Posts Tagged ‘Gwyneth Paltrow’
Tuesday, June 19th, 2018
June 5, 1998
I thought I had reviewed A PERFECT MURDER before, but for some reason it didn’t come up when I searched for it, so I watched it again. Then when I searched for my DIAL M FOR MURDER review to refresh my memory I did find a review of A PERFECT MURDER from five years ago. But that review wasn’t that good so fuck that review. This is the first time I’ve reviewed it in my opinion.
A PERFECT MURDER is the first of two Viggo-Mortensen-co-starring Hitchcock remakes that came out in 1998. The other is Gus Van Sant’s PSYCHO, which is not a summer movie, but is worth bringing up as a comparison. While that was a complete anomaly – an audience-provoking experiment infused with bright colors and stylized costuming – this loose, updated remake of DIAL M FOR MURDER is an expensive, high gloss star vehicle. Remember? They used to make R-rated thrillers that were A-movies, sometimes by top directors. Michael Douglas’s movie before this was David Fincher’s THE GAME. For co-star Gwyneth Paltrow it was part of a prolific period – after being in SE7EN and then really blowing up with EMMA she starred in five 1998 movies: SLIDING DOORS, GREAT EXPECTATIONS, HUSH, this, and best picture winner SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrew Davis, David Suchet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Michael Douglas, Patrick Smith Kelly, Summer of '98, Viggo Mortensen
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 26 Comments »
Monday, April 30th, 2018
(Honestly it would be hard to spoil everything major that happens in this movie, because it’s hard to keep track of it all. But this review is loose and reckless with SPOILERS)
I learned in 2012 when THE AVENGERS came out to never underestimate Marvel. So on the third AVENGERS movie, INFINITY WAR, I figured they could pull it off – they could combine most of the main characters developed over 17 previous movies (people from the IRON MAN movies, THE INCREDIBLE HULK, the CAPTAIN AMERICA movies, the THOR movies, the AVENGERS movies, the GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY movies, DOCTOR STRANGE, SPIDER-MAN HOMECOMING and BLACK PANTHER) into one big super hero monster mash. But back when I had first learned that lesson, when they introduced the purple CGI space monster villain Thanos after the credits, I gotta admit I was still skeptical. I didn’t know how they were gonna make that guy cool.
They did it. To me he’s their best villain outside of Killmonger. It’s a cliche to say that comic book characters are the Greek gods of the modern age, but Thanos (Josh Brolin, JONAH HEX) is the villain that most lives up to that description. In fact, one minor problem I had with the movie is that he seems so convincingly powerful I wondered what the hell the Avengers and the Guardians thought they were doing repeatedly going after him. Like, come on Star Lord (Chris Pratt, ZERO DARK THIRTY), why are you pointing a laser gun at this guy and acting like that’s gonna do anything? Are you stupid? (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Mackie, Anthony Russo, Benedict Cumberbatch, Chadwick Boseman, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pratt, Cobie Smulders, Danai Gurira, Dave Bautista, Elizabeth Olsen, Gwyneth Paltrow, Josh Brolin, Letitia Wright, Mark Ruffalo, Marvel Comics, Robert Downey Jr., Sam Hargrave, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Tom Holland, Zoe Saldana
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 104 Comments »
Friday, May 10th, 2013
(yes, the ‘Three’ is spelled out on the actual movie, so I consider that the official title)
[by the way since the movie’s been out a week or more in most countries this review is written in the spirit of HEAVY SPOILERS]
IRON MAN THREE takes the modern super hero movie and shakes it up a little bit, weirdly enough to be interesting and fun, but not well enough to be great. Directed and co-written by Shane Black, the writer of LETHAL WEAPON and THE LAST BOYSCOUT, it’s an odd mix of the ongoing Iron Man story and the unmistakable Shane Black style.
I know the script is originally written by Drew Pearce, but it’s got Black all over it: burnt out, mentally disturbed protagonist, conversational and self-aware first-person narration, most characters have witty responses to most situations, little moppet hardened by messy parental situation, constantly sets up movie conventions only to deflate them, and yes, it follows LETHAL WEAPON, THE LONG KISS GOOD NIGHT and KISS KISS BANG BANG in taking place at Christmas. Coincidentally it even has a crazy white guy and straight laced black guy buddy team. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ben Kingsley, Christmas, Guy Pearce, Gwyneth Paltrow, James Badge Dale, Marvel Comics, Rebecca Hall, Robert Downey Jr., Shane Black
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 153 Comments »
Thursday, March 14th, 2013
With DIAL M FOR MURDER fresh on my mind I was really curious how they updated it in the 1998 remake A PERFECT MURDER. In this one Michael Douglas plays the scheming husband, Gwyneth Paltrow is the wife and Viggo Mortensen (when he was still a rising character actor and not yet the guy from LORD OF THE RINGS) is her boyfriend.
The basics are all there. The husband knows the wife is cheating, he blackmails someone else into doing the deed, but she ends up killing the guy, and he has to desperately maneuver to cover his tracks, ultimately being undone by a mistake he made after giving the would-be killer a key to the apartment. But within that framework they do all kinds of things to update, expand, complicate and alter things. Some of it is kinda clever in the way it will surprise you if you’re expecting everything to go the same as in the Hitchcock version (I can’t say “the original,” because that would be the play by Frederick Knott, credited as the basis of this). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrew Davis, David Suchet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Michael Douglas, Viggo Mortensen
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 17 Comments »
Saturday, May 5th, 2012
spoilerish
As much as I enjoyed Uma Thurman and the teddy bear costumes in the original AVENGERS, this one is an improvement. It’s a fun super hero movie with lots of colorful super-characters like in the X-MEN pictures, but with more of a disaster-movie-level of spectacle. Instead of just fighting 1-3 supervillains they’re fighting an alien invasion. As you know this teams up characters from IRON MAN 1-2, THE INCREDIBLE HULK (2008) (arguably), CAPTAIN AMERICA and THOR under the direction and writing of Joss Whedon (SERENITY, Buffy the Vampire, all that). If they had had some guy from Doctor Who in there and based it on a video game or anime it would’ve had the monopoly on all of the existing nerd audiences. But also it’s fun for all of us.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Gwyneth Paltrow, Harry Dean Stanton, Jeremy Renner, Joss Whedon, Mark Ruffalo, Marvel Comics, Robert Downey Jr., Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 451 Comments »
Thursday, January 19th, 2012
HOOK, man. What went wrong? Let’s try to figure it out.
One thing I noticed about HOOK: it’s not called PAN. The title HOOK implies a new perspective on the PETER PAN tale, like we’re gonna see it from the pirate’s perspective, or even like it’s gonna be a Captain Hook biopic. Maybe we would learn about his struggles growing up, how he wrote his first hits, rose to the top of the charts, substance abuse, falling in love, the thing with the crocodile, etc. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Dante Basco, Dustin Hoffman, Gwyneth Paltrow, J.M. Barrie, Robin Williams, Steven Spielberg
Posted in Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 65 Comments »
Friday, September 17th, 2004
Sometimes it almost seems like there’s a whole genre of “INDIANA JONES-TYPE” pictures – movies that look back nostalgically to those golden days when George Lucas looked back nostalgically to those other golden days. THE MUMMY is one example of this horrible type of picture.
I bet some individuals consider SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW to be in that same category, but I think it’s different. It doesn’t have that same third generation xerox feel, because this movie actually feels alot more like the old serials and pulp novels and crap that influenced the genre than the STAR WARS pictures and what not do. The technology used is very modern (apparently it was all shot with actors in front of blue screens and everything else is computered in there) but there’s not a whole lot of modernizing going on here. It takes place in some alternate 1930s where THE WIZARD OF OZ exists but the Hindenburg never blew up and some British fighter jet hot shot named Joseph Sky Captain defends America and the world from evil science with his “army for hire” and wacky inventor sidekick. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Angelina Jolie, green screen, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, old timey super heroes
Posted in Action, Mystery, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Saturday, November 10th, 2001
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. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Farrelly Brothers, fat suit, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jack Black, Jason Alexander
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Reviews, Romance | No Comments »
