Before the shutdown brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, my life and free time were largely consumed by viewing and covering the latest theater openings and film releases. So when I would hear glowing reactions to long-form dramatic television series, I would make mental note of them, wondering when in the world I would ever have time to catch up and view them. … [Read more...]
‘Game Night’ has a monopoly on other people’s ideas
While enjoying, to a point, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein’s Game Night, I spent much of the picture wishing it had gone in a completely different, and subtler, direction. It’s easy to imagine some other project titled Game Night gestating and then languishing in the primordial muck of preproduction: a lo-fi, low-budget, semi-improvised mumblecore ensemble about a … [Read more...]
Sophomoric, witless ‘Office Christmas Party’ is a waste of fine comics
Seth Rogen makes funny look easy. This time a year ago, the comic actor-producer’s gloriously bawdy The Night Before was jingling its balls on thousands of screens. At the time, I wrote in this publication that “few comedies in recent memory measure up to middle hour of ‘The Night Before’ in its hedonistic inspiration, its rat-a-tat barrage of brilliant material, one joke … [Read more...]