2 July - "Why don't you like my spots?"

I Heart Huckabees (2004)

dir. David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook, 2012)

CAST
Jason Schwartzman (Rushmore, 1998)
Isabelle Huppert (Time of the Wolf, 2003)
Dustin Hoffman (Hook, 1991)
Lily Tomlin (Krippendorf's Tribe, 1998)
Jude Law (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, 1997)
Mark Wahlberg (Boogie Nights, 1997)
Naomi Watts (Eastern Promises, 2007)
Kevin Dunn (Almost Heroes, 1998)
Tippi Hendren (The Birds, 1963)
Said Taghmaoui (Hidalgo, 2004)
Jean Smart (Youth in Revolt, 2009)
Jonah Hill (Megamind (voice), 2010)
Isla Fisher (Rango, 2011)
John Rothman (The Devil's Advocate, 1997)
Talia Shire (Rocky, 1976)
Bob Gunton (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, 1997)
Saige Ryan Campbell (All I Want for Christmas, 2007)

I Heart Huckabees is one of those comedies that finds its humor in the absurdity of situations rather than jokes or physical comedy. The protagonist, played by Jason Schwartzman, hires a duo of existential detectives to discover meaning behind His coincidental encounter with the small Sudanese man three times in one day. As is the way with existential crises, however, the investigation rapidly spills into other aspects of his life, mainly the collaborative project between the protagonist's environmental organization and Wal-Mart-esk Huckabees superstore to preserve a patch of wetlands from development. Brad, the Huckabees representative for the wetlands project, sees this as a good PR move, but soon he and others around our protagonist are drawn into existential dilemmas of our own. The characters address the big questions, what am I? And why am I here? with the humor stemming from the absurdity of these personal dilemmas manifesting very tangibly and publicly in day to day life. 

I've seen I Heart Huckabees several times now. I find it to be more accessible than many other indie comedies, which are often so dark that they hardly merit being called comedies (as in Sunshine Cleaning). This is the exception, the tone consistently remains light even as the subject matter becomes heady. Great cast, too.

2 April - "You are the epitome of everything I have ever looked for in another human being."

Chasing Amy (1997)

dir. Kevin Smith -Mallrats (1995)

CAST
Ethan Suplee - Desert Blue (1998)
Ben Affleck - Dazed and Confused (1993)
Casey Affleck - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
Jason Lee - Dogma (1999)
Dwight Ewell - Party Girl (1995)
Joey Lauren Adams - Mallrats (1995)
Guinevere Turner - American Psycho (2000)
Carmen Llywelyn - Never Been Kissed (1999)
Matt Damon - Mystic Pizza (1988)
Welker White - Dead Poets Society (1989)
Ernest O'Donnell - Clerks. (1994)
Brian O'Halloran - Clerks II (2006)

I'm almost positive that this is my second-favorite Kevin Smith movie (Clerks - obviously). It's about comic book artist Holden (Ben Affleck) who falls in love with fellow comic book artist Alyssa and is undetered by the fact that she is homosexual. With perseverance, he succeeds in winning her heart, surprise! The catch comes when he learns more about the sexual misdeeds of her past, and is unable to accept her for her past. The irony is not lost on the supporting characters, who altogether scold Holden for rejecting the woman he loved because he couldn't condone the person she had been, even though she had completely changed herself to be with him.

The difficult question that always sticks with me after I watch this movie is whether Holden is supposed to be a villain or not. Of course you could say that in true Kevin Smith form there aren't any real villains (except in Dogma) but only these schlubby man-children trying to establish a coherent purpose as they bumble through their mundane lives punctuated only by comic book references and the recollections of women they've banged in the past (but rarely turn up in the course of the movie-story itself). But I repeat the question: is Holden an unlikely hero for winning Alyssa's heart and then tragically losing it, or is he a villain for discarding her hard-won affection?

14 March- "You lost your arms in battle! But you grew some nice boobs."

Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)

dir. Mel Brooks (Blazing Saddles, 1974)


CAST
Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride, 1987)
Richard Lewis (Leaving las Vegas, 1995)
Roger Rees (A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1999)
Amy Yasbeck (Pretty Woman, 1990)
Dave Chappelle (You've Got Mail, 1998)
Issac Hayes (Dr. Dolittle 2 (voice), 2001)
Megan Cavenagh (A League of their Own, 1992)
Eric Allan Kramer (True Romance, 1993)
Tracey Ullman (I Could Never be Your Woman, 2007)
Chuck McCann (Dracula: Dead and Loving It, 1995)
Brian George (Blind Date, 1987)
Herman Poppe (Pale Rider, 1985)
Patrick Stewart (Gnomeo & Juliet (voice), 2011)
Dom Deluise (The Muppet Movie, 1979)
Mel Brooks (Young Frankenstein (voice), 1974)
Dick Van Patten (Spaceballs, 1987)
Clement von Franckenstein (Just Married, 2003)
Tyce Diorio (Epic Movie, 2007)


I watched this with the little brother last time I visited the fam'ly in Philly. He had never seen it before, can you believe it! There's a lot to enjoy about this delightful comedy, but don't forget that some of the chastity-belt-centric jokes may go over a 9-year old's head.

27 Feb - "With great power comes greater responsibility"

Teen Wolf (1985)

dir. Rod Daniel (Home Alone 4, TV 2002)


CAST
Michael J. Fox (Mars Attacks!, 1996)
James Hampton (Sling Blade, 1996)
Jerry Levine (Wag the Dog, 1997)
Mark Holton (A League of their Own, 1992)
Doug Savant (Godzilla, 1998)
Gregory Itzin (Adaptation., 2002)

So apparently that corny line from Spiderman was lifted from Teen Wolf? Fair enough, I suppose.Teen Wolf is one of those classic comedies that I really felt obligated to watch, and it was cute, and funny, and totally not like anything Twilighty at all. Essentially, it was your basic nerd-coming-into-his-own-style movie, with the twist being that Michael J. finds out that he's a werewolf instead of getting some other kind of makeover or pretending to be something he's not. The catch, though, is that the other kids in high school like the Wolf-guy better than they liked the original dweeb, but even then it's sort of in an exoticizing-the-other sort of way. They like the Wolf, but they don't want to really get to know the person. The teenaged protagonist finds that he has become an emblem, and that's alienating.

In different ways, I think most people learn at some time in their life that the price of popularity is to allow the most vulnerable parts of yourself to recede into an indeterminate location. Teen Wolf literally hides behind a mask of fur and claws, and in so doing he gains acceptance. People like him. He's stronger and faster and never appears to be afraid, but the person on the inside is still there, just hidden. But this is a false happiness. They like you for who you are on the outside but recoil from the weak and ugly thing that lies at the core. You gotta be true to you, that's the moral of the story today.

24 Dec - "When I grow up and get married, I'm living alone"

Home Alone (1990)

dir. Chris Columbus (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, 2001)

CAST
Mark Beltzman (Employee of the Month, 2004)
John Candy (Canadian Bacon, 1995)
Kieran Culkin (The Cider House Rules, 1999)
Macaulay Culkin (Saved!, 2004)
Hope Davis (The Matador, 2005)
Matt Doherty (Ghost World, 2001)
Bill Erwin (The Land Before Time (voice), 1988)
Angela Goethals (Spanglish, 2004)
Larry Hankin (Vegas Vacation, 1997)
John Heard (Desert Blue, 1998)
Sandra Macat (Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, 1992)
Michael C. Maronna (Slackers, 2002)
Catherine O'Hara (Where the Wild Things Are (voice), 2009)
Jim Ortlieb (A Mighty Wind, 2003)
Joe Pesci (8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, 1997)
Peter Siragusa (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (voice), 2009)
Daniel Stern (City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold, 1994)
Ray Toler (A League of Their Own, 1992)
Alan Wilder (A League of Their Own, 1992)

Believe it or not, this was the first time I saw Home Alone: original flavor. I was surprised that I liked Lost in New York slightly better, but that did not detract from the pleasantness of this Christmas classic. Something about the extraordinary amount of punishment these two crooks can endure without permanent injury is amazing to me, and thoroughly enjoyable. I guess I haven't seen enough slapstick in children's comedies.

I also liked the counter-narrative of Kevin's mother, which isn't as strong in the sequel. The irony is that in her desire to return home as quickly as possible, she has to resort to a variety of planes, trains & automobiles (helped out by good Samaritan John Candy, of course!) but in the end she only arrives moments before the rest of the family, who waited in France a few days before catching the next available flight home. But the important thing is that she worked for it, right? Sometimes when I'm caught in traffic I'll take a much longer alternative route, even though I'm not certain if I'm actually saving time. The illusion of movement gives purpose to the journey.

8 Dec - "Easy to date. That's been my fate, since the age of ten"

Mad About Men (1954)

dir. Ralph Thomas

CAST
Glynis Johns (The Ref, 1994 )

This was a pretty silly old movie. It's about a slutty mermaid who switches places with a prudish schoolteacher, which they are able to easily do because they share a common ancestor and so look and sound identical. The mermaid, Miranda, wraps her tail up in a blanket and pretends the schoolteacher had an accident so she can sit a wheelchair. A bunch of times guys pick her up to move her around, but none of them notice the lack of legs. The ridiculousness is how many innuendos Miranda makes and how everyone just goes along with her crazy mermaid habits because she's pretty, I guess.

Miranda soon discovers that the schoolteacher's fiance is a pretty awful guy, so she decides to catch a better man. It ends up being a choice between this pretty smarmy dude who's already engaged, and another guy who is dashing and wealthy. Unfortunately, the moral seems to be that men love women who are stupid and easy like Miranda, and don't like uppity ladies like the schoolteacher. At the end, when she hesitates to kiss the wealthy fisherman, he's like, "What's wrong, you seem like your old self" and she's all, "Oh, sorry, I'll never be like that again," with a knowing glace back at Miranda. So, 1950s chicks, don't be yourself, the boys don't like that, be easy and undiscriminating.

25 Nov - "At first I did not know it was your diary. I thought it was a very sad handwritten book"

Bridesmaids (2011)

dir. Paul Feig

CAST
Kristin Wiig (Knocked Up, 2007)
Terry Crews (Middle Men, 2009)
Maya Rudolph (Gattaca, 1997)
Matt Lucas (Alice in Wonderland, 2010)
Wendi McLendon-Covey (Bewitched, 2005)
Jill Clayburgh (Love and Other Drugs, 2010)
Melissa McCarthy (Charlie's Angels, 2000)
Ellie Kemper
Michael Hitchcock (Serenity, 2005)
Joe Nunez (Rango (voice), 2011)
Steve Bannos (Pineapple Express, 2008)
Rose Byrne (X-Men: First Class, 2011)
Lynne Marie Stewart (Pee Wee's Big Adventure, 1985)

I watched Bridesmaids back around Thanksgiving time in the kitchen with my Aunt Dorothy. Apart from the very first scene and the very last scene, I didn't think that this was awkward to watch with my dear Auntie. It's possible though, that the circumstances detracted from the humorousness somewhat, because I thought this movie was supposed to be really funny, but I only thought it was sort of funny. Definitely not as funny as The Hangover.

Maybe part of the problem was in comprehension. I didn't understand all of the characters. Kristin Wiig was obviously the main character, but what's the deal with the antagonist? Did we decide she was just misunderstood or was she really conspiring against Kristin in pursuit of maid-of-honordom? Perhaps the movie would have been funnier if less emphasis had been placed on the developing relationships and more emphasis was on crazy antics unfolding, which is Apatow's usually recipe for success.

One of the things I like about Aunt Dorothy is that she makes me feel okay about watching a bawdy comedy with her. She's always been more fun than most of the other older folks in my family. When my brother and I were kids she let us watch Blackadder during family dinner parties. I didn't really understand a lot fo the jokes back then, but I think there were some pretty dodgy ones about turnips.

21 Nov - "It's too bad you don't have any bad habits"

Piccadilly Jim (2006)

dir. John McKay

CAST
Sam Rockwell (Iron Man 2, 2010)
Frances O'Connor (Timeline, 2003)
Tom Wilkinson (The Last Kiss, 2006)
Brenda Blethy (Atonement, 2007)
Allison Janney (Away We Go, 2009)
Austin Pendleton (Uptown Girls, 2003)
Tom Hollander (Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, 2007)
Pam Ferris (Children of Men, 2006)
Kevin Eldon (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, 2005)

I thought this romantic comedy starring Sam Rockwell would be cute, but it actually sort of sucked despite having a super amusing premise. Piccadilly Jim is the playboy son of a wealthy socialite who falls in love with his step-cousin. Despite having never met Jim, she hates him for his roguish reputation, so to win her heart, Jim pretends to be someone else. The funny part is that in order to gain the trust of her family, Jim incognito has to pretend to impersonate himself - leading to an endless series of amusing misunderstandings.

Unfortunately something about this movie fell flat, lacked excitement, was unconvincing. Perhaps there was a lack of chemistry between the leads or too many undeveloped side characters. I wanted to like this movie, I really did. Parts of it were clever, but it still sucked, sorry.

30 Oct - "You can't use the front door now"

Kick-Ass (2010)

dir. Matthew Vaughn (Stardust, 2007)

CAST
Randall Batinkoff (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 1992)
Xander Berkeley (Terminator 2: Judgement Day, 1991)
Nicolas Cage (Leaving Las Vegas, 1995)
Clark Duke (Superbad, 2007)
Craig Ferguson (Saving Grace, 2000)
Jason Flemyng (From Hell, 2001)
Dexter Fletcher (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, 1998)
Tamer Hassan (Eastern Promises, 2007)
Aaron Johnson (Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, 2008)
Corey Johnson (Saving Private Ryan, 1998)
Adrian Martinez (Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, 2007)
Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Role Models, 2008)
Chloë Grace Moretz (Bolt (voice), 2008)
Evan Peters (Sleepover, 2004)
Kenneth Simmons (My Super Ex-Girlfriend, 2006)
Mark Strong (Robin Hood, 2010)

This was a fun and entertaining movie, I'm surprised that it wasn't more popular. At least as popular as Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which I haven't seen yet, but I hear about it all the time and I've only heard this movie in passing coversation like once, I think. The best part is that, in the sense that it's an origin story, this movie is only slightly more plausible than something like Batman or Spiderman. They don't have superpowers, but by virtue of getting the shit kicked out of him, the portagonist has metal-reinforced bones and damaged nerve endings that...allow him to take a beating with slightly more fortitude than the average bear. By the end we see the critical balance reestablished, with the creation of a more powerful force of good we also see a concurrent rise in the force of evil. Like all of our other favorite supervillains, we see the polarizing forces of good and evil repelling, even with resistance, each other like magnets.

It wouldn't surprise me if the screenwriter had referenced Joseph Campbell. Nobody really wants to become that which is overtly and inherently despicable, and yet these characters arise from the ethos and by forces out of their hands are ostracized into dark and lonely places. I'm getting too philosophical now. My point is that this movie fits an archetype, but it's a good archetype.

Nicolas Cage is in it, and he's a polarizing actor, but I've defended him before and I'll do it again because I like Nicolas Cage and I think I get what he does. It's a role that's well suited to him.

I perused a few reviews of this movies, and while overall I think it recieved a positive reaction, several negative reviews focused on how appalling it was to watch Hit-Girl, played by an 11-year old actress, behave with so much callous violence, and profanity, and also recieve a vicious beating from a grown man. On the other hand, I'm certain that they would not be so alarmed if the character was an 11 year old boy.

This review by Prairie Miller cites Kick-Ass as a shocking display of child exploitation. Part of this character has to do with shock value, I'm sure, and also the slightly comedic incongrutiy that Hit-Girl is a much tougher cookie than the older and masculine Kick-Ass. But more importantly I this this is the only female superhero character I've ever seen that does NOT represent exploitation. Even though she unleashes a lot of bloodshed, she's happy, she's healthy, she has an odd, but loving parent, she's strong and not sexualized - can we say that of any other heroine? Certainly not Elektra, definitely not Catwoman. Praire Miller says that depicting children being beaten in fictional scenarios is unacceptable and potentially disturbing to children in violent homes. But violence happens in the world, and this character isn't victimized, she is an agent of her own storyline. She accepts violence with dignity and retaliates from a postion of strength. That's awesome, not just for children, but even grown up children like me.

I know it's supposed to be a funny movie, and so it was, but I just wanted to talk about it this way instead.

8 Oct- "He's five-nine, which is kind of short, but he's read The Great Gatsby twice"

The Ugly Truth (2009)

dir. Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde, 2001)

CAST
Katherine Heigl (Knocked Up, 2007)
Gerard Butler (Timeline, 2003)
Bree Turner (Dunston Checks In, 1995)
Nick Searcy (Fried Green Tomatoes, 1991)
Jesse D. Goins (WarGames, 1983)
Cheryl Hines (Along Came Polly, 2004)
John Michael Higgins (Blade: Trinity, 2004)
Bonnie Somerville (Bedazzled, 2000)
Yvette Nicole Brown (The Island, 2005)
Nathan Corddry (The Invention of Lying, 2009)
Blake Robbins (The Bling Ring (TV), 2011)
Kevin Connolly (The Beverly Hillbillies, 1993)
Valente Rodriguez (Erin Brockovitch, 2000)
Jamison Yang (Transformers, 2007)

Cora made me watch this but she promised that next time I get to pick the movie and I already know that I'm either going to choose The Last of the Mohicans (Because she's never seen it!) or Beautiful Girls.

This is Judy Greer with a puppy

This movie had some funny lines, all these rom-coms do, but it was terribly predictable, even in the madcap zany scenes where everything goes wrong. The characters were awfully archetypal; she's a workaholic and overbearing and drives away all of her dates, he's lewd and uncaring. Except it's because he's had his heart broken, and she's pretty nice once you get to know her.

What distracted me the most, though, was something about how the assistant/friend played the same character that Judy Greer usually plays and they made her up to look a lot like Judy Greer too, and that was really distracting because I kept trying to confirm that it was not, in fact, Judy Greer.

This is Bree Turner, a younger and prettier Judy Greer?

I don't know what else to discuss here. The only thing that's remarkable about this movie is how unremarkable it was. This is the most straightforward romantic comedy I've ever seen, absolutely no new ground has been broken here. I'm pretty certain that every gag in it already occurred elsewhere.

But I'm trying to be more positive, so let's talk about
solutions, not problems. First of all, Katherine Heigl was way too attractive to play that character. Am I supposed to believe that menfolk will make NO accommodations for an obscenely pretty face? That's ridiculous. All of the other romantic movies I've seen have demonstrated that men will go to great lengths to win the favor of fair ladies, and the guy in this movie won't even tolerate Heigl picking out a restaurant for their first date. Ludicrous.

17 August - "Tea can do many things, Jane, but it can't bring back the dead"

Death at a Funeral (2007)

dir. Frank Oz (The Indian in the Cupboard, 1995)

CAST

Matthew Macfadyen (Grindhouse, 2007)

Andy Nyman (The Brothers Bloom, 2008)

Ewen Bremner (Black Hawk Down, 2001)

Alan Tudyk (Knight's Tale, 2001)

Kris Marshall (Love Actually, 2003)

Rubert Graves (V for Vendetta, 2006)

Peter Dinklage (The Station Agent, 2003)

One thing I'd like to point out because it deserves to be an example for the whole entertainment industry, is that while Peter Dinklage, who is a short person, was cast in the role of the deceased's gay lover, this role did not require an actor of any specific height, nor was any humor explicitly derived from the fact of his shortness. The character's height was only referred to in reference to his appearance - no one ever said anything like, "ZOMG a gay dwarf is at this party!" Which is good, because we all need to get over shit like that. If you remember the similar rant I had about whenever Michelle Rodriguez is cast in a role - it's like affirmative action, which sucks. I want to skip the affirmative action bit and get straight to the part where diversity is a thing that happens without such a fucking big deal.

So much was happening in this movie and it was really very hilarious. You'll like this if you enjoyed The Royal Tenenbaums, A Fish Called Wanda, and movies of that ilk, a big emphasis on ludicrous situational comedy and everything going awry. It's one of those movies where everyone's got some sort of drama going on and they are all getting in each other's way trying to resolve it.

16 August - "I don't want to die like that French Poodle!"

Sólo Con Tu Pareja (1991)

dir. Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También, 2001)

CAST

Daniel Giménez Cacho (Cabeza de Vaca, 1991)

Claudia Ramírez

Ricardo Dalmacci

It amazes me how different the cultural standards for sexuality in cinema. In this movie, there's one scene where three children running through the woods stumble upon the protagonist making noisy love with a soon-be-bride, and one of them squirts them with a water pistol. It's hilarious, but Americans would never stand for it. In America, children aren't supposed to know that sex exists, only that males and females have a tendency to pair off and somehow or another offspring consequently occur.

Another thing that sets this movie apart is that it's about a man who realizes that he's pretty much a slut, and feels bad about it. The initial plot is that Tomas isn't happy with the person he has become. He keeps screwing around with these girls and saying alternatively that, "This isn't really me," and, "a leopard can't change it's spots."

The best part is when Tomas has to "entertain" two ladies at the same time, by climbing in and out of the windows of two apartments. However, on each trip he is riveted to the window in between the two apartments, where a third woman lives, the one he is actually in love with. This woman has a man, though, and she doesn't need to play the same tedious games that Tomas is engaged in. That's what makes her so attractive and untouchable.

So one of the ladies gets wind that she's been tricked, and since she's also Tomas's nurse, she falsifies his lab results and makes him think he's got AIDS. So he decides to do the suicide thing, except then the unattainable girl finds out her fiance is sleeping around, she decides to die, too, and so both of them are going to jump off a building together, but they fall in LOVE and Tomas figures out he's not infected after all. The end.

4 Aug - "I'm gonna strip away this mystery and expose it's private parts"

Rango (2011)
dir. Gore Verbinski (Mousehunt, 1997)

VOICES

Ned Beatty (Back to School, 1986)
Gil Birmingham (Eclipse, 2010)
Abigail Breslin (Zombieland, 2009)
Johnny Depp (Dead Man, 1995)

Isla Fisher (I Heart Huckabees, 2004)

Charles Fleischer (Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (voice), 1988)
Beth Grant (Flatliners, 1990)
Alfred Molina (Dead Man, 1995)

Bill Nighy (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow Part 1, 2010)

Joe Nunez (Superbad, 2007)
Timothy Olyphant (First Wives Club, 1996)
Stephen Root (Ghost, 1990)

Harry Dean Stanton (Alien, 1979)

Ray Winstone (The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, 2005)

Good Lord! Finally I see a computer animated movie that I actually like! I feel that Rango had an interesting and compelling plot that was both intensely amusing as well as attaining a level of emotional depth that I thought was appropriate for the material. The character development was tangible and neither the thematic element nor the humor insulted my intelligence. Kiefer was so pleased when we chose this off the On Demand that he gave me a long tight hug, so clearly it was a hit with the younger audience as well, proving my long-standing assertion that you don't need to dumb down the material to make kids happy. Let's treat children like clever and insightful individuals and, God willing, they may become such.

This was fun for me last time, so I thought I'd do another brief interview with my little brother, Kiefer.

P: Can you tell me what Rango was about?

K: Well, it started out from a lizard, or should I say, whatever you want to call it, a chameleon. Is that right?

P: Yep.

K: The chameleon, also known as Rango, who's told from a armadillo that he found outside of Rango's little box in the car--he didn't have any real friends until that armadillo showed up with little tire marks on him...

P: Hang on, Kief, you don't need to give a whole play-by-play, you can just sort of sum it all up.

K: It's kind of hard to tell because it's a long story. I don't really remember most of it but I do think it's a good movie.

P: Did you like Rango better than Gnomeo & Juliet or Tangled?

K: It's kind of hard to say 'cause they're all animated, which is equal. And they're all different kind of comedies, that's equal. I can't really compare it because they're almost the same and equally divided, and they're all comedies. So I don't really know what would be better, because they're only movies and they're all animated and they're comedies and they're all, like, journeys.

P: I don't know if Gnomeo & Juliet was really a journey.

K: I said sort of like a journey.

P: OK, sorry. Did you like the way the characters talked in Rango?

K: Yeah, you could say, but I don't understand why that would be a question because different people talk in different ways. But I also wonder if all the voices are done by the same person like Looney Tunes.

P: Did you think it was harder to understand than Gnomeo & Juliet?

K: No, not really.

P: OK, one last question. What do you think is the most important thing for a really good movie?

K: Most of the time I think it would be the thrill or a journey that takes place. Or something happens to someone really poor or really alone with no friends and ends up to be in a journey for life and death, just like Jane Eyre.

Last night Kiefer and I and our Mom watched Jane Eyre On Demand. So I guess that's why he stuck it in there at the end. I guess if you think of it that way, Rango is a little bit like Jane Eyre, minus the madwoman locked in the attic. I suppose what we could glean from this is that kids don't really know what they're watching, so there's no reason the adults have to be utterly bored and maybe some of those big words are penetrating the subconscious. In conclusion: Rango = more like this please.

25 July - "When an ugly chick dies...it's no big deal"

Flypaper (2011)
dir. Rob Minkoff (The Lion King, 1994)

CAST

Patrick Dempsey (Outbreak, 1995)

Ashley Judd (Heat, 1995)

Mekhi Phifer (Dawn of the Dead, 2004)

Jeffrey Tambor (There's Something About Mary, 1998)

Octavia Spencer (Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous, 2005)

Curtis Armstrong (Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, 2004)

Tim Blake Nelson (O Brother, Where Art Thou?, 2000)

John Ventimiglia (Party Girl, 1995)

Adrian Martinez (Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, 2007)

I'm almost not sick anymore! a couple days ago (more by the time I finish and publish this) I watched Flypaper On Demand with my mom. It was fun with a cute twist at the end, I liked it better than Ocean's Eleven, but I hated that movie (you know how sometimes a movie seems smart but clearly it is not? This is true for mostly everything).

I'm also super-stressed by some...unpleasantness..which makes a thinky and/or feely movie an undesirable option because all of my feelings are melting into anxiety and unhappiness and all of my thinkings are devolving into self esteem issues. Plus my sinuses are clogged up. It's been a rough week :(

Sorry to get self-indulgent there.

I never heard of this movie before I read the synopsis on the TV. It seemed okay and it was so indeed. Patrick Dempsey's character was schizophrenic or something, and Ashley Judd was the "strait man." Basically two robberies occur simultaneously in the same bank, and as the criminals squabble over how to get into the vault and what to do with the hostages, Patrick Dempsey races about using his super-observation skills to figure who murdered the guy who died in the first gunfight, and why. There are more than 2 bank robberies going on here!

The only thing I'm unclear on is whether or not Dempsey was in on it the whole time.

24 July - "Oh-llo?"

Megamind (2010)

dir. Tom McGrath (Madagascar, 2005)

voices

Will Ferrell (Stranger Than Fiction, 2006)

Brad Pitt (Burn After Reading, 2008)

Tina Fey (Ponyo (voice), 2008)

Jonah Hill (Strange Wilderness, 2008)

David Cross (Small Soldiers, 1998)

Ben Stiller (The Royal Tenenbaums, 2001)

J.K. Simmons (Burn After Reading, 2008)

A couple things come to mind when I'm thinking about how to start this one. The first is that I really just don't care for these chintzy computer-animated movies with the bright colors and the vomitingly (I made that an adverb) predictable ending and the complete and utter lack of charm.

I guess it was like, six or eight months ago when a fella asked me if I wanted to see this with him. I like it when someone asking me out has already picked the movie (or whatever the plan is, since a friend of mine told me that movie as a first date is bullshit because you're supposed to be engaging with each other) - but if we are going to see a movie I like it when the guy has already chosen one because it seems lazy otherwise. As if, hey I want to hang out with you, can you organize an interesting and fun evening? No, I say, if you want my company so bad, you gotta do the legwork.

Anyway, so my normal M.O. is to agree to whatever movie my prospective suitors suggest, because at that point I'm more interested in the person than the movie (a surprising confession, I know. This is why I ended up seeing Superman Returns TWICE in the theaters! But I still think the worst date movie I ever sat through was Enchanted, which ended up being quite pleasant when I watched it later on DVD with some girlfriends, so yeah, I think the company you've got during a movie is important)

I am having a hard time getting to the point. The point is that even though it usually doesn't matter to me what movie a guy picks, and even though I hate picking date movies, and even though I really liked this guy and wanted to go out with him, I was still like, Hells no, I don't wanna see Megamind, I will call you back in 20 minutes with a revised itinerary. We ended up seeing It's Kind of a Funny Story instead; it was a rather arid week for cinema in Athens, but I thought it was a reasonably good choice. It didn't work out, though, c'est la vie.

So I watched it because I wanted to watch something On Demand with my lil bro, we also saw Tangled (upcoming!) and we may resort to Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2. It was fun with him because we laughed at the funny jokes, but, honestly, this movie was artless, it wasn't cute at all, it was pandering and easy and heavy-heavy and clumsy, like someone who's trying too hard to be your new best friend and I just wanted to be alone after the whole confrontation.

My brain is all over the place right now. Still sick in bed, by the by.

15 June - "Back of the car, not a rear-entry situation"

Burn After Reading (2008)
dir. Joel and Ethan Coen (O Brother, Where art Thou?, 2000)

CAST
George Clooney (Fantastic Mr. Fox (voice), 2009)
Brad Pitt (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, 2007)
Tilda Swinton (The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, 2010)

Frances McDormand (Fargo, 1996)

John Malkovitch (Being John Malkovitch, 1999)

Richard Jenkins (Eat Pray Love, 2010)

Kevin Sussman (Sweet Home Alabama, 2002)

Dermot Mulroney (The Family Stone, 2005)

J.K. Simmons (The Ref, 1994)
Olek Krupa (Behind Enemy Lines, 2001)

If you heard that this movie wasn't very good, you would be justified in believing those rumors. Burn After Reading wasn't very bad, but I certainly wouldn't plan on seeing it again either.

I think the problem is that while it's fairly obvious that it was meant to be funny, it very overtly missed the mark. First of all, we're tricked in the very beginning into thinking that John Malkovitch is the main character, maybe he was supposed be, but George Clooney and Frances McDormand take the lead, plotwise, for the bulk of the remainder. The big joke appears to be that McDormand and Pitt are running around talking to the Russians and pretending to be all conniving but what they've really got is a disgruntled analyst's crappy attempt at a memoir.

That's the joke, everyone dies for no reason at all. Sorry if I spoiled it. There seem to be some allusions to government ineptitude, but I am less clear on those points.

Gosh, I'm nearly ten days behind on my movie reviews. I have a backlog of two movies I watched after this one. Hopefully I have more to say about them more than a week after I watched them. More complaining: Never has a comedy been so boring. Really disappointed, Coens.

14 May - "sobriety is for aardvarks, you ass"

Pizza (2005)

dir. Mark Christopher

starring

Ethan Embry (Sweet Home Alabama, 2002)

Kylie Sparks

Julie Hagerty (Confessions of a Shopaholic, 2009)

Joey Kern (The Sasquatch Gang, 2006)

Alexis Dziena (Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, 2008)

Mary Birdsong (It's Kind of a Funny Story, 2010)

I would sort this movie into the same group as Welcome to the Dollhouse, which I said was not quite as enjoyable as Napoleon Dynamite. Pizza is sort of like that, too (sorry, this is the best picture I could find without trying very hard). What happens is that this chubby girl on the cover, Cara-Ethyl, has a birthday party with no guests, so instead she runs off with the Pizza guy, who is a would-be intellectual who justifies being a layabout by saying that he's undermining the system, but he's really just using that as an excuse to continue hooking up with high school girls.

Cara-Ethyl is a lot like Napoleon Dynamite in that she isn't so much ashamed of her own weirdness as she decried the stupidity of others. At the same time, though, she really wants to fit in. The trick is that while Cara-Ethyl is the "dork" and Ethan Embry's character is "cool," the real winner and loser of the movie are inverted. Cara-Ethyl is going to Notre Dame where she will find a group of people just like her to be friends with, she'll get good grades and move on from that po-dunk town, while Ethan's going to be a pizza-delivery guy his whole life even until the high school girls are totally over him and his receding hairline.

This movie, was okay, it was kind of cute. I liked the parts with Cara-Ethyl's mom, who burnt herself while making donuts and thus had to wear bandages over her eyes. I wouldn't recommend it except in a very specific circumstance which has yet to manifest. Watch Napoleon Dynamite again instead.

22 May- "Twelve is the new twenty"

Zombieland (2009)
dir. Ruben Fleischer

CAST

Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale, 2005)

Woody Harrelson (Wag the Dog, 1997)

Emma Stone (Easy A, 2010)

Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine, 2006)

Amber Heard (Pineapple Express, 2008)

Bill Murray (Groundhog Day, 1993)

I watched Zombieland with my little brother last night. We had a tough time picking a movie to watch since we just moved and don't have any DVDs or VHSs lying around (I don't even know if my mom kept the old VHS player). And I put my netflix account on hold for the summer, and I don't have a membership to Blockbuster or anything and the On Demand isn't working in the living room for some reason so I had to go back to the cache on my external hard drive and I will tell you, there's not a lot of eight-year-old friendly stuff on there. I almost got him to watch Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, which would have been a fun entry on here, but it turned out my digital version was of extraordinarily poor quality and subtitled, at that, so we got like a minute and a half into that before it was nixed. I guess I should buy the DVD, because that's some quality cinema.

So we watched Zombieland, which is also fun times. I think I would like to see Jesse Eisenberg play a more dickish character than his general nerd-type. Not like in The Social Network, because that character was insufferable, but I mean like Troy from The Goonies. Don't you guys think that Jesse Eisenberg could play the preppie asshole boyfriend of the girl that the Hero pines after? I think he could. Step out of your box dude, you don't have to let everyone confuse you with Michael Cera.

I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, that this was the movie that made Emma Stone famous, or at least when we all started to recognize her. One thing I don't get is why, if she and Abigail Breslin are sisters, are named Wichita and Little Rock, respectively, if the characters are named after the cities they are supposed to be pursuing. If that was the case, they should both be named Pacific Playland, or something. I guess the writer was implying that their family moved around a lot.

I have a lot of thoughts about the zombie theme as a metaphor for a certain kind of social anxiety. But I think it would be better saved for the day I review Night of the Living Dead or, at the very least, 28 Days Later. Or maybe I'm just lazy and want to go watch some more TV.

8 May - "my God! The illusion is shattered!"

Easy A (2010)

dir. Will Gluck

CAST

Emma Stone - Zombieland (2009)

Penn Badgley - John Tucker Must Die (2006)

Amanda Bynes - What A Girl Wants (2003)

Thomas Hayden Church - Sideways (2004)

Patricia Clarkson - Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

Cam Gigandet - Pandorum (2009)

Lisa Kudrow - Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion (1997)

Malcolm McDowell - A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Stanley Tucci - The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

Fred Armisen - Anchorman: the Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)

Whoosh! That took a little while. Here is a long cast list of folks I recognized in this movie. But as I'm sure you're all well aware, a shitload of cameos does not a better movie make.

Amanda Bynes played the same character as Mandy Moore in Saved!, which was also better than this movie. I've always felt a little bit bad for Amanda because I don't think she's very funny, but she seems like she's trying really hard to pull it off. Her movies and sitcoms have consistently been seriously lame, and I didn't even like her bits on that Nickelodeon sketch comedy show, All That.

Notable mention: I think the best friend character is one of the Cheetah Girls (that's a super-dorky Disney channel reference, but I'll confess I'm sort of fascinated by [That's So] Raven's career development)

The saving grace of this movie is Stanley Tucci and Patrica Clarkson, who do a fabulous job playing Emma Stone's parents. They are hilarious and awesome and I want them to be in every scene. Let's have a spin off just about them and not this contrived teenager shit.

I'm starting to think that they stopped making good movies in the early 90s. This movie, which had an arguably clever premise (at least as good as Mean Girls, and that was only a pale homage to Jawbreaker), decided to cheapen the whole affair by shoving brat pack movie references down your throat the whole time. Yeah, I know Ferris Bueller's Day Off was a good movie. You are not Ferris, Emma Stone. Stop trying to be Ferris. Reminding me about movies I've enjoyed in the past isn't going to trick me into liking your movie too, gosh.

I don't know if anyone would agree with me. Or if anyone cares. Because we aren't talking about a classic 1980s movie or something that was black and white. But maybe in ten or twenty years someone will be thinking about cinema in the twenty-tens and try to derive some sort of doggy-bag message. And this is what I think of that:

The difference between Easy A and a really good Brat Pack movie is that if this movie had been made in the 1980s the main character would actually have been sleeping around, not just lying about it, and it still would have been just as funny. Remember Fast Times at Ridgemont High? There was an abortion in that movie! And society didn't crumble, we dealt with it! Because what all those movies had in common was a very shameless and dark sense of humor. I think they could have pulled that off here but it would have been a little harder. But not that much harder. And think of how much more poignant the story would have been with Emma Stone really hitting rock bottom but managing to rise above, still cracking jokes, and learn something from it.

I just worry sometimes about what they're teaching the kids these days.

2 April - "This is your one shot, so make it count"

Timer (2009)

dir. Jac Schaeffer

starring

Emma Caulfield

Michelle Borth

John Patrick Amedori (Unbreakable, 2000)

JoBeth Williams (The Big Chill, 1983)

I think I've proven a few times over that there are high-quality and worthwhile "chick flicks" and "rom coms" out there. You just never find because the marketing types would rather shove Jennifer Lopez or Kate Hudson mincing gimicks and making cheap pop-culture referencing jokes into your face for forty seconds than spend the money on making a movie worth watching. Instead, here you've got that chick who played Xander's girlfriend on Buffy trying to communicate something insightful.

The premise is silly, I guess you could call it Sci-fi, but that's not the point. You've got this technology called a "TiMER" and they implant it in your wrist and it starts a countdown for the day you meet your soul mate, or true love, and it's different for everyone. The main character, Oona, has a problem wherein her timer hasn't started ticking yet, which means whoever her true love is, he hasn't gotten a TiMER of his own. Her younger brother gets his implanted on his fourteenth birthday, and he learns he's going to meet his soul mate in three days, while Oona's sister, Steph, who I guess is in her 20s or something, isn't going to meet her's until she's forty-something. And there's a lot of other characters who have their own quirky variations on the theme and I guess the moral is supposed to be something like that life (or love, I guess) is not a race to the finish line, but the important parts are the detours you take along the way, the mistakes you make and whatnot.

But it's funny! The TiMER stores reminded me of nothing so much as an apple store. Emma Caulfield is very genuine to watch and she scrambles about trying to find the few rare men who haven't gotten TiMERs yet, and the sister has these scenes where she's working at a nursing home and, you know, crazy old-timers.

The interactions between Oona's mother and her housekeeper, Luz, are also hilarious, without giving too much away, Luz's family is invited to Thanksgiving dinner and they have no idea what is going on Oona's stepfather is mashing guacamole with a pestle and it's silly. It's all very silly.

Way to go, netflix recommendations.