Archives: Movie Reviews

The cloyingly overcute Rebecca Rittenhouse, far less effective playing a nice character than she was playing an intimidating gorgeous snob in The Mindy Project, as a convoluted, forced sitcom idea of a "psychic" who has to constantly deal (and force her friends to constantly deal) with "visions" which seem less like glimpses of the future and more like plot devices to drive dramatic developments. Never has such a good cast (Kerri Kenney Silver, Chris Elliot, Nichole Sakura nee Bloom) been so wasted on vacuous rom-com piffle.

Fairly mediocre woodlands pursuit pic. Bachelor party on a camping trip in the woods when someone starts shooting at them. They run. The shooter keeps shooting. For another 90 minutes.

An orthodox Jew who's left the strict denomination is asked to sit vigil overnight in the Brooklyn home of a deceased congregant, in keeping with orthodox tradition. There's a demon in the house and/or he may be hallucinating badly. Quiet and moody enough to be engaging for the first half, especially some of the vague shots of maybe-there's-something-there-and-maybe-there-isn't in the dark, but it wears thin, feels like something I've ultimately seen before. Interesting to see a horror movie that's half in Yiddish, though. Also, decent lo-fi minimal synth score.

Finally! A movie in which masked psychos pursue and and kill a family out in the sticks (this time in a trailer park) for no given reason, until finally only the daughter, who one might perhaps term the "final girl", escapes! It's about time! No, seriously, this movie is exactly what you'd expect, but, for what it is, it's not actually that tedious. It goes over the top enough to be entertaining and a little surreal, such as a kill in a pool lit only by garish neon palm trees while "Total Eclipse Of THe Heart" plays over the loudspeaker just because rural masked psychos apparently enjoy imparting a sense of cinematography to their kills, plus an over-the-top final villain who keeps coming after having his truck blown up with him sitting in it, chasing the final girl across a conveniently placed rustic bridge in a flaming pickup truck, collapsing…

Another one of those fun-enough Mark Duplass pics. This time, full of all those charismatic actors who basically always play themselves: Aubrey Plaza, Mark Duplass, that guy Nick from New Girl, cameos from Kristen Bell and Jeff Garlin. Journalists in Seattle follow a story about a guy who placed an ad looking for time travel companions. Lots of fridge logic in this one, but if you like movies like this, you probably don't care.

In this movie, Eric Andre plays Sacha Baron Cohen in "Borat". Probably the least funny thing Eric Andre has ever done, which means, still a little funny. I did laugh out loud like twice, so, funnier than not watching anything at all, and in fact funnier than many things I have watched. Still, there's plenty of better things to get your Eric Andre fix from. Although having the outtakes and reveals where they tip off the unwitting victims under the closing credits is a nice idea.

God save us from hipsters making indie movies about themselves. You see a movie has Aubrey Plaza and Sarah Gadon, you're gonna think, "What's not to like?" Well, plenty. Another painfully "indie" movie that seems to be in love with itself, and what's worse, a movie nominally about hipsters making an indie movie, which, being a painfully indie hipster movie, is mostly a setting for them to do nothing but argue with each other and be dysfunctional, because apparently that's some sort of statement or supposed to be entertaining. The only way this movie could be less interesting is if they cut out all the irritating characters, which would leave us with a shot of an empty cabin for 90 minutes. (NB it was long after this that I discovered Plaza's also catastrophically pretentious and irritating "A Night With Beverly Luff-Linn", and began to realize she may be a warning…

Ted Demme as Martin Scorsese directs Johnny Depp as Ray Liotta, in "Blow" as "Goodfellas", with cocaine distribution as the Lufthansa heist.

One of those pictures that keeps latter-day John Cusack working. A post-AI-apocalype adventure aimed at the pre-Hunger Games set, as well as probably a paltry stab at a franchise or TV pilor, featuring a gorgeous heroine and a robot who thinks he's human trying to reach a promised human utopia. Good special effects but that's about it. So, a computer thought wiping out humanity was the solution to the worlds problems? Revolutionary! How in the world did they come up with that?