The Way, Way Back review: how to escape from your family
One of the more achingly poignant stories of awkward (male) adolescence I’ve seen. Sam Rockwell steals this movie more than he has ever stolen a movie before.
Amanda Peet
Identity Thief (review)
There’s a bone-deep heartless cruelty at play here…
Gulliver’s Travels (review)
If you’ve been possessed of a burning desire to behold Jack Black’s belly flab in 3D, then I am delighted to announce that your moment has arrived. What’s that? You say it’s Black’s buttcrack you crave the sight of, rendered in three glorious dimensions? This, my friend, is your lucky day.
zombie Beatles; ‘Iron Man 2’ sexist?; good-bye, ‘Heroes’; more: leftover links
Every week my browser gets cluttered up with tabs for stuff that I stumble across and figure I might be able to use as a Question of the Day or a WTF Thought for the Day or grist for some other post. And inevitably, I end the week with most of that material unused. But … more…
2012 (review)
It’s kind of awesome, the film’s self-involvement. This isn’t really a movie: it’s more director/FX-mad wannabe supervillain Roland Emmerich calling out every other disaster film that has ever come before… including his own. Aliens blowing up the Empire State Builder? What piker came up with that?
The Crew and The Whole Nine Yards (review)
Mob stories rarely work as comedy. For every Get Shorty or Analyze This we seem to get a dozen Mickey Blue Eyeses and Jane Austen’s Mafia!s. For the comedies to gell, it seems, the mafia milieu needs to bump up against another idiosyncratic subculture: Mob Meets Hollywood, Mob Meets Therapy. The Crew tries it on with Mob Meets Old Fart… if there could be said to be an ‘Old Fart’ subculture.
