Though most publications reporting on the latest Oxford Dictionaries inclusions are leading with “butthurt,” The A.V. Club must of course acknowledge “manic pixie dream girl” first, as it was coined—and later publicly disowned—by former head writer and current columnist Nathan Rabin in his first My Year Of Flops…
"In conjunction with Malls Week, here's a My Year Of Flops look at a mall movie nobody seemed to love."
When Will Forte commits to a role he really commits. There’s no distance or protective irony. When Forte goes all in, he really goes all in. Will Ferrell commits to a similar degree, but he at least has the safety of a persona to fall back on. Forte doesn’t have that: He disappears inside characters that sometimes…
There are bad movies and then there are shitty miracles. In bad movies, something goes awry: The script is convoluted or the third act is a mess or Anthony Hopkins is playing a black man for some reason. In a shitty miracle, everything goes awry. It’s not a matter of one sorry element dragging the rest down; it’s…
All writing is, on some level, self-indulgent. By putting pen to paper, literally and otherwise, we’re declaring that our thoughts and sentiments are so bold and important they must be shared with the world. We write and dance and think and direct and storyboard about that which obsesses us. In four months, I will…
Is Mel Gibson beyond redemption? Is anyone? Will we ever be able to watch Gibson onscreen again without thinking of breathless threatening phone calls to ex-girlfriends, drunk driving, or anti-Semitic screeds? It’s a testament to how badly Gibson has crossed the boundaries of what’s considered forgivable that earlier…
I recently re-watched the first season of the American incarnation of Da Ali G Show in a rapt state. I am in awe of Sacha Baron Cohen. The depth and scope of his achievement is remarkable. For two incredible seasons in the United States, where he brought the show in 2003 after finding fame in the UK in the late ’90s,…
As I wrote in the MYOF book-exclusive Case File for W, there comes a moment in every cinephile’s intellectual and creative development when he or she comes to realize that Oliver Stone is full of shit; similarly, there comes a moment in every comedy fan’s intellectual and creative development when he or she comes to…
There are few things as tragicomic as the passion project gone awry. It’s one thing to whiff with work-for-hire. It’s quite another to bomb the story you believe you were born to tell. Put yourself in the Italian loafers of Mitch Glazer. Within the comedy world, he’s a Zelig figure with a knack for being in the right…
As indelibly documented in Neal Gabler’s essential 1988 history of early Hollywood, An Empire Of Their Own: How The Jews Invented Hollywood, the Eastern European immigrant rag merchants and peddlers who helped create the American film industry were a ferociously patriotic bunch. Why wouldn’t they be? The United States…
I fell in love with Chungking Express. There are no other words to describe it. I fell for the world writer-director Wong Kar-Wai created in the 1994 film, and I couldn’t wait to return. Chungking Express combined the comforting reassurance of the familiar with the exhilaration of the new. Wong is unmistakably a…
The Joaquin Phoenix-starring movie I’m Still Here represents a sticky wicket for My Year of Flops. It’s such an odd, unclassifiable project that it’s hard to even ascertain what the benchmarks for its success or failure might be. It was never going to gross $100 million or sweep the Oscars. It’s not that kind of a…
Geeks of the world, I have good news. We won the culture war! I didn’t realize that until last Friday, when I saw a film that would have blown geeks’ minds had it been released in 1986. Back then, every element of the film would have marked it as a pop-culture event to be breathlessly anticipated.
Dave Foley once seemed destined for greatness. He was funny. He was smart. He was boyishly handsome. But more than anything, he was likable. We rooted for him. We identified with him. We wanted him to succeed. We wanted him to get the girl and the happy ending. We wanted that for his characters, but we also wanted…
Somewhere, a 19-year-old is getting ready to watch a television show for the first time. This person is relatively pop-culture savvy. He likes comedy even if he would never consider himself a comedy nerd. Maybe he even reads The A.V. Club. So he’s heard about this show that is supposed to be absolutely fucking…
Project Greenlight, the filmmaking reality competition sponsored by Miramax and produced by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Chris Moore, was supposed to be a winning proposition for everyone involved. One lucky filmmaker would receive a million-dollar budget and the promise of a theatrical release from Miramax. Audiences…
Even famed comedy directors like John Landis—the man behind Animal House, The Blues Brothers, Trading Places, An American Werewolf In London, Coming To America, and the amazing documentary Slasher—sometimes have to work up a furious flopsweat trying to get studio executives and audiences to understand their comic…
I generally like to wait until history has rendered a verdict on a film before writing it up for My Year Of Flops. Every once in a while, however, I encounter a flop so irresistible, so intrinsically fascinating, and so utterly unreal that I swoop in like a vulture eying ripe carrion and write it up while it’s still…
The Coen brothers fulfill an important role in American society: They fuck with us. They’re tricksters who’ve made it into the upper echelon of American film without ever losing, or even compromising, their simultaneously admirable and maddening eagerness to fuck with audiences, critics, interviewers, and the world as…
In a perfect world, we would all go out on top. I can imagine no death greater than that of Harry Einstein, a journeyman dialect comedian better known as Parkyakarkus, and better known still as the father of Albert Brooks and “Super Dave” Osborne. On November 28, 1958, Einstein performed a killer set at a Friar’s Club…
