Geek For E!

Movie Review: Trainwreck

Amy Schumer lushes out for your funny bone

Judd Apatow and Amy Schumer are two great tastes that taste great together.  Great.  Now I want a Reeses.

I’m a big Inside Amy Schumer fan.  I dig Apatow’s oeuvre, though some more than others.  (Giving you the side-eye, Pineapple Express.)  But I figured if anyone could nail down the weirdness of trying to overcome the trust issues and ingrained mistrust of the world that is dating in the 21st Century, it’d be these two.  I was right.  Boom.

In Trainwreck, Schumer plays Amy (obviously), a woman whose dad has told her that “monogamy isn’t realistic”.  So all her life she’s been the stereotypical dude in the relationship, hooking up and skipping out before mattresses have even had a chance to spring back into shape.  She’s a writer for a magazine that feels like a cross between Maxim and How To Be A Chauvinist Weekly.  Her beautiful, too-cool senior editor Dianna (played by Tilda Swinton, with just the right touch of IDGAF) tasks her with writing a piece about a big-time sports medicine doc whose been credited with saving the careers of many high-profile sportsball types.

Dr. Aaron Conners (Bill Hader) seems like the perfect guy; smart, funny, a career he truly enjoys, and open to commitment.  Amy tries to do the pump-n-dump, but finds herself attracted to him just as her father Gordon’s MS progresses to the point where dad has to be in assisted living.  The fact that Amy and Aaron both want to be with the other is typically the end of a rom-com, but here it’s just the beginning.  Trainwreck looks at a relationship past its first kiss, and into the first fight, the settling in, interacting with the family, and all of the other little things that make long-term relationships work…or not.  Amy is all too willing to drop everything when things get rough, because that’s what she saw happen in with her parents. But Aaron isn’t willing to break up when things get bumpy.  Can Amy handle that?  Roll film! [Read more…]

Movie Review – “This is the End”

When I heard that there was a movie coming out where the plot is “James Franco throws a party and all of his friends are there and then the End of the world happens” I was sold. This idea just seemed quirky and out-there enough that I couldn’t see how this would be a failure. Then I saw the first trailer and I laughed and said to myself, “OK…this doesn’t look like it will suck at all.” I then learned that it was based on Jason Stone’s short film from 2007 James and Seth versus the Apocalypse and that the main characters are in fact James Franco and Seth Rogen playing themselves. How surreal! Actors portraying themselves as slightly-not-them-but-them characters that mimic their real life yet not so much. Twisted and brilliant, I know!

Seth Rogen and his writing partner Evan Goldberg (both also directed this amazing movie) manage to make BEST COMEDY TO HIT MOVIE THEATERS IN A DAMN LONG TIME!! I don’t even know where to start as I’m still laughing as I think about the movie while I’m typing the review. It’s that good and that funny. I haven’t laughed from start to finish for a movie in a very long time. I mean the audience was laughing so hard and loud at times that I need to see This is the End again just to try and catch some of the jokes that I missed due to all the laughing. If Man of Steel wasn’t coming out on the same weekend (even if it is two days later), This is the End would be the number one movie in the box office this weekend….but being the number one comedy will suffice.

this-is-the-end-banner

Grade: 5 out of 5 stars!!

[Read more…]

Movie Review: “The Five Year Engagement”

Written by Jason Segel and Nick Stoller, who also directed the movie, The Five Year Engagement should be the movie that makes you want to laugh so loud that your body will breakdown from all the shaking going on. Between the two of them we’ve seen plenty of brilliantly written movies over the years – Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Muppetts, Fun with Dick and Jane. Add to that long time Segel fan and friend Judd Apatow as the Producer behind this and other movies such as  Bridesmaids, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The 40-Year Old Virgin, and Pineapple Express and you’d think that this would be the recipe for another hit. Yet The Five Year Engagement falls flat and can’t really seem to shake itself out to become the movie we want it to be.

The plot is relatively simple.  Tom (Jason Segel) and Violet (Emily Blunt) have been dating for a year after meeting on News Year’s Eve. On that very night a year later, Tom and Violet get engaged. However the twist is that they don’t have any plans for their wedding and thus have ups and downs over a five year stretch on their way to the “big day.”

So what could go wrong with this premise? Answer: A lot!

[Read more…]