Review: ‘Promising Young Woman’ is a Wonderful Dark Comedy with Plenty of Thrills and Chills

Content Warning: This review discusses some topics that might be triggering to some audiences. Read at your own discretion.

Sex, drugs and…vendetta. All three are necessary for the sick fun that is Promising Young Woman, Focus Features’ new dark comedy highlighting gender inequalities while it sends chills down your trembling, newly woke spine. Trembling from nervousness, or perhaps from the rage ignited by the film’s lead Cassie (Carey Mulligan). Continue reading “Review: ‘Promising Young Woman’ is a Wonderful Dark Comedy with Plenty of Thrills and Chills” →

Review: ‘Locked Down’ is the Best COVID Movie We Have So Far

Significant moments in history are always immortalized through film, and we can expect that to hold true for the COVID-19 pandemic, too. After the first stay-at-home order last March, American studios had to adapt quickly to keep pumping out content, and one tactic was incorporating COVID into the stories they were telling. COVID-era entertainment rapidly evolved from Zoom cast reunions and hastily filmed season finales to in-person productions that either show life as normal or haphazardly reflect the current times. Continue reading “Review: ‘Locked Down’ is the Best COVID Movie We Have So Far” →

Joe Lollo’s Top Ten Films of 2020

It goes without saying that 2020 was a crazy year for all sorts of things, and this includes movies – due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the closing of theatres and rise of streaming meant there were limited options for people to make and watch new movies if they didn’t have the apt resources. The last time I made a top 10 list, last year, was much easier than it was this year. While part of it is because there weren’t many releases at all, part of it was because a lot of the movies I watched that came out this year were really good. Of the 2020 releases I’ve seen, I would say that my top 20 are all great films that I will be ready to defend in a heartbeat. It was really hard to put only ten films on my list this year, so before we get into those, I think it would be best to quickly talk about those 10 that just barely made the cut.

Continue reading “Joe Lollo’s Top Ten Films of 2020” →

Review: ‘The Stand In’ is Nothing But a Shallow Hollywood Satire

When a movie goes off the rails I try to do what Roger Ebert says, and imagine the elevator pitch that got it approved. The pitch for The Stand In might have been “Trading Places meets Death To Smoochy,” or maybe “All About Eve meets Dave.” Come to think of it, either of those look like amazing ideas compared to this strange film about two look-alikes who change places. Continue reading “Review: ‘The Stand In’ is Nothing But a Shallow Hollywood Satire” →

Review: ‘The Prom’ is a Superficial But Fun Way to End 2020

Hats off to Ryan Murphy: The man is consistently contradictory. Just a few weeks after his new show Ratched hit Netflix, his adaptation of the 2018 Broadway musical The Prom arrives to the platform gussied up in a technicolor version of the same worshipful high school nostalgia as Glee, and riddled with the same condescension toward “average” people that defined Nip/Tuck and The Politician. Continue reading “Review: ‘The Prom’ is a Superficial But Fun Way to End 2020” →

Review: ‘Holidate’ Sets the Tone for Netflix’s Holiday Season

Holidate establishes some all-important vocabulary right off the bat: A “holidate” is someone to spend any given holiday with, explicitly for the purpose of not being alone and preventing your family members from trying to set you up with someone else. To be clear, it’s not a friends-with-benefits situation. If anything, it’s closer to a rental family, except it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement rather than something paid for. But while having a “holidate” is a fun idea, John Whitesell’s Holidate isn’t the kind of movie to bring home for the holidays. Continue reading “Review: ‘Holidate’ Sets the Tone for Netflix’s Holiday Season” →

Review: ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’ Invites the World to a New America

A few years ago, the idea of a Borat sequel releasing days before a major election seemed unthinkable. The first film set itself up for a sequel with that ending, but it’s been years. 2020, however, has hardly been the realm of the expected, and of course we had Sacha Baron Cohen come back as the titular Kazakh “reporter.” Continue reading “Review: ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’ Invites the World to a New America” →

Review: ‘The Opening Act’ is a Nice Love Letter to Standup Comedy

The Apatovian formula is simple: Pluck an up-and-coming comic from the small leagues, support them while they write their own darkly funny but authentically heartfelt semi-autobiographical comedy then produce and/or direct the final format. This method has led to many successes, even without Apatow’s name, including Amy Schumer’s Trainwreck, Kumail Nanjiani’s The Big Sick, and Pete Davidson’s The King of Staten Island. Continue reading “Review: ‘The Opening Act’ is a Nice Love Letter to Standup Comedy” →

Review: ‘Hubie Halloween’ Has No Real Tricks, But Many Treats

Last year, while being interviewed by Howard Stern, Adam Sandler said if he didn’t get a Best Actor nomination for Uncut Gems, he would make a film that was bad on purpose. Hubie Halloween is Sandler’s first film since not getting nominated, so it would appear this is the promised revenge movie, but I am “pleased,” for lack of a better word, to report that this film is not terrible. It isn’t great, but for a Sandler comedy, this is notably good. Continue reading “Review: ‘Hubie Halloween’ Has No Real Tricks, But Many Treats” →

Retrospective: ‘Adventureland’ is an Underrated Comedy Recalling the Horrors of Post-College Anxiety

It is a truth of being 20-something that if you have a crappy summer job, the best way to take your mind off of it is to befriend the other 20-somethings who hate it there just as much as you do. You are trapped there together, 8 to 10 hours a day for three months, right? So what else is there to do? Even in a film set in 1990, like 2009’s Adventureland, this is all too relatable if you’ve had a summer job. Continue reading “Retrospective: ‘Adventureland’ is an Underrated Comedy Recalling the Horrors of Post-College Anxiety” →