The NYC-set comedy about the struggles of traditional Jewish values in a modern dating world currently playing at the Toronto Centre for the Arts Studio Theatre has the sort of mild likability of a CBS sitcom- it’s funny sometimes, it’s charming most of the time and it’s not going on any best-of lists anytime soon, […]
I’ve often praised the Netflix/Hulu stumble upon. It’s one of the greatest parts about streaming video, the ability to happen upon strange, offbeat, foreign or forgotten gems when browsing through one’s Netflix queue/hulu home page. So here’s the latest installment of my two part series, Better Know a British Sitcom. Spy, the shortly-named Sky-1 tv […]
Wanderlust, the new David Wain (Stella, Wet Hot American Summer) comedy starring Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston, is a deeply funny movie, with laughs that run the gamut from the shocked “Oh Shit!” style laughter to the character-based chuckle. Unfortunately, despite its producer pedigree in the form of one Mr. Judd Apatow, it’s also a […]
I had the best Valentine’s Day ever! Because I got to spend it with Dan & Jeff* and Harry Potter. What started as an Edinburgh Fringe show has brought the utterly hilarious duo of Daniel Clarkson and Jefferson Turner to Toronto as the two parts of the most smile-inducing production I’ve seen in years. I’m […]
Recent films rely on one convention. It’s sad but almost every Hollywood film is about character redemption. We love seeing someone with a problem they must overcome. We love going from liking them to loving them and we get catharsis from the sunset that brings everything together in the end. What makes Young Adult such […]
It would be very easy to hate Carnage, Roman Polanski’s simple but searing adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s Tony-winning play The God of Carnage (or, Le Dieu du Carnage, really). The characters are so dreadful, so maddening, so obnoxiously self righteous that I wanted to hurl things at the screen. But about halfway through, I finally […]
Cameron Crowe seems a long way away from his glory days in the late nineties/early oughts with this wishy-washy family film. The premise involves Matt Damon as a single father of two whose wife has recently died. Instead of doing the sensible thing like grief counseling, he quits his job and moves across the state […]
Once art-house director now studio comedy auteur David Gordon Green treats us to a not-so-typical night on the town in The Sitter, an R-rated comedy starring Jonah Hill. The basic premise of the film involves Hill as a college dropout stuck babysitting for a buxom brunette for the night. When his girlfriend calls promising sex […]