Hello, Dankness (2023)
The value of experimental filmmaking is in challenging [...]
Comedy
House Party (2023)
It’s a new year – 2023. The holiday season has ended, the parties are over, and the guests have all gone home. The bad news is that the new remake of the 90s sleeper hit House Party is not going to keep the party going. This is one of those movies that defines an empty-house January release. […]
Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul (2022)
In recent days, I’ve been reading Peter Biskind’s “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls,” a gossipy chronicle of the 70s auteur era that brought about a decade of personal filmmaking to a Hollywood couched in reliable formulas. The era would bring about a tapestry of great films like Easy Rider, MASH, Five Easy Pieces, Chinatown and The Last Picture […]
Girl Picture (2022)
I learned early in my life, thanks to the late-great World Book encyclopedia, that there are some parts of the northern world in which the sun never rises above the horizon for several months out the year. The closer that you are to the Arctic Circle, the longer the period will last. This is something […]
I Love My Dad (2022)
James Morosini’s I Love My Dad is a wonderful comedy of escalating embarrassment. It takes a simple idea and balloons it up into broad comedy so tense that, during the climax, I almost couldn’t look at the screen. It involves a father trying to connect with his son by creating an online persona so they can […]
Emergency (2022)
It would not surprise me if Carey Williams’ Emergency somehow found itself among the year’s Best Picture nominees next January. I know, I know. That’s a bold statement, but I want to make sure that I’m not misunderstood. It’s not that I think that Emergency is a grand achievement or anything. I think its a very good film […]
The Bob’s Burgers Movie (2022)
The most surprising thing about The Bob’s Burgers Movie is that it doesn’t feel like epic. Previous attempts to raise a prime time animated property onto the big screen, The Simpsons Movie and South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, have successfully ballooned up their world and their population of characters to fit the format. Those films […]
Senior Year (2022)
Netflix’s Senior Year is an annoying hi-concept comedy that takes a potentially interesting premise and waterlogs it with bad sitcom-style writing. An overcaffeinated 12-year-old could have written this. The subject in question is what happens when a high school senior gets into an accident, slips into a coma and wakes up 20 years later suddenly […]
Stanleyville (2022)
What are the limits of your human instinct for greed? How far would you go for a nuclear-orange compact sport utility vehicle? Would you be willing to write an entire national anthem in just 2 hours? Create a bit of technology? Could you blow up a lot of balloons in under a minute? How about […]
