Elf Movie Review: A Modern Christmas Classic

Jon Favreau wanted his Christmas comedy Elf to become a Christmas classic. Actually I’m kind of surprised it hasn’t yet. It has all the elements needed to establish it firmly in the canon. The reason I say Favreau wanted that is because it looks like he went out of his way to give it the look and feel of other classic holiday fare from both film and television. In this unusual and often uproarious story of a human raised by North Pole elves who goes to New York City seeking out his real father, Favreau’s direction keeps the comedy coming at consistent intervals while also injecting the right amount of sentiment. He never pushes the sappy stuff too hard, but it’s strong enough to give you a good feeling. David Berenbaum’s screenplay deserves credit for the straightforward plotting, some damn good jokes and an appropriate level of holiday spiritedness.

Cowboys & Aliens Movie Review: An Interesting Melding of Genre Films

What a fascinating concept, the mixing of genres in Cowboys & Aliens, director Jon Favreau’s latest action spectacular with enough brains to rise slightly above the usual mediocre dreck. Why must it be inevitable that every science fiction film about alien invasion has either a contemporary or a futuristic setting? If you’ve ever wondered how men on horseback with six-shooters and rifles would fend off technologically superior alien invaders, Cowboys & Aliens is a mash-up that might satisfy your thirst for knowledge. At any rate, all alien invaders are by definition technologically superior to humans.

Very Bad Things Movie Review: Very Bad Indeed

First published in The Connecticut College Voice on 25 November 1998.

I have made some minor editorial adjustments but nothing that affects the content of the review.

If there’s one thing I can promise after seeing Peter Berg’s Very Bad Things it’s that you will be disgusted, your head will be spinning, or both. In his directorial debut, Berg (who throws in a very subtle hint at his Copland character) has given us a new entry in what has been coined the New Geek Cinema, a new style of filmmaking largely attributed to the likes of Tarantino. The basic gist is that each film tries to outdo the other with outrageous situations, and perhaps also making light humor of it.

Jon Favreau is Kyle, a man who just wants to marry the girl of his dreams played by Cameron Diaz. But before the wedding, his four buddies decide to give him the bachelor party of a lifetime in Las Vegas. Drugs and alcohol abound, and then the stripper-prostitute arrives. As misfortune would have it, she gets killed accidentally during rough sex in the bathroom. Boyd (Christian Slater), the psychotic in the bunch, lays down two options. They can call the police and probably get in some serious trouble, or take the “105 pound problem” to the desert and bury her. Of course there’s more -- a security guard shows up at the hotel room, and Boyd murders him, leaving them two bodies to take care of.

Iron Man 2 Movie Review: A Preview of Our Coming Attractions

I was not one of the legions of critics who fawned over the first Iron Man. I thought it was a top-notch superhero film, but hardly the revelation that many thought it to be. It benefited greatly from a charismatic lead actor (Robert Downey Jr.) in a role of aching narcissism, egotism and bravado. Now along comes the sequel this year and like many a superhero movie sequel that preceded it, comes more bloated with extra characters, extra plot and extra baddies.