The Sting

Poor Man’s Ocean’s 11 – Oceans benefits from The Sting being in the public consciousness for decades, but the student has become the master ★★★☆☆ The Sting is one of the quintessential classic Hollywood con-man movies, featuring starring turns from Robert Redford (who you might remember as angry man on boat from my second review) […]

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I Melt With You

Rich man’s The Big Chill: Both have similar backgrounds, college friends get together and realize that their lives never turned out as planned. I Melt With You is the gritty reboot of The Big Chill. ★★★★☆ In I Melt With You, Rob Lowe, Thomas Jane, Jeremy Piven, and Christian McKay star as four college friends […]

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Swingers

Rich Man’s Humpday: a tale of bravado and bromance, but Swingers comes in the easier-to-swallow gel capsule ★★★☆☆ Swingers, as most of you probably already know, is Jon Favreau’s 1996 film debut. It stars Favreau and Vince Vaughn as two struggling entertainers (Favreau is a standup comedian, Vaughn is an actor) living in early 90s […]

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Chasing Amy

Poor man’s 500 Days of Summer: Both are romantic comedies with a twist, but I enjoy watching 500 Days more. ★★★★☆ This week Josh assigned me Chasing Amy. It’s the third movie in the View Askewniverse created by Kevin Smith. The film was released in 1997. I don’t know why, but Kevin Smith often leaves […]

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The Great Escape

Rich Man’s M*A*S*H, it uses the same dark-comedic tone but puts it to much greater effect ★★★★★ When you’ve been watching and discussing movies with the same people for over 7+ years you end up with a common vocabulary. Today, I get to talk to you cinemateurs about a term we use, a ‘perfect film’. […]

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Frank

Rich man’s Network: I feel the underpinnings of Frank is dissatisfaction with social media. Network screams this same dissatisfaction from the rooftops. Literally. ★★★★☆ Frank is a weird movie. It stars Domhnall Gleeson as a wannabe musician named Jon who gets pulled into an avant-garde art rock band led by the titular Frank. Frank is […]

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Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Poor Man’s Matchstick Men: it checks all the con-man boxes, but without much style ★★★☆☆ Last week, we talked about one of David’s great loves, the biopic. This week we wade into another of his favorite topics: the con man movie. The con man genre is full of excellent films and even better characters. Con […]

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Rebuttal: The Wind Rises

Le vent se lève! . . . il faut tenter de vivre! ★★★★☆ That’s right, I’m opening this rebuttal up in French. Before my next review, I wanted to give you my perspective on The Wind Rises by Hayao Miyazaki. David and I, y’know the two guys mentioned in the tagline, will be writing rebuttals […]

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The Wind Rises

Poor man’s The Good Shepherd: I somehow found this slower and less interesting than the profoundly boring fake story about how the CIA started in the US. ★★☆☆☆ Before we start on this film review, we need to have a discussion about biopics. I love biopics. If there’s a genre that has my absolute forgiveness, […]

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