Because Everybody Else Has One

Tear Jerker/ Vomit Inducer/ Whatever This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about A high-powered recruitment agent neglects his family for his job but when his son turns gravely ill, he is forced to confront his priorities in his life and just what he's really living for. What we thought Taking a hiatus from his usual wham bam action fare with a convincing enough turn as a (spoiler) douchebag-turned-softie in this by-the-numbers tear-jerker, Gerard Butler headlines a perfectly good cast in a film that is to family dramas what the Olympus Has Fallen series is to action films. It's not egregiously terrible and it's not even entirely unmoving but the only thing that really sets it apart from your average made-for-TV weepie that used to find a home on the Hallmark channel is just how often it manages to miss its mark – which is actually not something you could say about those otherwise pretty rubbish melodramas: they do, at the very least, mana...

Get Lost. This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about James King is a millionaire businessman who finds himself sentenced to ten years of hard time in San Quentin State Prison for various counts of fraud. In order to prepare himself for the ordeal (read: potential rape) of living life in maximum security prison, he approaches Darnell Lewis, the owner of the car-washing business he frequents, with a lucrative offer of $10 000 cash to teach him how to survive his next ten years. The catch though, is that despite James' racist assumptions about him, Darnell is actually a hard working family man and not the hardened criminal that James thinks him to be. Still, Darnell could really, really use that money... What we thought I'm getting kind of sick of saying this about damn near every comedy that comes out these days but, seriously, where the hell are the laughs? Yes, Get Hard has been the subject of a lot of controversy for its questionable racial an...