items tagged with Susan Sarandon

Before our cineplexes, and this column, become completely inundated with family-oriented holiday fare such as Treasure Planet, the latest Harry Potter, and The Santa Clause 2 (which is already in release ... how is it that holiday movies, like Christmas decorations at the mall, now routinely arrive the day after Halloween?), let’s take a brief look at some of autumn’s more adult works, a couple of which – unsurprisingly – have already left a theatre near you.

PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE

Punch-Drunk Love is exactly what its writer-director, Paul Thomas Anderson, claims it to be – “an art-house Adam Sandler movie” – yet I can’t be alone in thinking: What’s the point of that? Is Anderson merely trying to show up the hacks who’ve directed Sandler in other films? (Again: What’s the point?) All throughout, the movie is beautifully filmed, exquisitely composed, and filled with Anderson’s uncanny knack for stretching a scene out longer than it should humanly run and making you hang on every delirious second of it.

THE BANGER SISTERS

The Banger Sisters is a textbook example of the alchemy that can occur when two movie stars, stuck in a rather worthless vehicle, say, “What the hell, let’s run with it.”