items tagged with Megan Mullally

FAME

Not long into Kevin Tancharoen's remake of Fame, there's a brief sequence that completely underscores the difficulty - if not impossibility - of successfully updating Alan Parker's R-rated musical drama from 1980 for young audiences in 2009.

FANTASTIC FOUR

Fantastic Four is the first comic-book adaptation in ages that doesn’t seem ashamed to be a comic-book adaptation, for which I applaud it. No one could possibly argue that the film is better-made than something such as Batman Begins, but I, for one, certainly preferred it; given the choice between this obvious, goofy time-waster or Christopher Nolan’s dour mope-fest, I’d go with Fantastic Four every time. What we might lose in subtext, technical precision, and performance quality is more than made up for in inspiration and good humor, and the film has a true sense of playfulness. Finally – screen superheroes who are actually enjoying themselves!

ALONG CAME POLLY

There’s a pretty funny movie lurking within Along Came Polly, but unfortunately, it bears little relation to the slack and obvious one Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston are stuck in.

15 MINUTES

Near the start of writer/director John Herzfeld’s 15 Minutes, two tourists-cum-thugs, the Czech Emil (Karel Rodin) and the Russian Oleg (Oleg Taktarov), murder a pair of acquaintances and torch their apartment, while the movie-loving Oleg videotapes the crime.