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Posts Tagged ‘Keir O'Donnell’

Wedding Crashers (20 years later rematch)

Monday, July 14th, 2025

July 15, 2005

WEDDING CRASHERS is kinda like an old nemesis of mine. I reviewed it very negatively on The Ain’t It Cool News twenty years ago and though mostly people believed me there were some talkbackers who also saw it in preview screenings who got kinda mad at me. It wasn’t as controversial as my THE TRANSFORMERS pan or anything but I was applying a similar (in retrospect overblown) destructive fury to it – the headline was “Fuck WEDDING CRASHERS.” It was being hailed as a new comedy benchmark, or a return to the raunchy R-rated comedy, but I swore it would fade instantly. I made a challenge to one guy to meet back in two years and see if he still considered it a “comedic gem.” 

SUMMER 2005If we had followed through on that bet I’m sure I would’ve lost. Its popularity lasted at least five years, which I can clock by realizing in hindsight that this movie is the reason my wife’s younger cousins asked us to play “Shout” by The Isley Brothers at our wedding. But by then THE HANGOVER had come out and I think it quickly replaced WEDDING CRASHERS as the bro comedy of record (no judgment for that – I’d say it’s a funnier movie). (read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Romance | 36 Comments »

The Dry

Thursday, September 7th, 2023

THE DRY is an Australian mystery thriller from 2020. It stars Eric Bana (CHOPPER) as Melbourne federal agent Aaron Falk, who gets wrapped up in some off-the-books mystery solving in his home town while on personal leave.

It’s arguably a neo-noir, but not in the sense of shadowy cinematography. It takes place mostly in the daytime, in rural Kiewarra, during a torturous drought. It hasn’t rained in almost a year, so this farming town is full of desperate people. Falk hasn’t been home in years, and only returns due to a brief, stern note in the mail telling him to be at the funeral of his childhood friend Luke (Martin Dingle-Wall, GUN SHY).

From the beginning it’s a bleak and uncomfortable tone. He saw in the newspaper that Luke died in a murder-suicide. Killed his wife, his kid, then himself (abandoning a baby). The funeral is for the whole family but some people are pretty upset about including the guy who killed them. And here’s Falk coming in from out of town just to honor Luke – he never met the wife or kid. (read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in Reviews, Crime | 13 Comments »

Ambulance (2022)

Monday, April 18th, 2022

Over my [redacted] years of writing about movies, my relationship with the works of Michael Bay has evolved. It’s fair to say I once held hatred in my heart for them. I think I thought BAD BOYS was so-so when it first came to video (have not revisited – should I?) but THE ROCK, ARMAGEDDON and TRANSFORMERS 1 and 2 were some of the top offenders that sent me on a crusade against incomprehensible action back in the day. BAD BOYS 2 at least impressed me with its unprecedented levels of excess and aggression toward humanity, but I was young and full of hot air and worried that all movies were gonna start being hard to look at like that. Although that doesn’t stress me anymore, those movies still don’t appeal to me.

But since then I’ve watched each of Bay’s movies with more of a sense of humor about how unhinged they are, and thankfully his action has become less of a smear. The TRANSFORMERSes kinda blur together in my mind (as on screen), but checking my reviews I see it was the fourth one where he first showed he could do them with clean action. I gave it a rare 4.5 out of 5 ACR (Action Comprehensability Rating)! And I noted in my PAIN & GAIN review that having a mid-sized budget where he had to plan what shots he needed instead of shooting a giant pile of footage and chopping it into salad was a blessing. I would say the same of 13 HOURS. Finally, 6 UNDERGROUND is maybe his most entertaining mix of outlandish stupidity and incredible action spectacle. So I’ve been feeling positive about him. (read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews | 22 Comments »

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