items tagged with Thomas Lennon

BATTLESHIP

In the latest effects-heavy entertainment by Hancock director Peter Berg, a group of heroic U.S. Navy and Japanese-military officers team up to fight a race of marauding aliens, four of whose spaceships have crash-landed in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Battleship? This thing should’ve been called KerPlunk.

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.)

CEDAR RAPIDS

Prior my Saturday screening of Cedar Rapids, I’d seen 18 2011 releases, and my favorite of the mostly-slash-wildly underwhelming bunch – by a considerable margin – was Justin Bieber: Never Say Never. It’s tempting, then, to want to overpraise director Miguel Arteta’s raunchy yet genial comedy simply for being, you know, good.

17 AGAIN

If there were any lingering doubts as to whether the body-switching comedy 17 Again was tailored specifically for heartthrob Zac Efron, you should know that in the movie's very first scene, Efron's character, Mike O'Donnell, not only appears as the star player of a high school basketball team, but quickly breaks into a spontaneous, energetic dance routine with the cheerleaders. That's right, folks! It's High School Musical: Big-ger and Better!

In order of bearability ...