Here at The A.V. Club, we try not to get worked up over the personal lives of celebrities, because it’s harder to make fun of their acting performances or movie choices when we think of them as real people with real feelings. That being said, even stone-hearted cynics like us can sometimes fall into the trap of—blegh—…
Superbad was a pretty big hit upon its release, but, even then, film buffs would likely have been surprised by just how much Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s raunchy comedy would continue to resonate for both older and younger audiences more than a decade later. Sure, it’s funny, oddly wholesome, and filled with…
Five years since Arrested Development made its improbable comeback—thanks to Netflix’s then-nascent foray into original content—the verdict on its fourth season, its mere existence miraculous, is a shrug. When Netflix announced Arrested Development as part of its first slate of original content back in 2011—which…
Not long after becoming the best part of the Twin Peaks: The Return, Michael Cera has come back with another unexpected career move. As reported by Pitchfork, Cera has recorded a new song with Sharon Van Etten for the soundtrack to the documentary Diana. Cera says he recorded the song “in a hot basement with a Roland…
Ten years after its initial release, Superbad continues to live on in the American zeitgeist. Like other comedy hits before it, references to the film’s jokes have gone from being hilarious, to annoying, to nostalgia-inducing, to hilarious again. And even after a decade of everyone and their mother misquoting McLovin,…
The sad fact about modern weird-for-weird’s-sake micro-indies is that they tend to be even more alike that than the toothlessly quirky Sundance items to which they’re supposed to serve as an antidote. It’s like they’ve all been grown from the same frothy mixture of Adult Swim anti-comedy, vintage lens fetishism, and…
A sweet, light puff of a movie, Person To Person succeeds on the strength of its affection for shaggy-dog stories and the personalities who waltz in and out of them. In theory, it’s the sort of indie that’s already been done to death: an ensemble-cast love letter to the prickly character of New York. (Even worse, it’s…
Brett Gelman has never been one to shy away from stranger material. In fact, he dives into it—most often with projects of his own creation, like Brett Gelman’s Dinner In America, but also playing odd-duck characters in series like Eagleheart or Another Period. He’s also shown range as more buttoned down and grounded…
Let’s get the obvious comparison out of the way first: Yes, this looks and feels very much like a Woody Allen comedy from the ‘80s. The trailer for Dustin Guy Defa’s Person To Person features a sprawling cast, comic vignettes taking place all over New York City, and wry, meandering conversations about life, love, and…
This post discusses plot points from the third and fourth episodes of Showtime’s Twin Peaks revival.
The town of Twin Peaks is unlike anywhere else, so naturally it has different standards for what counts as “cool” or “weird.” In a lot of other small towns, Dale Cooper’s weird philosophies and eagerness to believe in murderous spirits would be strange, but in Twin Peaks, he’s basically a superstar. No matter where…
Several of the seemingly endless supply of movies about Batman have made note of the superhero’s duality. But the likes of Batman Returns and Batman Forever focus primarily on the duality of Bruce Wayne and his cowled, crimefighting alter ego. Batman has plenty of other dualities, some of which are almost paradoxical:…
Earlier this year, Microsoft unveiled Murphy, the latest eerily smart chat bot out of the machine learning labs. Last year, it produced one that guessed how old users were based on a picture. Next came Tay, a “teen girl” who quickly learned, via the magic power of Twitter, to be a Nazi.
The title character played by Michael Cera in the 2010 film Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is a bewildered young man in a constant state of flux. Fittingly, director Edgar Wright pays extra attention to the transitions between the scenes in this movie, transporting his viewers from location to location and moment to…
An episode on bar fights provides such a rich meta-commentary for Drunk History—not simply because these are drunk people telling stories about bars and alcohol but because these particular “bar fights” that the episode highlights bring complexity and depth to a seemingly trivial concept. Bar fights usually aren’t…
Will Ferrell is an absent (movie) father: According to The Hollywood Reporter, Ferrell has dropped out of Captain Dad, an indie written and directed by Sebastián Silva. Apparently the film was just about to begin production, and now THR reports that it’s unclear whether it will actually come together. Silva has a…
Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut, Molly’s Game, has already drawn in a fair amount of high-profile talent, including Idris Elba and Jessica Chastain. Now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Arrested Development and Scott Pilgrim star Michael Cera might also be signing on for Sorkin’s tale of high-stakes poker among…
It would be easy and accurate to describe Sausage Party as a parody of contemporary family-friendly animation, particularly of the Pixar-produced variety. It explores the secret life, unseen by humans, of seemingly inanimate objects; it sends its celebrity-voiced lead character on an epic journey that ends in an antic…
The new Justice League footage is a less serious than anything in Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, but that’s not really saying much. If it’s still too serious for you, though, it sounds like The Lego Batman Movie will prove once again just how versatile the Dark Knight can really be. Lego Batman director Chris…
Generally cheap, comfortable, and disposable, the humble T-shirt has been a part of American life since World War I, when doughboys brought them back from France. For decades, they were strictly undergarments, rarely worn exposed in public. But, according to Jane and Michael Stern’s The Encyclopedia Of Bad Taste,…
