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Please Give Holy Predators

By Genevieve Burgess | DVD Releases | October 19, 2010 |

By Genevieve Burgess | DVD Releases | October 19, 2010 |


Predators: “What follows is essentially 115 minutes of action-movie jungle golf without a cart: Walk a while, stop and shoot a few boogeyman, walk some more. Only the golfers aren’t getting drunk and making racist jokes but are being picked off one-by-one by alien Predators with dreadlocks and some serious gingivitis. Oh, and the catch here is that there are big Predators and then there are BIG Predators, and the BIG Predators also hunt the big Predators when they aren’t teleporting humans in for tea and spine removal. Because it’s a big planet. And they get bored clicking at each other all day. And apparently, despite all of their advanced technology, no one has thought to invent television on their planet yet (or perhaps they’re so advanced that their entertainment industry has fully devolved to where ours is going, and they simply don’t want to watch 24-hour reality porn — which is understandable since, to use Arnie’s original lingo, they’re some ugly motherfuckers).” - Dustin Rowles and Seth Freilich

Holy Rollers: “Like the illicit chemicals they explore, drug films follow a formula. Once in a while, a rarity like Trainspotting comes along that’s spiked with something fresh and exhilarating that blows your mind and cores you to the very soul. But most of the time, it’s pretty much the same assortment of elements brought together in the same generic $4 prescription way getting the job done. Change the color, change the name, change the delivery, but it’s still gonna be the same: an innocent boy (and it’s almost always boys, because apparently girls are only good for being arm candy or laying zonked and spread out on couches) who’s never done drugs suddenly starts selling drugs and slides down the slippery slope into the back of a police car. And that’s the problem with Kevin Asch’s Holy Rollers. It’s an amazing flavor — in 1998 Brooklyn an ecstacy ring starts using Hasidic Jews as drug mules to ship over a million pills from Amsterdam. It’s acted to the hilt, particularly by Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Bartha, but at the core of writer Antonia Macia’s script is just your basic, run-of-the-mill after-school cautionary tale. Only this one gets played in yeshiva.” - Brian Prisco

Please Give: “With a cast that runs the gamut of ages, Holofcener is able to nail down why it sucks at every age. We’ve got the teen daughter who hates the way she looks, but for once cast with an actress who actually looks and acts like an imperfect and wonderful fucking teenager. We’ve got people in their twenties trying to find a loving relationship in a world where it’s become almost impossible to date. We’ve got middle-aged people trying to do something with their lives and find purpose. We’ve got the elderly, pissed off because they have to rely on others for things they want to still do for themselves. To encapsulate just one of these age groups often eludes filmmakers. To actually hit all of them effortlessly is ludicrously astounding. And on top of that, she’s got the fucking ovaries to pull off an anti-New York film set in New York. Instead of treating the Big Apple like the supreme manna many of her ilk insist upon, she’s content with pointing out all the bruising and brown spots. It’s mean-spirited without being cruel or petty, and it’s kind of nice.” - Brian Prisco

Also released this week: Agora, Giallo, Night of the Demons, Disneynature: Oceans