Ruby Sparks was my most anticipated movie of the summer and it was the first time in a long while that I went in with high expectations and had them surpassed. Zoe Kazan’s script is touching, and unique, but it’s also brimmingly hilarious. And she and Paul Dano are hilarious in it. As directed by […]
I was really looking forward to The 5 Year Engagement. I was convinced it would be the movie that would finally make me love Emily Blunt (I’ve never warmed to her, but remain convinced that John Krasinski would never marry a cold fish). And she fares pretty well. She’s just goofy enough to shed that […]
Think Like a Man is the ensemble comedy that Gary Marshall keeps trying to direct. It’s funny and clever with a cast of interconnected characters who are at least marginally believable (can we all please agree that Jessica Biel’s never again allowed to play the lonely, un-lovable girl? K, thanks) and the film enjoys that […]
As a (mostly) unabashed fan of romantic comedies, you end up having to do a lot of apologizing. You’re supposed to couch your enjoyment of these films in the self-aware “of course, it’s JUST a romantic comedy.” Never mind that technically all films are JUST something. That’s what genre means. All films (short of maybe […]
There are many, many things that do not work about This Means War; check out Rotten Tomatoes, where the film is currently getting a 26% fresh rating. The movie is home to enough clichés to power about fourteen thousand post-modern comedies (like Friends with Benefits) about how clichéd romantic comedies are. The ending you can […]
Garry Marshall was once my favourite director. I will admit this only with the accompanying information that I was about 12 at the time, a devotee of the Julia Roberts- Richard Gere oeuvre (Runaway Bride, Pretty Woman) and quite entranced by The Princess Diaries. He’s not an inspired director, but he makes sweet, enjoyable films, […]
I’m watching The Holiday and wondering at that film’s most unbelievable achievement: making me fall madly in love with Jack Black. It’s this scene that does it, one of the loveliest ever.
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 […]