These days, it is simply accepted that Adam Sandler movies are going to be difficult to watch and yet increasingly generic. He’s made a very comfortable living by continually playing to the lowest common denominator, whether it’s through paint-by-numbers romantic or over-the-top absurdist comedies. But there was a time, in the not-too-distant past, when it […]
NOTE: It’s hard being Jewish at Christmas time, but nothing is quite as difficult as dealing with the complete dearth of Hannukah movies. In trying to put the “mukkah” into the 24 days of Christmas, I decided I needed at least two Hannukah offerings. Unfortunately, 8 Crazy Nights is the only one that even exists, […]
One of my non-obnoxious Film Studies TAs was struggling to explain to us the basics of plot. We were first year film students, dying to do avante-garde and unique things, and the idea of using standard structural elements to construct our opuses felt confining and uncomfortably like selling out. Then, she walks in one day […]
As a regular movie, Rent doesn’t exactly have classic status. With Chris Columbus’ stagey direction and lack of personal voice, Rent isn’t even a particularly good adaptation of the Broadway musical from which it’s based. The actors are all too old for their parts. The film lacks cinematic urgency. And the once-cutting-edge play about a group […]
The newest play from Canada’s beloved playwright Hannah Moscovitch is a stirring and inspiring drama about groundbreaking Polish/Jewish educator Janusz Korczak, set in Warsaw in pre-ghetto 1939 (Act I) and oppressive and war-torn 1942 (Act II). Against Camellia Koo’s innovative set of destructible paper orphanage walls and directed with sublime understanding by Alisa Palmer, Moscovitch’s […]
Aside from listening to the Bing Crosby tune “White Christmas,” I really knew nothing about the 1954 classic film by the same name. For example, I didn’t know it was a musical, didn’t know it starred Bing Crosby, had no idea it took place in a snow-less Vermont, and didn’t know it was in goofy […]
Adam Pettle and Brenda Robins’ 2009 adaptation of Miklos Laszlo’s 1937 Hungarian comedy Parfumerie, about the behind the scenes lives of employees at a beauty supply store, is not something you would assume would be a hit. But it is. Most performances of the Dora-winning remount have already sold out and a discerning friend of […]
Another new Christmas movie for me! Although I’ve seen the animated version more times than you can shake a stick at*, and have read the book pretty consistently since childhood, I was full of enough Jim Carrey-fatigue by the time the live action version of Dr. Seuss’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas showed up that up […]