The Adam Sandler formula hasn’t changed much in thirty years. It’s basically a few variations on the arrested adolescent turned underdog hero: the self-made jerk (Happy Gilmore), the underachiever and proud of it (Big Daddy), the sheltered local yokel unprepared for the social world (The Waterboy). Little Nicky (2000) falls in the latter category, and […]
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is disillusioned idealist Edward Snowden in Snowden (2016), Oliver Stone’s drama about the controversial NSA whistleblower. Framed by the famous meeting in a Hong Kong hotel room where Snowden (played with modest integrity by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) shared top-secret files revealing illegal surveillance programs with journalist Glenn Greenwald (Zachary Quinto) and documentarian Laura Poitras […]
In Greenberg (2010), Ben Stiller delivers the youngest curmudgeon in the movies. Roger Greenberg is a fortysomething guy recovering from a nervous breakdown and avoiding confronting the mid-life crisis he’s been tangling with since his twenties, apparently. Noah Baumbach, directing from a story developed with his wife, Jenifer Jason Leigh, is a shrewd student of […]
