August 19, 2005
I completely forgot that I reviewed THE 40 YEAR-OLD VIRGIN when it came out in 2005, but there it is. It’s not the kind of movie I normally review, but I thought it would be important to include in this series as the most influential comedy of the summer and as the opposite of WEDDING CRASHERS. That one was about smarmy well-paid pickup artists really falling in love while trying to just get laid via deception, this is about an awkward dork who works as a stocker at an electronics chain store and doesn’t own a car who has spent his life deliberately not trying to get down women’s pants, and the lie to the woman he’s falling for is just not telling her that he’s okay with not having sex yet because he’s scared he’ll do a bad job.
Steve Carell (last seen in BEWITCHED) plays Andy, friendly but socially awkward action figure collector whose life changes after his co-workers David (Paul Rudd, HALLOWEEN: THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS), Jay (Romany Malco, URBAN MENACE, TICKER) and Cal (Seth Rogen, DONNIE DARKO) very reluctantly decide to invite him to fill a vacancy in their after-hours poker game in the store. He does such a bad job of joining in their locker room talk that they figure out he’s a virgin and make it their quest in life to help him change that. “From now on your dick is my dick. I’m getting you some pussy,” vows Jay. (read the rest of this shit…)

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET is the incredibly entertaining new movie from director Martin Scorsese (
I heard MONEYBALL was good, so I wanted to see it, but I was definitely skeptical. Steven Soderbergh tried to get this movie done for a long time, based on the non-fiction book of the same title. But he got the plug pulled a couple times, the studio thought the script wasn’t entertaining enough and he wouldn’t do what they wanted because he was trying not to dramatize and composite and shit, he wanted to try to make it as close to 100% true as he could. Well, after he finally bowed out they quickly got a new script by Steve Zaillian (SCHINDLER’S LIST, GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO) and Aaron Sorkin (SOCIAL NETWORK, West Wing TV show) and director Bennett Miller, and that’s a good group of people, but these kinds of salvage jobs never turn out good.
Merrick here…

















