Tag: Rose Byrne

Screening Room: ‘Irresistible’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

In Jon Stewart’s new political comedy, two high-powered political consultants turn a tiny mayoral race in Wisconsin into an absurd battle for national attention.

Irresistible opens this week in VOD. My review is at Slant:

The film doesn’t focus its ire on Trump, conservatives, and the like, but rather on the cable news and consultant infrastructure that was accelerating America’s collapsing democratic polity long before anybody in a red baseball cap screamed “Lock her up!” and will continue to do so after Trump leaves the White House. This makes sense from Stewart, who went after Glenn Beck back in 2010 not through white-hot invective, but by holding a rally dedicated to polite, level-headed disagreement. These are desperate times, but if Stewart wants to tack toward a more Frank Capra vein, that’s just fine. We already have one Adam McKay…

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

neighbors2

People with lesser imaginations might have imagined that after the bong-huffing and keg-emptying rager that was Neighbors, there was nothing else to be done with the concept. But it appears that Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne are still irked to be living next door to a party house, only now it’s a rogue sorority instead of fraternity. Because: equality.

Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising opens this Friday everywhere. My review is at Film Journal International:

Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising starts with Kelly Radner (Rose Byrne), one-half of the film’s perpetually befuddled Gen-X couple, announcing her pregnancy to Mac (Seth Rogen) by spewing vomit on his face while they’re having sex. It ends in a curiously anti-climactic scene with the Radners enraptured in honeyed two-child McMansion bliss. In between those polar-opposite moments roils a helter-skelter of moments that read like something stitched together almost at random from the notebook leavings of Rogen and Evan Goldberg (just two of the five credited writers)…

Here’s the trailer: