Jonah Hill – Spinning Platters

Film Review: Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot

The self and its discontents

Joaquin Phoenix as John Callahan and Jonah Hill as Donnie star in DON’T WORRY, HE WON’T GET FAR ON FOOT.

Over the years, the director Gus Van Sant has returned time and again to his favorite subject: our constant struggle with self-deception and our many, mostly failed attempts at self-discovery. Let’s start with some dreamy-eyed pharmacy thieves (Drugstore Cowboy), move to homeless hustlers (My Own Private Idaho), catch up to a hitchhiker with enormous thumbs (Even Cowgirls Get The Blues), watch an aspiring TV Newswoman (To Die For), and let’s not forget the genius mathematician janitor at M.I.T. with girl trouble and the world’s funniest psychologist (Good Will Hunting). Van Sant’s characters show what an illusion we can be to ourselves. Does he return to this ground in Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot? Absolutely. Is it worth it to follow him yet again on this journey? Mostly.

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Film Review: War Dogs

**Arms and the bros: Hangover director brings incredible true story to the screen**

Efraim (Jonah Hill, center) and David (Miles Teller, r.) inspect some choice merchandise in an Albanian warehouse.

The economy of war and the audacity of youth brilliantly collide in writer/director Todd Phillips’s new picture War Dogs. A heavily fictionalized dramatization of Guy Lawson’s 2011 Rolling Stone article (and later book), the film details the spectacular rise and fall of two 20-something young men from Miami Beach who became major international arms dealers during the heart of the Iraq War.
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Film Review: Sausage Party

A profound examination of religious faith — buried deep, deep within a hilariously crude, offensive, foul-mouthed animated film.

Oh, sh*t, these foods are f**cking foul-mouthed!

Imagine if Toy Story was written by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and then sprinkled with a dash of Caligula. Even that probably doesn’t quite capture just how far Sausage Party goes in terms of it’s R-related language and content (supposedly it came close to an NC-17 rating, until they toned it down — yes, toned it down!). As advertised, the cast and creators of This is the End are back, this time to infuse their stoner, ultra-sexualized, black comedy into an animated feature. Sausage Party goes a step beyond just shock-value to deliver its laughs, serving a healthy does of side-splitting puns, curse-words, pop culture references, and hilarious characters. But Sausage Party is also an incredibly clever film. It disguises it’s more contemplative themes of divinity, the existence of an afterlife, and the triviality of religious tensions within the entertaining muck of a hilariously perverse one-note culinary joke — that anthropomorphic foods discover that they’re all doomed to be devoured by humans.

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Film Review: Hail, Caesar!

A silly, subversive, colorful day in the life of a 1950s Hollywood studio fixer — as only the Coens can envision.

Channing Tatum the singing, dancing sailor.

Expectations were high for Hail, Caesar! the new film from the modern great American filmmakers, Joel and Ethan Coen. Three years after their award-winning triple play of 2009’s A Serious Man, 2010’s True Grit, and 2013’s Inside Llewyn Davis, the sparkling musical trailers for Hail, Caesar! began hitting the web, and suddenly Coen fever began spreading again. However, unlike the washed-out colors and quiet dramatic quality of the former titles, Hail, Caesar! seemed to promise bright colors, outlandish musical numbers, and an unbridled sense of fun. The question I found myself asking was — would Hail, Caesar! embrace the darkly comic bizarreness of early Coen films such as Raising Arizona and The Hudsucker Proxy, or the cynical chastisement of Hollywood in Barton Fink? Well, the answer is really ‘no’ to both. The most wonderful thing about Hail, Caesar! is that it has its own new brand of Coen humor, one of PG-13 lightweight, sarcastic and playful tones, but still filled to the brim with the filmmakers’ unparalleled attention to detail and love of subtle and not-so-subtle references.

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Film Review: 22 Jump Street

School in the summer has never been so awesome.

The unlikely success of 2012’s 21 Jump Street prompted the production and release of the sequel, 22 Jump Street, which ends up being funnier, more ridiculous, and more exciting than it’s predecessor. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller must be on cloud nine right now since the writing/directing duo has experienced unbelievable success with 21 and 22 Jump Street, the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs series (they wrote and directed the first and produced the sequel), and one of the top rated and grossing movies of the year, The Lego Movie. Lord and Miller find creative ways to inject a constant stream of humor into their films. In the case of 22 Jump Street, they once again exploit the infectious chemistry between Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum and deliver a script that has no shortage of joke types — including slapstick, sight gags, witty banter, and an abundance of self-referential and meta humor. With such a clever script and the chance for us to revisit the budding bromance at its core, 22 Jump Street is comedic gold and perfect summer fun.

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Film Review: How to Train Your Dragon 2

A worthy return to Berk, where the kids are all grown up now.

'Night fury in the sky, I can fly twice as high' — ‘Night fury in the sky, I can fly twice as high’

In 2010, How to Train Your Dragon surprised audiences with its incredible cinematography and emotionally resonant central relationship between a young nerdy Viking, Hiccup, and Toothless, the elusive and dangerous Night Fury dragon. Nearly 4.5 years later we are treated to the follow-up, How to Train Your Dragon 2 (the second installment of an intended trilogy), which thankfully has Dean DeBlois (Lilo & Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon) returning as director. DeBlois successfully incorporates the same sense of discovery, wonder, and emotional gravitas into the sequel that were so prevalent in the first film. How to Train Your Dragon 2 gets just about everything right — it expands the story’s universe without overreaching, lets the characters mature without forcing the issue, and keeps the focus on the powerful central storyline in a way that remains fun and engaging.

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