Unhinged is unapologetic trash. That’s not a bad thing. Good trash can be great. But there’s not much worse than bad trash. Unhinged is not good trash. Its story is rote, and its characters are one-dimensional, giving the briefest of lip service to their inner motivations in order to get them in place for its…
Judd Apatow has a long history of “Lovable Losers” in his work. All the way from Freaks and Geeks to The 40-Year-Old Virgin, even in films like This Is 40 and Trainwreck, Apatow tells stories about broken, juvenile characters who are dragged, kicking and screaming, into the real world. Apatow’s also been accused of glossing…
The glass-is-half-empty among us has been decrying the death of cinema for many years, triggered by the increasing focus on reinventing old IP in the face of increasing apathy towards original material. The glass-is-half-full side will respond that the origination of the material matters less than what is done with it, and talented individuals have…
Spring, 1987. I’m a senior in high school. I’m sitting in the back seat of my friend Bill’s lime-green Chevy Nova. We’re in the parking lot of a Kroger’s, and we’re all a little drunk. Some of us more than others; we’ve been drinking beers, and right before we left the party at Heather’s house,…
Somewhere, on the side of a mountain in the Appalachians, a family is gathering for its annual celebration. Somewhere, a family is falling apart. Somewhere, the classic reactions and responses to unconscionable betrayal are turned on their heads. Somewhere, people act out their lives in a fashion both impossible to identify with and unmistakably human….
No film based on a true story is really about its subject, or at least not wholly about it. Sure, there’s a requirement to include the major moments of a life or event and keep the bones of the story in line with history. But the viewpoint of the filmmakers matters as much as the…
Spider-Man: Far From Home is a film caught up in the inconsistencies of grief. It suggests grief both causes individuals to freeze in their pre-trauma state and to attempt to put it behind them come hell or high water. Even as their every action is being caused by their grief, they are also turning their…