History lessons don’t have to be boring. But when they are, the problem usually lies with the execution of the presentation of the information. This happens to be the unfortunate circumstance of accomplished writer-director Armando Iannucci’s latest film, The Death of Stalin, which takes a satirical look at the death of Josef Stalin and the…
The film Trolls opened several weeks ago and this review is a bit late, but it should not matter, as few people will see or care much for this lukewarm knockoff of the Smurfs franchise (which is a lukewarm entity in and of itself). The Rotten Tomatoes synopsis reads: “DreamWorks Animation’s ‘TROLLS’ is an irreverent…
There’s certainly no accounting as to why Ben Affleck (“Gone Girl”) would choose this, The Accountant, a tepid and convoluted thriller to star in, but all I know is I wish I could deduct the two-plus hours I spent at the cinema to see it; time I will never get back in a refund next…
Ah, the bungled bank robbery movie. A movie that could have done with a cameo appearance from Eileen Brennan, Flypaper at least adds a slight kink in its comedy presentation, which results in it being slightly fresher than it perhaps could have been. A bank is being robbed, the heist goes wrong, and the perpetrators…
What is the obsession many Hollywood writers have with bathroom humor? Have American standards of comedy sunk so far that the only way to illicit a laugh nowadays is to resort to the lowest possible denominator? Have the Three Stooges (once the lowest of lowbrow comedy) become the gold standard of guffaws? I ask these…
One bank. Two gangs of bank robbers. Same time and day. That makes for one helluva scenario, especially when crafted in the hands of the boys who wrote “The Hangover.” As the trailer for Flypaper shows, it gets awfully complicated and comical — one gang is made up of professional thieves, the other is a…
What does winning the lottery have to do with serial killing? On the surface nothing, but in the new indie comedy Lucky, whose trailer debuted today, everything. When weak and ignored office worker Ben wins the lottery, his world, as one would suspect, changes. He gets the girl of his dreams (who couldn’t stand him…
