The Bad Guys is a big screen adaptation of a popular book series for kids, perhaps to tide over the Diary of a Wimpy Kid crowd. But even as someone who was completely unfamiliar with the series, I thought its feature-length debut was great. It’s one of the coolest and most exciting films of the year.
Stardust has a really good idea for a movie: the rise of an insecure musician who strives for fame but, at the same time, is scared of how his lack of identity will ruin him. If the movie was about an ambiguous celebrity, director Gabriel Range (Death of a President) could’ve had a lot of room to explore the anxieties of fame. Unfortunately, he’s desperate to crowbar these dilemmas into an unqualified and unauthorized biopic…
In the freewheeling indie Sword of Trust, director Lynn Shelton has given her four talented principals the go-ahead to improvise when needed. And with their background in comedy, the audience can clearly see these actors are game. Shelton (who wrote this movie with former SNL staff writer Mike O’Brien) is no stranger to a loose narrative, as seen in 2009’s hilarious buddy comedy Hump Day. But, this time, her reigns are a little too loose.