Review: The Beanie Bubble Charts a Toy Phenomenon and Its Founders’ Epic Rise and Fall
You can add Beanie Babies to the growing list of cultural phenomena of a particular era that are getting a film origin story. Or, in the case of The Beanie […]
Review: Disney’s Haunted Mansion Gives the Beloved Theme Park Ride a Welcome New Narrative
When I was a kid, one of the first pieces of vinyl I ever owned was an audio version of Disney’s The Haunted Mansion, containing all the music, voices and […]
Review: Ellie Kemper and Cast Don’t Get Much to Work With in Mediocre Rom-Com Happiness for Beginners
Much like with her debut film, The Volunteer, writer/director Vicky Wright chooses to place a woman in an apathetic fog at the center of her sophomore effort, Happiness for Beginners […]
Recap: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (S16, Ep5) — Stellar Cameos Can’t Save Dull Episode About Celebrity Liquor
Well, that was disappointing. When I learned that none other than Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul were going to be on Always Sunny this week, I was very excited. This […]
Recap: The Idol (S1, Ep4) — Penultimate Episode Painfully Drags Its Way Towards the Finale
This one wasn’t even fun. I really, truly hated last week’s episode of The Idol with a passion that I haven’t felt for bad TV this year. After two decent […]
Recap: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (S16, Ep4) — Dennis Delights in Exerting Control Over the Gang
If there’s one thing you can count on when it comes to Always Sunny, it’s that Dennis (Glenn Howerton) always gets at least one episode to be a complete and […]
Review: They Cloned Tyrone Pops Visually, and as a Sharp Parody of Conspiracy Movies
There’s just enough crazy going on in this directing debut from Juel Taylor (writer of Creed II, Shooting Stars, and of course, Space Jam: A New Legacy) to make it […]
Review: Family Secrets and Childhood Anxiety Don’t Add Much to Second-Rate Horror Film Cobweb
Adding to the long list of family dramas couched in the framework of a horror movie, Cobweb (the feature filmmaking debut of Samuel Bodin) tells the story of 8-year-old Peter […]
Review: Earth Mama Follows a Young Mother Determined to Do Right by Her Kids, Even When It’s Hard
Although many of the details are different, writer/director Savanah Leaf’s directorial feature debut portrait of Black motherhood, Earth Mama, feels like it’s cut from the same layered cloth as A.V. Rockwell’s […]
Recap: The Idol (S1, Ep3) — Abysmal Episode Showcases the Worst the Series Could Possibly Be
I’ve been going pretty easy on The Idol when compared to a lot of the other criticisms of it. People really hate this show, don’t they? I don’t really blame […]
Recap: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (S16, Ep3) — The Gang Deals With Curses on a Banal Episode
I was hopeful after the pretty solid season premiere of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia—it wasn’t perfect, but it was better than almost everything Always Sunny has put out over […]
Review: New Documentary Joke Man Chronicles Comic Jackie Martling from Stand-Up to The Howard Stern Show
As someone who has been listening on and off to various incarnations of The Howard Stern Show since Stern was a local DJ in Washington, D.C. in the very early […]