Comedy

Powerless – Wayne or Lose

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Powerless – Wayne or Lose
  • wiki: link

Powerless - Wayne or Lose television review

I know what you’re going go say. Another super-hero show? Yes, but this one is more super-hero adjacent. With iZombie still on hiatus, our current run of super-hero TV has had a decidedly lacking in fun and whimsy in favor of darker storylines (with the exception of the almost always optimistic Supergirl). More office comedy than true super-hero fare, NBC taps into an unexplored part of the super-hero universe – the regular people. In a world beset with super-villains and their constant destruction, somebody has to look out for the average Joe. For the citizens of Charm City that company is Wayne Security (the less-known subsidiary of Wayne Enterprises).

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Hero at Large

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Hero at Large
  • IMDb: link

Hero at Large DVD reviewThis Throwback Thursday we take a look back at a mostly forgotten 1980 film Hero at Large starring John Ritter as a struggling actor who becomes the talk of the town when he stops a crime while dressed in the costume of the super-hero Captain Avenger on his way home from the movie’s premiere. Decades before the boom of super-hero movies, director Martin Davidson‘s (Eddie & The Cruisers) movie plays with the concept of what it means to be a hero as our protagonist struggles with the ramifications and consequences of trying to cash-in on his new celebrity.

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Hidden Gem – State and Main

/ / Home Video
  • Title: State and Main
  • IMDb: link

State and Main DVD review

It’s about purity. We’ll double-down on Throwback Thursday this week to take a quick look at David Mamet‘s underrated 2000 comedy State and Main in which a movie set is forced to relocate to the sleepy town of Waterford, Vermont when their star’s (Alec Baldwin) love of underage girls gets them thrown out of New Hampshire. Immensely entertaining and highly quotable, this one never fails to make me laugh.

Go you Huskies. Featuring an amazing cast, Mamet gives us Philip Seymour Hoffman as the playwright turned screenwriter, William H. Macy as the film’s director, Baldwin and Sarah Jessica Parker as the film’s stars, and Rebecca Pidgeon, Clark Gregg, and Julia Stiles as townies. All turn out to be perfect fits for Mamet’s quick dialogue that takes equal swipes at Hollywood and small town life but still finds ways to celebrate each.

Everybody needs a hobby. The conflict in the film comes from the dysfunction of the set, the uproar the movie folks have on the town (in both positive and negative ways), and their star’s latest dalliance which puts the entire project in jeopardy.

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The Lobster

/ / Home Video
  • Title: The Lobster
  • IMDb: link

The Lobster DVD reviewTaking place is an odd world where being single is apparently the only crime, David (Colin Farrell) checks into a hotel where he is given 45 days to find a partner or face being transformed into an animal for the remainder of his existence. Part metaphor about the pressures society puts on single people to find a mate, and part wacky adventure, The Lobster is an unusual film with a deadpan (and more than a little bleak) sense of humor and a very unconventional view of love.

The first-half of the film, taking place within the hotel, works quite well as David and the other singles (Jessica Barden, Angeliki Papoulia, John C. Reilly, and Ben Whishaw) fumble at finding enforced couplehood. The second-half of the film involving David’s adventures with the equally hard-line single exiles where he finds forbidden love (Rachel Weisz, who also narrates) may not be as strong but still delivers its share of humorous and tragic moments. Available on Blu-ray and DVD, the only extras included are a digital copy of the movie and a single behind-the-scenes featurette.

[Lionsgate, Blu-ray $24.99 / DVD $12.96]

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Sausage Party

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Sausage Party
  • IMDb: link

Sausage PartyThis movie is fucked up. Offering us a glimpse into the lives on anthropomorphic food and other assorted items in a grocery store who sing about the promised land after being bought by god-like humans, Sausage Party follows the misadventures of a hot dog named Frank (Seth Rogen) and his friends (Michael Cera, Kristen Wiig, David Krumholtz, Edward Norton, and Salma Hayek) who discover the truth about what really happens to food in the kitchen. Wrong in (mostly) all the right ways, it has to be seen to be believed.

Offering an inspired amount of cursing and obvious jokes (the bagel doesn’t get along with the lavash, the douche is, well, a real douche) along with several genuinely funny moments, the script by Kyle Hunter, Ariel Shaffir, Rogen, and Evan Goldberg gets too infatuated with sexual innuendo at times (and ignores the inevitable truth of what will happen to all the characters), but while it lasts Sausage Party delivers an animated experience unlike anything you’ve seen before on the big screen.

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