The similarities between Adventureland and The Perks of Being a Wallflower are abundant and easily apparent. Each follows an adolescent male on the verge of adulthood – James (Jesse Eisenberg) and Charlie (Logan Lerman) respectively – who aspires to be a successful writer. Each combine the traditional “nerdy” traits of introspection, intelligence and awkwardness with…
I admire Moneyball for telling a story of baseball and statistics without embellishing with a romantic subplot – unless you include the professional chemistry between Oakland A’s general manager, Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) and his number-crunching number two, Peter Brand (Jonah Hill). I also admire its ability to make that story engaging, with its confident…
Successful art is defined by its ability to transform, to transcend. To take us beyond thin paper pages bound into a novel to the world beyond, to surpass men and women playing make-believe to something true. All art is built on artifice, but great art makes you forget about the brushstrokes, the actors, the instruments…
Captain Phillips approaches greatness. Tom Hanks has received as much praise as criticism for his work in the film as the eponymous captain, taken hostage after an aborted pirate raid on his commercial shipping vessel, with critics acclaiming the last few minutes of the film and deriding earlier scenes. I was actually impressed at how…
Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club – through Tyler Durden – stated that “self-improvement is masturbation. Now, self-destruction…” Invisible Monsters – written before Fight Club but released afterwards – is a novel expanding upon that idea, arguing that self-improvement and self-destruction are one and the same, each as solipsistic as pleasuring one self. The unnamed narrator of…
A pair of reviews to share… The first is of the dismal Last Vegas; a bad film, but I hopefully managed to salvage an entertaining review out of its mediocrity. My write-up can be found at Cheated Hearts. Second is for The Past, the follow-up from the director of 2011’s excellent A Separation. A much…
Magic Mike is a weird movie. It’s essentially a musical, except instead of big Broadway numbers you have male strippers (Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer, Matt Bomer) cavorting on stage, routines with such meticulous choreography and high production values that they’re as fantastical as a town spontaneously breaking into song. Outside of these scenes, Steven Soderbergh…
As a disaster movie, Black Sunday feels almost quaint compared to the destruction reaped in modern superhero films; the film sees the Goodyear blimp descend upon the Superbowl, laden with plastic explosives, a threat level a few notches below Superman tossing Zod through Metropolis’s skyscrapers or the Chitauri laying waste to Manhattan. The difference between…
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom is a lengthy hike indeed: the film stretches over nearly two-and-a-half hours, chronicling the life of Nelson Mandela from young revolutionary to iconic leader. A half hour in, I was dreading the next couple hours; the first thirty minutes thrusts its way through a checklist of Mandela’s early life –…
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* asks a lot of questions. Questions like “Do Aphrodisiacs Work?” and “What Happens During Ejaculation?” and “What is Sodomy?” If you’re looking for answers – or a coherent feature length film – you’ll be disappointed. If you’re looking to watch Woody Allen’s series of sketches loosely parodying…
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