Sunday 19 May
 
 

The Last Stand

Early in The Last Stand, the small-town sheriff played by Arnold Schwarzenegger says, "It's my day off. Should be a quiet weekend." That's the new way of saying, "I've got one week to retirement," because it signals — with flashing neon and everything — that life is going to royally upend those plans.
05/17/2013 | Comments 0

Texas Chainsaw

One of the most inconsistent franchises in movie history is the one beget by Tobe Hooper's 1974 classic, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. How does one follow all those less-than-beloved sequels? Lionsgate's latest in the series — the seventh — has a solution: Ignore 'em.
05/17/2013 | Comments 0

Captain America: Collector’s Edition

Not long after Batman changed Hollywood in the summer of 1989, every studio wanted to have the next comics-based blockbuster. I remember visiting Penn Square Mall’s multiplex (as I did often back then) and seeing a poster for Captain America. The one-sheet was comprised of little more than a close-up of Cap’s iconic shield and a promise to arrive next summer.
05/16/2013 | Comments 0

Dark Circles

With the Broken Lizard comedy troupe becoming increasingly broken, member Paul Soter has branched off to write and direct something about as far away as one can get from the likes of Super Troopers and Beerfest: a horror film. Now that I've seen it, I'm thinking maybe he should stay on his own.
05/16/2013 | Comments 0

Die! Die! My Darling!

File 1965's Die! Die! My Darling! under that now-dead subgenre dubbed "Grande Dame Guignol." The Hammer Films production may lack the dueling duo of two twilight-era titans of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and the others, but truth be told, Tallulah Bankhead is fierce enough to provide all the fire it needs.
05/14/2013 | Comments 0
Home · Articles · Movies · Comedy · Whip It
Comedy

Whip It


None October 8th, 2009

whipit
flick. "Whip It" is nothing you haven't seen before, but the dramedy is feisty, charming and beautifully acted.

Ellen Page ("Smart People") is Bliss Cavendar, a 17-year-old waitress languishing in small-town Bodeen, Texas. She yearns for more out of life, but doesn't know what, except that it doesn't include the beauty pageants she is forced to compete in by her uptight mother (Marcia Gay Harden, "The Mist").

Bliss' purposelessness ends the moment she stumbles on roller derby. She checks it out in Austin one evening, and is intoxicated by the theatricality of it, from the campy stage names to the hard-charging action. She tries out for a team called the Hurl Scouts, wins a spot and skates her way into a double life as Babe Ruthless.

Roller derby adds a bit of spice to the proceedings, but screenwriter Shauna Cross, adapting her own novel, rolls from clich

 
  • Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
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