Posts Tagged ‘Bill Murray’
Wednesday, November 3rd, 2021
There are two movies I had been wanting to see for a while but they were Apple TV+ exclusives and maybe I was gonna get a free preview to check them out or something but I never got around to it. But recently due to a housesitting situation I had access. So, Spike Jonze’s BEASTIE BOYS STORY is a really great “the story of the Beastie Boys as told live on stage by Mike D and Ad Rock” documentary that made me cry from both laughter and the other kind. The humbly told autobiography of an all time great band and a moving story of friendship. I don’t really want to review it though, just want to say if you love them try to find a way to watch it, you won’t regret it.
The other one is Sofia Coppola’s ON THE ROCKS (2020), and this one I can write a little about. Also, it’s one you can watch without subscribing or housesitting, because they just put it out on regular old blu-ray and DVD. It stars Rashida Jones (COP OUT) as Laura Keane, an author in Manhattan trying to work on her new book while her husband Dean (Marlon Wayans, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS) is launching a new company. (A “tech startup” they call it, so our suspicions are up.) He’s been doing all these business trips and she sees how he’s surrounded by all these young attractive women, and then a couple weird things happen like she finds a toiletry bag in his luggage that he admits belongs to his co-worker Fiona (Jessica Henwick, UNDERWATER). And at a work party she sees Fiona touching him, and the other women get real quiet and awkward around her when they find out she’s Dean’s wife. It doesn’t look good. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Murray, Jenny Slate, Jessica Henwick, Juliana Canfield, Marlon Wayans, Philippe Le Sourd, Rashida Jones, Sofia Coppola
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 46 Comments »
Tuesday, May 18th, 2021
May 17, 1991
If we agree with director Bill Duke that A RAGE IN HARLEM is “no god damn comedy,” then we have now come to Summer 1991’s first actually funny comedy. WHAT ABOUT BOB? is also the first ’91 release we’ve come to that seems arguably too problematicTM to be made now, at least quite like this.
You see, Bill Murray (following SCROOGED, GHOSTBUSTERS II and QUICK CHANGE) plays a person with multiple debilitating psychological disorders who follows his psychiatrist to his vacation home and, as they say, drives him crazy. Of course this is uncomfortable because we know so many horror stories of stalkers – troubled people crossing boundaries with results that are less hilarious and more tragic. But what really feels of-a-different-time is just how much poor Bob Wiley’s struggles are played for laughs. As he squirms and winces while struggling just to step outside of his apartment or touch a doorknob or get on an elevator, the score by Miles Goodman (TEEN WOLF, K-9) makes sure we know that it’s cute and funny. That seems kind of mean, or just off base when I think about how much Bob reminds me of a much less lovable Bob I dealt with for years at my day job. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anne V. Coates, Bill Murray, Charlie Korsmo, Frank Oz, Julie Hagerty, Kathryne Erbe, Michael Ballhaus, Richard Dreyfuss, Roger Bowen, Summer of 1991, Tom Aldredge, Tom Schulman
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs | 17 Comments »
Wednesday, July 3rd, 2019
Jim Jarmusch’s zombie comedy THE DEAD DON’T DIE is… I mean, it’s a zombie comedy by Jim Jarmusch. Which is unexpected. When the trailer came out I couldn’t tell if they were trying to mislead us or if Jarmusch had made something totally different from his other movies. The answer is in the middle, leaning toward the first one. It feels closer to normal Jarmusch than to, like, SHAUN OF THE DEAD. It’s high on oddness and quirk, low on concept, plot structure or traditional resolution. Compared to ZOMBIELAND or TUCKER AND DALE or something the humor is bone dry and the pace is molasses slow.
But by LIMITS OF CONTROL standards it’s an action packed thrill-o-rama. It has a whole bunch of zombies digging out of graves like Thriller or RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, pulling out people’s intestines for a snack, and getting their heads chopped or blown off. They’re respectable zombies, too – o.g. slow shambling style, some personality to them, one played by Iggy Pop (DEAD MAN, THE CROW: CITY OF ANGELS). There’s one pretty distinctive touch in that they emit puffs of dust from their wounds. I imagine Jarmusch worked with more FX people on this than on all his other movies combined. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adam Driver, Bill Murray, Caleb Landry Jones, Carol Kane, Chloe Sevigny, Danny Glover, Eszter Balint, Iggy Pop, Jahi Winston, Jim Jarmusch, Larry Fessenden, Maya Delmont, Rosie Perez, Selena Gomez, Steve Buscemi, Sturgill Simpson, Taliyah Whitaker, Tilda Swinton, Tom Waits, zombies
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Horror, Reviews | 18 Comments »
Monday, May 7th, 2018
WILD THINGS is the ultimate Sharon-Stone-meets-Brian-DePalma ’90s erotic thriller on swamp gas. It’s legitimately sleazy and provocative, but also clever and funny and audacious. It has a really game cast with grown ups played by men who are former young hotshots aging into respected veterans, and teens played by young women who were on a roll at the time but never got their proper due. And it’s usually grim and serious director John McNaughton (HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, NORMAL LIFE) taking a rare dive into slick, multiplex-worthy entertainment.
I’ve never been to Florida, and when I finally go there, let’s face it, I’ll probly just go to Disney World. So my impression of the place comes from Charles Willeford novels, Miami Vice, and the storied misadventures of Florida Man. From that perspective, WILD THINGS seems like a perfect mythical charting of the frontier that would soon bring us the election of George W. Bush. For the opening credits, helicopter shots survey the land from the swamps to the ritzy coastal town of Blue Bay, a collection of estates, country clubs and future Mar-a-Lago members where people wear white and tropical prints and the school counselor and his girlfriend both drive Benzes. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Murray, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Denise Richards, Florida, George S. Clinton, John McNaughton, Kevin Bacon, Matt Dillon, Neve Campbell, Summer of '98, Theresa Russell
Posted in Crime, Mystery, Reviews | 31 Comments »
Monday, July 18th, 2016
GHOSTBUSTERS (1984) is the story of three male scientists – Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Bill Murray – who live and work in New York City and specialize in studying the supernatural. They lose their grant at the college just because the uptight higher ups notice that they are bringing great shame and humiliation upon the institution by wasting everyone’s time and money on an area of study that is not real. And that’s without even knowing that Murray (WILD THINGS) doesn’t totally believe in it and spends his days doing fake telepathy tests just to hit on women.
So they decide to lease a beat up old fire station and start a scrappy new business that treats exorcism like pest control and advertises on TV and what not. Lucky for them they are correct, it turns out ghosts are real and there are a couple actual hauntings going on in the city. A female client (Sigourney Weaver, ABDUCTION) comes to their male offices with a huge case: her refrigerator is a portal to a ghost dimension or some shit and she and her neighbor (Rick Moranis, STREETS OF FIRE) get possessed and an ancient Sumerian god named Gozer (Slavitz Jovan, KNIGHT OF CUPS) appears on top of the building and they have to shoot lasers at it, etc. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Elmer Bernstein, Ernie Hudson, ghosts, Harold Ramis, Ivan Reitman, Richard Edlund, Rick Moranis, Sigourney Weaver, William Atherton
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 113 Comments »
Monday, April 18th, 2016
Disney’s 1967 animated version of THE JUNGLE BOOK was pretty much a hangout movie. A bunch of animal dudes kickin it in the jungle, occasionally singing songs. Like HOUSE PARTY but with snakes and shit. The tiger Shere Khan plays the part of Full Force.
Now modern Disney and director Jon Favreau (executive producer, GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS) have brought in more of the world and narrative of Rudyard Kipling’s stories for an excellent live action(ish) version that captures plenty of the spirit of the old one while also being totally different. It uses versions of the original songs and even evokes Disney animation with a painted version of the castle logo, but never feels redundant. It’s like putting on glasses and seeing that version in more detail, from the visuals to the story.
I have to admit, after COWBOYS & ALIENS I kinda thought maybe we got too excited about Favreau as a director because of IRON MAN. Clearly I was wrong. This is a movie I can’t imagine many directors pulling off. Like with IRON MAN he finds a perfect balance between nerdy love for the source material and clear vision of how to tell the story in a dramatic way we haven’t quite seen on screen before.
And it can’t be easy competing with the memory of Stephen Sommers’ 1994 version.
(That might be unfair. I haven’t seen it.)
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ben Kingsley, Bill Murray, Christopher Walken, Disney, Idris Elba, Jon Favreau, Justin Marks, live action remake of cartoon, Lupita Nyong'o, Scarlett Johansson, talking animals
Posted in Family, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 111 Comments »
Saturday, July 14th, 2012
When last I saw Garfield and friends, I was in a Bush-re-election-induced mania, the type that would cause a man to watch the movie GARFIELD. Now I decided to watch part 2 as part of our nation’s celebration of the comic strip going on in San Diego. That shows you how tolerant we, as a society, have grown toward Garfield. It’s like the whole thing about a lobster in a pot and the burner turns on and it gets slowly hotter and the fuckin thing doesn’t notice ’til it’s too late because it’s so gradual. Somehow I went from being horrified by the bizarre digital abomination that stars in this movie to not really being that bothered by it when I choose to watch part 2 of my own free will.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Murray, Billy Connolly, Breckin Meyer, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Roscoe Lee Browne, talking animals, Vinnie Jones
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 42 Comments »
Monday, June 11th, 2012
Now that GI JOE: RETALIATION has become GI JOE: PROCRASTINATION that means the big Bruce Willis movie of the summer to hold us off until EXPENDABLES 2 will have to be Wes Anderson’s MOONRISE KINGDOM. Bruce plays Captain Sharp, head of the Island Police, New Penzance Township, charged with the task of capturing a fugitive – Sam (Jared Gilman), a disturbed young orphan gone AWOL from the Khaki Scouts of North America, Troop 55, to run away with his also disturbed pen pal/girlfriend Suzy (Kara Hayward).
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Bruce, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand, Harvey Keitel, Tilda Swinton, Wes Anderson
Posted in Bruce, Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 76 Comments »
Friday, April 29th, 2011
Yes, it’s true, this is a movie about Mickey Rourke and Bill Murray fighting over Megan Fox because she has wings. Mickey plays a jazz trumpeter (the serious type who always wears colorful suits, a fedora and pointy shoes) who gets in trouble because he accidentally slept with the wife of a gangster named Happy (Murray). So he gets beat up and left in the desert.
When he wakes up he wanders and finds a carnival with a sideshow. That’s where he sees this winged lady. Not riding a ferris wheel – she’s in the sideshow, because she has wings. Not sure if you got that.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Murray, Chuck Liddell, Kelly Lynch, magical realism, Megan Fox, Mickey Rourke, Mitch Glazer, Rhys Ifans
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 41 Comments »
Saturday, April 15th, 2006
Last week I reviewed this movie THE ICE HARVEST which I thought was only okay. And I think I blamed director Harold Ramis, who I accused of mediocrity. Then the other day, through coincidence or karma or something, I ended up watching GROUNDHOG DAY, which is the Bill Murray movie Ramis directed back in 1993.
I’d seen this movie before but I actually forgot how good it was, so I gotta give Mr. Ramis credit. I give credit where credit is due, and credit is due right here. Harold, here is your credit. Take it.
I’m sure you’ve seen this one before but if not here’s the deal. Bill Murray is a bitter, cynical weather man who has to go to Punxatawney to cover the Groundhog Day ceremony where they pull the groundhog out of a tree stump and pretend to ask him if he saw his shadow or not. Bill clearly hates this shit so he gets it over with and tries to get the hell out, but a blizzard (which he had predicted would not happen) strands him at a bed and breakfast. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Murray
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Reviews, Romance | 16 Comments »
