items tagged with Harry Connick Jr.

50/50

Director Jonathan Levine’s 50/50 casts Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a young man afflicted with a rare form of spinal cancer, and Seth Rogen as his loud, loutish, perpetually stoned best friend. Consequently, I expected the film’s title and my chances of actually enjoying the movie to be one and the same. It’s always great seeing Gordon-Levitt onscreen, but is there anyone left who isn’t longing for a break from Rogen’s braying, one-note shtick, even if, as he is here, the man isn’t just presumably but damn near literally playing himself? (50/50’s script is loosely autobiographical, and Rogen and author Will Reiser are real-life pals and frequent writing partners.)

THE UNINVITED

Based on a South Korean horror film from 2003, The Uninvited begins with ... .

Wait! Don't go! I swear, this one isn't that bad!

V FOR VENDETTA

A day after seeing it, I’m still a bit shaken by John McTeague’s graphic-novel adaptation V for Vendetta. Action blockbusters – not to mention action blockbusters based on comic books – have been so dour and pedestrian of late that I don’t know if I’ve fully grasped the extent of Vendetta’s greatness yet; it’s the kind of explosive, overwhelming work that gets better and better the more you think of it. The film is a little 1984, a little Phantom of the Opera, and, with its screenplay by the Wachowski brothers, more than a little Matrix-y, but it casts an extraordinary, devastating spell. It may be the most fully realized film of a graphic novel the genre has yet seen, a movie you want to talk (and argue) about long after the closing credits.