Like so many screenplays, The World’s End has its origins in a Starbucks. As director Edgar Wright tells it, the ideas for the sci-fi action-comedy starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost came to him while shooting the trio’s last film, the buddy-cop parody Hot Fuzz. That film takes place in…
This article contains major spoilers. A white suburban teen, urged on by friends, makes the decision to finally get laid, maybe by the end of summer. That’s the premise of Sixteen Candles, American Pie, Superbad, and now The To Do List. Comedy pin-up Aubrey Plaza gives a characteristically low-wattage performance…
If there’s one nuance mainstream comedies have yet to learn, it’s that “empathetic” need not mean “likable” — audiences can feel for characters they don’t necessarily want to be. The hit black comedy Horrible Bosses, which had three angry underlings plotting murderous vengeance against their you-know-whats, should have been a…
Friends ended less than a decade ago, but it’s already a relic of a bygone era — a critically respected network sitcom that enjoyed massive ratings. That’s the central irony of the Must-See TV show’s legacy: It was one of the last programs to enjoy a national audience before cable…
Nat Faxon and Jim Rash didn’t set out to make a comedy about divorce. Eight years ago, when the improv comedians turned actors turned Oscar-winning screenwriters started writing a coming-of-age script based on a particularly upsetting moment from Rash’s childhood, they just wanted a happy ending. Yet almost all the…
The Way, Way Back is a crowd-pleasing summer treat, predictable in its sweetness but satisfying all the same. It’s like the multinationally branded ice cream sandwich you get on any pier in the Western Hemisphere — market-tested to appeal to as many people as possible (but that you don’t mind…
Before he was one of cinema’s finest dramatists (All About My Mother, Talk to Her, Volver, Broken Embraces), writer-director Pedro Almodóvar was a provocateur and a satirist. The 63-year-old filmmaker harks back to that past with his first comedy in nearly 25 years, I’m So Excited!, a lighthearted, ensemble-driven bit…
The Israeli arranged-marriage drama Fill the Void begins as a spy caper. Eighteen-year-old Shira (Hadas Yaron) and her mother (Irit Sheleg) play P.I. at the supermarket, observing a handsome asthmatic with gold-rim glasses and a gawky frame to see if he’s marriage material. Satisfied with the way he reads the…
Last week, EW columnist Mark Harris tweeted a statistic disturbing to anyone who cares about gender equality on the big screen: “It’s now been 61 days since the last wide release of a major studio movie starring a woman.” Unfortunately, that number will only increase—to 84 days—until Sandra Bullock and…
In his new film, the social drama At Any Price, director and co-writer Ramin Bahrani examines how the transformation of food into intellectual property through seed patents has corrupted, impoverished, or dissolved the American family farm. As with the Iranian-American director’s previous films (Man Push Cart, Chop Shop, Goodbye Solo),…
Last week, America received two embarrassing reminders of its doting but asexual love for the Nonthreatening Black Man (NTBM). First, professional cowboy-hat-wearer Brad Paisley and Kangol connoisseur LL Cool J unintentionally trolled the entire Internet with “Accidental Racist,” a country song that argues that access to necklaces today totally makes…
