I think this is my opinion on it
Ben Affleck’s first foray into the director’s chair was this adaption of a Dennis Lahane novel, Gone Baby Gone.
I didn’t like the twist and turns set up. It seemed to be almost forced like many bad movies. But this one wasn’t because of Casey Affleck’s character. Very believable, but the twist and turns were not.
3 of 5 stars.
The Darjeeling Limited. It reminded me too much of his AT&T commercials. Maybe it’s time for a new shtick?
3 or 5 stars.
Micheal Clayton. Perfect in every way. It had me glued in my seat trying to figure out what was happening. Clooney, Swinton, and Wilkinson do their acting very well.
4 of 5 stars.
I saw the trailer to this movie before 3:10 to Yuma. I turned to the Seed and said, “I’m conflicted. I really want to see Jessica Alba, but that Dane Cook gets on my nerves.”
And he does.
There’s been some speculation about why the trend in romantic comedies is to make the man a shlub and woman a hot girly-girl. It’s an interesting idea where the girl has to be hot but is reaching for someone low. What world is it that a shmoe like Dan Cook can get a hottie like Jessica Alba? Would it be a spoiler if I told you he wins her heart in the end?
Dan Cook lives a fantasy life where he gets to bed girls who’ll not want to cuddle. He’s the fuck that’ll get the girl to her true love. The girls have to kiss a frog before they find their prince.
Jessica Alba is the one, goofy and cute. She’s enough to make Dane Cook want to hop off the f-train and onto the r-train, a real relationship.
There’s some laugh out loud moments especially with grape fruits. It’s light like a candy bar snack, but it isn’t good for you. You’ll also experience regrets for choosing it. I wanted to watch this movie, because of Jessica Alba. After watching this movie (and Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer), I may not be so quick to buy a ticket to her next endeavor. If it’s got Dan Cook in it, I’m confident I won’t.
2 of 5 stars.
PS. Why does it seem as if Dane Cook’s face is composed of 1/3 above his nose, 1/3 below his upper lips and 1/3 of the space between his nose and lips? He’s got to be disproportionated in the face region there.
D-War or Dragon Wars or whatever?!
Lookit, the stars have aligned and it seems my NewsRadio quote matches something I want to blog about. Hooray!
Anywhoo.
D-Wars is the movie that Uwe Bolle wants to make. Pretentious, but bad. Really. Really. Bad. I know that I say don’t follow what other reviewers are saying, but in this case I saw it and it is bad.
First, the actors. I don’t know who the actors are that inhabit the main characters, but I hope that they can still find some work in Tinseltown. If not, there’s always Vancouver. It’s not that they are terrible, but I assume the Korean language barrier made it difficult for them to know what was to be conveyed in a scene so they acted like they were baffled. Certainly seemed to be the case.
Another baffling things is continuity. I joke about Vancouver, but they leading lady was supposedly 19, almost 20, but her friend takes her to a bar to drown her sorrows. Is the drinking age 18 in Canada? Are they even in the US? Wasn’t this supposed to be taking place in LA?
The final showdown took place in Mordor. Suddenly everyone was there. How did they get there? Where is there? Hunh? And tell me, after vanquishing the evil dragon, how is the hero going to get back?
Too many questions.
At least the fight over LA was kind of neat. Kind of. Really.
1 of 5 stars.
All story short, it’s a western. Like all westerns, there’s the good guy as portrayed by Christian Bale who must make his son believe that he is a man. And there’s the bad guy, Russell Crowe, being as charming and benevolent as evil can be to lure Christian Bale’s son to the dark side.
Is it an allegory of growing up and admiring your pa? Or is it one about the goodness in us all?
It’s set up to be just the good guy delivering the bad guy to the train station to be taken to jail. That is all.
Not bad. It’s hard to say that the bad guy (and his henchmen) who so remorseless kills people can have the change of heart he experiences in the last 10 minutes of the film. Other than that it was a nice, neat little oater that brings back the western genre of cowboys, indians, horses, cattle and ranches to the cinema screen. Not the best of the genre just another of its films that comprise the American experience.
Adventures from my Netflix Queue: Arizona
It seems that it’s been nothing but westerns. I caught 3:10 To Yuma last week (someday I’ll be reviewing it). My Netflix queue has been filled with the old timey stuff. And I totally loved Miss Stanwyck in Forty Guns. It’s an all-american genre, and it has some great movies to love. And it is good to look at some decent work in that genre outside of the major, important films.
Arizona could be one of them. It may not be memorable, but it has a lasting impression on the western genre. Columbia Studios built a fascimile of old Tucson, and it has been used since for other westerns.
Jean Arthur stars as Phoebe Titus, a gal stuck in Arizona making a go of it. She is ambitous and she plots to finally own the largest ranch in the Arizona territories. As her fortunes rise so does the prosperity of Tucson. She has a rival, a suave gentleman named Carteret, who acts nice but is duplicitous. He constantly is sweet to her all the while planning for her downfall. She has suitor. William Holden as Peter Muncie swept into Tucson at the head of a wagon train, courted Ms. Titus with a banjo, goes to California for some shade, comes back a soldier, gets her 500 head of cattle and finally marries her. He also has to settle the Phoebe’s score with cateret as her husband/man of the house.
It’s a sweeping movie. Epic in proportions. Filmed in 1940, you could say this was in reaction to the success of Gone With The Wind. Or you could say that it’s one in the long line of westerns. It makes due with the genre’s conventions, and churns out a solid effort of a movie.
Yet, there were some hilarious things. Ms. Titus made her living selling pies. Yes, pies. I loved that. She goes from selling pies to being the cattle baroness of Tucson. Hilarious. And everyone loved her pies. Muncie especially.
Jean Arthur is another favorite. Actually, I couldn’t stand her at first. Her melodious voice grew on me, and now I own several DVDs of movies she’s been in. Strange that.
3 of 5 stars.
Better than expected considering that it is currently at 31% approval at RottenTomatoes.com. Look I don’t think it was the greatest movie this summer or this year, but it was serviceable. I liked the story even if it was predictable. I didn’t think that Scarlett Johansson sucked. She was okay. I liked the flourishes the directors did.
But I didn’t read the book. But who cares?
I certainly don’t define my movie viewing habits by who gives what to which movie.
I liked it.
3 of 5 stars.
Maybe I’m too old, but it was raunchy.
McLovin was the best. His screen time always had me laughing.
Keeping along the lines of my criticism of Judd Apatow related flicks: this was 10 minutes too long.
It may also be this generation’s Dazed and Confused or American Grafitti. One night looking for love. More likely this generation’s Can’t Hardly Wait!
3 of 5 stars.
In story telling there is a classic theory that every story has three parts, a beginning, a middle and an end. The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum constitute the trilogy about Jason Bourne. Yet, it seems after watching the final installment to be better off as a two-parter.
In the finale, Jason Bourne’s story picks up soon after the second. He hurriedly flees Moscow. While evading the Russian police, he fixes his wounds which leads him to recover even more memories from Treadstone. These memories makes him ultimately want to end it all, so he plans to find out why he is who he is to restore himself once again. The trail starts in London where he meets up with a journalist who just unraveled the secret CIA program that Treadstone is a part of. Of course, the journalist is a goner. Then the trail leads to Madrid to a former director who has intimate knowledge of the who and the why of Jason Bourne and Treadstone. He’s a goner, too. Bourne meets up with Nicki who should’ve asked for a desk job in Langley and they jaunt to Tangiers. In a thrilling scene, Bourne chases another CIA op from the rooftops of the city to save Nicki. This is why it’s so good. Eventually, we end up in NYC to the final scene of the second movie, and continue again for another final chase.
And that’s my problem with this installment. The first two had tied together into a neat little ending. This one feels as if it as after the denouement of the films and tacked on. At the end of Supremacy, he had finally found out who he is. But in this film, not really, and he seeks out the truth. He learns that sometimes you may not like who is staring at you from the mirror. This film felt like those twenty minutes in which you want to leave the theater after the end of a story except it’s two hours long.
Still, the action was great. Greengrass seems more confident and assured. He chose a more stylistic visual approach separate from his first Bourne movie and from following in Doug Liman’s footsteps. He uses this style to make the movie seems faster and frenetic. In the fight scenes, we are up close and in the room with the fighters, but we never lose track of what’s happening. In the car chases, the action is majestic.
Overall, it was a disappointment, but much, much better than the other trilogy enders this summer.
3 of 5 stars.
