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larcenydogood
Reviews
27 Dresses (2008)
Nice Chick Flick
If you wish to see this movie please realize, first off, this is a romantic comedy, so nobody is hacked to death and nothing is blown up. There are no car chases, martial arts sequences or exploding nuns. Once you get past those flaws, omissions, oversights, restraints of budget, gaping plot holes, etc, you can enjoy this film, and I say this as a testosterone-driven politically incorrect man (I work out seven times a week, do martial arts, did a grad school history paper on the evils of outlawing prostitution, view most women as completely neurotic (do men send love letters to female serial killers?) and would like to remind you that in the mammal kingdom monogamy exists only once, that is in the vole, and only one type of vole not all of them) . The Plot: Katherine Hegel plays a woman who is super sweet, but a doormat. She is especially fond of weddings and has planned nearly thirty of them for friends., Michael Madsen is the weddings writer for The Times, there is a meet-cute (when the two romantic leads meet in a coincidental situation, e.g.: he rollerskates into her in the park, they both are carrying the same obscure novel and strike up a conversation) and they begin an odd relationship with plenty of bumps: her eco-friendly boss, bitchy cynical, morally compromised best friend, and bitchy self-involved HOT sister. Katherine Hegel plays a very convincing ignored sibling who always looks out for everyone else. Although the plot may be rudimentary (but what the hell, I'm fairly well-educated and liked 300) if you accept it for what it is, it is not so bad. Perhaps one of the hardest things for guys to do is show their emotions, and we have all experienced hurt or loss, so we can identify with both of the main characters. See this movie with this in mind, and you will not be disappointed. As to the critics, they are all about suffering and neurosis, but life sometimes has other, simpler things in store for us.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1 (2010)
stick to the book
Here's what's wrong: a novel sells billions of copies, and then the director thinks people want to see their interpretation (which means they sacrifice important plot points for their own tepid inventions). How do you exist with a head so big? Anyway, here's the plot, Harry Potter doesn't realize it, but Darth Voldemort is his father. And! If Harry can only take the apparently alternate-lifestyle Sam with him to the top of the volcanic mountain and throw in the ring, then the annoying emo chick with the pale face and the vampire fetish will die, which will bring about peace in The Middle East and erase all memories of the Telletubies. But, before they do that they must spend 2/3rds of the movie camping in England, living off of stolen canned boiled food (which is a major contributing factor in the grave dental challenges to the people of that island). In part 2, Ron will hopefully get laid.
Blood Diamond (2006)
lacking in depth but effective
Blood Diamond, the Titanic in Africa. Here's the deal, Leonardo takes a dangerous journey, meets an American girl with an attitude, and there is a bloody great diamond involved. Plus a lot of innocent people die. The plot follows the Blood Diamonds from Sierra Leone, West Africa. Mined by slaves to fund a civil war, the diamonds flood the legitimate market after being laundered. In the movie, a slave, Solomon, finds and buries a huge mother of a pink diamond, then the camp is attacked. Solomon is freed but white diamond smuggler Danny hears about the diamond in prison, and the two get out of a heavily assaulted Freetown and form a reluctant bond, Solomon needing Danny's help to find his family and Danny wanting the pink stone. Riding shotgun is middle-class American chick with race guilt and nice hooters, Maddy, who also happens to be a photojournalist. As it turns out Solomon's wife and two daughters are in a camp, but his son has been impressed into service by the RUF (Rebel United Front). So Danny and Solomon head back to the camp to try and find the diamond and Solomon's son, who has now been exposed to mass murder and heavy drugs, a foul practice. Along the way we see the horrors of war in Africa, the retired South African white regiment that is now a mercenary army, the destruction the Africans visit upon themselves. A cheesy movie, Zwick has no depth, (like in Glory or Last Samurai he introduces racially charged topics and dramatic situations) yet it is effective because the material is so rich in human tragedy. Leonardo Di Caprio is cast very inappropriately. In Titanic, he was supposed to be a very worldly-traveled precocious young man. Here it is even worse; he is supposed to be this prematurely aged veteran of armed conflict. It just doesn't work, however it's always nice to see Jennifer Connelly, even with her clothes on. That black guy from Gladiator with the name like a fancy French sandwich with mustard is very good as well, but I would be wary starring next to him because the white guys he stars with all die and are therefore illegible for a sequel.
Invictus (2009)
Dull Ghandi meets Remember the Titans and Rudi
Here is the plot: Nelson Mandela (played by Morgan Freeman), upon becoming president, decides to use his country's return to international interaction as a catalyst for smoothing the segue from apartheid to a mixed society. He decides that the beloved (by whites) rugby team should be the focal point and asks the captain, played by Matt Damon, to inspire his men.
Why it fails: 1)Like Glory or Remember the Titans, this movies simply tells a story by having one episode after another without any depth of character or emotional charge, as though the source material of evil white people was enough to move you to cry(as opposed to Rudi, when he practices or gets rejected or finally makes the field you feel it, not so with Invictus). There is nothing inspiring nor moving, the direction is flat, and the three chapters to the movie are impossible to distinguish. Matt Damon takes his fellow prisoners on a trip to the prison where Mandela was for almost thirty years, but what should have been motivating was not. Morgan Freeman voice overs a poem, Invictus, during this visit, but his normally beautiful voice is wasted in over-sentimentality which not only beat the point to death but was difficult to understand. The movie seems to set up that Matt Damon will motivate his players to counter the New Zealanders' Maori psychologically devastating pregame war dance. Does he get the men to learn the ANC anthem to get them prepared before the match? It is impossible to tell what or whether they sing. A truly failed moment.
2) The dialog is dull, you remember almost none of it after the movie. Morgan Freeman is my favorite actor but almost all he does here is issue Ghandi-like one-liners which does not have nearly the same effect as they did in Ghandi.
3) In summary, the whole thing is emotionally flat, Mandela is a great man, but his legacy is white-washed from the ANC violence, not one Rugby player's personality was developed, including Matt Damon's, the directing was uninspiring,a good movie for people who want to feel politically correct and but have no depth.
The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009)
Subpar Subway Movie
Oh where to start (at the end credits would be my suggestion). The movie (a remake) is about a high-jacked subway, and the entertainment value (in the original at least) comes from the conversations between the cold-blooded ex-merc played by Travolta (Robert Shaw in the original) and the transit worker played by Denzel (Walter Mathau in the original.) However, this movie has no tension because everything is so absurdly over-the-top. The dialog is not profound, it is profane. If you went to three aspiring writers who were, maybe seventeen, and told them to write some dialog that a very intense highjacker would say, then there's your movie. Every stereotypical theme of conversation from a cool super villain is thrown in, without the insight or wit, and every other sentence ends in "you got me mother-f***er!" It becomes laughable they try so hard. Rent the original and save yourself the time.
War of the Worlds (2005)
Diseased Imagery Gallery
Tom Cruise plays an armhole with two kids, Dakota Fanning, who primarily screams, and some kid who hates everything and needs a good beating.
Aliens have been waiting underground for thousands of years to attack us, and apparently, in a gaping oversight, have forgotten their hand sanitizer.
So, for some very obvious reason (that escaped me) they were waiting eons (what is an eon?) until we have nukes, flying machines, infrared weapons capability and the slinky, for this attack.
They generate electrical storms to arm their large metal ships (which are apparently, invisible to satellite imaging) with crew, then pop out of the ground like Jehovas Witnesses and the rest is carnage. In the beginning they shoot people, turning them to dust, but not their clothing. (Except the people who dress at Banana Republic)- Yet cannot seem to hit Tom Cruise, (who once played a high school football player.) Tom gets his kids, the crying one and the obnoxious one, and head off towards Boston with the only working minivan in north jersey (one must suspect that there would have been a plethora of Camarros)and curiously the only moving vehicle is not fired on. (But then again, Tom Cruise once played a NASCAR driver). oh yeah , the aliens throw a tanker on his block and kill Michael Scott's girlfriend Holly, which is a shame since she was such a cool character why did they take her off? But I digress. Along the way we see several scenes of destruction, including a jet void of passengers that lands on his exwife's house but does not fully disintegrate nor burn. Then some TV news people eagerly take the food from the airplane, how bad is their cooking? and Tom lets his unarmed teenage son join a mechanized battle against the invincible aliens before basement crashing with Tim Robbins. Eventually we discover that the aliens are drinking our blood, instead of turning us to ash, (so Biblically we go from Genesis to the Gospels)therefore Tom has to kill Tim (after all Tom once played a samurai) to avenge the people everywhere who are sick of Tim Robbins and his wife and their left-leaning politics.
then Tom gets captured by a death machine, when he is being sucked up its sphincter (50 points for me for using that word in a review) he gets pulled out by some other people, but he left the grenades inside (after all he did fight in Vietnam once) and destroys the machine. then Tom gets to Boston only to learn that the machines are hyper allergic to bird poop, and somehow his son has survived, apparently either the aliens couldn't stand him either or he smelled of bird droppings.Or both.
that was the movie, there were no characters to care about, lots of death and panic, and not a single musical number that you left the theater humming to yourself. A good date movie for the followers of Charles Manson or Demi Moore.
The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)
A movie made by, starring and revolving around Al Gore
The aliens land to tell us to stop mistreating the planet (they are inspired by Al Gore).
They elect to use as a conduit Keanu Reeves, who is eerily similar to Al Gore in two ways, both men are pale with black hair and both men are capable of two emotions, disinterest and monotony. Of course before Keanu can open a dialog a soldier (obviosuly a Republican and NRA member) shoots him insensitively.
Now we are doomed, because the aliens have a robot named GORT who is eerily similar to Al Gore in two ways, his name (coincidence? I don't think so)and secondly his emotional range, anyways, this GORT can destroy us all, even the PETA people. We learn we are now marked for destruction from a space-Chinaman in a McDonalds on the New Jersey Turnpike. Of course.
So the government calls in an extraterrestial biologist (I would love to get a job teaching at Princeton (not Harvard Roger Ebert, it's near to New York City, get a map dude for all they pay you)about a subject that has no proof or manifestations other than drunk lonely people in the middle of nowhere claiming to be abducted- thousands of years ago this was called religion)this biologist is Jennifer Conolly, who fails stunningly to take off her clothes which would have achieved two things, first it would have saved Earth instantly and second it would have saved the movie at the box office (or at least assured my purchase of the DVD-but I digress). No, instead she keeps herself clothed, and the Earth hangs in the balance while we try and change Al Gore's mind by inducing positive emotions through 1)the music of Bach (he forgot to say "Ah Bach" here but the book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detetcive Agency already had a Bach moment with a space alien),2) doing serious math with a Monty Pythoner and finally 3)being impressed at how, with the destruction of her entire species imminent, the hot scientist lady does not beat the s** out of her obnoxious stepson (who for some reason, is the little black kid from Holes I think someone should call the California Child Labor Board and check that kid for diet pills that stunt his growth).
So there you have it, a more violent version of the movie Starman with some Matrix and Equilibrium thrown in (curiously Roger Ebert's review on that movie mistook jazz for the opening chords of Beethoven's Ninth, you'd think with all the prentensious literary references he makes he'd know the single-most acclaimed piece of music ever!).
For all its intensity and production value, the movie has some strange points. If you were going to monitor what you thought was a cataclysmic impact on the island of Manhattan would you really put your most capable people in a helicopter flying right next to that island at the moment of impact? Would highly trained government operatives leave an alien alone in a room with a lie-detector and only one questioner? For that matter, when their earpieces became shatteringly loud with static would not one of those highly trained operatives have taken their earpiece out?
Not a bad movie, but the whole thing was eerily similar to Al Gore in two ways, the fate of the protagonsits (in the movie it was humanity in real life Al Gore the poltician) was decided by the emotional stability of others, and despite its obvious conviction it failed to convinvce you.
The Tale of Despereaux (2008)
scary, depressing, unengaging and all over the place
Desperaux is a poorly conceived film, or, more to the point, three poorly conceived films rolled into one. Much too ambitious/confusing.
First movie, a happy kingdom is about to celebrate their wondrous Soup Day. Among the happy throngs ready to eat are a sailor and his happy rat, Roscuro. Roscuro is so enthralled by the amazing soup that he sneaks into the castle for a closer glimpse and falls into the bowl from which none other than the queen herself is eating. This causes her to faint into her soup and suffer a quiet unnoticed death (No one thought the queen may need to breathe through all that soup?), so that her husband will become a near-catatonic depressive who spends his days in semi-darkness plucking away lachrymose tunes on a lute that sound like funeral music composed by Jethro Tull. He also bans rats and soup. Which drives away curiously, both the sun and rain.
Next movie, Desperaux is born in an unused castle room-village of neurotic mice who seem as though they are all candidates for the Dr. Phil hall of fame. Desperaux is an adventurous mouse, which I suppose makes him a republican in a Hollywood allegorical, and this goes against the grain of angst that permeates his community and he therefore is eventually banished to the dungeons, where the rats, who have their colony in the darkness, will certainly eat him. Guess which rat outcast saves him.
In the last of the three movies an angry dungeonkeepr yells at the comely wench who serves the princess. This servant girl, Miggery, has delusions of being the princess that manifest physically and is so anthropomorphic in reverse that any pigs watching the film would surely gasp, "Golly, it's scary how swine-like they made her." Then there's gladiatorial combat amongst the freaky looking rats, the princess is kidnapped and almost eaten by thousands of evil-looking rats, the mouse saves the kingdom and brings rain (see The Rainmaker, Dune, The Day After Tomorrow, et cetera). He also brings back the sun. And the soup. And we must assume, world peace and reduced carbon emissions.
The whole thing is so convoluted, the characters, especially the dungeonkeeper and the maid, oh and the lugubrious king, and the rat who caused all the problems then tried to kill the princess then had a life-altering moment (apparently he got access to some of the mice's Dr. Phil literature) are hard to care for, there is no emotional charge other than "Jeez, those are nasty rats", which are much too scary for little children, there's a ridiculous Quixotic-kamikaze man whose body is entirely vegetative (I suppose it would be difficult to have a Quixotic-kamikaze man whose body is entirely vegetative not be ridiculous), there is no humor other than laughing at Desperaux's ears (one is left pining for the "wit" of Shrek's bodily evacuations) and it is way too violent to be a kids' movie which it was marketed as. The whole movie comes across like the king, cleverly drawn but emotionally barren.