Elizabeth Banks
Cocaine Bear
By: Jeff Ching Walking into Cocaine Bear, I was expecting the movie to be the latest inductee to the “so bad, it’s good” list. Something along the lines of Snakes on a Plane or the Sharknado franchise: movies that are not good, but fun to laugh at. Cocaine Bear, however, is not “so bad, it’s good” – it’s “so good, it’s umm….…the best movie of 2023 so far”. Look, it’s only late February, and I don’t expect…
The Happytime Murders
The Happytime Murders is a bawdy comedy that’s being sold as “dirty Sesame Street”. However, as the film fired off obscenities and crude visual gags, I couldn’t help but be distracted by other filmmaking elements.
The Happytime Murders
By: Trevor Chartrand The Happytime Gang is here! Directed by the son of Muppets creator Jim Henson, Brian Henson brings us The Happytime Murders, a comedy that takes fun and lovable puppets into some dark new territory.
Power Rangers
By: Nick Ferwerda How do you take one of the cheesiest television shows of all time and turn it into a solid standalone movie? Believe it or not, but Power Rangers does a commendable job at doing so.
Pitch Perfect 2
By: Addison Wylie This isn’t the case with most sequels, but Pitch Perfect 2 is bigger in every way, and therefore better in every way. And, no, that isn’t a playful jab at Rebel Wilson and her Fat Amy character. This is a series that needs to rise to the occasion and use all the space around it in order to feel worthy. The film needs to break out of a boxed-in format and use every…
Hurricane of Fun: The Making of Wet Hot
By: Addison Wylie Before Paul Rudd was Ant-Man, before Elizabeth Banks was one of comedy’s leading ladies, and before Bradley Cooper became an Oscar nominated actor/producer, all three actors starred in an indescribable indie comedy called Wet Hot American Summer. The movie also served as a launching pad for Parks and Rec’s Amy Poehler, Stella’s Michael Ian Black, Bad Milo’s Ken Marino, and Brooklyn Nine Nine’s Joe Lo Truglio – all of whom had never…
Love & Mercy
By: Trevor Jeffery Over the past few decades, the biopic has been more or less perfected and recreated over and over, to the point of boring predictability. While ultimately Love & Mercy is no exception, the film deviates from the structure enough to make the journey feel like a new, albeit shaky, perspective on the formula. Following Beach Boy Brian Wilson, the film jumps between the 20-something-prodigy Wilson in the 1960s (played by Paul Dano)…
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1
By: Addison Wylie The Hunger Games series has been particularly strong with its film adaptations. However, something always appears to be slightly off key. Not always a detail that greatly affects the film as a whole, but an attribute that hampers the film from being great. The Hunger Games was a powerful introduction to dystopian District 12 and all the have-nots that inhabited such a mucky home. Audiences also received a brutal – yet PG-13…
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
By: Addison Wylie It was nice to see a young adult book series stick to its gritty tone and not feel the need to make it lighter for a mainstream audience. That’s exactly what The Hunger Games did with its first venture to the big screen. It did, however, succumb to attributes that felt reminiscent to other franchises with a widespread teen audience. One of these beats being complications with affection between two strapping young…