Film Review: Frances Ferguson (dir by Bob Byington)

Posted on July 10, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Frances Ferguson takes place in a town in Nebraska. As the film’s narrator (Nick Offerman) explains it, it’s a town where everyone knows everyone else. It’s a town where your mechanic knows your bartender and no one can really keep anything a secret for too long. For instance, it’s the type of town where there’s no way that a substitute teacher in her mid-20s is going to be able to get away with having an affair with a 16 year-old student.

The teacher in question is named Frances Ferguson (Kaley Wheeless). Frances wanders through her days in an apathetic haze. When she steps outside of her house, she sees her useless husband (Keith Poulson) masturbating in the car. When she spends time with her mother (Jennifer Prediger), she is criticized for every little thing. On the rare days when she gets called to teach, the students look down on her and Frances thinks about how little she knows about any of the subjects on which she’s giving instruction. Frances goes through her day holding back her emotions. She only screams on the inside and, when she does, only she and the viewing audience can hear.

Things start to look up when Frances teaches a biology class and notices a handsome but vacuous student named Jake (Jake French). When she finds out that Jake has been given detention, Frances volunteers to supervise him. When Frances flirts with him and the scene cuts way, the narrator asks us, “Was this a crime?”

(Yes, it was.)

Frances and Jake have a short-lived affair, though it doesn’t seem to be particularly passionate. If anything, Jake seems to be even more blase about it than Frances. Wearing her old cheerleader uniform, Frances meets Jake in a laundromat. “I’d never date a cheerleader,” Jake tells her. We, the viewers, notice that there are other people in the laundromat. Does Frances want to get caught?

Get caught, she does. “This is the last time we see Jake,” the narrators tells us as Jake fades away. Frances, meanwhile, sits in court. Her mother comes to the trial and tells her that her clothes make her look fat. Frances is convicted and sent to prison. Her mom brings her a chocolate cupcake for her birthday. Frances announces that she’s allergic to chocolate before taking a big bite and then pretending to die. “Get off that dirty floor!” her mother orders her.

You may getting the impression that Frances Ferguson is a strange film and I supposed it is. It’s a comedy but it’s an extremely deadpan comedy, with most of the humor coming from Frances’s seeming apathy to ever single thing that happens to her. It’s not that Frances doesn’t have feelings or emotions. We hear her inner scream enough times to know that she’s not as apathetic as she seems. It’s just that Frances is so consumed with small town ennui that she realizes it’s pointless to react one way or the other. Life is what it is and it continues regardless of how annoying it may all be. Whether she screams on the inside or on the outside, she’ll still have to wake up every morning in the same situation. One day, Frances Ferguson was a teacher. The next day, she was a prisoner. And the day after that, she was on parole and a minor celebrity. (“You’re that teacher!” is a phrase that she continually hears.) What happens, happens.

Here’s the thing …. though it may not sound like it from my description of the plot, Frances Ferguson is an incredibly funny film. A lot of that is due to Nick Offerman’s performance as the snarky narrator. (The narrator has a tendency to wander off topic.) A lot of that has to do with the performance of Kaley Wheeless, who perfectly communicates Frances’s suppressed irritation. Over the course of the film, Frances has to deal with a lot of people who, if not for her one mistake, she would have otherwise never had to deal with. Some of them get on her nerves and some of them — well, two of them — provide her with some comfort. I loved David Krumholtz’s performance as a beleagured but optimistic group leader. Martin Starr also gets a nice bit at the end, though it would be too much of spoiler to say anything else about his role. I also enjoyed the performances of Jack Marshall and Yoko Lawing, as the two detectives who investigate the charges against Frances and who explain that, because of TV cop shows, they can no longer get away with playing good cop/bad cop.

Frances Ferguson is good film. It’s also a short one, clocking in at just 74 minutes. To be honest, it’s the perfect running time for the story that this film tells. We follow Frances’s story for just as long as we need to. Frances Ferguson is on Prime so check it out.

Playing Catch-Up: Sausage Party (dir by Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan)

Posted on January 22, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Sausage Party opens with a scene that could have come straight for a heart-warming Pixar film. It’s morning and, in a gigantic grocery store called Shopwell’s, all of the grocery items are excited about the start of a new day. The hot dogs are singing. The buns are harmonizing. The produce is bragging about how fresh they are. Everyone is hoping that this will be the day that they are selected to leave the aisles of Shopwell’s and that they’ll be taken to the Great Beyond. At Shopwell’s, shoppers are viewed as being Gods and being selected by a God means…

…well, no one is quite sure what it means but everyone’s sure that it has to be something good. Surely, the Great Beyond couldn’t be something terrible, right? At least, that’s what everyone assumes until a previously purchased jar of Honey Mustard returns to the store and tells a hot dog named Frank (voiced by Seth Rogen, who also co-wrote the film) that the Great Beyond is a lie. The Great Beyond is not a paradise. Instead, it’s something terrible. Before Honey Mustard can be persuaded to give more details, it leaps off the shelf, choosing suicide over being restocked.

What could it all mean? Well, there’s not too much time to worry about that because, even as Honey Mustard is committing suicide, a customer is selecting both Frank and Frank’s girlfriend, a bun named Brenda (Kristin Wiig). They’re going to the Great Beyond together! Yay! Except…

…calamity! A shopping cart collision leads to both Frank and Brenda being thrown to the floor. While their friends are taken to the Great Beyond, Frank and Brenda are left to wander the store. It turns out that Shopwell’s really comes alive after the lights go down and the doors are locked. All of the grocery items leave their shelves and have one big party. Frank seeks answers about the Great Beyond from a bottle of liquor named Firewater (Bill Hader). Firewater has all the answers but you need to be stoned to truly understand. This is a Seth Rogen movie, after all. Meanwhile…

…Frank’s friends, the ones who survived the earlier cart collision, are discovering that the Great Beyond is not what they thought it was…

I apologize for all the ellipses but Sausage Party is the kind of movie that warrants them. This is a rambling, occasionally uneven, and often hilariously funny little movie. (I know that there were allegations that the film’s animators were treated horribly. That’s sad to hear, not least because they did a truly wonderful job.) Sausage Party was perhaps the ultimate stoner film of 2016, a comedy with a deeply philosophical bent that plays out with a logic that feels both random and calculated at the same time.

(If you’ve ever had the three-in-the-morning conversation about “What if our entire universe is just a speck of dust in a bigger universe?”, you’ll immediately understand what Sausage Party is trying to say.)

It’s also an amazingly profane little movie but again, that’s a huge reason why it works. Yes, a lot of the humor is juvenile and hit-and-miss. (I cringed whenever the film’s nominal villain, a douche voiced by Nick Kroll, showed up.) But for every joke that misses, there’s a joke that works perfectly. Interestingly, for all the silliness that’s inherent in the idea of making a film about talking grocery items, there’s a strain a very real melancholy running through Sausage Party. Sausage Party may be a dumb comedy but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have a lot on its mind.

Since it’s a Seth Rogen film, the cast is full of familiar voices. Yes, James Franco can be heard. So can Paul Rudd, Danny McBride, Salma Hayek, Edward Norton, Jonah Hill, and Craig Robinson. They all sound great, bringing vibrant life to the film’s collection of consumables and condiments.

Sausage Party. After watching it, it’s possible you’ll never eat another hot dog.

Back to School Part II #34: The Ice Storm (dir by Ang Lee)

Posted on September 13, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1997 film The Ice Storm is kind of a schizophrenic film, which makes sense since it’s set in 1973 and, just from what I’ve seen in the movies, it appears that the early 70s were kind of a schizophrenic time.

It’s a film that deals with two sets of people who all live in an upper class Connecticut community. One part of the film deals with parents who are freaking out about suddenly being adults. The other part of the film deals with the children, most of whom seem destined to make the same mistakes as their parents. It’s a film that is occasionally bracingly realistic and relatable, one that reminds us that being directionless in the 70s isn’t necessarily that different from being directionless in 2016. At other times, the film feels a bit too studied for its own good. This is one of those films that features a Tobey Maguire voice-over and, as good an actor as Maguire has always been, he’s always at his worse when reciting a pseudo-profound voice over. And then there are other times when the film feels a bit too cartoonish for its own good. Elijah Wood’s a stoner. Sigourney Weaver walks around with a bullwhip. David Krumholtz shows up as a character named Francis Davenport.

Fortunately, the film is directed by Ang Lee and Ang Lee is probably one of the few filmmakers who can overcome tonal inconsistency. Lee is so good with actors and is such a good storyteller that even his lesser films are usually worth watching. The Ice Storm would just be another silly sin-in-the-suburbs film if it had been made by any director other than Ang Lee.

The main adult in the film is Ben Hood (Kevin Kline). Ben is married to Elena (Joan Allen) but he’s having an affair with his neighbor, Janey (Sigourney Weaver). Elena may be upset when she finds out about the affair but she’s still willing to accompany her husband to a key party. A key party was a 70s ritual in which husbands would throw their car keys into a big punch bowl and then the wives would randomly pick a key and have sex with the owner. Basically, anytime a TV show or a movie takes place in the suburbs during the 70s, there has to be at least one key party.

And The Ice Storm‘s key party is kind of fun to watch. Kevin Kline and Joan Allen both give really good performances and Ben is such a loser that it’s fun to watch him freak out when Janey gets a key other than this own. Elena, meanwhile, ends up going off with Janey’s husband (Jamey Sheridan, pretty much looking the same in this 1997 film as he did in Spotlight and Sully) and they share a really good scene together, one that reveals that none of the film’s adults are really as mature or liberated as they claim to be.

While the adults attempt to play, their children attempt to find some sort of meaning to their empty existence. Ben and Elena’s daughter, Wendy (Christina Ricci), wears a Richard Nixon mask and enjoys sexually teasing her classmates, especially Janey’s youngest son, Sandy (Adam Hann-Byrd). Ben and Elena’s oldest son, Paul (Tobey Maguire) is in New York, hoping to lose his virginity to Libbits (Katie Holmes) despite the fact that Libbets is far more interested in his boarding school roommate, Francis Davenport (David Krumholtz). Paul also compares his family to the Fantastic Four so, assuming Paul survived both the 70s and 80s, he’s probably still living in Connecticut and telling everyone who disappointed he was with last year’s film.

And, of course, there’s Mickey (Elijah Wood). Mickey is Janey’s oldest son and he’s permanently spaced out. When the ice storm of the title occurs, Mickey is the one who decides to wander around outside and appreciate the beauty of nature’s remorseless wrath.

Needless to say, the ice storm is also a really obvious metaphor for the way all of these very unhappy (but very prosperous) characters tend to view and treat each other. Despite all the attempts to pretend otherwise, everyone has a frozen soul. Nobody’s capable of maintaining any sort of real emotional connection. Of course, someone dies and everyone’s forced to take a look at the sad reality of their lives and the film ends with a sudden and spontaneous display of actual human emotion. It’s one of those ideas that probably works better as a literary conceit than a cinematic one.

That said, The Ice Storm is flawed but very watchable. I enjoyed it, even if it did occasionally seem to be trying way too hard. It’s well-acted and, if nothing else, I enjoyed getting to see all of the amazingly tacky clothes and the interiors of all those big houses. These people love their wide lapels and their shag carpeting. The Ice Storm is not Ang Lee’s best but it’s still good enough.

Guilty Pleasure No. 31: Hail, Caesar! (dir by the Coen Brothers)

Posted on July 26, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Sometimes, I wonder if I was the only filmgoer who actually enjoyed Hail, Caesar! when it was released in February.

Oh, don’t met wrong. I know that I’m being a bit overdramatic when I say that. It got some good reviews from the critics, though the praise was rather muted when compared to the reviews that traditionally greet the latest film from the Coen Brothers. I know more than a few people who have agreed with me that Hail, Caesar! was an entertaining lark of a film.

But I know a lot more people who absolutely hated Hail, Caesar! Of course, no film is going to please everyone and the Coen Brothers have always had a tendency to attempt to deliberately alienate their audience. But what has always struck me is the fact that the people who disliked Hail, Caesar seem to really, really dislike it. Talk to them and you get the feeling that they view Hail, Caesar as almost being some sort of a crime against both humanity and cinema.

Taking place in a stylized Hollywood in 1951, Hail, Caesar! tells the story of Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin). Eddie is a shadowy figure. As head of production at Capitol Pictures, Eddie’s job is to keep the “bad” behavior of the stars from getting out into the press. (The press is represented by Tilda Swinton who, in a typical Coen Brothers twist, plays twin sisters who are rival gossip columnists. If the thought of that makes you smile, you are potentially a part of the right audience for Hail Caesar. If it makes you roll your eyes, you should probably avoid the film.) Eddie is the most powerful man in Hollywood and he will do anything to protect the image of the American film industry. He will lie. He will cheat. He will threaten. He is so ruthless and so good at his job that even Lockheed Martin is trying to hire him away from Capitol. And yet, at the same time, Eddie is also a family man and a Catholic who is so devout that he goes to confession on a nearly hourly basis.

(For all you non-Catholics out there, Pope Francis only goes to confession twice a month.)

Hail, Caesar! follows Eddie as he deals with a series of potential problems. Temperamental director Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) is upset because he’s been forced to cast Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich, giving the film’s best performance), a good-natured but inarticulate cowboy star, in his sophisticated comedy. Synchronized swimmer DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansoon) is not only pregnant but unmarried as well! (It’s the 50s, remember.)

However, the biggest crisis is that Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) has vanished from the set of his latest film. A mysterious group known as The Future has taken credit for kidnapping him. It’s not really much of a spoiler to reveal that The Future is a cell of communist scriptwriters and they are determined to convert the rather dumb Baird to the struggle. As opposed to most films about Hollywood in the 50s, the communist screenwriters are portrayed as being a bunch of self-righteous and rather cowardly nags, the majority of whom spend more time debating minutiae than actually trying to the overthrow capitalism. In many ways, Hail, Caesar is the anti-Trumbo.

As you might guess from the plot description, there’s a lot going on in Hail, Caesar but none of it really adds up too much. Nor is it supposed to. We’re encouraged to laugh at these frantic characters, as opposed to sympathize with them. Eddie Mannix and Hobie Doyle both emerge as heroes because they’re the only characters who remain calm and confident, regardless of what strangeness is happening onscreen. Eddie may be ruthless, the film tells us, but at least he gets results. Hobie may not be the smartest or most talented guy in Hollywood, we are told, but at least he doesn’t pretend to be anything other than who he is.

Hail, Caesar! is a bit of a lark, a celebration of style over substance. As far as Coen Brother films go, Hail, Caesar has more in common with Burn After Reading than No Country For Old Men. The film is largely an inside joke aimed at people who know the history of Hollywood, which is perhaps why some viewers reacted so negatively. Inside jokes are fun when you’re in on the joke. When you’re not in on it, though, they’re just annoying.

As for me, I thoroughly enjoyed Hail, Caesar! It may not be the Coens at their best but it’s a lot of fun and it appealed me as both a history nerd and a lover of old movies. The best parts of Hail, Caesar! are the scenes that parody the largely forgotten, big-budget studio productions of the 1950s. This is the rare film that acknowledges that not every film made before the 1960s was a masterpiece. The Coens love movies but that doesn’t keep them from getting a little bit snarky. For example, check out this production number featuring Channing Tatum:

Is Hail, Caesar self-indulgent?

Yes.

Is it largely an inside joke?

Yes.

Did I absolutely adore it?

You better believe I did.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Shattered Politics #80: Bobby (dir by Emilio Estevez)

Posted on February 7, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

A few years ago, I was on twitter when I came across someone who had just watched The Breakfast Club.

“Whatever happened to Emilio Estevez?” she asked.

Being the know-it-all, obsessive film fan that I am, I tweeted back, “He’s a director.”

Of course, I could not leave well enough along. I had to send another tweet, “He directed a movie called Bobby that got nominated for bunch of Golden Globes.”

“Was it any good?” she wrote back.

“Never seen it,” I wrote back, suddenly feeling very embarrassed because, if there’s anything I hate, it’s admitting that there’s a film that I haven’t seen.

However, Shattered Politics gave me an excuse to finally sit down and watch Bobby. So now, I can now say that I have watched this 2006 film and … eh.

Listen, I have to admit that I really hate giving a film like Bobby a lukewarm review because it’s not like Bobby is a bad film. It really isn’t. As a director, Emilio Estevez is a bit heavy-handed but he’s not without talent. He’s good with actors. Bobby actually features good performances from both Lindsay Lohan and Shia LaBeouf! So, give Estevez that.

And Bobby is a film that Estevez spent seven years making. It’s a film that he largely made with his own money. Bobby is obviously a passion project for Estevez and that passion does come through. (That’s actually one of the reasons why the film often feels so heavy-handed.)

But, with all that in mind, Bobby never really develops a strong enough narrative to make Estevez’s passion dramatically compelling. The film takes place on the day of the 1968 Democratic California Presidential Primary. That’s the day that Robert F. Kennedy won the primary and was then shot by Sirhan Sirhan in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel. However, it never seems to know what it wants to say about Kennedy or his death, beyond the fact that Estevez seems to like him.

(Incidentally, it’s always interesting, to me, that Dallas is still expected to apologize every day for the death of JFK but Los Angeles has never had to apologize for the death of his brother.)

Estevez follows an ensemble of 22 characters as they go about their day at and around the Ambassador Hotel. As often happens with ensemble pieces, some of these characters are more interesting than others.

For instance, Anthony Hopkins plays a courtly and retired doorman who sits in the lobby and plays chess with his friend Nelson (Harry Belafonte). It adds little to the film’s story but both Hopkins and Belafonte appear to enjoy acting opposite each other and so, they’re fun to watch.

Lindsay Lohan plays a woman who marries a recently enlisted soldier (Elijah Wood), the hope being that his marital status will keep him out of Vietnam. The problem with this story is that it’s so compelling that it feels unfair that it has to share space with all the other stories.

Christian Slater plays Darrell, who runs the kitchen and who spends most of the movie talking down to the kitchen staff, the majority of whom are Hispanic. Darrell is disliked by the hotel’s manager (William H. Macy) who is cheating on his wife (Sharon Stone).

And then, you’ve got two campaign aides (Shia LaBeouf and Brian Geraghty) who end up dropping acid with a drug dealer played by Ashton Kutcher. Unfortunately, Estevez tries to visualize their trip and it brings the film’s action to a halt.

Estevez himself shows up, playing the husband of an alcoholic singer (Demi Moore). And Estevez’s father, Martin Sheen, gets to play a wealthy supporter of Kennedy’s. Sheen’s wife is played by Helen Hunt. She gets to ask her husband whether she reminds him more of Jackie or of Ethel.

(Actually, Martin Sheen and Helen Hunt are cute together. Much as with Lohan and Wood, you wish that more time had been devoted to them and their relationship.)

And there are other stories as well. In fact, there’s far too many stories going on in Bobby. It may seem strange for a girl who is trying to review 94 films in three weeks to say this but Emilio Estevez really tries to cram too much into Bobby.

At the same time, too much ambition is better none. Bobby may have been a misfire but at least it’s a respectable misfire.

A Quickie With Lisa Marie: The Judge (dir by David Dobkin)

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hey, everyone!

Remember how, earlier this year, a whole lot of people (like me) figured that The Judge would be a surefire Oscar contender and that Robert Duvall would probably receive an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor?

At the time, it made perfect sense. After all, in the past, courtroom dramas have occasionally been popular with the Academy and, while we all knew that The Judge probably wouldn’t be a modern-day Anatomy of a Murder, there was still reason to hope that the film would turn out to be a watchable melodrama. Add to that, the movie starred Robert Downey, Jr, an actor who is eventually going to win an Academy Award. Perhaps most importantly, the title character was played by Robert Duvall, one of the best American actors of all time and an actor who, having recently turned 83, might not get many more opportunities to win one final career-honoring Oscar.

It only made sense to assume that The Judge would be a contender.

And then the trailer came out and those of us who know our film history were left a little bit confused. It wasn’t that the trailer was necessarily bad. It was just that it made the film seem rather old-fashioned. It didn’t feel like a trailer for a film that was set to be released in 2014. If anything, it almost felt like a parody, as if it was one of those fake, overly Hollywood trailers that appeared at the beginning of Tropic Thunder. (The fact that the trailer featured Robert Downey, Jr. looking haunted only contributed to this feeling.)

And then the film opened and received reviews that were, at best, respectful and, at worst, scathing. And I quickly revised my Oscar predictions.

Despite the bad reviews and my own suspicion that the film would not be very good, I still wanted to see The Judge. I love melodrama. I love courtroom dramas. Even more importantly, the Roberts are two of my favorite actors. Robert Downey, Jr. is always a lot of fun to watch. Robert Duvall began his career playing Boo Radley in To Kill A Mockingbird and, 52 years later, he’s still a great and uniquely American actor.

So, I saw The Judge this weekend and … well, it’s just a weird movie and not in a good way. Instead, it’s one of those movies where almost everything seems to be so strangely miscalculated that you really can’t imagine how it could have possibly happened. The film runs for nearly two and a half hours, despite only having enough plot for maybe an hour-long pilot for a potential mid-season replacement. The script is amazingly overwritten, full of portentous speeches and clichéd characters. It’s not enough that Robert Downey, Jr. has two brothers that he has to reconnect with while defending their father on a murder charge. Instead, one of the brothers also has to be vaguely developmentally challenged so that he can deliver cute lines that are full of “accidental wisdom.” It’s not enough that Downey reunites with his ex-high school girlfriend (Vera Farmiga, who deserves a better role) but she also has to have a daughter who might be his but could be someone else’s. It’s not enough that Billy Bob Thornton’s prosecuting attorney is slick and cunning but he also has to be a self-righteous crusader who has rather silly personal reasons for wanting to defeat Downey in court. It’s not enough that Downey and Duvall eventually end up yelling their personal grievances each other. Instead, they have to do it while a tornado literally tears through the front yard, the type of directorial choice that is so obvious and heavy-handed that it indicates that director David Dobkin (best known for directing comedies like Wedding Crashers) was desperate to prove that he could be dramatic.

Much like the similarly bad Love and Other Drugs, The Judge is one of those films that tries so hard to be all things to all viewers that it’s ultimately just a huge mess. Is it a murder mystery? If so, you have to wonder why we learn so little about the case against Duvall’s judge. Is it a romantic comedy about Robert Downey, Jr. returning to his small hometown and rediscovering what’s important in life? If so, you have to wish that the town had a little bit more character beyond just being a standard Hollywood version of what middle America is like. Is it a family drama? Well, then it would be nice to know more about the family dynamic beyond the fact that Duvall was stern, Downey was rebellious, and Vincent D’Onofrio is stuck playing the brother who never got to leave home. It’s a comedy with few laughs and a drama with few tears and ultimately, The Judge just does not work.

However, both of the Roberts give pretty good performances. That’s what makes The Judge truly frustrating. Duvall and Downey both do such good work but the material ultimately not only lets them down but lets the audiences down as well.

Oh well.

Back to School #69: Superbad (dir by Greg Mottola)

Posted on September 21, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

One of the great things about the 2007 comedy Superbad is that it has a title that allows for snarky but overworked reviewers like me to come up with an easy review.

For instance, if I disliked Superbad, I could just say, “Superbad more than lives up to its name!” However, since I happen to like Superbad, I can say that Superbad is supergood, supercool, and superfun!

See how easily that works?

Plotwise, Superbad tells a story that will be familiar to anyone who has ever seen a teen comedy. Three guys try to get laid. Seth (Jonah Hill) is the rotund and boisterous one, the one who has a crush on Jules (Emma Stone), who is your basic good girl with a wild side. Evan (Michael Cera) is the sweet and sensitive one. And then there’s Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), the nerdy one with the thick glasses. Fogell is the one who gets a hilariously bad fake ID, one that tells the world that his name is McLovin.

After Jules invites Seth to a party, he and Evan enlist Fogell to use his fake ID to buy them alcohol. However, as often happens in the type of films, things get complicated. While Fogell is buying the beer, the convenience store is held up. The police arrive and Evan and Seth panic and run off. Meanwhile, Fogell is befriended by the two cops (played by Seth Rogen and Bill Hader), both of whom are incredibly impressed that their new friend has as wonderful a name as McLovin.

(“You’re name’s McLovin? That’s badass!”

And so, while McLovin bonds with his new cop friends, Seth and Evan continue to try to find beer and make their way to Jules’s party….

Superbad was produced by Judd Apatow and it features his usual combination of raunchy humor and sentimental bromance. In fact, it’s such a male-centered film that I’m always a little bit surprised at how much I enjoy it. However, Superbad is a seriously funny movie. The script (which Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg reportedly starting on when they were 13 years old) is full of great lines and Michael Cera and Jonah Hill make for an adorable comedy team. And then there’s Christopher Mintz-Plasse who takes the character of Fogell to his most logical extreme and then just keeps going. McLovin’s adventures may not be the most realistic or subtle part of the movie but they are still a lot of fun to watch.

Speaking of McLovin and his adventures with the cops, I love the performances of both Seth Rogen and Bill Hader. If you don’t laugh at the way Seth Rogen says, “Oh no! It’s the cops!,” then you need to be worried about your sense of humor.

Superbad is supergood, supercool, superfun, supersweet, and just plain super.

Back to School #56: 10 Things I Hate About You (dir by Gil Junger)

Posted on September 16, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

A few nights ago, my sister Erin and I watched the 1999 high school-set romantic comedy 10 Things I Hate About You for like the hundredth time. Seriously, we love this movie so much and, in fact, just about everyone that we know seems to love it as well. 10 Things I Hate About You is one of those films that brings people together. If you like this movie, I’ll probably like you.

(Want to see true displays of spontaneous sisterhood? Go to Girlie Night at the Alamo Drafthouse when they’re showing 10 Things I Hate About You. You will walk out of the movie with a hundred new best friends.)

Why do people love 10 Things I Hate About You? There’s a lot of reasons. I love Heath Ledger singing Can’t Take My Eyes Out Of You. I love watching Joseph Gordon Levitt at his most adorable. I love that it’s a film about two sisters, largely because I have three older sisters and there is so much about the scenes between Kat (Julia Stiles) and Bianca (Larisa Oleynik) to which I could relate. I love the film’s quirky sense of humor and its unapologetically big heart. I love the way the film’s script expertly balances cynicism with sentimentality and humor with warmth. I love the fact that movie takes in place in beautiful houses and features beautiful people wearing beautiful clothes. What Erin and I especially love about this film is that, as played by Julia Stiles, Kat is just a kickass chick.

Of course, there’s a reason for that. Much as how the superficially similar Clueless was adapted from Jane Austen’s Emma, 10 Things I Hate About You is adapted from Shakespeare’s play The Taming of the Shrew. Oddly enough, Shakespeare’s plays seem to translate well into stories about high school. Maybe it’s because his characters are so often motivated by jealousy, romance, and — it must be said about some — by pure stupidity. 10 Things I Hate About You is definitely one of the best of the teen Shakespeare films.

Taking place at an upper class high school, 10 Things I Hate About You opens with Cameron James (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) arriving for his first day at Padau High School and quickly befriending the only slightly less adorable Michael Eckman (David Krumholtz). Cameron wants to ask out the beautiful and innocent Bianca (Larisa Oleynik) but Bianca’s overprotective father (played by Larry Miller) has decreed that Bianca can only date if her older sister Kat (Julie Stiles) is also dating. The problem is that all of the boys at school are scared of the outspoken Kat.

So, Cameron convinces the hilariously vapid male model Joey Donner (Andrew Keegan) to pay the school rebel, Patrick Verona (Heath Ledger, so handsome and charismatic and sexy), to ask Kat out on a date. Joey, you see, wants to date Bianca as well but Cameron is sure that he can win Bianca away from Joey…

Yes, it’s all a little bit complicated but then again, Shakespeare often is. For that matter, so is high school.

What matters is that all of this leads to a collection of classic scenes and classic dialogue. What’s my favorite scene from 10 Things I Hate About You? There’s so many that it’s difficult to narrow it down to just one. There’s the huge party where Joey continually strikes a pose and a drunk Kat ends up dancing on a table. There’s the wonderful scene where Patrick serenades Kat. Or how about when Kat reads the poem that gives the film its title. But for me, my favorite scene is that one where, after spending nearly the entire film as rivals, Kat and Bianca finally talk to each other as sisters. Bianca demands to know why Kat won’t go to the prom. Kat tells Bianaca about her own previous history with Joey. It’s a low-key and heartfelt scene, wonderfully played by both Larisa Oleynik and Julia Stiles, and I love it just because I’ve had similar conversations with all of my sisters.

I suppose this is where I should make some clever comment about having “10 things I love about 10 Things I Hate About You” but actually, there’s more like a 100 things I love about 10 Things I Hate About You.

This movie makes me happy every time I see it.

And, really, what else can you ask a film to do?

Trailer: This Is the End (Red Band)

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Arleigh

This Is the End looks to put a comedic touch on the end of the world genre as fictional versions of the cast as themselves try to survive all sort of disasters (from the trailer it looks like it may involve everything from volcanoes, lava, aliens and maybe raptors) while partying over at James Franco’s house.

I know for a fact that at least one person at this site will be seeing this because it has a certain Franco in it.

Looks like Emma Watson has definitely doing everything she can to prove to all Potter fans that she is now all grown up.

This Is the End is set for a June 12, 2013 release date.