At various times in recent years, Hollywood has tried to follow up on the success of the latest raunchy guy comedy by doing a version with a female cast. It's usually failed, for a few reasons. In movies like The Sweetest Thing, the humor usually feels forced, desperate and formulaic, while the filmmakers haven't understood what worked about the original films in the first place. At last, we have a female-fronted R-rated comedy that's truly great, and it's Paul Feig's Bridesmaids. The film, co-produced by Judd Apatow, works because it has absolutely all the right people both in front of the …
An aspiring professional surfer at the time, Bethany Hamilton was just 15 years old when a 13-foot tiger shark took her left arm off the shores of Kauai on Halloween morning in 2005 . She was in the water and back on her board less than a month later. “Soul Surfer,” starring AnnSophia Robb as Hamilton with Dennis Quaid and Helen Hunt as her parents, isn’t just a shark attack survivor story. It’s a coming-of-age in paradise whilst putting First World problems in perspective story. There are also a ton of blonde, tanned people milling about talking about Jesus a lot. Aimed at 'tweens and …
Once upon a time in the wilds of wintry Finland, there lived a 15-year old genetic experiment with hair of gold, nerves of steel and the preternatural strength to physically subdue a grown man without batting a cornsilk eyelash. In "Hanna," director Joe Wright ("Atonement," "Pride & Prejudice") introduces huldra-like titular heroine (played by Saoirse Ronan) and, moments after a demonstration of her bow-hunting prowess, sets the movie’s title on typographical stun and immediately fosters a fairy-tale feel for both film and character. Hanna’s mom is dead: to begin with. There is no doubt …
If you're the sort of moviegoer whose primary criteria for judging a film includes how many scantily clad beautiful women it can assemble, then Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch is the picture for you. Sure, there are plenty of people like that out there, which is the likely reason why this movie was made. But for the rest of you, be aware: The movie's ability to collect gorgeous actresses is its one and only defensible quality.
What an abysmal, pointless film, with just about nothing to say and no good way of saying it. Even though it's an original story, "Sucker Punch" feels like it must've been…
An awful lot of hype has gone into the movie "Rubber," a new wave French horror comedy by writer and director Quentin Dupieux. Reviews from the Cannes Film Festival were sharply divided, but when I learned the movie was about a tire named Robert, I have to admit my curiosity was piqued. Sadly, $10 and an hour-and-a-half later, I find myself searching for the proper words to describe an overly long, pretentious movie that uses an inanimate object as a means to criticize Hollywood. The movie starts out well enough, with a silly monologue about randomness and actions and events having no rhyme …
Oh, how I miss the days when the worst thing you could say about an Adam Sandler comedy was that it was stupid and unfunny. "Just Go With It" is that and something much worse - a truly repugnant and mean-spirited movie that's easily the worst film of the year so far. It's a movie about horrible people doing a horrible thing that's played for laughs, which are both slow to come and wholly unearned. Sandler and Jennifer Aniston have both been in some pretty horrendous movies, so it's saying something that this is a new low for both. "Just Go With It" kicks off with a truly ghastly prologue that…
