Two Drink Minimum: Jake Szymanski’s ‘Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates’
“It’s not a dumb movie pretending to be smart, it’s a dumb movie worried about (yet still embracing) its own base stupidity.”
Jacob Oller
Two Drink Minimum: ‘What’s Manzai?!!’
“It looks like a ‘Bill Nye the Science Guy’ episode was produced about manzai after they lost Bill, their writers and about ninety percent of their budget.”
Two Drink Minimum: The Rock and ‘Central Intelligence’ – When Wit Gets Ripped
“Would we like The Rock as much if he wasn’t shredded like taco lettuce?”
Two Drink Minimum: Bo Burnham’s ‘Make Happy’ (Netflix)
“When the red, white and blue lights go off, one can begin to understand that Burnham hasn’t put together a comedy special, but a deconstructive stage play of epic proportions.”
Review: Corbin Bernsen’s ‘Christian Mingle’
“Like a lot of reality television, ‘Christian Mingle’ is funny for hateful reasoning that displays damaging, scary facets of our culture.”
Vague Visages on Agnès Varda’s 88th: ‘The Gleaners & I’
“Varda’s sense of play, fun, silliness and humor comes from a collected bricolage of incident, travel and people.”
The Chicago Critics Film Festival Review: Patricia Rozema’s ‘Into the Forest’
“For a feminist attempt to show two women leaning on each other, ‘Into the Forest’ barely sketches them out.”
Two Drink Minimum: ‘Ali Wong: Baby Cobra’ (Netflix)
“Never preachy, Wong finds lots to love in her overwhelming honesty.”
Review: Jason Bateman’s ‘The Family Fang’
“Bateman brings the full force of his directorial ability to the film, finding beauty in every camera placement and character movement.”
Two Drink Minimum: ‘Hannibal Takes Edinburgh’ (Netflix)
“Hitting the cerebrally relatable and the absurdly goofy, Buress provides an allegory for the American worker: even if your daily grind is performing stand-up, taking pleasure in your work is the only way to stay sane.”
Review: Mike Flanagan’s ‘Hush’
“‘Hush’ has some very interesting moving parts in what amounts to an average film.”
Ebertfest 2016: Sound Some Opinions
Jacob Oller on His First Ebertfest
When Magic Was Real: Jean Cocteau’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’
“Cocteau’s magical realism, with flight and cursed beasts side-by-side with the economic woes of an importer-exporter, gives his fantastic elements gravity while letting the humanist tale of greed lilt like music.”
‘Southbound’ and the Anatomy of a Horror Anthology
“If the director’s approach to the material isn’t to your liking — say he’s too harsh to his characters or revels in gore for gore’s sake — a new direction, even within the confines of the broad horror genre, is just around the corner.”
The Allegory of Emotional Abuse in Tahmineh Milani’s ‘Two Women’
“From the safe, warm college campus scenarios that unfold in bathrooms, bus stops and classrooms, we see fringes of an increasingly conservative religious movement nipping at the edges of the screen.”
Review: Kirk Jones’ ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2’
“MBFGW2 is like going to a Greek restaurant and ordering a sleeve of unsalted saltines.”
Donald Trump, ‘London Has Fallen’ and the So-Bad-It’s-Good Candidacy
“A once-pure appreciation of misplaced passion, the hallmark of so-bad-it’s-good entertainment has been capitalistically leveraged.”
‘Whiskey Tango Foxtrot’: Empty Empowerment
“It’s not a bad movie, but no matter how long it spends in the war zone, it still feels like a tourist.”
Ryan Coogler and Black Intimacy
“Breaking the mold and raising his cinematic voice by embedding black intimacy in his movies, Coogler, in Creed and Fruitvale Station, uses mothers, girlfriends, children, squads of friends and Michael B. Jordan to create community.”
Review: Robert Eggers’ ‘The Witch’
“The Witch does for the woods what Jaws did for the ocean. They’re ruined for you.”