Second-time director Jim Field Smith offers more than the recommended daily allowance with Butter, a comedy that lets political satire slip straight through its fingers, if you’ll excuse the puns. In truth, the film, centered around an elaborate butter-carving competition, is an admirable attempt at parody, but while it offers a lot by way of…
Disney Studio’s effort to create a benign supernatural tale — with more than a passing nod to “Forrest Gump” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” — about a young boy who magically appears from a garden, at first seemed a bit ludicrous. Upon viewing The Odd Life of Timothy Green, however, reveals it is…
There are two unspoken rules to crafting a remake. First and foremost, classics are strictly prohibited. Secondly, if there are any trademark performances attached, it’s all the more reason not to continue onward. Jason Winer’s (T.V.’s Modern Family, Don’t Trust the Bitch in Apartment 23) Arthur breaks both amounting to nothing but another vehicle for…
Can the romantic comedy genre be out of steam? To me, it sure seems that way when: Matthew McConaughey is once again chalked up to be the leading man. The bottom of the barrel is scraped by stealing the plot devices of A Christmas Carol to tell the story. In a sentence, Ghosts of Girlfriends…
I’m late with the movie review, I know. I’ve resisted seeing Juno because I had trouble visualizing a female Napoleon Dynamite-like character. Could the bizarre, backwards character immortalized by Jon Heder be improved upon? Should it even have been attempted? The answers to those questions are: It certainly can be improved upon (most everything can…
I tend to get my guard up whenever I go into the theater to see a movie like The Kingdom. I always expect an overdose of political activism or some other jaded point of view that the writer and/or director wants to stuff down my throat. This, I believe, is the second such movie that…
It’s time for a feel-good, self-discovery movie. This time, however, our Hollywood friends have decided that the female lead usually given to Sandra Bullock, Renée Zellweger or Meg Ryan will go to Jennifer Garner. I guess they figured they needed a fresh face to attach to this comedy/romance; just like adding an air freshener to…
