A funny thing happened while I was watching the comedy “Man of the Year”: a thriller broke out. Not some blunt-instrument melodrama, like what happened in Robin Williams and director Barry Levinson’s last collaboration, “Good Morning, Vietnam,” but a full-blown thriller. And even after they launched the thriller, they refused to give up on the comedy. Now, comedy and drama can work together, hence the silly industry buzzword dramedy. Comedy can even work well with horror, which is good since a lot of horror movies are funny whether or not they actually intend to be. But thrillers are about establishing…
Author: David Medsker
Duran Duran has a lot more to their musical résumé than “The Reflex” and “The Wild Boys.” Indeed, if those songs were wiped off the face of the earth, I would be perfectly okay with that. There is also a considerable breadth of style on these albums as well. They weren’t just a synth-pop band. There are experiments in art rock, house music, Latin music, atmospheric pop, and funk. One thing’s for sure, they were not afraid to fail. And on more than one occasion, that’s exactly what they did. But they came back wiser every time. The following list…
Joe Simpson is a pimp. I’ll explain that. Jessica and Ashlee Simpson’s father is one of the executive producers of “Employee of the Month,” a slacker comedy whose characters bear little resemblance to anyone you’d run across in real life, and Joe, in his infinite wisdom, thought this vapid little movie was the perfect vehicle for his little Jessica. Then again, I suppose this kind of business strategery is to be expected from the man who once said about his eldest daughter, “She just is sexy. If you put her in a T-shirt or you put her in a bustier,…
The most important part of a movie is the ending. If it doesn’t feel satisfactory to the audience, it doesn’t matter a whit what came before it, the movie’s toast (see “Signs” or “Little Shop of Horrors”), if you must. The makers of “The Guardian,” perhaps sensing this, decided to give their movie three endings, presumably to cover all the emotional bases that endings are supposed to cover. We’ll never know the real reason, but I do know that the movie felt real, real long as a result of these three endings. Which is a shame, because when it’s working,…
This is going to be the most half-assed review of “Open Season” you’ll find on the web…unless you find the reviews of my other movie critic friends who, like me, left the screening an hour after the initial run time had passed and there were no signs that the movie would begin anytime soon. Then, right as we were about to enter a nearby bar, the studio rep tracked us down and told us they had started the movie. So we grabbed our 3-D glasses (and for the record, this is not your father’s 3-D, and would recommend a 3-D…
There’s a great bit on “The Simpsons” after Moe has given his bar a facelift and turned it into a chic night club: Homer, Barney, Lenny, Carl: Hey, Moe, what’s with all this stuff on the walls? Moe: Come on, guys, it’s po-mo! Homer, Barney, Lenny, Carl: (stare blankly) Moe: You know, post-modern! Homer, Barney, Lenny, Carl: (stare blankly) Moe: All right, weird for the sake of being weird. Using Moe’s definition, “The Science of Sleep” is undoubtedly the most po-mo movie you’ll see this year. And what else would you expect from Michel Gondry, the man that made “Eternal…
This is going to be the shortest movie review I’ve ever written, because if I were to describe the scenes in “Jackass: Number Two” in great detail – and granted, I’m going to have to explain some of them – I’d be ruining it for everyone. And since this is one of those “Snakes on a Plane”-type ‘you’re in or you’re out on the title alone’ movies, I’ll try to keep this review as spoiler-free as possible. But I will say this: I loved “Jackass: Number Two.” In fact, it’s clear that Johnny Knoxville & Co. took a good long…
Does anyone else find it at all odd that Dimension would decide to launch a theatrical run for the Project Greenlight-winning gorefest “Feast” (to call it a horror movie is misleading, since it’s more funny than scary) a month before the movie makes its debut on DVD? Yeah, me too, but since this movie wasn’t even on my radar when the pass for the screening landed in my mailbox, it made the experience of seeing it all the more pleasant a surprise. Though if I may, I’d like to suggest that you not follow in the footsteps of the couple…
When most people are planning their work day, they don’t have to decide whether to go through a car wash on the windshield or get shocked by an electric eel. But most people aren’t Steve-O, the unflappable “Jackass” and “WildBoyz” stuntman that has made a living out of subjecting himself to intolerable levels of pain. With “Jackass: Number Two” due in theaters September 22, Bullz-Eye caught up with Steve-O as he performed the most terrifying part of his job: dealing with the press. Steve-O: No way, what’s up, David, bro man, dude, homes, buddy, pal, amigo, dude! Bullz-Eye: (Laughs) How…
By the time that “The Black Dahlia” finished, I couldn’t tell if Brian De Palma was paying tribute to the film noirs of the ‘40s or making fun of them. (That last line may or may not have been written by my boy Kevin Carr. It’s late, and I’m trying to forget everything associated with this movie as quickly as I can, but I’ll acknowledge that he said something along those lines as he – disgusted, like me – was leaving the theater.) Either way, the movie was filled with all of the trappings that have cluttered and undone any…