Nostalgia oozes from every cinematic pore of ‘Pixels,’ as director Chris Columbus weaves these videogame relics into a modern landscape. Unfortunately, rather than fully committing to his elegant premise, Columbus gets bogged down in unconvincing character development. Sandler fans and little kids might enjoy this rollcall of ‘80s game icons, but everyone else should just rent ‘Ghostbusters’ instead.
Better Living Through Chemistry flirts with danger from its opening moments, in which a narrator first says that while each of us can’t help everyone, everyone can help someone, and follows it up by saying that our lead character would dismiss that sentiment as fortune-cookie foolishness. That character, portrayed by Sam Rockwell, who grows more Sam Rockwell-esque by the minute here, would be right to do so, but the film he occupies essentially embraces that sentiment, if to a slightly amoral extent. Better Living Through Chemistry is, seemingly, a bit desperate to both occupy the same satiric subgenre as American Beauty and to be so emphatically unique among other American Beauty-esque films that it’s unable to fully achieve either goal in the end.
True Detective, Season 1, Episode 4: “Who Goes There” Written by Nic Pizzolatto Directed by Cary Fukunaga Airs Sundays at 9pm ET on HBO – Given that I am not your standard True Detective recapper (Ricky D is on The Walking Dead duty this week), it seems worthwhile, now that the first series is half …