The Playlist

How Marvel's Risks Paid Off

The obsessives' guide to contemporary cinema via film discussion, news, reviews, features, nostalgia, movie music, soundtracks, DVDs and more.

Interviews

In Theaters: 'Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance' Declares 'This Means War'

By Katie Walsh
|
February 17, 2012 4:28 PM
|
1 Comment

News

YEAH! Are you ready for some Cage's Festival of Wigs (TM)??? A wig made of FIRE perhaps? That is right, people. Nicolas Cage is BACK as that motorcycle madman from hell (nope this is not "Drive Angry 2") as the GHOST RIDER in "Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance." And that's it, no other movies to see this week. KIDDING, there's like some Oscar nominated documentaries and foreign films and shit. And Tom Hardy debasing himself in "This Means War" with Reese Witherspoon and Chris Pine. But really, it's all about the Cage this week. When is it not?

By Simon Abrams
|
February 14, 2012 2:00 PM
|
0 Comments

Reviews

When the screenwriters of “Thin Ice” finally play their hand and reveal their film’s obvious twist ending, that dumb plot point almost eclipses all the other lousy things that came before it. But make no mistake, “Thin Ice” is nothing if not consistently lousy. Set in frigid Kenosha, Wisconsin, the film follows Mickey Prohaska (Greg Kinnear), a shifty and increasingly desperate insurance salesman as he tries to con his way to a tropical vacation. Mickey is the leader of a parade of unlikable, uniformly histrionic and very unfunny characters. Living and being around the residents of Kenosha is nightmarish, but not in the humorous, neo-noir-inflected way that director Jill Sprecher (“Thirteen Conversations About One Thing”) and her co-writer Karen Sprecher want us to think.

By Ryan Sartor
|
January 6, 2012 11:38 AM
|
1 Comment

News

“Thin Ice” premiered at 2011’s Sundance Film Festival under the name “The Convincer.” The Greg Kinnear/Billy Crudup-starrer got some good reviews at the time, but the less kind notices called it the “poor man’s ‘Fargo,’” which sounds about right by the look of the trailer. The dark comedy features Kinnear playing a down-on-his-luck insurance man who resorts to fraud in order to get some more cash. Crudup finds out about the scheme and blackmails Kinnear. There are also murders and hi-jinks and ultimatley, it all feels a bit more “Ice Harvest”-esque than deserving of ‘Fargo’ comparisons.