items tagged with Adam Sandler

DOUBT

Based on his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, writer/director John Patrick Shanley's period drama Doubt - set in 1964, and concerning a nun who suspects a priest of sexual misconduct with an altar boy - isn't much of a movie. Shanley's previous directorial effort was 1990's Joe Versus the Volcano, and it's a shame he wasn't able to get in more practice over the last 18 years; in an attempt to gussy up the visual blandness that accompanies most theatrical adaptations, Shanley opts for a series of high- and low-angle shots and symbolic thunder, lightning, and wind effects that oftentimes make Doubt resemble a satire of a low-budget horror flick. And it's still visually bland.

DEATH RACE

Inspired by the 1975 thriller Death Race 2000, writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson's Death Race isn't much of a movie. But you don't go to it expecting a movie; you go expecting a bone-crunching, brain-splattering, ass-kicking cinematic video game, and that's exactly what you get.

[Yes, we're aware that this is the second week in a row in which the movie-review headline is some sort of "Superman" pun. Considering how many superhero movies have already been released this summer, we're impressed that we've kept the tally to merely two.]

HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY

I found Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy II: The Golden Army considerably more entertaining than the writer/director's 2004 comic-book adaptation Hellboy, but let's keep in mind that I didn't really care for Hellboy much at all.

YOU DON'T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN

The latest Adam Sandler vehicle, You Don't Mess with the Zohan, is crass, infantile, moronic, and, on almost any level you can name, pretty damned offensive. I could kill myself for having so much fun at it.

21

Based on the Ben Mezrich nonfiction Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions, the film 21 boasts a far snappier title, yet I wouldn't recommend viewing it if you're even a day older than that. It's not often that a true story is re-told with such aggressive fraudulence, but 21 is a rare and rather spectacular failure - one in which your bullshit detectors wail at you early on and don't stop until you're rendered nearly deaf. The movie is directed by Robert Luketic, who also helmed Legally Blonde, and it's all just slightly less believable than Legally Blonde.