weekend watchlist: is it good to be the queen?
Plus a teenage con artist, a skewering of late-night comedy, and more… (First published September 18th, 2022, on Substack and Patreon.)
Michael Sheen
Slaughterhouse Rulez movie review: no, it doesn’t
This unfunny, unscary mess is a series of missed opportunities that has no idea what to do with its attempted class-warfare satire. It’s cheap but not even cheesy: that would require some passion, which is completely lacking.
Brad’s Status movie review: when a white man can’t bear not having all the privilege
Ben Stiller is having another midlife crisis, and only his sincere, heartfelt performance saves this pile of unchecked white male privilege from self-parody. But only just.
Home Again movie review: imitation of life
Precious, fatuous, Nancy Meyers–lite rom-com about a privileged rich white lady with no real problems who can’t help but mom her much-younger new boyfriend. Barf.
Passengers movie review: lost in sexist space
After a few quick nods to the profoundly unethical act at its core, it shrugs it off and uses it as the basis for its fairy-tale romance. This is not okay.
Far from the Madding Crowd movie review: a woman’s choices
Ridiculously romantic in all the best ways, and more modern, more progressive, and even just plain more grownup that half the movies thrown at us today.
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 (review)
The world’s most insipid vampires are back in inaction! Twilight has never been more about people standing around waiting for stuff to happen to them…
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 (trailer)
“Forever isn’t as long as I’d hoped.” The wisdom of Bella Swan, ladies and gentlemen.
Midnight in Paris (review)
Midnight in Paris becomes the butt of its own gentle joke… perhaps the most Woody Allen joke ever, one that wraps up a paralyzing self-awareness in a redemptive self-deprecation to, finally and splendidly, laugh with great good humor at itself.
Resistance (trailer)
“The German invasion continues to advance north and west”? Oxford? Swindon? What the–?
