Category: Reviews

Paulie: Charlie Kaufman, Eat Your Heart Out

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From left: Jay Mohr, Jay Mohr, and Jay Mohr.

Paulie (1998)
Directed by John Roberts
Written by Laurie Craig
91 min.

Spoiler-free.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—when you’re a kid, it’s damn near impossible to know whether a movie is revered or not. You watch a thing, and if you enjoy it, it’s a part of your world. And your world is only as big as you and your parents, so if you and your parents like the thing, it’s a ‘classic’. Only when you grow up do you discover, by asking friends and scouring the internet, how many movies you thought were well-known that were really just well-known to you.

It still throws me for a loop that I’m the only person in the history of the world who has seen Little Big League. When I was a kid, it played on TV just as much Rookie of the Year, but apparently, I’m the only one who flipped to it. I must’ve watched it damn near 30 times, and I still know parts from it by heart: “Kids today are amazing—I played winter ball down in Venezuela, and they had kids half his age, every one of them speaking Spanish. That’s a hard language.” “They speak Spanish in Venezuela.” “I know! That’s my point!”

But I digress.

The point is, Paulie is one of these such movies—a movie that, for whatever reason, hasn’t had its due, despite being ubiquitous at one point in time. And like Little Big League, it still holds up today. It’s thoroughly enjoyable family fare.

But it’s also so much more.

Paulie is the most ‘meta’ family film of all time.
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The Cosmic Circle: Outside ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’

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Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Written and Directed by Joel & Ethan Coen
104 min.

Some spoilers ahead.

Inside Llewyn Davis is a frustrating movie. It’s difficult to know how to approach it. Going in, you either know something about the folk music scene of NYC in the early 1960’s, or you don’t—and either way seems to handicap a viewer looking to make sense out of the film. Those who have a familiarity with the subject will be running through their head for facts, looking for characters who correspond to real people, wondering ‘Will Dylan be in this?’ They will be distracted, and in the end, it will not be a very rewarding experience. On the other hand, those who go in blind will probably get lazy and blame their misunderstanding of the film on their ignorance of the subject, thinking it to be full of inside jokes.

If you can somehow make it past that built-in obstacle course, you’ll be able to view the film for what it is—another Coen Brothers film about a cosmic circle. A man, standing still (a la Ray from Blood Simple, H.I. McDunnough from Raising Arizona, Jerry Lundegaard from Fargo, Barton Fink, The Dude) while at the same time, going on an adventure (a la Tom Regan from Miller’s Crossing, Rooster Cogburn from True Grit, Llewelyn Moss—practically sharing the first name of our main character—from No Country For Old Men, Ulysses Everett McGill from O Brother, Where Art Thou?—literally sharing the first name as our other main character, a cat).
Continue reading The Cosmic Circle: Outside ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’

Anchorman 2: The Pursuit of Stupidity

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Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013)
Directed by Adam McKay
Written by Will Ferrell & Adam McKay
119 min.

There’s a certain kind of joke that makes you groan.  Airplane! is built out of these jokes—every moment in Airplane! is a joke so cheesy, obvious, and bizarre in its construction that the only apt response is a groan and an eye roll.  This is a joyous, appreciative response.  The jokes work.  “Let’s get some pictures!”—and then all the reporters take pictures off the wall.  It’s so fucking stupid and obvious—yet something you’d never expect.  It’s playful and silly and not the least bit offensive.  And these jokes may appear simplistic, but they aren’t.

Invisibility is the best friend of style.  The more ‘obvious’ a joke may seem, often times, the more creativity there is underneath its surface.  The jokes in Airplane! are not ‘stupid’—they’re clever and advanced.  They are meta, esoteric, and the epitome of auteurism.

Anchorman, Wet Hot American Summer, Freddy Got Fingered, Spaceballs, and Airplane! are not only are they some of the greatest comedies of all time, they are some of the most interesting meta-artistic achievements of all time.
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It’s Okay To Like Disney Princesses Again: A Review of ‘Frozen’

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Frozen (2013)
Directed by Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck
Written by Jennifer Lee, Chris Buck, and Shane Morris
102 min.

Spoiler-free.

When I reviewed How To Train Your Dragon, I drew a line in some imaginary sand separating it from the cynically produced schlock that gets dumped on the kid demographic these days. As much as I love that movie though, I have to admit that it only seems so great because everything else is so bad. For a long time, CG movies were too annoying to even endure, Pixar’s output aside. But now Pixar sucks too. Go ahead, admit it. They haven’t made a great movie since Wall-E, and everything since has been worse than what came before it—Monsters University in particular is downright abysmal.

Strangely enough, as Pixar has declined, Disney Animation has experienced a resurgence. Bolt was way better than anyone expected, and, for the most part, Tangled feels about as effortless as any Disney 90’s hit did. Wreck-It Ralph was terrible, and The Princess and the Frog was a bit too paint-by-numbers, but whatever—all upward trends have their occasional dips. Now we have Frozen, which, despite its stupid title, is without a doubt the peak of this new renaissance. I have a feeling this all has something to do with Pixar legend John Lasseter’s appointment as Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios following Disney’s buyout of Pixar in 2006, but I’ll leave that speculation for someone more informed and just get back to Frozen.
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You Are Worth Less, Alec Baldwin: A Review-ish Rant on ‘Seduced and Abandoned’

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Seduced and Abandoned (2013)
Written and Directed by James Toback
98 min.

Spoiler-free.

The title of this review contains one of the greatest puns I’ve ever made in my entire life. (To get it, you have to be aware of the song ‘You Are Worthless, Alec Baldwin’, which plays at the very end of the credits of Team America: World Police.) What makes my pun so great and so apt is that this documentary, Seduced and Abandoned, is literally about Alec Baldwin thinking he’s worth a lot more money than he is actually worth, and constantly being reminded by various knowledgable people that he isn’t, and him not understanding. That’s the majority of this movie, which might make it sound like the greatest movie ever made, but unfortunately, it isn’t. It’s downright grating in its unrelenting narcissism. There are parts where you’ll damn near groan your throat off, and eye roll your eyes off. But you should still watch it. It may not be a good film, but it sure as hell is an important one.
Continue reading You Are Worth Less, Alec Baldwin: A Review-ish Rant on ‘Seduced and Abandoned’