Peter Murmann

The typical high school movie has a plot line that goes like this: Students collectively arrive at standards for deciding a status order for the group. Good looks, athleticism, and social skills typically form the standards by which each student is ranked. The high-status people form an in-group with a very strict social boundary, keeping [Read More]

If you are flying to the West Coast this month with United Airlines, you are presented with the Briget Jones sequel. Just like the first film, it is a light romantic comedy. Competent writers were hired to put together a script that delivers the same kind of effects as the first movie. It is not [Read More]

Stuck in the airplane, I watched Richard Gere dance again.  Dirty Dancing or last year’s sequel Dirty Dancing Havanna Nights are filled with teenage lust and broken hearts. This film is the middle aged version of the earlier dance films. Everything is cleaned up. A young women makes a bored estate lawyer take up ball [Read More]

This film, which received an Ocscar for best picture in 1963, takes an hour to become funny for someone who is not English. The first hour is filled with dry British humor. The second hour adds drama, making it easier for me to forget that I was standing on a stairmaster, trying to lose a [Read More]

Unlike his later masterpieces About Schmidt and Sideways, this film lacks existential gravity. Instead of directing it as a comedy, Payne should have cast it as a drama with comic scenes. This is the style he uses in his later movies. But you can see already here Payne’s immense ability to bring onto the screen [Read More]

Deeply built into our notion of romantic love is the idea that there is one other person out there who is tailor-made to be your mate. The only real question in this particular notion of love is whether you are able to find this person among the 6 billion people who could be the one. [Read More]

The movie is billed as a comedy. It is not much of one. It is a diary of a man whose girlfriend just walked out and who starts callling old girl friends to find out why they all rejected him. The situation is ripe with comic potential but the narrative lacks power and leaves one [Read More]

If you like popular music and if you like to laugh, this movie is pure joy. I haven’t cried in laughter so much for a long time. Jack Black’s acting performance itself is a joy to watch. He deserves an Oscar for the gig.