Love the Coopers features no fewer than six dog reaction shots. Has a successful comedy ever contained this distraction and desperate plea for a chuckle, “awww,” or both? It’s really just the beginning of the problems for this confused, temperamental, and mostly miserable film. Love the Coopers is as much a comedy… Continue reading
How rare it is to see something that you’ve never seen before. Spike Jonze’s Her takes the romantic comedy/drama genre, one desperately in need of a genre-buster, and turns it upside down with one of the sweetest, most heartfelt films to come along in quite some time. In an era… Continue reading
Finally, an absurdist comedy that wears the label proudly. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone comes from the Will Ferrell school of film comedies, meaning that we have bizarre people doing bizarre things, but it somehow gels. The film isn’t quite the classic it could have been with such a stacked cast… Continue reading
Watching TRON: Legacy, the long-awaited follow-up to 1982’s TRON, I was reminded of Siskel’s and Ebert’s 1995 roasting of Jumanji. Ebert stated that special effects have to be “at the service of the story.” It was correct then, and it is correct now. There will be very little debate regarding… Continue reading
Go ahead and yawn. Turistas is just another disposable piece of pseudo-exploitation trash that has arrived in the wake of the success of Hostel, a film that, while flawed, at least had the benefit of some psychological plausibility. Nightmares of isolation and unendurable pain are the calling card of this… Continue reading