Peter Murmann

The first three quarters of the film are stupid. No, boring is a better word. Everything feels staged. You feel that you are watching a comedy without soul and intelligence. But then suddenly it all changes, you are in for a big surprise and the film comes to life.  I wonder if it would be [Read More]

Robin Williams is one of the most talented comedians alive. The range of voice impersonation he can do is amazing. Some of his talent is on display in Mrs. Doubtfire. The film was made in 1993 and feels a bit outdated. There are funny moments but the most enjoyable part of the film is to [Read More]

Selling insurance is one of the most boring jobs in the world. But some people’s personality seems to be uniquely suited for this line of work. Tim Lippe is one of them. The most excitement Tim has experienced in life to date is having sex with his former 7th grade teacher (Segourney Weaver) once week. [Read More]

Watching a teenage girl lose her boyfriend of 3 weeks is a lot less scary than watching a woman in her late 30 losing her boyfriend of three years. The film relies on the fact that as adults we all realize that the teenage girl is probably better off being “back on the market” [Read More]

My Wes Anderson Film Festival continues. This week I screened his fourth film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004). While Anderson pushes the cinematography onto a higher plane than in Rushmore or Bottle Rocket, the characters here feel more constructed and synthetic. Owen Wilson co-wrote the first two Anderson films. Perhaps he brought greater [Read More]

“50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce,”  says Jennifer Baker of the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology in Springfield, Missouri.  Sometimes I hear arguments that the divorce rate is so high because people go into marriage without sufficient commitment. I don’t think that a large [Read More]

The trailer was a lot funnier than the whole film that was only mildly amusing.  The subject, of course, is serious. Human beings are designed to have sex but some people are extremely shy and lack social skills to hook up. The entire premise of the film that at age forty you can lose your [Read More]

The Proposal is a lot better than I had expected after seeing the trailer for it. The short preview made it look like a silly film with a lame plot and stale humor. The heroine (Sandra Bullock) starts out a bitch. She is the chief editor of a distinguished book publisher in New York City. [Read More]

There is a reason why in most films different people take on the roles of the writer, director,  and the lead actor: Rarely is one and the same person equally good at all these jobs.  Tropic Thunder stars Ben Stiller, and is written and directed by Ben Stiller. That was a mistake. When I saw [Read More]

The four ladies of HBO’s “Sex and the City” comedy series continue their adventure in New York. The writers infused the film with a good sense of fun. At times it is also a bit sexually daring, but for the most part it falls into the genre of a tame romantic comedy. This is not [Read More]