Captain America: Civil War Movie Review

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is one hell of an impressive machine. It has churned out three Iron Man movies, two Thor movies, a dedicated Hulk movie, two Avengers movies, Ant Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, and now a third Captain America movie (or Avengers depending on how you look at it). Through all of it, the stories have toyed with more important themes and topicality. They have often remained a notch above just popcorn and candy, explosions and mayhem. Now, after lots and lots of catastrophic destruction in the name of heroism and the self-anointed good trying to stymie evil, Captain America: Civil War aims to dive deep on the divide between those who would allow for an unchecked team of independent heroes (or vigilantes, call them what you will) and those who would seek to control them, track them, and direct them in order to minimize collateral damage and tamp down the public belief that these “enhanced individuals” are running roughshod over the globe.

Short Cut Movie Review: Admission

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

Paul Weitz was very wise not to allow himself to get pigeonholed into making more movies like his debut feature, American Pie, which he co-directed with his brother. Audiences were lucky that American Pie wound up in the hands of directors who were sensitive to character issues. That film was notable for being outrageously hilarious while not losing sight of the fact that the audience still needs to connect with the characters on the screen. Weitz has continued to bring that human touch to all of the films he directs, especially as he has moved away from outright comedy to stretch himself with dramatic films.

Admission is his latest, released earlier this year and now available on home video. Like About a Boy (probably the best film he’s made), it is a drama, but with plenty of comedy born of the absurdities of everyday life. It is funny because its stars, Paul Rudd and Tina Fey, can’t be anything but hilarious in their delivery. Fey is a Princeton admissions officer and Rudd is the founder and director of an alternative school. He’s identified one of his graduating seniors as an exceptionally bright student who has nevertheless failed to excel academically. He thinks the kid deserves a chance to attend Princeton. Oh, and he believes Fey is the boy’s biological mother who gave him up for adoption back in college.

Karen Croner’s screenplay, based on the novel by Jean Hanff Korelitz, is part family comedy and part romantic comedy. But this isn’t your average rom-com with pratfalls and cheap plot points recycled over and over for the last 75 years. It mostly feels natural and honest. The film is greatly aided by some fantastic supporting cast members including Lily Tomlin as Fey’s hippie feminist mother; Michael Sheen as her feckless boyfriend; and Wallace Shawn as the Dean of Admissions.

This Is 40 Movie Review

The Judd Apatow brand of comedy has dominated the genre for the better part of the last ten years. His influence extends far beyond the handful of films he’s directed himself into a host of other films that he’s also produced, many of them featuring actors he’s fond of using in his own films. His films don’t go for the simple gross-out and zany laughs of the Farrelly brothers. They rarely rely on shock value. They’re more like situational comedy with believable situations, unlike what you get from your average popular TV sitcom. His writing is often insightful, replete with astute observations of human behavior, even if it’s usually from the eccentric limit of the spectrum. In his latest (only his fourth as writer and director) film, This Is 40, he returns to peripheral characters created for his 2007 comedy Knocked Up, crafting a story around a married couple with two daughters and their attempts to deal with their changing lives as they reach middle age.

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers Movie Review

Because this was released when I was already nearing the end of high school it wasn't really a part of my horror culture when I was a kid. I watched it once when I rented it with a friend, but honestly that was probably when we were in college, past my cutoff year of 1996 for this October series.

Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.

As incredible as it was that Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers improved upon the quality, or lack therof, of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, that’s nothing compared to Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, the series’ sixth film. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to criticize here, but taken as a whole experience it’s more fun, better written and acted, and scarier than most other horror sequels.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower Movie Review

That feeling of being infinite is one of the amazing things about being a teenager and also the most frustrating thing about dealing with teenagers. I look back on my high school days with fond memories even as I recall that there was a fair amount of trepidation going to school on the first day of freshman year. But through four years of making new friends, drifting apart from old ones, growing up and slowly becoming the person I am today, I don’t have much recollection of ever feeling like it was going to end. Now I look back and wish I’d taken it slower, for those four years are, in fact, finite. These feelings and many more are captured eloquently in Stephen Chbosky’s film version of his own novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Our Idiot Brother Movie Review

Paul Rudd is simply wonderful at playing the easy-going  supporting characters. He’s been dramatic, forlorn, hilarious, and steady in films ranging from The Object of My Affection to The 40 Year Old Virgin. Remember what a perfect foil he was for the flaky Phoebe on “Friends”? Years of playing second fiddle in a variety of comedies has finally paid off for him with a recent series of leading roles, most recently as the bearded hippie peacenik Ned in Our Idiot Brother.

The Object of My Affection Movie Review

First published in The Connecticut College Voice on 24 April 1998.

Republished here with some editorial adjustments that don't affect content.

One’s first thoughts on a movie about a girl who falls in love with a gay man might be, “Another bland romantic comedy,” or “A trite revision of Chasing Amy.” Coming from a person who hasn’t seen a decent new movie in about a month, The Object of My Affection was a pleasant surprise.

The movie centers on Nina (Jennifer Aniston), a social worker in Brooklyn, and George (Paul Rudd), a 1st grade school teacher. They meet at a cocktail party being held by Nina’s stepsister. George and Nina immediately form a bond laughing at the rest of the guests who engage in name dropping as if it were a competition. In a somewhat unbelievably fast pace, Nina invites George to be her new roommate and they very quickly discover they are nearly soul mates for each other. All gets complicated when Nina finds out she is pregnant by her boyfriend Vince (John Pankow). She asks George to be the live-in dad as opposed to Vince. This is when the true grit of the movie comes out: the exploration into relationships. Can it survive without sex? Is a wonderful friendship enough to make it last?

Dinner for Schmucks Movie Review: Never Go Full Retard

Paul Rudd meets Steve Carell with his mouse Last Supper

Dinner for Schmucks is what happens when middlebrow Hollywood talent take a perfectly respectable French comedy of errors and simmer it down to a lumpy reduction. Screenwriters David Guion and Michael Handelman, along with director Jay Roach (the Austin Powers trilogy), have altered Francis Veber’s The Dinner Game, a sophisticated and light farce, to a lowbrow ramshackle disaster comedy.