Mark Waters

‘Bad Santa 2’ Review
‘Bad Santa 2’ Review
The opening of Bad Santa 2 feels exactly right The first movie gave its degenerate, safe-cracking mall Santa a glimmer of a happy ending, an absurd outcome for a man who had screwed and robbed and drank and cursed his way across a large swath of the Phoenix metro area. 12 years later, Bad Santa 2 finds its antihero back at rock bottom; alone, drunk, and broke. In a despairing voiceover, Billy Bob Thornton croaks out a treatise on the absence of happy endings in life — or any endings at all. Life, his Willie Soke muses, just goes on and on, consistently sucking forever. Then he writes a suicide note on an old pizza box and sticks his head in an oven.
‘Vampire Academy’ Trailer: Finally an Intentionally Funny Young Adult Film
‘Vampire Academy’ Trailer: Finally an Intentionally Funny Young Adult Film
There have been a number of Young Adult adaptations made of late -- arguably too many -- that focus on the growing pains of becoming an adult while dealing with a dystopian future, or magic, or vampires and werewolves. But though these movies have had their jokes, none have been pitched as comedies, and that might be where 'Vampire Academy' succeeds.