Don't Read This on a Plane: Movie Review

Slow moving and bizarrely plotted, but Jovana has her charms.

Don’t Read This on a Plane borrows its title from the book at the center of the film. And yes, it is named that for a reason. The protagonist is Jovana (Sophie Desmerais) this is her third novel, but her publisher has abruptly gone bankrupt and left her stranded on her book tour. This is very slow, and very bizarrely plotted, but builds to a strangely satisfying story.		2020 Directed by: Stuart McBratney Screenplay by: Stuart McBratney Starring: Sophie Desmerais

Jojo Rabbit: Movie Review

Very funny absurdist comedy.

Jojo Rabbit begins at a Hitler Youth Training Camp. Boys are taught important life skills like how to stab people and how to throw hand grenades which comes right after how not to throw hand grenades. While the girls are taught how to get pregnant. These are 10 year-old girls. During a time of war, and really just at all times, German women can best serve their country by producing more Nazis. If it’s not obvious, and I really hope it is obvious, this is a satire. A satire set in Nazi Germany during World War II.		2019 Directed by: Taika Waititi Screenplay by: Taika Waititi Based on the novel by Christine Leunens Starring: Roman Griffin Davis, Thomasin McKenzie

The Laundromat: Movie Review

Smart, funny, zany and unimpactful.

The Laundromat is a fast-paced satire of the rich and the financial frauds that they willfully commit. It fits right in line with Adam McKay’s The Big Short. However, director Steven Soderbergh and writer Scott Z. Burns wanted to make it quicker and less impactful. Less impactful is definitely what it is, this is a Meryl Streep and Steven Soderbergh collaboration that is smart, funny, illuminating, debuted on Netflix and yet most people don’t seem to know it exists.		2019 Directed by: Steven Soderbergh Screenplay by: Scott Z. Burns Based on the book by Jake Bernstein Starring: Meryl Streep, Antonio Banderas, and Gary Oldman

Private Life: Movie Review

Hilariously flawed people going through life.

Private Life is a bitter-sweet exploration of a marriage and two people’s struggles to conceive. I know from that description that you might assume that the movie would drag on, that it might not offer anything new to the thousands of characters that have struggled with those issues in many movies that came before this one. But this one is different, trust me. There’s a sharp wit to these characters who are very true to themselves.		2018 Directed by: Tamara Jenkins Screenplay by: Tamara Jenkins Starring: Kathryn Hahn, Paul Giamatti

Crazy Rich Asians: Movie Review

A heart beneath all the glitz and glamour.

Crazy Rich Asians is an enjoyably funny romantic comedy because it succeeds with two distinct but equally important fundamentals of the genre: lead characters who are real, relatable, empathetic and decent people at their core, and supporting characters who are funny and/or conniving, and not necessarily decent people at their core. It’s a world of money and glamour and so much of both that it can be very hard to imagine that any humans actually live like this.		2018 Directed by: Jon M. Chu Screenplay by: Peter Chiarelli, Adele Lim Based on the novel by Kevin Kwan Starring: Constance Wu, Henry Golding

Tag: Movie Review

Exaggerated nonsense leaving the comedy and characters behind.

A group of grown men playing a game. Tag simultaneously believes that is so far-fetched the audience must be repeatedly told it’s based on a true story, convinced that nobody could believe it otherwise, and yet on the other hand, also felt the true story is too tame and then exaggerates it to the extreme. The movie jumps right into the game of tag: getting a job as a janitor for fun, destroying company property, trespassing, destroying personal property, breaking doctor-patient confidentiality, all in the first ten minutes.		2018 Directed by: Jeff Tomsic Screenplay by: Rob McKittrick, Mark Steilen Starring: Ed Helms, Jeremy Renner, Jon Hamm, Jake Johnson, and Hannibal Buress.

Ocean's 8: Movie Review

A stylish film with comedy, crimes and fashion.

A satisfying spin-off of the Ocean’s franchise, Ocean’s 8 continues the trend of all-star casts and sleek heists. Those two attributes are the movie’s main highlights and writer-director Gary Ross knows it. It opens with a delightfully immoral Sandra Bullock (playing Debbie Ocean, the sister of George Clooney’s Danny Ocean) remorsefully explaining to the parole officer that she is ready to put crime behind her and live a quiet life. Cut to the freshly-released Debbie in a slinky black dress explaining that she’s got 45 bucks in her pocket so she can go wherever she wants.		2018 Directed by: Gary Ross Screenplay by: Gary Ross, Olivia Milch Starring: Sandra Bullock, Anne Hathaway, Cate Blanchett, Mindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson

Step Sisters: Movie Review

Whites vs Blacks in a lame comedy.

Apparently, the world of stepping is just so popular that we needed a movie that combined Step Up with Sydney White, Pitch Perfect and Dear White People, but doesn’t take any of the humour or originality. In fact Step Sisters is even advertised as being from the director of Drumline, the choreographer of Pitch Perfect and the producers of Dear White People and Straight Outta Compton.		2018 Directed by: Charles Stone III Screenplay by: Chuck Hayward Starring: Megalyn Echikunwoke, Eden Sher

The Polka King: Movie Review

Bizarre, entertaining, half-baked.

The true story behind The Polka King is disturbing; the movie is a comedy. While those two facts can be successfully juxtaposed, it often results in an unsettling feeling, that something is missing. The comedy isn’t as funny as it could be, the tragedy isn’t as revolting as it could be. The result is a good, but half-baked tragi-comedy, light on everything but the polka music.		2017 Directed by: Maya Forbes Screenplay by: Maya Forbes, Wallace Wolodarsky Starring: Jack Black, Jenny Slate

Flower: Movie Review

Strangely sweet and heartwarmingly funny.

A dark romantic comedy where you never know if sane and normal happiness is just around the corner, or if eternal depravity is closer than you think. Life, as Flower contends, is always a mix of the two. This is writer-director Max Winkler’s second feature; his first, Ceremony, looked more like a traditional romantic comedy but with an acerbic bite as we followed tragic characters around. Sophomore effort Flower looks nothing like a traditional romantic comedy, presenting a more caustic bite and deeply flawed characters heading straight towards a tragedy.		2017 Directed by: Max Winkler Screenplay by: Alex McAulay, Matt Spicer, Max Winkler Starring: Zoey Deutch, Joey Morgan, and Kathryn Hahn

Game Night: Movie Review

Exteme action and some laughs.

These big-styled action comedies have a really tough line to straddle where the difference between larger-than-life fun and over-the-top ridiculousness can be really thin and many just fall off on the wrong side. The most notable recent success is The Horrible Bosses where even when reality is thrown out the window, the audience is willing to go along with it. Game Night is always slipping off the edge – each new action sequence is larger than it should be, but it never completely falls off.		2018 Directed by: John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein Screenplay by: Mark Perez Starring: Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams

Crazy Famous: Movie Review

Successfully walks to the tightrope between nonsense and comedy.

Bob Marcus (Gregory Lay) will do whatever it takes to be famous – that includes stripping down to his underwear and using a trampoline to vault over the President’s security gate. Unfortunately, he was at Camp David and the President wasn’t there at the time, so it didn’t get him on the news, but it did get him a stay at a mental institution. That’s the premise for indie comedy Crazy Famous. Silly for sure, but it’s a funny, short, entertaining romp about sanity and government agents.		2017 Directed by: Paul Jarrett Screenplay by: Bob Farkas Starring: Gregory Lay, Richard Short, Victor Cruz and David Neal Levin

I, Tonya: Movie Review

Uproariously entertaining with astute insight into Tonya Harding.

Craig Gillespie, director of I, Tonya, opts for a comedic breaking-the-fourth-wall type biopic where characters in mid-action will either deny or confirm what they’re currently doing. When Tonya has a rifle aimed at ex-husband Jeff’s head, she says she didn’t do it. When Jeff slams Tonya’s fingers in the car door, he says he didn’t do it. But you know they did do most of it. The style works for a too-crazy-to-be-true true story.		2017 Directed by: Craig Gillespie Screenplay by: Steven Rogers Starring: Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney, Paul Walter Hauser

Get Out: Movie Review

Humorous, bizarre and very well made.

Get Out is the type of movie that just begs you to keep watching. The theme of systemic racism has been explored before, the psychological thriller/supernatural element of the suburbs has been done before, even the horror ending has been done before (at least similarly), but none of it has been put together in quite this way before. It’s a very complete movie with brilliantly designed cinematography, and a score that perfectly balances the uneasiness and inherent humour.		2017 Directed by: Jordan Peele Screenplay by: Jordan Peele Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, and Bradley Whitford

Opening Night: Movie Review

Delightfully funny, chaotically real.

What a blast. There are a number of things that films can do to overcome weak stories and characters, namely, have a quick pace with popular songs and funny lines, and that’s exactly what Opening Night does. Set in approximately real time backstage at a Broadway musical on opening night, the characters aren’t particularly innovative. There are a lot of gay men and drama queens, helpful hands who aren’t exactly helpful, and Nick (Topher Grace) – the stage manager trying to pull everything together.		2017 Directed by: Isaac Rentz Screenplay by: Gerry de Leon, Greg Lisi Starring: Topher Grace, JC Chasez, Taye Diggs, and Alona Tal

Landline: Movie Review

Witty, genuine and authentic.

Landline is set in the 90s. The filmmakers definitely make that point clear, but at the same time the references are mostly kept in the background. The film is so much more than outdated fashion and culture jokes. It’s a very enjoyable treatise on love – family love and commitment to yourself and commitment to another you’ve professed to love. It hits that remarkable balance between witty silliness and relatable drama of real life.		2017 Directed by: Gillian Robespierre Screenplay by: Elisabeth Holm, Gillian Robespierre Starring: Jenny Slate, Abby Quinn, Edie Falco, John Turturro and Jay Duplass

The Little Hours: Movie Review

A nun sex comedy goes crazy and sometimes funny.

The Little Hours is a medieval satirical farce, a sex romp through a nunnery and its countryside. The movie looks exactly like it could have been a Monty Python sketch. An idea that probably should have remained just that, but writer and director Jeff Baena and the cast with a background in sitcoms were able to stretch it out with enough laughs to keep the audience’s attention.		2017 Directed by: Jeff Baena Screenplay by: Jeff Baena Starring: Aubrey Plaza, Alison Brie, Dave Franco, Kate Micucci, John C. Reilly

The Incredible Jessica James: Movie Review

Not as incredible as she thinks she is.

The Incredible Jessica James is only partly a misnomer. The title Jessica (played by The Daily Show’s Jessica Williams) thinks of herself as incredible. She also likes to use many other adjectives to describe how wonderful she is, but it doesn’t take long before the audience just finds her annoying and incredibly insufferable. Oddly the movie around her is mostly non-descript. An unremarkable comedy-drama mixing together a little quarter-life crisis with a romantic comedy.		2017 Directed by: James C. Strouse Screenplay by: James C. Strouse Starring: Jessica Williams, Chris O'Dowd

Baywatch: Movie Review

A fun and entertaining ride into the ridiculousness.

When Mitch (Dwayne Johnson) describes their lifeguard job as saving lives, chasing down criminals, uncovering intricate crime rings and doing everything that the police should be doing, Zac Efron’s character Matt Brody responds “that sounds like an entertaining but really far-fetched TV show.” Considering that’s what Baywatch is, it’s only fitting that that’s also what this movie remake is as well. For the most part, entertaining, but also utterly ridiculous and they play that up big time.		2017 Directed by: Seth Gordon Screenplay by: Mark Swift, Damian Shannon Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron

Snatched: Movie Review

Implausibility rules raunchy adventure comedy with mother-daughter relationship.

As demonstrated in Trainwreck, Amy Schumer is really good at playing an extreme version of a regular woman – being relatable and funny at the same time. In Snatched, Schumer’s Emily is more incompetent than the average woman, and is really funny when she quits her job right after she’s fired or breaking up with her boyfriend right after he dumps her (speaking of which, Randall Park was great as said boyfriend).		2017 Directed by: Jonathan Levine Screenplay by: Katie Dippold Starring: Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn