Comedy Films
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Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (PG-13)
During the theatrical run of Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, Dodge had an extensive promotional campaign featuring Will Ferrell’s Ron Burgundy character. In the TV spots, he never actually identified himself as Ron Burgundy or reported any news or interacted with any other characters from either Anchorman film. He just wore a loud suit and […]
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The Truman Show (PG)
Apocalyptically speaking, falling stars signal the end of the age, a coming political revolution, for the celestial lights represent rulers. The fall of one star foretells the rising of another and we have just such an omen in an early scene of The Truman Show: a halogen light with “Sirius (9 Canis Major)” written on it […]
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Much Ado About Nothing (2012) (PG-13)
“Shakespeare” is a word which likely conjures up an endless string of irrevocably poignant images, though the writer himself was directly responsible for none of them. I think of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet and the battle on the beach, wherein Harold Perrineau’s tragically underestimated interpretation of Mercutio claims “A scratch!” after being mortally stabbed. […]
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The LEGO Movie (PG)
I experienced the collective cringe we all felt at the announcement of The LEGO Movie. Does their avarice know no bounds? They’ve made billions of dollars, saturated childhoods for generations, moved into video games. Nobody doesn’t know what Lego is. Do they need the marketing? A movie at this point seems cynical, doesn’t it? It’s […]
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A Serious Man (R)
Various Christian media outlets championed True Grit as the acme of the Coen brothers work with religious material, although I think A Serious Man renders True Grit as hollow as a flintlock gun barrel. Of all the qualities the film owns which might be discussed, the passage which immediately follows the prologue is of peculiar […]
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The Bling Ring (PG-13)
The Bling Ring is not an ambitious movie. The show might be aptly criticized for not being ambitious enough, but then I think moviemaking as a whole might collapse under the weight of such a demand. In truth, there are less than a dozen ambitious filmmakers alive. You say there are more. I say there […]
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Her (R)
Her, written and directed by Spike Jonze, contains three scenes of strong sexual content, and at least two other scenes with frank sexual language. All the sex is varyingly virtual. The movie uses sex both to demonstrate closeness between characters, and the gaps between them. Taken as whole, however, it’s not clear that Jonze understands […]
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Blue Jasmine (PG-13)
There’s something rote about Woody Allen films. In his sixth decade of filmmaking, both writing and directing, he has crafted and refined his own genre: neurosis plus jazz, adultery and A-listers; sometimes there’s murder, often there’s humor, but it is always with a deep sense of mortality. “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my […]
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Junebug (R)
In Flannery O’Connor’s seminal lecture Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction she uses the expression “Christ-haunted” to describe the South. Since first reading this, I have been haunted by this idea of Christ-hauntedness. She goes on to say that the Southerner “who isn’t convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may […]
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A Charlie Brown Christmas (G)
“Show, don’t tell” is the oldest law of storytelling, that thing which frustrated short fiction profs shout, mutter, whisper, beg and plead over and again in student workshops. “Don’t tell me Pat is angry. Show me. Did he lower his voice? Did he take deep breaths and shake his head? What?” And yet, the oldest […]
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Frozen (PG)
In the first minutes of Frozen, the older of two sisters nearly kills the younger, making it the rare Disney Princess Movie initiated by a brush with mortality. The principle concerns of the movie fall out around this life and death incident. We learn: That the older sister has the power to create and control […]
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Last Vegas (PG-13)
In Last Vegas, journeyman director Jon Turteltaub has demonstrated once again his ineffable knack for tapping into the middlebrow sensibility. Here, as in his unadventurous adventure films with Nicolas Cage, his safe combination of A list actors with B list material lulls the audience into the blissfully false impression that the picture they are watching […]