MovieSorter

loading Title loading Tws summary loading Trust ▲ loading Year Viewable
Everybody Wants...
Really Great 66 Points 2016

An all-time great college comedy, EWS!! riffs on pre-PC male privilege in all its semi-decadent glory. It imagines a nationally-ranked baseball team at a third-tier Texas college – the Bad Habit Bears, basically.

As a guy who was a sophomore in 1980, when Richard Linklater’s movie is set, I …

Full Review »
WikChip Video Rappers Driving
The Lady in the...
Pretty Bad 66 Points 2015

Even the great Maggie Smith can’t save The Lady in the Van. Let’s repeat: Dame Maggie can’t save it! Perhaps that’s because she plays an angry old woman who’s beyond saving, sad as that common sight is.

Disclosure: I saw The Lady in the Van on the little tilt-down screens of a 737. It kind…

Full Review »
WikChip Image Dame Maggie gets wasted.
X-Men: Apocalypse
Really Great 66 Points 2016

Now this is what a marvelous blockbuster should be. No surprise, as Marvel Entertainment always delivers. And talk about a monumental origin story, one that also harks back to existing plots! Wow. Plus, given that all the X-Men come out to play – all of them – it’s also a sequel in a way. Double …

Full Review »
WikChip Image JLaw's sexy mutant goes nightstalking.
Eat That Questi...
Good 66 Points 2016

Eat That Question is well titled. Frank Zappa in His Own Words is FZ waxing loquacious, repeatedly. Zappa, the pugnacious, contradictory and iconoclastic rockstar, indeed the consummate rockstar, trades heavily on his privilege and arrogance, by turns funny, shocking and ridiculous, a Trump t…

Full Review »
WikChip Video Václav Havel was a big Zappa fan.
The Infiltrator
Really Great 66 Points 2016

Coke culture from its Eighties heyday comes alive in The Infiltrator, a biopic that profiles the Medellin Cartel’s apparent money launderer. This guy lived la vida loca in all its money grubbing, slimy glory.

Bryan Cranston is nails as real-life U.S. Customs agent Robert Mazur, who went de…

Full Review »
WikChip Video Cranston talks Infiltrator with Colbert
Lost in America
Good 66 Points 1985

Lost in America’s reputation exceeds its reality. Modestly funny in 1985, its four memorable scenes live on in the mind’s eye, but fail to sustain this mere 91 minute movie. Turns out its nest-egg wasn’t enough.

Not that it doesn’t have a great line here and there.

Don’t use “nest”! D…

Full Review »
WikChip Video "Oh I know, you mean the $100,000 box."
Hands of Stone
Good 66 Points 2016

Hands of Stone is a ham-fisted biopic of boxing great Roberto Durán. Raging Bull it’s not, notwithstanding Robert De Niro in a major role. That said, it does provide clear insight into Durán’s impoverished childhood, rise to prominence and fall from grace after his “No Mas” capitulation to Suga…

Full Review »
WikChip Image Ana de Armas has star quality.
Rain Man
Really Great 66 Points 1988

Who’s on first? Tom Cruise to start, until Dustin Hoffman outshines him in an acting duet for the ages. Rain Man is all that and much more, a wonderful movie full of charm, humanity and insight. It won the Big Four Oscars in 1989 – Best Picture, Best Actor (Dustin Hoffman), Best Director and Be…

Full Review »
WikChip Video The Oscars were once revered.
Drunk Stoned Br...
Great 66 Points 2015

National Lampoon – the maidenhead of post-modern comedy – was the ultimate risqué magazine for “well-to-do nobodies” in the Seventies. Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon lists in its title four conditions associated with the Lampoon, another being being ROFL. This gr…

Full Review »
WikChip Video Doug Kenney, comedy genius
Ferris Bueller'...
Very Good 66 Points 1986

Fun for kids of all ages, Ferris Bueller’s harmless hi-jinks, energetic panache and gentle farce make it the ultimate ditch day movie. Matthew Broderick will be forever associated with the title character, a charming conniver prone to belting out a Beatles song in the middle of a parade.

Jo…

Full Review »
WikChip Video Twist and Shout Ferris