The opening sequence of Howard Goldberg’s Jake Squared bears a striking resemblance to Paolo Sorrentino’s modern Italian classic, “The Great Beauty,” however the two films are worlds apart in style and cohesiveness. Director Jake Klein has everything a man could want. He lives in a beautiful Los Angeles home and decides to let the cameras…
The cliché nowadays is not showing a film’s title characters until the better half of its second act. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles continues that trend by focusing more on April O’Neil (Megan Fox, “Passion Play”), a good-looking New York reporter reduced to covering fluff pieces. Eager for a break that’d set her apart from her…
Suicide is no laughing matter. Neither is A Long Way Down, a movie that uses it as a jumping off point to bring together four people whose individual plights are supposed to draw sympathy and whose differences when combined are supposed to create laughable conflict. Of course, it’s not a comedy in the strictest sense,…
The feature directorial debut of Dan Beers, Premature, doesn’t capture the complete or debaucherous high school experience like most of its raunch-fest predecessors (“American Pie,” “Superbad”) do, but the comedy is smart and in tune with a new generation of frustrated hornballs. At its heart is high school senior Rob (John Karna) and his world…
Tammy Banks (Melissa McCarthy, “The Heat”) is having the bad day to end all bad days. Thanks to a deer with a death wish she has managed to crash her poor excuse for a car and then get fired from her dead end job at the depressing burger joint Topper Jacks. To top it all…
Although Expecting is advertised as a comedy drama, it’s undeniably much more of a drama, with the occasional laugh thrown in. This format is not necessarily problematic within itself, but when it comes packaged in such a joyful poster, it invariably comes as a bit of a curve ball to suddenly be faced with so…
Seeing Kevin Spacey back in action is a good thing. Back in action in Warner Bros. Pictures’ Horrible Bosses 2 is up to debate, however, as this is a sequel no one was looking to see happen. In it, instead of trying to eliminate their horrible bosses (which Spacey was one of) with a cockamamie…
