Discovering good movies, one bad movie at a time

There’s a lot of interesting chatter out there about the sociological status of Bridesmaids, a film that looks to have finally cracked the seemingly insurmountable wall of “Guys won’t see movies about girls”, and that represents a massive sea-change in the output of the Judd Apatow Filmmakers Circle, which has for the first time released […]

Somewhere in all the swampiness of wasted acting talent and artificially-flavored heteronormativity and a terror of sex that masks itself in acres of naked movie star flesh and filty dialogue, No Strings Attached is hiding a deep, dark secret: it’s actually not that bad. It’s not that good either, of course. There’s little hope for […]

Perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not, the new film Morning Glory ends up being altogether delightful and cute and entertaining, which makes it all the weirder that it’s left a distinctly sour taste in my mouth. I suspect the reason would, if I explain it, make me an asshole in the mind of the filmmakers; a suspicion […]

Categories: chick flicks, comedies, romcoms

Every week this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: nothing says “desperately garish” like a dance movie sequel titled Step Up 3D. But isn’t that exactly what we […]

The full disclosure bit: I haven’t seen but a few episodes at most of the six beloved seasons of HBO’s Sex and the City, nor did I manage to catch the 2008 feature film continuation thereof. I thus have somewhere in the vicinity of no business whatsoever trying to review Sex and the City 2 […]

Apparently, January is now the dumping ground, not only for the worst of the worst horror films and Happy Madison productions, but for enormously retrograde comedies about how every girl in the world wants so very much to have a big fancy wedding. Last year: 27 Dresses. This year: Bride Wars, a paean to friendship […]

I find it gratifying, that the remake of The Women opened the same weekend as Righteous Kill, for this provides us with a marvelous snapshot of the contempt with which the great Hollywood marketing beast divides its audience into gender roles; at least I assume that nobody will have much issue with my argument that […]

Mamma Mia! is the movie version of Red Bull. It is absolutely going to raise your energy level, but it’s practically guaranteed to give you the jitters, it’s artificially sweet, and it leaves a foul chemical aftertaste. Based on the ginormous Broadway hit, Mamma Mia! begins on a supremely photogenic Greek island with Sophie (Amanda […]

Though only a fitfully entertaining romantic comedy and often not even that, What Happens in Vegas is better by a fair margin than anybody could have expected it to be. Which I use as code for “it stars Ashton Kutcher, yet it is not hopelessly bad.” Nor, for that matter, is Kutcher himself hopelessly bad. […]

Helen Hunt presents Helen Hunt in a Helen Hunt film by Helen Hunt, and the result is…not as brain-scrapingly awful as it might have been, honestly. Not that there is any universe in which Then She Found Me counts as an artistic success, but in this universe, at least, it certainly isn’t the nightmare of […]

The word “pretentious” gets batted around a lot by people who don’t use it correctly. It does not mean, “This work of art requires that you think a lot, and it probably isn’t much fun to watch it, so only arrogant people and posers will claim to like it.” It means, “This work of art […]

First things first. Last things first, actually. The end credits for Over Her Dead Body do not begin in the ordinary way: the very first words scrolling up after the final fade to black are “A Film By,” and this is followed not by the director’s name, as is customary, but by the cast list. […]

Categories: chick flicks, comedies, romcoms