The World’s End review: the very bitter (and lager) end
Its humor is a little more uncomfortable than that of the other Cornetto flicks, and it’s more far satirical, in a far more cynical way, than I ever would have anticipated. (please click through for...
View Articlefun stuff from FlickFilosopher stats week of Jul 13-19 2013
Actual unretouched phrases that people plugged into search engines this week that led them to this site (with some commentary from me)... (please click through for commenting, social networking, tags,...
View ArticleGrown Ups 2 review: Adam Sandler’s Happy Funtime Circle Jerk
This is not a movie. This is nothing but Adam Sandler hanging out with his pals and congratulating himself on how awesome he finds himself to be. (please click through for commenting, social...
View ArticleBad Words redband trailer: bee with a sting
Will it be Bad Santa, or bad Adam Sandler? (please click through for commenting, social networking, tags, and more)
View ArticleWalk of Shame movie review: Slut Shaming, The Motion Picture
If you don’t think it’s hilarious that a woman dressed for a night out would “naturally” be mistaken for a prostitute, there is nothing here for you. (please click through for commenting, social...
View ArticleBlended movie review: smug addiction
Adam Sandler goes to Africa, via the tampon aisle, and assumes you’ll agree with him that racism and sexism are family values worth celebrating. (please click through for commenting, social networking,...
View Articlemovies I can’t wait to see at the 58th BFI London Film Festival
LFF is a veritable orgy of cinema, and I love it. It’s exhausting, but I love it. (please click through for commenting, social networking, tags, and more)
View ArticleMen, Women & Children movie review (London Film Festival)
Jason Reitman is way too young to have produced a work of such fuddy-duddy handwringing over These Kids (And Adults) Today and how we play with our e-toys. (please click through for commenting, social...
View ArticleTop Five movie review: funnyman black-and-blues
Writer, director, and star Chris Rock is so close to something great here, but he gives in too easily to the unchallenging and the very conventional. (please click through for commenting, social...
View ArticlePixels movie review: blue screen of death (please)
Adam Sandler imagines himself as the savior of the planet. And then it gets even more puffed up with arrogance and all manner of masturbatory fantasy. (please click through for commenting, social...
View ArticleHotel Transylvania 2 movie review: check out and never return
The barrage of nonstop sitcom idiocy is nigh on unendurable. A father plotting against his daughter as touching and uplifting? Way worse. (please click through for commenting, social networking, tags,...
View ArticleSisters movie review: women are messed-up people too
The just-right mix of wistfulness, snark, and painful personal growth makes this nonstop hilarious, with humor that gets women in a way movies rarely do. (please click through for commenting, social...
View ArticleThe Mermaid (Mei ren yu) movie review: the biggest movie on the planet you...
A wacky fantasy lark, half screwball comedy, half Looney Tunes. Chinese audiences have thrown half a billion dollars at it. Prepare for Hollywood imitators. (please click through for commenting, social...
View ArticleFast & Furious 8 (aka The Fate of the Furious) movie review: notes from the...
EMPs and nukular codes and cyber crap and submarines, oh my! “What does this have to do with us?” Michelle Rodriguez cries, and I’m like I know, right? (please click through for commenting, social...
View ArticleUncut Gems movie review: diamond in the blech (#LFF2019)
There is real cinematic tension in this own-worst-enemy tale of addiction and its ever escalating series of bad bets. But Adam Sandler’s unfettered arrogance renders it far from endearing or fun....
View ArticleOFCS 2019 awards winners announced
And we have winners! (please click through for commenting, social networking, tags, and more)
View ArticleAWFJ 2019 EDA Awards winners announced
And we have winners! (please click through for commenting, social networking, tags, and more)
View ArticleNorth American box office: ‘Funny People’ not laughing so much
It wasn’t a terribly happy opening for the Apatow/Sandler flick: 1. Funny People: $22.7 million (NEW) 2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: $17.9 million (3rd week; drops 39%) 3. G-Force: $17.5...
View ArticleNorth American box office: ‘G.I. Joe’ no!
Joe’s ohs are lots of zeroes at the end of its weekend tally: 1. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra: $54.7 million (NEW) 2. Julie & Julia: $20 million (NEW) 3. G-Force: $9.9 million (3rd week; drops 44%)...
View ArticleClik here to view.
NBC’s business plan: burn money, then burn more money
Item: NBC will pay Conan O’Brien a severance of $40 million— no, wait, maybe it’s $45 million. Well, some of the dough will go to O’Brien’s laid-off staffers, but still: that’s a ton of money to not...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Grown Ups (review)
Heartless Shameless Ugliness Is it too overblown to suggest that what passes for the modern American mainstream comedy has finally descended into the downright sociopathic? The relentless cruelty of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
new this week in U.S., Canadian, and U.K. theaters: ‘Knight and Day,’ ‘Grown...
U.S. AND CANADA/OPENING WIDE Knight and Day: Tom Cruise does some spy stuff and runs around a lot, while Cameron Diaz does a lot of screaming and runs around like a girl. If you can’t make it to the...
View Articlequestion of the day: Is there ever a good reason to open a movie on any day...
Last week the Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz action comedy Knight and Day opened on a Wednesday, ostensibly to avoid the Friday opening, two days later, of the Adam Sandler “family” comedy Grown Ups. It looks...
View Articlewtf: ‘Hunchback of Notre Dame’ done up funny
Just when you think the shamelessness and the senselessness of Hollywood can’t possibly get any shamelesser or senselesser, Variety is there to correct this misapprehension: Paramount has snagged an...
View Articletrailer break: ‘Just Go With It’
Why? Why must we be continually subjected to Adam Sandler? Why won’t he just go away? It is possible that anyone watching this trailer doesn’t know that he ends up with Jennifer Aniston by the end of...
View Articlequestion of the day: What would be the best Christmas present Hollywood could...
If you haven’t already written your letter to Santa Claus, time to get cracking. Since I’m sure you’ll have some movie-related gift requests, here’s one to think about: What would be the best Christmas...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Just Go with It (review)
The Comedy of Moral Hazard No. No, I’m not going to just go with it. The title alone of this latest atrocity in the oeuvre of Adam Sandler, Professional Manchild, is an admission that it is absurd on...
View Articlecelebrity headlines I’d love to see
The Guardian’s headline about the marriage of two movie stars somehow elevates it above the level of mere gossip and turns it into something nearly shocking: Rachel Weisz marries Daniel Craig in secret...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Jack and Jill (trailer)
Wow. I didn’t think Adam Sandler could sink any lower. But he has. How does “She isn’t shy” translate into “Flinging a shoe into Granny’s face at high speed”? What is fresh or funny about making fun...
View ArticleClik here to view.
question of the day: Has Hollywood abandoned young men?
This was the startling conclusion of Daniel Frankel at TheWrap after this weekend’s box office results: No one is thinking of the menz! The strong showing of “Immortals” and “Jack and Jill” this...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Jack and Jill (review)
There has always been something meanspirited about drag: men dressing in women’s clothing, as a way to make audiences of mainstream comedy laugh, has always been about holding women up for ridicule...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Alex “Repo Man” Cox insists you pirate his movies (and other adventures in...
What my followers on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ saw yesterday and today: • Pretty please… Can Someone Fix the Academy Awards? Please? Anyone? • This: “Now they want to have longer copyright...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Adam Sandler sweeps the Razzies (and other adventures in social networking)
What my followers on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ saw today: • Another take on the “Why did they have to ‘make’ Rue black” idiots. It really is astonishing how nearly illiterate many people are. Not...
View ArticleClik here to view.
That’s My Boy (redband and greenband trailers)
This is, of course, entirely appalling just on its own, and surely a sign not only of the impending apocalypse but that humanity deserves to die in a maelstrom of hellfire and brimstone. But it’s even...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Candy Land is most dreaded upcoming board-game adaptation, say readers of...
In a totally unscientific poll conducted on Facebook, the readers of FlickFilosopher.com have declared, by a wide margin, the upcoming film Candy Land as their most dreaded board-game adaptation....
View ArticleClik here to view.
if R-rated movies were kids’ books (and other adventures in social networking)
What my followers on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ saw today: • Love it. Kids’ Book Versions Of R-Rated Movies • Another one. This reporter is “award-winning.” Is there something deeply wrong about...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ted (review)
I’m “biast” (pro): got a big ol’ soft spot for Mark Wahlberg I’m “biast” (con): with the exception of Blue Harvest, I’m not a fan of Seth MacFarlane (what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto) Get...
View ArticleHere Comes the Boom (trailer)
Oh my god, they’re not even kidding with this, are they? I thought this was like Adam Sandler “parodying” The Fighter, except this is a real movie, isn’t it? For puny values of both real and movie, of...
View Articleit was a long four-movie day (and other adventures in social networking)
What my followers on Facebook and Twitter saw today: (Had a long four-movie day: two press screenings at the far ends, filled out by two multiplex movies killing time in the middle. Was barely at the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Benedict Cumberbatch + Monty Python — this is real (and other adventures in...
What my followers on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ saw today: • Comic Book Illustrator Tony Harris Hates Women (Cosplayers) Professional nerd dude lashes out at women who (he thinks) are only...
View ArticleMovie 43 (redband trailer)
This is amazing. All these huge stars… and director Peter Farrelly apparently has blackmail material on all of them! Because why else would they all have agreed to appear in a movie that believes it’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
question of the day: What do you think Hollywood movies tell the rest of the...
In the wake of the Newtown shooting, there have once again been rumblings about how violent movies (and violent video games) are perhaps partly to blame for the epidemic of mass shootings in the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
question of the day: What are your all-time favorite and least favorite...
Reader Anne-Kari recently suggested that we talk about Favorite and least favorite movies within specific genres (drama, b&w, scifi, comedy)? So that’s what we’ll do all this week, starting with:...
View ArticleClik here to view.
That’s My Boy (review)
I’m “biast” (pro): nothing I’m “biast” (con): despise Sandler, and this looked even worse than his usual garbage (what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto) I don’t know what I was thinking. Why...
View ArticleClik here to view.
question of the day: What’s the most inexplicable appearance by a big star in...
Much is being made of the inexplicableness of so many major major movie stars appearing in the execrable Movie 43. Peter Howell in the Toronto Star calls it “the biggest waste of talent in cinema...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What makes a movie star a movie star? (QOTW)
Film critic Stephen Witty explores the differences between movie stars and actors this weekend at NJ.com. A taste: [B]eing an actor, and being a star, are different jobs, requiring different skill...
View Articletrailer break: ‘Funny People’ redband trailer
Take a break from work: watch a trailer… I know I’m known as a Judd Apatow hater, and it’s true I haven’t liked most of his recent work, but I’ve always got an open mind and I always go into the next...
View Article‘Orphan’ and the generational aspects of horror
If you’ve been reading my online writings for any length of time, you may already be aware that I’m a fan of the works of William Strauss and Neil Howe, who’ve proposed a generational theory of history...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Funny People (review)
Tears of a Clown Oh, people are gonna hate this movie. Look, the jokes are not jokes in Funny People. The humorous-sounding bits of dialogue are not intended to make you laugh so much as they are...
View ArticleJuly 31: DVD alternatives to this weekend’s multiplex offerings
We know how it is: You’d like to go to the movies this weekend, but Adam Sandler dying of some awful disease isn’t your idea of a good time. But you can have a multiplex-like experience at home with a...
View Article