The End of the Tour (opens August 14th in Cleveland)

Review by Pamela Zoslov

“Suicide is such a powerful end, it reaches back and scrambles the beginning,” wrote David Lipsky in his memoir of the writer David Foster Wallace, who hanged himself in 2008 at age 46, after writing his wife a two-page note and spreading out the pages of his unfinished novel The Pale King nearby. “It has an event gravity: Eventually, every memory and impression gets tugged in its direction.”

Sex Tape

Review by Grace Snyder

It's easy to guess that a film titled SEX TAPE will contain a lot of sex, and in fact director Jase Kasdan's film is centered around the sacred act of passion. Annie (Cameron Diaz) and Jay (Jason Segel- who also co-penned the film) met in college. Their time at school was spent getting busy anywhere they could: the library, the car, even the middle of campus. Their spark never seems to dim. That is until Jay gets Annie pregnant.

Fast-forward ten years and Annie is writing about her past sex-capades, and lack of recent, in her blog. Jay and Annie now have two children and to-do lists that have no end. It is safe to say that the sexual antics of their youth have died down substantially. With Jay working long hours, Annie taking care of the kids, and her potential new blogging job; there simply isn't time or energy.

Muppets Most Wanted

Review by Pete Roche

One really couldn’t have wanted for a better Muppets reboot than 2011’s THE MUPPETS.  Over a decade had passed since Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, and the rest of the gang headlined a major motion picture, so—some thirty-five years after the debut of The Muppet Show (1976) on television and release of THE MUPPET MOVIE (1979) in theatres—it was questionable whether Jim Henson’s felt-skinned friends could still fire our imaginations and tickle our funny bones.

Writer / star Jason Segel (I LOVE YOU, MAN) cleverly addressed the Muppets’ relative post-millennial obscurity for their new Disney keepers by setting his human character’s half-pint brother—Walter the Whistler—after Kermit and company in a bid to save their historic studio from a greedy oil tycoon.  The resulting romp packed ample pep for young audiences but was also nostalgic (and smart) enough for parents who grew up watching the show and early films.  The musical numbers were catchy, the gags funny, and the whole “let’s get the gang together again” story sufficiently heartwarming for all.

So how could Disney top Segel’s reunion picture?

The Five-Year Engagement

Review by Pamela Zoslov

There's a segment in THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT, the new comedy from the Judd Apatow production company, in which Jason Segel, as an affable chef named Tom, takes up deer hunting and lets his hair and beard grow long and grizzly. It's a useful metaphor for the movie, which is funny but undisciplined, with a lot of weedy growth crowding its good qualities. Like Tom, the movie desperately needs a shave and haircut (in other words, a good editor).

That said, the appearance of a new Apatow production is always of interest to me. The movies directed by Apatow, a comic genius I have loved since The Larry Sanders Show, and his creative acolytes are messy masterpieces of fast, funny dialogue (KNOCKED UP) and relationships portrayed with a humanity that shines through the raunchy dialogue. In most of the Apatow movies, the main relationships are between guys and their buddies; their exasperated wives and girlfriends stand on the sidelines, insisting that they grow up, get married and act responsible.  

Jeff, Who Lives at Home

Review by Bob Ignizio

According to the philosophy of Jeff (Jason Segel), everything is connected and every coincidence is a meaningful sign from the universe. So what then does it mean that both Seigel and his I LOVE YOU MAN co-star Paul Rudd had films released within a year of each other in which they each played the pothead black sheep of a dysfunctional family who turns out to have more wisdom than you might think? Maybe if Robert Anton Wilson or Carl Jung were still alive they could find some profound significance in it all, but I'll just stick to reviewing the movie.

Like Rudd's OUR IDIOT BROTHER, JEFF, WHO LIVES AT HOME is by today's comedy standards about as gentle and nice as they come. So is its main character, Jeff. I imagine most people have known guys like Jeff; still living at home in their parent's basement, still waking and baking, still aimlessly adrift in the adult world, but by no means bad people. When Jeff answers a wrong number looking for a “Kevin”, he takes it as yet another sign.

Bad Teacher

Review by Pamela Zoslov

As if to fill the void in summer raunch left by the disappointing HANGOVER sequel, BAD TEACHER, directed by Jake Kasdan, brings us Cameron Diaz as the sleaziest middle-school teacher in the history of education.

There is a certain wicked pleasure in beholding Diaz’s unregenerate misanthrope, whose character is mildly reminiscent of Billy Bob Thornton’s BAD SANTA in its twisting of traditional expectations. How, and why, did this woman ever become a teacher? The character, Elizabeth Halsey, edging over the hill but still gorgeous, stalks the corridors of the Illinois school where she scarcely works, wearing five-inch slides and tight skirts, hung over from booze and bonging, dozing while she feeds her students – whose names she can’t be bothered to learn — a pedagogical diet of school-themed movies (STAND AND DELIVER, LEAN ON ME). She is crass, mean, profane and callous to other people who aren’t wealthy, eligible men. Her plans to leave her hated job for marriage are foiled when her oblivious, opera-obsessed fiancé dumps her after his mother discovers she’s spent tens of thousands of his dollars.