Suburban Surrealism

Grown Ups 2
Tweet-sized Review by John Demetry

Dugan-Sandler's GROWN UPS 2 deserves critical acclaim for its delirious suburban surrealism to visualize family and social connections and anxieties (especially sexual) and for its innovative montage during a dinner table sequence that Godard should salute--bringing avant-garde hilarity to the multiplexes. They might be geniuses.

Deconstructing the Wedding Ring

Pawn Shop Chronicles
Tweet-sized review by John Demetry

With the first 2/3 of PAWN SHOP CHRONICLES, Wayne Kramer creates a terrifying portrait of our divided, demonic culture (deconstructing male violence, female objectification, and the wedding ring) that rivals RUNNING SCARED, but the last third disastrously attributes unifying pop experience to the work of the devil rather than the divisive media culture that exploits the pain so vividly expressed in the first 2/3.