Category: Reviews

Grown Ups 2: The Art of Space

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Grown Ups 2 (2013)
Directed by Dennis Dugan
Written by Fred Wolf & Adam Sandler & Tim Herlihy
101 min.

In 2010, Adam Sandler and his band of merry men released Grown Ups, a film that I felt, at the time, wasn’t good by any stretch of the imagination. I couldn’t understand why they chose the jokes they did, why they acted as if their actions had no real consequence from one scene to the next, and why the characters, when they weren’t at their absolute broadest, began to meld into one another to form just one character. I chalked it up to a case of bad movie syndrome.

Catching up with it on television, coming into the film at various points, it slowly began appealing to me. And then one day, while splitting my time between watching it with the sound down and reading, I realized why. The film is like a silent comedy, not like those told through space like in Buster Keaton pictures, or through pathos and character like Charlie Chaplin, but those told through time, like that of the great Mack Sennett and his band of merry men (namely the Keystone Cops). If you watch Grown Ups with the sound turned off while reading a book of jokes, it amounts to the same thing as with sound, except you can always refresh the jokes.

Its sequel, the imaginatively titled Grown Ups 2, is without a doubt obsessed with the idea of space (progressing from Sennett to Keaton). For instance, the film opens with a moose running amuck in Sandler’s mansion, which seems to happen only to give us a remarkable (for this day in age) view of the layout of the Sandler’s home and personal space.
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An Interview with James Merendino, Writer/Director of SLC Punk (But First, A Review Of The Film)

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SLC Punk (1998)
Written & Directed by James Merendino
97 min.

I could never identify the groups in my high school.  We certainly had some jocks, potheads, and even a few hanger-on goths.  But punks, I don’t know.  We had a kid with a mohawk; he was a fucking asshole.  And we had a bunch of kids who loved punk music—a lot of them had safety pins in their clothes and dyed hair, but they seemed to really like some band called AFI, which I always thought was the American Film Institute.  By the time I was in high school, punk music had completely soaked into the mainstream and everybody had heard of Pennywise and Bad Religion.  It was in vogue to go see Henry Rollins do his spoken word shows in Ann Arbor, and if you were really cool, you already liked Bad Brains and Minor Threat.

I didn’t care about any of that stuff and I was tired of every local band sounding like Green Day.  I was like the James Duval character in SLC Punk—the social diplomat.  I could be friends with anybody.  I was too busy getting into movies and figuring out my own depression to bother committing to some specific clique.  Plus, the fashion of punk seemed so childish to me.  It’s music; I don’t wear it, I listen to it.  But that being said, we didn’t have nazis or rednecks either.  Well, everywhere has rednecks, but our punks didn’t beat them with bats.  Our punks were nice kids (except for that mohawked loser) and they got good grades and loved their parents.  They went to Michigan State University and were proud to do so.
Continue reading An Interview with James Merendino, Writer/Director of SLC Punk (But First, A Review Of The Film)

Netflix Excludes The Blind. Why?

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When I was a little kid, I

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had an excessive vocabulary. I knew what the word ‘superficial’ meant, and also even biggermicrosoftcrmsolutions.com words, like ‘garrulous’. But even with these words and countless othersparajumpers jas ugoin my head, there was one that wasn’t—and that word was Accessibility. Back when I was seven, many things were accessible, and if they weren’t, my grandmotherunivisstasofttech.com would help make them so. Not being able to see, my primary canadian online pharmacy way of learning was through reading, touching objects, and listening to explanations. Of course, all my other remaining senses came into play, but hearing and touch were, and are, my primary link to the world not constructed by books. Even though I had never heard the word Accessibility, overthecounterviagracheap.com I was an early adopter of its concept. One day, my grandmother took me to a museum that was new in town. It was different than the ones we frequented, and I was very eager to feel exotic artifacts under my fingertips, and experience paintings through verbal descriptions given to me via headset. I eagerly speedwalked with my

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grandmother into the museum, my stomach full with butterflies over the soon-to-be. Continue reading Netflix Excludes The Blind. Why?

Reviewing in the Dark

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screen. After all, reviewers write what they see in a movie. And movies can have everything from vibrant 70-417 camera work to dizzying effects to catchy credits with high-class animation. My attention, however, isn’t focused on

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these things, because I don’t see any of that when I sit down to watch a movie. I’m a blind film critic, and I evaluate different aspects of movies—word choice, tone of voice, dialogue, musical score, and storytelling. Continue reading Reviewing in the Dark

The Blue Goop That Comes Out Of A Bag Of Dead Pig Babies: Nights on Netflix, Part II

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June 29th, 2013 12:06 AM.  My girlfriend and I nestled in for a night on Netflix.  This is what happened.

It started with a really ‘clever’ and ‘quirky’ movie called Spork.  That didn’t last long.  Then we tried Kink, a Canadian TV show about an assortment of really arrogant and obnoxious S&M purveyors.  The bumpers took up more time than the fucking interviews.  Next.  Then we tried that Sushi documentary that every keeps talking about but it was boring as fuck.  Then we entered what I call ‘the blur’. This is where you turn off so many movies that are all so similar that they run together.  I can’t remember what any of them are called.

After a while, Netflix kind of beats you down and you end up sticking with the least shitty thing.  Generally, you want to pick something that’s just bad enough to be fun to make fun of, making it bearable.  Most movies are far below that, but finally, I found one.  Here’s what I wrote right after it ended:
Continue reading The Blue Goop That Comes Out Of A Bag Of Dead Pig Babies: Nights on Netflix, Part II