Tag: comedy
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The Magician’s Elephant: Soaring to Heights of Childhood Courage and Imagination
Plot via IMDB: The Magician’s Elephant follows Peter, who is searching for his long-lost sister. When he crosses paths with a fortune teller in the market square, he want to know, is his sister still alive? To get the answer, he must find a mysterious elephant and the magician who will conjure it, setting Peter…
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Violent Night: This Is One Die-Hardened Santa
Plot via IMDB: When a team of mercenaries breaks into a wealthy family compound on Christmas Eve, taking everyone inside hostage, the team isn’t prepared for a surprise combatant: Santa Claus is on the grounds, and he’s about to show why this Nick is no saint I’m one of those film fans that thinks Die…
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Puss in Boots- The Last Wish: Knowing the Last Cat Life Is Not Really the Final Curtain Call
Plot via IMDB: Sadly, Puss in Boots, the undaunted Spanish lover and hero, is now down to the last of his nine lives, a decade after the events of Puss in Boots (2011). And as if that weren’t enough, the unstoppable bounty hunter known as The Big Bad Wolf is after him. To restore all…
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Babylon: Unable to Get Past the Partying into the Art of Moviemaking
Plot via IMDB; An original epic set in 1920s Los Angeles led by Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and Diego Calva, with an ensemble cast including Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li and Jean Smart. A tale of outsized ambition and outrageous excess, it traces the rise and fall of multiple characters during an era of unbridled…
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We Have a Ghost: Going Beyond Spooky
Plot via IMDB: Seeking a fresh start in Chicago, the Presley family moves into a dusty fixer-upper they soon realize comes with a catch: a ghost in the attic named Ernest (David Harbour). Despite Ernest’s attempts at scaring teenage son Kevin (Jahi Winston), the detached, music-obsessed teen soon finds a kindred spirit in this trapped…
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Bardo: A False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths- Getting Caught in Self Deception’s Indulgent Purgatory
Plot via IMDB: Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths is an epic, visually stunning and immersive experience set against the intimate and moving journey of Silverio, a renowned Mexican journalist and documentary filmmaker living in Los Angeles, who, after being named the recipient of a prestigious international award, is compelled to return to…
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Triangle of Sadness: Going Just a Little Beyond Gilligan’s Island
Plot via IMDB: In Ruben Östlund’s wickedly funny Palme d’Or winner, social hierarchy is turned upside down, revealing the tawdry relationship between power and beauty. Celebrity model couple, Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean), are invited on a luxury cruise for the uber-rich, helmed by an unhinged boat captain (Woody Harrelson). What first appeared…
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Cocaine Bear: Zonked Out More than the Average Bear
Plot via IMDB: Inspired by the 1985 true story of a drug runner’s plane crash, missing cocaine, and the black bear that ate it, this wild dark comedy finds an oddball group of cops, criminals, tourists and teens converging in a Georgia forest where a 500-pound apex predator has ingested a staggering amount of cocaine…
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Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania— Getting Tinier and Tinier Until It Hardly Even Matters
Plot via IMDB: Scott Lang and Hope Van Dyne, along with Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne, explore the Quantum Realm, where they interact with strange creatures and embark on an adventure that goes beyond the limits of what they thought was possible. It’s a cinematic truism that if a character says “It’s never over,”…
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Lyle, Lyle Crocodile: Hoping and Bopping to that Crocodile Rock
Plot via IMDB: Follows the title reptile who lives in a house on East 88th Street in New York City. Lyle enjoys helping the Primm family with everyday chores and playing with the neighborhood kids but one neighbor insists that Lyle belongs in a zoo. Mr. Grumps and his cat, Loretta, do not like crocodiles,…
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Sundance: Scrapper
Plot via Sundance:Following her mother’s death, a resourceful 12-year-old girl, Georgie (Lola Campbell), continues to live alone in their London-outskirts flat. She makes money stealing bikes with her friend, Ali (Alin Uzun), and keeps the social workers off her back by pretending to live with an uncle. It works like a charm until Jason (Harris…
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Sundance: Mama Cruz
Plot via Sundance:Devoutly religious Cruz leads a routine existence with her husband and precocious granddaughter Viky, while her daughter Carlota chases her dream of becoming a professional dancer in Vienna. A single errant click while attempting to navigate the internet momentarily exposes Cruz to online pornography. She’s mortified but suddenly reminded of her own desires.…
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Sundance: Bad Behaviour
Plot via Sundance:Lucy seeks enlightenment. The former child actress makes a pilgrimage to join her guru, Elon Bello (Ben Whishaw), for a silent retreat at a beautiful mountain resort with a Tesla-crammed parking lot. Before she shuts off her phone to the world, Lucy reaches out to her daughter, Dylan — a stunt person training…
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Sundance: Shortcomings
Plot via Sundance:Ben, a struggling filmmaker, lives in Berkeley, California, with his girlfriend, Miko, who works for a local Asian American film festival. When he’s not managing an art house movie theater as his day job, Ben spends his time obsessing over unavailable blond women, watching Criterion Collection DVDs, and eating in diners with his…
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Sundance: Theater Camp
Plot via Sundance:As summer rolls around again, kids are gathering from all over to attend AdirondACTS, a scrappy theater camp in upstate New York that’s a haven for budding performers. After its indomitable founder Joan (Amy Sedaris) falls into a coma, her clueless “crypto-bro” son Troy (Jimmy Tatro) is tasked with keeping the thespian paradise…
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A Man Called Otto: Tom Hanks Gets a Little G(r)umpy
Plot (Sony Pctures):Based on the # 1 New York Times bestseller “A Man Called Ove,” A Man Called Otto tells the story of Otto Anderson (Tom Hanks), a grump who no longer sees purpose in his life following the loss of his wife. Otto is ready to end it all, but his plans are interrupted…
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America: The Motion Picture- Doesn’t Let Alternate Facts Get in the Way of Its Own Inane History Lesson.
When filmmakers fall asleep and flunk high school American History, America: The Motion Picture is what’s created years later- an animated, anarchic, free association lunacy that mixes up the American Revolution with the Civil War and shows that it respects America by disregarding its truth and hyping its memes. In this alternate America, George-Bon Jovi-Washington…
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“Smallfoot” Is a Yeti Tale of a Sweetly Human Kind
For the Trump obsessed, there is a sub theme of treating obvious lies, even those written in stone, with obvious caution and questioning. That surely will draw some ire from the fake news believers.
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“The Package” Surprisingly Isn’t a Dick
The Package knows that all teen comedies are about overcoming and being comfortable with the dick.
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“Brij Mohan Amar Rahe” Is Too Squalid for Bollywood
Brij Mohan tries to give its audience something more substantial than the usual light Bollywood fare. It ends up to squalid for that audience to watch.
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“Blindspotting” Is There There
Blindspotting is pure Oakland, pure there there. It drills down into the city’s essence and finds not just a physical place but the perfect metaphor for a divided and disenchanted America struggling and resisting change.
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“Don’t Worry He Won’t Get Far on Foot” Doesn’t Go Far Enough
Sadly, Callahan’s cartoons vividly animated and sketched are receded as the art becomes background to the Oedipal drama of a son successfully overcoming his abandonment issues and alcoholism.
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“Father of the Year” Is a Bad Dad Every Other Time
Adam Sandler produced Netflix movies aren’t about the quality. They are about how much stuff they can get away with, the more sexual the better. The plots are just setups for the gags. Father of the Year excuse is about an idiot long haired alcoholic father (David Spade) attempts to impress his valedictorian son that…
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“Damsel” Isn’t in Distress
Damsel is probably the best of a trio of feminist Westerns to grace the big and and small screen this year.
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“Isle of Dogs”: Wes Anderson’s Unbearable Lightness of Being an Abandoned Canine
The sorrowful wisdom brought by their abandonment can be heard in the dialogue (spoken in English by a talented American voice cast), a disaffected whine two hopes, a pat and a cheerful compliment removed from love.
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“Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation” Is a Monster Bash Worth the Voyage
The series gentle heart has always stuck to its winning formula of total inclusion because underneath all of us are all the same monsters with a good heart. Every life, even steam punk rehabilitated one’s like Van Helsing, have value.
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“Boundaries” Knows Where Those Are
Boundaries implies it’s a film with no boundaries or trying to find it boundaries.
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“The Legacy of a Whitetail Deer Hunter”: A Different Kind of Deer Hunter
When the expected Deliverance moment comes it is both false and awkwardly right. They all get through the rapids not shattered, just a little bit better men, friends and maybe understanding and appreciative parent and child.
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“King of Peking”: Father and Son Create Their Buddy Film
King of Peking (streaming on Netflix) proves that the best buddy films are created by fathers and sons.
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“Uncle Drew” Got Game
Uncle Drew can’t help to come off looking like a Harlem Globetrotters highlight reel. After all, the glorified exhibition tourney is their to show these stars love of the game.
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“The Incredibles 2”: Trying to Get to Super Duper
Yes, it is a mess, but families are messy also. The best of them are also near super duper.
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“Ocean’s 8” Hits the Glass Ceiling
All the Ocean films do share the fact that their star powered casts are there to have fun, cash a paycheck– and if luck be a lady, make a good movie. The con is that is they convince the audience of the same.
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“Set It Up” Pretty Much Knows It’s a Setup
Set It Up is so smart that it almost attains singularity, just not enough for the average Netflix viewer to be unchill with it.
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“Tag” Is It
Tag is one of those movies that is much better than it has any right to be.