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Posts Tagged ‘Movie Review’
Thursday, December 18th, 2008
Going into this movie I figured that there was no possible way that I could enjoy this one. I was sort of right and sort of wrong. The saving grace of this movie is Vince Vaughn and his banter with Reese Witherspoon. These two have a good on-screen chemistry, but I really wouldn’t want to see them in another movie together. That may be a weird assessment, but I’m sticking to it!
The premise of the movie is fun – Vaughn and Witherspoon are in a long-term relationship, but not married. They habitually avoid visiting their respective families during the Christmas season because they’d rather not share their family stories with each other. Why is the movie called “four” Christmases? Well, it turns out that both of their sets of parents are divorced. In other words, in order to visit their families on Christmas, Vaughn and Witherspoon have to hit four different locations in one day.
For Vaughn, he’s got an alcoholic father and two brothers who are obsessed with ultimate fighting. In fact, they’re so obsessed that they beat the hell out of his each time he comes home. Further, they mock the fact that he pursued a higher education and resent him for his increased income. The funniest part of the movie for me was when Vaughn was being bodyslammed by his brothers and his nephews come into the family room to beat him up, too. I don’t know why, but I got a kick out of that.
Vaughn’s mother left the alcoholic father to run off with someone who just wants to be friends with Vaughn again. Ahem…again. That’s right, Vaughn’s mother ran off with one of his long-time friends! The Director, Seth Gordon, does a great job of making these scenes extra awkward.
As for Witherspoon, her mother has a few sisters who are eager to jump on Vaughn when he enters the house. They’re also not shy about sharing some of Witherspoon’s more embarrassing moments from growing up including her stint at fat camp and the fact that her best friend growing up was a butch lesbian!
Witherspoon’s father, on the other hand, reports that he’s been divorced “multiple” times, but his introduction into the movie also serves to set the stage for the climax. I won’t share the outcome of the movie with you, but suffice to say that the good guys always win in the end and that holds true for this movie, too.
The bottom line is that if you’re into Christmas movies, but are more into the Bad Santa type rather than the Miracle on 34th Street type, then you’ll enjoy this movie. Given the craptastic economy, though, I suggest that you wait until this is available as a cheap rental and not an expensive trip to the movie theater.
Posted in Book, DVD, Movie, & Media Reviews, Winter & Christmas Time | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
The other night I had the unfortunate opportunity to watch Jack Frost, the 1998 Christmas-themed movie about a kid and a snowman. The kicker here is that the snowman is his father reincarnated a year after his death. Intriguing, right? I didn’t think so either, but I sort of watched it anyway.
The movie starts off like any other Christmas movie – a family with its unique ups and downs, a wide-eyed child looking for something more, a parental figure who is too busy to notice some things, etc. You know the drill. Seriously, some of these haphazardly thrown together Christmas movies stick WAY too close to the generic script, but I digress. So there is the standard family that you’ll find in any Christmas movie. Michael Keaton plays the father and does a pretty good job with the role that he’s given: he’s not quite an arrogant jerk, but not quite ready to be the father figure that he needs to be…and eventually he’s the voice of a snowman. Joseph Cross plays the son and I thought he did an exceptional job, as did Kelly Preston in playing the mother.
Again, the movie starts like any other and then Keaton’s band gets a big break and he needs to be somewhere important on Christmas day. Cross gets pissed off, gives him back a magical harmonica (yep), and then Keaton dies trying to rush back to his family before Christmas.
A year goes by, life is miserable for the young kid, he builds a snowman to remind him of the one he and his Dad built a year before, he blows on the magical harmonica, the snowman is infused with his Dad’s spirit. Simple story, right? Cross finds out the snowman is his Dad and he spends the rest of the movie trying to hide this fact from the world – including his mother who now thinks that her son is nuts. If your kid was walking around talking to snowmen, you may think the same thing!
The folks who put this one together attempted to include a bunch of touching scenes throughout the movie, but most of them come off as just awkward. Even through the final scene of the movie (which I won’t be wretched enough to share here) this viewer received more of an awkward feeling than anything else. There is even one moment towards the end of the movie where the bully antagonist (because these awkwardly thrown together Christmas movies always have a bully antagonist) and the young, bright-minded protagonist become friends. Awww… I almost threw up.
If you’re a freak for Christmas and Christmas movies, then you can go ahead and watch this one, but everyone else should run away from this movie.
Posted in Book, DVD, Movie, & Media Reviews, Winter & Christmas Time | 2 Comments »
Sunday, October 26th, 2008
This movie was given to me by a client. He received a few copies of the movie gratis from a friend and thought it a good idea to pass those copies along. Unfortunately, it took me a while to get around to watching this movie and frankly, there is nothing ground-breaking about The 11th Hour.
First of all, this is actually a documentary so calling it a movie is really not correct. And as a documentary I found it more alarmist than anything else. The visuals used to augment the information that the speakers are giving the viewers are skewed to show situations that frighten and alarm. I was sad to see this because instead of showing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when talking about global warming, I think showing more shots of melting mountain tops and glaciers breaking up would be more effective. The bulk of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina came from a bungled local and state government response as well as the levies breaking. But hey – I guess if you’re trying to sell your position you have to use the visuals that work.
Most of the information in the documentary is nothing new. Everyone knows that the human race has had an impact on the planet and that our waste products are negative to the environment. Thankfully, more people have become aware of this fact and are working voraciously to lower their personal imprints on the planet either through recycling more, using sustainable items, and working to conserve their use of resources. That’s all and great. But documentaries like The 11th Hour work against these positive trends by yelling that the sky is falling.
I admire Leonardo DiCaprio, the documentary’s narrator, but he should continue to be in the business of helping out the underprivileged by using his notoriety and money in conjunction with already established organizations. Going out and producing this documentary did not do much to help “turn the tide” in the battle against pollution. In fact, it might have hurt the progressing trend of environmental sustainability in some areas. For example, one commentator refers to the human race as a sickness on the planet earth; he talks about how we are creating a crust or a shell on the actual earth itself and we are poisoning it. Yeah…THAT’s how you rally support.
Another commentator says that the biggest weapon of mass destruction is the huge power amassed by corporations. In other words, corporations are the biggest weapons of mass destruction on the planet. Not only is this intellectually insulting, but the underlying meaning will be lost on most of the public due to the outrage associated with the comment. An unfortunate way to go about the business of changing minds.
It’s not that I didn’t like this documentary, but I thought that it did much less to advance environmentally friendly ideas than Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Plus, the documentary is more of a beginner’s guide to some of these issues than anything else. If you’re into alarmist documentaries or just looking into the whole environmentally sustainable issue, then you may want to look at this documentary if you have some time. If you don’t fall into one of those categories, don’t worry about seeing this one.
Posted in Book, DVD, Movie, & Media Reviews, Sustainable Living | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 15th, 2008
Awesome. This movie was awesome. Edward Norton plays Bruce Banner and the Hulk and he does a great job of bringing a bit of humanity to an otherwise gigantic green monster. And the story isn’t too bad, either. Here is a story about a guy who took this superhuman injection so that he could be a test subject of the formula – then he winds up having to run from the military because they want to test him. The story is, of course, much more complicated than what I say about it here, but you should watch the movie if you want to know every last detail! Plus, if you ever read any of the comic books you’re probably better at the story than I am anyway.
The movie makes great use of the latest CGI graphics, too. Both The Hulk and Abomination are fluid in on-screen movements and they are smooth to watch. One would almost think that these two creatures are real…  Oh, and it’s also worth mentioning that Lou Ferrigno, the bodybuilder who played The Hulk on the old television series, has a cameo. Nothing big, but nice that they threw him a bone in the new movie.
Bruce Banner’s changing life is really the focus of this movie – especially his personal transformation after being injected with the “hulk” formula. He has to train himself to keep his blood pressure below a certain level or else he goes green. This means that he has to take the crap that people around him give him on a daily basis, but it also means that he can’t get as involved as he would like with a certain lady… Norton also does a good job of conveying how annoying (and exhausting) it is to have this problem from having your clothes be torn off of your body to completely losing your senses during the transformation.
Tim Roth also deserves a mention for playing The Hulk’s nemesis in the movie. He’s the type of bad guy that you love to hate. He even shoots Banner’s dog, the bastard!
I was a little bit confused by the last battle in the movie because I don’t see how the Hulk managed to all of a sudden defeat Abomination. The battle just sort of turned around and then the Hulk had him beaten on the ground. Weird.
For those of you who are fans of these superhero movies, I recommend going out and purchasing this DVD. The special features are probably really good (I don’t know), but the movie itself is worth having in your collection.
Posted in Book, DVD, Movie, & Media Reviews | No Comments »
Sunday, October 5th, 2008
Yesterday I had the opportunity to watch some movies that I’ve been meaning to see – one of which was the new Batman: The Dark Knight movie. This was a good movie that would probably have looked really good on the big screen, but for the life of me I can’t seem to figure out why the world went bonkers over Heath Ledger’s Joker. Yes, he played the role very well. Did he redefine the role? No, not at all. Was he a demented weirdo as the Joker? Yes! However, all I kept hearing from everyone was that Ledger was completely engulfed in the role and that he brought a new, sick twist to the character. Sorry folks, I didn’t see it.
What I did see were great performances from Christian Bale (Batman), Heath Ledger, Gary Oldman (Commissioner Gordon), and Aaron Eckhart (Two-Face) among others. When you have an ensemble cast like this (including Morgan Freeman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Caine…even Tiny Lister had an appearance) you’re bound to get a good movie put together. The various synergies between these actors and their performances made for a great movie.
Batman undergoes a bit of maturing in the movie as he has to deal with loss and the realization that there can never be a world without Batman because there can never be a Batman who doesn’t have a vengeance for retribution. On the flip side, the forces for “good” in Gotham begin to realize that they have multiple opponents including spies in their own ranks, the Joker’s men, the fears of the people, the mob, common petty criminals, etc. Not a fun situation to be in.
The movie kept a good flow, though it might have been 15 – 20 minutes too long for my liking. However, there is no wasted time in the movie so you won’t be bored watching. In fact, there are a lot of good chase scenes and a few good fighting scenes (and I generally hate chase scenes, so that should tell you something). I also liked the way Alfred talked for a moment about his background as a guy who chased criminals (in this example, he was in Burma). His words of wisdom to Batman when fighting the Joker: “Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with – some men just want to watch the world burn.”
Another one of my favorite quotes from yet another legendary actor comes from Lucius Fox (played by Morgan Freeman). One of the auditors or financial guys for Wayne Enterprises uncovers a bunch of blueprints detailing how the company has been making weapons for Batman. He threatens Fox with a request for $10 million per year to keep his mouth shut. Fox replies, “Let me get this straight: You think that your client, one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante who spends his nights beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands. And your plan is to blackmail this person? Good luck.”
Ha!
If you get the opportunity, I’d rent this one (or possibly purchase it, depending on the price) as soon as it hits the stores. For those of you who are not hardcore fans of these superhero movies, I think that you’ll enjoy this one anyway.
Posted in Book, DVD, Movie, & Media Reviews | No Comments »
Monday, July 7th, 2008
Lipstick and Dynamite: Piss and Vinegar is a 2005 documentary by Ruth Leitman that follows around some of the women wrestlers from the 1950’s – 1970’s. Thanks go out to my uncle for passing this DVD on to me over a year ago – I only recently had the chance to watch it and I’m glad that I did. As a wrestling fan, I’m always interested in learning more about the beginnings of the sport when it existed as part of the local carnivals or as sideshows. For their part, women wrestlers were an even bigger attraction than the regular men wrestlers.
Leitman interviews women wrestling legends like The Fabulous Moolah and Johnny Mae Young. Current wrestling fans are sure to recognize those two WWE Hall of Famers, but I found myself most intrigued during the documentary by the women like Gladys “Kill ‘em” Gillem. Gillem was, in today’s terms, a jobber – or a wrestler whose “job” it is to lose and make their opponent look great in the process. Also, the bitterness that some of the older women wrestlers have towards Moolah is interesting. As one of the women wrestlers put it, “Moolah loves money. That’s the perfect name for her.”
I certainly wouldn’t begrudge anyone from making money at their chosen profession, but some of these women are definitely bitter about Moolah’s long-term success. The women wrestlers commented on how Moolah and Young’s presence in WWE in the early 2000’s in actual wrestling matches takes away from the accomplishments of the women’s wrestling movement. I don’t know if I necessarily agree (especially when groups like TNA are bringing back real women’s wrestling). By the way, Moolah passed away last year so some of these topics are a moot point now.
Fans will enjoy hearing the stories about one of the original promoters of “girl wrestling” and how he manipulated the sport so that his wife could retain the title. Moolah talks at length about her disgust for this guy and how she was glad to take the title from his wife and then put him out of business. At that time, Moolah became the number one trainer, promoter, and booker of women wrestlers in the world.
I have to recommend this DVD to any wrestling fan who thinks more of the sport than just a generic set of moves leading to a generic ending to a generic match. This is a DVD that follows around these women wrestlers and talks about the many hardships that they had to endure during the early years of their business. If you enjoy knowing more about the wrestling business than just what you see on Monday, Thursday, or Friday nights, then you’ll enjoy this DVD.
Posted in Book, DVD, Movie, & Media Reviews, Entertainment, Sports | 2 Comments »
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