Tag: Comedy

3SMReviews: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

3SMReviews: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Alfonso Gomez-Rejon knows how cancer movies can go and he pushes Me and Earl and the Dying Girl in a different direction. I love how the screenplay retains the book’s focus on Greg’s self-loathing* something I was sure would be toned down. I also appreciate a cancer film where the patient isn’t chipper about her fate and a movie that manages to combine hilarity and tears in a completely organic fashion.

Verdict: Recommended

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home

*Possibly due to the fact that Jessie Andrews wrote both the book and the screenplay.

3SMReviews: Best Man Down

3SMReviews: Best Man Down
http://www.impawards.com/2013/best_man_down.html

Ted Koland’s Best Man Down is not a very good movie.* However, my enjoyment of this film overcame its detraction. Part of the credit goes to the plot (I’m always interested in films that examine nuances of friendship) and part of the credit goes to Addison Timlin who has full command of the screen as Ramsey, and Tyler Labine as the good-times (yet furtive) Lumpy.

Verdict: Skip, unless the things listed above sound good to you.

Cost: free from the Multnomah County Library
Where watched: at home

*The pacing is totally off and Jess Weixler’s character is fairly cardboard. At times I wasn’t really sure what was going on, and not in an intriguing way.

3SMR: Adam Sandler 100% Fresh

3SMR: Adam Sandler 100% Fresh

In 100% Fresh, Adam Sandler skips from topic to topic, for an internet version of what some people say about the weather: if you don’t like it, just wait 30 seconds. This was a successful strategy. I watched this for the last two songs (one dedicated to his wife, and a beautiful tribute to Chris Farley) but I didn’t know there would be a song about his bat mitzvah, which was also delightful.

Cost: Netflix Monthly Subscription ($7.99)
Where watched: at home, with Matt 

3SMR: The Good Place Season 2

3SMR: The Good Place Season 2
http://www.impawards.com/tv/good_place_ver2.html

While this is a movie review site, I’m happy to feature good TV, and The Good Place is very good TV. In season two, we get to see all of our characters grow, which isn’t always a thing in American Television. This show is funny,* visually interesting, and has Janet.**

Cost: Netflix monthly subscription fee ($7.99)
Where watched: at home with Matt.

*We knew Kristen Bell had good comedic timing from the funny parts of Veronica Mars, and it’s good to see her skills at work in this show.
**Janet is the best!

3SMReviews: Boy

3SMR: Boy

Taika Waititi is a fabulous director of children* and his talent is on full display in Boy, the story of a Alamein, a boy living in New Zealand in 1984.  Alamein tells his friends a lot of stories about the adventures his father is having, and then must reckon with the reality of who his father is, once he appears. Boy contains 80s touchstones, abounds with the earnest/slacker New Zealand accent, includes really great fantasy sequences, and is a movie that is a  masterpiece of the wonder and fantasy of childhood, while also doesn’t spare childhood’s dark places.

Cost: free via the Multnomah County Library’s Kanopy service (first movie watched via that platform!)
Where watched: at home with Matt when we were both feeling under the weather.

*As seen in the delightful The Hunt for the Wilderpeople

3SMReviews: Private Life

3SMR: Private Life

Tamara Jenkins’ Private Life is a sad and funny tale of a couple trying everything to become parents, specifically through fertility treatments. I cannot say enough about how good Kathryn Hahn is in this movie–she’s unrecognizable from the comedic roles I have loved her in, and incredibly real. Aside from being a movie worth watching, this sheds light on the high hopes sold by the fertility industry, something probably foreign to women who don’t want children, or who can easily conceive.

Cost: Netflix monthly subscription fee ($7.99)
Where watched: at home

3SMR: Community Season One

3SMR: Community Season One

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Back when I discovered Gillian Jacobs, everyone always referenced her work on Community, which I had never heard of. Having now watched the first season, I can say that not only is her work delightful, so is everyone else’s in this hilarious community-college-set comedy. While I have to sit through the will-they-or-won’t-they between Jacobs and McHale, (which got old waaaay back in the Sam and Diane days) it’s worth it for the antics of Glover and Pudi.

Cost: free from the Multnomah County Library
Where watched: at home

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