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Posts Tagged ‘Matthew Broderick’

The Cable Guy

Thursday, June 18th, 2026

June 14, 1996

THE CABLE GUY was, somehow, a divisive movie. It’s such a good idea: what if you slipped the guy hooking up your cable some extra money to give you the pay channels for free, and then he felt entitled to be your friend, and you couldn’t get rid of him? And what if he was an over-the-top goofball Jim Carrey but it played out like a SINGLE WHITE FEMALE or CAPE FEAR type suspense thriller? It’s very funny, but directed like a real thriller by Ben Stiller (following his debut REALITY BITES), so it turns out it wasn’t what most of society expected or desired from Carrey after his run of ACE VENTURA, THE MASK, DUMB AND DUMBER, BATMAN FOREVER and ACE VENTURA 2. We’ll get into that a little more later, but for now, fuck ‘em. They were wrong, obviously.

Steven Kovacs (Matthew Broderick, WARGAMES, THE LION KING) is newly separated from his girlfriend Robin (Leslie Mann, LAST MAN STANDING), having freaked her out by proposing. So he has a new apartment and needs the cable hooked up and it’s his buddy Rick (Jack Black, WATERWORLD) who suggests bribing the guy, which is not really Steven’s way, but he does it anyway. Great idea, Rick.

The cable guy says his name is Ernie “Chip” Douglas, acts like he’s caressing a nipple when he finds the “sweet spot” to drill into the wall, intuits that Steven is dealing with a breakup, likes to say “I’m just messin with ya” and “I’m just jerkin yer chain,” and pressures him into hanging out the next day. Then he brings him to sit on top of the city’s satellite dish, the place where he goes to think, to talk about the future of cable and internet. (read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Thriller | 22 Comments »

The Lion King (1994)

Monday, June 24th, 2024

June 24, 1994

There’s this term they got now, “Disney adult.” I’d rather jump in a pool of lava than be called that. I feel that it goes without saying that animation is an artform, that Disney is a historically great animation studio, and that adults can appreciate their films if they want to, so turning it into an identity group is not necessary. I’m not a person who would strut around in a Winnie the Pooh letterman’s jacket like I think I’m Ryan Gosling in DRIVE, I’m just an ordinary respecter of excellence in animation.

Most of my favorites are ones from before I was born, like PINOCCHIO, but I also respect the now-vaunted “renaissance” period of the ‘90s and enjoyed most of them in theaters. I was in my teens or twenties then, so I was never indoctrinated by the clamshell VHS tapes, and maybe my tastes are just weird. I used to rate BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and ALADDIN at the top but to me their greatness has faded a little with time, so I’m afraid I have THE RESCUERS DOWN UNDER, POCAHONTAS and TARZAN at the top. I know millennials love MULAN and I wish I did too, it seems like the subject matter I’d like best, I just think the animation and story are mediocre by their standards.

And, even worse, I never liked THE LION KING (as I confessed when I reviewed its widely derided, $1.664 billion box office grossing 2019 remake). I’ve watched the original several times over its decades of existence, always thinking this is gonna be the time it works for me. Never does. (read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in Reviews, Cartoons and Shit | 26 Comments »

WarGames

Tuesday, May 30th, 2023

June 3, 1983

A mere three weeks after John Badham’s BLUE THUNDER, he came out with another movie that is in awe of, but also a cautionary tale about, then-newfangled technology that (as one would assume) seems very crude from the perspective of 40 years later. This one is WARGAMES, and the technology is computers – both home computers used by high school hacker prodigy David Lightman (Matthew Broderick in his second film, after MAX DUGAN RETURNS) and a more fantastical experimental A.I. (though that’s not the term they use) created by eccentric genius Dr. Stephen Falken (John Wood, later in LADYHAWKE with Broderick).

David is well known to the vice principal due to his “attitude problem.” He gets kicked out of class for an actually very high quality smart ass response to the teacher, who writes “ASEXUAL” on the board and asks who came up with the idea of reproducing without sex. He hears the class laughing at something David whispers, and asks him to repeat it.

“Your wife,” David says. (read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in Reviews | 15 Comments »

Godzilla (1998)

Tuesday, May 22nd, 2018

“We got approached with GODZILLA, and Dean was really in favor. I said, ‘Are you crazy? Have you seen a Godzilla film? How does the monster look? They put a guy in there.'” –Roland Emmerich

May 20, 1998

Man, LOST IN SPACE was a terrible summer blockbuster, but I was kind of excited to take a look at it because I had skipped it at the time and there was 20 years of curiosity build-up. And there’s another one coming later in the summer that I despised at the time, but it ended up being influential and kickstarting an in-my-opinion-bad-but-oddly-fascinating filmography, so I’m looking forward to finding out how I’ll feel about it now.

GODZILLA has neither of those factors going for it. I thought it sucked then and it has not grown better or more interesting. Director Roland Emmerich (WHITE HOUSE DOWN) has gone on to make fairly successful (but widely mocked) FX movies, often in the disaster genre. The only significance to this one is that it deflated his premature ascension to blockbuster-A-list after the still-befuddling-to-me smash success of INDEPENDENCE DAY in 1996. TriStar Pictures managed to build up fevered anticipation with a series of teasers that kept the design of the monster a secret. I remember one used the scene where the fisherman runs down the dock as Godzilla’s spikes tear through it. The tagline “SIZE DOES MATTER” simultaneously promised thrilling spectacle and giggled “ha ha, you get it, because of penises.”

I was skeptical on account of my belief in the auteur theory. I was one of the rare wet blankets who hated ID4 (which stands for “Independence Day takes place partly on July 4th”) and as much as I wanted to see a cool modern Godzilla movie I didn’t think this guy had the skills to do it. On May 20th most of the world ended up agreeing with me. (read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in Monster, Reviews | 86 Comments »

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