Addams Family Values: I re-watched this as a nostalgia goof with the Girlfriend and found myself actively enjoying it. Wednesday's one-liners were perfect. Raul Julia is simply fun to watch as he hams up Gomez Addams and Christopher LLoyd is an awkward ball of inept weirdness that's just the right amount of silly. It's far from a great movie, but it has some charm.
Baseketball (1998)- Two losers, played by Trey Parker and Matt Stone (Orgazmo, South Park), invent a new game, baseketball, where players take basketball shots while being distracted by opponents ("psych-outs"), and then run around bases depending on what range they shoot from. A pro league is founded, and hilarity ensues. It's a throw-back, retro comedy which reminds me of other classic Zucker pictures like "The Naked Gun" and "Airplane". Parker and Stone are great here, and there are plenty of terrific scenes, crazy non-sequiters, and gags throughout. The "psych-outs", featuring a mix of dirty insults and insane sight gags, are comedic gold. The rival pro teams, all absurd stereotypes like the Miami Dealers, New Jersey Informants, and San Francisco Ferries, are funny, too. Surprisingly, "Baseketball" is also an effective parody with its critique of pro sports, expansion, and free agency. And the hospital rampage is one of the funniest things I have ever seen in a movie. It gets noticeably more straightforward and less funny in the last twenty minutes, but still excellent overall. 77/100
Skyline Weak pointless drivel, featuring the Squiddys from Matrix and the pit beast from StarWars IV on roids. Some of the special effects are ok but otherwise it’s just fucking dumb. It would have been a 2 star popcorn movie until the big reveal at the end, which kinda showed why the aliens had invaded. Then the movie went full retard and transmuted into a 1 star steamer. The Expendables Not perfect, but I really enjoyed it, took me right back to my early teens and movies like Commando. It’s not going to stick with you or challenge you in any way, but not all movies need to do this to be good, and the Expendables was good. 3.5 Stars. Machete Stupid, over the top, clichéd, awesome. 3 stars.
I watched the infamous hilariously bad film Deadly Prey (1988) A group of mercenaries kidnap normal people from LA and then hunt them. They're so skilled that it takes 20 mercs with machine guns closely trailing a fat Mexican to take him the "prey" down, and even then, they manage to lose a man. Hilarity ensues. It's one of the worst, most idiotic films of all time. Hero Danton collects dozens of machine guns only to kill enemies by lifting and smashing them against trees. Nothing makes sense, the "dialogue" was written by a drooling Mongoloid, the "acting" would embarrass a junior high drama student, and the same extras keep getting killed over and over again. However, the highlight clip for Deadly Prey is one of the funniest Youtube videos ever, and there is comedy throughout. But the actual film doesn't live up to that classic; too much idiotic talking, lots of boring, slow, plain crappy editing, and boring "action" scenes. Has its moments, but is not as unintentionally hilarious as "Dolemite", for instance. 31/100 AAAARRRGGHHH!!!!!
A couple old Zooey Deschanel flicks. All the Real Girls, directed by David Gordon Green [Pineapple Express, prod. Eastbound&Down] and starring Paul Schneider [also wrote a lot of it] and Zooey Deschanel in a pretty good little indie flick. Schneider's character is a man whore who has slept with more than half of the town and Zooey is the younger sister of his best friend and is a virgin. Lots of good dialogue in this one, the shouting match between the two halfway through is pretty good as is Schneider's monologue in the bar to an ex-flame of his. I had never seen Schneider in anything before this and really enjoyed his performance. Solid B. Winter Passing stars Zooey, Ed Harris and features a more serious Will Ferrell than you are used to seeing. Zooey is the daughter of Harris and returns home to uncover a collection of letters sent between her parents over the early part of their relationship to sell for money. Really good soundtrack in this one, was impressed by most of the supporting cast. B-.
Once (2006) An atypical Irish romantic musical starring two non-actors as a street-performer/vacuum repair man (Glen Hansard) and an immigrant Czech single mother (Markéta Irglová.) There is minimal dialogue as most of the story is told through gorgeous songs and backstory is given through video montages. Easily worth watching for the soundtrack alone. 9/10
The Fifth Element I hadnt seen this movie in years before watching it yesterday. In case you havent seen it, in the distant future Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis) is an ex-military cab driver. Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) is the Fifth Element, a mystical supreme being and the human manifestation of "good." A giant evil fire ball is heading toward earth and will destroy all life unless Korben, Leeloo, a cross-dressing Chris Tucker, and Bilbo Baggins find the elemental stones to take them to a temple to join them together with Leeloo to destroy the evil fireball thing. But an evil Gary Oldman with a rediculous haircut and accent wants to prevent this from occuring. Does our rag-tag group of heroes succeed? Spoiler Yes they do. If that plot sounded rediculous, its because it is; but in a good way. Although the characters and story are absurd and nothing really new, this movie is a great sci-fi film. Bruce Willis is basically John McClane in the future, complete with the badassery and cracking wise, and is fun-to-watch. Gary Oldman also does a decent enough job as the villain, and its interesting to note that he and Bruce Willis' character never meet once in the film. The artistic color pallette of the make-up scenery is very vivid and gives depiction of the future that is best described as the opposite of what the future painted in Blade Runner looked like. For 1997, the graphics and CGI hold up very well. The sound effects and music are also very good and help drive the story and mood of the film. I really want to hate this movie for so many reasons but I cant, its just really fun to watch and enjoy. If you havent seen it (most people have), its worth checking out. 9/10
Birdemic: Shock and Terror Sigh. Taking in a midnight movie recently I put my put my brain in a food processor and withstood the onslaught of this film. It's a recent string of new Midnight Movies that are making serious coin because of how insanely awful they are. If it wasn't for the acting being slightly less terrible than The Room, this might be the worst film ever made. I just can't really decide that they made this film on purpose as the ultimate in shit satire, or they are just the worst filmmakers alive. I won't even bother with the plot, since every time a character opens their mouth you'd wish a sledgehammer would crash into it. Birds attack. But no, here comes what makes this movie famous: Commodore 64 grade visual effects that will void even the strongest bladder. The worst I have ever seen in a movie. The characters wave coathangers and whatnot in the air as these hovering, superimposed whatchamacallits that are supposed to be birds violently dart back and forth on screen. Thse are the action scenes. Watching it high, I naturally went bezerk with laughter just like the rest of the theatre. I thought my eyes were going roll right out of my head. This movie sucks ass beyond belief, but it has to be seen to be believed. 0.5/10
The 2000s weren't the first decade to see quality films remade into shit. Bedazzled (1967)- Stanley, a loser working as a short-order cook (Dudley Moore) lusts after an average-looking waitress at his job, and being unable to confess his feelings, decides to hang himself, a decision played purely for laughs. After he fails at even that, the devil (Peter Cook) makes an appearance and grants him seven wishes. Each wish Stanley makes has to do with him getting the waitress, but in each case, something goes horribly wrong, as the devil keeps fucking with him. And while the script is nothing special, it's Moore and Cook, two exceptional comedy pros, that make this funny. Cook is flat-out amazing, playing the devil as a suave, calm, charming rogue. During the course of the movie, he goes around committing various sins, like throwing a beehive at hippies enjoying a picnic, or talking a pigeon into taking a crap on a bald-headed man. There's a major mistake when he tears out the pages of an Agatha Christie book as part of his daily sinning, but whatever. He owns a club in London manned by the Seven Deadly Sins, and provides the vast majority of the humor throughout. The final resolution is clever and doesn't ruin the tone of the work, unlike the 1997 remake turd starring Brendan Fraser and Elizabeth Hurley. The movie isn't a classic, but is very funny and stands up well to this day. 73/100
Devil in a Blue Dress (1995) Denzel Washington, Jennifer Beales, Don Cheadle. Based on the novel by Walter Mosley. The film takes place in post WWII Los Angeles. Ezekiel Rawlins (Easy) is a vet and has just lost his job. He has bills piling up when he's introduced to Tom Sizemore's character who is willing to pay Easy to find a particular white woman, Daphne Monet (Beales). Easy starts to try to track her down, and after running into some friends, finds out one of them (Coretta) is friends with Daphne. I don't want to spoil the movie, because there are great twists in it. Don Cheadle's 'Mouse' is a fabulous character. I would say this is one of better films of the 90's, and well worth the watch if you haven't seen it. 8.5/10
Double feature; How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989) A brilliant, high-strung, borderline insane young advertising executive develops a boil on his neck with a face, mouth, and mind of its own. No huge spoilers here, but it's the embodiment of the evil and soullessness of his profession. It's pretty good, not great, and suffers from a weak ending. The problem is that it's not half as intelligent as it wants to be, delivering pothead cliches about "The Man", "greed", and "advertising consumer culture" as if they were some brilliant insights. It soon grows old. However, the comedy, horror, and delicious insanity still make this an exciting, noteworthy film. Richard E Grant's performance is nothing short of superb; his razor-sharp tongue, intelligence, manic speaking style, and barely concealed madness is a joy to watch. Worth checking out. 70/100 Three the Hard Way (1974)- An evil white supremacist group comes up with a special drug designed to only kill blacks. The three most popular blaxploitation stars of the era, Jim Brown, Fred Williamson, and Jim Kelly come together to stop them. I had big expectations coming in, but the first twenty minutes were a disaster. There were too many scenes of Jim Brown trying to "act" (and miserably failing, just like in all his roles), producing a Motown act, or driving around in his fucking car. I don't know what the hell the producers and director were thinking. You make a blaxploitation film about whites trying exterminate black people and you insert long romantic interludes of Jim Brown driving around with his girl? Luckily, things pick up from there. Jim Brown meets Fred Williamson, and from there, bodies start dropping! Chase scenes, cars exploding, wild fights, and shoot-outs on the streets of big cities...now that's what I came (well okay, sat at home) to see! Still could have used some more action though, and there are some moments of nothing later on in the film. Also, they get lazy near the end, with Neo-Nazi mooks falling down without any bullets even being shot. At that point though, our evil white group doesn't pose even the slightest threat to our black heroes, which makes it anti-climactic. Still, the cinemaphotography was neat, and topless Asian, white, and black girl torture trio was a neat B-movie touch. Entertaining, but a missed opportunity to do something special. 62/100 By the way, both Brown and Williamson were former NFL players with no acting background whatsoever...so why the hell is Williamson so much better at it?
Repulsion Repulsion is Polanski's ultimate masterpiece, his first English language film that accomplishes with anyone exactly what it's designed to do: drive you right up the wall for the entire duration of the film. It's one of the very scariest films of all time, a taut psychological shocker about a mousy, sexually repressed woman (the utterly gorgeous Catherine Deneauve) who goes bezerk while house sitting in her sister's apartment over a few days. The idea of never letting on what's real and what isn't will wet palms and make skin crawl, and you can take that to the bank. The fact that it's shot in black and white only adds to its chilling effectiveness of shadowy paranoia and random jolts. Watch it in the dark, alone. You will feel this film for days after seeing it. A must. 9.5/10
I've been on a movie kick lately. Idiocracy I saw it for the first time a few days ago. The film revolves around Luke Wilson being transported 500 years into the future after a military experiment went wrong. He finds out that everyone in the world has turned out to be stupid, and it happened because the dumbest people had kids and smart people didn't. The people of the future find out that he is the smartest man on earth and want him to solve their problems, but all he cares about is getting back to 500 years earlier. The pacing was good, and I thought that the satire regarding stupid people and big corporations was hilarious, but the movie relied too much on a story that I thought was just decent. The part of the film where I laughed the hardest was when everyone was at a movie that consisted of its viewers staring at an ass the whole time. The movie needed more gags like that instead of relying almost entirely on a so-so story. It wasn't my favorite comedy but it was worth watching. 71/100 About Schmidt It was directed by Alexander Payne who also did Sideways, which I wasn't crazy about, and Election, which is one of my favorite movies of all time. Jack Nicholson plays a retiring actuary in his late 60s. His daughter is marrying a guy who is kind of a slacker, and he is also having a hard time trying to figure out what meaningful things he has done with his life. Before his daughter's wedding he goes on a mini road trip throughout the Midwest, and visits his Alma mater, his hometown, and some other places. Jack Nicholson absolutely NAILED the role, and it's one that you wouldn't normally picture him in. The story is moving at times and there are some laughs here and there, but some of the dramatic scenes are played out more than they need to be (the movie is 2 hours long). I recommend watching this just so you can see Jack Nicholson's performance--it's not one that you want to miss. 74/100 Mrs. Doubtfire Yes, I saw Mrs. Doubtfire the other day for the first time in forever. I think everyone knows what it's about. It was a half hour longer than it needed to be, as some of the comedic and dramatic scenes lasted longer than they should have. It was also kind of hard for me to get past the fact that Sally Field's character wouldn't know that she was talking to her husband in drag. I am kind of ashamed to admit it, but overall I found it to be funny. I also loved Pierce Brosnan as the new boyfriend, even if they could have done more with his character. Two big strengths of the movie were that it made Pierce Brosnan's character a nice guy and not a villain, and it opted for an ending that was realistic relative to its plot. 76/100
Big Trouble in Little China (1986) I always used to say that John Carpenter is two thirds of a great director, because some of his films have a habit of turning to shit in the final reel. In this film, the bad thing about it happens before it begins. What I'm trying to say is that watching Big Trouble in Little China is like starting a movie you haven't seen half-way through it and then trying to decipher what's going on in the entire film. Good luck with this one. Sure, I watched the film dozens of times as a kid and it's wildly imaginitive with impressive special effects, but what the FUCK is going on exactly? There are dozens of plot devices that Carpenter already expects you to know, but it is not possible. He throws in everything but the kitchen sink: ghosts, flying warriors, lightning attacks, monsters, ninjas, street fights, rotting corpses, weird trippy scenes with chicks flying up to the roof, gun fights, sword fights, magic laser fights, a sasquatch for some reason, and Kurt Russell playing a character who by all measures says lots of cool things but is an utterly unlikeable blowhard. By his side is Wang Chi, his best friend whose unexplained morph from nerdy coward into supercharged turbo warrior in unintentionally hysterical. They go to some funhouse/house of horrors run by 7-foot-tall ghost David Lo-Pan (the incomparible Victor Wong, who is sometimes a rotting old man in a wheelchair) and is backed up by the Three Storms (I will admit, three of the most awesome henchman of all time). Lo-Pan needs Wang Chi's breathtaking green-eyed Chinese girlfriend (not genetically possible) to turn into a human again and after that it's a blur of weird violence, weird plot throw-aways and characters that get introduced and tossed away all the while we're left scratching our heads. Never has a movie had more mumbo-jumbo in it than this. I know a lot of board members love this film, and it's fun and energetic to a fault with some FANTASTIC art direction but I found Total Recall infinitely easier to understand than this whack-job outing. I accept it as tongue-and-cheek and that's why I don't rate this high tech Indiana Jones-style outing as a complete bomb. Kim Cattrall looks as gorgeous as ever in this. 4.5/10
What an absolutely brilliant, spot-on description of what makes "Big Trouble in Little China" so damn awesome! It's not supposed to make sense. It's almost like a dream; a disparate number of cool, exciting set pieces, characters culled from other great action movies, and non-stop fighting. Look, if the movie were presented seriously, all the plot holes and lack of sense would be a problem. But since the movie is so light-hearted, and in fact, highly comedic throughout, the crazy randomness only adds to its charm. It's a purely entertaining film, and one of the best ever made in that regard. Not only does it master visuals and pacing, but Carpenter has a better understanding of action films than probably any Hollywood director working in the genre today. The one liners are superb, and the presentation of villains and heroes alike is awesome, getting the viewer hyped up for their eventual clash like nothing else.
Big Trouble is one of my all time favorite movies for exactly the reasons Crown hates it, and I agree totally with KiMaster. 9/10 I even have a quote from it on my race car: "I only drive as fast as I can see"
Wordplay Definitely a movie that is not for everyone, but if you're into crossword puzzles, this is a very entertaining and enjoyable film. The film focuses on Will Shortz, the current crossword editor for the NY Times (which in cruciverbalist circles, is THE crossword puzzle) and the annual crossword competition he started several years ago before he got the job at the Times. Shortz's bio is both amazing and funny (he designed his own program of study at Univ. of Indiana in "enigmatology"--yes, he has a degree in puzzles!), clips of some celebrity Times puzzle solvers are presented (Jon Stewart, Bill Clinton, Ken Burns) in a comedic-documentary style, and a handful of competitors in the tournament are presented before and then at the tournament in 2005 (these guys are amazing, finishing a Saturday puzzle--the most difficult of the week--in under 5 minutes). 85 thoroughly enjoyable minutes. As mentioned, if you're into crossword puzzles, you'll love it.
A bout de souffle - 1960 The first film by critic turned director Jean-Luc Godard, Breathless isn't his best film but it could be his most influential. It's so hard to believe this film was made over 50 years ago. Its style was so ahead of its time that some of the dialog and shots would not seem out of place in a Tarantino movie (who dedicated Reservoir Dogs to Godard). I also recently watched The Apartment, a Hollywood film also released in 1960, and the New Wave rejection of the "Hollywood feel" is as plain as night and day when seeing the two films side by side. The story is a pretty conventional criminal-on-the-run plot but it's really not about that. Michel is ugly, a petty thief, and a murderer but we can't help but like him. I think the whole gangster anti-hero character that Scorcese and De Palma have mastered probably got its big start here. Like Tarantino's films, long stretches of banal dialog is punctuated with jump cuts, witty lines, and sudden violence. But again, the story isn't that important. Most of the lines were improvised anyways. More than anything, its a testament to the possibilities of film when convention and planning are thrown away. That someone with no formal training or budget could pick up a handheld camera, some unknown actors, and film a movie in Paris that would become one of the most influential of all time (at least for the New Hollywood directors) should be an inspiration to artists everywhere.