To describe Booksmart as “Superbad” with girls is to be reductive and overly simplistic. Nonetheless, it is a not inaccurate description of Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut, due to its winning combination of coming of age trials and tribulations, the strains upon teenage friendship and profane humor. However, these elements are combined in such a way…
When 38-year-old Fred Flarsky (Seth Rogen, “The Disaster Artist”), a sloppy and unkempt-looking journalist, falls for Charlotte Field (Charlize Theron, “Tully”), a highly sophisticated, intelligent, and political savvy politician, we know that we must be in fantasyland or in a Jonathan Levine (“The Night Before”) comedy. While Levine’s Long Shot challenges believability, there are enough…
Imagine if “Rear Window” were in motion, the fragmented but persistent yearning to see given (literal) added dynamism. What we glimpse through windows is always partial, but if viewed from a moving train the glimpse is even more fleeting. Then replace James Stewart in a wheelchair with Emily Blunt addled by alcohol and you have…
I’m not quite sure how it works but I get a distinct feeling fraternities don’t just up and buy a house in the middle of quiet neighborhoods and setup shop. Especially one known for hosting extravagant, panty-dropping parties and on some sort of super, double secret probation. That, you see, would be a recipe for…
If Seth Rogen can land Katherine Heigl in “Knocked Up,” then it is at least a possibility he can land Rose Byrne, right? Either way, he’s married to her in Universal Pictures’ upcoming comedy Neighbors and together they butt heads with the party-til-you-puke frat house that has moved in next door. Crude stupidity, as it…
A teen comedy all about sex, without there actually being any sex, you say? Has John Hughes risen from the dead? Pretty damn close, as Will Gluck pays homage to the legendary director every chance he gets in Easy A — with better than expected results. The film works on several fronts, although the bulk…
