Category: Comedy
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Movie Review: “American Hustle” (David O. Russell, USA 2013)
In 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was released to eventual great (if undeserved) acclaim, a novel deconstructing the idea of “the American dream” through a distasteful character who seeks the trappings of that dream via some unfortunate means with eventually disastrous results. In more recent times, the clearest examples of films with the…
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Movie Review: “Chicken with Plums” (Vincent Paronnaud/Marjane Satrapi, France/Germany/Belgium 2011)
Paronnaud and Satrapi came into the public consciousness through an acclaimed animated film in Persepolis (France/USA 2007), something I had no interest in watching because I generally have no interest in animation. However, they followed up that success by surprisingly moving into live action with a strange and inventive dark comedy that did not meet…
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Movie Review: “The Cabin in the Woods” (Drew Goddard, USA 2012)
The tagline for this film was, “If you hear a strange sound outside, have sex.” Similar to Pauline Kael’s famous description of the basic appeal of movies as “kiss kiss, bang bang,” this tagline actually describes horror movies in a nutshell. However, like Kael’s statement and the later film named after it (Kiss Kiss Bang…
