With Steven Spielberg, sometimes, most of the time, you get E.T: THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL. Sometimes, though, you get 1941. It’s not that READY PLAYER ONE rivals the sheer ineptitude of the latter, but it is definitely skirting the shoals. With Spielberg, one has come to expect much, and so when presented with a flick that is… Read More »
ICE AGE: COLLISON COURSE
The Ice Age series has always gone more for the heart that the funny bone, though there is no denying that Scrat’s eternal and Sisyphean struggle both to acquire and to retain the acorn he’s been chasing through the four previous films has, in equal parts, both hilarity and a keen commentary on the noble struggle of humankind against a basically unfeeling universe.
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: ROGUE NATION Rocks
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: ROGUE NATION is lean, mean, and seriously fun. There is not a wasted moment for fans of high-energy, slickly plotted action flicks of the popcorn variety, as this installment of the franchise finds the Impossible Mission Force shut down by the government, but not out of business. Not by a longshot. Their last official… Read More »
HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND ALIENATE PEOPLE
There are a few bright moments punctuating HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND ALIENATE PEOPLE based the memoir of the same name by Toby Young. Very few. And all of them courtesy of its star, Simon Pegg, a man of great comedic gifts who finds himself in a vehicle greatly unworthy of them. Pegg plays Sydney… Read More »
ICE AGE 3: DAWN OF THE DINOSAURS
After an uncertain sophomore effort, the ICE AGE franchise has bounced back, more or less, with its third installment. The message is the same, family arrives in the least expected of forms, and though one may love the other members of ones herd, one doesnt necessarily like them all of the time. The humor is… Read More »
THE WORLD’S END
The Cornetto Trilogy comes to a superb conclusion with THE WORLDS END. Director Edgar Wright again teams with the regular cast of co-writer Simon Pegg as the anti-hero, and Nick Frost as the humorless corporate lawyer, along with newcomers Eddie Marsan as the grinning bunny rabbit of a car salesman, Paddy Considine as the enterperneur… Read More »
SHAUN OF THE DEAD DVD
Click here for the interview with Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright.There were three press screenings of SHAUN OF THE DEAD prior to its release here in San Francisco. The first one I had to be talked into. After all, the premise, a romantic comedy about zombies made by people I?d never heard of, didn?t sound… Read More »
HOT FUZZ
Co-writers Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright made an indelible impression with SHAUN OF THE DEAD, an unconventional look at what happens to human relationships when zombies run rampant through a London neighborhood. Wright directed, Pegg co-starred as Shaun, with Nick Frost as his pear-shaped and singularly unhelpful flatmate. All three of them are back in HOT… Read More »
RUN FATBOY RUN
Dennis Doyle (Simon Pegg), the oddball hero of the sweet-and sour-romantic comedy, RUN FATBOY RUN is a man who has lived for five years with the fallout of one bad, impulsive decision. That would be running out, literally, on his fiancée, Libby (Thandie Newton). His >pregnant< fiancée, Libby, and doing it as the guests were… Read More »
SHAUN OF THE DEAD
SHAUN OF THE DEAD is a crisp and lethally funny blend of B-movie monsters and those “kitchen sink” dramas from Britain’s theatrical renaissance of the late 50s and early 60s. Our angry young man is the Shaun (Simon Pegg) of the title, a feckless drone with a dead-end job that is a daily, even hourly… Read More »