A snooty admissions officer puts her career on the line when trying to get the son she secretly gave up for adoption accepted into Princeton. This is 117 minutes of prefabricated shit for people who are constipated. The performances are uniformly lazy; not for one second do Tina Fey and …
SNL alumnae Tina Fey and Amy Poehler form a babymaking pact across the class divide, the barren career woman and the fertile prole. Broad, predictable, and pallidly photographed, yet an agile and energetic playing of the angles. Strong supporting part for Steve Martin, plus ponytail, as a self-mythologizing health-food tycoon: …
A hedged bet, marital comedy cum action thriller, with a “boring” New Jersey couple enlivening their stale marriage by getting themselves mistaken for high-stakes blackmailers. Tina Fey will never in her lifetime use up the eternal gratitude she earned for her role in the 2008 presidential campaign (the faux Palin), …
High-concept comedy with and from Ricky Gervais, co-writing and co-directing with Matthew Robinson. It's set in an alternative universe where everyone by nature tells the brutal truth (even advertisers: "Pepsi, When They Don't Have Coke"), until the brutalized short portly hero, unable to make his rent, makes an evolutionary leap …
A home-schooled teenager, raised in the wilds of Africa, is let loose as an innocent in the American public school system, and the worn-out subject of adolescent cattiness and bitchery receives an infusion of fresh blood, or at any rate a megadose of caffeine. The snap-crackle-pop script (from a book …
A home-schooled teenager, raised in the wilds of Africa, is let loose as an innocent in the American public school system, and the worn-out subject of adolescent cattiness and bitchery receives an infusion of fresh blood, or at any rate a megadose of caffeine. The snap-crackle-pop script (from a book …
Hayao Miyazaki further postpones his announced retirement three feature films earlier, and appears to reverse the slippage of his hand-drawn purism into corner-cutting computer animation, reverting to a simpler, less congested style than in Spirited Away and even more Howl’s Moving Castle. His famous sensitivity to nature is immediately on …
Hayao Miyazaki further postpones his announced retirement three feature films earlier, and appears to reverse the slippage of his hand-drawn purism into corner-cutting computer animation, reverting to a simpler, less congested style than in Spirited Away and even more Howl’s Moving Castle. His famous sensitivity to nature is immediately on …
The accidental and premature death of Joe (voiced by Jamie Foxx) on the biggest day of his life lands him in limbo, where he’s compelled to plead his case at a corporate, other-worldly way station. Sound familiar? It’s the premise for Albert Brooks’ fantasy comedy Defending Your Life. In this …
The accidental and premature death of Joe (voiced by Jamie Foxx) on the biggest day of his life lands him in limbo, where he’s compelled to plead his case at a corporate, other-worldly way station. Sound familiar? It’s the premise for Albert Brooks’ fantasy comedy Defending Your Life. In this …
Jason Bateman is Judd, a man who, by his own admission, has never taken any chances, who has spent his whole life playing it safe. Oh, dear. Cue the manic pixie dream girl. While you're at it, throw in a dead dad, a wayward wife, a trip home, a sexually …
It seems likely that at some point, most folks probably entertain a fond fantasy of pulling up stakes and heading off into a new life full of adventure, excitement, and maybe even danger. Bored TV newswoman Kim Baker (Tina Fey, successfully and rapidly alternating between aggressively smart and emotionally vulnerable) …