Woody Harrelson

The splitting of the conclusions of recent fantasy or sci-fi franchises into two parts (or more – looking at you, Peter Jackson) has been financially successful for Hollywood studios, but less so creatively. Only arguable trendsetter Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I proved a satisfying film in its own right by being so rich in character interplay and having an actual sense of progression. Mockingjay – Part I is heavy on character beats, but they are repetitive ones due to its limited scope through withholding all the big stuff until Part 2.

With the news that CBS has canned The Millers for this season, Saturday Night Live decided to poke fun at the current climate of network sitcoms and create their own version with The Dudleys. The sketch, which aired this Saturday with host Woody Harrelson, creates a sitcom that includes two parents and two children and chronicles …

The nature of sketch comedy means that anything can happen. It’s an inherent feature of the form, one that can lead to some truly transcendent weirdness and some pretty bland filler. Take Key & Peele, for example: By being a sketch show, they are able to do things like have a silent short commenting on the Trayvon Martin case and racial profiling, and have goofy things like the East/West Bowl sketches (“Everybody’s talking about Fudge”). But because anything can happen, this invites unevenness into a sketch show more easily than in other programs. The main goal of any good sketch show, other than being funny, should be consistency. With SNL, that consistency can come from a variety of places

Rust and Marty close in on the man with the scars, revealing their true natures and how they’ve changed in the process, in a strong finish to an excellent first season.

The investigation into the murder of Dora Lang and similar cases moves completely into 2012, as the viewers learn how time has changed Rust and Marty.

True Detective, Season 1, Episode 4: “Who Goes There” Written by Nic Pizzolatto Directed by Cary Fukunaga Airs Sundays at 9pm ET on HBO – Given that I am not your standard True Detective recapper (Ricky D is on The Walking Dead duty this week), it seems worthwhile, now that the first series is half …

Out of the Furnace Written by Brad Inglesby and Scott Cooper Directed by Scott Cooper USA, 2013 In the last few years, American filmmakers have turned to the bleak parts of the country, both to explore the sharp, darkened corners of our current psyche, and to depict a world stuck in the past. Films like …

With I Am Legend and Constantine in his filmography, two not entirely successful features but both ones with impressive sequences here and there, director Francis Lawrence would seem an adequate fit for a populist sci-fi or fantasy franchise instalment.

The new animated film Free Birds lives in a strange purgatory of concurrently trying way too hard and not trying nearly hard enough. Though its high-concept hook—turkeys go back in time to right before the first Thanksgiving to devise a way for the settlers to not dine on their feathered brethren at the inaugural feast—is admittedly not something animation studios have tried before, the execution is tired, manic, exhausting, and nonsensical.

In the midst of a horrific zombie apocalypse that has put paid to much of civilization, an action survivor anti-hero attempts to make an escape from a parking lot with a small crowd of diseased flesh devourers in hot pursuit. He reaches his car, but in his haste drops his keys to the ground, losing vital time.

“Some things are better left unexplained,” a character intones at one point in Now You See Me, a wise lesson that the film’s trio of screenwriters should’ve taken to heart. This heist film, in which a quartet of magicians are highly intelligent thieves (or are they?), becomes more nonsensical and inexplicable the more we learn about how these tricksters have robbed banks (or have they?) and sent federal agents on various wild-goose chases (or were…well, you get the idea).

The term ‘movie magic’ has, alas, lost much of its once proud luster. Film savvy folks can now read in-depth articles, watch online interviews with filmmakers and dive into the ogles of behind-the-scenes content available on home media formats that reveal the tricks of the trade in impressive detail.

Seven Psychopaths Directed by Martin McDonagh Written by Martin McDonagh USA and United Kingdom, 2012 Christopher Walken has become a gag in modern popular culture, a punchline to a joke no one’s actually told. His repeated hosting gigs on Saturday Night Live over the past two decades along with a series of bizarre appearances in …

The Hunger Games Written for the screen by Suzanne Collins, Gary Ross and Billy Ray Directed by Gary Ross USA, 2012 In the dystopian, totalitarian nation of Panem, a wealthy capital city rules over an impoverished nation of districts. As penance for a previous rebellion, every year sees each district forced to enter two adolescents …

Zombieland (2009) Directed by Ruben Fleischer It’s been a couple of years since critics started calling the zombie trend dead and yet new films featuring our favourite brain gobbling monsters continue to fill theaters and draw crowds. Subgenres like the zom-rom-com have breathed a little life into things, but the question remains whether there are …

As a huge fan of Natural Born Killers and White Men Can’t Jump, I used to look forward to every Woody Harrelson movie. For awhile we were spoiled with excellent performances but in the past decade, I’ve been thoroughly disappointed with almost every role WH has signed up for. Well, believe it or not, you …