Day 181: Not Another Teen Movie (2001)

R, 1 hr. 30 min.  Directed by: Joel Gallen.  Release Date: December 14, 2001.  DVD Release Date: April 30, 2002. 

I have a love-hate relationship with the spoof.  I love the idea of making fun of some of the dumber trends that exist within the various genres of film.  There have been some moderately good spoofs made in the last decade or two (and beyond):  Scary Movie, Vampires Suck, and The Naked Gun come to mind immediately.  Well, Vampires Suck comes to mind because I'm sure it'll start a massive trend of bagging on how stupid the Twilight movies are.  Then, there have been some absolutely terrible creations, like Meet The Spartans, Disaster Movie, and Dance Flick.  Not Another Teen Movie falls somewhere in the middle.  It isn't terrible enough to make me wish a falling meteor would strike me while I watch the movie, but it wasn't funny enough to really keep me entertained for the whole movie.

This spoof has some good bones, although I think it tries to take on too much, which is one of the crimes of the spoof genre in general.  Better spoofs tend to minimize their influences, whereas the worst offenders of the genre will have a single movie that defines their storyline, but will take influences from every movie in the genre they're attempting to poke fun at.  The more influences, the more chaos and the less funny the formula seems to create.  Without giving too much thought to the question, I guess that Teen Movie spoofs scenes from more than a dozen teen movies spanning three decades: Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Jawbreaker, She's All That, Varsity Blues, blah blah blah.  The list goes on and on.  They could have reduced that number, kept their comedic efforts the same, but gotten a better overall effect.  

The cast is also a bit stronger than average.  Led by Chris Evans, who I like, but I think he gets bum parts because of how young he is.  I'm hoping in another five years or so he'll get to cut his teeth on real parts and leave these teen comedies and action movies behind... although I may change my tune on that last after I see Captain America this summer.  It's not like he'd be the first young actor with potential to be more than an action star that gets rooted in a single genre.

The movie waffles between funny and absurd.  It doesn't take itself too seriously, and I'm all for that.  I own this, but only watch it once every few years.  It has some really great scenes, and others that make my gorge rise.  I'd make this decision based on what you think about spoofs yourself, because picking a spoof is very hit or miss.

Day 180: Pretty Ugly People (2008)

R, 1 hr. 38 min.  Directed by: Tate Taylor.  Release Date: April 12, 2008.  DVD Release Date: January 12, 2010.

Two years ago, I made a trip to California.  It’s where I’m from, and I hadn’t lived in the state since 2002.  It still feels like home, which was a part of the reason I went.  Most of the reason for my trip was I was curious.  I was curious to see what’s going on in the lives of the people who meant so much to me in my high school and college days, curious to see if I still recognized them.  To give you an idea, my graduation years are '95 (Archbishop Mitty High) and '99 (University of the Pacific).  I figured after the better part of fifteen years, it was time to SEE my friends, not just type at them.  Facebook helps keep in touch on an irregular basis, but it wasn’t quite the same.  What I learned is that MOST of my friends are pretty much the same as I remember them.  Some were a bit heavier, some a bit lighter, some show a remarkable sense of self-security and responsibility that they'd lacked when I knew them, a few were wearing new emotional or physical scars, one or two had come out of the closet, one or two were still firmly in the closet, but they’re all pretty much recognizable as the people I loved back in the day. I was fortunate that a few of my fraternity brothers and our little sisters were able to get together for a few hours, which ended up being one of the highlights of a truly awesome trip.

This movie had some of the same ideas behind it, except that it was like the ideas went in to Bizzaroworld. Here, a woman reaches out to her college friends after gastrointestinal bypass and a massive weight loss, excited at the prospect of being as “pretty” as they were in college… only to find out most of her friends were as ugly on the inside as she had always felt.  It was kind of sad seeing how the pressures of being an adult wrecked almost all of these people, and how their relationships were suffering as a result. It was sad that it took me almost forty minutes, approximately half the movie, to figure out that there wasn’t going to be that part of the movie where it “got” funny.

In fact, I realized about ten minutes later that this was not truly intended to be a comedy… or someone’s sense of humor is pretty seriously whack.  I don’t know what to say about this movie.  Pretty Ugly People was billed as a comedy, and somehow that doesn’t feel right, despite the fact that the only three people I recognized from the cast all tend to do comedies., mostly of the Indie milieu, which hasn't been synonymous with suck for a few years now.  Granted, none of those three had ever been in a good comedy, mind you, but still, they knew how a comedy should look.  So I was pretty disappointed.

Despite all the nonsense, I realized I liked the main character’s journey to self discovery.  I guess it’s never a bad time to learn not to judge a book by its cover, although it might be a little sad that she waited until she was close to 40 before she figured that simple truth out.  I also liked how the friends seemed to fall back into their old roles, as if nothing really had changed them, even though I don't think that's even a little realistic.  I even like when the conflict started, but I thought it was odd how two spouses were included in this “friends weekend.”  In my recent fraternity reunion, it seemed to be a general, if unspoken agreement that spouses weren’t invited, and only two of us brought dates… and one of those dates had gone to school with us.  It kept this movie from being a total failure in my book, as did the scenery, which was beautiful.  

There are some days that I’ll take interest in lieu of entertainment, and this was apparently one of those days.

Day 179: Bad Teacher (2011)

R, 1 hr. 29 min.  Directed by: Jake Kasdan.  Release Date: June 24, 2011.

I wasn't expecting a whole lot from this movie.  The trailers looked like it was going to be dull with occasional moments that were funny because they were absurd as opposed to being funny because they were inherently funny.  Unfortunately, Bad Teacher manages to barely meet my expectations, as opposed to exceeding them.

The first thing is that in the trailers (and in the film) that the things that are funny actually happen outside the realm of the trailers and inside your mind.  You’ll find, as you were intended to find, that the ad lib created in your own head was hysterical, as were the situations.  The things in your mind brought the funny, the trailer did not.  The movie was fairly similar:  it was funnier from as a conceptual construct than it was in practice.  A lot funnier.

The other thing is that about half of what you’ll expect to see from the trailers never happens, and it’s a bad, bad sign when everything that’s actually funny about a movie ends up in the editing room floor.  The film still edges up to the same situations, but the things that brought most of the audience to the theater are all suspiciously absent.

The cast’s strengths were also absent:  Cameron Diaz has a million-watt smile and can generate a contagious field of enthusiasm.  When she smiles, the world smiles with her, and that smile didn’t make an appearance even once.  Jason Segel is a great shtick guy, but it was if some unseen power (possibly the director) was forcing him to restrain himself, which provided a muted performance.

It’s not there aren’t a few laughs, because there are.  A very few.  Unless you absolutely must go to the theaters and you’ve seen everything else at the theater, you can safely avoid this one until you have a DVD crisis.

Sorry if I've managed to derail your hopes and dreams about this movie, but forewarned is forearmed.

Day 178: Miss Congeniality (2000)

PG-13, 1 hr. 51 min.  Directed by: Donald Petrie.  Release Date: December 22, 2000.  DVD Release Date: June 1, 2004.

Sandra Bullock gets a lot of flack related to her title "Queen of the Romcom," and I get that.  I make the same complaints about lots of actors.  It's rare to see her remove herself from that self-constructed bubble, but when she does, she's inevitably great to watch, such as her performance in The Blind Side, which got her an Academy Award in... 2010 I believe.  The thing is, that while Ms. Bullock may play variants of the same role over and over, she never gives less than a good accounting of herself.  Unlike other actors who cookie cutter themselves, I never seen her onscreen and think, "oh boy, yet another Sandra Bullock movie where she sucks her way through the whole thing."  Most of the time, I just assume I'll see her movie at some point.  Maybe not in the theaters, but I'll give it a shot when it's released on home video.

It didn't take a whole lot of arm twisting to get me to see this one in the theaters.  I don't remember who I went with, but I vaguely remember it was a big group, which honestly isn't the way I like to see movies.  It ups the chance that I'll have to deal with people talking throughout the whole thing or getting up and down or using their cell phone.  You know, my normal complaints in a theater.  Despite the less-than-optimal viewing conditions, I thought this movie was... charming.  There really isn't a better word for it.  And I thought Sandra Bullock was one of only a few high points in the movie.

One of the low points is the stretching out of their "ugly duckling" metaphor, because even that masculine Sandra Bullock with the storm trooper walk and limp hair is still kind of hot.  I've never seen her without makeup on that I know of, but I suspect she's not unattractive in that condition.  I actually would have found it far more acceptable if they'd actually made her unattractive (using makeup) so that Michael Caine's whole bit actually made her beautiful, as opposed to just prettier.

Speaking of Michael Caine, he was a bit of a gimme in this film.  I don't think I've ever seen him where I didn't like him, and yes, I've seen Without A Clue.  He was responsible for most of the comedy that comes through, although Sandra Bullock handles most of what I think of as the physical comedy.  The two together put on a really enjoyable show.  The scenes where he's berating her every move never fail to crack me up.

If you haven't seen this, you're probably missing a fun evening.  I wouldn't recommend a group of guys sit down and watch this together, but I've seen it happen at least once.  Even they got a few laughs out of the deal.

Day 177: Prozac Nation (2005)

R, 1 hr. 39 min.  Directed by: Erik Skjoldbjaerg.  Release Date: March 19, 2005.  DVD Release Date: July 5, 2005.

I vaguely remember when the book that was the inspiration for this movie was released.  By vague, I mean I don't remember any of the details, but I remember being sort of aware of the book's prominence in my local Barnes & Noble.  I certainly remember the whole baby eating urban legend about prozac, which seems to have followed in the wake of the book release, but I'm not sure why.  When I saw the trailer for the film a few weeks ago, there wasn't anything I didn't immediately like:  Christina Ricci, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Jason Biggs, and Jessica Lange.  Christina Ricci is... bipolar, maybe?  Something other than "depressed" is a certainty, because I'm pretty familiar with the workings of clinical depression and that wasn't it.  Well, some of her behavior was classical depression, but some of it was, well, I'm thinking "lunacy" is the right word.  

Initially, I was fascinated by the development of Lizzie's (Christina Ricci) character and the portrayal of her life, because in many ways we have had a very similar experience.  My parents divorced when I was two, and my father largely disappeared.  Like Lizzie's father, he tried to return at a later date as if nothing had ever happened, the only difference was more than 18 years passed for me and Lizzie's father vanished for four.  My mother compensated by over-involving herself in my life, resulting in a battle of will, rage, injured feelings, and guilt that I see when I deal with my mother to this day.  I even enjoy writing, although I don't think I have Lizzie's talent for it.

From there, the gild falls off the lily pretty quickly though.  I love Jonathan Rhys-Meyer's work, and unfortunately he spends all of fifteen minutes on camera taking a back seat so Jason Biggs and Michelle Williams can have larger parts.  Rhys-Meyers could have used extra lines to help him practice his American accent, which is nearly as abysmal as Kevin Costner's British one.  Christina Ricci shows, as I think she almost always has once she moved past her "Wednesday Addams" roles, depth and promise.  I keep hoping she'll find either a way or an interest in going mainstream so I can see her on the big screen more frequently.  Jessica Lange spends most of her time mimicking her role in Hush, adding only a thin layer of sanity to the mix.

Conflict is key to a good story.  The problem here is that every ounce of conflict is driven by Lizzie's illness and most of it feels eye-rollingly contrived, even though I'm sure it's all real, or to be more precise, all real to Lizzie.  Perception can be a terrible thing, but from an outside view, there isn't any real conflict in the film, it's layers upon layers of Lizzie's misinterpretations and exaggerations of the words and behaviors of her friends and family.  I saw one critic write something to the effect that it shouldn't surprise anyone that a movie about depression was depressing... I have to agree with the statement, although I think it sums up the American feeling about mental illness.  There's a certain flippant disregard for people who suffer through these diseases.  I suffer from dysthymia myself, a form of depression that is less severe than most, but can last for years without a break in the "low" period, and even I struggled not to discount Lizzie entirely because of her illness. I won't write down everything I thought, but "crazy" featured prominently, as did "bunny boiler," for those of you familiar with that old chestnut.

If a conflict external to Lizzie's own mind had been introduced, this may have been to depression what Philadelphia was to AIDS.  As it was, I was looking at the timer on my DVD player at about the halfway mark.  There's a lot of promise in the film, but I'm guessing the material that inspired it wasn't quite what the film needed to reach the goals it so obviously sought.

Day 176: Wet Hot American Summer (2001)

R, 1 hr. 37 min.  Directed by: David Wain.  Release Date: July 27, 2001. DVD Release Date: January 8, 2002.

When I read the description for this movie on Netflix, I was a little intrigued by the concept.  I'd never seen a summer camp movie, I'd never been to summer camp, but there was something about the way that text was worded that made me want to watch this movie.  Like always, I didn't read the Netflix reviews until it was too late.   Normally, I ignore those reviewers, because of the tendency for them to rate a movie not on content, but on the technology supporting Watch Instantly.  In one case, a movie called White Lion, the movie seems to be very good, but has a sound issue so that there's no audible dialogue on the streaming option, and thus receives negative reviews in lieu of complaints to Netflix.  This is a perfect example of why I allow myself to ignore the Netflix posters, but this time it would have saved me a little time.  I looked at the cast list, which is an impressive mix of well-known comic figures and a few figures who are well known, just not for comedic roles.  So, I figured I'd give this a shot.

On the one hand, if you're looking for a comedy, you probably want to check somewhere else.  I'm no stranger to dark comedy, and if this is it, it's so dark that it's completely outside my comic spectrum.  Now, I thought the cast and film crew TRIED real hard to make this funny, they just failed to do so.  There are scenes in which the cast are so obvious in those efforts that I was almost embarrassed to watch them do so poorly.  In particular, a scene involving Paul Rudd and a temper tantrum comes to mind.  Mr. Rudd is someone I like watching on screen, but this was such a pantomime of "typical teen" reactions that it felt and looked forced.  There's also a montage sequence involving about a third of the cast that was probably supposed to be funny, but ends up looking like a pro-drug use message.

As a coming of age movie, this was probably a bit better.  I think there's a fairly good, if rushed, portrayal of teen life and love, how people make the same bad decisions in a cyclical fashion.  Some of this is ruined by the cast's frantic antics to make something funny happen, but for the most part that particular message shines through.  I was a little surprised that the movie focused entirely on the camp staff and more or less ignored the campers except for one group of kids.

There's a lot of star power here, but most of them have better performances elsewhere.  In the case of Paul Rudd and Bradley Cooper, they have lots of better options to choose from.  I guess we can just be thankful that this wasn't a 100 minutes of Molly Shannon sniffing her own armpit.

Day 175: Slackers (2002)

R, 1 hr. 26 min.  Directed by: Dewey Nicks.  Release Date: December 1, 2002. DVD Release Date: May 28, 2002.

I found this movie on the shelf of a friend of mine who has a... passion for bad movies.  When I stumbled across the King of Pain Blog-A-Thon on Dark Side of the Matinee, and saw the Hatter's invitation for other Bloggers to participate, I knew I had to find something.  I found it, in spades, and rearranged a ten-day period of my planned blog entries to make it happen.

When I saw this the first time, I wondered why the generation after mine hadn't made it into it's anthem statement.  In my day, I hardly knew anyone who admitted to cheating so openly.  Ten years later, I returned to an academic environment, and it was a rare thing when I didn't spot people cheating their way through proctored exams, or attempting to cheat through proctored exams.  The last exam I sat for was proctored by a major educational facility in Columbus, and I could hear at least three people (of the seven people current sitting for exams) texting back and forth throughout the exam period.  For whatever reason, the proctor, perhaps entranced by the richness and depth of her Janet Evanovich novel, didn't.  Even worse, she wasn't even laughing at the one-liners in the book, and that's the ONLY acceptable reason to read Ms. Evanovich.

But then I gave it some thought and realized why the next generation hadn't embraced this movie.  It's a wee bit on the disgusting side.  Characters played by Laura Prepon and Jason Schwartzman are particularly foul... doing things most of us do from time to time, but under circumstances where most of us would avoid those actions, such as an audience.  The scene where Schwartzman gives a sponge bath to an old woman that I've learned is Mamie Van Doren never fails to make my gorge rise, which I suspect is the point. 

There's a romance blossoming over the course of the movie that seems to jump in and out of focus, as if the filmmakers weren't quite sure what to do with it once the concept had been written in to the script..  Sometimes it's the overriding theme of the move, and then occasionally it's pushed to the side so that one of the more disgusting characters can do something outlandish and interrupt whatever sweet thing might actually have been taking place.  I suspect that the budding relationship was a little too pure and sickly sweet for what these filmmakers had in mind, thus the hopping around.  It involves the two lead characters, but neither it nor the lead characters in question receive as much screen time as they probably should. 

The movie is infrequently funny, usually in that "broken clock" sort of way, but I found the subject matter and premise so disturbing that it more than compensated for anything entertaining that might have happened.  You can miss this one without feeling any guilt or shame.  If only the cast members didn't feel the same way.

Day 174: Lucas (1986)

PG-13, 1 hr. 40 min.  Directed by: David Seltzer.  Release Date: March 28, 1986.  DVD Release Date: March 11, 2003.

I don’t know when I saw this for the first time, but I know that it was one of those 80s movies that started showing up at my house a lot once I was old enough to rent my own movies, say in 1989 or something close to that year.  We had a couple of video places within easy walking distance, and I was no stranger to any of them.  I bet if we could look back on my Blockbuster and Warehouse accounts back in those days, this would appear a lot, probably in equal numbers with The Breakfast Club, Adventures in Babysitting, and Sixteen Candles.  Those four movies pretty much made up the cornerstone of my late childhood, and because of that, I have a lot of favorable things to say about Lucas.

No, it’s not just because of there seem to be so many cast members from The Goonies, another childhood favorite.  I watch a lot of movies, and it’s hard to find a film that has an almost total lack of negativity but still manages to have conflict.  At this point in my life, being picked on by jocks and not getting the girl don’t really seem like the life-killing events they seemed like in back then, but I can still empathize with poor Lucas’ plight.  In my first year of sixth grade, I was in a Montessori school, where they let you progress (or stagnate) to the best of your abilities.  I found myself graduating out of my little school in three years, a path that should have taken me four.  When I was up for graduation, my classmates were waiting for their thirteenth birthday and I had just turned eleven.  It was the total suck.  A second year of sixth grade at a public school helped me fall back in line with students my own age, but I still remember what it was like to be so obviously younger than the people I was taking classes with. 

I love watching these 80s movies to see what the cast used to look like.  To remember a time before Winona Ryder had crows’ feet, a time before Charlie Sheen was certifiably insane.  If you’ve been paying to Charlie Sheen’s frantic efforts to prove this is what his brain looks like on drugs, you might have noticed his claim to have named Winona Ryder.  I haven't paid a lot of attention to his recent antics, although I did notice that particular claim, and I’m thinking this might have been the movie where they met, although she looks like a boy, and they only share like four minutes of screen time, they might have actually socialized during the filming this movie.  It made me smile to think about that this time around.

While I like that the conflict in the movie is a bit on the soft side, too much gets solved and too much ends with just that “aw” amount of sweetness for me to be really satisfied with the way things happen here.  In real life, someone would have gotten beaten up or left school to have a baby or something.  It wouldn’t have worked out like this, but this kind of ending makes people happy.  Even me, on occasion.

If you haven’t seen this movie and you like 80s movies in that John Hughes milieu, you could do worse than to check this out.  Ditto if you’re looking for something light and easy to kill some time. 

Day 173: Boys Don't Cry (1999)

R, 1 hr. 56 min.  Directed by: Kimberly Peirce.  Release Date: October 8, 1999.  DVD Release Date: April 18, 2000.

Hilary Swank does some crazy movies, and I'd say if anything has characterized her career, it's that there doesn't really seem to be a pattern, except that I can't recall seeing her in a comedy.  Having seen this (and having ignored most of the hype and hate out on the 'net about it) I’m of a mixed mind about what I think.  On the one hand, no one should have to go through what Brandon Teena went through.  A lot of what he suffered through was because of our lack of understanding for what he was going through and how to handle the situation when it arises.  I’ve said it before in this blog and I’ll say it again:  the transgendered community is a tough sell for a lot of Americans, and for lots of reasons.  No matter what your personal feeling is about the subject, I hope that no one can deny that every person on this planet deserves consideration and respect… and this movie shows how little of either a person like Brandon receives from the people around them.

Now that I’ve said that, there was something that kept me from having complete pity for Brandon.  His behavior, especially in the early parts of the film feels a little… predatory.  I get why he kept his secret, but I would have had more respect for him if he was dating and open about his situation and aspirations.  The film shows Brandon interacting with a lot of women, and none of them knew his secret.  Once he weakened their power of choice, I had a bit of a problem with that whole aspect of his life and character.  I had a bigger problem when the story expands to show you the lengths that Brandon went to hide his secret from the women in his life.  The fairly graphic love scene between Hillary Swank and Chloe Sevigny was shocking, for lack of a family-friendly term.  I’m also not sure… well, never mind.  Watch the movie and specifically that scene and you’ll probably figure out my question.  If you have the answer, I'd LOVE to hear it.

It bothers me a little that I’ve seen two movies on this subject and both of them had similar endings.  Both films were based on true stories, and that bothers me even more.  Boys Don’t Cry is worth watching.  It’s gritty, occasionally gruesome, and is thought provoking in unusual ways.  For a lot of people, it might be reality expanding, for good or ill.  Hillary Swank definitely earned her chops here, and she wasn’t alone.  The entire cast is pretty awesome.  My only serious complaint about this movie is that it drags pretty heavily through the midway point of the story.  Oh, I’ve kind of wanted to punch Lecy Goranson in the face since she’s started playing Becky in Roseanne… this didn’t change that for me.

Day 172: Road Trip (2000)

R, 1 hr. 31 min.  Directed by: Todd Phillips.  Release Date: May 19, 2000. DVD Release Date: December 19, 2000.

Ugh.  I'm still awake, which is a surprise considering I was using this in an attempt to fall asleep.  It's starting to push 2 am, and I'm exhausted, but just can't seem to shut my brain down tonight.  This morning, or I guess yesterday morning now, I woke up tired, so I can't figure out what the problem is, but these sleepless nights seem to be happening more and more frequently.

There are a lot of teen sex comedies, and this is one of them.  That's not fair.  I used to like this movie.  Not a lot, but enough that I added it to my DVD collection in 2000 or 2001, although considering how frequently I used to go to Blockbuster and check out those 4 DVD for $20 sales, you'd be amazed what's found it's way in to my collection.   I should probably say more, and I'm thinking of how best to form my thoughts.  While these comedies can generally overlap in my mind, especially since I've watched so many of them over the years, I've come to set my opinions based on how well they set themselves apart from their endless ranks of competitors.

There are two possibilities that set this apart from others of its genre.  The first is the, um, milking of Seann William Scott.  Before I popped this into my DVD player today, that scene was the only one that popped immediately to my recollection.  The other scene made a reappearance as I watched the movie:  the scene when DJ Qualls finally finds his ness and gets a hookup. I realized that the woman who played his love interest died relatively recently, which is kind of a sad thing.  I'm still relatively young and she wasn't younger still. 

But what else here is original?  A cheating boyfriend?  Nope.  A crazed girlfriend?  Not that either.  A pothead?  Nope.  I've seen those same things happen in the same movie before.  I've also seen them done better in the same movie.  There have been road trips in other movies, and I know I've lived through a few myself.  There have been other frat parties... Animal House comes to mind as being a better set up.  Even National Lampoon has had a few better frat parties.

There's an interesting cast in this movie.  Not a great cast, or even a good cast, but an interesting one.  Some of them have made careers out of doing teen-interest movies, and most of them are passable.  Almost everyone in the cast has a few decent lines and a few zany escapades before the whole thing is over.  But no other teen movie has the lead weight that is Tom Green.  I think in 2000 he was mostly famous for having married Drew Barrymore.  Personally, I'm glad she came to her senses about him (Drew, if you read this, call me!).  He lurches around this movie, looking like a total jackass, he provides little to the story, but you have to sit through his insufferable stupidity.  In my opinion, Tom Green bears sole responsibility for making a blah-fest from a decent comedy.

I probably wouldn't go out of my way to recommend this to someone I liked.  It isn't terrible, but there are so many better movies of this sort available that I wouldn't have come up with Road Trip on my own. 

Day 171: From Russia With Love (1964)

PG, 1 hr. 55 min.  Directed by: Terence Young.  Release Date: April 8, 1964.  DVD Release Date: March 28, 2006.

There are folks out there who love From Russia With Love, putting it somewhere at the top of their rankings of this long-running series of films.  It has all the right elements:  shoot-outs, vehicular chases, beautiful women throwing themselves at Bond for all the wrong reasons, intrigue, villain monologues that allow Bond the chance to escape, and exotic locales in the form of Istanbul, Zagreb, and Venice.  In some ways, Russia puts itself as Bond on PCP, because every element seems to follow Fleming's master formula so closely.  There's a reason that the man's stories and later movies made him so successful, and this particular installment of the Bond series seems not only to depend on that success, but to give the fans all that they could want, and more.  It's a bit like being beaten to death with the things that make you enjoy the premise.

As you might expect, From Russia With Love is severely rooted in Cold War politics, putting Western and Soviet interests at each others' throats over a machine that seems to be loosely based on the German "Engyma" decoding machine from World War I.  Austin Powers fans will note that there are several elements of this movie that contributed to the spoof trilogy, (although rumor has it there will soon be a fourth AP installment, Thunderballs) including Frau Farbissina and the appearance of a villain with a cat.  This has to be one of the shortest Bond movie ever, at just under two hours, and I didn't get that feeling that a lot of time had passed, as I do with a great number of these movies, which seem to run at somewhere between 2 and 2.5 hours.

While this doesn't rank among my favorite Bond films, it is a thoroughly enjoyable movie.  There is no shortage of Bond-style action, including multiple mass gunfight scenes, murder and mayhem both happen at regular intervals, and in truth, most of the last half of the film is a chase scene, wherein Bond tries to escape Soviet-controlled territories with a defector.  Of course, because this follows formula (and cannon) so closely, the movie is fairly predictable.  Many of the elements of the film are reused in other installments of the series, so if you, like me, watched these in some hodgepodge, anti-chronological fashion, you're probably going to think that several parts of the film are vaguely familiar.  What is it about people getting the drop on Bond when he's either in the tub/shower or about to get in?

I haven't watched this in a good long while, and I'm thinking I should revisit it more often.  While far from perfect, this movie really is the identikit Bond adventure.

Day 170: Undercover Brother (2002)

PG-13, 1 hr. 25 min.  Directed by: Gregory Dark, Malcolm D. Lee. Release Date: May 31, 2002. DVD Release Date: January 14, 2003.

There are times when you see a cast gathered to do a movie and it blows your mind how fantastic it is.  Some can act, some look good and don't embarrass themselves, some are cool, and some are just along for the ride, but it could still work.  This wasn't one of those casts.  Most of these guys have hit or miss relationships with success, so it certainly couldn't have been easy to pull something like this off.  Fortunately for the filmmakers, this is a parody of well, lots of things.  There are some Blaxploitation elements, some stuff straight out of Bond, and this is possibly hanging on a bit to the coattails of Austin Powers and his merry band of 60s British invasion humor.

Let's talk about some of the decent performances I saw here.  Eddie Griffith is very toned down from what I expect to see from him.  He manages to be funny without being more ridiculous than the role requires.  Chi McBride does a great job, although I wish he was both funnier and in more scenes.  Neil Patrick Harris was awesome, but in the same way he was awesome in the Harold & Kumar movies.  That kind of awesome that works, but the part is so small he doesn't really contribute to the overall success of the film.  But the real surprise was Denise Richards.  She still sucked acting wise, but the girl's got a half-decent set of pipes... and that in no way is a reference to chest, because as we should all know, that is way more decent than half.   I didn't hate Chris Kattan, either.  He was funny without falling into that retardation mode he likes to live in.

Like too many movies, this is funny, but not in that way that makes you proud to be laughing.  It's also not going to be to everyone's taste.  Truth, it's not really to mine, although I do occasionally find this kind of stuff funny.  The characters are absolutely ridiculous, but they all seem to work together in a way that makes more sense than they probably should.

I probably shouldn't admit this publicly, but I liked the soundtrack.  Check this out if you like screwball comedies and are really, really open-minded.  Otherwise, take a pass.

Day 169: Conviction (2010)

R, 1 hr. 47 min.  Directed by: Tony Goldwyn.  Release Date: October 15, 2010.  DVD Release Date: February 1, 2011.

Conviction is a reference to two aspects of the film.  The first is, of course, the conviction that sends Kenny Waters, played by Sam Rockwell, to jail for the rest of his life for the murder of an old woman.  The second is the conviction that Kenny's sister, played by Hilary Swank, has that her brother is innocent of the crimes that he has been accused of committing.  Over the course of the movie, Betty Ann Waters gives up her entire life: her marriage, to a certain extent her children, and her friends so that she can pursue her law degree and pass the bar exam.  The only people who don't seem to realize this are Betty Anne herself and her brother, Kenny, who accepts it as his due.

There are some uncomfortable moments in the film that have their epicenter around the relationship between Kenny and Betty Anne Waters.  There are no outright statements of impropriety, although the average viewer of this movie might come to that conclusion easily.  There is a closeness between these siblings that might be the response to an absent mother who parented poorly even when she was around.  The tale is brief, but it is almost the textbook horror story of growing up in the inner city, filled with allegations of abuse, violence and poverty.  There are some who might see their codependency as a natural outgrowth, but it is odd that one sibling would expect, or even want, his sibling to sacrifice everything she had to make up for yet another of his mistakes.

Hilary Swank has a habit of staring in these late-year, emotionally-gripping biopics in what has been called an obvious grab at the Oscar, since many of the awards go to films that are released closer to when the Academy begins its selection process.  It's a mixed bag.  She always performs beautifully, but her films tend to be dull, and Ms. Swank has only two Oscars to show for her efforts, which is more than other actors who limit themselves in similar ways can claim.  Sam Rockwell was amazing, a beautiful performance of a man who has so many emotional issues that he could carry them around with him on the bed of a truck.  The supporting cast included some big names such as Melissa Leo, Minne Driver, and Juliette Lewis, but their parts were so small that the skill of these women is not allowed to come through.

The best thing about the movie is the complete uncertainty whether or not Kenny Waters was a killer.  He certainly provides enough reasons for the audience to doubt him, between his violent temper and frequently used fists.  Even if he was wrongly accused, there would have been the question as to whether or not he hadn't earned his place in prison.

Conviction is interesting, but the audience will feel every minute of its hour and forty-seven minute run time.  For many, the characters' rationale for their actions will be hard to understand.  There are some wonderful performances from some great actors, but at the end of the day, that may not be enough to keep this movie afloat.

Day 168: Green Lantern (2011)

PG-13, 1 hr. 45 min.  Directed by: Martin Campbell.  Release Date: June 17, 2011.

I'm giving this a green light, no pun intended, but just barely.  The Green Lantern has long been my favorite worthless superhero.  I say worthless because the fact that someone can make up green things just isn't really all that impressive against people who can do, well, other stuff.  With a relatively short run time, this feels a little long, fed in part by introductions to Hal Jordan's personal life that not only don't really go anywhere but aren't truly necessary in the grand scheme of the film.  Granted, if these scenes were absent I might be complaining about a lack of background on Jordan and how he lived before he was a Green Lantern.  I'm kind of unpredictable that way.

If you go see this movie, it should be mostly for the special effects, which are absolutely amazing.  Specifically the space scenery, which looks like it might have been done by the same company that did Thor's special effects and space scenery, but failed to include the disco elements that unnerved me when I watched that movie last month.  Gone, too, was the great fear that Renee Russo might appear wearing gold lame and HUGE hair.  The ring effects were also impressive, bright without being overtly cartoonish or childlike, and there were also a multitude of effects.  You never saw the rings do exactly the same thing twice.  Sometimes there would be similar constructions, but they were always a little different.

I also enjoyed the mythos of the Green Lanterns, which has been true since back in the days of The Superfriends and more recently on those rare occasions that I'm flipping through channels and find a rerun of Justice League of America on Cartoon Network that's GL-heavy.  The whole formation of the GL Corps is kind of cool; I like the idea of green guys running around and watching over us, keeping us from doing things that are too stupid or dangerous, and preventing other people from making those things happen.

Ryan Reynolds had a kind of love-hate relationship with this role.  I thought he was excellent as Hal Jordan, who was a bit absurd, a little reckless, and the kind of cocky that can turn to arrogance in the wrong circumstances.  I liked him less as Green Lantern, and yes, I know they're the same person, but they don't have the same mindset.  Or they're not supposed to.  Reynolds was great as the carefree fun guy, but he wasn't as good as the guy with responsibilities.  I also didn't love Peter Sarsgaard, who I generally think makes for a good bad guy... or Mark Strong, who was a good guy but usually plays the bad guy.  Of course, if you, like me, watched The Superfriends back in the 80s, you know that Strong's character eventually becomes the bad guy, so I'm expecting sequels.  

The movie gets off to a rough start.  It's all about Jordan deciding whether or not he's capable of being a Lantern and whether or not he deserves the honor.  It took about twice as long as it should have and introduced us to way too many characters who don't really matter.  Not like in the social sense, but in the sense that they don't serve to drive plot or story progression in even the slightest.  Once Hal Jordan starts to take on the ring, the movie wobbles a little, and then picks up speed for what is a pretty great, although predictable ending.  Considering ole GL will now have his own animated show on Cartoon Network, and considering that DC is frantically trying to compete with Marvel in the superhero film niche, I expect to see more of these if this grabs them a positive return on their investment.  I'm not sure I'd expect to see the same cast though. 

My last complaint comes from the naming of the "Lost Sector," which everyone seems to know about.  If everyone's found something, can it still be lost?

386Q545EQPRN

Day 167: The Craft (1996)

R, 1 hr. 40 min.  Directed by: Andrew Fleming.  Release Date: May 3, 1996. DVD Release Date: July 2, 1997.

I was obsessed with this movie back in college.  It was hip and helped further my short-lived, post-Scream obsession over Neve Campbell.  It had a bunch of hot chicks and Fairuza Balk in it... so it was pretty much everything I looked for in a movie back in the day.  It was also one of those movies that seemed to take my fraternity house by storm, mostly likely because of the aspects I've mentioned.  Today, I was still enthusiastic, in no small part due to the fact that I haven't watched this for a few years, but my passion for this flick has waned a bit.

The Craft is still worth watching, although folks out there seem to think that this was an attempt at teen horror.  I suspect that comes from the presence of Fairuza Balk, who scares the absolute becheebus out of me and has done so since I first noticed her in Return to Oz way back in the 80s.  I'd say teen movie yes, but horror, not so much.  Teen occult?  That sounds a little bit better, but not much. 

There are some cool effects, a few decent performances despite the fantastical situations involved.  The evolution of these girls felt pretty natural.  I knew a couple of people back in the day who chose an occult lifestyle or converted to paganism because they felt like they didn't fit in with their peers.  I'm also pretty sure that at least three of those girls would have had problems associating with their peer groups in just about any high school you wanted to place them in.  Which is a nice change from the teen film where both the setting and characters feel so contrived that you just can't stand to watch them. 

What surprises me about the story is that there's actually a moral to the story.  Even walking in to this, I expected something empty and devoid of life, something more style than substance.  While that latter part is true, it isn't true by much.  While the movie isn't complicated, I really appreciate the effort to make this be about something other than emotionally scarred young women in short skirts and a few special effects.

This movie's a bit of mindless entertainment and really doesn't pretend to be anything it isn't.  The dialogue is pretty snappy, even though the subject is a bit silly.  Unlike a lot of teen flicks from the 90s, they didn't seem to be making up any "slang" for the cool kids by which I mean "cooks rich trash."  Do I love it like I used to?  No, but I'll have to watch this again soon. 

Day 166: For Your Eyes Only (1981)

PG, 2 hr. 7 min.  Directed by: John Glen.  Release Date: June 26, 1981. DVD Release Date: October 19, 1999. 

This is arguably one of my least favorite movies in this long-lived, but frequently struggling series.  These days, I suspect a lack of funds and a decent Fleming-ish story are keeping Bond… 26 (?) from being made a reality and I’m planning on being thoroughly annoyed if Daniel Craig only gets two shots at bat as the world’s favorite spy.  In the 80s, I’m pretty sure pop culture was the culprit behind the miraculous and marked plunge in quality of these movies… although I’m also willing to blame Roger Moore, who seemed to suck his way through like half of the existing series films.

Now why do I hate this movie in particular?  It’s got vaguely what I look for in a Bond movie:  what was then considered big-budget action sequences, exotic locations, a hot Bond girl, a semi-plausible plot.  But, I have complaints (Surprise!), and quite a few of them.  It seems like half the scenes are borrowed directly from other movies, although this may be because I didn’t even come close to seeing these movies in chronological order.  I don’t really like the whole revenge theme that appears in the very early scenes and keeps rearing its ugly head until the very last few moments of the film.  I appreciate that they’ve tried to give some substance to the movie, a rarity in the Bond world, but it falls a little flat.  I miss the gadgets in this movie… well, in every movie of the franchise made during the 80s.  And, I hate the Bond girl.  She’s wonderful to look at, but they use her like an annoying plot battering ram that talks too much and is kind of stupid.  It’s not cute.

The story and set up seem to be a big change from earlier Bond flicks, but I’m not sure I really think any of the changes are improvements.  I know there was some political stuff as well as business stuff going on in the background that probably prompted all this stuff that I hate, but it seemed to take them a few pretty crappy pictures before the people making these movies realized just what the problem was.  

I guess finally I dislike the villain, which is a common problem for me throughout the franchise, but this is an especially vexing issue because this particular villain reappears in at least three other Bond movies.  It must be difficult to come up with a decent villain when you’re making the archetypal villain for an espionage thriller, but I don’t even feel that this guy represents a decent attempt.  

Basically, I’d avoid this movie.  If I hadn’t bought the box sets of the existing Bond movies in 2002 or 2003, I certainly wouldn’t own a copy of this movie.

Day 165: Life As a House (2001)

R, 2 hr. 4 min.  Directed by: Irwin Winkler.  Release Date: October 26, 2001. DVD Release Date: March 26, 2002.

I love this movie.  It came to my attention during a phone call with my dad:  I was serving active duty in California and he was settling into his retirement in Ohio.  He was trying to convince me that I had made a good choice in joining the military, something he was never able to do successfully while I was in.  Now, I realize that, in some ways, he was right.  I’m glad that I did my part, but I wish I had considered my decisions a bit more carefully before signing on the dotted line.  Life As a House was playing in theaters at the time… right down the hill from my barracks room at the theater in Monterey that’s name is Spanish for bones, or at least, the name is Osso something.  It would have been easy to go see the movie, since I had lots of free time in Monterey.

I took a pass on his suggestion.  I’ve mentioned that we didn’t exactly see eye to eye on movies, so this is hardly surprising.  He also suggested I watch Patton, which I thought was a total snooze fest.  About a year later, I rented the movie on DVD and immediately started recommending it to everyone.  One of the first people was the guy who lived across the hall from me.  I knew he had some parental issues, and he had a thing for dramas.  I told him to watch it, but to watch it when he was alone.  

He took a pass on my suggestion and watched it with his roommate.  They spent the latter half of the movie choking down sobs and trying to hide the fact that they were both crying.  Apparently the roommate had some dad issues, too.

Life As a House is an emotional roller coaster.  It’s touching to watch a mostly-absentee father try to reclaim his son from the brink, a man who is willing to be hated if it keeps his son from continuing down his current path.  Kevin Kline is BRILLIANT.  No foolin’.  This is easily his best performance that I’ve seen.  Hayden Christensen is also remarkably good, and I normally find his chronic whining and bizznatchy behavior to be tedious, even when he’s got a light saber.  There’s no light saber here, and his whiny tendencies actually work for his part.  These two actors head up a supporting cast that is filled with good performances and some of the most shocking scenes I’ve seen in a coming-of-age movie.  Gritty doesn’t quite explain the situation.

The grit is also a problem:  it's too raw, the situations seem to play too well and the characters fit too well into the ongoing action.  There's always been someone in my life, even in the good times, who stands out because they don't fit in the situation.  It's not always the same person, but here, everyone fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.  That synchonicity keeps this from feeling like it might be a memoir, or something that could happen in real life, and I've never met a kid who was that far astray in so many ways... but as something that's so completely fiction to be nearly fantastical in nature, there are few better films.

Watch this movie.  Just make sure you’re either alone or with someone who won’t make fun of you if you get all sniffly. 

Day 164: The Freebie (2010)

R, 1 hr. 20 min.  Directed by: Katie Aselton.  Release Date: September 17, 2010.

For a long time my friends have tended to approach me when their romantic lives get rocky.  I’ve heard some crazy stuff.  You have no idea.  I have consoled my friends in time of romantic crisis, through those self-caused (and occasionally repeated – you know who you are) or entropic, but still painful moments that seems to be a part of life’s process.  I’m not complaining about it.  I love my friends and I’m glad that we have the relationship that allows us to communicate freely even when the subject might be uncomfortable for one or both of us.

I also hope that when they do come to me, that I’ve been a source of comfort or maybe good advice.  I like to think that I have a good random sample of data that allows me to put my finger on the pulse of what’s going on in the romantic relationships of twenty- and thirtysomethings.  I might be wrong, but hey, I haven’t received a complaint or even a sound of protest yet.  The point of this ramble is that, despite my own experience, and the experiences that my friends have brought to the table of my life, I had absolutely no idea where these guys were coming from.  How stupid do you have to be to consider for even a moment that this situation would result in something that even vaguely resembles a healthy relationship.  Not that I don’t get the source of the problem.  The movie discusses, in pretty frank terms, the slumps that enter into almost every relationship.  But one of the problems I had with this movie is by the time the story opens and we see what’s going on, these guys are substituting sex with crossword puzzles.  If these guys were in the grief cycle over their relationship, they’d be waffling somewhere between denial and acceptance, which suggests drastic measures, because you should never just accept the death of your marriage.

It took me about twenty minutes to start frowning.  That’s not a good sign because I can still get through most of Spaceballs without negative facial reactions.  This couple’s discussion of their lives is ridiculously depressing, considering that neither of them really seems to have much to complain about with the exception of their lack of passion towards each other.  They spoke about sex in ways that reminded me of how a substance abuser talks about their drug of choice.  It sounds like when my grandmother talks about the smell of a newly lit cigarette… and she hasn’t smoked for longer than I’ve been alive.  It made me sad and a little angry.  The dialogue didn’t help matters too much.  It was heavy on manipulation and subtle probing towards a single, unapologetic goal (the freebie).  While I’m glad this wasn’t a disgusting romantic comedy where it’s been three years and these guys are acting like bunnies, this was awkward and disappointing.  There’s only so much worthless angst I can tolerate.

45 minutes in, I was skipping forward.  I skipped so frequently I eventually sent my Netflix stream into buffering limbo for about five minutes.  I couldn’t listen to the justification for this situation, particularly after the whole discussion about how they couldn’t discuss their own plans.  If you’ve ever witnessed a car accident or train wreck so horrible that it went by in slow motion… The Freebie was like one big slo-mo effect, if slo-mo could be pregnant with manipulation and crap.  Endless discussion and preparation for the big day; scenes filled with backdrops of the sunny southern California coast.  The rage and jealousy build.  Worse still was the totally predictable, even obvious ending and results.

If you’re looking for an hour and twenty minutes of pure, unadulterated drivel, or you need to know what NOT to do to spice up your marriage, check this out. 

Day 163: How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)

Unrated, 1 hr. 36 min.  Directed by: Jean Negulesco.  Release Date: January 1, 1953.  DVD Release Date: May 29, 2001. 

I should first mention that this is unrated not because of content, but because of age.  I'm not sure when movies started getting ratings, but there were a large number of films from the 50s that don't have them (yet).  By modern standards, this MIGHT be PG, nothing heavier than that.

This was an odd movie.  Well, it wasn't an odd movie for Marilyn Monroe, who seems to play a gold digger in every third movie she did over the course of her career.  It was odd in that it sort of failed to deliver on its promises.  It's billeted as a romantic comedy, but I didn't find it particularly romantic or funny.  You could see where both Monroe and Grable were trying (occasionally frantically) to make the movie funny, but it just came off as sort of lame.  The only time I laughed was when Marilyn Monroe and William Powell shared a scene together and he divided his attention fairly equally between her eyes and her chest.  I'm not sure if that was directed or not, but once I caught it I laughed.

Of the three of these ladies, I've only seen Monroe on screen before, and I know she can do better than this.  Marilyn Monroe is to the dumb blonde siren what Katherine Heigl is to the uptight woman who is destined to fall in love with the guy she hates, by which I mean, it's her signature role.  In How to Marry a Millionaire, she has the same part, but only manages to pull off the dumb blonde part.  Unfortunately, it wasn't a funny dumb blonde, which can actually work for people, such as Reese Witherspoon.  Monroe was a painfully dumb blonde, where you hear the lines and wince rather than laugh.

Betty Grable was worse.  Considering how famous an actress she is, I'm going to call her tedious part bad directing and not bad acting.  There are 25 minutes or so of the film dedicated solely to Ms. Grable's character and her machinations and I was considering slitting my wrists before those minutes were over.  Only Lauren Bacall gave a good performance among the women, but again, she wasn't funny and didn't appear to be trying for funny.   So again, I’m not really sure if I just missed the cultural cues that would have made this funny back in the day or if it was just a blasé act that would have been considered funny when this was originally released.

If I could have watched this and not known it was supposed to be a rom-com, I would have probably liked it better.  If I'd never seen Marilyn Monroe anywhere else, I might have liked this better.  As it is, I probably won't watch this again.

Day 162: Life As We Know It (2010)

PG-13, 1 hr. 52 min.  Directed by: Greg Berlanti.  Release Date: October 8, 2010.  DVD Release Date: February 8, 2011.

I don't think this counts as a spoiler:  you know how this is going to work.  You know how it's going to end.  You've seen this movie before, shot a hundred different ways, with a variety of actors and actresses.  Only the details and circumstances change.  The results?  Not so much.  Katherine Heigl, the female lead of this show, actually made a movie that's nearly identical in formula only a few years back:  a young woman, whose wound way too tight, meets a man that she's totally not suited for.  She's forced to interact with this man due to some random plot device, and what a surprise, opposites attract.  No, it isn't the story of The Ugly Truth, or even Knocked Up.  This is Life As We Know It, a movie that begins in tragedy, but ends up with everyone having a smile on their face.

More than any other actor on the big screen, Katherine Heigl seems to appear as the same part in different movies.  It's a part she plays well, but even Sandra Bullock changes things up once in awhile.  I'd like to see Heigl take some direction from her own early career, where she appeared in a wide variety of movies and played a wider variety of roles.  She's enjoyable here, and I thought her pairing with Josh Duhamel was better than decent.  The two had, I thought, good chemistry, but what progresses in the movie was inevitable.  I knew that before Duhamel even knocked on their door for a disastrous first date.

I have to give it to the filmmakers, this is a bit of an emotional roller coaster.  The story line involving Sophie, the baby with which Heigl and Duhamel find themselves charged, is a sad one, but it's also one that any parent, or anyone who's ever babysat for a parent can empathize with.  I'm a single guy with no kids, and I've been around a baby that won't stop crying... usually on airplanes, but even in my personal life.  The journey these two take in the process of accepting their new roles as parents is awkward, emotional, and a little sweet.

So this movie isn't terrible, just terribly predictable.  However, it's more than a little funny, and more than most of the time.  The characters have some depth (in particular, I love Sophie's social worker, who never fails to appear when things are going, not wrong, but when things are a little topsy turvy, and who always has sage and frank advice) and the situation is strange, but I could see it happen.  I enjoyed the movie, but I don't know that I'd feel the need to see it again.

Day 161: Gothika (2003)

R, 1 hr. 36 min.  Directed by: Mathieu Kassovitz.  Release Date: November 21, 2003. DVD Release Date: March 23, 2004.

This is a world contrived almost entirely of plot holes and spelling errors.  I know that I can't see the dialogue as it's spoken by the actors, but I'm sure the screenplay was an absolute mess.  There are so many problems in this story that I can't figure out how it was actually supposed to work.  Building a thriller from coincidence upon coincidence upon assumption upon unlikely truth makes for an uncomfortable 96 minutes.

In what Bizzaroland would a woman that looks like Halle Berry marry a man that looks like Charles Dutton? The man's a great actor (and has a too-short appearance in this movie), but it was like I'd tripped and fallen down the rabbit hole... or found myself back in Texas.  In what crazed legal system would a psychiatrist get accused of murdering her husband and then end up as a guest of the state in the same psych ward where they both used to work?  And finally, what the hell was the ghost supposed to do?  Speaking as someone who has a degree in communications, someone needed to un-muddle that channel.

What saves this from being a total waste of space is the performance quality that the cast brings to the table.  I don't mean the vague ghost, or some of the smaller parts, but the Halle Berry-Penelope Cruz-Robert Downey Jr combination of actors came together pretty well.  Berry in particular, I think, does a remarkable job with the part that she was given.  If she wasn't running around complaining about "the studio" for "making" her do this part, then she probably missed her shot.

As a horror film, this is a total failure, although there are a few good scares.  The scene where an unseen person breathes on the glass of Halle's cell and uses an invisible finger to write out NOT ALONE was remarkably creepy.  The ghost affects were similar to those seen in Thirteen Ghosts and netted the same occasional jumps in reaction to stuff appearing and reaching out for someone on screen.  This is better as a thriller, but I would have preferred to have more back story on the criminal activity that's going on behind the scenes throughout the movie.

This is worth seeing once.  The first time I saw this, I thought it was pretty good, but I've watched it repeatedly over the years and each time I feel a little less satisfied with what's going on.

Day 160: Jason X (2002)

R, 1 hr. 33 min.  Directed by: James Isaac.  Release Date: April 26, 2002.  DVD Release Date: June 1, 2004.

Since I was rudely awakened by the sonic equivalent of a goosing this "morning," a term I'm going to throw around loosely because it's still frigging dark, I've started my movie watching early.  To the gust of wind that set off my house alarm, I'm thinking rude thoughts in your general direction.

Do you ever wonder how celebrities sleep at night?  In the modern era a decent actor is hard to find, much less a good one.  Let’s take Josh Brolin as an example, a man who I think is a fine actor:  Do his efforts The Goonies, Milk, and True Grit among his other works make up for Jonah Hex?  My initial impression is no.  Good actors should be smart enough to dodge bad projects, or at least make the most of a bad role if they somehow get roped into a project they know is going to be crap.  Also, good actors should avoid pulling a Halle Berry.  /Begin rant.  Girl, you make MILLIONS of dollars a year when the rest of the country survives on 40K.  I think that you don’t have to take anything a studio throws your way, and I’m sure that you not only have enough money to lose some to a contract violation suit, but you’d find work with a less a-holish studio even after the litigation dust settles.  What I think is that you CHOSE to do Catwoman, probably for a ridiculous, seven-figure lump of cash.  /End rant.  So, if good (or even famous) actors have some sort of karmic score for their work, do I feel the same way about actors struggling to get noticed?  Yeah, I probably do.  I’m moderately unforgiving even under the best of circumstance, and Jason X was a far cry from ‘best of circumstances’.   

I’ve mentioned in my internet ramblings that I didn’t get to grow up on classic horror franchises like Friday the 13^th.  An uptight mother who’s scared of her own shadow and a lack of older siblings or cousins who lived nearby all helped contribute to this serious deficit in my character.  It’s possible that I missed some things here from earlier parts of the series’ story line.  Is there some part of the canonical story line that explains how Jason has been killing for decades and then manages to find himself in (1) in military penal custody and (2) in space?  There’s also (3) does freezing yourself cryogenically prevent you from being murdered by an axe-wielding psycho?  I have other questions, such as where they picked up the redheaded Vulcan-like chick.

This really was a terrible movie, although it worked with what I thought was a cool premise… kind of.  I always like the idea of sci-fi horror, but usually the results tend to resemble the worst aspects of both genres rather than taking on a single positive trait from either.  Jason X was a rare deviant from the usual problem:  it only picked up about half the worst traits of both genres (horror and sci-fi) and it actually managed to deliver some fairly decent, if small in scale, special effects.

Day 159: The Rundown (2003)

PG-13, 1 hr. 44 min.  Directed by: Peter Berg.  Release Date: September 26, 2003.  DVD Release Date: March 23, 2004.

Here's the rundown on The Rundown.  I think it's relatively hard for action-comedies to work.  Like a lot of hybrid films, they usually lean so far in one direction or the other that they've hardly earned the right to the hybridized genre.  The Rundown manages both action and comedy, although I'd say not in equal amounts.  Actually, I'd say about half the funny scenes weren't intended to be funny at all.  It also manages to show us most of the cast in roles we've seen them play before, and in some of the cases, we've seen them play better.

I own this movie on DVD, and I enjoy it, but it isn't a great movie.  A few of the better players, specifically Christopher Walken, seem to be phoning in their performance.  I'm not saying that even phoned in Christopher Walken isn't pretty good, but there was an oddness to his role that I'm not used to seeing from him.  He's ALWAYS the bad guy, so that's nothing new, and neither is the role of quirky villain.  But this was a bit different.  When I was about 17, I had to have my bottom wisdom teeth surgically removed, and for a few days, I was on a ton of Vicodin.  My speech and behavior had some of the same qualities that Walken's does here.  If someone told me that he'd had minor surgery and was taking painkillers during the course of the film, I wouldn't be surprised.  In at least two cases:  The Rock and Seann William Scott, they've played the roles so many times, I'm hardly surprised that they're on automatic, but Walken usually feels more natural on the screen than this.

Folks who like fight scenes will no doubt like this movie.  In particular, there's a pretty funny scene that occurs between The Rock, Seann William Scott,and someone that I think is Ernie Reyes, Jr, but I'm not sure I've ever seen him outside of a Ninja Turtle costume.  I know vaguely what he looks like because friends of mine took lessons from him at one of his dojos in the San Jose area... and what I saw here matches more or less what I remember of that description.  I was thrown a bit by the choreography which looked like capoeira, a skill I didn't know he had.  His dojos were only training tae kwon do back in the day.

The Rundown is a lot of fun, but it doesn't require a lot of smarts.  If you're a fan of action movies, or for some inexplicable reason, The Rock, you'll enjoy this.  If you want a bit more mental chew in your movies, you should find something else.

Day 158: X-Men - First Class (2011)

PG-13, 2 hr. 11 min.  Directed by: Matthew Vaughn.  Release Date: June 3, 2011.

I was introduced to the X-Men in what I think was 1992.  Well, I should say "reintroduced," since I had some old 80s-era comic books when I was a kid, but I never made a connection with everyone's favorite mutants until a classmate named Sandra mentioned she was watching the X-Men animated series either after school or on Saturdays or maybe both back in those days.  I watched and I was hooked.   Obsessed is probably a better word.  The X-Men called to me in ways that not many superheroes did back in those days.  Puberty helped me feel different from the people around me, occasionally isolated from my friends and family.  Gotta love those hormones, right?  The X-Men were isolated from the rest of the planet because of the way they were born.  They were fighting for the right to live unmolested in a world that didn't belong to them and where they weren't accepted.  It's a semi-positive message, even if the methodology used is violent and occasionally fatal... or re-fatal in the case of Jean Grey.

So my first, but not only problem with First Class is that it actually only contains one of the five original students at Xavier's Academy, Beast.  Yes, this is totally nerd rage, so I'm not going to gripe about it too much.  I'm also going to consider this a reboot of the series in the wake of Bryan Singer's disastrous third release in order to minimize more problems.  Was I one of those screaming fanboys on Fandango screaming about the franchise bailing on the "original fans" in a tone that proved without a doubt that I was not alive to read comics in the 60s when the "original" fans of the series would have been found?  No, but I had more than a few concerns well before I'd seen so much as the first trailer.

I also didn't like some of the casting decisions:  James McAvoy and Jennifer Lawrence follow in the "let's-cast-Oscar-noms-in-an-action-flick" overkill tradition of the X-Men series, but I didn't love either of them in their roles as Xavier and Mystique, collectively.  I particularly didn't appreciate that McAvoy tried to play off young Charles Xavier as if he'd helped inspire Austin Powers.  That was a VERY groovy mutation, baby, yeah!  And what's with the kid playing Banshee?  Rupert Grint wasn't available?  They had to go and use his clone?

But once I got past all that, First Class is one significantly slick piece of script work and special effects.  They did an amazing job of tying in the new take on the series to the existing work, such as Mystique choosing to appear as Rebecca Romeijn, which I totally thought was an improvement (sorry, Jennifer Lawrence), setting up Beast's transition from odd human to blue furball, explaining Xavier's wheelchair, showing how the relationships between various characters formed, and even bringing in Hugh Jackman in a Wolverine cameo.  There are also obvious shots of young Storm, Jean Grey, and Cyclops in various scenes involving Cerebro.  Vaughn may want to re-imagine the series, but he's not leaving anything behind.

The story is very strong, and feels almost like a period piece, because it vaguely follows the path of events that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis in the 60s.  Several scenes have real video news archives included, so we can see Kennedy's address about what happens although the events that caused that historic event have been changed.  There were, I thought, few actual action scenes, and while I haven't confirmed this anywhere, I suspect we'll be seeing more movies in this vein (hopefully with some extra characters thrown in).