Because Everybody Else Has One

The week of major literary adaptations by actors-turned-directors starts with Daniel from Freaks and Geeks doing Steinbeck. What could go wrong? This review is also up at Channel 24 . What it's about During the Great Depression, a pair of activists involve themselves in the struggles of desperate workers by getting them to strike for fair wages. What we thought In Dubious Battle is hardly the Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden or Of Mice and Men in the canon of great novels by premier American writer, John Steinbeck, as it is known for concentrating far more on its message than on its story or characters. At least, that seems to be the general consensus. I admit, I haven't read it or any of Steinbeck's novels (he's always been near the top of my must read list but I still haven't gotten round to him) so I certainly can't compare the novel to the film but, based purely on the evidence on display here, it's hard to argue with that consensus. ...

Who knew that Ewan McGregor had balls this big... This review is also up at Channel 24 . What it's about Seymour “the Swede” Levov is the envy of his local Jewish community as he follows his years as the most popular kid in high school with an adult life that includes his taking over his father's massively successful clothing business and having seemingly the perfect family life with his (non-Jewish) beauty-pageant wife and doting daughter. As his daughter comes of age and the 1960s rage on, however, the Swede's perfect life comes crumbling down. What we thought The acclaimed, Pulitzer-prize winning novel on which this film is based is one of those “classic” novels that utterly defeated me. I made it halfway through before the sheer misanthropic self-indulgence of Philip Roth's magnum opus had me throw up my hands in defeat and turn towards something a bit easier to swallow – something like War and Peace, perhaps (though, not really). Even after ha...

Not even bronze. This review is also up at Channel 24 . What it's about Based very loosely on true events, a gold prospector, desperate for one more chance at striking it big, joins forces with a geologist to find gold in the jungles of Indonesia. Is what they find there, however, to good to be true? What we thought Though a step up from the last movie starring Matthew McConaughey as a man in search of gold (the pretty but stupidly vacuous Fool's Gold), Gold takes one part Romancing the Nile (minus the romance), one part the Wolf of Wall Street and one part, oddly enough, Fool's Gold and churns out something hopelessly and profoundly mediocre. McConaughey himself is pretty great, of course, as the “McConaussence” shows no sign of slowing down, especially when he eerily but presumably unintentionally channels his former True Detective co-star, Woody Harrelson, but he's the only remotely notable thing about a film that resolutely refuses to leav...