I just finished watching the hilarious Slasher.com (or “S/ash.er,” as it’s expressed in the credits), which is a, um, slasher movie. Those aren’t usually funny, and this one probably didn’t set out to be comical in nature, but it is what it is: One of those elusive so-bad-it’s-good movies. Slasher.com begins with some faux news…
Movies often attempt to capture the breadth of a whole life fully lived, but few do so with little more than a single breath. That’s the aim of the lovely little short Bernie and Rebecca, which elliptically plays the part of a comedy at either end of its running time, while segueing sweetly into more…
“A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.” — Jane Austen, “Pride and Prejudice,” Chapter VI Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale, “Total Recall”), the main protagonist of Whit Stillman’s (“Damsels in Distress”) period comedy Love & Friendship is determined to get what she wants…
If cinematic quirkiness exists on a spectrum that ranges from charming to obnoxiously grating, then surely try-hard rom-com 3rd Street Blackout is pushing towards the latter end. Every character in the movie speaks and acts as though they know they’re in a quirky indie flick, but there’s no meta subtext at work as a result….
Nostalgically, the baby-boomer generation that had grown up with two-time Oscar winning actress Sally Field (“Norma Rae,” “Places in the Heart”) will identify and sympathize with her quirky turn as the sixty-something working stiff Doris Miller trying to fit into a youth-oriented world while pursuing love and companionship in co-writer/co-producer/director Michael Showalter’s ambitious but uneven…
Some romantic comedies can be conventional in nature and not really want to invest in anything substantive beyond the familiar follow-the-dots formula of lightweight lunacy. In director Christian Ditter’s romantic romp How to be Single the gloves come off and are thrown in an entirely different direction. Sure, one can applaud Ditter for not hanging any…
“So, where is this going?” Those are the five dreaded words every romantic relationship will wrestle with in order to figure out the identity and destiny between its two prospective lovers. Also, it just happens to be the central question behind writer-director Leslye Headland’s new romantic comedy-drama (her feature directorial debut was “Bachelorette” in 2012…
