It’s hard to imagine a movie about the U.S. military training soldiers to discover their psychic powers that wouldn’t be fun, especially if it’s played for laughs. And the first half of Grant Heslov’s directorial debut, The Men Who Stare at Goats, doesn’t disappoint.
The action begins when heartbroken reporter Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) heads off to imbed himself with troops as the Iraq War starts, but Wilton can’t get himself into the country until he chances upon Lyn Cassady (George Clooney). It turns out Lyn spent decades as part of the New Earth Army — a platoon of men, led by Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), who lived a new-age lifestyle in an attempt to cultivate extrasensory perception that would allow the U.S. army to win wars nonviolently. Bill now has a secret mission in Iraq, and allows Bob to come along. As the duo gets into a series of misadventures, Lyn shares with Bob the colorful history of the New Earth Army and chronicles the nefarious machinations of Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey), whose jealousy of Lyn’s remarkable skill brought an end to the group.
At its core, Adam Elliot’s stop-motion animated opus Mary & Max may well be one of the most despairing mainstream features ever made. That isn’t intended as a criticism of the film, but as an observation; despair is integral to the film’s worldview. In Elliot’s universe – a godless, a-humanist universe of chaos, random violence and meaningless, tragic absurdities – humans create their only real significance via intimate personal connections with one another. The earnestness of one such connection – a marvelous friendship at the center of this story – also gives the movie resounding levels of heart, soul, and hope, that effectively offset the maelstrom of suffering it perceives.
Depending on how much abstract thought the viewer is willing to engage in, (Untitled) is either an astoundingly brilliant meditation on the vacuous essence of popular contemporary art, or a dreadful mess, the cinematic equivalent of “my six-year-old could do this.” Perhaps with this in mind, the filmmakers have provided a product so devoid of entertainment that it virtually guarantees 90 minutes of awkward silence in which to nurture the audience’s ruminations on the film’s deeper meaning and inherent worth.
In today’s world of recession, stimulus packages, and layoffs, it seems only fitting that a film should attempt to explore the notion that a college degree no longer guarantees a place in the job market. This holds true in Post Grad, a romantic comedy of sorts that appeals not only to the Facebook generation, but to the hopelessly unemployed.
Most anybody who was a teenager after 1955 can relate completely to the idea of rock & roll as the path of deliverance from adolescent angst. Director Todd Graff takes full advantage of this in Bandslam. The story centers on teenage music lover Will Burton (Gaelan Connell), a social misfit who shuts out the classmates he hates with the help of his omnipresent iPod. He wants nothing more than to leave his Cleveland school, and one day that dream unexpectedly comes true when his single mother (Lisa Kudrow) lands a job in New Jersey. At his new school, Will is just happy to be anonymous, but he eventually starts a tentative friendship with a fellow misfit (Vanessa Hudgens) whose name, Sa5m, has a silent “5.” And when the most popular girl in school (Aly Michalka) realizes (thanks to their shared appreciation for the Velvet Underground) that Will has spectacular taste in music, she gets him to manage her rock group so they can defeat her ex-boyfriend’s band in Bandslam, an annual battle of the bands contest.
The first time we meet Don Ready (Jeremy Piven), he embodies everything that we’ve come to expect from the actor who portrays him; munching bacon in a strip joint with Jibby Newsome (Ving Rhames), Brent Gage (David Koechner), and Babs Merrick (Kathryn Hahn) — his hard-bitten cadre of used car mercenaries — he’s sleazeball confidence personified. But he gets the job done. When struggling dealerships need to move cars, no one else can clear a lot faster. Ben Sellick’s (James Brolin) dealership in Temecula is about to go bust, and Ready is his last hope for staying in business. Of course, Ready and his crew are up to the task, but when the fast-talking salesman finds himself falling for Sellick’s daughter, Ivy (Jordana Spiro), he starts to lose focus and risks blowing the whole deal. Perhaps with a little help from his oddball crew and the eager salesmen at Sellick Motors, Ready will find his soul and a reason to settle down.
Everybody needs inspiration. Julie Powell wanted to be a writer, but not until she challenged herself to make every recipe in Julia Child’s culinary bible Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year – and blogged about it – did she find her voice. Her memoir about that year, Julie & Julia, comes to the big screen thanks to writer/director Nora Ephron, a filmmaker who was in dire need of some inspiration.
If Sam Raimi directed a film for Hammer Studios, odds are it would look and feel a lot like director Glenn McQuaid’s impressive feature directorial debut, I Sell the Dead. A Creepshow-flavored, period horror comedy with comic-book style to spare, it’s a rare treat that serves up laughs and chills in equal measure, and manages the rare feat of cramming just about every genre imaginable into its brisk 85 minutes, without ever feeling bloated or overbearing. From the playful score to eerie, brumous nightscapes (fog juice alone appears to have comprised half of the film’s budget), I Sell the Dead always entertains and never takes itself too seriously. Fast-paced, funny, and featuring solid performances by a talented cast, it’s the kind of rare gem that isn’t likely to come to a theater near you (if you live outside of New York or Los Angeles), but could well gain a cult following down the road thanks to positive word of mouth.
Trying to reinvent the romantic comedy is like trying to reinvent the wheel — highly ambitious, but nearly impossible to execute. Such is the case with The Ugly Truth, the latest Katherine Heigl vehicle, which falls back on an all too familiar story: Type-A career woman meets crass, rough-around-the-edges man-child, they do the love-hate tango, and in the end realize they’re perfect for each other.
Sixteen Candles meets Superbad in I Love You, Beth Cooper, a barely adequate teen comedy that borrows so heavily from previous efforts that it seems to have been assembled from the cut scenes and alternate takes of other, better coming-of-age films. Adapted by Larry Doyle from his popular novel of the same name, the terminally clichéd film blows its figurative load in the opening five minutes, and never quite recovers. It’s a bit of a shame, too, since the story of a high school kid who hasn’t yet peaked is one that many teens can relate to. Unfortunately, most of the time it feels like I Love You, Beth Cooper is simply playing it too straight to be anything other than ordinary, despite the continuing promise of something greater.
Creating effective social satire is no easy task — just ask Sacha Baron Cohen. Shortly after scoring a hit in the U.K. with Da Ali G Show, Baron Cohen attempted to translate his unique brand of humor to the big screen with the disastrously unfunny Ali G Indahouse. Conventional narrative form simply didn’t fit his spontaneous, on-the-spot style, and in order to remain relevant he was forced to innovate. Fortunately for him, the secret of Baron Cohen’s genius was still only known to a (relatively) select few, so when Borat hit the big screen in 2006, most folks were blindsided by the boorish, yet morbidly endearing character. But the same character who also shot Baron Cohen to fame threatened to become his downfall — these days his schtick isn’t nearly as easy to pull off as it was just three years ago, but pull it off he does in Brüno, a boisterous, taboo-smashing satire that establishes its star as the Andy Kaufman of his generation, and nearly earns him an ass-whooping on more than a few occasions.
After a string of films set outside not just the familiar confines of Manhattan, but outside of the U.S.A. altogether, Woody Allen returns to his home country and his hometown with a vengeance in Whatever Works, a comedy about how America would be a much better place if everyone lived in New York.
Having grown rather disgruntled, last week, by the fact that the American Life Network has started inexplicably preempting everything (including beloved St. Elsewhere reruns) with irritating late night infomercials for thigh-press machines and hair conditioners, I eventually gave up and tuned into an animated short that I impulsively DVR’ed from the Sundance Channel, entitled Harvie Krumpet. And in the process, I discovered a minor miracle: a commendably offbeat, fresh, hysterically funny creation that was deservedly one of the breakout hits of the Sundance Film Festival six years ago (and won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short at the 2003 Oscars). Though only 23 minutes long, it has been released on North American DVD, supplemented by earlier shorts from the same director. It won me over instantly, and if you haven’t yet seen it, I cannot recommend it highly enough.
If you ever wanted to see a movie starring Ice-T as a talking mule who does a terrible Mr. T impression, farts, and wears bling, then sit back and get ready to be happy.
Most family films aim their lessons at children, but some actually have a thing or two for adults to learn. Imagine That is one of the latter. Eddie Murphy plays Evan Danielson, a highly successful financial analyst competing for a huge promotion against Johnny Whitefeather (Thomas Haden Church) — an up-and-coming investment whiz who peppers his presentations with mystical Native-American metaphors. Evan spends so much time focused on his work that he’s separated from his wife, and he doesn’t pay enough attention to his seven-year-old daughter, Olivia (Yara Shahidi). Because of all the domestic upheaval, Olivia carries her goo-gaa (a security blanket) with her everywhere, screaming at the top of her lungs whenever it’s taken away. Olivia uses her goo-gaa to enter an imaginary world, and this pretending annoys her dad to no end — that is, until one day when the three princesses whom she visits there provide some expert advice on what stocks are worth buying. At that point, in order to maintain a competitive edge at work, Evan begins spending more quality time with his daughter.
There might not be a more dependable name in all of Hollywood than Pixar, and their tenth animated feature, Up, continues the studio’s remarkable hot streak.
As is usually the case, the premise is elegantly simple: in order to fulfill a promise to his dearly departed adventure-loving wife, senior citizen Carl Fredricksen (Ed Asner) flies to South America by hitching thousands of helium balloons to the house they built together. As silly as that may sound, director Pete Docter captures the audience’s heart right from the beginning, thanks to an opening ten minutes that encapsulate the happy, decades-long marriage Carl shared with his dear Ellie. Following the duo from their first meeting as children who idolized the same superstar adventurer, to their tragic inability to have children, to their final moments together, this sweet, nearly dialogue-free sequence stands as arguably the most poignant in Pixar history — right alongside WALL-E’s spacewalk, and Jessie’s abandonment in Toy Story 2. It’s a remarkably emotional way to start things off, but it sets the audience up for all the amazing things that follow precisely because you never question why Carl acts on his obsession.
The Wayans family cash in on another genre ripe for parody with Dance Flick, a dead-on-arrival stinker that gets it right comedy-wise one out of 30 miserable tries. If success were based on how many jokes are lobbed at the audience, this movie would be king of dummies. Like choreographed dance moves, Dance Flick’s wisecracks could be counted in three tired steps. First are the worn-out pop-culture references to both music (Britney Spears) and movies (Ray, since it’s so timely), then throw in some racial humor — mostly having to do with the ditzy white girl making her way through an urban school (much of which ends up being aimed directly at the baffled white teen audience). The third step usually has to do with a misunderstanding, resulting in a slapstick moment of violence that, if dragged out long enough, kisses up to a level of absurdity that almost renders it funny. But really, that’s giving Dance Flick too much credit.
If there were an Oscar for Weirdest Film, the award would almost certainly go to Big Man Japan, a mockumentary-style parody of the kaiju genre starring and directed by famed Japanese comic Hitoshi Matsumoto. See Big Man Japan with a crowd of otaku and the shockwaves of laughter may prove as powerful as Godzilla’s trademark atomic breath; check it out with a group of average movie nerds who know the tropes, and odds are you’ll be in hysterics by the time it winds to its inexplicable, yet sublimely bizarre, ending.
Masaru Daisatou (Matsumoto) is the last of his kind, a select breed of heroic giants charged with the task of keeping Japan safe from any manner of invading monsters.
Combine a few stupid but lethal bad guys, one likable loser in over his head, an array of quirky supporting characters, millions of dollars in cocaine, and enough guns to arm a commando team, and you’ve got all the ingredients for a solid crime comedy — and that’s exactly what Next Day Air is.
Leo (Donald Faison) thinks he’s having just another average day. He works for Next Day Air — the shipping service run by his mother. To help pass the time, he smokes weed while making his deliveries. That afternoon, in his impaired state, he accidentally delivers a shipment of cocaine to inept bank robbers Brody (Mike Epps) and Guch (Wood Harris) — instead of to the low-level drug dealer who’s supposed to get it — setting in motion a series of double-crosses, lies, and schemes that just might end in his death.
There are only so many ways to spice up the traditional romantic comedy formula, which is probably why many of them are so dull and familiar. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past stars Matthew McConaughey as über-famous womanizing photographer Connor Mead, a single man so entrenched in his love ‘em and leave ‘em lifestyle he’ll use a video conference to break up with three girls simultaneously. He takes time out of his busy playboy schedule to attend his brother’s wedding, where he comes face-to-face with Jenny Perotti (Jennifer Garner), the only girl who ever truly captured his heart. Because the two have known each other since childhood, Jenny seems to be the only one who can call Connor out on his emotionally empty life and bad-boy behavior. After the rehearsal dinner — where Connor, who hates all weddings, delivers a drunken speech about how love isn’t real — he’s visited by the ghost of his Uncle Wayne (Michael Douglas), a Hefner-esque horndog who taught Connor everything he knows about picking up chicks. Wayne tells Connor that three more ghosts will visit Connor that night. They proceed to show him his romantic past, present, and future, in an attempt for him to get over himself and recognize his true feelings for Jenny.
Some big-screen adaptations of TV hits don’t demand any real knowledge about the show to enjoy them — like, for instance, the South Park movie. Some, like the first X-Files film, do. Hannah Montana: The Movie, however, requires a pre-digested knowledge of, and unconditional love for, the titular pop princess. So as a service to everyone else, here’s the sitcom’s setup: typical high schooler Miley Stewart (Miley Cyrus) keeps a secret from everyone but her closest friends — she’s actually the superstar singing sensation Hannah Montana. She maintains a double life because she wants, as her theme song states, “the best of both worlds” — the perks of fame and the anonymity of life outside the public eye.
If you know your con-game movies, then you’re familiar with the differences between short cons and long cons. The short con is all about making a quick buck — like getting a bartender to give you change for a 20, when you really paid with a 10. Long cons, on the other hand, require months, if not years, of setup, and come with a payoff to match. They also make for timeless movies like The Sting, The Grifters, House of Games, and Tony Gilroy’s Duplicity. Like those other time-tested con movies, Duplicity is about more than just lying, deceit, and trickery — the story’s mind games also serve as a metaphor for bigger issues — in this case, love. In the opening scene, Ray Koval (Clive Owen) seduces Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts) at a cocktail party thrown by the government of Dubai. Their passionate night together ends with him drugged, and her taking pictures of some sensitive documents in his possession — and thus begins a most unusual courtship between people who inherently mistrust everyone around them. It would be just plain wrong to reveal much more about the plot, but years later, the two end up on opposite sides of some serious corporate espionage, and their time together in the past has more of an effect on their present than anyone — the characters or the audience — really understands.
First time feature director Will Gluck’s teen sex comedy Fired Up stars Eric Christian Olsen and Nicholas D’Agosto as Nick and Shawn, high school football stars in the midst of a deep bromance. Their bonds are rooted in the fact that they’ve had sex with just about every girl in school. This situation leaves them looking for new options, so, in a moment of insight, they sign up for cheerleading camp, a locale that offers hundreds of new hookups. As they plow their way through tons of girls, Shawn unexpectedly falls for Carly (Sarah Roemer), his school’s head cheerleader - and seemingly the only woman under the age of 19 to realize what total a-holes Nick and Shawn are. Will Shawn prove his love for her by committing himself to the cheerleading squad? Will Carly ever find out that her current boyfriend, Dr. Rick (David Walton), is also a lying male slut? Will anyone need a trip to the clinic?
You’ve got to be a pretty big Star Wars fanatic to get any real joy out of Fanboys, a geek-fueled road trip comedy whose saving grace may be its built-in audience (and even then, only if you’re still in the same kind of forgiving mood you were in when Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace stunk up the big screen back in 1999). Fanboys is a film that, despite having its heart in the right place and successfully showcasing the way that obscure science fiction film facts bond die-hard movie nerds, still falls flat by being too slavish to the formula.
Director P.J. Hogan made his name helming Muriel’s Wedding and My Best Friend’s Wedding, a pair of “You Go Girl!” comedies that, on the surface, popped with chick-flick enthusiasm. Thankfully, Hogan made sure that his main characters’ darker qualities — their neediness and insecurities — shaped their relationship problems just as much as their love for ABBA and Burt Bacharach did. That darkness made those films something special, but Hogan leaves the darkness behind in Confessions of a Shopaholic. He turns a blind eye to the selfishness of his main character — bubbly, clothes-crazy Manhattanite Rebecca Bloomwood (Isla Fisher) — and the result is infuriating.
Dazed Digital premiered a new short film directed by Roman Polanski as part of a spoof on marketing campaigns for high-end goods. The Oscar-winning director’s faux perfume ad stars Natalie Portman and Michelle Williams - and it also happens to be, with apologies to Adrien Brody, the sexiest film Polanski has made since Bitter Moon.
A romantic comedy just as benign and generic as its instantly forgettable title suggests, New in Town may be a simplistic reworking of rom-com script number 42B, yet much like Blanche Gunderson’s “nothing fancy” meatloaf, it has a certain Midwestern charm that settles calmly in the stomach, making the viewer feel warm, comfortable, and quick to smile.
Strays of both the kiddie and canine varieties long for a place to call home as Lois Duncan’s Scholastic paperback is adapted for the big screen courtesy of director Thor Freudenthal. Dog lovers will quickly warm to the story of two orphaned siblings who put the needs of their beloved pooch, Friday, before their own — even when it means incurring the wrath of their selfish foster parents — and kids will get a kick out of watching the visually inventive story unfold as the four-legged guests file in and the brother-sister duo crafts a series of Rube Goldberg contraptions to ensure that their furry friends are well cared for.
Few movies possess enough sheer goofball power to make Army of Darkness look like a chamber drama, and though Bruce Campbell’s ultra-meta sophomore directorial effort, My Name Is Bruce, may not go quite that far over the top in delivering the kind of slapstick mayhem that’s made Campbell one of cult fandom’s hottest commodities, it still comes pretty damn close. Fast-paced, ridiculously self-depreciating, and fueled by a manic energy that’s so outlandish it washes over the viewer with the giddiness of a B-movie fever dream, it’s an enormous step up from Campbell’s disappointing directorial debut, The Man with the Screaming Brain. Likewise, it’s sure to satisfy Evil Dead fans due to the fact that it’s essentially a scaled-down, contemporary working of the Army of Darkness model (cocky jackass defends the frightened locals from an invading supernatural force) and that the alternate-universe-Campbell presented here is, for all intents and purposes, an Ash-ified version of his own bad self.
There’s always a certain sense of melancholy in witnessing one of the last works of a great artist, especially when that artist never lived to see the finished product. Thankfully, Bernie Mac’s penultimate feature is a soul movie with genuine heart, a crowd-pleasing comedy that leans more heavily toward laughs for the majority of the running time, yet still manages to draw the viewer in with a slightly more earnest subplot. The chemistry between headliners Mac and Samuel L. Jackson provides more than enough energy to sustain the good vibes straight through the final showstopper, with a special postscript serving to send the audience out with a warm smile.
During one pivotal moment of revelation in David Koepp’s Ghost Town, dentist and insufferable prick Bertram Pincus (brilliantly played by Ricky Gervais) gazes at a poster of Albert Einstein with the quote, “Only a life lived for others is a life worth while.” And, though Pincus cynically dismisses the quote for its inauspicious placement on a novelty poster, it becomes immediately apparent to the viewer watching the film that Ghost Town is, in fact, the feature-length incarnation of one of those inspirational posters that clutter the bargain bins of drug stores everywhere.
Frat-boy humor and tired romantic comedy clichés do battle in My Best Friend’s Girl, the schizophrenic Dane Cook/Kate Hudson vehicle that tries - and fails - to meld two movie going mindsets into one cohesive comedic package. The problem isn’t in the performers, per se. While Cook’s brand of shtick isn’t everyone’s bag, he’s proven to be a dynamic force for his audience - just not for Hollywood as of yet. Hudson on the other hand, flounders once again in a genre setting where she was once a queen of the screen. So what exactly went wrong here? If one had to point their finger anywhere, it’s clear that some dreadful miscalculations were made about this tale of a jerk who makes a living off of being a jerk to friends’ ex-girlfriends so that they’d go running back to the jerks that hired the jerk to be jerky to them. In fact, one could say that the whole film is one massive miscalculation, since whoever thought that this mean tale would be a surefire moneymaker must’ve been out of their gourd.
Even those without a soft spot for old-fashioned monster movies will recognize that the animated feature Igor manages to squander a rather ingenious premise. The story takes place in a fictional land populated primarily by mad scientists and their Igors - faithful but downtrodden hunchbacked assistants - like the title character (voiced by John Cusack) who informs us that he graduated from college with a “Yes, masters” degree. Igor longs to be a mad scientist, not a lowly assistant, and he gets his chance when Dr. Glickenstein obliterates himself during an experiment. This sets the stage for the kind of “persevering to be all that you can be” narrative common to so many “family” films. This central lesson persists because it’s easy to graft onto almost any setting – you can find the need to excel in just about every area of human endeavors – and because it’s a moral that fits in with traditionally American concepts of individuality.
Unfortunately, nothing about this film seems to have been thought out past the initial burst of inspiration. Even though the movie features the talents of some highly gifted comic performers - including John Cleese, Jennifer Coolidge, and Molly Shannon – nobody is given anything memorable to say. The actors are working hard, Steve Buscemi as a suicidal yet indestructible robot most especially, but they can’t breathe life into the two-dimensional characters, or the rather stale story arc. Even the film’s look starts to wear thin because the forebodingly dark Frankenstein-inspired interiors throw a wet blanket over the comedy, and the character designs aren’t very interesting. The movie does offer a decent slice of social commentary in the third act about living in a land where the leaders lie and keep the people living in fear — a message underscored by Cusack’s real-life political stance — but nothing else about the story ties in directly with this surprising splash of topicality. Like everything else about Igor, this theme remains a great idea that nobody bothered to develop.
The opening shot of the Coen Brothers new black comedy Burn After Reading takes the viewer from outer space to inside CIA headquarters. The last shot takes us out of that building, back up into space. This device makes it clear that Joel and Ethan are playing God. They have devised a shaggy dog tale where almost every single person acts only in their own self interest, and nobody gets away unscathed. It’s the darkest comedy they’ve made since Barton Fink, and it might be mistaken for a work of genuine misanthropy if it wasn’t so funny.
Writing for All Movie Guide means having to synopsize a wide variety of films, from high profile Hollywood epics to zero-budget, direct to video flicks that seem to have been shot in the director’s back yard. It’s the constant variety that keeps the job interesting, though from time to time a title still comes down the assembly line that causes even the most jaded writer to do a double take… as was the case with Telephone Book: The Movie. Of course there are a billion and twelve reasons to love this trailer - from the terminally monotone voice-over announcer to the unfortunate copy-editing oversight around the :24 mark – it’s just too bad that none of them appear to have anything to do with the actual movie itself.
Without further ado, we proudly present the trailer for Telephone Book: The Movie…
Disaster Movie couldn’t have been more appropriately titled had the producers just thrown their arms up in defeat and released it into theaters as the infinitely more honest but slightly cumbersome “Ponderous String of Poorly Executed Pop Culture References That May Have Been Amusing if They Weren’t So Painfully Unfunny.” Seriously, if this is what passes for comedy, maybe it’s time to take a moment and really think about where we’re headed as a culture. Warring civilizations may destroy each other by the busload while feuding over which deity to worship, but perhaps if we could convince them all to gather in one theater for a screening of Disaster Movie, their shared disdain for the film would be enough to get everyone working towards the common goal of ensuring that audiences are never again subjected to such inane excrement. Ultimately, this could open the door for new dialogue and maybe, just maybe, serve to usher in an unprecedented era of peace on earth. These would be the only circumstances that could possibly justify the existence of this movie.
If Lloyd Kaufman were to get a lobotomy and decide to make a satire skewering post-9/11 politics, the result would probably be pretty close in tone and execution to notorious schlockmeister Uwe Boll’s fifth video game-to-film adaptation – the only difference being that the imaginary Troma version of Postal might actually be worth watching.
Rainn Wilson’s new comedy, The Rocker, follows the exploits of Robert “Fish” Fishman, a drummer for the ’80s hair metal band Vesuvius. The film opens to find the group kicking Fish out of the band, just as they’re about to sign their first big record contract and become massively popular — leaving Fish to spend years working soul-crushing day jobs, and brooding about what could have been. Fish gets an improbable second chance at stardom, however, when his teenage cousin asks him to drum for his band during a gig at the high school prom, and the oddly matched group decide to make a go of it. In honor of The Rocker’s release, Wilson recently sat down for a roundtable interview with a handful of critics for a freewheeling Q&A about geek-cool, religion, and the upside of a rock star diet.
Leave it to director David Gordon Green to help redefine the Judd Apatow comedy. In the wake of such Apatow-produced laugh-fests as Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Drillbit Taylor, it seemed as if Team Apatow may have been getting a bit too comfortable with its success, and a bit more willing to fall back on the reliable formula that made it successful in the first place - you know, the old “loveable goofball gets into awkward situation, but ultimately proves he has a heart of gold once he’s seen through the haze of pot smoke and/or redeemed himself to the requisite dream girl/soul mate” schtick.
The black clouds had blotted out the sun nearly fifteen minutes ago, giving what was previously a bright summer afternoon an eerie air of impending menace. I was racing down the freeway intent on keeping my date with a seducer of worlds as the rain and hail began to bounce noisily off my windshield, reducing my visibility to virtually zero. Just then, my cell phone began to ring. It was one of Yivo’s human wranglers. The elements were bearing down on her as well, so that both she and the oversexed alien’s harem of intergalactic space babes were forced to seek temporary shelter until the storm could blow over. She warned me that Yivo was feeling a bit deflated this particular afternoon, but I figured human that would only give this humble human a distinct edge over the tentacled menace.
The documentary Super High Me follows comedian Doug Benson as he spends one month indulging in neither marijuana nor alcohol. Then the camera stayed with him for a second month while he smoked and drank all day every day. Along the way, viewers get a look at the history of medical marijuana in California, and a taste of how the political battles surrounding the issue continue. To mark the film’s DVD release, director Michael Blieden sat down with AllMovie’s Perry Seibert to answer questions about the film, and to discuss some of his more obscure gigs, his other films, his plans for the future, and the advantages of being part of the L.A. comedy scene.
This big screen version of Get Smart succeeds because, unlike the main character, newly minted field spy Maxwell Smart (Steve Carell), every person who worked on the movie performed their job competently. This is not minor praise. Director Peter Segal makes both the comedy and the action pop with energy. He knows when to cut to a joke, and when to trust his actors to get the point home with their interactions. He’s as comfortable staging a humorous ballroom dance competition as he is constructing a kinetic beat down administered by agent 99 (Anne Hathaway) to a couple of bad guys. The action scenes, particularly the hand-to-hand fight scenes, aren’t treated as comedy, but as tense and exciting set pieces. Dean Semler’s cinematography balances the brightness required for comedy and the darkness needed to add tension with unobtrusive professionalism. Quite simply this is the most enjoyable American action comedy since Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
Mike Myers is willing to do anything to make an audience laugh. The Love Guru is no exception. The movie is loaded with dick jokes, poop jokes, tortured puns, outlandish accents, and stylized make-up - all elements of Myers’ repertoire since he first became a household name on Saturday Night Live. Since the stereotype goes that comics are by nature needy - constantly desiring an audience’s laughter and approval to fill some emotional void in their lives – many comedians willing to be this ridiculous come off as pitifully desperate. Myers will forever remain a more interesting figure than many of his peers because, while he’s willing to do anything at all for a laugh, he always seems to be able to commit to the jokes so fully that one senses he thinks they are funny.
Those who prefer their comedy served nice and quirky are sure to be familiar with the name Zach Galifinackis (if you’re not, you may want to take a look at his work for yourself since words in a blog can’t really do it justice), though to this point in his career the ivory tickling comic has been relegated primarily to supporting performances.
Thankfully, with Visioneers, that all seems set to change.
In the film, Galifinackis plays George Washington Winsterhammerman, a Level Three Visioneer at The Jeffers Corporation - the largest and most successful business in the history of mankind. The reason that the Jeffers Corporation has been so successful is its strict philosophy of happiness through mindless productivity. Lately, however, people all around Winsterhammerman have been literally exploding due to unhappiness. When Winsterhammerman begins experiencing a series of increasingly surreal dreams that his doctor believes to be a sign of impending detonation, the previously unquestioning office drone is suddenly prompted to reevaluate his passionless existence.
For more info and a full trailer, check out the official Visioneers website here.
Turning elements of Steven Spielberg’s superb Munich into a typical Adam Sandler comedy might seem like a questionable idea. Thankfully, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, starring Sandler as an Israeli counter-terrorist who fakes his death in order to live his dream of being a hairdresser in America, turns out to be something genuinely interesting thanks to the collaborative efforts of Sandler and his co-screenwriters Judd Apatow and Robert Smigel. For a project so willing to be little more than a dumb comedy, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan has an awful lot on its mind. The movie tackles an improbably sensitive topic, Palestinian-Israeli relations, and gets away with so much of the humor precisely because it’s insensitive about everything except the stupidity of endless violence. The film makes sure the bad guys are racist white morons, or rich white businessmen; gentrification is yet another storyline. There is also a tentative love story played out between Zohan and the Palestinian woman who runs the salon where he works. Throw in a middle-aged Jewish MILF, a long-simmering grudge over a beloved pet goat, a superstar Palestinian terrorist who runs a chain of fast food restaurants, and stereotypically overbearing Jewish parents, and it’s clear that the plot is overstuffed. The film clocks in at nearly a full two hours primarily because the script does bother to tie up the many loosely connected story strands.
The massive success of Shrek turned out to be a double-edged sword for Dreamworks Animation. The giant box office revenues created by the big green ogre gave the young company a familiar face to market, and Jeffrey Katzenberg his first mega-hit after his ugly split from Disney. However, Shrek proved to be something of a creative liability. Instead of focusing on storytelling, the studio often attempted to recreate Shrek’s massive success by stuffing their movies full of pop culture references. Shark Tale, Madagascar, and Over the Hedge all sacrificed story in favor of a self-referential pop-culture knowingness, even when – in the case of the last two – the story was strong enough to work without relying on those gimmicks. One got the sense that as far as quality went, Dreamworks would forever play second fiddle to Pixar.
Fans of Michael Lehmann’s 1989 cult classic Heathers should do themselves a favor and seek out this slick little indie from first-time feature filmmaker Michael Lichtenstein, as this gruesomely charming tale of vagina dentata shares a similar satirical tone with that darkly comic tale of teen alienation. Of course, there are some fairly obvious key differences separating the two films, yet their approach to skewering teen trends and suburban morality bounds them as cinematic siblings who share an uncannily similar comic sensibility.
Spawned from the satirical newspaper of the same name, The Onion Movie is an abysmal mess of an attempt to recapture the absurdist glory of such satirical sketch films as Kentucky Fried Movie and Amazon Women on the Moon, and a genuine comedy endurance test. Even the most devoted fans of The Onion will likely find it difficult to fend off sleep while being assaulted with a relentless barrage of jokes without punchlines, gags stretched out beyond the breaking point, and, worst of all, sketches that were simply aborted mid-stream.
If you, like me, adore both Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love and singer/songwriter Harry Nilsson, you might want to go check out For the Love of Harry, simply the best website devoted to the man whose song “He Needs Me” from Robert Altman’s adaptation of Popeye PTA used so effectively in PDL. A recent post to that site reveals the existence of a very rare Nilsson track, also from Popeye, called “Everything Is Food”. This unravels the mystery of a seeming non sequitur from the party scene in Punch-Drunk Love (skip to 1:38 if you just can’t wait).
Sad news from Hollywood as the AP reports that actor John Phillip Law has died at an undisclosed illness at the age of 70. Whether you remember him best as the mischievous anti-hero Diabolik from director Mario Bava’s wildly entertaining fumetti-flick of the same name, Pygar the angel from Roger Vadim’s Barbarella, or the vengeful Bill from Death Rides a Horse, odds are that if you’re a fan of movies, you’ve admired Law’s work in some capacity. And while this particular writer may be more inclined to first mention some of Law’s lesser-known films (he also showed up for a supporting role in Otto Preminger’s notorious 1968 comedy Skidoo), it was roles in such undisputed hits as The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad that propelled the handsome actor to international stardom.
Law’s AP obit quoted a Los Angeles Times interview from 1966 in which the actor stated, “I’ve had more kicks out of playing far-out things. It’s like putting on a funny face and going out in front of people and going, ‘yaaaaaa.’”
You certainly gave us our fair share of kicks, thanks John.
In commemoration of Law’s passing, we present a series of memorable film trailers featuring the fun-loving star, as well as an illuminating interview regarding his experiences in Skidoo.
John Waters fans, prepare to be happy. No, unfortunately Mondo Trasho isn’t coming out on special edition DVD, but his morbid tale of suburban butchery, Serial Mom, has finally arrived in an impressive package that makes HBO Home Video’s previous release of the film look positively anemic by comparison. Go ahead and use that old fullscreen disc as a coaster, because this is the version of Serial Mom that every Waters fan is going to want for their collection.
Everyone’s favorite little green mischief makers have returned, and they’re doing what they do best in this ninety second BT spot featuring Dragons’ Den star Peter Jones.
Thanks AICN.
The duo at the center of Baby Mama - Tina Fey, as a corporate climber with a loudly ticking biological clock, and Amy Poehler, as the uneducated slob hired to be her surrogate mom — are to comedy what Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were to dancing. They trust each other, and they know each other’s rhythms so well they can trade off who gets to be the straight man and who gets to deliver the laugh lines. If the film were just the two of them, it would be worth recommending, but writer/director Michael McCullers likes to share the comedic wealth - he knows that giving the supporting characters good lines pays great rewards.
The producers of the oddball Finnish “Star Trek” fan film “Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning” are back, and this time they’ve cooked up something truly original.
The line between your computer and TV gets a whole lot blurrier today with the public launch of Hulu.com. It’s hard not to be impressed by the joint NBC/Fox venture. Full episodes of TV shows from 30 Rock to House and full-length feature films like The Usual Suspects and Ice Age are all available at no charge, streaming in high-quality. Many are even available in HD.
It’s ad-supported, and playing around a little, I saw a few different advertising models. Some movies give you the option of watching one trailer before your selection or a few commercials throughout. Others don’t give you the option and you either just watch a trailer and the movie plays without interruption or a handful of commercials play at random intervals. I also saw one not-too-intrusive overlay add at the bottom of the screen for a few seconds during one of my selections.
Beowulf: If you thought The Polar Express was great but would have been better with graphic violence and cartoon nudity, then here’s the flick for you, guy who only exists in Robert Zemeckis’s mind.
30 Days of Night: This film tells the terrifying tale of a small-town in Alaska that’s forced to spend a month in the dark with Josh Hartnett. Fortunately, a group of merciful vampires comes along to put them out of their misery.
The Darjeeling Limited: Easily among the top-nine best Darjeeling-centric movies of 2007.
Inspired by the Kung Fu Flicks series I had previously posted about and still lamenting the lack of fun choices on Detroit area movie screens, yours truly has partnered with Synapse Films and the Emagine Theaters to cook up a mondo bizarro movie series that is absolutely guaranteed to overload your cerebral cortex with some of the most outrageous cult films ever produced!
Every Thursday evening in April, Detroit area moviegoers are invited to come out to the Novi Emagine and experience the seedier side of cinema as we present a series of $7 double features featuring everything from punk rock zombies and flesh-eating schoolgirls to alien parasites, demonic heavy metal bands, debauched detectives, and gore drenched winos!
Sure it might be a time for love and romance, but a science fiction film will be the box office champ this weekend. Doug Liman’s Jumper should score big with no other film like it out there in the marketplace. For that same reason the big screen adaptation of The Spiderwick Chronicles has the kind of built-in name recognition that should drive it to within striking distance of the top spot. Step Up 2 The Streets should quietly amass solid attendance numbers thanks to the popularity of the first film. Fool’s Gold will tumble due to the increased competition, but should round out the top five along with Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins.
How It Will Look on Monday: Jumper: 30 Million The Spiderwick Chronicles: 28 Million Step Up 2 The Streets: 14 Million Fool’s Gold: 10 Million Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins: 9 Million
Gone Baby Gone: Ben Affleck directs Casey Affleck in this well-received drama that I can only assume was scored by Ulysses Affleck and catered by Geppetto Affleck.
Martian Child: If you loved K-Pax, then this one is for you, Mrs. Spacey.
We Own the Night: Probably the closest I’ll ever get to realizing my dream of watching Marky Mark of the Funky Bunch duet with Johnny Cash.
The Brave One: Jodie Foster stars as a vigilante bent on avenging her boyfriend’s death in this film that John Hinckley Jr. gave “two thumbs way up!”
2 Days in Paris: Actor/director Julie Delpy’s indie romantic-comedy was warmly received by critics, but disappointed theatergoers who mistook it for a sequel to One Night in Paris.
The Ten Commandments: At long last, the cross-section of animated religious epic aficionados and Christian Slater fanatics has a movie to call their own.
Daddy Day Camp: If you squint, the leads in this look a lot like Eddie Murphy and Jeff Garland. And if you squint harder and plug your ears, watching it might not make you want to jump out a window.
The Comebacks: If you’re one of the people who propelled Meet the Spartans to the top of the box-office over the weekend… well, you probably aren’t able to read this, are you?
Ricco the Mean Machine: The English translation of the original Italian title for this 70s exploitation flick is Some Guy with a Strange Face is Looking for You to Kill You. And yes, the movie pays off on the promise of that title.
King of Kong - Fistful of Quarters: See the film critics have called one of the fifteen greatest documentaries about Donkey Kong released in the second-half of this decade so far.
From Twitch comes our first ever look at footage from Choke, the adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s book, which is premiering at Sundance this week. The clips of the flick are interspersed with a short interview with first-time director Clark Gregg, who’s sure to come under heavy scrutiny from devotees of the source material. Palahniuk fans looking for the grit of David Fincher’s Fight Club will be disappointed, but I think the stark look of Gregg’s movie will work really well with the story. See for yourself after the jump.
The Ten: Say what you will about David Wain’s disappointing follow-up to Wet Hot American Summer, but it’s still the best new comedy on DVD this week.
Mr. Woodcock: Say what you will about this cinematic root-canal starring Billy Bob Thornton and Stifler, but it’s not the worst new comedy on DVD this week.
Good Luck Chuck: Say what you will about this crime against humanity, but it makes Mr. Woodcock look like The Ten.
Bad movie lovers rejoice, because Mystery Science Theater 3000 creator Joel Hodgson is back in the game of riffing on flicks, and he’s brought a few familiar faces along for the voyage!
That’s right, the same crew who previously took on some of the most hilariously awful films ever to hit the silver screen in Mystery Science Theater 3000 are back doing what they do best in Cinematic Titanic, and the first film to hit the iceberg is Al Adamson’s abominable 1972 sci-fi schlock-fest The Oozing Skull. Original cast members Trace Beaulieu and J. Elvis Weinstein also have their own chairs on the deck, as do longtime MST3K writers and co-stars Frank Conniff and Mary Jo Pehl.
If this preview clip is any indicator, the gang that once blasted turkeys from the deepest depths of outer space are equally comfortable carving them up while cruising the oceans here on Earth.
Instead of airing on television, each episode will be available to purchase on DVD through the show’s official website - where fans can also find out more by reading the press release and signing up for the Cinematic Titanic e-mail club.
Did someone do you wrong? I don’t mean like a little, but really really badly. Well, fret not, revenge is at hand. Just make the guilty party watch the crime against humanity known as the Witless Protection trailer. It features Larry the Cable Guy and is pretty much the cinematic equivalent of being water-boarded. You’re welcome.
Those kooky guys from Broken Lizard are back — this time reconnecting to their roots with their newest comedic outing, The Slammin’ Salmon. After playing the Hollywood game with both Fox Searchlight and Warner Bros. with their last three films, the troupe have gone solo and independently raised the cash to bring this newest romp to the big screen. The plot follows former heavyweight champ turned restaurant owner Cleon Salmon (played by Michael Clarke Duncan) as he challenges his staff in a Glengarry Glen Ross style competition to see who can make the most tips in a single night, with the loser tapped to get in the ring with none other than Cleon himself for a big time beat down. Group member Kevin Heffernan tackles the directing duties for this one, taking over for longtime Lizard helmer Jay Chandrasekhar. Additional details and set pictures can be found on the Broken Lizard MySpace page. Let’s hope that without the heat of a big studio behind them, the Lizard gang can hit another one out of the ballpark for us comedy fans!
Envision Tom Tykwer’s frantic, flame-haired heroine from Run Lola Run after inadvertently consuming a particularly potent batch of pot-laced cupcakes, and odds are the result would be something strikingly similar to Gregg Araki’s freewheeling, stream-of-conscience stoner comedy Smiley Face. While I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve never actually seen any of the films that endeared Araki to nihilistic indie hipsters in the first place (though I have recognized and admired his penchant for frequently using Curve on his soundtracks), this lightweight look at a particularly disastrous day in the life of an unrepentant pothead was ambitious, fast-paced, and lots of surreal fun. Anna Faris is pitch perfect as the lovable, perpetually stoned Jane F (whose half-eyed, gaping grin often gives the impression of a bong-packing female Butthead), Danny Masterson has his fair share of hilariously creepy moments as her potentially psychotic sci-fi fanboy roommate, and John Krasinksi was nearly unrecognizable in a substantial role as the bespectacled, greasy-haired nerd who harbors a lingering crush on our toke-happy protagonist. While only a handful of the jokes (including an internal conversation about using a photo of an ex-president to display one’s love of lasagna) truly clicked for me, the film was ultimately breezy and inventive enough to win me over in the end. There’s nothing truly groundbreaking or illuminating here, but if one happens to be in the mood for a creative little stoner comedy one could do far, far worse.
I was the first victim on the last day, and as I walked in to interview the Golden Globe-nominated duo behind the indie comedy hit Juno, they had just stepped in from the frosty Michigan morning. Jason Reitman balanced a full mug of hot chocolate, and I could see a shiver as he walked over to the coziest chair in the room, kicked off his shoes, and went for the zipper on his warm winter jacket. He must have noticed me flinch when he revealed the Ghostbusters shirt underneath, and as he let out a chuckle I joking swore not to pester him with any questions about father’s Ivan’s beloved comedy classic (I had read plenty of online interviews with Reitman in preparation for this talk, and it seemed as if every one of them invariably led back to that slime-soaked hit). As he recounted a recent Juno screening in Boston in which he made the same reveal in front of a theater-full of nostalgic comedy fans (“they went fuckin’ nuts!”), Cody joked that she should have worn her “Strippers Do It With Poles” shirt, and that any Ghostbusters questions were officially on the table given the circumstances. So we sat down in the cozy living room area of the hotel suite and began our conversation…
Here are some highlights from today’s DVD releases:
The Simpsons Movie: Finally, the big-screen spin-off of the small-screen series can be seen on the small-screen.
Stardust: The effect of the titular powder appears to be removing any recollection that this movie ever came out.
Balls of Fury: It’s just like Dodgeball, except with ping-pong instead of dodgeball, and not-funny instead of funny.
Underdog: Just in time to remind us that not every 2007 live-action adaptation of a once semi-popular cartoon starring Jason Lee is an unexpected box-office behemoth.
Fans of The Chin rejoice… the trailer for the Evil Dead icon’s long-awaited “Bruce”-versus-the Chinese God of War epic My Name is Bruce has finally dropped, and from the looks of things this one is going to be an absolute blast!
(At least it couldn’t be much worse than Alien Apocalypse, but who’s keeping score?)
Kudos to the folks who cut this giddy little trailer for seamlessly cramming together (a rip-off of?) the theme from The Terminator and House of Pain’s Jump Around before really cranking the zaniness up to eleven by utilizing one of the most manic moments from Danny Elfman’s score for Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. This one kinda looks like Army of Darkness without the time travel and with Campbell just playing an Ash-ified version of himself rather than the genuine, chainsaw-pawed article, and short of that elusive Evil Dead 4, really, what more could us loyal fans hope for?
When word came earlier this week that a big-screen A-Team movie might be in the works, it got the old brain-juice flowing around the AMG offices. So much so that they overflowed and spilled all over the carpet. It actually made quite a mess, but we were able to put together the following dream casts.
Enjoy, and be sure to share your own choices in the comments.
Looking forward to seeing Walk Hard, but don’t want to shell out the dough? Lucky for you, Sony has posted like a million clips on the movie’s official YouTube page. I’m particularly fond of this one featuring The Beatles:
Here’s a taste of what’s hitting home-video today:
The Bourne Ultimatum: The third outing cements the Bourne saga as one of the most satisfying and consistent trilogies in recent history. There’s also a four-disc Safe Deposit Gift Box out, so grab a case of Red Bull and see if you can watch all three back-to-back-to-back.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: After five installments, I’m starting to lose track of the plots of these movies. I’m pretty sure this is the one with all the magic and whatnot. There’s also a 12-disc box-set being released today featuring all five Potter flicks.
December Boys: If that aforementioned dozen-discer somehow doesn’t quench your thirst for Daniel Radcliffe, then you’ll be interested in this Australian coming-of-age flick starring the billion-dollar kid. You might also be served with a restraining order by Radcliffe’s reps.
Everything’s Cool: Taking the message of An Inconvenient Truth and adding a spoonful of sugar, this documentary out of Sundance is billed as a global-warming comedy.
Hot on the heels of announcing that John C. Reilly will be going on a concert tour in character to promote the upcoming biopic spoof Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Sony has just put the flick’s first ten minutes up on the official site. It’s an interesting move, but as hilarious as the clip is, it makes a lot of sense. I already wanted to see Walk Hard, but if I didn’t before, I definitely would now.
Take a gander and see for yourself. It’s rated R, so it should be considered slightly NSFW.
While the cineplexes are beginning to fill with some of the year’s better films, it’s pretty slim pickings on home video this week. Here are some highlights of what’s hitting stores today:
Bratz: Yes, it was universally panned and tanked at the box-office, but at least they didn’t try to give the live-action versions of the characters those giant heads.
Waitress: If you missed the late Adrienne Shelly’s final film in theaters, now’s your chance to catch one of the year’s best-reviewed romantic comedies.
Hot Rod: To call it one of the best SNL-fueled movies in years isn’t saying much, but Andy Samberg’s admittedly uneven starring debut is funny more often than it isn’t. Think of it as a more coherent Freddy Got Fingered. I’ll let you decide if that’s good or bad.
Who’s Your Caddy?: This movie got a wide theatrical release. You’re likely laughing more now than you will throughout all of Who’s Your Caddy’s 93 minutes.
It seems like just yesterday that Chris “Ludacris” Bridges was starring in critically acclaimed films like Hustle and Flow and Crash. But these days, he’s reduced to playing an eighth-billed elf in a movie that lost out at the box-office to the second week of Bee Movie. Perhaps if Bridges had decided to drop some lyrics on a theme song for the flick, it would’ve improved its showing. Actually, probably not, but judging by the reviews for Fred Claus, this parody music video is surely funnier than the move that inspired it. Lyrics NSFW.
It’s hard to imagine a movie about the U.S. military training soldiers to discover their psychic powers that wouldn’t be fun, especially if it’s played for laughs. And the first half of Grant Heslov’s directorial debut, The Men Who Stare at Goats, doesn’t disappoint. 
At its core, 
Depending on how much abstract thought the viewer is willing to engage in, 
In today’s world of recession, stimulus packages, and layoffs, it seems only fitting that a film should attempt to explore the notion that a college degree no longer guarantees a place in the job market. This holds true in 
Most anybody who was a teenager after 1955 can relate completely to the idea of rock & roll as the path of deliverance from adolescent angst. Director 
The first time we meet Don Ready (
Everybody needs inspiration. 
If 
Trying to reinvent the romantic comedy is like trying to reinvent the wheel — highly ambitious, but nearly impossible to execute. Such is the case with 
Creating effective social satire is no easy task — just ask 
After a string of films set outside not just the familiar confines of Manhattan, but outside of the U.S.A. altogether, 
Having grown rather disgruntled, last week, by the fact that the American Life Network has started inexplicably preempting everything (including beloved 
Most family films aim their lessons at children, but some actually have a thing or two for adults to learn. 
There might not be a more dependable name in all of Hollywood than Pixar, and their tenth animated feature, 
The Wayans family cash in on another genre ripe for parody with 
If there were an Oscar for Weirdest Film, the award would almost certainly go to 
Combine a few stupid but lethal bad guys, one likable loser in over his head, an array of quirky supporting characters, millions of dollars in cocaine, and enough guns to arm a commando team, and you’ve got all the ingredients for a solid crime comedy — and that’s exactly what 
There are only so many ways to spice up the traditional romantic comedy formula, which is probably why many of them are so dull and familiar. 
Some big-screen adaptations of TV hits don’t demand any real knowledge about the show to enjoy them — like, for instance, the 
If you know your con-game movies, then you’re familiar with the differences between short cons and long cons. The short con is all about making a quick buck — like getting a bartender to give you change for a 20, when you really paid with a 10. Long cons, on the other hand, require months, if not years, of setup, and come with a payoff to match. They also make for timeless movies like 
First time feature director 
You’ve got to be a pretty big 
Director 
A romantic comedy just as benign and generic as its instantly forgettable title suggests, 
Strays of both the kiddie and canine varieties long for a place to call home as 
Few movies possess enough sheer goofball power to make 
There’s always a certain sense of melancholy in witnessing one of the last works of a great artist, especially when that artist never lived to see the finished product. Thankfully, 
Frat-boy humor and tired romantic comedy clichés do battle in 
Even those without a soft spot for old-fashioned monster movies will recognize that the animated feature 
The opening shot of the Coen Brothers new black comedy 
If 
The black clouds had blotted out the sun nearly fifteen minutes ago, giving what was previously a bright summer afternoon an eerie air of impending menace. I was racing down the freeway intent on keeping my date with a seducer of worlds as the rain and hail began to bounce noisily off my windshield, reducing my visibility to virtually zero. Just then, my cell phone began to ring. It was one of Yivo’s human wranglers. The elements were bearing down on her as well, so that both she and the oversexed alien’s harem of intergalactic space babes were forced to seek temporary shelter until the storm could blow over. She warned me that Yivo was feeling a bit deflated this particular afternoon, but I figured human that would only give this humble human a distinct edge over the tentacled menace. 
The documentary 
This big screen version of 
Turning elements of 
The massive success of 
Fans of 
Spawned from the satirical newspaper of the same name, The Onion Movie is an abysmal mess of an attempt to recapture the absurdist glory of such satirical sketch films as 
Sad news from Hollywood as the AP reports that actor 
Everyone’s favorite little green mischief makers have returned, and they’re doing what they do best in this ninety second 
The duo at the center of 
The line between your computer and TV gets a whole lot blurrier today with the public launch of 
Inspired by the 
Sure it might be a time for love and romance, but a science fiction film will be the box office champ this weekend. Doug Liman’s 
Here’s a sampling of the new titles hitting DVD shelves today:
Those kooky guys from Broken Lizard are back — this time reconnecting to their roots with their newest comedic outing, 
I was the first victim on the last day, and as I walked in to interview the Golden Globe-nominated duo behind the indie comedy hit 
Here are some highlights from today’s DVD releases:
When word came earlier this week that 
Here’s a taste of what’s hitting home-video today:
Hot on the heels of announcing that John C. Reilly will be going on a concert tour in character to promote the upcoming biopic spoof 
While the cineplexes are beginning to fill with some of the year’s better films, it’s pretty slim pickings on home video this week. Here are some highlights of what’s hitting stores today:
