REVIEW: Bad Santa [2003]

“Fraggle-stick car?” I tried to put a decade behind it and me, but not even that could turn my opinion on Bad Santa around. It’s just a mean-spirited, way-too-random account of a stereotypical alcoholic populated with other characters as ruthless as him or worse. The only role with a modicum of humanity is a borderline retarded kid who asks a ton of questions through a naïvely childish view on a perpetually cruel world. There’s a problem when the film’s biggest laugh comes courtesy of this boy running down the stairs…

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REVIEW: 3 Days of Normal [2013]

“Have a super day!!” The romantic comedy is derivative as a point of fact—there are only so many ways an unsuspecting boy and girl can meet and thaw before falling desperately in love. Settings change, periphery characters provide the big laughs, and you hope the spark is realistic and sweet enough to get you through the inevitability of their union. Add in a fish-out-of-water trope done to death across all genres, though, and you’d assume the end result would be nothing short of an obnoxious waste of your time. Well,…

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REVIEW: SubUrbia [1996]

“I don’t need a limousine to know who I am. At least I know I don’t know” Always having been a fan of Richard Linklater’s work, it confounded me that his film after indie darlings Dazed and Confused and Before Sunrise has never been released on dvd. SubUrbia is the kind of movie you hear that fans of his work love, but never found a place in cinema history. Flipping through the movie channels on tv, I happened across the film and could not stop watching until it was over.…

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