Show Your Work – “The Dictator” Review

I was never a fan of showing my work in math class. I knew how I got the solution, so why’d it matter? Well, The Dictator has me sympathizing with every math teacher who ever told me to show my work. In The Dictator, Sacha Baron Cohen delivers a somewhat diluted dose of the racy, raunchy humor from his previous films. Forgoing the pseudo-documentary approach of Brüno and Borat, The Dictator is a much more traditional narrative feature… well, it’s as “traditional” as a feature directed by Larry Charles and starring Baron Cohen can be. But without seeing Baron Cohen’s revealing interactions with real people, the end result just isn’t the same.

The Trouble with Quibbles: Hugo

An interesting change of pace from some of his grittier films, Hugo is Martin Scorsese’s 3D celebration of cinema/magical mystery tour through 1930s France. The film, an adaptation of Brian Selznick’s novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, follows the eponymous young protagonist, an orphan who secretly lives in the walls of a Paris railway station, as he attempts to unlock the mystery of a clockwork automaton, which he believes holds a message from his deceased father.