What’s buried in Grant’s Tomb? The headquarters of the Bureau of Sexological Investigation, a non-existent but factual-sounding organization designed by husband and wife comedy team Jeanne and Alan Abel for this early entrant in the mockumentary market. A parody of Mondo movies, this hit at around the same time the …
It’s one thing for a group of untried kid actors to take out a hydrocephaloid sewer clown. It was, by all accounts, a scarefree nap, but at best there was something this clown-hater found intrinsically inviting about the kids-in-peril novelty it waved. But watching a group of (mostly) well-paid (mostly) …
It’s one thing for a group of untried kid actors to take out a hydrocephaloid sewer clown. It was, by all accounts, a scarefree nap, but at best there was something this clown-hater found intrinsically inviting about the kids-in-peril novelty it waved. But watching a group of (mostly) well-paid (mostly) …
The Hollywood model of sexual promiscuity meeting with horrific reprisal was first presented to me in the 1960 version of Where the Boys Are: tramps who “put out” deserve to be struck down by oncoming traffic. It figures that It Follows’ updated chastening procedure finds writer-director David Robert Mitchell cleverly …
If the Grinch in you has difficulty getting past the saccharine silliness of Miracle on 34th Street, how about a Christmas film that opens with an alcoholic druggist bringing his fist so hard against his delivery boy’s head that blood flows from the lad’s ear? And for a beloved yuletide …
If the Grinch in you has difficulty getting past the saccharine silliness of Miracle on 34th Street, how about a Christmas film that opens with an alcoholic druggist bringing his fist so hard against his delivery boy’s head that blood flows from the lad’s ear? And for a beloved yuletide …
At what point in recent history were rom-coms obfuscated by chick-flicks? I Want You Back welcomes the return of the romantic comedy. Two people, recently dumped and drawn together through logical coincidence, conspire to excise their replacements and permanently win back their exes. Emma (Jenny Slate) and (Charlie Day) meet …
Ixnay on any aughlays in this dilatory drama about a 17-year-old Guatemalan girl who, though spoken for through an arranged marriage, finds herself pregnant with another man’s child. First time writer-director Jayro Bustamante’s opening salvo lobs metaphoric bricks out of a tennis cannon: an unbroken long take of our virginal …
When a review commences with, “As gratifying as it is to see the gang back together…,” you know there’s trouble in paradise. Johnny Knoxville’s gone white (in some scenes) and Steve-O is practically sporting a pompadour. Why lead with those observations? They offer something different to look at in a …
The emphasis of Bad Grandpa is not so much on the daredevil stunts that made household names of Johnny Knoxville and the Jackass brand. Nor is there, apart from decorating the wall of a small town eatery with a duodenal Dali, much of the traditional dependence on doody humor. Instead, …
Were it not for the giant blood stain on the lower-half of her fabled pink dress – a moment director Pablo Larraín takes his sweet time revealing in a startling pullback – and constant juxtaposition next to her husband’s casket, Jackie Kennedy could have just as easily been mistaken for …
A bag containing cholesterol-free, nutrient-dense seeds that have the power to change the world falls into the wrong hands. Fee-fi-ho-hum! All of the costumes, elaborate sets, lush cinematography (thank you, Newton Thomas Sigel!), and naturalistic use of depth don’t amount to a hill of beans in this giant time-slayer. Talk …
Still barred from officially making movies, the house arrest has been lifted and Jafar Panahi is now free to move about the countryside. It’s life and death in the backseat of a cab as Panahi tools around Tehran in search of flailing arms and predetermined passengers. The fares range from …
While taking a vacation from taking a vacation, the titular and incognizant party boy of James White gets a call that his co-dependent mother’s stage four cancer has spread. The only things separating this from the typical disease-of-the-week tripe beamed directly to one’s satellite dish is first-time director Josh Mond’s …