2011 was a great year for comedies. You had Bridesmaids and Crazy, Stupid, Love., both of which finished in my Top for the year. You also had Horrible Bosses and The Hangover Part II, each of which finished just outside my Top 10. Hall Pass is the fourth great comedy for that year and a movie that will cause me to re-evaluate my list shortly. Right now, I’m uncertain whether this finishes just outside the Top 10 of 2011 or if it finishes ahead of Bridesmaids (my current #3). Wherever it falls, nothing will change the fact that it is a hilarious movie. It’s also a movie I almost did not watch because I didn’t like the concept. I like the raunchy humor movie, but the idea of two wives giving their husbands a week-long hall pass where they could do what they wanted to whoever they wanted didn’t appeal to what I valued in a movie. With that said, I’m glad I gave the movie a chance because it was also a really good movie in addition to being an absolute comic gem.Continue reading Hall Pass (2011)
Celeste and Jesse Forever is a fantastic little movie paused on a completely implausible concept: that you can remain best friends with the love of your life after a failed relationship. The movie was a difficult sell. While it hit with the critics (70% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), it missed with audiences (just $3 million at the box office). The movie stars two of Hollywood’s funniest young actors (Andy Samberg – Saturday Night Live and Rashida Jones – NBC’s Parks and Recreation) who have worked so hard on the small screen that now they are household names. This both helped and hurt the movie. When we see each name, we think comedy, comedy, comedy. So when we see them in a movie like Celeste and Jesse Forever that has as much drama as it does comedy, we aren’t sure what to think.
Low-budget fright flicks have become a part of our culture since 1999’s Blair Witch Project. A good number of these the majority of the public has never heard of because the completed product goes straight to video. Another batch makes it to the big screen, some of which we convince ourselves to see (The Fog, Darkness, Feardotcom), and after 20 minutes, we wish it had gone straight to video and never heard of it. Then there is the small group of these movies you cannot just tolerate but come to enjoy for whatever reason. The best example is 2005’s The Descent, which saw a group of six 20-something females trapped in a cavern on a girls’ getaway weekend and hunted by a force that lives in the dark. This movie was an instant classic and still a top-five horror movie. Chernobyl Diaries is nowhere close to The Descent, but it still offers many of the same elements that made this movie successful. It offered a small group of no-name actors. It was set in a location where you could suspend your beliefs and start to believe that anything is possible. There are the slowly developing scenes where you know something bad is about to happen, and you are just sitting there wondering what that will be and when it will occur. Finally, it has a handful of jump-out-your-seat moments. For these reasons, I give Chernobyl Diaries a positive review and would encourage low-budget horror fans to check it out.
Add The Campaign to the list of laugh-out-loud Will Ferrell (Old School, 
The Place Beyond the Pines is a place you do not need to visit anytime in the near future. Director Derek Cianfrance and Ryan Gosling (