Hipster loathing has graduated from passive distaste to aggressive protest. The religion of rebellion, of conformity to anti-conformity, seems to every generation looking back on their bygone years in the fold to be at a fever pitch. As naive and as stylistically and ideologically clichéd as each iteration of youth culture is, it was never [...]
”Peepli Live” has been the toast and tea of town for the better part of this past year. A Sundance selection and Berlinale screening, it has been picking up favor and five star reviews across the Prime Meridian, becoming the focus of India’s annual interest in evaluating its culture through the Western eye. Unlike the [...]
Paperwork? You must be kidding. No badass buddy cop duo has ever been troubled by the monotony of filling out countless forms for every firearm discharged, domestic dispute, auto accident, petty shoplifting, or false burglar alarm. You never saw the likes of Riggs and Murtaugh, Tango and Cash, Hammond and Cates or even Turner and [...]
Safety first. “Dinner for Schmucks” clings to that mantra like a corporate lawyer with executive overlords deathly afraid of dishing out workers comp checks to injured employees. The production studio, Spyglass Entertainment, must have circulated a memo during pre-production forbidding experimentation of any kind, taking chances, sharpening the writing, casting out of type or any [...]
It takes about three months to make a movie — a Hollywood movie — excluding post and preproduction. Some take longer. Nightmarish production on Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” took 238 days. Stanley Kubrick’s penultimate masterpiece, “Eyes Wide Shut,” took more than 15 months. Nonsense. Jim Wynorski, the most prolific filmmaker you’ve never heard of, [...]
Pixar isn’t blazing any new trails in the realm of critically acclaimed animated cinema. Its parent company, Disney, has been winning Oscars with its hand-drawn masterpieces since 1937. But, the relatively young computer animation studio, through a flawless record of mature, innovative, deftly crafted pictures, has positioned itself atop the heap as a perennial Oscar [...]
The merits of an intellectual elucidation of Joe Carnahan’s 21st century revamp of the mid-1980s absurdist TV show about a team of disgraced Army Rangers-turned outlaw mercenaries are negligible at best. To engage in such an endeavor would neutralize the only conceivable reason to watch the film at all. Which is why I love it. [...]
The trilogy used to be the golden standard for film franchises prior to the aughts. Every now and then a “James Bond” or a “Godzilla” or a “Star Trek” would come along and break the mold, creating a veritable cash cow for the property’s delighted studio. But properties with that level of fan loyalty and [...]
Saddled with plot holes, tonal and practical inconsistencies, shallow characters and an uneven, intermittently funny script, “MacGruber” is not a good film. But it does feature a surprisingly nuanced love interest (Kristen Wiig) and an aging, slightly plump Val Kilmer as super-villain, Dieter Von Cunth — yes, Cunth — which almost make up for the [...]
Hallelujah! Nicolas Cage has finally returned. Once a brilliant and respected actor whose eccentricities and prodigious talents combined to create truly memorable characters like H.I. McDunnough in the Coen Brothers’ zany masterpiece, “Raising Arizona,” and Charlie Kaufman’s neurotic, alter-ego twins in Spike Jonze’s “Adaptation,” Cage has since become known more for laughably bad turns in [...]
