(This is an extended version of a review originally written for the Portland Mercury)

I can’t decide whether The Big Wedding is a bad rom-com or if it’s actually a brilliant prank on the genre. When boring yuppie women plunk down their money for another beige Katherine Heigl movie with ‘Wedding’ in the title, I can’t imagine they expected to see Robert DeNiro going down on Susan Sarandon in the first scene, DeNiro filmed in POV from the perspective of Susan Sarandon’s vagina, him licking his lips like he’s craving a french dip sandwich with extra jus, his leering face peering over the tops of her pulled-down panties framed between the twin peaks of her splayed knees. I like to imagine a whole bachelorette party of them, holding each other’s hair back, puking cosmos in the bushes, crying and slobbering over the bait and switch. “WHAT THE F, LINDSAY, I THOUGHT YOU SAID THIS WAS A WEDDING MOVIE!” (*spew*)

It feels almost as if writer/director Justin Zackham wanted to make this slyly subversive sex comedy for grandparents -  “American Pie for sexagenarians,” as my old buddy Laremy described it – but was only allowed to if he cloaked it in the trappings of a generic rom-com, throwing it off the tallest rom-com tree and hitting every cliché on the way down. The result is a bizarre amalgam in which a 69-year-old Robert DeNiro brags about “laying pipe” on Diane Keaton and calls her “one of the great c*nts of the 19th century” all within the context of a wedding rom-com that otherwise could’ve been Frankensteined together from outtakes of Love Actually and She’s Just Not That Into You.

Here’s an abridged list of rom-com tropes present in The Big Wedding:

Read the rest of this entry »

You may remember a while back that Lindsay Lohan was supposedly attached to a biopic about Deepthroat porn star Linda Lovelace. That project, sadly, fell through before the crew even had a chance to experience the joy of working with a mature professional like Lindsay. Now we have Lovelace, directed by Howl directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, and starring Lindsay Lohan’s Mean Girls co-star Amanda Seyfried. Ah, Mean Girls, remember when Lindsay was the star and Amanda Seyfried was making her debut playing the dumb chick? There’s really no better illustration of their respective career paths than this.

Anyway, Lovelace is currently looking for a distributor at Sundance, and you can watch a clip below. It features creepy Wes Bentley asking her about the first time she had sex. She talks about her vagina as a delicate flower that opens in the sun and gets all loosened up to the point that it looks like she’s about to take her top off and let the creepy guy take pictures of her. Is this how Terry Richardson does it? Anyway, it’s an inspirational story of self-acceptance that every young girl should watch.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tom Hooper’s 160-minute adaptation of Les Misérables, aka the Olympics of Piss-Holding, is a “sung-through” musical, meaning there’s no spoken dialog, only singing. In keeping with the style of the film, I decided to format my review to the tune of “All Star,” by San Jose’s finest sun-pop four piece, Smash Mouth. Enjoy.

(*clears throat, tunes guitar*) (*feedback noise*)

Sooome BODY once TOLD me, the SOOONGS were gonna BORE me, I AIN’T a cultured DUDE just a GUUUUUEST…
Anne was LOOKin kinda GLUM with her HAAAAIR up in a BUN, and some DIRT on her FACE, yeah she’s POOR, now… (*DJ scratching*)

Well, the songs start comin’ and they don’t stop comin, BLADDER ’bout to burst gonna piss my pants HONEY
Diggin’ that plot about RE-DEMPT-TION, their WIGS get gross and your HEART gets CHuUUuBBED..

Read the rest of this entry »

The trailer for Les Miserables is here, from The King’s Speech director Tom Hooper, and as you can see, it is going to win ALL OF THE OSCARS! Don’t believe me? This is only a partial list of the things you can expect to see in Les Miserables:

• POVERTY!

• SINGING!

• FRENCH!

• WHITE PEOPLE HAVING AFFAIRS!

• HATS!

• CRYING ANNE HATHAWAY!

• FAMOUS ACTORS LOOKING FILTHY!

• FINGERLESS GLOVES!

• A PRECOCIOUS CHILD!

• HELENA BONHAM CARTER LOOKING HOMELESS!

Sorry, other movies, Les Miserables is winning all of your awards. Somewhere, Ben Affleck is sadly putting his beard on a shelf saying to himself, “Next time, old friend. Next time.”

Read the rest of this entry »

You guys, I look at this banner image and actually feel bad for Topher Grace. That’s how bad this is. Just imagine if they combined ALL YOUR FAVORITE F*CKED-OUT ROM-COM PLOTS into ONE SOULLESS VACCUUM OF A CHARDONNAY FART?!?

THIS SUMMER! KATHERINE HEIGL QUEEFS INTO YOUR EYES, EARS, AND MOUTH! ROBERT DENIRO’S AGENT TRADES HIS LAST SHRED OF CREDIBILITY FOR AN EIGHT-BALL! AMANDA SEYFRIED SOMETHING SOMETHING DONKEY NOISE!

Read the rest of this entry »