When I was little, I went to see The Secret Garden in theaters with my mom. During one scene, as young Mary Lennox is creeping towards the garden, I started to freak out. When my mom asked, “What’s wrong?” in a very nice voice, although I’m sure what she meant was “Why the hell is […]
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the concept of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. It was started here by AV Club writer Nathan Rabin as a description of Kirsten Dunst’s character in Elizabethtown, and, by extension, as a deconstruction of the type of female character that seems to exist solely to propel a male protagonist’s […]
The biggest problem with The Grey, Liam Neeson’s new movie about fighting wolves in the Alaskan wilderness, is simple, really. It’s the fact that you just walked into a movie theater expecting to see Liam Neeson fight wolves in the Alaskan wilderness – you’re ready to watch Neeson take out our lupine brethren using the […]
Touch, Kiefer Sutherland’s new pilot about to air on Fox, is described as a “drama that blends science and spirituality to explore the hidden connections which bind together all of humanity,” by Fox Publicity. Needless to say, 24 this isn’t. At the same time, the drama does focus on Kiefer Sutherland as a man needing […]
Haywire, the recently released directorial effort by Steven Soderbergh which Jason nicely reviewed here, also marks the first starring role for Mixed Martial Arts fighter, Gina Carano. As anyone who’s seen the film can attest, Carano is a certified badass. She made the erst-while Magneto, Michael Fassbender, look like a little boy in way over […]
I sort of find all of the Office naysayers tiring (and I’m not just saying this because I desperately want Mindy Kaling to be my best friend). Since Steve Carell left, the internet has been full of people ready to proclaim The Office dead. Hell, BEFORE Carell left, most people agreed that the show was […]
Happy Endings is not a show that is particularly about depth. The characters are one step away from cartoons. What makes the show work (and what powers similarly surface-y shows like New Girl and, to a less successful extent, 2 Broke Girls) is the show’s non-stop commitment to its characters and to jokes*. One of […]
In a lot of ways, the new Disney policy of re-releasing classic films (like The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast) in 3D can be seen as a cynical cash grab. After all, it essentially tricks people into paying $16.00 a pop to see a movie they probably already own on VHS, DVD and […]