Write Better Movies: Baywatch and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
Either Baywatch or Dead Men Tell No Tales could have been good – well, passable – with screenplays content to be plain ol’ mediocre.
Either Baywatch or Dead Men Tell No Tales could have been good – well, passable – with screenplays content to be plain ol’ mediocre.
Another Apatow-esque comedy where attractive people goof around, do drugs and learn lessons. Also, spoilers: Zac Efron takes his shirt off.
It’s been a while since I’ve gone to a cinema and done nothing but laugh for 90 minutes. Was this because laughter surround me from beginning to end? Or was it that Bad Neighbours 2 was simply a well-written comedy? You can judge for yourself but in my opinion the sequel surpassed the original in many…
Improvisational comedy is fast becoming the norm. Whether it’s This is the End, Bad Neighbours or Anchorman 2, the construction is the same: narrative skeleton to keep the audience interested interspersed with some carefully-honed gags and a lot of loose improvisation, edited into something tighter. I’m not complaining, mind; I love the shooting-shit-with-your-mates vibe of…
Bad Neighbours (titled just Neighbors in the States) is a mash-up of two “classic” – or, if you’re feeling less generous, clichéd – comedy conceits. The film modifies the ‘slobs vs snobs’ frathouse formula by repurposing the ‘snobs’ as 30-something stoners struggling with the demands of adulthood. There’s little originality in the Bad Neighbours screenplay, but thankfully…
I liked Tim Winton’s The Turning more than most critics. Looking back at my review now, I don’t think I succeeded in explaining why it appealed to me; it’s an assumption underlying my write-up, but I don’t think I made it clear. In part, it’s based in my fondness for Winton’s original anthology, which I’d…