I watched Bad Santa last night, a wholly inappropriate family movie, but I laughed my ass off. There are a few scenes in that movie that are truly hilarious, such as the scene involving the wooden pickle. I've got to agree with Roger Ebert's review, Billy Bob Thornton was pretty brave to tackle this role. I about fell off the couch at this line, spoken by Santa:
"I turned a corner yesterday...I beat up some kids. . .I felt like I really accomplished something. . . "
If you're looking for a great romantic comedy, check out Love Actually. We watched it this weekend and had many good laughs. It's a bit schmaltzy and sentimental at times, and there are probably a few too many characters to try to keep track of, but it was really a lot of fun. If you haven't seen it yet, put it at the top of your Netflix rental queue.
I saw Black Hawk Down this weekend. It isn't one of those movies you can wait to see on video, it demands the true Theatre experience to really hit you with the full impact of the movie.
And what an impact it was. This is the first movie that could actually cause Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in a person. Yes, the movie was gory, and normally that doesn't bother me. But the level of realism attained in this movie was what really drove it home, it wasn't cheesy cartoon-like violence, those wounds seemed real, and the knowledge that the movie is based on actual events makes it seem real to the viewer.
I was literally horrified, it's a terrifying experience to watch the planned raid by the American soldiers go so disasterously wrong. This isn't a cheesy patriotic film, it's not about moral superiority, or great leadership. It's a illustration of Murphy's Law, and it's worth $6.50 and 2.5 hours of your time.
I don't pretend to be a serious movie critic, however, so I'll link to my favorite critic, Roger Ebert, and his review of the film.
It was too hot to spend any significant time outdoors this weekend, so I saw three movies. I saw Shrek and A.I. at the local theatres, and enjoyed Cast Away from the comfort of my living room.
Of the three, I liked Shrek the best. The computer animation was simply stunning on the big screen, and it was much funnier than I thought it was going to be. The little digs at Disney were quite funny as well..
A.I. was quite entertaining, though a little long. This is most definitely not a movie for kids. Don't take yours along thinking that it is. The underrated Bicentennial Man covered much of the same material as this movie, and I think it did it better.
Cast Away was very entertaining, though I think it would have been even better if more time was spent focused on him on the island, and less time...well, I'm not going to give anything away like the trailers unfortunately did.
Alas, it is just as I feared, Pearl Harbor is no good. At least that's what Roger Ebert says in his review. I was afraid that Pearl Harbor would suffer from Armageddon syndrome, in which lots of explosions and cheesy patriotism are substituted for a decent plot or any semblance of realism. I can suspend disbelief, but I don't want a movie to treat me like a 5 year old. It's too bad Spielberg or James Cameron couldn't have done this movie instead. I'd gladly suffer through a love story element if the director had taken Cameron's obessive-compulsive approach to historical accuracy.
I almost always agree with Ebert's reviews of movies, his tastes run parallel to mine, and he hates being insulted by a movie even more than I do. Here's the first paragraph from his review:
"Pearl Harbor" is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its centerpiece is 40 minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality. The film has been directed without grace, vision or originality, and although you may walk out quoting lines of dialogue, it will not be because you admire them.
I woke up early this morning, and decided to watch the DVD of Titan A.E. that's been sitting on my entertainment center for the last few weeks. It was really a fun movie for a Sunday morning, not necessarily superb, but entertaining and full of outstanding computer generated graphics.
This is one of those DVD's that everyone should have in their collection, just to show off their DVD player. The visuals are outstanding on this disc, it made me wish I'd seen it in theatres, where it would have been even more breathtaking. The story is somewhat derivative, containing a lot of elements from Star Wars and Star Trek movies, but it's never boring, just not entirely original.
The one thing I was surprised at was the level of violence in the film, it was a little more than I was expecting, so this probably isn't a great movie for your five year old. In turn, this makes the movie have a little more appeal for an older audience, however. The voice acting is top-notch, Matt Damon, Drew Barrymore, and Bill Pullman are just some of the actors who lent their voices to the characters. Watch the credits at the end, and you'll find a few more celebrities you know as well...
All in all, it was a fun movie to watch, and a great film to show off your equipment and the quality of DVD. It's not the greatest film of all time, but it's something that both a 10 year old and an adult could enjoy together. It reminded me a lot of Transformers: The Movie, now 14 years old, and made me wonder what it would have looked like given today's technology.
I saw the movie Gladiator this weekend. A very enjoyable show, but surely not one for the kiddies. As I sat there watching the violence unfold, I realized that this kind of stuff is exactly what Trey Parker & Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, were commenting on in their movie. Anyhow, it's a very entertaining summer flick, and although a few plot points were rather predictable, overall it was a lot of fun. On the IMDB, I gave it a score of 8 out of 10. I skimmed a couple other reviews on the net, a couple people commented that the fact that the actors had different accents bothered them. I found this pretty laughable considering that:
