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 »
INVENTION OF LYING, THE
THE INVENTION OF LYING is a wildly funny flick that never sacrifices its considerable humor, nor its even more considerable acuity when it comes to parsing human nature. A world without falsehood, or even a word for it, or for truth, for that matter, is the conceit at work, and co-writer and star Ricky Gervais… Read More »
INFORMANT!, THE
There is something poignantly human in the way that everyone in Steven Soderberghs INFORMANT!, comedy of corporate greed and earnest FBI investigation, so completely believes in what they want to see going right in front of their eyes. The kicker is that the prime mover in all of this, Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), is so… Read More »
EXTRACT
There is a poetic, if not necessarily gentle, justice to Mike Judges paean to the working man and woman, EXTRACT. Not all of them are smart, but they all have an affinity for their chosen field, and a willingness to go all the way to achieve their respective dreams. Its bedrock American values skewed through… Read More »
COUPLES RETREAT
You cant fault people for wanting to take a trip to French Polynesia on someone elses dime. The water is so very blue, the sunsets are so very spectacular, the palms swaying the trade winds are so very alluring. And yet, as Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn sat down to write the screenplay set there,… Read More »
THE PROPOSAL
What almost saves THE PROPOSAL from itself is a pair of performances by Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds that have a bold and bracing bite of snarkiness to them. Alas, the formulaic nature of the script requires that they both warm up to each other and in the process, while their characters find true love,… Read More »
MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS, THE
Two men, each determined to cross the border from Kuwait into Iraq for reasons they find compelling to themselves, wait with some impatience to get going. One is a man whose consciousness has been expanded beyond the quotidienne, and the other, a man whose consciousness has been contracted to the confines of his own psyche… Read More »
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