Archive for the ‘Romance’ Category
Saturday, January 1st, 2005
I don’t know if you guys have ever heard of this one. It’s a weird crime movie starring Fred Ward as a cop with fake teeth, Alec Baldwin as a crook who steals his teeth, and Jennifer Jason Leigh as Baldwin’s dumb hooker turned naive fiancee.
From the cover you’d assume this is just some boring cop movie, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that it’s something completely unique. Or don’t take my word for it. Let me explain to you a little bit about the plot, and see if that waxes your mustache.
See, Alec Baldwin (back when he was young and skinny, and made the gals swoon) gets off a plane in Miami, steals somebody’s luggage, and heads for the exit. At the bottom of an escalator he is approached by a hare krishna, who asks him what his name is. He says, “Trouble,” breaks the guy’s finger, and leaves.
So far he’s a petty crook, and kind of an asshole. Or maybe hare krishnas killed his father, I don’t know. The point is, breaking a guy’s finger for trying to push his religious beliefs on you is not usually a big enough crime to be the center of a movie plot. But we find out later that being a sensitive peace loving religious dude, the hare krishna went into shock after the attack and died. Of a broken finger. And maybe a broken heart. So that’s where Fred Ward, the homicide detective, comes in. He’s gotta find the perp, and even he doesn’t take it that seriously (him and the other cops laugh about the murder) but it’s a job, you know. (more…)
Only 1 person likes this post. Kinda sad.
Tags: Alec Baldwin, Charles Willeford, Fred Ward, George Armitage, Jennifer Jason Leigh
Posted in Crime, Drama, Reviews, Romance, Thriller | 3 Comments »
Saturday, January 1st, 2005
You probaly heard of this cute little Mexican sex movie that was nominated for some oscars. It’s really a sentimental story about two young friends on a road trip but it’s also about their sexual experimentation and it’s got alot of the NC-17 sex that’s so hot there were urban legends going around that the sex was all real. So naturally they hired the director to do the next henry porter movie.
The title translates to AND YOUR MOTHER TOO or, in other words, I FUCKED YOUR MOTHER. I FUCKED YOUR MOTHER is directed by Alfonso Cuaron who also directed A LITTLE PRINCESS, an extremely well made fable that’s probaly the real reason they hired him to do Henry Porter. That movie is about a little girl who defies her harsh boarding school by escaping into an imaginative story world. There’s ten headed monsters and all kinds of shit. Everything you want in a henry porter adventure. Shit I admit it I loved that movie, I just never reviewed it because I’m still embarassed by that time I reviewed FLY AWAY HOME.
I FUCKED YOUR MOTHER is about two rich kids in Mexico just out of high school who meet a real attractive older gal at a wedding. She’s married to one of the boys’ cousins and the last time she saw him he was crying because he lost his Thundercats doll. But that doesn’t stop them from hitting on her. They talk about beaches, she mentions one they say is for yuppies and tourists, and they start bragging about a secret beach they prefer, but they’re just bullshitting. (more…)
Tags: Alfonso Cuaron, Diego Luna, Emmanuel Lubezki, Gael Garcia Bernal, Maribel Verdu
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Reviews, Romance | 1 Comment »
Saturday, January 1st, 2005
I don’t know why it took me this long, but I’ve finally seen the most recent Chucky picture. This one came out on the tenth anniversary of Die Hard as well as the original Chucky picture so it is very special to me.
As some of you know, over there in Japan they are making cartoons for adults, and what they’re doing with Bride of Chucky is doing the same thing for puppets. I think many adults have always wanted to watch a puppet movie but they were too embarrassed unless it had alot of blood and a respectable brand name like Bride of Chucky.
This is actually not as much a horror movie though as it is a campy comedy with occasional sadistic murder scenes. It is all very tongue in cheek. I don’t know if the filmatists here realize that Chucky isn’t scary anymore, but they definitely do know that there are some things that are just funny to see puppets do. Like shooting two guns at a time, or getting in a shovel fight, or making out in front of a fireplace. The best scene of the movie is when the girl doll Tiffany spectacularly mutilates and electrocutes a newlywed couple with the simple toss of a champagne bottle, and it impresses Chucky so much that he marries her and then there is a romantic love scene in silhouette. That is why the trailer (which is on the DVD) says “This October, Chucky gets lucky.” I guess it came out in October. (more…)
Tags: Brad Dourif, Don Mancini, Jennifer Tilly, John Ritter, Katherine Heigl, Peter Pau, Ronny Yu
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Horror, Reviews, Romance, Thriller | 2 Comments »
Saturday, January 1st, 2005
So there’s these two middle aged dudes, Miles (Paul Giamatti) and Jack (some dude from a sitcom they used to have). Jack is an ex-soap star who’s about to get married, Miles is a depressed middle school english teacher who can’t get his novel published and is obsessed with wine. Together they have to stop a criminal mastermind who is poisoning the wine supply in the San Fernando valley and turning wine drinkers into an army of zombies.
Actually I made that last part up but what it’s actually about is they go on a trip into wine country the last week before the wedding. The idea is for Miles to show Jack “a good time” which to him means going around tasting wine and showing off that you know how the grapes were grown and what year it is and stupid crap like that. I mean in this movie you got people talking on and on about Pino this and 1961 is peaking and all this shit, they might as well be talking backwards, you got no idea what these idiots are blabbing about. Except when they start talking about how fragile the grapes are or something, and it is obviously a parallel to their own emotional state or their dreams or something. But I’m sorry, metaphors are not a good enough excuse for that kind of talk. Anyway, it works for the movie because they are good characters. You are not supposed to think their wine talk is cool.
But Jack notices that Miles is depressed and he wants to help him, by getting him laid. They end up hanging out with a pair of female wine fanciers who they really like. Jack tells them that Miles’ novel is about to get published, and Miles doesn’t tell them that Jack’s getting married on Saturday.
So okay, it seems clear where the movie is going. You got the whole falling in love deal, along with the keeping a secret torment, the eventual revealing the truth misery, the begging for mercy humiliation and the sudden, exhilirating proving love and making up ending. And by the way this is an Alex Payne picture. This is the guy who did CITIZEN RUTH, ELECTION and ABOUT SCHMIDT and they don’t call him payne for nothin. He’s real observant and honest about the kind of things that make a dude feel miserable and uncomfortable. (more…)
Tags: Alexander Payne, Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Reviews, Romance | No Comments »
Saturday, January 1st, 2005
In Hollywood they have a saying that goes something like, “if you can’t think of anything funny, put a movie star in a fat suit.” On some magazine I saw on a news stand they had another saying that goes, “Fat suits: the new blackface.”
It’s true too. I mean the less acceptable it becomes to make fun of the gays, the more people need somebody else to pick on. So they start pickin on these big folks.
I don’t know why but for some reason people think it’s hilarious to see a celebrity made up to look all fat. They did it on Big Momma’s House. They did it on one of those sitcoms that is popular now, I believe it was either Friends or Cheers. The one about the kids in the apartment who have relationships, etc. Also Eddie Murphy did it. He thought it was so funny he based two movies around it. And within each movie he had to play four or five different fat characters in order to try to fill the whole movie with laughs.
Well to be fair SHALLOW HAL is not really that same kind of movie. NUTTY PROFESSOR was a movie where they have fat joke after fat joke, and then in one scene they tell you to feel sorry for poor Eddie because everyone makes fun of him for being fat. Then in the very next scene he’s stuffing a fistful of M&Ms in his mouth and you laugh at him for being fat again. Also there is farting. (more…)
Tags: Farrelly Brothers, fat suit, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jack Black, Jason Alexander
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Reviews, Romance | No Comments »
Saturday, January 1st, 2005
I like the horror pictures. I used to just review them because I saw them, and what else am I supposed to do, you know? I already saw it, might as well Write the fuckin review you know.
But after a while I started to really like this stuff. I mean everybody likes monsters and shit. I started to watch all the Dracula pictures, all the Chucky pictures, everything. I started to seek them out.
I heard alot about this director, Larry Fessenden, who is some new york independent filmatist who has made a trilogy of pretentious horror movies – NO TELLING, HABIT, and WENDIGO which got some good reviews when it played at a film festival here but I haven’t seen it.
First I checked out NO TELLING which is supposedly an “eco-horror” film and is about some dude doing weird experiments on animals. I was impressed when I heard that he never graduates to experimenting on humans – that made it sound more realistic than most horror movies and that could be creepy. Unfortunately I only made it about 8 minutes into the movie before the community theater style acting made me throw in the towel. As far as I saw, the movie was just about couples standing around in a field talking about relationships.
So I gave up on Larry Fessenden, but I forgot he directed HABIT and ended up taking it home by accident. This time I got all the way to the end. (That’s nothin to brag about though, I just watched EARTH VS. THE SPIDER starring Dan Ayckroyd.) (more…)
Tags: Larry Fessenden, vampires
Posted in Drama, Horror, Reviews, Romance | No Comments »
Saturday, January 1st, 2005
Baby Boy is the underrated new picture by young Johnny Singleton, the director of Shaft 2K who was also the youngest fella to ever get nominated for a best director oscar. That was for Boyz N the Hood, and what makes Baby Boy interesting is that it is a companion piece to that movie, telling the story of thugs and gangstas in South Central Los Angeles. But now Singleton is older and he sees things differently. So instead of portraying these thugs as a menace to society, he portrays them as a bunch of fucking babies who need their mommies.
The main character is Jody, who is played by a model named Tyrese. He is bald and muscled, like what Singleton wishes he looked like. But he drives his girlfriend’s car or, when necessary, rides a bike. And he lives with his mom, even though he has two different babies from two different mamas.
The story is about Jody trying to grow up and move out of his mom’s house. But all he can figure out to do is steal a bunch of dresses and sell them. And then beat up some kids who steal his beer.
I don’t know much about modeling so who the fuck knows if tyrese is good at that, but I’ll tell you this. He’s real good in this role. And I like the character because he’s VERY flawed, but this tyrese is charismatic enough to make you keep rooting for him. to some extent.
There are sort of two villains in the piece. The best one is the great Ving Rhames, who steals the movie as Jody’s mom’s ex-con boyfriend. He’s a tattooed motherfucker who threatens Jody by moving in, inventing new sex moves with his mom, and walking around the house naked. He’s a thug who smokes cigars and dresses up like an old school gangster. Like he could be one of those bank robbing LA cops that worked for Death Row Records and killed those two rappers back in the ’90s. He’s a real scary character but he’s also sort of the yoda character. He has the funniest scenes in the movie and also the most powerful. In short, he is Ving Rhames. (more…)
Only 1 person likes this post. Kinda sad.
Tags: John Singleton, Omar Gooding, Taraji P. Henson, Tyrese, Ving Rhames
Posted in Crime, Drama, Reviews, Romance | 1 Comment »
Saturday, January 1st, 2005
This is the latest from the director Miguel Arteta and the Writer Mike White, who did CHUCK AND BUCK together. Mr. White also used to write for some tv shows, one supposedly really good and the rest called DAWSON’S CREEK and PASADENA. More recently he wrote the only okay ORANGE COUNTY and had a funny cameo in it. He has a small role here where he gets some laughs. He was the star of CHUCK AND BUCK and he’s a real goofball so when he appears in his movies you always want him to have a bigger part.
Before we move on I gotta ask, is this or is this not the same Mike White who does the zine Cashiers Du Cinemart that I used to always get spam for until dejanews shut down and I changed my e-mail? [UPDATE: I e-mailed the Cinemart Mike White, and he said he was not the GOOD GIRL Mike White.] If so that would also make him the same Mike White who makes the videos trying to point out which parts of Tarantino movies are similar to other people’s movies, which would make him kind of an ass. Somebody told me it was the same dude and I tried to verify it but the closest thing I could find for verification was that the Cinemart guy says he doesn’t have a new issue because he spent all of 2001 finding a new house, and then an interview with Miguel mentions that they auditioned Jake Gyllenhall in Mike White’s brand new house and he threw a chair and put a hole in the wall. That’s a pretty good clue I think but I don’t know if it would hold up in a court of law. I mean I wouldn’t want to besmirch Mike White’s name if there were two of them, like how there’s one George Miller who did MAD MAX and the other one who did the Steve Guttenberg movie where a dog rides on a dolphin’s back.
Anyway regardless of whether or not Mike White is an ass, this is a pretty good one and mostly due to his Writing. In this story Jennifer Aniston (the gal from OFFICE SPACE) is in a small town in Texas, working at a K-Mart like store called Retail Rodeo, married to John C. Reilly who is a housepainter, who comes home with Tim Blake Nelson, paint all over their pants, smokes pot and watches TV. Jennifer is real fuckin bored with this life, real depressed, and then she meets the new cashier, a teenager played by Jake Gyllenhall, the independent Tobey Maguire. (more…)
Only 1 person likes this post. Kinda sad.
Tags: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jennifer Aniston, John C. Reilly, Miguel Arteta, Mike White, Tim Blake Nelson, Zooey Deschanel
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Reviews, Romance | No Comments »
Saturday, January 1st, 2005
Not even Mr. McTiernan’s ROLLERBALL managed to scare up as much hatred in movie critics as THE RULES OF ATTRACTION, the latest by Roger Avary, Oscar winning screenwriter best known as the guy who worked at the video store with Quentin Tarantino. I knew there were a handful of fans but many of the reviews were filled with the kind of angry blubbering you usually get when somebody talks about that last Batman and Robin movie or the 30th Anniversary version of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD where they added in extra scenes and changed the music. The kind of thing where you’re so appalled by the movie you can barely even speak English anymore. The film critic at a local alternative weekly interviewed Avary about the movie and the first question was “What were you thinking?”
So I was kind of surprised by how good the movie actually is. Sure it’s pretty pretentious. And if all you see is a “rich college kids are fucked up” message then no, it’s not an original message. But then neither is “war is hell” and that hasn’t made anyone declare the end of the war movie genre for all of eternity. I didn’t find this movie profound (I didn’t find it empty either) but I really thought the execution of it was exceptional. And there is some truth to the story it paints of people being attracted to horrible people and things turning out bad. (In fact, real bad.)
Based on a book by Bret Easton Ellis, who also did AMERICAN PSYCHO, the story is about the painful mating rituals of some college kids. First of all you got the kid who plays Dawson Creek on tv. I believe his tv character is a goody two shoes type but here he is a real asshole coke dealer misogynist named Sean Bateman, apparently the brother of AMERICAN PSYCHO Patrick Bateman. He describes himself as an “emotional vampire” searching for victims. Dawson does a good job, doesn’t really seem like a stunt although it’s a little overboard when he does evil slasher expressions while hitting on women (actually the opposite of his brother Patrick, who looks like a normal guy hitting on women when he is actually a slasher looking for victims). (more…)
Only 1 person likes this post. Kinda sad.
Tags: Bret Easton Ellis, James Van Der Beek, Jessica Biel, Roger Avary, Shannyn Sosamon
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Reviews, Romance | 5 Comments »
Saturday, January 1st, 2005
What this movie is about is pie fucking. There is a kid who fucks a pie in it. There is also a guy who fucks a grapefruit apparently but you don’t see that. But this guy fucks a pie.
The version I saw is the unrated DVD, which I guess has extra pie fucking footage. in the original apparently it was a standing up with the pie position, wheras here it is a missionary position with the kid mounting the pie. The cover of the unrated DVD shows all the young gals on the cover but don’t be fooled, none of them do any pie fucking in the movie, it is only this one guy.
That is only one part though, the rest is about four high school seniors who make a solemn vow to lose their virginity by the night of the big prom or whatever. Then they all go on a bunch of shenanigans trying to find a young gal to have sex with, and they all screw up really bad, and then they decide that the whole thing is stupid and there are more important things than getting laid and just forget it. And then about thirty seconds later every last one of them suddenly finds somebody and starts humping up a storm.
As you can imagine this is pretty standard stuff, but the actors are all likable and there are some funny jokes. There is some observant humor about how kids use scrambled cable channels to get off. But is this kid stupid or what, there is plenty of unscrambled porn right there on the internet. But then again he’s a pie fucker so who knows.
The main thing I noticed about this movie is that kids today don’t show any appreciation for a blowjob. This little ingrate has a pretty gal sucking him off every day and he’s still desperate to “lose his virginity.” Hell I am not saying I wasn’t lickin and moanin in my day but jesus when I was in high school most kids would get down on their knees and thank the lord jesus christ every time they got even a handjob. If they got to stick their finger in for a minute that was an exciting month. And if they were DAMN lucky and did all their rosaries or whatever then MAYBE they’d get a little poke – and only then would it be even a REMOTE POSSIBILITY that they’d get to the oral business. Holy christ, sliding it in a girl’s MOUTH, that was more than they dared dream of! (more…)
Tags: Chris Klein, Jason Biggs, Mena Suvari, Seann William Scott, Tara Reid
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Reviews, Romance | 7 Comments »
