David Cross Archives | Deep Focus Review

Oh, Hi!

Brian Eggert — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 21:17:54 +0000

“I did a thing,” confesses Molly Gordon’s Iris, the sympathetic if somewhat unhinged protagonist of Oh, Hi!, a familiar, convoluted rom-com that escalates into bad-sitcom level absurdity. When Iris and Isaac (Logan Lerman) escape to a picturesque farmhouse—singing the Dolly Parton-Kenny Rogers duet “Islands in the Stream” in the car like an old married couple—their weekend trip brings some details about their relationship status to light. The “thing” she admits to over the phone, speaking to her best friend Max (Geraldine Viswanathan), is that she has chained Isaac to the headboard and refuses to release him. It started as playful bondage and good sex, until he remarked that he didn’t consider them boyfriend-girlfriend. “I’m not really looking for a relationship,” he says, after four months of dating. And so, Iris has resolved to leave him there, hoping that he might come around after twelve hours or so. This twisted look at modern dating from writer-director Sophie Brooks is the kind of insufferable movie where, if the characters just had a quick conversation to clarify their feelings, they could have avoided everything that follows. But then, of course, there wouldn’t be a movie—meaning Oh, Hi! exists to perpetuate itself. Brooks lays […]

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The Post

Brian Eggert — Mon, 15 Jan 2018 20:01:44 +0000

In his strain of historical films, Steven Spielberg has searched for moments in history where humanity emerged better for the lessons learned, regardless of how atrocious the conditions of the instruction. Humanity grows from Oscar Schindler’s example; from the sacrifices on D-Day; from the racist laws on which America allowed slavery; from Lincoln passing the 13th Amendment to the Constitution; and from the peaceful negotiation of a captured spy exchange between the Cold War enemies. With The Post, the director creates a vital lesson for the present by establishing a parallel to the past. The film is about The Washington Post‘s daring decision to print the Pentagon Papers in 1971, leading to a Supreme Court ruling that reinforced the First Amendment. Angry that journalists had dared criticize his administration, Nixon had attempted to control what journalists wrote about him by making thinly veiled attacks on the credibility of the news media, going so far as to order illegal wiretaps on reporters. The modern-day parallels are unavoidable. The Post responds to the political zeitgeist, while also reflecting feminist and journalistic issues under the Trump administration. To call this film of the moment would be a gross understatement. But more importantly, it’s another deftly entertaining Spielberg film. […]

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Kung Fu Panda 3

Brian Eggert — Sun, 31 Jan 2016 00:00:07 +0000

Kung Fu Panda 3 is bubbly, well-choreographed nonsense with a heart. Since the 2008 debut, DreamWorks Animation’s actionized series has prevailed using the same blueprint. Lovable, bulbous panda Po (enthusiastically voiced by Jack Black) somehow subsists with the mind of a child or moronic adult, yet performs incredible feats of martial arts wizardry—ever amazed and bewildered with his own skill. The so-called Dragon Warrior, Po is constantly being prophesied to stop evil, and despite his flawless track-record for distinguishing bad guys, he’s always surprised when a new master proclaims that Po is the only one who can save the day. And when the time comes, of course, Po achieves whatever’s expected of him and more, to which he observes, “Awesome!” Not that the formula doesn’t still work, but it’s all just a bit too predictable and tiresome. Co-directors Jennifer Yuh Nelson (Kung Fu Panda 2) and Alessandro Carloni (an animator on the previous two) assemble another brightly colored production with this third entry, offering a number of diverse planes of existence and each with a unique animation style. Though, the directors are sometimes inconsistent in their application. Along with the cartoony photo-realism of the present, flashbacks have a watercolor look […]

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Kung Fu Panda 2

Brian Eggert — Fri, 27 May 2011 00:00:48 +0000

The greatest threat to the ancient China of Kung Fu Panda 2 recalls the menace plaguing a small town in Japanese master Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. In that 1961 classic, a gangster runs the story’s feudal village with a powerful weapon against which no one stands a chance, except, of course, Toshiro Mifune’s rogue samurai swordsman. Tatsuya Nakadai’s enemy carries a gun, a pistol, and in doing so, marks a battle between martial arts and industrialism, between the old and the new. Naturally, the wiser and more experienced opponent prevails, leaving the gunfighter cut down and the stoic ronin to continue his journey. DreamWorks Animation broadens that storyline with melodramatic family overtones spliced into martial arts comedy antics in this sequel to their 2008 hit, Kung Fu Panda. Although the Jack Black-voiced panda, Po, isn’t quite as charismatic as Mifune’s iconic role, the plump “dragon warrior” has his moments bouncing fists off his belly and shouting funny lines in slow-motion. In the first scenes, he’s told by his teacher Shifu (voice of Dustin Hoffman) that kung fu is in danger from a modern threat created by the evil peacock, Lord Shen (voice of Gary Oldman). Lord Shen has invented gunpowder and, […]

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Year One

Brian Eggert — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:00:55 +0000

Year One contains a lot of funny. There’s the funny concept, lifted ever-so-slightly from Monty Python’s Life of Brian, about modern humor in ancient times. Funny actors like Jack Black, Michael Cera, David Cross, and others populate the cast. Harold Ramis, the funny director of funny movies such as Caddyshack and Groundhog Day, takes the helm. Writers Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, who work on the funny television show The Office, co-scripted the film with Ramis. And producer Judd Apatow, who helped make every funny movie in the last several years, oversaw the production. So why is the result so painfully unfunny? The potential spoofs on history are enormous, as explored by Mel Brooks and the aforementioned British troupe in some detail. But Year One limits its scope to a rather small expanse of time; beginning with a hunter-gatherer tribe, it barely gets passed Sodom and Gomorrah. Does the title refer to the first year in recorded history? If so, aren’t we coming in a little late in the game? Or perhaps we’re coming in too early, and the title refers to the first year on the Christian calendar, in which case we question, where’s Jesus? Don’t bother thinking about the timeline. There’s […]

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Battle for Terra

Brian Eggert — Fri, 01 May 2009 05:00:56 +0000

Not to be missed, Battle for Terra is a computer-animated family film, and it’s not from the top animation studio Pixar, but it is presented in 3-D—two significant strikes, both of which are minor details that viewers should ignore. Though entertaining enough to divert your children’s attention for the duration and keep them quiet in the theater, the ideas within are big enough to inspire discussion and critical thinking in youngsters. At the very least, it presents a narrative structure your children haven’t seen before. Consider how your children would react to humans being the bad guys and aliens being the good guys. And instead of aliens invading Earth, humans are invading an alien planet for a change. The alien world is called Terra, which is Latin for “earth.” Perhaps that’s why the producers changed the title from Terra, its name at the Toronto Film Festival, to Battle for Terra to not confuse Latin-speaking children who saw Disney’s recent nature documentary Earth. (Okay, so maybe that’s not likely.) Anyway, the film’s peaceful little alien planet is home to flying tadpole-like creatures with big expressive eyes and a funny way of floating by wiggling in the air. Their local fauna consists of […]

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Kung Fu Panda

Brian Eggert — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 05:00:17 +0000

Animation’s greatest quality resides in bringing the impossible to film without the audience noticing strings or seeing through sometimes transparent special effects wizardry. When fantastical events occur onscreen, cartoons serve them up drawn with the same hands or (the now standard) computers that constructed the entire environment, integrating a spotless self-contained verisimilitude into every aspect of the film. With animation, the world is as you make it, existing in its own unreality. What other format could have conceived Kung Fu Panda, a movie wherein a chubby panda bear moves faster than Bruce Lee in all his martial arts glory? Po, the overweight panda in question, is voiced by the similarly round Jack Black, who lends his displaced character an appropriate lovable loser quality. Working for his noodle-peddling father Mr. Ping (voice of James Hong), a goose, Po almost certainly has some identity issues stemming from his biologically impossible parentage. He dreams of something more than waiting tables, such as becoming a kung-fu warrior of epic proportions—like those training at the temple high up on a nearby mountain. Separated by thousands of steps below, in the Valley of Peace, Po is resigned to noodles until an ancient tortoise, Master Oogway (voiced […]

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