I am serious…and don’t call me Shirley.
Joe (Michael Caine), aging, out of a job, no pension, defaults on his mortgage and is on the verge of losing his house. To solve this problem and stick it to those who wronged him in the process, he decides to recruit his friends (Morgan Freeman and Alan Arkin) to help him rob a bank.
Zach Braff’s direction in Going in Style yields a social problem comedy that is Continue reading Going in Style (2017) Movie Review
A seeming momma’s boy with blunt high standards and commitment issues (Kieran Culkin), two dopey lackeys with differing levels of alcohol intake (Kevin Corrigan and Martin Starr), and a take-no-prisoners, fast-talking white collar type (Nick Offerman). In short, a bunch of cold, insensitive pricks.
Thus is the cast of characters initially established in Infinity Baby. They all work at different rungs of the ladder for the eponymous company, whose aim is to get rid of thousands of babies who never age. A botched stem cell experiment, compliments of Mitsubishi.
The film fully acknowledges the laundry list of flaws that this infinity baby premise presents. In fact, it Continue reading Infinity Baby (2017) Movie Review
CHiPs. California Highway Patrol. Also, an ’80s television show starring Erik Estrada that is no longer culturally relevant.
There is not much to say about CHiPs, so I will try and keep this short. For a silly reboot comedy, this film about two motorcycle police officers goes dark in weird atonal ways. Heroin, sex addiction, and suicide are all introduced as plot devices within the first 10 minutes of the film.
As a comedy, the film is, by and large, serviceable. Continue reading Chips (2017) Movie Review
A father’s (Peter Simonischek) desperate, juvenile attempts at reaching his over-worked white collar daughter (Sandra Huller) is the subject of Toni Erdmann. Dressing up in fake teeth and a wig, the father becomes the titular character, a fictional businessman who is occasionally a life coach and occasionally a German ambassador. He follows his daughter around, sending her work life in flux during a time where securing a client is pivotal.
Toni Erdmann is a film that boasts its Continue reading Toni Erdmann (2016) Movie Review
Ray Wentworth (Bob Odenkrik) is a greeting card writer. The best, if you ask him. We first see him looking down the barrel of the camera in closeup, waxing poetic about the poetics of card writing. Writing novels are for hacks who cannot edit themselves. Cards are the real challenge.
Following this, Ray is Continue reading Girlfriend’s Day (2017) Movie Review
Son of the headmaster of his prep school, Jason Hodges (Alex Saxon) gets more than he bargains for during a mundane field trip to the U.S. Mint. While Jason attempts to get the school “hacker” to change his bio grade, his father is arrested for embezzling.
In the fallout of this, the school is forced to enact cuts to all extracurricular activities. And this is an adequate amount of parts for a Continue reading Coin Heist (2017) Movie Review
In New York, 1944, a wealthy socialite named Florence Foster Jenkins (Meryl Streep) takes a fancy to opera singing. With her husband’s (Hugh Grant) aid, she reunites with an old vocal coach (David Haig) and hires a young pianist (Simon Helberg). To the pianist’s dismay, his first rehearsal with Florence yields the revelation of her sheer inability to carry a tune.
This initial rehearsal scene is a Continue reading Florence Foster Jenkins (2016) Movie Review
Ove (Rolf Lassgard) is rigid, resolute, decisive, cynical, cantankerous, embittered, emboldened, unfriendly. But mostly he is a man of simple means who wants things just to his liking. He doesn’t like people driving through his neighborhood, as it is strictly forbidden. He argues over the coupon price of a bouquet of flowers that he leaves for his deceased wife. And, when he loses his job of 43 years to a pair of 20-somethings, he decides to hang himself from his living room ceiling.
Except, each time he tries, he is interrupted by his new neighbors: a family who means well in spite of pushing all of Ove’s buttons.
The narrative of an elderly man hardened over the grief for Continue reading A Man Called Ove (2016) Movie Review
Office Christmas Party. No synopsis required.
Except, the film presents itself as if there needs to be a thorough plot for this raucous party comedy. A struggling tech company faces layoffs due to sibling rivalry, the newly divorced CTO (Jason Bateman) is…yadda yadda yadda.
Office Christmas Party is slow to get started. The premise and characters are Continue reading Office Christmas Party (2016) Movie Review
Kevin Smith’s latest feature, the blatantly Canadian-set Yoga Hosers, feels at first like an unofficial Clerks 3 graduated to a new generation to include Instagram, yoga, an attempt at current slang, and a female empowerment angle. Indeed, most characters are introduced through an Instagram insert that adds no information to the character that was not already presented through narrative context.
The film is also a horror movie about bratwurst Nazis. And a musical, kind of. It paints Canada like a fantasy world completely alien to American audiences, so alien that Continue reading Yoga Hosers (2016) Movie Review
CineFiles Movie Reviews 