MacGruber
SimilarArmageddon (1998), Bring It On (2000), Hellboy (2004), Mars Attacks! (1996), Night at the Museum (2006), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006),
In the age of streaming, any movie, short of maybe Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, can become a TV show. It doesn’t matter if your original film was a box office turkey, these channels just want “content” and any previously established brand name will do. Through this phenomenon comes MacGruber, a continuation of a Saturday Night Live character and the star of a 2010 movie that crashed and burned financially. But when Peacock desperately needed something, anything, to release over the holidays, MacGruber rose from the aches like a conceited phoenix. Continue Reading →
Violet
SimilarMonster (2003), The Fisher King (1991),
Olivia Munn's spirited performance elevates what otherwise feels like a moralistic, obvious self-help treatise on trauma and accountability.
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival.)
There has been a significant shift in filmmaking and scripting recently where buzzy ideas like ‘trauma’ and ‘accountability’ have been explored in a very lazy and uninspiring surface-level fashion. The need for movies to be some sort of active moral life lesson and perhaps worse, a form of therapy, has overtaken the artistry with which human emotions and connections can be conveyed through the moving image. Continue Reading →
Bridesmaids
Come back to a simpler time. A time when people were left shocked and awestruck when a remarkable pop culture event occurred, one that dumbfounded many and helped inspire a cultural shift, one where viewpoints that had previously been derided and ignored were placed at the center of an increasing number of narratives. Continue Reading →
The Social Network
When The Social Network premiered on October 1, 2010, Facebook had only existed for six years. It already had 400 million users. Its founder and C.E.O., Mark Zuckerberg, was worth $4 billion. Continue Reading →
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
After Ukraine Is Not a Brothel and Casting JonBenet, Kitty Green makes her first scripted feature in one of the year’s very best. Julia Garner plays Jane, a Northwestern University graduate and aspiring film producer. Now she works as an office assistant for an industry executive. She does the work one would expect her, but it’s over the course of a day that she becomes aware of the predation going on. Comparisons to Harvey Weinstein have already been made, but to relate the two is to simplify the issues on screen here. Continue Reading →