Review: Hot Pursuit

This article was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad

If you look really closely while watching Sofia Vergara act, you can sometimes catch little one frame jokes the animators have snuck in. You surely wouldn't be looking for subtlety if you sit down for Hot Pursuit, but perhaps you wouldn't be expecting a full-blown cartoon? In this new buddy comedy from director Anne Fletcher (Step Up, The Guilt Trip, The Proposal) everything and everyone is broad, broader, broadest. And not just Vergara as America's favorite Colombian broad. Think The Proposal's strange dancing campfire scene between Sandra Bullock and Betty White. No, no. Not broad enough. Broader. Broadest! 

Sofia Vergara plays tempestuous Sofia Vergara while Reese Witherspoon plays Officer Cooper, a well meaning super uptight cop. It's the classic odd couple dynamic showbiz has relied on since the camera was invented. These types are comedies are never reinventing the wheel, nor should they be expected too, so the test is always in how funny they are and how good the star chemistry is. Hot Pursuit will immediately be compared to The Heat not just because it stars two women (gasp!) but because of this uptight/wild dynamic and a similar crime situation with dirty cops and a drug lord who keeps escaping the law.

1. Will this odd couple who immediately hate each other learn to work together before the end credits roll?  

2. Will Vergara & Witherspoon survive the McCarthy & Bullock comparisons?

The answers are after the jump...

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Review: Maggie

Michael C. here to review Maggie

The buzz on Henry Hobson’s Maggie has focused on the novelty of blockbuster icon Arnold Schwarzenegger starring in a low-budget indie drama, which is akin to seeing Daniel Day-Lewis star in a Farrelly brother’s comedy. There is an undeniable fascination in seeing one of filmdom’s most famous men-of-action play a character defined by his powerlessness. The invincible violence machine that once laid waste to entire armies single-handedly now gets into a believable hand-to-hand struggle with some schmuck deputy sheriff and almost loses.

Arnold’s performance is one of the main reasons to see Maggie, and it doesn’t need to operate on that meta-level to work. There is nary a trace of the one-time blockbuster God on the screen this time out. There are no quips. No poses. No winks to the camera. As Wade, Schwarzenegger’s star charisma remains in tact, only this time it is tempered by a new vulnerability. Set well into an unfolding zombie apocalypse, all Wade wants is to rescue his daughter Maggie (Abigail Breslin) from the zombie virus with which she is infected, but we watch those Mr. Universe shoulders droop under the weight of sadness as Maggie’s veins gradually turn black and congeal. This disease is one enemy Arnold can’t destroy.

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Grace and Frankie: "The End" (Which is the Beginning)

Another week, another Netflix series debut. It seems like there are loads of them every month, yes? But this one, Grace and Frankie  is right up The Film Experience's alley.

It stars two beloved actresses: double Oscar winner Jane Fonda (Grace) and Oscar nominee Lily Tomlin (Frankie) reuniting 35 years after their comedy blockbuster Nine to Five. What's more Grace and Frankie uses, at least as its launching pad, our favorite genre Women Who Lie To Themselves™ and mixes it with LGBT subject matter and comes from the creator of Friends Marta Kauffman. That's a lot of pluses in its column even before you get to its delightfully sweet opening titles sequence involving a multi-tiered wedding cake.

Don't believe whatever early buzz that had people shrugging. It's a lot of fun and it's damn beautiful to see these two actresses working together again. After the jump a quick recap of the first episode with best lines and MVP moments and such.

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Review: Welcome to Me

Michael C. here with your non-Avengers review of the week

When we daydream about striking it rich the objects of our fantasies usually fall into tangible, straightforward categories. The things we will buy, the places we will travel, the jobs we will quit. Alice Klieg, the lottery winner with borderline personality disorder played by Kristen Wiig in Shira Piven’s Welcome to Me, has more abstract ideas. Alice has spent her whole life trying and failing to live in the world everyone else seems to inhabit with ease. Now, fresh off the decision to go off her meds and with 86 million at her disposal, she can finally force the rest of us to live in her world.

When we meet Alice prior to striking it rich, she is filling her lonely days watching her vast collection of Oprah episodes on VHS, mouthing the words along with the host. It makes perfect sense then, that when she finds herself thrust into the spotlight her first instinct is to cast herself in the role of self-help guru, albeit one with her own life as her first and only subject. [More...]

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Tribeca: "Sleeping With Other People"

Tribeca ends tonight but we'll have a few more reviews for you as the team finishes up. Here's Joe Reid...

After the phenomenal success of Bachelorette (creatively if not commercially; I'm still fuming that it never got the promotional push it deserved), I expected Leslye Headland's follow-up film to have that same dark-heart-with-teeth approach to the tried and true "can men and women be friends" comedy. Intriguingly, a few things about that statement turned out to be not the case. The humor in Sleeping with Other People is still incredibly sharp, but where Bachelorette was as hard as nails when it came to female singlehood in a wedding-drenched world, Sleeping with Other People puts its beating heart on display.

Which isn't to say Headland has gone soft. [More...]

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