Anne Pick

What's more ironic: That Morgan Spurlock, director of the Oscar-nominated documentary Super Size Me, sets out to make a documentary about product placement by funding the film entirely with product placement, or that the products hinder what the film could have been? Maybe that was the point all along. Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold sets out to be a telling expose on the world of product placement and co-promotion, but tell us anything we didn't already know.

Bridesmaids succeeds where others have failed in portraying the necessary evil of being a bridesmaid, and does it on comedic steroids. There's one thing anyone who has ever been a bridesmaid can tell you, but would never tell the bride: being a bridesmaid is a certain kind of punishment saved only for the kind of friends who will forgive you for it later.
In Bridesmaids, Annie (Saturday Night Live's Kristen Wiig), a broke victim of the recession just trying to get by, becomes her best friend Lillian's (Maya Rudolph) maid of honor. Annie, along with four other colorful bridesmaids, rounds out the “stone cold pack of weirdos” Lillian has selected to be part of her bridal party.

“A girlfriend of mine didn’t go to hers [prom]. Once in a while she gets a terrible feeling, like something is missing. She checks her purse and her keys, she counts her kids, she goes crazy. And then she realizes that nothing is missing. She decided it was side effects from skipping the prom.” – Iona in Pretty in Pink

For decades, Hollywood has been building up this idea of prom being the pinnacle of adolescence. The above quote comes from one of my favorite movies, Pretty in Pink, which back in the '80s solidified prom as a significant right of passage. Since that time, there's been no shortage of movies about the supposedly spectacular event. In Disney's Prom, the traditional (and perhaps accurate) images of sex, drugs and underage drinking take a back seat to teenage innocence.

When you enter the theater to watch Water for Elephants, there's an elephant in the room, and I'm not just talking about the 9,000-pound animal that plays a significant role in this film. In this case, the elephant in the room is expectation. For some, expectation comes from the novel of the same name by Sara Gruen, on which the film is based. For others, the expectation of chemistry from two of the most attractive actors in Hollywood takes over your thoughts.
After Jacob Jankowski's (Robert Pattinson) parents die in an unexpected car crash the day he plans to take his final exams as a veterinary student at Cornell, he decides to skip town. Jacob hops a train belonging to the Benzini Brothers Circus and after proving his skill with the animals, joins them as a veterinarian. Jacob must work closely with the circus' star attraction, Marlena (Reese Witherspoon), while trying not to get on the bad side of August (Christoph Waltz), the ringmaster and Marlena's husband.

Coincidentally, days after Scream 4 opened in theaters, ABC's Cougar Town returned from its winter hiatus. I have been eagerly anticipating the return of both series, of which Courtney Cox is the star. Oh come on, don't hate – Cougar Town is hilarious. But wouldn't it have been much, much cooler if Cox could have combined these two projects? Maybe she could call it Screaming Cougar or something like that. Here's how it could play out:
If we're following the Scream formula, an unimportant character must die gruesomely in the episode's opening. That would be Barb, the only true cougar in the now reformatted buddy sitcom. When the phone rings (she's an older lady and definitely still has a landline), the voice of Ghostface asks, “What's your favorite scary movie?” But before Barb can answer, Ghostface jumps out from behind her lifetime supply of Botox injections and slashes her throat.

The quest story hasn't changed much since the days of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The major variation being that most modern-day quests typically involve traveling great distances to find cheeseburger sliders or return an alien to its spacecraft. Every once in a while, though, a film comes along that satirically dips back into medieval times. First came Monty Python and the Holy Grail, then The Princess Bride, followed by Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Now, as Your Highness hits the big screen, can it measure up to satirical quests of “olde” times?

There must be something in the Easter candy I've been nibbling on intermittently for the past couple weeks. Normally, I have no desire to see movies aimed at the 12-and-under demographic, but for some strange reason I genuinely wanted to see the digital-animation-meets-live-action Easter film Hop. Perhaps it's because Easter has (arguably) the best candy that I'm sweetened up enough to watch an animated bunny bang the drums.