Updated: Friday, August 8, 2008 at 11:51am
“When life gives you lemons, just say ‘Fuck the lemons,’ and bail,” Peter Bretter’s stoner surfing instructor (Paul Rudd) flippantly tells him off the coast of Hawaii as he struggles to get up on his board to ride the waves (of life). Maybe this surfer-bum pseudo-koan is meant to inspire, to provide feelings of hopeful renewal to the film’s hapless center of...
Many experience excitement, shock and even dread as they await the birth of their offspring, but Morgan Spurlock is different. Motivated by the news of his wife’s pregnancy, he embarks on a journey to make the world a better place for his yet-to-be-born child by capturing the most notorious man of our age: Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda and architect of 9/11...
“88 Minutes” delivers everything that made horror and suspense action movies like “Saw” or “Speed” successful — in a laughably watered-down version. It begins with a man elaborately binding a girl and trussing her up by one leg using ropes and pulleys. After muffling her cries with a rag soaked in halofane, he proceeds to surgically cut her open and rape...
This week saw the debut of two student-produced films, “Half Court Shots” by Maxwell Lanman ’10 and “Everyone Who Has Ever Lived Here,” the senior thesis of Michael Nedelman ’08. “Half Court Shots” runs like a YTV comedy, employing “The Office”-like situational humor and playing off social stereotypes to appeal to a student crowd. In contrast...
With a tagline that may seem relevant to Yalies, the newly released “Smart People,” directed by newcomer Noam Murro, makes the claim, “Sometimes smart people have the most to learn.” Slow-moving and uninspiring, the film’s tagline should read, “Sometimes smart people should learn to be more interesting.” Class is in session with Professor Lawrence...
Let’s face it: You’d enjoy watching a cute little boy playing soccer. You might even pay to sit in a dark theater and eat popcorn while doing so. But if you’re expecting a more meaningful experience than that from “O Ano em Que Meus Pais Sairam de Ferias” (“The Year My Parents Went on Vacation”), you will be disappointed. The film, directed by Cao Hamburger...
Let’s say you loved Man Man’s 2006 release, “Six Demon Bag.” You listened to it obsessively, went to their concerts, tapped your feet to its frantic, antic rhythms under your desk at work, hummed it’s sneakily catchy melodies as you walked down the street. Let’s say you loved it so much that you committed it to memory and could more or less reproduce it on...
Like any good documentary, “Beyond Borders: The Debate Over Human Migration” seeks to shed new light on an important, controversial topic and its less obvious but very relevant implications; it scours in search of diverse opinions on a given matter. In this case, the film struggles to answer the question: “Is it a basic human right to migrate?” True, many serious...
Who knew Jim Halpert could throw a ball like that? Jim Halpert, known as actor John Krasinski by those not “Office”-obsessed, stars alongside George Clooney and Renee Zellweger in “Leatherheads,” directed by Clooney himself. Together, the seasoned expert, the grown-up blongenue and the boy wonder from Brown carry a ’20s-era football flick in a pretty and...
You might laugh a little and cry a lot, but don’t think this movie will make you ponder too deeply about illegal immigration. Though “Under the Same Moon,” directed by Patricia Riggen, does a lot of talking about the subject, the heart of this film is about the separation and reunion of a boy and his mother. The opening scene presents Carlitos (Adrian Alonso) and...
