8/22/08:  "We seem to be entering a very strange and exciting time in the career of Adam Sandler.  Already working hard to refine his Saturday Night Live-honed acting skills to the point where he can give a real performance, the reigning king of lowbrow comic blockbusters has now made back-to-back movies that are (gasp) “about” something.  Big things, too.  I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry attempted, with some success, to generate some empathy on the gay marriage issue among a constituency unlikely to have given it much thought.  And now he's stepped into even stickier territory, perhaps the world's single most divisive issue:  the eternal struggle between Israel and Palestine.  OK, You Don't Mess With the Zohan isn't exactly a thoughtful, dramatic examination of the issues, and this gonzo, anything-goes comedy can be hit and miss.  But it also has a way of sneaking up on you, scores more satirical points than you have any right to expect, and most shockingly of all, allows the former Opera Man to make me believe in the crazy dreams of a commando who only wants to be a hairdresser." MORE

8/22/08:  "Whether or not, as Henry David Thoreau famously observed, the great mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, certainly the great mass of men (and women) lead lives designed as large-scale remakes of their own childhoods.  For most, this means starting a family of their own and, like many a reboot, casting the children from the original as the parents in what otherwise ends up being a carbon copy for a few more swear words and the kids showing a little more skin than the first time out.  For the rest, it means an adulthood of arrested development, watching the life everyone tells them they’re supposed to be living from the sidelines across that same gulf of mutual misunderstanding W.G. Sebald said separates man from animals.  For these people, life is often an endless sequel, covering the same ground year after year to diminishing returns.  Or at least that’s how it all looks through the prism of depression, the subject of Young Adult, a daring new dramedy from Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody, who performed the same directing and writing chores on Juno, a movie that could not be more dissimilar in tone.  Young Adult’s got some laughs, but they’re mostly of the horrified, uncomfortable variety as we watch depressed, delusional Mavis Gary (a stunning and brave Charlize Theron) make a desperate attempt to recapture her lost adolescence.  Sporting an equally gutsy breakout performance by Patton Oswalt, Young Adult is an emotionally rich black comedy of ennui, shattered dreams, and the way the pretty and ugly alike are left by the side of life’s parade if they can’t keep up." MORE

1/12/10:  "Nick Twisp, the hero of a series of novels by C.D. Payne, is like a lot of teenage boys:  obsessed with losing his virginity, convinced he's smarter than every adult around him, and clueless as to why girls prefer “bad boys” to the refined, nerdy likes of himself.  What makes Nick different is that these obsessions lead him to a complete nervous breakdown and the creation of a dual identity who's free to be very, very bad on Nick's behalf. Youth in Revolt, the new film version of the first three novels in Payne's series, tells a story that could just as easily be the basis for a horror movie as a comedy, and never does quite come to terms with the contradiction between that and a desire to be fuzzy and uplifting.  But Michael Cera has found his Hamlet in the dual role of Twisp and his alter ego Francois Dillinger, and that demented pair is enough to make Miquel Arteta's film a consistently appealing tale of life's inequities and how, if you can't win a girl with brains and personality, sometimes you've just got to blow something up.

Nick Twisp (Michael Cera) lives with his mother Estelle (Jean Smart) and her loser boyfriend Jerry (Zack Galifianakis).  A nerdy would-be writer who listens to Frank Sinatra records all day, Nick is hopeless with women and grows more frustrated with this fact by the day." MORE