“I Want More Rom-Coms Like ‘I Want You Back'”

Not the Jackson 5 song, though that song is great, but a Jenny Slate and Charlie Day rom-com. This is, in fact, a selling point. Continue reading →

Review: The Polka King, 2017, dir. Maya Forbes

I’m happy enough to sneak a terrible-on-purpose play on Shakespeare into my review of Maya Forbes’ very good The Polka King that I don’t mind my reference to Phanuel being cut from the final copy. Take that bad with the good, or maybe in this case the bad with the very bad. Whatever. I don’t know. … Continue reading →

Review: The Lego Batman Movie, 2017 dir. Chris McKay

I guess I’m not surprised, per se, that I enjoyed The Lego Batman Movie as much as I did; I liked The Lego Movie quite a lot, after all, and found Will Arnett’s Batman riff utterly hilarious. When The Lego Batman Movie was first announced, though, I wondered whether that riff could sustain a whole movie, and there it … Continue reading →

Review: The Secret Life of Pets, 2016, dir. Chris Renaud & Yarrow Cheney

…man, even thinking of an appropriate intro blurb for linking my review of The Secret Life of Pets feels like as much a chore as writing the review itself. What a nothing of a movie. It isn’t terrible. It isn’t good. It is awkward and oddly structured, and you can see where Chris Renaud and Yarrow … Continue reading →

Review: Zootopia, 2016, dir. Byron Howard, Rich Moore, Jared Bush

Months ago, if you told me Zootopia would win me over on a cardiovascular level, I probably would have ignored you. Yet here we are today, with my glowing review freshly posted over at Paste Magazine. Zootopia is a delight. Even if it didn’t lean hard on its discrimination allegory, it would still be wonderful; it has a great sense … Continue reading →

Choice & Drama In ‘Obvious Child’

Obvious Child is agenda-driven filmmaking, a movie with a blatant and unapologetic political (and social) perspective that shapes its narrative. Like Juno, or Knocked Up, it’s about the complicated matter of abortion, and choice, and what people (in this case, a single woman) do when they’re faced with the problematic realities of unwanted pregnancy. Unlike … Continue reading →