Mystic River What we have here is a clash of the diversive acting styles of Sean Penn and Tim Robbins, and surprisingly, Robbins comes out WAY ahead in terms of performance. Clint Eastwood directs with an eye for the unremittingly sober details of working class life in the city of Boston, and crafts a tale […]
Naked Gun: From The Files Of Police Squad! Hot off the success of their major hit Airplane! (STILL to this day the definitive disaster movie spoof), the legendary ZAZ trio of David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, and Jim Abrahams surprised everyone by setting their sights on television next, coming up in the process with Police Squad!, […]
National Lampoon’s Animal House Bad taste in movie comedy had been cultivated for almost a decade after the collapse of The Old Production Code, mostly in the work of Mel Brooks. But this 1978 film which has been hailed as a classic to this day reached a new high (or low) by bringing the mindset […]
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation In 1989, when it came time to come up with the third installment in the Vacation series, the producers must have obviously looked at the troubled final product of what was European Vacation, and managed to discern a few of its flaws, which included a disjointed, uneven tone (no doubt caused […]
National Lampoon’s European Vacation Sometimes an installment in a popular franchise (particularly a comedy one) can find itself being unfairly maligned for even years after (especially if the entry afterwards is considered to be on a par with the original), but when it can still be compared favorably to 90% of today’s movie comedy output, […]
National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon I Airplane!-style spoofs are often known to be pretty much letdowns, especially in recent years (Meet The Whatevers, Genre Movie), but this 1993 production directed by Police Academy sequel writer Gene Quintano is for the most part pretty damn funny and solid, choosing as its target the Lethal Weapon Series and […]
National Lampoon’s Vacation Among the things that made movie comedies of the 80s better and funnier than any other era was besides the superior writing and character development they had, there was also a penchant to take some chances with the material being used in such a way that certain parts might come off a […]