John Patrick Shanley’s WILD MOUNTAIN THYME, based on his play Outside Mulligan, is a charmer of an Irish muddle. Committed in its gentle eccentricity, it essays to find the mythic in the quotidien and darn near pulls it off. At least sly humor abounds as the determined Rosemary (Emily Blunt) pines for Anthony (Jamie Dornan)… Read More »
THE WAR WITH GRANDPA
Amid the stale jokes and flat direction to be found in THE WAR WITH GRANDPA, one is subjected to cartoonish takes on elder abuse, child abuse, and I’m pretty sure that the bass didn’t enjoy its time during the fishing sequence. Based on the book of the same name by Robert Kimmel Smith, the film… Read More »
CATCH ME IF YOU CAN
You can see how Steven Spielberg and company would have salivated at the prospect of bringing this story to the screen. Inspired by actual events in the life of Frank Abignale, Jr., its got a 16-year-old runaway conning his way around the world with forged checks and eluding the FBI for three years back in… Read More »
GIGLI
If GIGLI were any worse than it is, it would require special HAZMET handling. It transcends merely bad, merely tedious, merely irksome and plummets into that very special category of film, the one that so tries and tortures its audience that, emerging again from the soul-sucking black hole of celluloid disaster, it no longer fears… Read More »
RUNDOWN, THE
One of the best moments in THE RUNDOWN is Christopher Walken, doing his own peculiar riff on being the heart of darkness, explaining through a translator to a group of Brazilian Indians just exactly what the Tooth Fairy is. Its also emblematic of what is best in this slam dunk of an action flick that… Read More »
ENVY
I have always adored Christopher Walken, but never more than while enduring ENVY, a flick as deadly to the concept of entertainment as the deadly sin of the same name is to ones mortal soul. Walken is an actor who can do more with less than pretty much anyone else I can think of and… Read More »
WEDDING CRASHERS
The urge to mate is a primal one and the one, arguably, over which we as a species have the least control. In pursuit of such a goal, much energy has been expended, including wars. John (Owen Wilson) and Jeremy (Vince Vaughn) The heroes of the WEDDING CRASHERS have simplified the process in a way… Read More »
BALLS OF FURY
Christopher Walken’s essential star quality, his absolute uniqueness as a performer, is never more apparent, or welcome, than when he appears in dreck. Even in the worst films, ENVY comes to mind, he is there, effortlessly finding something, anything, in a bad script and worse directing, to which a hapless audience can cling until the… Read More »