MADAGASCAR 2 ESCAPE TO AFRICA begins with a backstory, the better to set up the forestory of this animated piece. Alex (Ben Stiller), the dancing king of New York, was not always an inhabitant of the Central Park Zoo. Nor was always an inhabitant of the New World, for that matter. No, when he was… Read More »
WALL-E DVD
The true test of a great film is whether or not it is able to affect you as deeply the tenth time you see as it did the first time. WALL-E does. When WALL-E, the eponymous robot hero of his own Pixar feature, first takes the hand, or robot facsimile of same, of his robot lady… Read More »
CADILLAC RECRDS
Writer/director Darnell Martin has an obvious passion for the blues and for the men and women who sang them. It comes across in every frame of CADILLAC RECORDS, based on the true story of Chess Records, whose founder, Leonard Chess, had a penchant for handing out Cadillacs to his recording artists. Executive producer and pop… Read More »
NOBEL SON
As with his last film, BOTTLE SHOCK, Randall Miller returns to the themes of father-son relationships in NOBEL SON. While the former was a sun-drenched idyll in the wine country of Napa Valley, arch but ultimately warm and fuzzy, the latter starts in the darker environs of human behavior and then gets seriously nasty and… Read More »
YES MAN
YES MAN tries to be two kinds of Jim Carrey movies at once and fails twice over. The result is a flat and unappetizing work that is neither serious enough to win over an audience looking for something of substance, nor wacky enough to satisfy fans of the manic Carrey of THE MASK or ACE… Read More »
BEDTIME STORIES
There may once have been a charming idea at the heart of BEDTIME STORIES, but alas, whatever it might have been has been Sandler-ized. And not for your protection. The tale of Skeeter (Adam Sandler), an underappreciated hotel maintenance man given a chance to succeed where his father failed in the hospitality industry is singularly… Read More »
BRIDE WARS
Sloppy writing and lazy direction are the hallmarks of BRIDE WARS, a stale story badly told. And that’s a shame because there is much to lampoon about the current state of the wedding business, where the complicated planning and execution can rival that of the Normandy Invasion during World War II. Perhaps it’s no accident… Read More »
PAUL BLART — MALL COP
Kevin James, star and co-writer of PAUL BLART: MALL COP should know how to play to his comedic strengths when penning a role for himself. He and writing partner, Nick Bakay, an alum of James’ sitcom, “The King of Queens”, however, aren’t so great at fabricating a long-form script around which to build on James’… Read More »
SWEPT AWAY
When Lina Wertmuller, the elfin feminist gadfly of Italian cinema, made SWEPT AWAY back in 1974, it was a tantalizing and brutal take on the war between the sexes, between the classes and on the whole human comedy. When Guy Ritchie re-wrote the script for his wife, Madonna, I’m sure he thought it was a… Read More »
HUMPDAY
HUMPDAY is a wry and perceptive comedy that is deadly serious about intimacy, sexuality, and the peculiar zero-sum form of competition that male bonding can manifest. Beyond gender, it also examines with a compassionate, if unflinching, eye the maddening fluidity of personal identity, the not so tidy ways people slice up themselves in order to… Read More »
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