We are loath to be late to a musical party, especially when it involves any band that could be described as ‘Anglo.’ When Scottish power trio Biffy Clyro first popped up on our radar last week, well, we were embarrassed. An intense rock band with a fondness for melody and Muse-like tendencies, whose 2010 album Only Revolutions sent a whopping six (!) singles into the UK Top 40? How the hell did we miss these guys? We could come up with some sorry excuse, but it would be just that – a sorry excuse. Still, better late than never, and…
Author: David Medsker
After spending not nearly enough time chatting with “Cedar Rapids” star Ed Helms, we online pressers are escorted to another room so we can chat with the film’s director Miguel Arteta. After a few comments about who makes the best deep dish pizza in Chicago (our vote: Geno’s East), Arteta surprises everyone in the room when he throws out some comments that make our chat with Helms seem positively quaint. He also describes his love for the world that’s familiar but alien, the many talents of John C. Reilly, and the tendency for all comedies to take place in L.A.…
It only made sense that a movie like “Cedar Rapids,” the indie comedy about a small town insurance salesman who gets his world turned upside-down at a convention in a certain Iowa city, would do a press junket in the Midwest. And of course, the day they selected would turn out to be the coldest day of the year. But inside the gorgeous Elysian Hotel in Chicago, Ed Helms, star of “Cedar Rapids” and a regular on “The Office,” was as warm and gracious as any actor we’ve ever met. Bullz-Eye sat down with three Chicago writers to talk with…
It’s one of the most unoriginal movies to come down the pipe in a long time – it’s “Toy Story,” with gnomes, set to a Shakespearean tragedy with a “Shrek”-like sensibility – but “Gnomeo & Juliet” manages, just barely, to rise above these obstacles and carve out an identity of its own. In a rare surprise, the stunt casting actually works in the movie’s favor, and the soundtrack, which consists of Elton John songs old and new, is quite symphonic. With a nearly all-English cast, a Shakespearean play as the source material, and Elton John providing the tunes, it’s safe…
“The Town” showed that you could take a well-worn premise and still make something fresh and interesting with it. Most of the time people try to do that, they end up with a movie like “The Eagle.” It’s quite lovely to look at, but it doesn’t really mean anything. It’s a sword and sandals reluctant buddy road movie, and it’s clear how it will end from the moment it begins. Roman warrior Marcus Aquila (Channing Tatum) requests an armored post in the north of England as a means of restoring the good name of his father, who led 5,000 men…
The two leads haven’t made two good movies back-to-back in over a decade, and the director made the Onion AV Club’s dubious list of directors you didn’t know you hated. On paper, “Just Go with It” looked like a perfect storm of suck, the unholy joining of B-list actors, a C-list director, and a D-list story line. And while the movie is still riddled with problems, it’s far more entertaining than it has a right to be. There is a gonzo nature to it, similar to another Sandler/Dugan pairing, “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan,” that becomes intoxicating, even when…
“The Mechanic” is the best movie that the recently resurrected CBS Films has released to date. Now, let’s examine that statement a little more closely. It sounds like a compliment, but when you take into account that the other movies CBS has released are “Extraordinary Measures,” “The Back-Up Plan,” and “Faster,” calling this their best movie is damning with faint praise, to be sure. If it hadn’t spent so much time trying to convince us of its seriousness, it could have been much better. Why hire Simon West and then not let him try to make another “Con Air”? That’s…
You’d be hard pressed to find a band as much good will and bad luck as alt-country pioneers the Jayhawks. When they dropped their major label debut Hollywood Town Hall in 1992, many presumed that having Black Crowes producer George Drakoulias at the boards would mean instant success. (It didn’t.) When they released their 1995 watershed album Tomorrow the Green Grass at a time when bands like Hootie and the Blowfish and Dave Matthews were reshaping the charts, people thought that they would surely get a piece of the pie. (They didn’t.) Entertainment Weekly was so perplexed by their inability…
Kristen Wiig plays a character on “Saturday Night Live” that can’t keep a secret. Man, could this movie have used her. The story for “The Dilemma” hinges almost entirely on people not talking to each other, running on what our colleague John Paulsen has astutely dubbed manufactured conflict. One simple sentence could clear up this movie in 20 minutes, or even better, open up doors to newer, more realistic, and potentially funnier outcomes. But not this movie: this is the Johnny Tightlips of comedies, and it will bleed to death before it tells anyone where it’s been shot. Ronny Valentine…
It’s tough to get emotionally invested in a movie where 99.9% of the characters aren’t real. But really, that’s just a by-product of the larger problem with “Tron: Legacy,” which is the story structure. So much exposition, so little time. Oh wait, that’s the other problem with “Tron: Legacy.” There isn’t so little time; there’s too much of it. In fact, it’s a good 15 to 20 minutes too long. The visuals are magnificent, and the score is stunning, but the human element is virtually nonexistent, which is surprising considering the story revolves around someone losing his father as a…