Laurie Fundukian

This is 40 takes us back to Pete (Paul Rudd), wife Debbie (Leslie Mann) and daughters Sadie and Charlotte (Mann and writer/director Judd Apatow’s real-life children Maude and Iris) who we meet up with again five years after the events of Knocked Up. Apparently turning 40 means it’s midlife-crisis time, and this couple both hit the landmark birthday the same week, though Debbie is in denial, ...[Read More]

Word is that Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand had a really good time together filming The Guilt Trip, according to their press interviews, and I’m happy for them. I’m not sure their audiences will fare as well. Both are definitely forces in the entertainment world, but the script for this movie did not live up to their status. It’s quite clichéd, starting with the typical Jewish mother/son relation...[Read More]

The sessions about which the title of the new film The Sessions speaks are sex therapy sessions, and the audience learns that there can only be six total. Not to be mistaken with nights spent with a paid sex worker, these sessions are raw, real, awkward, and heartbreaking. John Hawkes plays Mark O’Brien, a man whose least distinguishing characteristic is that he is a thirty-eight-year-old virgin. ...[Read More]

Anna Kendrick (Oscar nominated for Up in the Air) leads the young cast in this college a cappala romp that is part Bridesmaids (complete with actress Rebel Wilson, who graces both, and gross-out scenes involving bodily fluids) and part Glee (but cooler). The music is great and the humor is laugh-out-loud raucous. I must disclose that I saw this movie with a friend from high school I was in show ch...[Read More]

This low-budget indie is a gem of a movie. Snarky, intelligent, moving dialogue reigns free in Your Sister’s Sister, giving the actors much to work with and play off each other. The movie’s first scene is at a party that takes place on the anniversary of a death, where we witness Jack (Mark Duplass) deliver a cringe worthy toast that gets derailed and ends up being not a tribute to but a condemnat...[Read More]

It should come as no surprise that Madonna would be fascinated by the story of Wallis Simpson, the twice-divorced socialite for whom King Edward VIII (David, as his familiars called him) abdicated the British throne in order to marry. Simpson, the subject of Madonna’s new film W.E., was a survivor: outspoken, calculating, popular yet unpopular in the media, and sexual and ambitious at a time when ...[Read More]

It’s good to be Paul Rudd these days. He is well-liked and gets to be in a fun late-summer release – Our Idiot Brother – with fellow actors who are likely his friends, but this time he is completely carrying the movie. Those of us who’ve liked him since Clueless are glad to see he continues to show his charm on screen, but many may long for a deeper vehicle for his talent. In Our Idiot Brother he ...[Read More]

In the film One Day, Dex (Jim Sturgess) and Emma (Anne Hathaway) spend an awkward night together after their graduation from the University of Edinburgh. He is the cad who has always had it easy – because he came from money and because he’s smooth and good looking. She is more of a wall flower, studious, Jane Eyre-reading type, so they do not seem to be a match; something he lets her know by askin...[Read More]

I can guarantee that Another Earth is not for everyone. But maybe everyone should step out of the comfort zones of superhero and action movies and spend a couple of hours with this thoughtful, languishing, and visually stunning little gem. In his feature directing debut, Mike Cahill, known for documentaries such as Boxers and Ballerinas, along with his writing partner Brit Marling, have made the m...[Read More]

I, as did many women in this country, read the book The Help, so the movie was on warning in my head to deliver the goods and stay true to Kathryn Stockett’s novel, or else. It did. And one of the reasons it succeeded is the fact that Stockett’s childhood friend (since the age of five) Tate Taylor serves as both writer and director of the new film adaptation. Taylor (a mostly unknown actor who had...[Read More]

If the goal of the lead actor, Kevin James, and director, Frank Coraci, of Zookeeper was to make a better movie than Paul Blart, Mall Cop, they succeeded. This movie is indeed better than earlier Kevin James outings. If an audience’s goal is to see something light and fun that is out of the superhero genre that seems to have taken over the multiplexes this year, then they should give it a shot. If...[Read More]