• Home
  • popular
  • EVENTS
  • submit-new-event
  • CHARITY GUIDE
  • Children
  • Education
  • Health
  • Veterans
  • Social Services
  • Arts + Culture
  • Animals
  • LGBTQ
  • New Charity
  • TRENDING NEWS
  • News
  • City Life
  • Entertainment
  • Sports
  • Home + Design
  • Travel
  • Real Estate
  • Restaurants + Bars
  • Arts
  • Society
  • Innovation
  • Fashion + Beauty
  • subscribe
  • about
  • series
  • Embracing Your Inner Cowboy
  • Green Living
  • Summer Fun
  • Real Estate Confidential
  • RX In the City
  • State of the Arts
  • Fall For Fashion
  • Cai's Odyssey
  • Comforts of Home
  • Good Eats
  • Holiday Gift Guide 2010
  • Holiday Gift Guide 2
  • Good Eats 2
  • HMNS Pirates
  • The Future of Houston
  • We Heart Hou 2
  • Music Inspires
  • True Grit
  • Hoops City
  • Green Living 2011
  • Cruizin for a Cure
  • Summer Fun 2011
  • Just Beat It
  • Real Estate 2011
  • Shelby on the Seine
  • Rx in the City 2011
  • Entrepreneur Video Series
  • Going Wild Zoo
  • State of the Arts 2011
  • Fall for Fashion 2011
  • Elaine Turner 2011
  • Comforts of Home 2011
  • King Tut
  • Chevy Girls
  • Good Eats 2011
  • Ready to Jingle
  • Houston at 175
  • The Love Month
  • Clifford on The Catwalk Htx
  • Let's Go Rodeo 2012
  • King's Harbor
  • FotoFest 2012
  • City Centre
  • Hidden Houston
  • Green Living 2012
  • Summer Fun 2012
  • Bookmark
  • 1987: The year that changed Houston
  • Best of Everything 2012
  • Real Estate 2012
  • Rx in the City 2012
  • Lost Pines Road Trip Houston
  • London Dreams
  • State of the Arts 2012
  • HTX Fall For Fashion 2012
  • HTX Good Eats 2012
  • HTX Contemporary Arts 2012
  • HCC 2012
  • Dine to Donate
  • Tasting Room
  • HTX Comforts of Home 2012
  • Charming Charlie
  • Asia Society
  • HTX Ready to Jingle 2012
  • HTX Mistletoe on the go
  • HTX Sun and Ski
  • HTX Cars in Lifestyle
  • HTX New Beginnings
  • HTX Wonderful Weddings
  • HTX Clifford on the Catwalk 2013
  • Zadok Sparkle into Spring
  • HTX Let's Go Rodeo 2013
  • HCC Passion for Fashion
  • BCAF 2013
  • HTX Best of 2013
  • HTX City Centre 2013
  • HTX Real Estate 2013
  • HTX France 2013
  • Driving in Style
  • HTX Island Time
  • HTX Super Season 2013
  • HTX Music Scene 2013
  • HTX Clifford on the Catwalk 2013 2
  • HTX Baker Institute
  • HTX Comforts of Home 2013
  • Mothers Day Gift Guide 2021 Houston
  • Staying Ahead of the Game
  • Wrangler Houston
  • First-time Homebuyers Guide Houston 2021
  • Visit Frisco Houston
  • promoted
  • eventdetail
  • Greystar Novel River Oaks
  • Thirdhome Go Houston
  • Dogfish Head Houston
  • LovBe Houston
  • Claire St Amant podcast Houston
  • The Listing Firm Houston
  • South Padre Houston
  • NextGen Real Estate Houston
  • Pioneer Houston
  • Collaborative for Children
  • Decorum
  • Bold Rock Cider
  • Nasher Houston
  • Houston Tastemaker Awards 2021
  • CityNorth
  • Urban Office
  • Villa Cotton
  • Luck Springs Houston
  • EightyTwo
  • Rectanglo.com
  • Silver Eagle Karbach
  • Mirador Group
  • Nirmanz
  • Bandera Houston
  • Milan Laser
  • Lafayette Travel
  • Highland Park Village Houston
  • Proximo Spirits
  • Douglas Elliman Harris Benson
  • Original ChopShop
  • Bordeaux Houston
  • Strike Marketing
  • Rice Village Gift Guide 2021
  • Downtown District
  • Broadstone Memorial Park
  • Gift Guide
  • Music Lane
  • Blue Circle Foods
  • Houston Tastemaker Awards 2022
  • True Rest
  • Lone Star Sports
  • Silver Eagle Hard Soda
  • Modelo recipes
  • Modelo Fighting Spirit
  • Athletic Brewing
  • Rodeo Houston
  • Silver Eagle Bud Light Next
  • Waco CVB
  • EnerGenie
  • HLSR Wine Committee
  • All Hands
  • El Paso
  • Avenida Houston
  • Visit Lubbock Houston
  • JW Marriott San Antonio
  • Silver Eagle Tupps
  • Space Center Houston
  • Central Market Houston
  • Boulevard Realty
  • Travel Texas Houston
  • Alliantgroup
  • Golf Live
  • DC Partners
  • Under the Influencer
  • Blossom Hotel
  • San Marcos Houston
  • Photo Essay: Holiday Gift Guide 2009
  • We Heart Hou
  • Walker House
  • HTX Good Eats 2013
  • HTX Ready to Jingle 2013
  • HTX Culture Motive
  • HTX Auto Awards
  • HTX Ski Magic
  • HTX Wonderful Weddings 2014
  • HTX Texas Traveler
  • HTX Cifford on the Catwalk 2014
  • HTX United Way 2014
  • HTX Up to Speed
  • HTX Rodeo 2014
  • HTX City Centre 2014
  • HTX Dos Equis
  • HTX Tastemakers 2014
  • HTX Reliant
  • HTX Houston Symphony
  • HTX Trailblazers
  • HTX_RealEstateConfidential_2014
  • HTX_IW_Marks_FashionSeries
  • HTX_Green_Street
  • Dating 101
  • HTX_Clifford_on_the_Catwalk_2014
  • FIVE CultureMap 5th Birthday Bash
  • HTX Clifford on the Catwalk 2014 TEST
  • HTX Texans
  • Bergner and Johnson
  • HTX Good Eats 2014
  • United Way 2014-15_Single Promoted Articles
  • Holiday Pop Up Shop Houston
  • Where to Eat Houston
  • Copious Row Single Promoted Articles
  • HTX Ready to Jingle 2014
  • htx woodford reserve manhattans
  • Zadok Swiss Watches
  • HTX Wonderful Weddings 2015
  • HTX Charity Challenge 2015
  • United Way Helpline Promoted Article
  • Boulevard Realty
  • Fusion Academy Promoted Article
  • Clifford on the Catwalk Fall 2015
  • United Way Book Power Promoted Article
  • Jameson HTX
  • Primavera 2015
  • Promenade Place
  • Hotel Galvez
  • Tremont House
  • HTX Tastemakers 2015
  • HTX Digital Graffiti/Alys Beach
  • MD Anderson Breast Cancer Promoted Article
  • HTX RealEstateConfidential 2015
  • HTX Vargos on the Lake
  • Omni Hotel HTX
  • Undies for Everyone
  • Reliant Bright Ideas Houston
  • 2015 Houston Stylemaker
  • HTX Renewable You
  • Urban Flats Builder
  • Urban Flats Builder
  • HTX New York Fashion Week spring 2016
  • Kyrie Massage
  • Red Bull Flying Bach
  • Hotze Health and Wellness
  • ReadFest 2015
  • Alzheimer's Promoted Article
  • Formula 1 Giveaway
  • Professional Skin Treatments by NuMe Express

    At the Arthouse

    Philip Seymour Hoffman pulls a Houston movie man out of a post-Angelika funk

    David Theis
    Oct 2, 2010 | 1:28 pm
    • Jack Goes Boating isn't a great movie, but it still pulled me out of my postAngelika closing movie malaise.
    • The movie scene hasn't been the same in Houston since the Angelika suddenlyshuttered.
      Photo By Nic Phillips
    • It took Philip Seymour Hoffman directing to get this movie lover to jump backinto the art house pool.

    I got very excited the morning I found out that Jack Goes Boating was opening in Houston. I had been looking forward to the movie, mostly because it marks Philip Seymour Hoffman’s directorial debut, but that wasn’t why I did a double take at the ad in the Houston Chronicle. Instead it was because, according to the ad, the film was opening in the Landmark Greenway.

    Good news on the art house front, I thought. And badly needed news! I’d gone into a movie funk with the sudden overnight closing of the Angelika Film Center. I no longer scanned the Sunday TImes to see which French crime drama was headed to these shores, because I’d probably have to drive to Dallas to see it on the big screen.

    Except for needing the subtitles, I might as well just go to France. But here was a sign that a barely dared prayer had been answered; the weird old orange-walled Greenway triplex was back!

    Except that it wasn’t. The Landmark River Oaks manager explained that a mistake had been made in the Chronicle ad — the film was playing at the Edwards Greenway.

    If I’d known from the start that Jack Goes Boating was “just” playing at the Edwards, I might not have bothered to see it. Such was the ongoing state of my depression. But now I told myself to snap out of it. Philip Seymour Hoffman doesn’t direct a movie every day.

    So I paid my three dollars to park and entered the Edwards, where I found, not an art house, but an art corner. In one nook of the cineplex, three screens were devoted to films that had probably been Angelika-bound: Jack Goes Boating, The Tillman Story, and Catfish.

    That didn’t seem so bad. In fact, seeing those films on the digital marquee alongside The Social Network and Resident Evil: Afterlife reminded me that I used to argue that the “art house” was a kind of ghetto, and that more challenging films ought to be playing at the ‘plex, so that the unsuspecting might wander in and be amazed.

    I’m not saying that I don’t want the Angelika back, (or the Landmark Greenway, for that matter) or that we won’t miss out on some interesting films. (I’m very curious to see how many subtitled films will open at the mainstream theaters. I’m afraid it will be a small number, but I’m hoping to be surprised.) But, they’re long gone, so I welcomed myself to the brave new multi-screened world of Houston art film.

    It’s not so bad.

    And, what about Jack Goes Boating? The film, adapted from a play by Bob Glaudini, is resolutely small. It tells the story of four very ordinary, working class New Yorkers. Two of them, Lucy (Daphne Rubin-Vega) and Clyde (John Ortiz), comprise a married couple who play matchmaker for one of Lucy’s work underlings, Connie (Amy Ryan) and Clyde’s fellow limo driver, Jack (Hoffman). Jack and Clyde are best friends.

    Actually, Connie and Jack are not as “ordinary” as the matchmaking couple. They’re low-key people, easy to ignore, or to mock once you noticed them, but they also seem beamed in from another planet. Jack is a grown man who lives in his uncle’s basement, and who has adopted a subtly Rasta style. When the going gets tough, Jack puts on the The Harder They Come soundtrack (he does have good taste), focusing on the Melodians’ “By the Rivers of Babylon.”

    Taste aside, he seems unduly challenged by life, for unexplained reasons.

    Connie is supervised by Lucy at some kind of mortuarial services sales job, but Connie is too passive to close many deals. She seems like the kind of frail person that New York would simply eat alive. She is probably the first person who has ever needed Jack, and once he understands how important he might become to her, the rather slovenly man glows with unaccustomed excitement. He resolves to change his life — to find a new job, and to learn to both cook and swim, skills he’ll need if he’s to indulge Connie on her dream date.

    Like The Kids Are All Right and other intimate dramas, Jack Goes Boating provides a feast of fine acting. Seymour somehow makes his frankly ridiculous character sublime, while Ryan’s bone-deep vulnerability is quite touching. I have to admit, though, that both characters feel literary, rather than real.

    Jack does have several truly alive moments; most of them come with Clyde, in particular when Clyde is teaching the rotund, literally baby-faced Jack to swim.

    Clyde and Lucy, on the other hand, seem all too real. At first they represent everything that Jack is missing in his lonely life. Later, they come to represent everything he and Connie hope to avoid. They’re a wounded couple, with (of course) self-inflicted wounds. One of the film’s pleasures comes in watching as Hoffman and the actors gradually reveal the married couple’s cracks.

    In general the movie feels like a filmed play of the kitchen-sink variety, rather than truly cinematic. But at times Hoffman sets the camera free to capture moments of grace. Editor Brian A. Kates does noteworthy work here; during several passages the images flow together in surprising and satisfying ways.

    I’m glad it’s playing here.

    A glimpse of Jack Goes Boating:

    unspecified
    news/entertainment

    Movie Review

    New movie Friendship pairs Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd in a bizarre bromance

    Alex Bentley
    May 16, 2025 | 3:30 pm
    Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd in Friendship
    Photo courtesy of A24
    Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd in Friendship.

    Comedian Tim Robinson has gained a cult following thanks to series like Detroiters and I Think You Should Leave, in which his brand of cringe comedy is on full display. The former Saturday Night Live writer/performer has had a few small movie roles over the years, but he’s now getting his first starring role in the off-kilter Friendship.

    Robinson plays Craig, a mild-mannered suburbanite with a wife, Tami (Kate Mara), and son, Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer). Craig has a boring life that involves little more than going to his middle manager job while wearing the same clothes day after day, anticipating the next Marvel movie, and helping Tami out with her at-home floral business.

    He gets a jolt of energy when Austin (Paul Rudd) moves into the neighborhood. The two men seem to hit it off, with Austin — a weatherman at a local TV channel — even taking Craig on a couple of impromptu adventures. But when Craig commits a couple of faux pas at a group gathering at Austin’s house, their bond starts to fracture.

    Even though the film is written and directed by Andrew DeYoung, it’s clear that Robinson had a big influence on the style of comedy it features. There are no big set pieces with a slew of jokes coming one after another. Instead, the film forces the audience to try to vibe with the very particular type of wavelength it’s giving off, one that could almost be called anti-comedy for the way the laughs come out of left field.

    The 100-minute film is full of random comedic moments, like Steven kissing Tami on the lips, Craig being obsessed with his plain brown clothes, a group sing-along, and more. More often than not, it’s the way Craig reacts to both normal and abnormal situations that gets the laughs. The character is needy and oblivious, two traits that combine to make many of his actions cringeworthy.

    Perhaps most importantly for this type of movie, many things in the story go unexplained or don’t make sense. Seemingly crucial elements are brought up only to fade away just as quickly, while other parts that appeared to be throwaway sections get callbacks later in the film. DeYoung and Robinson are determined to keep the audience on their toes the entire time, never knowing what to expect next.

    Robinson has the perfect face for a story like this, one that’s bland enough to blend into the background but memorable enough to sell the jokes. His demeanor is also excellent, never becoming too expressive, even when he gets angry. With long hair, a mustache, and a certain swagger, Rudd is a great complement to Robinson. Only in a film like this would an everyman like Rudd be considered the suave and cool one.

    There will be some that will see Friendship and come away wondering what the hell they just watched. But anyone who goes in knowing that they’re about to witness a comedy that challenges their sensibilities will likely have a great time.

    ---

    Friendship is now playing in select theaters.

    moviesfilm
    news/entertainment
    Loading...