Category: Movies

Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child does one unique thing very well: It tells a story about abortion without any emotional trauma or hysterical moral wailing.

Obvious Child is the story of Donna (Jenny Slate), who gets pregnant after a drunken one-night stand and, given her complete lack of financial or emotional stability, decides to have an abortion. Predictable hijinks ensue, but more interestingly, women talk about their experiences with abortions, and none of them degenerate into tearful monologues about terrifying clinics or lifelong regret.

American Hustle opens with a balding and pot-bellied Christian Bale performing the intricate ritual of arranging his combover. There’s some obvious symbolism in his character, Irving Rosenfeld, pretending to be someone he’s not: He’s a con man, leading desperate people on with the promise of loans that will never materialize in exchange for some very real fees. As his partner and lover, Amy Adams masquerades as an English noblewoman with ties to British banks.

But the scene, full of glue and merkins and hairspray, also hints at one of the film’s weaknesses: It is very concerned with how it looks. The film is set in the late 1970s in New Jersey and Long Island, and director David O. Russell wants to make sure you know it. This was clear from the earliest promotional posters, which showed off the clothes, hairstyles, and, in the case of the female cast members, cleavage of the era.

Watching people suffer is funny.

Mel Brooks, who knew a thing or two about making funny movies, said “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” Bridesmaids is about people falling into the sewer of failure and disappointment.

Despite having one of the most misleading trailers I’ve ever seen – several scenes don’t even appear in the film – Bridesmaids is just as funny as you might expect, if not more so. But there’s little that can prepare you for how staggeringly depressing it is. While it’s a movie full of slapstick and silliness, it’s also about failure, loneliness, and the feeling that everyone else is getting on with their lives while you’re still stuck in the mud. Almost no one in the movie is happy, and everyone is envying someone else’s seemingly perfect life. It also features the most depressing cupcake scene ever filmed.

The Mighty Thor does not require a puny mortal origin story.

Superhero movies remain hot stuff in Hollywood, and we’re all going to have to accept it. Some of them are good, and some of them are bad, but one thing is certain: There are too many origin stories. Since studios would like to turn every superhero into a franchise, the first film in a theoretical series has to introduce and explain everything. And it all becomes rather tiring, because while the details are different, the song remains the same: Average guy (usually a nerd) lives his regular life until a life-changing event turns him into a costumed vigilante.

Spider-Man, Batman, and Iron Man have all done it with great success. Green Lantern and Captain America are going to try it later this summer. Regardless of the quality of the actual film, it often ends up feeling like two hours of setup so the second movie can get moving quickly.

But Thor isn’t an average superhero. He’s not some schmuck who suffered through a trauma or got exposed to the good kind of radiation. He’s a god. He’s been flying around and smashing people in the face with his giant hammer for thousands of years.