“Anders has been counted out for so long that his sudden reappearance becomes more of an inconvenience than a welcome reunion. Nobody wants to make much of an effort because he’s probably just going to let them all down again. So why even bother? That’s the awful, existential question posed by Oslo, August 31st.” – The Improper Bostonian, 07/25/2012
“A mashup of four disconnected shorts, this picture feels as though Allen was rifling through his desk drawer and came across some unfinished New Yorker pieces, then fashioned them after Italian omnibus films from the 1960s. Midnight in Paris was profound in a deceptively breezy way. To Rome With Love is just plain breezy, but I didn’t mind.” – The Improper Bostonian, 07/04/2012
“Scafaria is trying something interesting here by positioning stock formula beats in a pre-apocalyptic landscape. But the scope narrows as the film goes along. There’s an entire world out there that’s just about to end, and this movie zooms in on the two least interesting people in it.” – The Improper Bostonian, 06/20/2012
“A glorious throwback to those sweaty, profane, cheerfully violent underdog movies of the 1970s—back when onscreen jocks were all foul-mouthed drunks with awful facial hair and ugly one-night-stands. Forget Miracle, this one would rather be Slap Shot. I laughed so hard, I almost injured myself. My distinguished colleague fell out of his chair.” – The Improper Bostonian, 04/11/2012
“Fast, funny and smarter than its dunce-cap demeanor initially lets on, when it gets really interesting 21 Jump Street becomes more like a dude-comedy remake of Francis Ford Coppola’s Peggy Sue Got Married, wondering what you’d do differently if given a second crack at high school.” – The Improper Bostonian, 03/28/2012
“Just once I’d like to see a movie in which a man and a woman can be platonic friends without hooking up. Friends With Kids tries awfully hard to trumpet its bold irreverence, while at the same time settling for such boring plot mechanics and conventional Hollywood morality that it might as well star Katherine Heigl.” – The Improper Bostonian, 03/14/2012
“Are we at last prepared to admit that Woody Harrelson has grown into one of the greatest actors of his generation? Lean, insinuating and spouting some of Ellroy’s most colorful invective, Harrelson leers and slurs his way through the movie. Always teetering on the edge of violence, he’s odious and magnetic.” – The Improper Bostonian, 02/15/12
“The film warps a moment of unspeakable horror into a digestible fable, with a moral delivered by Sandra Bullock. When 9/11 inevitably becomes a national holiday devoted to sales at mattress discounters and used-car lots, we can all look back on cheapjack movies like Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and thank them for paving the way.” – The Improper Bostonian, 01/18/12
“Even if I was amused by how Serkis’ besotted sea captain consumes whiskey the way Popeye consumes spinach—it’s a fallacy that you can remember what you knew when you were blackout drunk just by getting wasted again. I’ve been disproving this theory on an almost weekly basis since my senior prom.” – The Improper Bostonian, 12/28/2011
“Young Adult is remarkable for the way that it espouses two seemingly contradictory toxic worldviews. On one hand, the film is a mean-spirited revenge fantasy, in which the girl who was prettier and more popular than you in high school returns home as a shrew. At the same time, we must suffer the movie’s septic condescension toward small-town life.” – The Improper Bostonian, 12/14/2011
SPLICED PERSONALITY 