2011’s hockey comedy Goon wasn’t groundbreaking, but it was grounded—you could feel the shoosh of skates scraping across ice and smell the funky pads in the locker room. It had a casualness that allowed you to smile even when you weren’t laughing, and a subtle charm that seemed to grow with subsequent cable viewings. By […]
Vince Mancini
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Goon Was Great. Goon: Last of the Enforcers Sucks.
Well, This Is Disappointing
Most sports movies traffic in clichés. Goon: Last of the Enforcers can’t even decide which ones to use.
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Movie Review: Robert Pattinson Refuses to Sparkle in Good Time
Good Time has the keen eye for anthropology you find in a lot of Sundance movies—the casting feels both unconventional and authentic, and there’s an interest in subcultures that you don’t normally see on screen—but the beauty is that it packs this sensibility into a taut genre thriller.
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The Lamebrained Heist of Good Time
It’s Like a Knucklehead Fractal!
It’s like a knucklehead fractal!
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A Ghost Story Will Take You Somewhere, If You Let it
There are a lot of arthouse movies about grief and grieving, and most of them are bad. A Ghost Story is so much more than that, but to understand what writer/director David Lowery (Pete’s Dragon, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints) is playing at, you have to forget what you’ve learned from other grief narratives. A Ghost […]
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A Ghost Story Is Poetic in the Best Way
It Also Features Rooney Mara Eating an Entire Pie.
It also features Rooney Mara eating an entire pie.
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Must-See Movies of 2016: Everybody Wants Some!!
To close out the year, we’re taking a look back at some of our favorite movies of 2016. Check out what’s in theaters now in our Film section, and go here for movie times! Over the course of two hours, Everybody Wants Some!!, Richard Linklater’s “spiritual sequel” to 1993’s Dazed and Confused, goes from detestable […]
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Why Maggie’s Plan Is Better Than So Many Other Relationship Comedies
It feels unfair to compare a movie that’s as undeniably good as Maggie’s Plan to lesser contemporaries, but it’s hard not to see it as a corrective to so many other failed relationship comedies set in academia. Finally, here’s one that’s as funny as it is clever, that depicts pompous characters without itself being pompous. […]
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Maggie’s Plan: Fixing the Romcom
A Corrective to So Many Other Failed Relationship Comedies
A corrective to so many other failed relationship comedies.
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Neighbors 2: In Which Seth Rogen and His Four Male Co-Writers Try to See the College Greek System From a Female Perspective
How much you enjoy Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising depends on how much leeway you give it for having its heart in the right place—even when its brain is slightly addled, and even when it’s constrained by the limitations of its format. Neighbors 2 is a hell of an effort, see, to do something meaningful with […]
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Neighbors 2: They Actually Tried This Time!
Sure, It’s an Unnecessary Sequel—But It’s a Pretty Good Unnecessary Sequel
Sure, it’s an unnecessary sequel—but it’s a pretty good unnecessary sequel.
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Key and Peele Are Comedy Superstars. Keanu Is a First-Year Expansion Team.
In theory, there’s nothing wrong with a movie that’s a collection of sketches—plenty of great ones are. But of all the sketches collected in Key and Peele’s Keanu (which I saw in “in-progress” form at SXSW, though that descriptor seems merely a loophole to allow a public screening before the official premiere), there are none […]