A basement-dwelling aspiring tattoo artist begins to take the first steps towards a meaningful life in The King of Staten Island. Scott Carlin (Pete Davidson) is a 24-year-old high school dropout, who lives in the basement of his mother Margie (Marisa Tomei) and has aspirations about being a tattoo artist. Life becomes complicated for Scott…
The career of filmmaker Hal Ashby is revisited in Hal. Beginning his film career as film editor, which included winning an Oscar for his friend Norman Jewison’s 1967 film In the Heat of the Night, Hal Ashby began his directorial career with the racially charged drama The Landlord in 1970. He followed this up with the controversial cult romance Harold and Maude in…
A woman who does not believe in relationships falls for a sports doctor in Trainwreck. Inspired by the failed marriage of her father Gordon (Colin Quinn), Amy Townsend (Amy Schumer) has been perfectly content with having a series of one night stands, without any real need for a monogamous relationship, as opposed to the married lifestyle…
It was less than a decade ago when Judd Apatow established himself as a comedy king. After producing mostly TV series during the 1990s and early 2000s, Apatow hit a one-two punch by producing Anchorman in 2004 and directing The 40 Year Old Virgin in 2005, both of which would go on to be big…
It would be unfair to compare this film to Judd Apatow‘s previous directorial efforts, The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, since those were different types of movies. Funny People is definitely a comedy-drama and even though there were scenes with plenty of laughs, there were also serious scenes within the film, and I thought that…
Adam Sandler’s comedies have always been hit or miss. However, for the last few years, he has been doing some different types of rolls, which did not really fit his character. Some of the magic came back last with with I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry and it’s back in full force with this…
This film comes about a little under 11 months after my only other experience with star Jason Segel (that being Knocked Up). He wasn’t really too much of a stand-out in the movie, so it was a little risky pushing him into the lead (even though that move worked for Seth Rogen in last year’s…
This year’s holiday season is jam packed with films I’d like to see, so here is the third film I’ve seen within a week’s timespan (with at least one or two more planned before the end of the holidays). This has been a killer year for producer/director Judd Apatow, whose films Knocked Up and Superbad…
First, I hope you enjoy the new look of the blog. As you can see from this post, I will now be including a picture of the movie poster when I post thoughts (I also edited my last post to include a picture from the Death Defying Acts Q&A at TIFF). Now onto the film….
There was a time, not so long ago, when I would have not felt comfortable seeing R-rated comedies like this one. However, films like Wedding Crashers and The 40-Year Old Virgin (a film I was initially freaked out about, but quietly went to see anyway) showed me that those films tend to be the more…
