Aside from over-familiarity and increasingly indulgent premises, Fox’s Family Guy has been criticized lately for attempting to cram in awkward dramatic conflict and existential crises (even the dog Brian has contemplated suicide) alongside the show’s torrents of scatterbrained, scatological anti-humor and 1980s pop culture references. Making way for pandering sentimentality has done little to win ...[Read More]
You know the storyline all too well. A retired criminal must commit one last big crime before he can get out of the game for good. Countless authors and filmmakers have used this handy plot device, some more effectively than others. The bad news for Contraband, Mark Wahlberg’s latest film, is that writer Aaron Guzikowski and director Baltasar Kormákur have pumped too many tiresome clichés into thi...[Read More]