At some point, seeing a commercial for Joyful Noise, you may have had flashbacks to Whoopi in a habit and started calling the new film Sister Act 3. This is completely acceptable because I definitely did that. Sitting in the theater watching Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton headline a cast of people you’ve never heard [...]

It is a fact known by all and sundry that Meryl Streep could play Adolph Hitler and make the man seem human, sympathetic, and likable. To this end, The Iron Lady (or as my mother hilariously calls it, Iron Maiden) is incredibly successful. Sure, the helmet hair, hand bag, and fake teeth help, but at the [...]

Do not, under any circumstances, go in to see We Bought A Zoo because you love the story of the family that worked together to purchase and run a zoo in Devon, England. Their story is a beautiful one touched by a tragedy. It is heartwarming. There has been a book. The BBC made a [...]

A few years ago, fresh off a surprise Oscar win for Juno, Diablo Cody was enlisted to write a Sweet Valley High remake. Since then she’s released the underrated Jennifer’s Body and the uneven but brilliantly experimental United States of Tara. She’s also signed on to adapt a remake of Evil Dead. And she’s done [...]

In 1989 my dad took a wee little Alex and company to see Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. At the time I was young enough to think that an Indiana Jones movie just came out every few years. Like how Star Trek Next Generation came back every fall. I decided while watching it that [...]

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is a funny film. Not as in a curiosity but as in humorous. Scenes in this film had the audience around me chuckling with laughter. Once it was a bit of wryly expressed hatred spewed from Christopher Plummer’s mouth. Another time it was Blomkvist tripping while running from a [...]

I’m watching Tom Cruise crawl around the outside of the tallest building in the world. He’s wedged into the structure of the building and I’m seeing him from the safe vantage point on the inside. Behind him is a gorgeous expanse of desert and glass and a great looming cloud of CGI sand. I know [...]

Michael Fassbender’s Brandon moves through Shame with this seething rage. Scene to scene he’s waiting to explode. But he squashes it down. Becomes an automaton who cares about nothing but the next orgasm. His sex life. His rage. They’re things he’s meant to control, because they’re the only things he can control. Films about addiction [...]

For me, Jim Henson’s Muppets have always represented the power of the absurd, the importance of friendship, the glories of being different, and, more personally – the fundamental importance of following your art. I know, right?! At my heart, I’m secretly this very wistful, sweet person – you’re shocked. I was beyond psyched when I started [...]

Okay so picture this. It was 2008 and Breaking Dawn came out and I was clutching pearls because the children, people. Think of them. They’d read these books and think that the ideal man was all tall and made of marble and disrespectful of boundaries and a stalker. I’m pretty sure I wrote some incendiary [...]