Tag: Anna Kendrick

Film Review: A Simple Favor

Feig’s Favor to you: A twisty, stylish picture with a sly sense of humor

Suburban moms Stephanie (Anna Kendrick, l.) and Emily (Blake Lively) become fast friends over martinis.

“Secrets are like margarine: easy to spread; bad for the heart,” muses perky mommy vlogger Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) in director Paul Feig’s new film A Simple Favor, and does that ever prove to be a prophetic understatement. Feig, best known for helming the comedies Bridesmaids and The Heat, brings a breezy, stylized light touch to the film adaptation of Darcey Bell’s 2017 debut mystery thriller of the same name. The result is a mostly successful mash up of black comedy and icy noir that, despite similarities to better films, still manages to be a wickedly fun good time.

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Film Review: The Accountant

Convoluted, violent story doesn’t add up to a picture worth seeing   

Accountants Dana (Anna Kendrick) and Chris (Ben Affleck) are puzzled by some discrepancies they discover on the books at a robotics firm.

Ben Affleck has always had a sort of a cold, distant quality; showcasing warmth and deep emotion isn’t his strong suit. Such chilliness is what made him both a decent Batman and so good in a role like the one he had in Gone Girl, in which he played such a standoffish husband that he easily seemed capable of murdering his wife. So it’s not surprising that director Gavin O’Connor (best known for the 2011 cult hit Warrior) would cast Affleck in his new film The Accountant, an action thriller in which Affleck plays Christian “Chris” Wolff, an imperturbable accountant and assassin with a high-functioning form of autism who connects better with numbers than with people. The problem, though, is that O’Connor and screenwriter Bill Dubuque (The Judge) play much of Chris’s condition for laughs, and the Rain Man-as-Jason Bourne premise doesn’t succeed nearly as well as the filmmakers probably hoped it would.
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Film Review: Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates

Winning cast brings solid laughs to predictable picture

Mike (Adam Devine, l.) and Dave (Zac Efron, r.) are aghast after being chastised by their parents for their boorish behavior at family events.

Back in the pre-Internet days, an old creative writing teaching technique used to be to have students read the classifieds and generate a short story based on gems they found there. Screenwriters Andrew Jay Cohen and Brendan O’Brien obviously understand the imaginative gold of such an assignment, since, for their post-Neighbors 1 and 2 screenplay, they’ve turned an actual Craigslist ad into the decently funny picture Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates. Directed by TV comedy director Jake Szymanski in his first feature film foray, Mike and Dave is neither no more nor no less than what you’d expect from a raunchy-but-sweet summer comedy.
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Film Review: Into the Woods

The cast is great/The film is good/Into the woods/To go to the movies!

The Baker (James Corden) and his Wife (Emily Blunt) venture Into the Woods.
The Baker (James Corden) and his Wife (Emily Blunt) venture Into the Woods.

Director Rob Marshall, who was nominated for an Oscar for his film version of the musical “Chicago” back in 2003, returns this holiday season with another big screen adaptation of a Broadway hit musical. This time he takes on Steven Sondheim’s storied (pun intended) 1987 mega-hit Into the Woods, an extraordinarily entertaining mishmash of several of the Grimm Brothers classic fairy tales. Produced by Disney, the film had been the subject of widespread speculation that the darker edges of the Sondheim/James Lapine fantasy might be smoothed too much. Purists need not worry, however; Marshall’s version retains the mature themes and disquieting tone of the original, and has the added benefit of a terrific cast.

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Film Review: Happy Christmas

Soft and low key, and a healthy dose of reality

Melanie Lynskey and Joe Swanberg snuggle up tight in 'Happy Christmas'
Melanie Lynskey and Joe Swanberg snuggle up tight in ‘Happy Christmas’

Some people enjoy movies because they provide an escape from the hardships of real life.  To them, the more out-of-this-world, the better.  Other people enjoy realistic movies the most – the movies that capture the intricacies of real human behavior, real emotions, and stories grounded in reality.  Happy Christmas will definitely please the latter group of movie watchers, but has a rather good shot at pleasing the former group, too.  Director Joe Swanberg (Drinking Buddies) is a rising talent getting known for his acute handling of complex onscreen relationships.  Happy Christmas is Swanberg’s most mature film to date, capturing a segment in the life of a few in a way that doesn’t rely on overly dramatic instances to drive the plot.  In doing so, the film is actually a pleasant invitation into another family’s life, one in which the characters ring true.

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Film Review: Drinking Buddies

When Luke met Kate: Can drunk men and women ever be just friends?

Olivia Wilde's Kate and Jake Johnson's Luke are drinking buddies... and maybe more.
Olivia Wilde’s Kate and Jake Johnson’s Luke are drinking buddies… and maybe more.

Watching Joe Swanberg’s new film Drinking Buddies is a bit like spending a summer evening out having beers with friends. The beers are cool and tasty, the company is good, the conversation can run the gamut from light, playful, and flirty to serious and intense, and the whole experience is decidedly pleasant. Of course, when you awake the next morning, you may only have a hazy recollection of having had a nice time, and by day’s end, you probably will have forgotten much of what transpired. But that’s not to say the diversion wasn’t worth it. Continue reading “Film Review: Drinking Buddies”

Film Review: “Pitch Perfect”

Rebel Wilson and Anna Kendrick in PITCH PERFECT

starring: Anna Kendrick, Brittany Snow, Anna Camp, Rebel Wilson, Skylar Astin, Adam DeVine, John Michael Higgins, Elizabeth Banks, John Benjamin Hickey

written by: Kay Cannon

directed by: Jason Moore

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for sexual material, language and drug references

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Spinning Platters Interview: Michael Peña and Natalie Martinez on “End of Watch”

Michael Peña and Natalie Martinez in END OF WATCH

End of Watch is unlike any cop movie we’ve seen before. Its distinguishing traits range from its texture — the film is shot and edited to resemble a pulse-poundingly visceral “found footage” documentary — to its thoroughly realized characterizations of LAPD officers Brian (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike (Michael Peña), thrill-chasing partners and best friends who have a tendency to run toward the action while others run away from it. The film plays out like a feature-length episode of COPS as written by Aaron Sorkin or David Mamet; its substance comes from the palpable bond between Brian and Mike, which plays out in a series of remarkably authentic-feeling conversations we watch them have as they drive around on patrol, waiting for that next call, never knowing if they’ll be getting a cat out of a tree or walking into gunfire. This naturalistic and wholly believable quality comes both from the direction and script of David Ayer (Harsh Times) and the committed performances of Gyllenhaal and Peña, with whom Ayer rehearsed for several months before shooting the film to get their chemistry just right. Anna Kendrick and Natalie Martinez are heartfelt and dynamic as the officers’ better halves.

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Film Review: “What to Expect When You’re Expecting”

Elizabeth Banks and Brooklyn Decker in WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU'RE EXPECTING

starring: Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Lopez, Elizabeth Banks, Anna Kendrick, Matthew Morrison, Rodrigo Santoro, Ben Falcone, Chace Crawford, Dennis Quaid, Brooklyn Decker, Rebel Wilson, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Chris Rock

written by: Shauna Cross and Heather Hach

directed by: Kirk Jones

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content, thematic elements and language

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Spinning Platters Interview: Seth Rogen and Will Reiser on “50/50”

Will Reiser and Seth Rogen on the set of 50/50

Have you ever watched a cancer movie and thought, “You know what this needs? More dick jokes!” If so, 50/50 is the cancer movie for you. Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Adam, who seems to have his life together: he works for a public radio station in Seattle, he has a devoted (if obnoxious) best friend, Kyle (Seth Rogen), and a beautiful girlfriend, Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard). But when Adam is suddenly diagnosed with cancer, his life begins to fall apart. His relationship with Rachael becomes increasingly strained, he is assigned a counselor named Katherine (Anna Kendrick) who is barely out of diapers, his overbearing mother (Anjelica Huston) won’t leave him alone, and Kyle keeps using Adam’s cancer to get himself laid. And if that sounds like too irreverent of a storyline for a film about cancer, then take it up with screenwriter Will Reiser. Because it’s inspired by his life.

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