The hero is not what he is by reason of any philosophy, religion, or phobia: "It just never happened." But now his colleagues at the Smart Tech electronics store, cottoning on to his condition, are pitching in to cure him of it. Though not unsympathetic in treatment, the character is …
A slice-of-life indie-looking movie about a peevish, aimless young man (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) facing cancer. Except it’s mostly not really about the young man’s struggle with cancer; it’s about his difficulties with girls (Mom included). Once you have that down, it’s easier to see why most of the film seems to …
A trustworthy storyteller recognizes that the essence of fantasy relies less on a filmmaker’s potential to suspend disbelief and more on their ability to create a plausible universe within which to frame their work. Herschel Greenbaum (Seth Rogen) is a Russian-Jewish immigrant, transplanted to Brooklyn in 1919, where he worked …
Just passable gross-out comedy, in which three obsessive parents (Leslie Mann, John Cena, and Ike Barinholtz) — all far more repulsed by the thought of lost virginity than their respective begats — combine forces to cockblock their daughters on prom night. As it must in all Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg productions, …
Directed by Steven Spielberg, the surreal comedy stars Gabriel LaBelle as 16-year-old aspiring filmmaker Sammy Fabelman, Michelle Williams as his artistic mother, Paul Dano as his successful scientific father, Seth Rogen as honorary “uncle” to the Fabelman children, and Judd Hirsch as Mitzi’s Uncle Boris.
A monument of Success Going to One’s Head. The head in question belongs to writer-director-producer Judd Apatow, previously of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, but more widely known as just producer and/or writer, weather vane, fashion plate, brand name, school headmaster. In these capacities he has apparently accumulated sufficient …
Pay attention to the opening scene, people: a boy who plays with superhero dolls is chewed out by his dad in the world’s most opulent newspaper-editor’s office. Because, as the film’s last scene hammers home with a clang, that’s what this movie is about: a schlubby, bighearted underachiever coming to …
Babs dearest. Barbra Streisand could write her own first-class ticket on any project in Tinseltown but instead chooses to ride shotgun for Seth Rogen in this terminally cute justification for matricide. Rogen — an uptight organic chemist shopping around a new environmentally safe cleaning product — decides to play Cupid …
Dr. Seuss adulterated: plumped-up graphics (faithful in bare outline); wised-up attitude (vocal impressions of Kissinger and JFK, a martial-arts anime parody); dragged-out storytelling. The elephant’s crossing of a rickety rope bridge is a good sequence (meanwhile, down in minuscule Whoville, a jostled dentist misses the mark with the novocaine needle, …
Seth Rogen and James Franco leave no “Suk,” “Poon,” or “Dong” unturned in their quest to whack North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. As a vapid entertainment talk show host, Franco fills in the blanks his with more facial tics than a barrelful of Bill Buckley’s and a wardrobe made up …
More animated martial arts and loveable Chinese-bear antics in Jennifer Yuh’s sequel. Voices by Jack Black, Gary Oldman, Dustin Hoffman, Seth Rogen, Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, Jean-Claude Van Damme.
It’s Celebrity Apprentice meets Abbott and Costello when an orange-haired billionairess (Salma Hayek) bankrolls a pair of makeup artists (Rose Byrne and Tiffany Haddish), only to landmine their thruway to success with seemingly insurmountable tasks in the hope of gaining control of their company. It’s hard to believe that a …
Director Jonathan Levine’s mighty, even valiant, but still probably doomed struggle to make a rom-com for the post-Tinder era. So while it’s still a given that people will bang before they feel close enough for something so intimate as a date and a slow dance, there’s sort of a reason …
Machine-made cartoon from DreamWorks, credited to co-directors Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon. It posits a secret government quarantine of benign monsters modelled on such Fifties archetypes as the Blob, the four-fifths-human Fly (except now a Cockroach), Mothra, the 50-Foot Woman (a girl-power placebo), and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. …
Quite possibly the most conventional and conservative comedy featuring two straight dudes engaged in a dildo swordfight you'll see all year. Director Nicholas Stoller's (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) story of a ludicrous "battle" between new parents (Seth Rogen and an uncommitted Rose Byrne) and the freshly transplanted fraternity next door lets …