GAIL DAUGHTRY AND THE CELEBRITY SEX PASS. Wet Hot American Summer (2001) is as much a tenet of my marriage as any of the shared values upon which it is founded. For a quarter century, it has been a source of solace, celebration and common ground unlike any other for my wife and I. It […]
Screens
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“Super Troopers 3” Keeps it Stupid
SUPER TROOPERS 3. One might rightfully wonder — as I did, while watching Straight Time (1978) on the Criterion Channel on Saturday Night — if there is any reason to go see a third installment of a willfully dumb cop-comedy franchise. At best, it seems unlikely to add anything to the cinematic lexicon (or even […]
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In On the Joke
THE DINK. Awash as we are in a new wave of underdog sports comedies, usually centered on has-beens or never-weres, it should come as no surprise that Pickleball should have shuffled into the crosshairs. The newfound passion of a generation, what was once a middle-school time-filler has become, in this age of idleness and catastrophe, […]
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Homecoming Surprises
THE INVITE was titillatingly teased (for what felt like years) as a sex comedy of manners, a will-they-or-won’t-they about two couples of a certain age circling each other in an apartment brought uncomfortably close by erotic tension. And while it certainly is that, one of the many pleasant surprises it holds — and a testament […]
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Schnabel’s Inferno
IN THE HAND OF DANTE. It can be reflexive — instinctive, even — when confronted with a grand-to-grandiose work, especially one that spans genres as quickly as it does centuries, to dismiss it as muddled, misguided or unaware of its own intentions. But this reaction dismisses the work’s substance, the meaning that compels the artist […]
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Micro Hustlers
In news that’s not really news, Jackass is quite old and the cinema branch of DC has issued a sputtering salvo in the pointless, unwinnable, poorly timed war with Marvel. In the case of the former, Jackass: Best and Last would appear to be a pragmatic coda, a sort of clip-show send-off from a group […]
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“Obsession” is a Hard Watch, Hard Recommend
OBSESSION. Stephen King once wrote that many of his best stories started with a “What if?” What if vampires invaded a small New England village? What if a bullied high school girl turned out to have supernatural powers? What if the person you love suddenly loves you back, and that turns out to be the […]
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Master Classes
DISCLOSURE DAY. When I last wrote or even thought critically about Steven Spielberg (The Fabelmans, 2022), I recalled my adolescent resistance to his work, realizing in hindsight that my affinity for snark and edginess (it was the 1990s) had veiled my eyes, or at least inured me, to the integrity and mastery underpinning all of […]
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“Tow” Might Be Good for You
TOW. Is a judicial system, ostensibly built to protect the citizenry but susceptible to the manipulations of commerce and greed, inherently cynical? Possibly. Is a movie, replete with marketable stars, that explores an individual’s struggle against such a corruptible system, also cynical? Hopefully not. What about the critic who, in the face of such an […]
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‘Backrooms’ Breaks Out of the Internet
BACKROOMS. In order to talk about Backrooms (2026), A24’s newest psychological horror directed by breakout filmmaker Kane Parsons and based off his cult YouTube series, it is important to take a few steps back to look at the veryinternet-based origins of this film’s unsettling landscape. The film’s endless mono-yellow passages and torturous fluorescent light invoking […]
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Folk Horror Summer
PASSENGER. Sunken in our seats after the now usual set of car commercials that precede the previews, the trailer for Passenger was a welcome jolt. A likely pair of dudes pull over on a dark backroad for a potty break that escalates to creepy disappearance, sudden shock, gore, specter-sighting and a cracking jump scare. It boded […]
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The Limits of Imitation
IN THE GREY. Guy Ritchie has, for almost 30 years now, traded on his charming, distinctly British brand of cleverness as heavily as anybody in the movie business. In the early days — Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), Snatch (2000) — when so many of us were caught up so willingly in the […]