The Out-Laws (2023) - Movie Review

Dammit, I knew that getting lucky with Murder Mystery 2 being kind of decent wasn’t going to last. Although honestly, I have some morbid appreciation for this because I didn’t even think they made American comedies like this any more. Both here and for my FilmInk work, I find myself regularly bringing up how modern US comedies seem to spend a lot of time just ad-libbing and riffing instead of actually moving the plot forward or doing anything interesting with the characters. Nowadays, most filmmakers have gotten it into their heads that comedy can help advance a story instead of just grinding it to a halt for little to no reason, but there are some brave little soldiers who are doing their best to keep that style alive.

American Ultra (2015) - Movie Review

Of all the different films that have resulted from Hollywood today at its most adaptation-happy, one of the rarest seen nowadays is the spoof. There are probably two fairly big reasons for that: The proclivity of YouTube parodies have pretty much made the notion of paying to watch a spoof movie on the big screen unnecessary, and the simple fact that none of the filmmakers that could actually pull off doing spoof movies are around anymore. When the only champions for spoof films are the sanity-stripping duo of Friedberg and Seltzer, the guys behind Date Movie, Disaster Movie and Meet The Spartans, it’s enough to make anyone swear off snarking on films ever again. But, then again, maybe these parodies aren’t as dead as we think; they can also sneak up on people if you’re not careful. For example, we have today’s film: This is American Ultra… and points already for the most awesomely ludicrous name for a film this year.