Raging Rocky. It’s Rocky versus Raging Bull in a battle to the retirement community. It’s old versus older in a rampage to the replaced hip… Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro square off as old – and I do mean old – boxing rivals who ended their careers unbeaten, except by each other – once each! Now, thirty years later, … Read More
STAND UP GUYS
Say goodnight to the bad guys… The KING OF NEW YORK takes SCARFACE for one last night on the town. Before he has to kill him. A comedy with heart – and imminent heart attack – as three aged wiseguys in their septs and octs wheeze about town on one last bender, partly in celebration of one of them being … Read More
THE INCREDIBLE BURT WONDERSTONE
The Incredible Jim Carrey (and the Soporific Steve Carell). Steve Carell is not a terrible comedian. Yet I still wonder how he gets starring roles as a comedian. Carell is THE INCREDIBLE BURT WONDERSTONE, a successful – yet boring – entertainer (much like Steve Carell), who must get his magician’s tricks and personal licks up to speed, to stave off … Read More
ARGO
The Year of Living Hollywoodly. When your facial hair says yes and your fashion sense says no – that’s ARGO. Ben Affleck does battle with his beard for top billing as CIA “exfiltration” expert Tony Mendez, trying to extract six American fugitives from Iran during a political insurgency. (When is there NOT a political insurgency in Iran? Can someone call … Read More
THE CHANGE-UP
Another change-up, another plage-up. How many times have we seen this movie? THE CHANGE-UP is the latest mystical body-switching movie from the venal plagiarists in the Hollywood Cookie Cutter Industrial Complex who have the audacity to call themselves writers. At least it’s funny. Mitch (Ryan Reynolds) and Dave (Jason Bateman) are best friends but lead diametrically opposite lifestyles – Mitch … Read More
GROSSE POINTE BLANK
Whackjob Whack Job. It’s the terror of knowing what this world is about Watching some good friends screaming, “Let me out!” — Queen/David Bowie, “Under Pressure.” Even hitmen have high school reunions. Even hitmen have psychiatrists. One could suppose GROSSE POINTE BLANK was a precursor/inspiration for THE SOPRANOS – and one could be whacked for it. When we attend our … Read More
MARLEY AND ME
The Pursuit of Crappyness. In the insensate family comedy, MARLEY & ME, a young couple (Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston) buy a labrador puppy that we know the film wants us to regard as mischievous, lovable, cute, but which is, in reality, retarded, for when it grows to adulthood, it still has not learned one shred of discipline and cannot … Read More
GET SMART 2008
Get Dumb. And Dumber. Who wrote this crap? Would you believe…? Well, it wasn’t Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. Their Maxwell Smart (personified by Don Adams) was hilarious. As the creators-writers of the 1965 television series, GET SMART, they are listed as “creative consultants” as soon as the end credits roll. It’s as if the writers of this torpid remake … Read More
RENDITION
Lessons in Amerikan Euphemism. THE LIE: “America doesn’t torture.” THE PLOT: CIA authorizes kidnapping and torture of a suspected terrorist in a misguided attempt to thwart further terrorism. THE EUPHEMISM: “extraordinary rendition.” THE TRUTH: America DOES torture. All my life I’ve regarded the word “rendition” to mean “the act of rendering.” So how the hell does it come to mean … Read More