Eric Hynes

Marshall's masterpiece

Garry Marshall, Risible Genius

Eric Hynes
Garry Marshall gives you what you came for. "A dollar's work for a dollar's pay," is how Marshall mainstay Hector Elizondo puts it in The Flamingo Kid. Although he started as a TV joke writer alongside Mel Brooks and Woody Allen, this 77-year-old Bronx baby never blossomed into an auteur......
law logo2x b

Coriolanus Review

Eric Hynes
Updating Shakespeare seems doubly condescending, the implication being that we need help in relating to the text, and that the text needs to be made relevant. In the case of Ralph Fiennes's adaptation of Coriolanus–a knotty tragedy about a warrior who refuses to kowtow to the perceived inferiors who control......

A Warrior's Heart Review

Eric Hynes
The latest film to ride Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth as if it were a nonconsensual pony, A Warrior's Heart tries to fashion a hero's journey out of a Seventeen spread. Two peripheral pretty faces from team Twilight star in this story about a high school lacrosse player's fitful......
law logo2x b

Weekend Review

Eric Hynes
Naturalistic without being ineloquent, heartfelt yet unsentimental, Weekend is the rarest of birds: a movie romance that rings true. After spending an evening with his domesticated straight friends, Russell (Tom Cullen) goes dancing and then home with the object of his desire. But before they can part on customarily awkward......
Azazel Jacobs

Azazel Jacobs Interview

Eric Hynes
Sheepishly, obligingly, Azazel Jacobs trespasses into the Manhattan apartment where he used to live. On Avenue A and 10th Street, above where the now-defunct Brownies used to showcase indie bands back when Jacobs was a postpunk postgrad, he pushes open an unlocked door and bounds up the steamy, unrenovated stairwell......
The Hangover Part II

The Hangover Part II: Been There, Drunk That

Eric Hynes
Most sequels are born of good box office rather than good ideas — if you build it and they come, you simply must build another one — but it's hard to imagine a more calculating, creatively bankrupt piece of real estate than The Hangover Part II. Trade out Las Vegas......
Submarine; Credit: PHOTOS BY DEAN ROGERS/THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY

Submarine: Directed by Richard Ayoade, English Sitcom Star

Eric Hynes
Imagine if David Fincher had played Joey on Friends. Or if Michel Gondry had replaced Charlie Sheen on Two and a Half Men. It's one thing for a music-video director to graduate to feature filmmaking (from Fincher to Spike Jonze, there's a rich history of that) or for a sitcom......

Wretches & Jabberers

Eric Hynes
WRETCHES & JABBERERS For what it’s worth, Wretches & Jabberers is never less than clear about its objectives. Two men with autism embark on a worldwide tour to fight misconceptions and change perceptions about their disability, and Gerardine Wurzburg’s film is committed to furthering that mission. The title, which co-opts......

Hanna

Eric Hynes
HANNA Joe Wright's Hanna is a tech-savvy fairy tale, replete with a wicked witch, uncertain parentage and chopsocky mixed martial arts. Despite its 21st-century trappings and protofeminist protagonist, Hanna strangely reverts to reactionary politics as usual. When we first meet 16-year-old Hanna (Saoirse Ronan), she's a fierce huntress, disemboweling woodland......

The Music Never Stopped

Eric Hynes
THE MUSIC NEVER STOPPED Based on a typically heart-wrenching case study by Oliver Sacks, this admirably modest adaptation tells the story of Gabriel Sawyer (Lou Taylor Pucci), a homeless hippie whose burnout isn't the product of drug abuse but a ballooning benign tumor that's erased his memory. Institutionalized in the......