Oh SNL, you rib us bloggers so perfectly. I love this because of how frighteningly accurate it is of so many snarks out there on the interwebs. And for my latest takes on movies and such, check out my new site, the canler blog. It’s rarely written while clutching an iced latte, but I think you’ll like it nonetheless. Enjoy.
Adventurland is the story of James Brennan, a recent college graduate with a noggin full of impeccable vocabulary and lofty esotericisms. When his father takes a pay cut at work, his trip to Europe is called off and his fall plans for grad school are put in jeopardy, leading him to a summer job at the local theme park whose name is the film’s title. There, of course, he falls in love, learns more about himself, and meets all kinds of wacky characters along the way in this refined coming of age comedy.
Setting aside (most of) the raunch and raucousness of 2007’sSuperbad, writer/director Greg Mottola offers us a view of young adults that has become frighteningly rare in Hollywood. Grounded yet hopeful, with limited but sufficient resources, James and his love interest, Em, are relatable and realistic twenty-somethings, not overly ironic Napoleon Dynamites or vacuous shells like those found on NBC’s failedQuarterlife (does anyone even remember that show?). It’s hard to describe their trials without giving away much of the film’s draw, so let’s mostly take a look at the who instead of the what. Continue reading on the candler blog…
It’s entirely possible that I’ve seen this film before, but it’s also possible that I never swallowed it down all in one sitting. I’ll be brief:
There is only one thing not to love about Martin Brest’s Scent of a Woman: the very serious hunk of jarlsberg that must be downed while watching it. Certainly, the film reeks of early 1990s overwritten performance-vehicle sentimental pieces of cheese whiz. But that goes down much better if you take it with a grain of salt. Read on…
A solid if unoriginal indie flick with moving performances and a tight, quirky script is what I had hoped to see at the movies. Instead, I saw Sunshine Cleaning, which plays like an idea trying desperately hard to find a story.
The film follows Rose Lorkowski, played by Amy Adams, a down on her luck single mother in Albuquerque who makes ends meat by cleaning houses. Rose’s sister, Norah, is a former punk-kid who never grew up, can’t hold down a job, and lives with their idiosyncratic father, played with respectable charm by Alan Arkin. When Rose’s police officer boyfriend, who is married, tells her how much money there is to be made in cleaning up messy crime scenes, a lightbulb goes off and the tiny glint of a plot begins to form. Of course, the two sisters start a business cleaning up crime scenes while dealing with their own emotional hangups.