Thats a funny story. We went down to Florida...right?.....

MIAMI VICE
















I guess for a cops-go-undercover-for-a-giant-drug-bust kind of movie, it wasn't bad in a Michael Mann-ish sorta way. I'm not particularly fond of Michael Mann's style but I can appreciate it to a degree. That being said, for a movie being made from the 80s classic tv drama,'Miami Vice', I was pretty disappointed. For all the potential it had for style, it just didn't do anything Miami Vice-y or even gave you a clue that this movie was a remake of an old show. You didn't even get any Miami-ish atmosphere or any atmosphere at all through the whole movie. If they didn't mention that they were taking a boatride over to Cuba, I wouldn't even have guessed it was Florida.

I felt Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell had nothing to add to the movie. They could have easily been replaced by anyone and I wouldn't have noticed. Colin Farrell didn't do anything Don Johnson-y ever or even dress cool. He wore black and grey throughout the movie. Who wears drab shit like that in Miami? And the soundtrack was pathetic. Totally sucked balls. Crappy Rapcore we can get any day of the week on our pathetic Indiana rock station. I was hoping for a soundtrack like GTA Vice City or something cool like that. I thought that was the least they could do. NO, we get a bunch of Audioslave and a laughable cover of "In the Air Tonight" during the big climax, done by some genaric band called Nonpoint. Nonpoint is right, there really was no point to that.

I would have liked this movie a lot better if they just called it something else. It really had no relation whatsoever to Miami Vice, which bugged me. I felt if they were going to remake a show like that, they could have done so much more. Add some more colorful lighting, play up the Miami wardrobe, a little more character developement...y'KNOW? Gimme something Miami Vice. I didn't think that was expecting too much.

Beautiful chicks with dicks that would put mine to shame...

Cillina Murphy Marathon day 6
Breakfast on Pluto

So this is the story of an psychologically disturbed transvestite homosexual Irish foster child who grows up and travels around against the backdrop of political tensions in 60's-70's Ireland and England. "Kitten" was at times charming, sweet, innocent, and irreverent, but just as capable of being maddeningly obtuse, stubborn, and annoying. I never fully sympathized with this character, although I alternately pitied, rooted for, and disliked her.

The performance was good but a little weird. It was convincing, Cillin did a good job of selling me on the character, but the problem is this character never really felt real. There was never any clear motivation or character traits behind it all- nothing made any sense. She just floated along on a whim, changing to suite the circumstances but always being weird and never really fitting in. At times you could cry for her because she just needed to be loved and accepted (and find her mom) but at times you just wanted to smack her and demand 'Just what in the hell are you doing with your life?!?'

In the end, I just wondered what the point of watching that movie was (other then crossing off another title in the Cillian Murphy filmography). Was it to entertain? I don't know, the laughs and the tone were very inconsistent for an entertainment movie. Was it a drama? The character was just too flakey and inconsistent to pull me into a drama. Was it to show us something of the human condition? Perhaps that was the intent, but again the character would have to be at least a little more grounded for that to take hold- something like what I anticipate from Transamerica.

I didn't hate it, but I can't really recommend Breakfast on Pluto either. Cillian was good, but the character needed work. That may be on the director (or maybe it's just me). Two and a half stars, maybe three if I'm in a good mood.

Beavis and Butt-Head do America

Idiocracy

I was looking forward to Idiocracy for a long time. Some no-holds-barred social criticism and satire from Mr. Mike Judge, of Office Space, King of the Hill, and Beavis and Butt-Head fame. (honestly, I never really liked KOTH, but I like Judge.

So the premise is simple, Luke Wilson is forzen for 500 years and wakes up after humanity has de-evolved to a point where everyone basically acts like Beavis and Butt-Head. The satire is over-the-top and vicious: the reason for the de-evolution is laid out in an opening segment where a hillbilly family tree is played out and juxtaposed with a couple who are successful and intelligent but put off having kids until it is too late. The idea is that we have undermined the theory of evolution by making it easy to survive and breed, so that the be willing to reproduce (or stupid enough to not exercise control over your reproduction) is all it takes to succeed on an evolutionary level. Technology develops to the point where it does everything for people, and only the most basic skills are needed to function. Essentially, things are made idiot-proof and that is exactly what we get.

The concept is great, but as a movie it is flawed. It suffers from 'good idea but doesn't translate to the screen' syndrome. So along with the biting satire we have to endure a bunch of groin-kicks and the silly plot to find a way home and/or save people from being killed by the ignorant savages. There is ample opportunity for gags and not-so-subtle jabs at our culture, and they are what save the movie from being a disappointment after the back-of-the-box concept is over. Watching the characters interact was painful and boring. most of the dialog in this movie sucked. The point made by the omnipotent voice-over narrator that language had deteriorated to a mixture of hillbilly and ghetto slang and rudimentary grunts was funny, and occasionally the outlandish statements got a laugh, but when it needed to advance the plot it was just bad. Of course, there was no better way to do it. As I said above, the movie was interesting but flawed from the beginning. It makes an interesting point, but it isn't one you can build a compelling story around.

No, the jokes. sight-gags, and parody's of the decline in our own culture is what makes this movie worth watching. Taking the stupidity of reality TV, the sexualization of advertising, and the laziness and selfishness of our times and carrying them to absurd lengths provides the entertainment that caries this movie. Luke Wilson, and the other principle actors, have very little to add. It's good on the way SNL or MAD magazine is good.


I looked for a good picture of one of the many funny scenes and couldn't find anything but a movie poster of the President and Luke riding on a big bike, so here is what I did find, a review on the Onion that said everything I meant to, only better, because I am rushed to catch up on my movies and also possibly sick:

Idiocracy is an unrepentant satire, a genre George S. Kaufman famously defined as "what closes Saturday night." Idiocracy feels more like a Beavis And Butt-head follow-up than an Office Space follower, thanks to its depiction of a society devolving at a rapid clip, and the way it satirizes its instant-gratification-obsessed target audience using the limited vocabulary of the terminally stupid.

In Beavis And Butt-head, that devolution is just suggested; in Idiocracy, it's made dizzyingly literal. A perfectly cast Luke Wilson stars as a quintessential everyman who hibernates for centuries and wakes up in a society so degraded by insipid popular culture, crass consumerism, and rampant anti-intellectualism that he qualifies as the smartest man in the world. Corporations cater even more unashamedly to the primal needs of the lowest common denominator—Starbucks now traffics in handjobs as well as lattes—and the English language has devolved into a hilarious patois of hillbilly, Ebonics, and slang.

Idiocracy's dumb-ass dystopia suggests a world designed by Britney Spears and Kevin Federline, a world where the entire populace skirts the fine line separating mildly retarded from really fucking stupid, and where anyone displaying any sign of intelligence is derided as a fag. Working on a sprawling canvas, Judge fills the screen with visual jokes, throwaway gags, and incisive commentary on the ubiquity of advertising—for instance, with the presidential-cabinet member who works paid plugs for Carl's Jr. into everyday conversations. Like so much superior science fiction, Idiocracy uses a fantastical future to comment on a present in which Paris Hilton is infinitely more famous than Nobel laureates. There's a good chance that Judge's smartly lowbrow Idiocracy will be mistaken for what it's satirizing, but good satire always runs the risk—to borrow a phrase from a poster-boy for the reverse meritocracy—of being misunderestimated.

I gotta fever and the prescription is more Dr. Duchovny

PLAYING GOD


It has been a while since I've seen this movie and even when I saw it years ago, I was too busy drooling over David Duchovny to pay any leftover attention to the actual plot. This time, taking a break from Cillian Murphy, I actually sat and watched all of it. We were between Cillian movies and felt like watching something we didn't have to take seriously and JP was goodly enough to choose Playing God from the list of free On-Demand movies from Comcast.

I wouldn't call it a "good" movie by any stretch but it was interesting enough and a well-written narration. There is a chance that it might have just seemed that way to me because it was spoken through David Duchovny's sexy man-voice. It could have been a crap screenplay but all crap sounds beautiful with David as a narrator. All I know for sure is that I dug it.

Brief summary- So, David Duchovny is a drug addict ex-doctor (He lost his med license) who is in a bar one day, just minding his own business, visiting with his dealer when some bozo comes in shooting up the place and shoots this one dude over by the bar. Everybody is all, "Call 911! - NO, we can't cause we'll go to jail" or something. So here is this guy bleeding and dying all over the place. David Duchovny, I think his name was Eugene or something gay, leaps over the people and comes over there to help him. (Because with great medical knowledge comes great responsibility, right?) He touches the guy's neck and just like that, he can tell the guy has a punctured lung. (So magical, I love him.) Then, he yells at the bar people to bring him a water bottle and a plastic hose/tube thing and other handy stuff and he starts working his doctory magic on him and saves his life. Well, then, it turns out Angelina Jolie was at the bar gawking at him and went and told her not-handsome criminal drug-dealing boyfriend and before you know it, Dr.Cutey-Cute wakes up in the back of a moving jeep with two friends of AJ's boyfriend. They take him to a beachhouse to talk to her boyfriend. I can't remember his name. Maybe it was Raymond. Lets call him Peckerhead. (He looked like someone you would call a Peckerhead.) So, Peckerhead talks to Dr.Dreamboat about a deal that would make him a "doctor" again. Basically, he would fix up all of Peckerhead's thugs when they got shot for like, 10 grand a pop. Dr. Hotty is like, well, I don't know. Maybe I can do it for a little while... He doesn't feel good about it but he wants to practice medicine again so he goes along with it. Then some hoopla sets in with the FBI. Some twists and turns, yada yada yada. Some people wear wires to help bust other dudes. Dr. Man-Candy even wears a wire taped so gently to his manly chest. All I could think of in those scenes was how I wanted to be that particular wire. I could be the wire and I could just remember everything being said and relay it back to the feds and hide against Dr. Heartstealer's chest under his clothes. That would be the funnest job ever. Or maybe hide under there with a walkie talkie - "Peckerhead just told the other guy to put his gun down." "Yeah. Now some more guys walked in with some briefcases. Over." That would be sweet. Anyway, thats what I'm thinking.

David Duchovny is just so damn gorgeous in this movie. Its mesmerizing. I would want to get shot just so he could work on me and play doctor. Nothing fatal, just maybe in the back of the leg or somewhere cool. I wouldn't need any painkillers cause he would touch me and I would get all tingly and numb. That would be cool.

Oh yeah, I'm not just saying this but Angelina Jolie SUCKS in this movie. Her acting was just ridiculously HORRIBLE. She does okay in her more recent movies and everything so I'm thinking that maybe this was her first or second movie or something cause she absolutely could NOT act. NONE of her sentences came out like a normal human being would say them. Nothing she said or did came off natural. It was shit. It was so distracting, it was almost comical. And because she was such a bad actress and couldn't say her lines properly, she couldn't have chemistry with a single person in this movie. It was like she was in a completely different movie than everyone else. She was off in 'No Retreat No Surrender' while everyone else was living it in this 'Playing God' movie. Maybe she thought the movie was called 'Playing GodAwful' cause thats exactly what she was doing. It was distracting me from my Dr. Hotness moments.

Playing God isn't really a movie I would recommend to anyone. Its not really a great movie but its one of those movies that is good to check out at 2 am on the couch when it comes on cable.

...and her adam's apple was as big as her balls.

BREAKFAST ON PLUTO


As emotionally confusing as it was for me, I liked this movie. I enjoyed the main character, Patrick Braden or "Kitten" as he/she liked to be called. Basically, Patrick/Kitten was a cross-dressing homosexual foster kid who grows up, leaves behind his small-town life in Ireland for London, where he tries to search for his real mother. The fashion and bubblegum music lets me believe this takes place in the late 60's - late 70's. Its a little bit like Joe Dirt meets To Wong Foo Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar only more soulful and interesting.

Cillian Murphy was amazing. I loved his performance and his character. He was just fabulous as the brave and relentless seeker of the truth who faced life with conviction even when everything around him seemed to be disintegrating. This film is about a transvestite on one level, but it is also a lot more: it's about, belonging, being, loving and being loved. What could have been a one-dimensional caricature becomes a three dimensional movie in the hands of a good director like Neil Jordan, and actors such as Liam Neeson, Stephen Rea, and Cillian Murphy (who is magnificent...even in heels).

Who does not want to be loved? Not many of us, and Kitten wants it more than most. Her journey to find love in whatever form it may take is both touching and harrowing at times. You cringe when she finds her self in certain situations, and you root for her to take charge of her life, but that is something she is quite unable to do for the most part of her journey.

I found it funny that Steven Rea is once again the interest of a she-male. For a moment in the film, I thought we were going to see another Crying Game moment. I also had a huge Lesssbian crush on Cillian and it was taking me places I've never been. I've never wanted to jump a transvetite before. At first it was kinda weird seeing him all girly but then his character as "Kitten" develops and he had me through the whole movie. Not quite like Cillian's other films but still had me. Even though his character carried herself like a hero and was eternally optimistic, she was definitely a lost kitten who needed to be rescued. It was breaking my heart. I wanted to adopt him. I would have rescued him and danced with him to Bobby Goldsboro. And YES, I would have took him to the hospital if I came home to find him dead like Bobby's wife; although I did find it a bit strange that this circumstance is what Kitten found comforting (I mean of all the pillowtalk in the world, this is what she wanted most to hear) Anyway- Then I would kiss him so passionantly, it would turn him straight and his cross-dressing would be reduced to a kinky bedroom fetish. I could play along with that. A little champagne goes a long way with me. A little lipstick, stockings, maybe even "Goodbye Horses" or a whole record of Bobby Goldsboro as long as I get to please and satisfy every inch of Cillian, ahem, I mean Kitten. Kitten just needed love. I'm all for it. Whats not to love?

Overall, I enjoyed this movie. It was hilarious, yet heartbreaking. The events related by Kitten are sad and terrible, but Kitten's sense of humor and optimism always shines through. And Liam Neeson! He was also great. I love him. I couldn't close this post without mentioning his greatness. Everyone was great and Cillian is always my favorite.

Eat You? I don't even like talking to you on the phone.

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE



What can be better than Christian Slater, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, and Antonio Banderas all in the same movie? This is one of those movies I can watch again and again, when I'm in one of those dark, romantic moods that calls for a good vampire movie.

Directed by Neil Jordan, a great Irish director who also directed Breakfast On Pluto, the Cillian Murphy movie that is next on our marathon list. You can see from watching this film, that Neil Jordan actually cares about staying true to Anne Rice's novel and takes her input into careful consideration to avoid bastardizing the characters in the story, unlike Queen of the Damned where the characters and story were bastardized so much, the whole thing was like a damn goth-band music video. Totally unrecognizable. Lestat played by Stuart Townsend? Did the director lose a bet?

Anyway, fantastic screenplay. Fantastic cast (all except Kirsten Dunst, but then again she does have snaggleteeth so maybe I can forgive them for trying to go for real-looking vampire teeth so they can save on the budget for special effects.)

Christian Slater is the curious, kinda-jaded, reporter conducting an interview with the vampire, Luis (Brad Pitt). Luis is a tortured vampire who is happy to tell his story that starts in the year 1791 - New Orleans and leads all the way up to present day.

Lestat (Tom Cruise)is a vampire that comes out of the shadows and seeks out Luis. He asks him first if he wants to become a vampire and join him as a hetero lifemate and he says yes but then once he is made immortal, he is like, "I immediately regret this decision. I didn't know I was actually going to have to eat people. " To avoid eating people, he just eats the animals and comes off as a total gaylord to Lestat who at first thinks its funny and cute but then you can see it gets on his nerves.

Luis gets frustrated as he notices all the slaves on the plantation can sense evil and are scared shitless of him and his new pal, Lestat. So, he burns his own house down and sets his slaves free. They leave their nice, neat flaming little shit and set on for traveling adventures. Lestat is a ruthless, badass vampire and takes pride in his vampiric work while Luis is still a bitch who can't deal. He's all set on breaking up with Lestat and moving on to be miserable elsewhere. Then Lestat makes a vampire kid (Snaggletooth) to manipulate Luis into staying with him. She takes to vampire life well and then turns into a screaming brat who tortures your ears during several scenes of overacting and bitch-fits. "Feck You! This is a house of lies!" It gets old real quick and you are supposed to sympathize and understand what it must be like living as a forever-young, sheltered vampire with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt as your 2 dads. The pscyho bitch scenes are all painful to watch and listen to and all you want while they are happening is for her to stop talking and to go on with the story. "Go ON with the Chlorafil."

The story takes some more turns after that on a dark, long and winding road. The story gets weirder and better. The ending was awesome, closing in an awesome cover of "Sympathy for the Devil" by Guns N' Roses.

This was one of my favorite movies when I was a kid. I would watch it with my best friend and we would talk about the man-candy and what it might be like to be a vampiric creature of the night and how much Kirsten Dunst sucks. 1995, good times.

Now, of course, it has a bit of a nostalgic feel to it. I can pretty much say all the dialoge along with the movie and remember all the parts I used to find funny with my friends. I think I can draw new things from it as well. I am able to notice different things and appreciate it different things such as cinematography and art direction of the film. A more educated view of film that I've picked up from the college years. That and I have more jokes now to blurt out during the movie with Tom Cruise losing his mind to Scientology and all. Its great fun.

Whatsa matter, Greit, You got somethin' against guys with hair?

THE GIRL WITH THE PEARL EARRING (Cillian Murphy movie marathon: Day 5)


Before I realized Cillian Murphy was in this movie and added it to the marathon, I figured this movie was way to boring for my taste and never would have seen this movie otherwise. Once this movie came to us in the mail, I actually gave this movie a fair shot and stayed with it the entire way through.

Of course, this movie WAS really boring and went nowhere. Thats why they couldn't come up with a more creative title to the movie. They were either being lazy or more likely, they didn't have much to go off of so GWTPE is the best they could do.

Anyway, a brief recap: Greit is a girl who had to go be a maid because her real family was poor and blind. So she goes to work for this family of weirdos. Colin Firth has really long hair. He's the artist that paints people mostly and he's really good and sponsored by the rich bajillionaire (the guy from Full Monty). His wife is weird and bitchy. Her mom is even weirder and scary. Like someone out of the Tom Petty "Dont Come Around Here No More" video. A brat kid that I think was a girl but I'm not sure. Greit has to live with these people and clean around them. We watch that for about half the movie. She shows interest in the artist. He sees something in her and wants to paint her. The whole time she wears a bonnet, hiding her hair and looking like Marilyn Manson. Seriously. With no hair, Scarlet looks like Marilyn Manson. With less make-up of course.

So anyway, yeah, for the whole first half of the movie, this is going on. Not much else. I'm sitting here thinking, OK. Where's Cillian? Before seeing this film, I heard of a really hot "love scene" involving Cillian and I waited and waited for that part in this movie. I was like, "Well, the movie kind of sucks for far and is kind of boring but at least I have that love scene to look forward to." Can we please get some Cillian up in herrre? Well, some boring scenes of cleaning shit go by and finally, Greit goes to the butcher shop. and there he is. behind all the meat. Looking a little like an elf from Lord Of the Rings with that long hair and crazy peasant clothes but finally, we are getting a little Cillian action. Greit is picking up some fish and then complains it isnt fresh enough. Cillian then gives her a fresher bag and she doesn't even say thank you. She says "Thats better". What a bitch. She's a peasant maid and she's acting like she some kind of heiress. Its the olden days. What did she expect? A big semi truck in the back is making speedy deliveries of fresh packaged fish? The fish came with eyeballs.

Cillian took a liking to her anyway, probably out of loneliness and desperation. He comes around again to her on the street and asks her out. "Hey, you're the one who ordered haggas, right?" She accepts his date, kind of. Like "Look, I heard this guy I like was going to paint me so I'm going to wait and see what happens there...That sounds great. Yeah." And he's like "So, is that like, like a yes? or...?" and Greit is like, "I thought I made it perfectly clear. If everything falls apart...maybe." and Cillian is like "I'm going to hold you to that!"

She goes back to her job and things are all crazy. With the paintings and the brat kid making her life hell and the bitchy lady. I guess the painter agreed to make a secret painting of Greit for the rich guy. She's doing that gig and its all secretive and the bitchy wife is getting jealous but she doesnt know whats going on. The painter is like "You know what this paining needs?...A really large over-sized pearl earring." And his scary mom steals them from the bitch wife and Greit wears them for the painting.

Meanwhile, I'm STILL waiting for the love scene. She ends up going for a walk with Cillian. I guess that qualifies as a "date". They stop and I guess they start making out. I'm seeing her face, hair still hidden in bonnet. I'm not seeing much of his face. They are standing up. Is this the love scene? Did they even have sex? or was that just an awkward body shake? Wow. That was weak. What was that? I felt so jipped. Not only do you not see much of anything but 2 clothed people making out or whatever, but there was no chemistry between them whatsoever. It was like she was settling for him and not that into it. I'm not sure if that was what it was supposed to look like but NO PASSION. No passion at all. No passion. No chemistry. That sucked.

If it was me, I would make out with him standing up. Then tackle him down to the grass. Then make sweet love to him. Then bring him lasgna at his work, rub his shoulders and ask if he needs any help linking his sausage.Maybe even drop him little butcher love notes like, MEAT ME AFTER WORK. Then go grab an ale afterwards and make love to him so more. What was her problem? He was right there, wanting to get to know her and she gives him the cold fish right back. Like, "Alright, alright, I guess I'll make out with you. Is this going to take long? I've got paintings to pose for." Poor Cillian.

So, they make out or whatever and I'm not sure if its then or another dull date they were on when he asks her to marry him. To blow off that jerk painter she was seeing that night and come with him to live free as peasants. and she's like "..how about No." and he's like, "...Please?". Its kind of a no-brainer. But she already looks like she has no hair with that bonnet covering everything, why not look like she has no brain too? Maybe it died from not EVER taking the bonnet off and giving it some air. I guess because she ended up giving him the same bullshit response as before. She basically then told him "I dunno. I've got this whole maid/paining gig. I should really concentrate on my career right now. If everything falls apart...Maybe. Don't hold your breath or anything though." WHat IS that??

Once again, if it was ME, I would have thrown my arms around him and cried "YES! YES! YES! Lets get married! I frickin' Love you! We'll get married on top of a mountain with trumpets and flowers and gardens of fresh herbs and we will start a family band and we'll tour the countryside and weirdo art family won't be invited." And THEN Greit gets kicked out of the house for...being in the painting or something? And She STILL doesn't end up in Butcher Boy's sweet lovin' arms, she decides she would rather hold out. WHAT AN IDIOT! WHAT A LOSER! ...GOOD. GOod. More butcher boy for me and you. He should have his own movie. Where his other peasant friends and him get a place together and start a fraternity to help him get over her. You can call it REALLY Old School.

I'm tellin' ya Erv- we weren't anywhere near isle 4!

Employee of the Month

What a colossal disappointment. This had some potential - there is plenty to make fun of and satirize in the world of low-wage low-skill labor. Unfortunately, this movie didn't even try. That Jennifer Anniston movie, The Good Girl, had sharper social commentary, to say nothing of Waiting or Clerks. Ok, so maybe we just cut Dane loose and let him riff on 20-somethings and maybe play out a few Dane-stories from his comedy routine (how awesome would it have been if he went into a Burger King and ordered a Spaghetti Basket or got into a 'thanks buddy' 'alright pal' 'ok, ok, gaylord!' type of altercation, maybe an "I'll fuckin' kill you!' Hell, just have a couple of cans of cashews on his nightstand, something for the Dane fans. Something that lets them connect to the film. Instead any fan of Dane Cook leaves this movie totally disappointed.

instead of anything worthwhile we got a lovable loser with a heart of gold- a totally generic comedy protagonist- by Dane Cook. The friends were a poor man's version of the friends from 40-year old virgin, again totally devoid of personality. There were a few half-assed gags like the clubhouse on top of the shelves and some blind Andy Dick moments but it was nowhere near enough to hold this movie together. The store manager character was terrible, his boss was even worse, and The arch-rival cashier was the worst part of all. There is nothing good I could possibly say. It was painfully, painfully bad. Jessica Simpson, thankfully, had a very small part in the movie that did not justify her high billing at all. She was on about as much as the Grandma character, and served only to set the plot in motion. A contest for the car could have accomplished the same thing and we would have been spared her gremlin-manish face and scoop neck work clothes.

Not sure what else to say. This movie wasted so much potential, and could have been made so much better. I was hoping for a little bit of Grandma's Boy or 40-year-old Virgin. Instead, I wasted 90 minutes of my time - and I'm the easy to please one! I'm the one looking for something to like! And I couldn't find it.

I was just looking for the rest of this bottle... oh, here it is- there's some more of it over there.

Road House

I can't believe that is really what the movie is about. It is about a bouncer who is "the best bouncer in the business." That concept alone I have trouble with- the idea that being a bar bouncer is elevated to an art form. For the first 20 minutes at least I couldn't get over it. He is the Zen Master of Bouncers. His reputation is known all over. The plot is based on him going to a really, really, really rough bar- and taming it. If you have ever watched the Simpsons they occasionally have made-up arcade games like "Great White Hunter" "Escape from Grandma's House" or "Larry the Looter." The premise for this movie could easily be a Simpsons video game gag: Bar Bouncer - a side scrolling action game where you punch your way through broken bottle wielding thugs.

Eventually it sucks you in with it's pure formulaic 80's action. The bar is in danger, the town is in danger, there is an evil rich dude who is making everyone else's life hell, there is his gang of easily defeated punks and then the bad ass he brings in who is almost better then Swazey- but not quite because Swazey ends up ripping his throat out (literally). There is the grizzled old veteran mantor who comes to town and gets in the end- prompting the vengeance rampage. There is the blond doctor love interest. It's all there.

So yeah, I got into it in a Saturday afternoon movie kinda way. Glad I saw it. Like Rocky this one was just getting embarassing to have not seen in 25 years of manly life on this Earth.

I can see how it would be rewatchable on TNT- like a guy pretty woman. It is a little ridiculous, however, like the way the bad guy is so out-of-control (burning down businesses, driving monster trucks through car lots, blowing up houses, killing people) and there is no fear of repercussion or anything. He just keeps pushing the envelope until Swazey has to come kill him.

Makes we want to watch some Van Dame or Seagal. Or Ghost.

Griet? Is she the one with all the shit in her face?

Girl with the Pearl Earring

I cannot write a review of this movie without using the word "dull." It's just a fact of life. I think it was actually part of the intention of the filmmakers, much like a PBS documentary or something. They know it is going to be dry and boring but they make it anyway.

The painting is real, it is really by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. The story behind it is unknown so some dude wrote a book about how it hypothetically could have come to be (much like Black Dahlia was a bunch of bullshit spun around the real life 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short in LA), basing the story around a young girl who comes to live with the Vermeer family as a maid and has a moment with Jon where they bond over her interest in/ fascination with his art and he ends up painting her in a work that ends up being his masterpiece - the Dutch Mona Lisa, I am told - and the name is due to his use of the pearl earring as a focal point. That, in turn, is dramatized by the long, slow zoom out from an extreme close shot of the earring to the painting as a whole that occurs near the end.

Whew, wait, let me take a step back, I am getting to into describing things. This, by the way, is the actual point of the movie. All the subtly layered detail, nuance, history, story... things you would appreciate more after a half-hour college level art history lecture on 17th Century Dutch artists. It also belies the problem with watching the film- that a modern viewer is going to miss a lot of the subtlety and not pick up on the portrayal of interactions between social groups in the period and place.

So Colin Firth is the long-haired artist, he has a bitchy jealous wife (who has at least some room to be jealous, though an actual sexual affair, at least in this instance, is not taking place) and bratty daughter, and a bunch of other kids. His family is to some extent dependent on Tom Wilkinson buying his paintings, so you get lots of scenes of people who are motivated or pressured by people with more power then them (both the Vermeer family to the count and the servants to the family).

The story starts when Scarlett has to go be a maid because her family is poor. Her dad was an artist (painting ceramic tiles?) not a rich one like Firth but still an artist, but recently he went blind and can't work. So this explains her situation as well as her predisposition to being teacher's pet to Colin Firth. She also meets a butcher's apprentice, the one and only Clillian Murphy. He is more on her level and a much more suitable match. He is very interested, she is somewhat interested back.

Eventually rich and lascivious old Tom Wilkinson fancies Greit and commissions a painting of her- as well as a deal to have her for his own *ahem* maid. Scarlett and everybody else know what is implied by the deal. She hooks up with Cillian in a very brief love scene, and I think it is partially motivated by fear at being basically sold to the old count, and she at least wants to be with a guy she likes first.

The painting is the masterpiece "Girl with the Pearl Earring." The wife is insulted that the peasant girl wears her jewelry and is the subject of her husbands great work. "why not me?" She asks. And is told she doesn't understand art and stuff the way Scarlett does. Needless to say Scarlett gets kicked out of the house after that.

What I wasn't sure of until reading the internet is that she does in fact end up going to live with Cillian Murphy in the end. I assume this is how the book ends as well.

It was dull, the story moved very slowly and there weren't any real twists. It didn't build up do anything. There were big dramatic scenes like when the wife finally storm up and demands to see the picture but it's all based on rules and customs and beliefs that we don't really understand. When the picture is revealed the wife is upset: "How could you! It's indecent! Why don't you paint me like that?" and then the picture is revealed and, yeah it's just the same one on the cover of the DVD we've seen 100 times and we're like "oh, that's it? She's not naked or anything? Just a girl with an earring? Did I miss something? I don't get it." But the creepy old guy stares at it and the family kicks her out over it...

Maybe I just don't have as much of an appreciation for art. but that's another subject for another day. GWTPE is good, just know what you are getting into. Cillian is just a background character who provides a good, honest guy for Scarlett. The artist and her have a thing but it is not romantic, Cillian is her romantic interest. He is a little forgettable in this one, but then again, the whole movie is a little forgettable. Glad I made this blog entry detailed because in a few months I would have troubling remembering it for detail at all.

RE: Cillian Murphy movie marathon- Day four

INTERMISSION


I agree with JP on this one. I also thought it was going to be more crime/caper oriented in a Guy Ritchie-ish kind of way (maybe it was the look of the case) but it surprised me and turned out to be a good, multi-charactered story of people, relationships, loneliness, selfish needs, and all that goodness. A little bit of everything for everyone, I thought. I dug it.

There were several storylines going on that all seemed to intertwine in some ways. Like 6 degrees of seperation from Cillian Murphy. Thats how I saw it. CM had his story about how his unforgiving girl from Trainspotting was mean to him and left him for some baldy old dude. The Old dude left his poor wife for Trainspotting girl. Poor wife discovers her single self and has a fling with CM's friend. CM's friend gets friendly with Trainspotting girl's sister with a mustache (who is also from Trainspotting). Also some Colin Farrell action, some other people too. JP explained the plot pretty well. Gave you about the same feel as Full Monty only without the nakedness.

I loved how this was an irish movie. I love irish accents and couldn't get enough. I could listen to these characters talk all day. It was also one of the first movies I've actually heard Cillian crank his accent up to 9, it was so charming. Lately in american movies like RED EYE or BATMAN BEGINS, he buries it under an american accent. Much smoother in B.B. than RED EYE, where you could very much tell he had a little irish accent behind his voice dying to come back out. I loved it anyway.

Overall, I like this movie. It flowed very well, with realistic characters. Not all of them likable but still interesting and solid. It had me into it from the beginning to end. It was good fun.

Cillian of course was great. Shorter hair, less smooth but he played it very sincere. Even though I thought he was way too cute and lovable for his girlfriend, who didn't appreciate his awesomeness enough, I still rooted for him to win her back because that seemed like the only thing he was interested in through out the whole movie. He was a bit of a rebel and a bit of an idiot and totally clueless on how to go about winning back his girlfriend but his eyes make him forgivable for all of it. Like a kitten that scratches up your furniture and poops in your refrigerator and you want to yell at him and be mad but then he looks up at you and you just can't stay mad. That is just one of the powers possessed by Cillian Murphy and why he is so fun to watch on screen. He's awesome.

Bad Movies

As I have slipped out of capasity to blog the cluster of movies I've seen while sick, I see JP has took the reigns of this blog and documented them along with his 2 cents. I noticed that we are masochists for bad movies. I'm not entirely sure why that is but I think its a vice we developed somewhere in our relationship.Its a compulsion, an addiction to work in at least one movie we know is going to be horrible. Thats the fun of it. Its the fun of satisfying our masochistic curiosty and cracking jokes all the way through. Its our own MST3K and we have a blast. There's bad movies and then there's bad movies. The bad movies I crave are the kind that give you all that fun stated above. Cheesy one-liners, ridiculous premise, blood, gore, erotic sex scenes with lots of saxophone, over-the-top cheese. Classic examples would be Basic Instinct, Dead Alive, Showgirls, Dawn of the Dead part 2 and the often referenced Ginger Dead Man. Movies that spark weird looks and question from the Blockbuster clerks "So...how WAS that movie?" Then there are bad movies that are just...a godawful waste of time. Movies that are bad and not even bad in a good way. Movies like Step Up, Pearl Harbor,American Psycho 2, Swept Away, and A Scanner Darkly. Sometimes they trick you and make you think that they will be awesomely bad in that good way. You're thinking, this is going to be hilarious. Then they disappoint you and waste your time and make you regret giving up 2 hours of your life to that movie, it was so bad.

I think JP, being the movie-whore he is, has a little trouble recognizing the difference between the 2 kinds of bad and he ends up coming home with Step Up and A Scanner Darkly. Lately, I havent even been able to defend myself from being sick. and sometimes its my fault. I am fooled by what I think a movie will be like or fall into a rut of straight-to-video horror movies that will wear down JP after a while if he doesn't stop me and insist on a quality movie like Capote or Brick or something to break up the rut. But seriously, I thought I was going to have to watch The Dukes of Hazard or Fantastic 4 because of JPs whorish ways and he still thinks that just because people put up a bajillion dollars to make the movie, that it will be worth watching. That is I think what blocks his vision of what makes a bad movie fun and confuses him of good-bad and bad-bad. He's enticed by the damn budget. Typical accountant-ish JP.


Anyway, the reason I address this bad movie business is that there is a cluster of them recently viewed by us while I am recovering from being sick. Movies so bad, they dont even deserve their own posts. I dont have the strength.

Step to it, stand it up, stick something, stick it up your ass? Some random teen dance-drama. I don't know

Well, this was one of those guilty pleasure/curiosity killed the cat/E is sick and has become one with the Chase and requires something only slightly better then Everybody Loves Raymond re-runs to keep her catatonic mind occupied while recuperating from the flu and hey- if we don't rent it right now we probably never will.

In other words, my movie-whore nature got the best of me once again. This one was made-for-TV-movie bad. Absolutely everything was color by numbers. In the beginning I think they were just doing things because they knew they had to, because that was the plot they needed to set in motion. Actions were not motivated at all. The girl needs a dance partner and immediately selects the guy washing the windows doing community service (because the Freshman and sophomore dance academy students are too inexperienced. Right.... and yet she had to teach him up from basic ballet). It was totally like Wayne looking around the recording studio and naming artists.... Areosmith... Sting... Old man fashioning a Kayak out of a block of wood. No! His only qualification was he had the upper-body strength to lift her and he did a few dance-club spins and she is Bang!- into the principals office lobbying for him to be her partner.

But of course he hasn't yet learned to finish things and be there for people who depend on you, so he flakes out a few times, and learns to dance via-montage, and then they get close, but her boyfriend gets jealous, so he has to become a dick and leave her for the plot's sake so it is ok for her to be with danceman. Then something bad happens to an expendable friend character, Mom shows up to support her at the 0-hour and together they pull off the dance and, whattaya know, she gets offered a job.

Every step of the way they were just doing things because they had to. Absolutely nothing was natural at all. The plot was about on the level of a Scary Movie sequel, you know where they go to an old house in Japan and you instantly say 'ok, here comes the Grudge scene and you get ready to see the most memorable aspects of the grudge like the creepy green hand and the weird pale dark haired Japanese kid. Ok, well same thing here (here comes the turns his back on her scene only to go back later but it's too late she moved on...) the only difference is that Scary Movie is trying to be funny, this movie is trying to be serious.

Trying, and failing. Utterly predictable, bland, boring, worthless drivel.
I think I need to see something with some substance. and soon.

sci...sci...sci...Psycho. It's Psycho.

American Psycho 2

What the hell was that? Ok, Ok, I didn't expect much but I think I expected a little more then the Ginger Dead Man. I mean, give me Feast meets Single White Female with worse acting - give me something, that movie looked like they weren't even trying.

Seriously, the writing and the acting were bad, and I mean like porn movie bad. Like they weren't even trying to make an effort. You know in a porno when the bimbo sits behind the desk and says "This movie needs to be really good, or else I'll get kicked out of my apartment. My landlord's a real jerk." Well, that is exactly what That 70's show girl sounded like. If, instead of killing people to get to the top, she had just had sex with all of the people in her way (the secretary, the rich kid, the bimbo, the intense student, the psychiatrist, the professor) and then got her position at the FBI in the end, it could have been a porno without any additional changes needing to be made. They could have called it Legally Boned or something. Just, instead of a cheap death-by-icepick give me 10 good minutes of mixed-position hardcore sex and we're done. completely differnent movie, but the same basic movie really.

Which brings me to my next point- where was all the sex, and even the violence for that matter? Hey, I understand we are on a budget here, I know I am not going to get the original Christian Bale version, I know that quality is taking a back seat in this one, I get it. But what exactly is the point? Why are we making American Psycho 2? Is it the story? no, obviously not. The acting? Nope, no effort there. So if we are purely just trying to entertain and to cater to the lowest common denominator, then why is there not more sex and violence? There was little to no gore, most murders happened conveniently off-screen, bloodless. There was no real sex or nudity in the movie. What's the point? were they going for a PG-13? How much does it cost to get some stripper to do a lesbian sex scene and then throw a few gallons of red-dye #40 around the bedroom? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here!

Look, I can take low-budget straight to video sequel but you have to do more then throw three lame-ass twists at me and call it a movie. I don't understand why more of these low-budget horror films don't take a cue from Troma. If you can't do something well, at least sell out and do it to excess! Give us some reason to watch. Do something. I just don't see the point of making an American Psycho 2 if you aren't going to push the envelope a little bit. lame. File it away next to the Dusk 'till Dawn sequels.

cillian murphy movie marathon - Day Four

Intermission

I went into this one expecting another accent-heavy ensemble British crime/caper movie filled with colorful if unlikely underworld types - and was surprised to find it had as much in common with Love Actually as Guy Richie. The movie was all about relationships and any crime (usually involving Colin Farrell in some way) was just a backdrop.

Ok, it wasn't exactly Love Actually, but there was a bunch of loosely connected relationship melodramas playing out. For most of the movie I thought it was characterized by a bunch of people acting selfishly, trying to find love and happiness, but only really concerned about themselves and what they want. Cillian Murphy, for example, dumping his girlfriend out of fear-of-commitment or something, the girlfriend (the one from Trainspotting) entering into a relationship of convenience with an older man, the old guy, leaving his wife for someone younger, the wife, out on the prowl and finding an assertiveness she never had before, and the friend who hooks up with the wife, lonely and a little desperate.

So by the end everything becomes a mess and then everyone pairs off again, correctly this time, and Cillian learns the value of love, the shy friend and the jilted sister find each other, and the wife gets the husband back, but now she has the power in the relationship.

So what did I think? The heavily accented Irish dialog was flying, and it was pretty good. The movie kept me entertained more then I thought it would. There was also the matter of a bus-driving friend and a crazy outside-the-lines cop and a TV journalist and a prick supermarket manager and an Irish Pub and a rock throwing brat and lots of other things going on.

I guess this 'review', if you can call it that, is more like a 4th grade book report just to keep track of the movie, just to mark it's existence in a blog entry so we can look back on it in the future and remember what we saw. I don't have much else to say and there are other movies that we need to play catch-up with. I'll see if E has anything to add.

Cillian handled his part well here, dark, bad-boy yet vulnerable, thick accent, did well in scenes with friends and in scenes with the Trainspotting girl. Glad we finally got around to seeing this one - we might have missed it but for the CM marathon.

I want a new drug...

Well, it turns out it is impossible to resist going for the somewhat lame forced pun and/or other movie reference when coming up with a Blog post title to review a movie. At heart, we are all amateur newspaper editors looking for a good by-line. When the Daily Show is at their best, nobody does it better.


Turns out it is also impossible to resist an animated Richard Linklater adaptation of a Philip K. Dick sci-fi story sporting some name actors and intriguing plot twists. Even though it is possible to see this for what it is from a mile away, even though we should now that this movie goes hand-in-hand with computer games, high school, and maybe pot use as well, I still can't help thinking 'I want to see that' every time we pass by the box at Blockbuster.

A little something we should all know by now: JP is a sucker for the trailer. That insidious, corrupting, deceitful, Hollywood marketing device that slaps enough make-up on a turd of a movie to make it look good for all of 90 seconds can land me hook, line, and sinker. I see this preview, and I want to see this movie. I wanted to see Pearl Harbor. I wanted to see DaVinci Code. I want to see that Kevin Costner-Ashton-Snow Patrol Rescue worker movie, I bite at romantic comedies with ridiculous premises and actions/suspense movies with even more ridiculous premises. I buy into big-name actors even if they aren't in good things because I want to see them on screen. I will watch the big budget movie that cost $100Billion (X-Men, Day After Tomorrow) just to see what they did with it. See, I have taste and a refined cultural appreciation for artfully made films, I just can't help myself at enjoying (or not enjoying, but wanting to see it anyway) all manner of bad/flawed/brainless/derivative/soulless Hollywood garbage out of pure, naive, sycophantic Hollywood-worship.

So of course we got Scanner Darkly, and even though it might not have been the best time (a Saturday morning, perhaps?) we sunk a whole Monday evening into it. E was not amused. I, on the other hand, was slightly amused but ultimately disappointed. This movie was not without it's redeeming qualities. I mean, people always like to trash these movies I pick and say they are all miserable and time-wasting and crap, which is not to be ignored, but they forget the pleasure of it. Otherwise I wouldn't rent them. I mean I'm not fucking stupid. X-men, Fearless, Running Scared, Transformers, the new Bond, the new Rocky- these movies can be a lot of fun if you give in and let yourself enjoy them, and Scanner Darkly was not without redeemable qualities.


Maybe it would have been better if I had read the book, because despite the effort to explain things, most notably how this future world made it possible to both track and spy on everyone and completely obscure your identity to everyone, I was constantly in the dark as to what the rules and assumptions were. In particular, the role and function of the giant corporation and the role and function of the government (as represented by the police department) was never clearly explained, so in the end when the predictable twist (that the evil corporation is both selling substance D and marketing the treatment for addiction all while usurping state power and restricting civil liberties in the name of national health crisis) is revealed we can't figure out how it all pieced together, even if we get the eventual point. How can you work for a company and they not know who you are (even though they did)?

Themes of dystopian, Orwellian future, addiction, and paranoia are presented, and while sometimes the characters motivations are not made clear (and they aren't supposed to be, due to drug-addled brains and aforementioned paranoia and plot turns) they are generally entertaining to watch. Harrelson and Downey Jr. in particular have an almost Hunter S Thompson- Dr. Gonzo dynamic going as they try to fuck with each other's drugged-out heads while not-quite in control of their own drugged-out heads. I was about to turn it off (and maybe I should have to save the Monday) when an extended WH/RD jr. exchange grabbed my interest and held on until we were beyond the point of no return.

ok, time to reign this runaway review in for a while. The plot was indeed basic, just one of a hundred gimmicky sci-fi ideas that PKD spun a book around in his career. We get the 100 minute treatment from dialog-and-animation loving Linkleter. Take it for what it's worth. The best scenes, like in all Linkleter films (Before Sunrise, Dazed and Confused) are the random conversations between a couple people.

I'd have to say...A sphincter says "what?".....Thats what I think of it

A SCANNER DARKLY

I hated, hated, hated this movie. You know that friend back in high school who tries his hand at writing his own comic book- short story- kind of thing and then asks you to read it and tell him what you think? Well, A Scanner Darkly was a lot like that, only with a budget and a green light from people who didn't have the balls to tell Richard Linklater that his piece of shit story sucked gigantic rhinoceros balls and that just because they animate the characters with that trace-over Capitol One commercial graphics and for about 4 seconds it looks kind of cool, it doesn't mean that there will be anybody in a sober, non-stoned state of mind that will enjoy this film or even be able to get into it. Everyone in my household is now dumber for having watched the whole thing. I award this movie no thumbs up and may god have mercy on Linklater's soul.

Even though I was reluctant to make an attempt to see this movie, I went ahead and pushed play on this DVD cause Before Sunrise was the best and how much can you go wrong with a cast like Robert Downy Jr, Keanu Reeves, Woody Harrelson, and Winona Ryder all in the same movie? ...Well, pretty wrong as it turns out. What a bloody waste of time. Maybe I missed something while I was trying to stay awake during this movie but "A Scanner Darkly"? What the hell is that? This movie was like some kind of sick,tasteless joke played on anyone who has followed Linklater's career and liked what he's done in the past (with the exception of ' Waking Life' which I thought was retarded). After this movie ended, I was actually angry at myself for sitting through the whole thing and not shutting it off after 5 minutes. Seriously, I was in a bad mood, angry at the movie for making me feel I wasted my Monday night. JP had to cheer me up with cookies. It was bad. Really, really bad. I hated it. Screw this movie.

Lets talk about chicks, man.

Conversations with Other Women

Well, that was something. All Helena and Aaron Eckhart all the time, each in one frame of a split-screen format, a pure dialog movie without even the change of scenery that Before Sunrise had, and it takes place almost entirely in real-time.

Well, that's not exactly accurate because as the story unfolds in near-real time in one frame we occasionally get flashbacks to similar scenes in another frame. In addition to the usual format of each character in a separate frame, the split screens can reveal a character's psychological or emotional reaction, an echoed moment from the past, or a memory. Aronofsky did something very similar for a scene in Requiem for a Dream to highlight the disconnection between two people together.

Despite this gimmick the movie is very much focused on the two characters and what unfolds between them in one night (after his sister's wedding) as they re-unite for a brief affair in her hotel room before she returns to England. The split screen is not as distracting as you would imagine as most of the focus is one the constant back-and-forth conversation between the two. Since the movie primarily communicates the story through sound you are free to relax and observe the visual portion of the film without needing to focus on anything. (on that note, you could probably re-watch this movie a couple times and pick up on different things with each viewing).

I have to admit I was completely into it for the entire 84 minutes. This movie is going to live and die with the strength of the characters and writing (and how much was improvised by HBC and AE?). My only qualms were with the characters' (especially married Helena's) frequent acknowledgment that they were making a mistake yet unwillingness to change course. It is easier to believe in two people committing adultery by giving into overwhelming passion (even if they know it is a mistake- see Adrian Lyne's Unfaithful). The lead up to the sex in this movie was like they new they had to do it for the movie even if they didn't want to. In fairness, by the end of the movie we had learned more about the characters and the affair didn't seem as awkward and unmotivated as it did in the beginning. You could see the rationale for sleeping with an ex whom you left abruptly long ago and still think of and miss, and by the end we knew enough to see how that night could be fated and how they could be drawn to it despite themselves.

If the movie was flawed it was in the beginning. By trying too hard to be mysterious they just came off as weird and irrational. I can take film that tosses us into the story without spoon-fed character introduction but they should at least play straight with us and let us get to know them. The movie went out of it's way to have the characters talk about their past in the third person. I suppose with how little the movie had to offer in terms of story and plot they felt they needed something to build up a little intrigue. It just made it hard to get into the relationship when you were starting off with misinformation.

Overall, surprising and better then I had hoped. Held on to my attention much more then flashier movies (the recent Body Shots debacle comes to mind- then again, starring Tara Reid and Jerry O'Connell should be a sufficient warning of things to come). Even if the characters were a bit unlikable and occasionally irrational, the story it told about their relationship was good.

Oh, but I'm not buying Aaron Eckhart as a law student with that hair from the flashbacks.

Also- thanks to Pajiba for pointing out the obvious bonus of (and possible motivating factor for) filming it in split-screen: It allows us to see both characters simultaneously rather then cutting back and forth for reaction shots and line delivery.

Though it is somewhat grating at first, it ultimately works, allowing the audience to see each side of the conversation as it happens without having to break away for a reaction shot. There is a lot going on in each actor’s face of one side of the equation while the other is speaking, and both Eckhart and Bonham-Carter take excellent advantage of the opportunity to emote. In fact, though both Eckhart and Bonham-Carter have a string of great performances behind them, there’s a heartbreaking nuance in their split-screen performances here that rises to a level unmatched in either’s previous work.

Whats the mile-high club?

RE: Cillian Murphy movie marathon-Day three

RED EYE


This movie was better for me the second time around. I think I liked the beginning of the movie, before it gets into the actual plot,even better than I liked the rest of the plot-driven movie. The natural,casual dialog between Jackson Rippner and Lisa was very good and if you didn't already know what the movie was about, you wouldn't even see it coming that he was an evil manager that threatens to kill her dad.

Even later in the film, where he reveals his evil plan and turns scary, he didn't really come off as your typical evil villian. It was more like he was a likable person but he just had a job to do and he took his job seriously. Probably because he's a good project manager and they pay him well. Much like Number Two in the Austin Powers movies. Cillian Murphy of course fits this role perfectly. You needed someone who you would want to order you a Seabreeze at an airport bar and distract you during scary plane turbulence. The chemistry was great. I also loved how Rachel McAdams's character, Lisa, didn't have your usual unbelievable glamorous job, she was very believable in her job as a hotel manager. She was also very natural in her role in a way where you weren't like "Oh, this is the new Rachel McAdams movie." You believe her and enjoy watching what she is going to do about this sticky evil-manager situation.

If it was my situation, it would have been a much shorter movie. If my dad's life was being held hostage by some dreamy, evil project manager I would feel really bad and really confused and scared as hell but I would make the call and cooperate. He explained the situation calmly and politely enough with those soulful irish eyes. That would be enough for me. I'm not a super hero. I'm not going to kid myself and think I can foil the big elaborate evil plan by stabbing him in the neck. I'd spare my poor dad and make the call and move on. Maybe even see if Mr. Bad guy wanted to go grab a drink or something after. He's been following me for 8 weeks so I could totally trust him to order for me. There was some great chemistry there in the beginning.

The beginning could have been the beginning of a whole different movie. Two beautiful strangers meet at the airport and discover they share the same flight. They have the whole red eye flight to fall in love. JP's Before Sunrise analogy was a pretty winning idea. Where does all that chemistry go? What? Just because he's got a questionable, dangerous job that threatens your dad to get you to help him out with his evil plan, he's suddenly undesirable? He promised to not kill the dad. I believed him. And what a bitch stabbing him in the neck, I mean, what was that?

Ok. Maybe things wouldn't work out in the long run but she had an opportunity in that airplane bathroom to have some pretty exciting sex and she blew it. Instead of trying some desperate attempt of whatever that soap call-for-help thing was, I would have been waiting to pounce him when he comes crashing in to check on me. That would have been hot.

Anyway, overall it was a pretty entertaining movie, Wes Craven did a good job and even though I've seen it once before, I still felt that edge-of-seat sensation. Everybody was great and Cillian Murphy has become one of my favorite actors. He added a lot of flavor to this movie and if he wasn't in it, it wouldn't have been the same.

RE: Cillian Murphy movie marathon- Day Two

BATMAN BEGINS




I agree that this movie was better for me the first time I saw it in the theater. Seeing it a second time, I felt the whole beginning training part was long enough to be its own movie. It explained things for the rest of the movie but it was hard for me to sit through for so long while they did that whole back-story thing.

I also agree that the breathy Batman voice was a little lame but it was also mildly amusing. As Bruce Wayne, all I could think about was Patrick Bateman quotes. The Bruce Wayne scenes totally took me back to American Psycho and it kind of took me out of the movie for a minute because in a way, the two Bale roles are very similar. Both characters putting on a phony facade in social situations for the sake of fitting in and masking the tortured soul within them. ("I have to return some videotapes") Overall, I liked Christian Bale as Batman. I'm looking forward to the next episode of Batman-y goodness.

I thought Katie Holmes was forgettable and I liked Liam Neeson even if he was a little evil and had that mustache.

As for our Cillian Murphy, I thought he nailed his part something brilliant. He's got the creepy thing down. Calm, articulate,EVIL! I was totally mesmerized during his scenes with equal parts creep and totally dreamy with a dash of sexy. I'm hooked now. He plays evil so well, you would think he would get type-cast but he wont be cause he's such a brilliant and versatile actor. I love him. I just love him.

cillian murphy movie marathon - Day Three

Red Eye

What I immediately noticed while watching Red Eye for the second time was the quality of the first Act. The conversation was very quick and well-paced. The characters were introduced to us naturally and we picked up on personalities naturally, without having it force-fed to us. Most notable was the quality of the dialog and the chemistry between Cillian and McAdams (before he revealed himself as the psycho).



Usually the set up in a horror suspense film is labored and you are just waiting for the plot to kick in (killing time before the killing starts). This was just the opposite, I was totally engrossed in the characters and it wasn't until the suspense plot was sprung that things started to feel labored and formulaic

• the obligatory gutsy-yet-ill-advised attempt to get a message to another passenger
• the frantic-minutes-alone-in-an-airplane-bathroom after the kidnapper inexplicable falls for the 'but it's an emergency' line that always ends with the killer bursting in and snuffing out any escape attempt anyway. and of course
  
• the finally-escaped-but-oh-shit-the-cell-phone-is-dead/ out of range scenes
• the trapped-in-the-house-running-upstairs scene and ending with
  
• the final shooting of the wounded-yet-undeterred villain just before help can arrive as he once again springs to attack after being knocked down/out for a final scare.
  

Cillian was the man, R-Mac was quality, and the movie played out better then expected upon second viewing. It could have had the plot of Before Sunrise (and may have been a better movie for it). This is why an actor gets a movie marathon.

cillian murphy movie marathon - Day Two

Batman Begins

Our quest to re-watch some of the seminal films of Cillian Murphy's young career led to a rental of Batman Begins. We originally saw this one in the theater. I remember being really excited at the prospect of Christopher Nolan taking over the franchise and returning it to a darker more realistic (for a super hero movie) vision which has been in steady decline since Burton. And basing it on a work of Frank Miller didn't hurt anything either.

It was still good, still well made, still well directed to avoid the Tommy Lee Jones over-acting and the cartoon-ish special effects. Katie Holes did nothing for us and Christian Bale really didn't have the opportunity to stand out (the breathy batman voice kinda sucked, Bruce Wayne was overly-bland) but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

I will eagerly wait for the next film in the series, and I want to watch the Prestige, but we may have seen the end of Batman Begins. Oh and I am happy to report that Cillian is now recognizable with his long hair and dreamy eyes. He was sufficiently creepy as ScareCrow. Polite and charming while at the same time evil and a dick as he deals with Kate's assistant D.A. More on Cillian to come.

catching up with Road Trip

Eh...

See, here is the problem with our movie blog, some films are just throughly underwhelming and the motivation to document it on the blog will run short. We are running about four movies behind and need to quickly catch up.

So Road Trip fits right in with Harold and Kumar, Accepted, and Van Wilder as college comedies that have their moments, are entertaining to watch, yet lack an overall quality and re-watchability. I don't regret seeing Road Trip but I never plan on seeing it again. It fails to capture the quality that Old School or Outside Providence have.

Bland and predictable, interesting at times, and, since we have been pointing these things out lately, I should add a so-so sex scene with Amy Smart that is noteworthy only because I didn't think she did nudity in movies.

Tom Green is contained by the plot and not as annoying as he is in his own movies. His obsession with feeding a disinterested snake and his weird never-left-town character wasn't bad. The protagonist was forgettable, Sean Williams Scott was a tame Stiffler rip-off, and DJ Qualls' weird skinny kid was strangely fascinating. Not sure how else to describe it. I wondered what else we might see him in but it is mostly TV (Scrubs, CSI) and a few movies like The New Guy and The Core, Hustle & Flow. Hey- he's going to be in Alpha-Dog with JT- cool!




... better be careful before we end up with another actor-driven marathon.







that is all.

Use Your Illusion I

When I first saw the preview for The Illusionist, I admit I pre-judged it a little harshly. My first thoughts were,"What? Thats what Edward Norton is doing now? and with that mustache? No, thats not going to work. This movie looks like another Johnny Depp vehicle and I don't know if Ed can drive it...but it could be interesting."

Then, when I finally saw it, I found it to be surprisingly good and satisfying. Edward Norton made that role his bitch. He was awesome, powerful and believable. Paul Giamatti also deserves snaps for his always great performance. I almost didn't recognize him with all that beard-action happening on his face but he was great nonetheless. Jessica Beil I felt was alright. Nothing wrong with her performance but I felt she didn't have anything she really brought to the film besides an adequate performance. I am also grateful that she was in this film instead of Keira Knightley or someone equally annoying.

Basically, the movie takes place in Vienna back in the 1800s or something old like that. Norton is a kid playing around with some magic tricks and he meets with a rich girl and canoodles with her during adolescent times. (Think, "I think we're alone now" by Tommy James & The Shondells) Then years go by, and he becomes this badass magical sensation. He comes back to Vienna to do some shows and he discovers Jessica Biel again only to find out she is engaged to some douchebag prince who turns out to be quite a cockblock for Norton. The story gets more interesting and complicated from there.

Overall, I would say it kept my attention (which is good for a period film, they usually bore me) and was very fun to watch. Especially, Norton who's performance put me in my place and showed me to never assume anything about him again. He is truly great and I love him.

I like Jackass and I make no apologies for it

I can really appreciate what these bozos will put themselves through for the sake of comedy and entertainment. These guys know how to party and I dig it. I loved the Jackass movie. I laughed, I screamed, I wanted to throw up, then I nearly did throw up from laughing so hard. What added to the fun is there were the rest of the Jackass gang laughing and throwing up with you. It was like being there.

The male nudity was also great fun. One of my favorite male nudity moments was the scene "Ass Rockets" where Steve-O used his ass to launch bottle rockets and Chris Pontius tied a string to his wiener and the other end to the bottle rocket that was going to shoot out of Steve-O's ass. Thats hilarious. Another great moment was when one of the guys stuck cranked-up muscle stimulators to his balls. I used to work with muscle stims. and always wondered what it would be like to play around with it in such a fashion. Thanks to these guys, I can get in on that fun without having to. I also loved "Party Boy".

Call me immature, whatever. I understand this humor and I think what they do is great and hilarious. If you're not around to stop me, I could probably watch Jackass skits all day. If they make a 3rd Jackass movie, I'll be the Jackass dragging my husband to go see it opening night.

Call me crazy, but which would you rather see: Tom Cruise pretending to be scared, or Steve-O actually terrified (of a large alligator)? Vin Diesel grunting the F-word, or Bam Margera conning his mother into saying it (with a large alligator)? Gwyneth Paltrow in a fat suit, or Preston Lacy without one? The answers are easy ones, kids.

RE: Cillian Murphy movie marathon- Day One

It is true. A short while ago, I did have a series of weird dreams one night and in one of them, there was Cillian Murphy. Just hanging out, in my dream. Not for any reason I can think of except that my subconcious was probably on 'shuffle' and he just popped in there. Anyway, like some dreams do, it continued to stick to the walls of my brain and invoked a funny obsession with Cillian that can only be cured by a Cillian Murphy movie marathon. I'm weird like that.

So, we start with '28 Days Later'. The last and only time I saw this movie was when it came out in the theater. I was so horrified by the blood-spitting, fast-coming zombies of "the infected", that I completely forgot to appreciate what an insanely beautiful and talented actor C.M. actually is. I'm tempted to go off on a tangent about the full-frontal in the beginning of the movie where you can get a eye-full of all of Cillian and his cash and prizes...but I won't go there this time. I will say the movie was quite exciting for my second time seeing it. Zombies were still scary as shit, Cillian was even more amazing this time around watching this and I forgot how it ended the first time so the happy ending was exciting as was it well done.

I say C.M. was more amazing this time because before when I saw this movie, I had never seen him in anything before. He was soft-spoken and was almost always scared through the whole movie and I kept wanting to jump through the screen and give him a hug through pretty much the whole movie. He was very real in this movie,which I like. Since this movie, everything I have seen him in so far, he has played "the kind-of dreamy, creep villian" such as his characters as Scarecrow/evil doctor in 'Batman Begins' and the creepy, evil guy in 'Red Eye'. He plays the creep so well, he sends a tingly chill down the spine much like Anthony Hopkin's Hannibal Lecter. (He also gives you mixed emotions too like, he's evil...but he's kind of dreamy too. I dont know if they should kill him off right away.) When I went back and saw '28 Days Later' after seeing his creep performances, I felt more debth in his 28 Days Later character along with a realistic vulnerability that made you really believe everything going on in this movie. I felt emotionally invested in the whole thing and really wanted to see a happy ending for him and his un-eaten entourage. It was great. He's one of the few actors I can think of that can actually make a performance better and more real AFTER I've seen him in a bunch of other movies. Its hard to explain but he's got it. (Leonardo DiCaprio...Don't got it.)

cillian murphy movie marathon - Day One

Since E has been dreaming about cillian murphy and getting this unique irishman stuck in her imagination (she can elaborate further in a post of her own) we decided on revisiting some of the more interesting C.M. movies of his brief career. A lot of them were good movies that got your attention but fell just short of being "re-watchable." It would take a convenient excuse like showing them to a friend who had never seen them to get some re-play. Well, a cillian murphy movie marathon provided just that excuse.

The movies on our short list are 28 Days Later, Batman Begins, and Red Eye- and we will probably see Girl with the Pearl Earing and Intermission as well. Today we started with 28 Days Later - and it started if with a full-frontal of bearded cillian murphy. Hmmmm. Didn't remember that one. Just what was this girl getting me into.

The rest is history: super-fast acting Zombies, post-apocalyptic London-town, the bonds of family and human relationships, the dark lord-of-the-flies-type Military outpost, and the happy ending. Not bad for a horror/ zombie film. Worth the second viewing. Danny Boyle was solid (maybe we should re-do Millions now and get some 2nd perspective on that).

"Did cillian murphy have a part in that movie?"
Well, he had a part in that movie...

You are a jackass

Watching the new Jackass number 2 had us thinking back to the original, the one that started it all, so we decided to revisit that cinematic milestone: Jackass.

I remember going to see the first one in the theater and feeling almost a little ashamed, "Am I really going to go see this?" "Do I really want to open that door?"

Yeah, yeah, what's the big deal. And really there is none. It is gross-out movie meets documentary. It is a 2-hour high-quality, fast paced, best of College Humor. It is a darker, voyeuristic, slightly sadistic side of ourselves, our inner skate-jock.

Hey, we've all had those friends who we hang out with just to see them do something stupid (like blow up a section of the woods behind their house, drink 3 liters of soda underwater, zap themselves with a tazer gun... And sometimes we are that person who accidently gets a mouthful of bong-water because they don't know how a bong even works.

So really jackass is nothing shocking (ok, some of it was a little shocking) but it is all in good, guilty pleasured fun.

Ebert refused to review the jackass movie (because it is un-reviewable) but he did watch it and acknowledge it. He made an interesting point when he compared it to "real" Hollywood movies where characters pretend to be afraid of special effects monsters, while Steve-O dangles from a tightrope terrified of real alligators waiting below him.

Yeah, you get the idea that they over-play some of the falls and pain reactions (like the opposite of faking an orgasm) but you can't deny that they are getting shot by riot guns and they are really vomiting up their own pee that they just ate.

Maybe not my finest hour but not an hour wasted. It holds your attention (the movies are actually edited and paced very well, and usually leave you wanting more follow up). The Jackasses are the crazy guys who do the stuff you would never do but would encourage (or dare) your friends to do.

Sonuva Witch

Watched the Covenant with the kid brother this weekend. I can't say I didn't expect it to be a bit on the godawful side but that movie was so bad, I have to compare it to something like an episode of Charmed or something equally-retarded that would show up on the CW. Nothing but no-name actors that were so genaric, we had to associate their looks with other celebs to get the characters straight.

Basically, there were 4 families of witches that this group of man-witches came from that all hold witchy powers. There is Caleb (the Jesse Metcalfe-ish one),Pogue (long-haired pretty boy),Aaron (the guy who looked kind of like Jeff Samardzija),and Reid (the Aaron Carter-looking guy). When they turn 18, thats when they are supposed to "ascend" into a new level of power which I guess is some sort of witch-boy puberty all man-witches have to go through, and they become super-powerful but have to conserve their powers or they will end up a wrinkly ,slimy, ugly old man. A new boy comes to town (the guy who kinda sorta looked like the gay guy from Clueless) and he turns out to be a witch too from the "5th family of witches" everyone thought was dead. And he's a big witch-bully who demands Caleb's puberty power like it was milk money or else he's going to spider people to death. That is basically the plot outline in a wrinkly nutshell. There is also some hoopla about a dead kid in a car, a bland love interest in the new girl, and the man-witches using their powers Bruce Almighty-style for their own entertainment such as making some dude throw up out of nowhere, levitate and hide on the ceiling, and blow up a girls skirt in a bar.

There is one thing I will give it credit for...a scene that made me scream out-loud like I was being murdered and will haunt my dreams forever. I wasn't expecting it at all and then I couldn't stop jumping up on the couch and screaming and grabbing people close to me when this scene was happening. I think that scene was the reason this director made this movie and that scene is where all the money went because the rest of the movie was ridiculous but this scene was one of the most horrifying scenes I have seen in a while. If you like grabbing people and screaming your lungs out on the couch, the 2 minutes in this movie of that might be worth renting the movie for but it only works if you hate spiders.

Another good thing about it was the laugh you get from cheesy lines uttered with total seriousness throughout this movie. ("I'm gonna make you my We-otch!")I haven't heard one-liners this hilariously bad since GingerDead Man.