“Welcome to the Jeffers Corporation. The largest and friendliest and most profitable corporation in the history of mankind.”
The first joke in Visioneers is visual: a logo of buildings shaped like a raised middle finger. On the surface it’s juvenile. That surface is promptly removed, along with other expectations foisted by flimsy Netflix descriptors like “quirky” and “understated.” In the world of the film, the gesture has none of the connotation it does in our world. Instead, giving someone the bird is a salutation. That’s how Visioneers works. The film trades in expectations, presenting the familiar without accepting preexisting definitions.
It’s not an easy film to describe [...]
In The Finally Screenings, Alden Ford is watching comedy classics that, because he grew up in a cave in Alaska, he’s never seen. These are his takes on movies everyone else has seen before.
Okay, National Lampoon. You win this round.
Christmas Vacation is the first National Lampoon movie I’ve seen for this column that actually works. Impossible, you say? Well, maybe it’s the benevolent Christmas spirit filling my tiny green Grinch heart. Or maybe it’s some decent characters and set pieces finally given a chance to take on some dimension and relatability.
It’s not that difficult to do, and when it happens it makes a world of [...]
In The Finally Screenings, Alden Ford is watching comedy classics that, because he grew up in a cave in Alaska, he’s never seen before. These are his takes on movies everyone else has seen before.
A good barometer for whether or not a comedy makes it onto this list is the volume at which the word “NEVER” is shouted in the sentence, “You’ve NEVER seen that?” The higher the volume, the more likely it makes the list. By this point, it’s harder to tell – not because the volume is lower after a few months, but because the damage done to my ears prior to watching Ghostbusters and [...]
In The Finally Screenings, Alden Ford is watching comedy classics that, because he grew up in a cave in Alaska, he’s never seen before. These are his takes on movies everyone else has seen before.
I just don’t get it, Ramis. I really don’t.
Another pre-Ghostbusters Harold Ramis movie, Stripes feels like another in a line of films that slowly improve until the stars align and inspiration strikes with Venkman, Stantz and Spengler. Believe me, it pains me to write these words. I didn’t want to dislike Stripes any more than I wanted to like Beverly Hills Cop. But we can’t always get what we want.
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In The Finally Screenings, Alden Ford is watching comedy classics that, because he grew up in a cave in Alaska, he’s never seen before. These are his takes on movies everyone else has seen before.
Until now I've only run the risk of offending comedy nerds in my blithe ramblings about classic films I should have seen a long time ago, but this week I'm happy to report I also have the potential to offend legit film buffs by my having only just now watched Raising Arizona.
Anyone who has seen Raising Arizona knows that, while funny, it's known more for its influence and renown as a film [...]
