Archive for the ‘Comedy/Laffs’ Category
Saturday, April 13th, 2002
This is a story about the dude who Wrote BEING JOHN MALKOVICH and how if that movie alone didn’t prove that he was some kind of demented genius, then this one does. HUMAN NATURE is the story of a woman with a hormonal problem causing her whole body to be covered with hair, who lives among the animals until she falls in love with a scientist whose life work involves teaching mice the difference between a salad fork and a regular fork. Together they try to civilize a feral man who grew up in the woods thinking he was an ape.
Sounds completely silly and random, right? But what surprised me, a film expert, was the amount of Substance in there. If this were just a regular, make you laugh kind of comedy it would still be the most original, and funniest, in a long time. There were less than ten people at the showing I went to and I was embarassed because I was laughing harder than anyone else. But believe me, I’m the one that’s right. This movie is fuckin hilarious. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry, Mirando Otto, Patricia Arquette, Rhys Ifans, Tim Robbins
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Friday, March 29th, 2002
I guess you have to be suspicious of a movie made in 2002 that is making fun of Barney. Which was a children’s show that was popular for a while a couple years back. Barney is one of those things that everybody in the world hates, but then some people think they are the only ones who hate, and that they are being subversive by complaining about it. But hating Barney is as unique as liking pizza or chocolate. “No way! You like pizza too? I can’t believe this!” There’s not really anything subversive about connecting a lovable tv icon and murder. It’s old. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Edward Norton, Robin Williams
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Crime, Reviews, Thriller | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 19th, 2002
Every so often a picture comes along that is so good as a concept, who the fuck cares if it works as a picture. This is a type of picture that may not be that great to watch, or may even get boring as hell by the end, but you are so happy it exists that you want to own it, memorize it, hang it up on your wall, make it into a t-shirt. You want to tell everybody it’s your favorite movie even though you’d be lying your ass off, because you fell asleep at the end and didn’t even feel compelled to rewind and see what you missed. But still, you loved it.
That picture is, of course, Shaolin Dolemite. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Robert Tai, Rudy Ray Moore
Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Martial Arts, Reviews | No Comments »
Friday, February 1st, 2002
I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me. Here I am battling the IMDB for a prestigious award, I’m trying to prove myself worthy and this is all I have to offer you. Fucking Slackers.
I couldn’t tell you how it happens. Every time I set out to see a particular movie. I mean there are three movies in particular I want to see right now. There’s Little Otik, the Czechoslovakian cartoon about some folks raising a tree stump as their baby. There’s Brotherhood of the Wolf, where the frenchy who directed Crying Freeman mixes French history with kung fu and, I guess werewolves maybe. Who knows. And there’s also Storytelling from the pervert who made Happiness. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Devon Sawa, Jason Schwartzman, Jason Segel
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Reviews, Romance | No Comments »
Friday, January 25th, 2002
I don’t know what you’ve heard about this one, but I keep hearing that it’s a pile of shit. That Todd Solondz has gone from a visionary manipulator of our deepest taboos and human flaws, to some kind of shock value asshole just trying to get a rise out of people. That this is just a big fuck you to the audience with no sense of humanity and etc. etc.
Well none of that is true. I’m not gonna say this is a perfect movie. It feels a little short (apparently they cut out one of three stories, and that seems like it mighta been a mistake). But if it weren’t for all the shit I heard from contrarians waiting to pounce on their former hero, I would say that anybody who liked HAPPINESS would like this one too. Because it’s the same kind of feel – a deep probing of the things that make individuals the most uncomfortable. It’s not as sad as HAPPINESS but it has that same feeling that it is daring you to laugh. Come on motherfucker. Laugh at this. I fucking dare you. Remember, you’re in public here. Do you have the balls to let everyone else in this room know that you think that’s funny?
Do you? (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Paul Giamatti, Robert Wisdon, Selma Blair, Todd Solondz, Xander Berkeley
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Reviews | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
I always wanted to see this one but never got around to it back in the day, and now it is available on DVD for the first time since its original release, as well as the first time ever. And it was worth the wait, because this is the best picture I have seen Mr. Rudy Ray Moore involved in.
Rudy plays Petey Wheatstraw, a famous comedian and rhyming Badass much like Dolemite without the criminal record. In the introduction he is a godlike narrator in some netherworld rhyming about all the great things he can do because he’s the devil’s son in law. Then it shows him being born on a stormy night. First thing he does is bite the doctor. He comes out looking about 13 years old and beats the doctor’s ass for slapping him. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: blaxploitation, Rudy Ray Moore
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
First of all I want to point out I don’t think this picture is really about disco. I mean it gives a different view of the phenomenon, showing it only in the early ’80s when it was taken over by a bunch of yuppies and it tries to explain what it meant to those people. This is not the young and exciting working class disco of Saturday Night Fever. This is at the point when you had to look a certain way to get in. For one of the main characters jimmy the club is his life, but not because he loves to dance. Because he works in advertising and he brings his clients there to impress them. That’s the kind of bullshit scene we’re talking about here.
But even though it makes that point it’s not a disco movie, it’s not one of these movies about dancing and partying and what not. What it is about is a bunch of young rich kids fresh out of college talking endlessly about a bunch of pretentious bullshit about their generation or relationships or which is the best cocktail for their image or what is the true meaning of Lady and the Tramp. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chloe Sevigny, Kate Beckinsale, Whit Stillman
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Reviews | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
Remember that motherfucker that made Happiness? His name is Todd Solondz and you might think he’s some hipster that came out of nowhere with 1996’s Welcome to the Dollhouse and then hit it big when he was Outlaw enough to refuse to cut Happiness, brought it to a different distributor who would release it unrated or whatever. Well, that’s what I thought but then I found out about this, his first picture from 1989, one year after the release of Die Hard.
And I gotta be honest this movie is a piece of shit. It is only worth watching as a curiosity for fans of the other two Solondz works. What is weird is it has all his themes of loneliness, hopelessness etc. except in the context of a more goofy mainstream comedy. Solondz is actually the star of the picture playing a struggling playwriter named Ira. And this Solondz, I mean to be frankly honest, this guy is what they call a nerd. I mean seriously. He’s a skinny, scraggly haired, overbited weirdo with gigantic glasses, a squeaky, whiny voice and weird affectations. He would be right at home in one of his other movies. But here he is cast as a Woody Allen type stuttering neurotic Writer character. And he is in a functional lifestyle with successful friends, he even goes on dates and gets laid. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Stanley Tucci, Todd Solondz
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
As you know I like to watch the classics but the only way to tell for sure if it is a classic is based on what channel it is on. This one was on American Movie Classics so that’s how I know. If it was on TBS or especially USA that would be another story. Anyway it is an old one from James Whale the director of Frankenstein.
Boris Karloff from the Frankenstein gets top billing but let’s be honest here, he’s playing a mute butler for christ’s sake. This is not a starring role it is strictly a gimp role in my opinion. I mean I know for a fact the man can talk, and can talk well. But you wouldn’t know it the way he’s typecasted in some of these pictures. Here he’s just a big oafish brute who gets drunk and tries to grab the pretty ladies. He looks like they left the Frankenstein makeup on him and pasted a beard over it the poor bastard. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Boris Karloff, Charles Laughton, James Whale
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Horror, Reviews, Thriller | No Comments »
Friday, December 7th, 2001
When you get two Oscar nominations for best director in the same year (for Erin Brockovich and Traffic) and you’re at the commercial peak of your career, what do you do for a followup?
I think Steven Soderbergh has the right answer. Two Oscar nominations is nothing to commit suicide over. Sure it’s embarassing, but it’s not the end of the world. After all it was only one year earlier that his picture The Limey won Best Picture, Musical Comedy or Badass in the 1999 Outlaw Awards, and that magic could not be entirely faded. So Soderbergh packed up the political pretensions, left them out on the porch in a box marked for the retard center, and went and made a casino heist movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Steve Soderbergh
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 1 Comment »
