Jim Taylor

Occupation

Filmmaker

The Descendants Review

By Rich Cline

Extraordinary

As with Sideways and About Schmidt, Payne finds clever ways to blend sharp comedy and warm drama to create a seriously involving and entertaining film. And Clooney has never had a role that was quite as emotionally resonant as this.

In sunny Hawaii, Matt (Clooney) has coasted through marriage and parenthood, focussing on his career and managing the estate of his family, which is descended from Hawaiian royalty. But now his wife (Patti Hastie) is in a coma, and he has to take responsibility for his free-spirited daughters, 10-year-old Scottie (Miller) and 17-year-old Alexandra (Woodley). Meanwhile, his cousins want to sell off a gorgeous tract of ancestral land in Kauai. Amid all of this, Matt finds out that his wife isn't going to wake up, and also that she had been having an affair.

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I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry Review

By Chris Cabin

Bad

We were barely getting over 300, and now this: a movie about two straight firemen who pretend to be gay to ensure that one's life insurance policy won't go to spit if he should die. This all sounds nice on paper, but the execution could be lightly described as flippin' horrendous. While twits are raging against John Travolta slipping into a fat suit to replace Divine in Hairspray, they're missing out on Adam Sandler, Kevin James, and a veritable who's-who of cameo stars sinking in an overblown, patently-ridiculous monolith of fag jokes and gay stereotypes. In I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, Director Dennis Dugan has moved quickly from sentimental spoon-feeding into the realm of absolute absurdity.

So, one day Chuck Levine (Sandler) and Larry Valentine (James) decide to get hitched. The reason is simple: Larry doesn't want to fill-out an insurance form, so he gets Chuck to pose as his "life partner," thus allowing any pension money to go directly to Larry's two kids, a tomboy daughter and a showtune-singing son. Larry still can't get over his saintly wife's death and Chuck has more than likely contracted more STDs than the leather upholstery in Tommy Lee's Jaguar; they're a match made in heaven.

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