Upfront, I didn’t have high expectations for The Spy Who Dumped Me; I don’t have faith in studio comedies, and I especially don’t have faith in studio action comedies, because they tend to treat the action with indifference and just joke through fight scenes where characters reasonably should be taking matters seriously. But Susanna Fogel isn’t fucking … Continue reading
Seth MacFarlane takes his first jaunt into feature filmmaking with a really, really fantastic premise, a solid cast, and an utter inability to get past the tics that make his television shows so mundane and useless. Continue reading
Taking an everyperson– that’s an everyman or an everywoman for you PC types out there– and throwing them into an extraordinary circumstance can provide a path to success in storytelling if the person spinning the yarn knows what they’re doing. In a way, I think we respond more to the everyperson than we do to … Continue reading
What makes the efforts of one director superior to those of another? If one person wins Best Director, does it stand to reason that they should also win Best Picture? I had these two questions– and sub-questions pertaining to both, as well as variations on each of said questions– rolling around in my head after … Continue reading
Black Swan could almost be called The Wrestler 2 despite not featuring strapping, muscle-bound men in tights and torn jeans beating each other with their fists and the occasional piece of hardware in bouts with predetermined outcomes; Darren Aronofsky here uses the lens of ballet to continue examining the lengths performance artists will go to, … Continue reading
A Constant Visual Feast 