Breaking Wind, Fart 1. The two-part laborious conclusion to the most trivial love story ever told, TWILIGHT: BREAKING DAWN PART 1, opens with a wedding sequence, exactly like the one in THE GODFATHER, with two small differences: it’s not about New York Crime Families, and it’s not good. Edward the Vampire (Hayden Christensen doppelganger Robert Pattinson) and Bella Swan the … Read More
HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA
Goolies Not Groovie. I really wanted to like HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA: an animated comedy with a cute concept (iconic screen monsters gathering at a resort set up by Dracula, far from the persecution of humans) and a simple boy-meets-girl story, featuring the talents of director Genndy Tartakovsky (the wild mind behind DEXTER’S LABORATORY and THE POWERPUFF GIRLS) and writer Robert Smigel … Read More
MAGIC MIKE
Sweat, Flesh, Booze, Drugs, wife-swapping, dry humping, backstabbing… who wants breakfast? Don’t bullshit me! You came here to see Channing Tatum dance! You didn’t come to MAGIC MIKE to see the story of young loser Adam (Alex Pettyfer) who can’t hold a job to save his life, befriending stripper Magic Mike (Tater Tots Tatum), who smarms him a job at … Read More
TOP GUN
Highway to the Gayer Zone. TOP GUN – the movie that wrested the crown from MAD MAX 2: THE ROAD WARRIOR as the Gayest Movie Ever Made. Tom Cruise is Maverick, the pop gun let loose in billion dollar taxpayer war machinery, one of the best fancypants F14 Tomcat pilots stationed onboard an aircraft carrier, though so smug, irritating and … Read More
TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE
Trouble With The Script. Hold up a mirror to Brad Pitt’s MONEYBALL, you get Clint Eastwood’s TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE. MONEYBALL (2011) told us the best way to draft major league baseball players is to study their stats on a computer and not rely on the disdainful opinions of crotchety old men. TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE tells us that despite … Read More
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN
Another good character study cloaked in superhero duds. THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN is the latest RE-imagining/ RE-boot/ RE-working of Spider-man canon. RE RE RE… Here’s my word for it – REally? Did we really need to sit through 40 minutes of another origin tale – again? In this very well-made movie, over half of it is wasted plying us with Spider-Man’s Same … Read More
TED
If you go down to the woods today, You’re sure of a big surprise… WHAT A CUTIE! I want to hug him and kiss him and pet him and sleep with him in my arms. And the teddy bear’s pretty cute too… TED (voiced by Seth MacFarlane) is a teddy bear who is raunchy and foul-mouthed, filthy-minded and immoral, a … Read More
SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK
Couldn’t find the silver lining. SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK is a teachable moment in filmic history. They showed us how to cure bipolar disease. You just need to get laid! Two damaged people Meet Cute. They pretend to hate each other. By movie’s end, they love each other, which apparently means they’re not damaged anymore. Yay. All it took was sex. SILVER … Read More
TWILIGHT: ECLIPSE
The Tween Team. So it has come to this. After the vampire wars and the werewolf killings, after the tempest of accepting a human unto the clan of the undead, after the dark skies of Forks presage death raining rivers of blood, TWILIGHT ECLIPSE has come to this, the most chilling decision mankind has ever faced: Team Edward or Team Jacob. Edward … Read More
MAN OF STEEL
Kneel Before Steel. Darkness, moral ambiguity, self-doubt, wearing underpants inside the trousers: these are things not commonly associated with Superman. But in MAN OF STEEL, the newest Superman vehicle, this heretical new direction is what we get – like it or not. But Poffy likey. The bedrock of Superman canon has been preserved (Krypton exploding, Kal-El sent to Earth, super … Read More
IRON MAN 3
Phallus Metallus. Hmm, an IRON MAN movie without Iron Man… Kiddies will fidget, parents will cringe, marketers will hit the roof, executives will cower, and fans of good storytelling will rejoice. Is IRON MAN 3 the best of the series? Maybe. Probably. If you could call this an Iron Man movie. All I know is, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) … Read More
STEALTH
Top Dumb. Uninvolving tale of a hi-tech artificial intelligence warplane that threatens to make human pilots redundant. STEALTH stars Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel and Jamie Foxx as the three top gun pilots the robot plane may potentially replace. Ironically, in this movie, they all act like robots. Part of a secret military project (is there any other kind?), overseen by … Read More
DEAR JOHN
Dear John, I never want to see you again. Who knew dating was so frickin’ BORING?! DEAR JON is a weepy date movie, where army guy Brick Rockchest (Channing Tatum, champion mumbler) meets beach chick Blondie Cocktease (Amanda Seyfried) and they bore us going on talk-dates. Then they get caught in the rain and kiss. Then they have a beach … Read More
THE OFFICE
Office Spaced. Genius Ricky Gervais forges one of the greatest comedy series in history, co-writing, co-directing and starring in THE OFFICE. No punchline required. Before we proceed with this joyous excursion into comedic venality, let us clarify the world in which we live in (thank you, Paul!): there is only *one* THE OFFICE. That is: Ricky Gervais’s and Stephen Merchant’s … Read More
THE UGLY TRUTH
Uglier than we can imagine. THE UGLY TRUTH seems to be telling us that strong, intelligent women are not desirable, or at least, not as alluring as eye-candy T&A who exhibit only as much brainpower as required to breathe and fuck. Why does the movie make its leading lady an ambitious, intelligent, decisive woman until she is in the proximity … Read More
STREETS OF FIRE
Rock and Roll Fable Disable. Everything you know is fake. Everything you believe is wrong. STREETS OF FIRE taught me this. In one crushing swoop, everything I believed about the movie’s finale song, Dan Hartman’s I Can Dream About You, was shattered. Allow me to digress… The movie itself is an unsuccessful stab at cult musical-actioner, with comicbook visuals set … Read More
TWILIGHT NEW MOON
Dead – and Mumbling It. Kristen Stewart mumbles her way through another TWILIGHT movie. Synopsis of NEW MOON on the BluRay cover: “In the second chapter of Stephanie Meyer’s best-selling TWILIGHT series, the romance between mortal Bella Swan and vampire Edward Cullen gets more intense.” And by more intense, they mean he almost gets to second base. Stewart once again … Read More
PRETTY WOMAN
For the Love of Prostitution. Julia Roberts is a classless whore who gets lucky by bedding a millionaire. And in PRETTY WOMAN, Julia Roberts is a classless whore who gets lucky by bedding a millionaire. In what may be the most ignorant movie in a decade, a businessman hires a Hollywood Boulevard hooker (renowned for their trashiness, tastelessness, uncleanliness, tardiness … Read More
EASY A
THE SCARLET LETTER for Generation Nerd. How quaint: Emma Stone pastes a letter ‘A’ onto her A-cups. Drawing heavily on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, EASY A brings the 17th century pariah adulteress into modern times, setting the story in an American high school, where outcast Olive (Stone) does a favor for a gay nerd at her school by pretending … Read More
THE AMERICAN
AMERICAN Beauty. George Clooney is THE AMERICAN. Everyone else is Euro, buttery accents and dynamite sexy. Clooney is Jack, a hitman sent to Italy by his boss Pavel (Johan Leysen) to design a high-powered rifle for a client. While Euro-ing out amongst the cobbled streets and breezy cafés, Jack falls for prostitute Clara (Violante Placido, the most naturally beautiful woman … Read More