Another Self-Help Book Gets the Romcom Treatment

What to Expect When You’re Expecting is another unfortunate example of what happens when real self-help book advice is applied to the plot of a romantic comedy. Having just a few weeks ago suffered through the joyless Think Like a Man, we have yet again a strained, unfocused, badly developed relationship farce that focuses more on slapstick gags and verbal jabs than on genuinely funny scenarios.

An Ex-Grifter Forced Back into the Grift

Foley (Samuel L. Jackson) is a former grifter who has just finished a twenty-five-year prison sentence for murdering his best friend and partner in crime. This wasn’t a case of one turning against the other. Quite simply, he was given a choice; he either had to kill his friend or resign himself to the fact that both of them would be killed. He chose survival. Serving time has given him time to think, but it has also left him with nothing.

When the Uterus Was to Blame

Hysteria is an exuberantly charming romantic comedy, yes, but it’s also a surprisingly compelling depiction of a world in transition, when tradition was being challenged by progressive behaviors and technologies. The time is the 1880s. The place is Victorian England. Electrical devices were barely starting to make their way into the lives of everyday people. In the field of medicine, germs were still widely regarded as theoretical, and in London alone, nearly a quarter of the female population was diagnosed with hysteria, a catchall diagnosis conjured up by male scientists describing a vast and arbitrary list of mental disorders.

A Mindbending Journey into the Craft of Filmmaking

How exactly does one review something like Beyond the Black Rainbow, a movie that intentionally overwhelms our senses without ever once telling us what it’s about? In times like this, I turn to that most reliable of critical copouts, namely the annoyingly vague assessment that the film is an experience. When I go that route, it generally means that, although I cannot begin to interpret the visuals, the characters, or the thematic subtexts, I still responded well to the look, the atmosphere, and the sheer audacity of the filmmakers.

Even an Oppressor Needs Someone to Cuddle

When I saw the first ads for The Dictator, I knew that there would be absolutely no middle ground, that it would be either a work of genius or one of the most offensive movies ever made. I now know what side of the divide I stand on. Where you stand, well, that will depend not only on your sense of humor but also on how you personally interpret the state of the world we live in.

Depp Finally Lands His Dream Role

In a 2007 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Johnny Depp proudly stated that, as he grew up watching Dark Shadows, he wanted to be the vampire Barnabas Collins. “I think lots of kids did,” he said. “He was super-mysterious, with that really weird hairdo and the wolf’s-head cane. Good stuff.” Depp is now luckier than ever to be dear friends with Tim Burton; apart from the fact that he helmed this year’s film adaptation of the gothic soap opera, he gave Depp the chance to live his dream by casting him as Barnabas Collins.

Really, Really Slow Progress

The idea of a teenage daughter rebelling against her mother under the guise of gaining independence is compelling. The fatal flaw of Girl in Progress is that this idea is not taken seriously until the final act, at which point we’ve been so turned off by the plot and characters that we no longer care. It really is shocking how badly this movie is structured and how poorly the characters are developed; what should have been a poignant and insightful generational story has been reduced to an implausible and inconsistent mess.

Goldthwait’s Final Solution

Frank (Joel Murray) sees nothing around him apart from the collapse of American society. Television is saturated with reality shows that exploit stupidity and glorify shallowness. The nightly news reports little apart from stories of murder and mayhem. Conservative political talk shows have devolved into cruel, bigoted gusts of hot air. People in general, namely his coworkers and neighbors, have become apathetic and stupid; genuine conversation has been reduced to mindless chatter about the latest celebrity scandal.

This One Doesn’t Quite Runeth Over

The Cup is a sincere inspirational sports drama with a lot of heart. This is not to say that it’s an especially great or even memorable film; it does everything it’s supposed to do on technical, emotional, and performance levels, but when it comes to narrative, it lacks the style and the spark of imagination necessary for it to stand out above the others. I use the word “imagination” in the grand cinematic sense. I know full well that the film is based on the true story of Damien Oliver, the Australian jockey who in 2002 competed in the Melbourne Cup horse race and won.