Tag Archive
Funny People
Last year’s biggest hit, The Dark Knight, proved a lot of things—about the strength of the franchise, about the positive financial advantages a movie has with a deceased star being the lead* (see: The Crow), and that you can change actors from film to film, such as with the part of Rachel Dawes, played by [...]
Zabriskie Point
Here’s the idea behind “A Canadian, an American, a Lawyer, and an Elitist”: Rhett’s favorite movie is Meatballs 4, Shawn has an unhealthy fixation on Resident Evil, Richard scoffs at anything that isn’t pretentious and hoity toity, and Adam is a prick who hates everything. We all watch far too many movies, and spend our [...]
Mac and Me
While it would be fair to complain that the recent #1 film in the US, Disturbia, is a movie built on shameless product placement (check out that opening Coca-Cola moment in the first scene!), and doesn’t have to make a dime to be profitable, the producers still have something to strive for. While Adam Sandler [...]
Adventureland
Selling nostalgia is a tricky thing. While you already have the advantage of being able to tap into people’s hazy memories and playing off their vague recognition and familiarity, you risk relying on such a lazy device to the point where you become guilty of The Wedding Singer syndrome, wherein the entire purpose was to [...]
Margaret
One of the downsides of the disintegration of the theatrical release of independent films and the dissolving of the indie arms of major studios, such as Picturehouse and Warner Independent, and the shutting down of daring studios like New Line is that the low-mid-budget films have no shot in the market. The reason for that [...]
Anger Management
Hopeless in nearly every way. A very promising idea can’t make up it’s mind whether it’s goofy or genuine, and that is negated anyway by a double blunder of an ending, the first shameless part in Yankee Stadium, the second part which reveals that not only did you waste your time in real life, so [...]
Shaolin Soccer
In 1997, when ownership of Hong Kong was returned to China from the United Kingdom, more than a transfer of land took place. Many filmmakers and actors, who sensed the upcoming political change, had already left to pursue careers in the US where they anticipated they would have more freedom to make the kinds of [...]
Pineapple Express
The most surprising thing about the Seth Rogen-James Franco vehicle Pineapple Express obviously isn’t its pot humor, overt silliness, and the pushing of women to the side (this is a Judd Apatow production, after all). The surprise is that it is the most baldly homoerotic Hollywood buddy film since Damon Wayans stuck his gun up [...]
The Gay Action Hero is Still in the Closet
Since the invention of postmodernism, it has been quite easy to find homoerotic subtext in any film involving bonding between members of the same sex (Lord of the Rings), men who like to hold guns (any buddy-cop action movie from Lethal Weapon to Damon Wayans’ gun




