Day 212: Seven (1995)

R, 2 hr. 5 min.  Directed by: David Fincher.  Release Date: September 22, 1995.  DVD Release Date: April 14, 1997.

Back in the day, when I saw this in the theaters, I would have said I hated this movie.  I couldn't for the life of me figure out what people were talking about.  Granted, that could have something to do with the fact that I saw this movie in the absolutely horrible theater on the University of the Pacific campus, where I was a Freshman at the time.  Not unlike the theater in my hometown, the UOP theater suffered from sticky floors, too much exterior noise, and seats that seemed hellbent on exploring your nethers with broken springs in the seat.  Since I started blogging, I've mentioned more than once how time and location can change my opinion of a movie, and Seven is the perfect example.  I've seen it maybe half a dozen times since 1995, including today, and I like it more and more each and every time I put it in the DVD player.

In many ways, this reminds me of The Bone Collector, although I suspect that it has more to do with the settings used in the films and less to do with the other details.  Not just the New York background that runs throughout both films, but the fact that all of these crime scenes are taking place in some pretty gritty areas.  Have you ever thought about what aliens might think of New York City if all they have to go on was episodes of Friends, Law & Order, and movies like Seven, The Bone Collector, and Cloverfield?  I've never spent time in the city that wasn't limited to an airport terminal, but I know my opinion of New York is tainted by video entertainment.  It's not okay, and certainly isn't accurate, but it's the situation.

Originally, I didn’t love Seven.  It was better than most of Brad Pitt’s work to date in '95, and in my mind, one of the lesser entries on Morgan Freeman’s brag sheet.  Over the years, you can see where it’s spawned some copycats… although that word is probably generous.  In terms of setting appearance, The Bone Collector reminded me strongly of Seven, and there was a ritual style to the murders that felt similar in my head.  Much later down the road, I was unfortunate enough to see Saw (no pun intended) and Jigsaw’s machinations tossed me right back to this start-up point.  Is Saw’s effort like one aspect of Seven on PCP and getting hit by the stupid truck?  Yeah, it is.  But the complicated scenarios and murder devices are common themes.  At least to me.  In retrospect, I also see some structural similarities between Seven and Copycat, a move I have loved for a very long time, but I’m willing to buy that I’m finding similarities because these are smarter-than-the-average-bear movies about serial killers, and ones where the writers learned about this sort of psychopathy before they started on the keyboard.

I originally used the term “overabundance of subtlety” to describe Seven in comparison with your average “modern” serial killer flick, say anything after 2000.  Look at the violence portrayed in films like Saw and Hostel (although neither of those were as intriguing as this) and then look back.  Glimpses of the aftermath appears subtle in my way of thinking.  That’s not a bad thing.  I can’t unsee some of the gore-fests that I’ve watched in times past, and I recognize that my words are a walking advertisement for why we should be eliminating violence from movies, but desensitization is at work.  It takes a lot more violence (and gore) to create a response in me now than it took back in ’95.  If I were to watch a similar crime movie from say, the 50s, the reaction is even smaller, or on some occasions, nonexistent.  I have a terribly hard time watching old crime films, and this progression towards more and more violent films is the cause. 

I was already a fan of Morgan Freeman by 1995, and this is a really solid performance from him.  I think he borrowed heavily on his William Sommerset role from this movie in order to build his role as Alex Cross.  Back in 1995, I generally flamed Brad Pitt as a talentless hack, someone selected for movie work because of his pretty face and not because of his abilities.  Seven made me back off on that stance a little.  There's some pretty bad work on his part, especially toward the end, but I could see the promise that would eventually help him put together Benjamin Button and Inglorious Basterds. 

This is a quiet sort of thriller, which isn't to everyone's taste, but I recommend that everyone see this at least once.  This still seems to be fairly popular, since I've waited for about five months for it to come off of "long wait" on Netflix, so I'm guessing lots of people are already operating on that idea. 

Day 211: Jawbreaker (1999)

R, 1 hr. 30 min.  Directed by: Darren Stein.  Release Date: February 19, 1999.  DVD Release Date: May 22, 2001.

I love this movie.  It never fails to make me laugh, just a little, and it's always entertaining.  I'm never ashamed that we've exported the idea to the rest of the world that this is what American high schools are like or that we have high school students that are obviously well in to their 20s.  That doesn’t mean that I’m not ashamed of that fact, or that I watch this publicly.  I don’t.  Generally, I watch this late at night or when no one else is around.  If you were observing my nervous behavior, which regularly includes looking over my shoulder and checking the sounds from the rest of the house, and you couldn’t see what I was watching, I suspect you’d think I was watching something dirtier.

The comedic element here has the same basic impact as a shock jock.  You’re laughing, but you really can’t believe you’re laughing at what amounts to murder and an extensive cover up by girls who should be rooting for the quarterback and preparing for the next sock hop.  The cast was well picked for their various roles, although some of these guys were getting a bit long in the tooth even in 1999 to play 18 year olds.  Just because you were the Noxema girl for like 5 years doesn’t mean that you can continue to successfully play a teenager as you near 30.  They all still looked youngish, helped in large part, I’m assuming, by makeup, but there was something about them that suggested quite a bit more life experience.

If you liked The Heathers, chances are good that you’ll dig this movie.  It’s got vaguely the same pitch:  horribly nasty teenage girls running amok in their high school, although I’d suggest that the Heathers had nothing on the antics of these chicks.  It’s a bit shocking how much things changed for us culturally in terms of what behaviors we were willing to accept in this movies within the same decade.

Day 210: Tarzan (1999)

G, 1 hr. 28 min.  Directed by: Kevin Lima, Chris Buck.  Release Date: June 16, 1999.  DVD Release Date: January 1, 2000. 

I got some rough news last night.  Two weeks ago, I interviewed for something that I thought might be my dream job.  The kind of job that might have justified all the time and effort I put in to my MBA and the kind of job I never thought I'd have a shot at.  The news was, well, obviously, that I didn't get the job.  The rejection letter I received was so impersonal that not only was I heartbroken, I was a little insulted.  I guess it could have been worse.  My name wasn't misspelled this time, which it was in a similar letter that I received just two days ago.  I know I shouldn't be taking this personally.  I know the economy, blah blah.  But I did.  I took it as a sign that I was never truly in the running.  I was a dark horse, and one that didn't quite make it to the first bend in the track.  That feeling sucks.  And worse, it's happening to me frequently in my job search.  I'm getting interviews for positions, but I don't quite seem to be a serious candidate.  I went to one (six hour) interview during which multiple managers lamented the fact that I wasn't an engineer.  It was like they'd brought me in just to point out that shortcoming.  I took that rejection personally as well.

I'm at a point in my life where every day is a struggle, something bleak and hopeless, with only occasional, dim lights in my path.  Most days I don't want to get out of bed.  I can only barely remember what it was like to be happy or anything but sad.  I'm in need of some cheering up... and more than one friend has suggested I'm in need of something a little more physical, but I'll settle for a cartoon.  They're far simpler and the last thing I need is something else to complicate what's left of my life.  I probably needed some perspective, which I didn't get during the course of the movie.  But this did put a listless smile on my face again.  Knock on wood, it'll last more than ten minutes.
 

I have some mixed emotions about this movie.  I grew up reading (and loving) the Tarzan stories, and I was thrilled when Disney decided to take on a project like this.  On the one hand, we have the animation, which is… beautifully done; stunning, really, when you think about it.  If I were to grade Disney’s efforts solely on the animation, watch the movies with the sound off and being totally ignorant of the story lines, Tarzan would probably score as my favorite.  There are so many subtleties of shading and light… I hate to call it art, because animation already is, but I’m thinking Art might be a more appropriate term.  Museum-quality work.  I was in a shop in Disneyworld a few years ago and I saw what appeared to be a single animation cell from this movie, done large, say 3 x 4 or something similar, and set in oils.  I was taken completely aback by my reaction to the scene.  It could have been in a museum.  It also had a price tag that suggested it should have been hanging in a museum, so I declined to purchase it.  But, in my dream place, somewhere in a potlighted corner of my home theater, there’s probably room for something like that animation cell.

Then, on the other hand, you have the story.  It seems to be a hash of everything Tarzan oriented.  There are the basic factors of his upbringing, which you expect considering how Tarzan never quite caught on with an American audience, and even its home base seems to be moving past his adventure tales.  People aren’t as familiar with the Ape Man as they used to be, and they’re getting less familiar all the time.  I mentioned to a friend that I was going to watch this movie today, and she asked me who Tarzan was… so she ended up joining me for my viewing.  I also warned her to stay away from the Casper Van Dien version, although there are even aspects of that movie that I don’t think are horrible.

And then, if I had a third hand, there’s the music.  Now, we know that Disney films always have musical elements to them.  Some of those elements have turned in to run away hits in their day.  In my own life, we had to listen to Celine Dion croak out Beauty & The Beast, Peabo Bryson & Vanessa Williams did A Whole New World… and I’m blanking on the others, but there have been more than a few.  The music here should have been an easy sell.  I grew up listening to Phil Collins.  I loved his work, both solo and with Genesis, in the 80s and 90s, but I didn’t love his songs here.  They’re a bit too mushy for my taste, and while that’s been okay on occasion, Disney mushy usually has a bit of fun, a bit of spirit, that these songs lack.  Animation and morose don’t really mix.

I think any Disney fan should see this.  The overall product is a bit of a wash, but their animators are at the top of their games here.  Even if you’re just looking for a way to entertain your kids for an hour or so, this is worth looking at.

Day 209: Star Trek III- The Search For Spock (1984)

PG, 1 hr. 45 min.  Directed by: Leonard Nimoy.  Release Date: June 1, 1984.  DVD Release Date: April 18, 2000.

“Even numbered Trek movies don’t suck.”  I think that’s how Spice advertises when they run these movies, especially if they’re running them in sequence, which happens not infrequently.  Spock holds that adage true, serving as a fairly weak follow up to The Wrath of Khan and a stage-setter for The Voyage Home, both of which blow the doors off this installment in the franchise.

I’m not sure why I have the problems I have with this movie.  It’s probably story-based, because the special effects that I enjoyed in Khan make a reappearance (more or less) in Spock.  The cast members seem to deliver their average performances… a quantification that is admittedly is hit or miss depending on how much time Shattner feels the need to waste with inappropriate pauses between words not separated by punctuation.  It also probably has a little bit to with the actress playing T’Saavik.  For whatever reason, Kirstie Alley was replaced in the role, and the new star is a little lacking.  

The resurrection of Spock (I don’t feel like I’m giving a spoiler, since the man appeared in three later films of this franchise, at least three episodes of The Next Generation, and the 2009 reboot) is probably the crux of my issue.  I'm pretty sure that resurrections like this belong only in three places: soap operas, the X-Men comic series, and World of Warcraft, and its appearance here gives the movie a vaguely space opera feel.  To make matters worse, other than to bridge the gap between Khan and Voyage Home, Search doesn’t seem to serve a whole lot of purpose.  They could have extended the second film in the series by half an hour and gotten the same closure this movie offered.  I liked the whole conflict with the rogue Klingon commander, and I probably would have been happier if that guy had a bigger, more powerful vessel and the Enterprise was again the only ship in the quadrant.  I actually was happy that Christopher Lloyd played the bad guy, which is a nice deviation from what I'm used to seeing him do.

Search has its moments, but I generally skip it in favor of its even-numbered movies.

Day 208: Ocean's Eleven (2001)

PG-13, 2 hr.  Directed by: Steven Soderbergh, Luis Buñuel.  Release Date: December 7, 2001.  DVD Release Date: May 7, 2002.

This is the only Ocean's movie I'll be talking about, due in large part to that steaming pile of crap in Ocean's Twelve wherein Julia Roberts' character looks so much like (GASP!) Julia Roberts that she manages to pass herself off as, well, herself.  I guess that takes some talent, because Kristen Stewart couldn't pull it off, but it feels a bit of a total rip-off and I want the whole franchise to die.  Painfully, if possible.  

Now that my meandering rant is done, I'm going to say that as a standalone and not part of its own sequels, I think Ocean's Eleven is a really strong movie.  It's also a strength that begins and ends with its cast.  It's not very often that any movie manages to pull in THAT many high-profile, middling-to-high talent actors in one place.  I'm not claiming that the entire cast is talented.  I couldn't make that claim, because, well, Scott Caan.  He tries real hard, but it's not enough.  

The story is actually pretty standard for the caper movie.  I've seen some that were better written (with worse casts), like the latest version of The Italian Job, and some that were more poorly written, both with better OR worse casts.  It's a bit hard to organize one of these, even if you've had someone else's script to work from, as this movie did.  I've also seen these films with better special effects and more complicated heists in progress, which I tend to like better.

It's hard for me to get real excited, even about Ocean's Eleven.  It might not be fair, because I'm sure I've let some of my hatred for the sequel taint my perceptions here, but I'm also not sure this movie has a strong enough presence without its cast to warrant more of my attention.  If you haven't seen this movie, or the original of this movie, I'd suggest seeing the one with old Blue Eyes just to save you a bit of nonsense and a lack of association with Twelve.

On a side note, why is Brad Pitt's character constantly eating?

Day 207: Captain America (2011)

PG-13, 2 hr. 1 min.  Directed by: Joe Johnston.  Release Date: July 22, 2011.

I've been looking forward to this movie since it was announced that Chris Evans was going to be Captain America, because there's something about him that always makes me smile, although I had some trepidations because, well, Cap isn't my favorite superhero.  This ended up being my movie today as part of spending the day with my godfather, which hasn't happened with just the two of us since I was 10 and he was coaching my baseball team.  

For me, the cast was seriously the strength of the film.  I loved Chris Evans as Cap.  Flat out loved him.  I loved Tommy Lee Jones as Colonel Phillips.  Well, this is starting to get a bit repetitive, so let's just say that I thought everyone in the movie was great.  They made the show for me.  There are a few fun special effects.  They also get mad props for having Chris Evans move (and fight) like Captain America from the cartoons and video games of my childhood (okay, and adulthood).   I do dig the message that sometimes being a good person is better than being a physically strong person. 

But here's the rough:  I thought this was BORING, and for more than the first half of the film.  They did the exact opposite of what I would have liked to see, which was a montage of munchkin Steve getting manned-up on super'roids and then lengthy action scenes with nifty special effects and daring rescues.  We have what feels like an eternity of someone who probably should have been a extra from the Lollipop Guild scene of The Wizard of Oz mighty morphin' his way into the embodiment of America's strength and spirit followed by montage action sequences.   By the time the action finally starts, I wasn't really concerned with anything but getting the Cap'n to The Avengers movie next year.  I did a lot of sighing.  

Here's one of the questions I've been asked by three different people:  do you need to be a fan to watch the film?  I'm not, and I could follow along... although I'd done enough research into Captain America to know the basic story arcs, which clued me in not only to the ending of the film, but also what happened to many of the characters.  Is this appropriate for small kids?  I'm going to field this with a cautious no.  Red Skull, the villain of this piece, is probably going to be scary for your average kid under the age of, say, 10.  If your kid is made of sterner stuff, you might want to consider the turbine-related death of at least one Hydra agent and the fact that Cap kills more people than the Manson family combined.  

I'm still looking forward to the Avengers flick set to be released next month because I think Captain America was decently cast.  I won't be buying this on DVD, and I probably won't go out of my way to watch this a second time. 

Day 206: Live & Let Die (1973)

PG, 2 hr. 1 min.  Directed by: Guy Hamilton.  Release Date: June 27, 1973.  DVD Release Date: October 19, 1999. 

I’ve watched this movie a lot.  I almost always manage to catch this on the Month of Bond that’s run by… I think TNT every summer.  I’m still not sure whether I love it or I hate it.  I guess if I’m going to rate it against what I expect of a Bond movie, it kind of sucks.  The action is pretty low-key compared to most of the series, the only gadget worth mentioning is a watch that doubles as a high-powered magnet… yeah, I can’t talk about it, it makes me sick to my stomach, the most exotic location in the film is N’awlins, and the Bond girls are a total mess.  BUT, if I look at it from the point of view I look at most movies from, it’s kind of a success.  It’s hysterical, although probably not intentionally… well, mostly not intentionally.  The story’s fun and easy to follow, although it borders on the stupid.  What really sets this apart from other Bond films for me is the successful completion of a twist that’s so good that it manages to surprise me every time I watch it.  You’d think I’d remember, but I never seem to.

Now, this movie is one of those movies where I’m laughing and I know I shouldn’t be.  In part, this is because I feel like I should be high to watch this so that it makes sense.  I never doubt that the people who made this movie were totally stoned throughout the process.  This movie contains like 98% of the black people I’ve seen in a Bond film, with the rest being Felix Lighter (in one of his many face-changes throughout the series) and the MI 6 aide that appears in… maybe Tomorrow Never Dies, for sure he’s the one communicating with Bond via wristwatch communicator or some such crap, and nearly every single person of color in this movie seems to be in on the bad stuff going on.  It sends a bad message.  The portrayal of the characters feels… racist.  Not deliberately so, but still.  Think of the crows from Dumbo.  If you put every stereotype about African Americans that existed in the time into a story, it would probably look like this.  If all the characters were black, I’d call this exploitation, but at its worst.  Live & Let Die also creates Sheriff J.W. Culpepper, who is ridiculously funny and so racist that even Mel Gibson would be like, “woah, dude, that’s not right.”  I also have to feel a little sad for Solitaire... she ends up with a total skeeze like Bond, no matter how brief the relationship is.

Nice read, Velma.  You know, that moment in every Scooby Doo where Velma has to explain that the man in the mask was the first person they ran in to that they didn’t actually know before the story took place.  It sucked being Velma, because she was the only one who ever pieced that stuff together, and she got none of the credit.  Fred had his ascot on so tight nothing was getting up to his brain, Daphne seemed to have thought with something about two feet below her cranium, and Scoob and Shag were well… busy expanding their consciousness in the back of the Mystery Machine.  I’m sad to report (although I’m laughing about it) that there is that moment in this movie:

“growing camouflaged poppy fields protected by the voodoo threat of Baron Samedi…”  

No, I haven’t been drinking.  I actually wrote that crap down while it was still coming from Roger Moore’s mouth.  This represents my “nice read, Velma” award of the franchise, and the whole set up is so much like a Scooby Doo episode that I don’t really know what else to compare it to.  The only thing worse than that line is getting to SEE that description enacted.  There are really, really plastic snakes. It’s not pretty.  

I like this, but I’m not sure I’d recommend it to everyone.  I like to think of myself as sensitive without being a slave to the political correctness movement.  If you are one of those people who might be insulted when no insult is intended, take a pass on this.  Otherwise, you might get a chuckle or two out Live & Let Die.  

I have three things to leave you with; they’ll make more sense if you watch this movie:  (1) I want to have a N’awlins style funeral (although I still plan on cremation or being left in a ditch), (2) give it a rest with the sharks, dammit, and (3) the Death card doesn’t always literally mean death.  Miss Cleo taught me that.

Day 205: The Sting (1973)

PG, 2 hr. 15 min.  Directed by: George Roy Hill.  Release Date: December 1, 1973.  DVD Release Date: September 6, 2005.

For people who are older than me by say ten to fifteen years, this is one of those movies that I've noticed they never shut up about.  I knew quite a bit about The Sting long before I spotted it as an option for streaming on Netflix.  In some ways, this reminds me a little bit of Newsies, but I can't tell you why, because other than the period in which they take place, there isn't all that much that the two of them have in common.

I've never seen a Robert Redford movie before.  Well, that's not true.  I've never seen a Redford movie when he was young.  I saw Sneakers back in the early 90s, and I thought it was good, but Redford was totally not the draw for me.  I finally get why women my mother's age thought he was handsome, now that I've seen this movie.  I'm also left wondering who put his face through the cheese grater and why.  Good thing he's got some talent to fall back on.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed The Sting, because as a rule, I tend not to enjoy heist movies.  There are a few exceptions, like (kind of) The Italian Job and Ocean's Eleven, which I wrote about last week.  But the smile appeared on my face as the opening refrain of that old song "The Tramp" started playing... you know, that one that nearly every kid taking band in any school learns to play at some point.  It didn't leave until the music faded with the ending credits.  Considering it's heisty roots, there's a lot of energy.  This wasn't action packed, it was fun

The story was a little hard to follow, not in that poorly written way, but in the way a story that depends on the machinations of several major characters is hard to follow.  This is one of those plot-counter plot movies, and some of the plots are way better than others.   I was trying to multitask when I sat down to watch The Sting, and I either had to stop or rewind every once in awhile because I wasn't sure what had happened.

I was originally afraid that this movie wouldn't live up to the hype.  I've heard nothing but praise about the movie, and I can see why.  I was afraid the hype would kill my enjoyment of the film, but it didn't. This is definitely one of those movies you should see at least once.

Day 204: Masters of the Universe (1987)

PG, 1 hr. 46 min. Directed by: Gary Goddard. Release Date: Aug 07, 1987. DVD Release Date: Oct 23, 2001.

I'm participating in another Blog-A-Thon, this time, the My Hometown Blog-A-Thon hosted by Wide Screen World, a fellow LAMB.  You'd think that, growing up in the 'burbs just south of LA like I did, that I'd have had an easy time of this challenge.  It took me forever to come up with the perfect suspect, as I'd forgotten that the summer I was 10 that I was taken to the filming of Masters of the Universe on two or three separate occasions, as it was filmed only a few minutes drive from where I lived in Whittier, California.  I even met Dolph Lundgren on the second trip, in full He-Man regalia, and he was so nice and gracious that I have a hard time really slamming him for his crappier work to this day.


I say a lot that I grew up in the best place on Earth.  Southern California in the 80s was idyllic.  It led the way in social trends, such as "Valley," which I spoke pretty fluently even though I never set foot in the Valley if I could help it.  Birthdays and Christmases resulted in tickets to Disneyland, and for a time I lived so close to the Happiest Place on Earth that I could sit in my backyard and watch their 11pm fireworks show.  In the same day, we could ski and surf, and so long as we stayed as west as we could, we avoided gang warfare and firefights.  The ground might have shaken, and I believe 1987 was the year that a major earthquake ripped its way through Southern California, poor little Whittier, in particular, was hard hit.  And of course, now that I struggled to find something and started writing, I just remembered that most of The Karate Kid was filmed at my local Golf 'N Stuff and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure was filmed at my favorite waterpark.  But seriously, anything you could possibly want to do

Okay, so now for the movie.  I grew up loving my He-Man toys, and I was disappointed how few of the characters and settings managed to make it to the screen.  Neither Stratos nor Ram-Man made the cut.  There was no Castle Greyskull, and while Evilyn and the Sorceress both made it, they were all kinds of old and completed de-sexified.  The movie managed at once to be both too similar to and not similar enough to the toys and the cartoons that I loved so much.  I also found it strange that there was absolutely no discussion of Prince Adam, even though Eternia was laid waste by war, and two of the characters in the film would know about the link between Adam and He-Man.


Nearly ever aspect of this movie is atrocious. The acting, the special effects, the script... there's just no end to the badness here. While the film does have some of the basics of the He-Man cartoon: characters, concepts, and place names, it provides a script like that Beastmaster installment where somehow the fighting spills out into "modern" America.  I expect this was a much lower budget film than I would have thought back in those days.  Now, I can point out the flaws and the stuff that was done with computers or special cameras, but as a kid, I couldn't have spotted any of that.  Frank Langella was pretty choice as Skeletor, but unfortunately, the makeup they used to give him the classic skull face was less choice.  Now, this movie has become a cult favorite, and not just because it portrays an 80s icon; it's one of those rare films that's so bad it's good. I always enjoy watching this, although I have to space out my viewing by significant amounts of time.

Day 203: Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)

PG, 1 hr. 45 min.  Directed by: Stephen Herek.  Release Date: February 17, 1989.  DVD Release Date: December 4, 2001.

As part of the My Hometown Blog-A-Thon, I'll be talking about this movie as to how it relates to my hometown, which was literally a hop, skip, and a jump from San Dimas.  Tomorrow's entry was actually filmed, at least in part, within the boundaries of my home town, but today was close enough that certain places discussed in the film were favorite hangouts of mine.

I've mentioned a few times that Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure was the entertainment for the first date I ever had.  Her name was Tiffany something or other, and she played the drums (something that I think is sexy to this day), but that's about all I remember about her now.  It was a good choice as entertainment for a date since it managed to break all that awkward tension.

It also reminds me strongly of growing up in southern California.  San Dimas wasn't far from where I did grow up, and the um, "excellent" water slides mentioned in the movie are those rides at Raging Waters, the first (and in my mind, the only) waterpark in southern California.  In many ways, San Dimas wasn't so different from my own hometown, although it was a bit larger than my hometown and a bit closer to Los Angeles.  Both main characters speak a variant of Valley, which reminds me... well, it horrifies me to remember that I spoke in a similar way growing up.  I've been out of southern California since the year this movie was released and "like" is still a major presence in my speech and something that occasionally forces people NOT from California to make fun of me.  Bill & Ted also has the same feel to it that a lot of 80s movies set in LA have:  a land of no responsibility, no consequence, and wild abandon; a kind of paradise, which is how I still feel about southern California.  While I would have been a bit younger than these guys, even I felt that and it colors my thought process to this day.   

The movie was funny and dealt with topics that were easily identifiable to the pre-teen experience.  It was silly without being falling over the line to stupid.  Bill & Ted also managed to be hopelessly mired up in my own personal nostalgia for all things 80s.  This is only strange because it is one of the last things to have been produced in the 1980s that has that association.

At the time, I liked this because it covered the basics of what my history class had covered over the course of the school year.  Today, I like the movie for the same reasons.  It managed to cover a whole year's worth of world history, granted, with a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor that occasionally bordered dangerously on the slapstick.  I was actually surprised by how well this has survived the years.  I don't laugh out loud like I used to, but it served as the catalyst for a major improvement in my mood today, and that's not something to sneeze at.

When I saw this in '89, I was sure we'd go on to see a large number of great things from both Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter.  Time would see me only half right:  we'd see a lot of things from Keanu Reeves (most of which were utter crap), and we'd see a few things from Alex Winter, only two of which were great (The Lost Boys and Ben 10 on Cartoon Network).  For Keanu Reeves, this movie would serve as a touchstone, something for him to fall back on whenever he was uncertain of how else to proceed.  There aren't many Reeves' movies to follow this one where he doesn't, even if for a moment, revert back to his Ted persona.  Let's face it.  Half of The Matrix is a "woah" moment.

There's very little to offend in this film, which is likely part of its charm.  By the late 80s, teen interest movies were rapidly evolving, more and more frequently becoming something that was designed to shock rather than to amuse.  Bill & Ted offers nothing like that, portraying two fun-loving, but not very bright, high school students who are given what is possibly an impossible task, but who learn something over the course of their quest.

Day 202: Waiting (2005)

R, 1 hr. 34 min.   Directed by: Rob McKittrick.  Release Date: October 7, 2005.  DVD Release Date: February 7, 2006.

When I saw this movie back in 2005, it made me rethink the way I interact with wait staff at any restaurant, from McDonald’s all the way up to five-star places.  I’m not rude, at least not purposefully, but once upon a time I wasn’t shy about expressing my displeasure if some poor soul had done something.  In the wake of this movie, I’ve learned to check my “anger” behavior.  I’ve never been a big fan of talking down to someone who’s responsible for handling my food, but I wasn’t averse to raising my voice if the situation called for it.  I was okay with complaining, especially if I thought that the problem was something that the server could have, or should have prevented before it appeared before me.

Now I don’t.  I could have the worst server on the planet and I remain calm.  I don’t impact their tips.  If I send something back (which I’ve done maybe four times in my entire life), I ask for a drink, and I don't drink very often.  Why do I do this?  Watch Waiting and take notes, because I’ve seen almost everything that happened in this movie (at least, everything the customers did in the movie), and I saw the response from the server staff.

While the gross-out quota is high, a not unusual condition in a Ryan Reynolds comedy, the humor more than makes up for any discomfort you might feel watching the cook staff enact revenge on the ruder customers.  In fact, the combination of Justin Long and Ryan Reynolds was incredibly good.  Granted, I like both guys in a comedic role, but I had originally thought they might cancel each other out; I had thought they might spend so much time fighting for “lord of the funny” in such a way that each person’s impact might be diminished.  While it did occasionally look like they were in competition, they seemed to feed off each other, which made for an enjoyable experience.

There’s a little bit of this, both in the portrayal of staff at a restaurant and the comedy, that’s over the top.  I don’t spend much time rolling my eyes at the stuff on screen, but there are a few groaners to deal with.  If you haven’t seen this, or you got tempted by the sequel, which wasn’t as good, you should probably check this out.

Day 201: 40 Days & 40 Nights (2002)

R, 1 hr. 34 min.  Directed by: Michael Lehmann.  Release Date: March 1, 2002.  DVD Release Date: September 17, 2002.

I thought this was (mostly) a vaguely clever attempt at a romantic comedy.  It has a certain tongue-in-cheek humor to it that I liked.  I think the cast, filled with hip starts; only a few of whom seem to have survived the "aughties," is very good.  Those who have relationships have great chemistry, particularly Shannyn Sossamun and Josh Hartnett.  I don't happen to love either of these guys on a regular basis, but I thought they were excellent here.  The supporting cast was very good and often drove the story in a very positive sense towards the effective climax (no pun intended) of the movie.

However, I don't think this is very realistic.  I suspect that most people could do a forty day stretch without sex.  I suspect they might have a harder time avoiding all sexual contact from their lives for that stretch of time, but it could still be done without the hyperventilating and spastic behavior that Josh Hartnett shares with us.  I suspect that most people wouldn't CHOSE to go through that, for any reason.  I'm wondering if the problem was the forced restraint, going through that period of time knowing you'd made a promise and had to get through it, rather than deciding to forgo sex.  

I love that the supporting characters get so involved in this.  Actually, if I were Matt (Hartnett) and so few of my friends could support my choice, I'd be getting a better quality of friends.  But, the bet on when Matt would fold did provide at least fifty percent of what was really funny about this.  In particular, I like the scene where Matt's roommate barges in to Matt's room and uses an ultraviolet light to scan the bed for um... signs that Matt had broken his vow.  Funny stuff.  In fact, I can't think of a time where anything really funny was going on between Hartnett and Sossamun unless there was a third party present.

When it's the leading couple are together, it's all sweetness and light.  They put on a very good show, and fortunately it's a brief one.  I wasn't against them getting together, but I would have been happier if it had been shorter.  Vinessa Shaw, who I noticed because of her role in Hocus Pocus, plays a great role as the "villain" of the piece, the evil ex-girlfriend.  She starts Hartnett down this path, and she's determined to wreck his life because of it.  Even better (at least if your sense of humor is as warped as mine), is that she's totally unapologetic.

You could do worse than watch this.  I don't know that it bears frequent, repeated watching, but it's certainly entertaining every once in awhile.  I received this as a gift for Christmas, probably in 2002 or 2003, from my sister and her husband and I still think it was a great gift.

Day 200: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pt 2 (2011)

PG-13, 2 hr. 10 min.  Directed by: David Yates.  Release Date: July 15, 2011. 

I can't think of a better way to celebrate the 200th day of this little project of mine.  I'm in Chicago right now, hopefully only days away from selecting my first post-MBA job, but after six interviews, I was ready for some fun.  I snuck away from my conference a bit early and crossed the street to see Harry Potter. I'm going to be honest.  I'm a little sad that Harry Potter is over, first as books and then as films.  After all is said and done, I'm still curious to know what our favorite wizards are like as adults, I'm curious to know what a magical place Hogwarts was with Minerva McGonagall as Headmistress, and I'm curious to see how the next generation learns their magic.  Even knowing what was going to happen, this was an emotional journey for me.  The video input makes the story more real for me, especially since the film crews have managed to stay not only close to the books, but to what I imagined as I read this book.  I know I wasn't the only one, because the little boy next to me was trying (and failing) not to cry and telling his mother in feverish whispers that he didn't want Harry Potter to die.  I heard grown ups doing some sniffling, too.   Geeks :).

It isn't often that I get so wrapped up in the lives of film characters.  When I wrote about Star Trek: Nemesis, I mentioned that in that ending, when I realized that there were no transporter tricks, no magical shuttle rides, no Santa, that I could feel the blood drain from my face.  It was like losing a loved one, a cold, sick feeling, that I'm thrilled to say I've only experienced a handful of times in my life.  I had another one of those moments in this movie, despite foreknowledge of what was going to happen. 

To put it simply, this was fantastic.  I'm probably going to be replacing my A Year In Movies entry for 2011, and I never believed I'd like anything more than Water for Elephants.  The movie has a few problems though, the first being that this very obviously BEGINS in the middle of something, which is something no good story ever does.  I also didn't care for the conversation that took place in the "cleaner" version of the train station.  I'm not going to spoil it for anyone, but the whole set up really annoyed me.

I found myself asking a question.  Fans of the books may have come up with a similar one.  In The Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince, we see Harry and his gang still using simple spells with accompanying... invocations, and they all occasionally stumble.  Last year, without any real visible path, we see these guys suddenly able to do some pretty impressive magic without so much as a word.  Granted, we do learn that they START the process of casting spells without words, but we never really see them do more than practice it until Deathly Hallows.  What gives, JK Rowling?

Other than these little, nitpicky issues, I couldn't think of a better way to finalize the franchise.  The cast and crew deserve some sort of lifetime achievement award for this, because let's face it, what other film franchise has done such an amazing job as this one?  None come to mind immediately... or even after some lengthy thought. 

Now I get to spend the rest of the day wondering what life is going to be like after Harry Potter.  Sigh.

Day 199: E.T. (1982)

PG, 1 hr. 45 min.   Directed by: Steven Spielberg.  Release Date: June 11, 1982.  DVD Release Date: October 22, 2002. 

I remember seeing a few movies before I saw this one.  Mary Poppins is the first memory I have of being in a theater.  I don't remember who was with me, but I remember being in the dark in a room with lots of people and we were all sitting in dark blue chairs.  They looked black in the dark, but as soon as light from the movie screen hit them, you knew they were blue.   I remember thinking that it was weird how the real people were interacting with the animated characters and I remember someone in the audience near me had been sick, or was sick, because the man was coughing a lot.  I remember a lot of things about the things around the movie, but virtually nothing about the movie itself.  No flash of the picture in that heavily curtained screen.  I wasn't paying much attention to the movie.  I was doing what most four-year-olds do.  I was checking out everything else and probably talking a lot.

My memories of E.T. are solid.  I was five in June of 1982, and I have flashes of the scene where Elliot and ET meet.  I remember the Reese's Pieces on the big screen.  I remember thinking Drew Barrymore was pretty, but not as pretty as Linda Carter, who I wanted to marry at the time.  I don't remember ANYTHING about the theater or the people around me.  I was sucked in to the magic of what was certainly the best-made family film of the time and arguably one of the best-made family films ever.  There are parts of this movie that still manage to give me goosebumps thirty years later.  If nothing else, the appeal of this movie has some serious staying power.  

This is going to be a short entry, because I suspect there are few enough of you who haven't seen this movie.  I keep forgetting to check if the kids in my family have seen this.  I figure, if nothing else, I'll trick my nephews into watching this because the ET species shows up in the Senate discussions in the prequel Star Wars trilogy.

If you have kids in your family and you haven't shared this classic, you've been amiss.  You should get a copy (it came out on DVD a few years ago) and schedule a family night.  Popcorn, sodas or punch, however you guys do it.

Day 198: Soapdish (1991)

PG-13, 1 hr. 37 min.  Directed by: Michael Hoffman.  Release Date: January 1, 1991.  DVD Release Date: December 11, 2001.

It's funny how our perceptions of movies change over time.  There are some that you fall in love with as a kid that have staying power; you continue to love them, you just might not have to watch them over and over anymore.  There are others that you love at one point in time, but then you start finding them less and less entrancing.  Soapdish is one of those latter types of movies for me.  I remember seeing this in middle school, which in California (mostly) is 5th through 8th grades.  I don't remember why or how, because a movie poster with this much pink in it would have gotten a turned up nose in reply, but I saw it.  Once there, I thought it was funny.  Funny enough that I purchased the VHS tape when it came out about six months later.  I had it in my collection until I dumped all my VHS tapes in favor of DVDs, but by that time... say 2000 or 2001, I had little interest in replacing this movie as a part of my new collection.

There are lots of good features about this movie.  It has a brilliant cast:  Robert Downey Jr., Terri Hatcher, Whoopi Goldberg, Sally Field, Kevin Kline, Elizabeth Shue and so on and so forth.  Even the cameo roles got sent out to fairly well know actors and I think that they do an outstanding job with their parts.  Spoofing the soap opera should have been comedy gold.  Lord knows, there's plenty about soap operas that should be spoofed.  They're the perfect example of how too much drama is a bad thing.

But the execution of this movie is lacking.  Don't get me wrong, there are funny moments.  There are even a few funny moments that feel like they're being ad-libbed, which is always impressive... or speaks of bad writing, and I'm not totally sure which.  

I wouldn't rush off and go get this movie.  Even the cast shouldn't tempt you.  However, it is currently up as a streaming option on Netflix, so if you're bored and haven't seen this, there are worse options on the list.

Day 197: Spin (2007)

R, 1 hr. 22 min.   Directed by: Henry Pincus.  Release Date: August 3, 2006.  DVD Release Date: June 15, 2010.

Towards the end of my college experience, Go swept through my fraternity house like it was VD.  All the AV geeks in the house, and there were quite a few of them, had it on DVD back when DVD was still a relatively new concept.  I think that I watched it for the first time with my fraternity brothers Ian and AJ, because they introduced me to a lot of... not indies, but off-mainstream movies that were being released in the late 90s.  

Watching Spin, which is apparently alternately titled You Are Here, was like sitting down to watch Go all over again.  And, I guess I should start with a slight confession:  I hated Go.  It was pointless and stupid, a bunch of kids getting hopped up on booze and whatever drugs they could get their hands on then running around doing absolutely STUPID stuff that we were supposed to think was funny. Spin had a similar feel and premise, and I'm not sure that they ever told a story per se, it was more as if we just happened to wander in on a particularly bad day of The Hills.

While the plot was the same this time around, I have to say that this was a bit better executed than Go.  The cast felt a bit like it had fallen out of one the CW's lamer shows, but I guess that's how you rake in the kids for box office (or DVD) ticket sales.  I got a little tired of reliving the same events from several different points of view, but there were a few characters that were so quirky it managed to keep my interest.  Granted, they were largely caricatures of other characters that I'd seen in similar youth culture movies, but they were still of interest.  Mick and Audrey were my personal favorites, in no small part because they seemed to be the only two characters that weren't half retarded.

What saves this from being an utter waste of time is the crazy short run time.  The last time I saw a feature length film this short, it was animated and there was a talking animal on the screen.  They might have been able to stretch this out, but the product would have been really, really dull.  As it stands, there are worse ways to waste time than to watch this.  You could, for instance, watch Go. 

Day 196: Miami Vice (2006)

R, 2 hr. 13 min.  Directed by: Michael Mann.  Release Date: July 28, 2006.  DVD Release Date: December 5, 2006.

I grew up watching Crockett and Tubbs.  For like three years, I rocked the wet look.  I would have KILLED for a white suit and a bunch of pink or baby blue tee shirts.  I retrospect, I realize how strange that would be, but back then, Miami Vice was the best show ever.   It's been 20 years since I've seen an episode, and to this day my pulse races when I hear that stupid theme song.  Back then, it was innovative for being instrumental and not sounding like muzak.  Now it sounds dated and electronic, stereotypically 80s, but not in a good way.  Even still, it gets the old adrenaline pumping.

When I heard about this remake, I was hesitant, but excited.  I figured with modern stunts and pyrotechnics and the right cast, it could be pretty good.  I got even more excited once I learned that the dynamic duo had been cast:  Collin Farrell and Jamie Foxx.  It sounded absolutely perfect if Farrell could get his American accent right, which has occasionally been a problem for him... or maybe its just my ear for languages.  To me, he occasionally hints at the sing-song brogue of his homeland.  It's not as distracting as Costner in Prince of Thieves, but it's pretty close.  

I think that the actors are pretty much all that makes this movie watchable.  Farrell and Foxx, in addition with Gong Li put on a very good show, making the best of parts that are a bit... muddled.  I've heard some complaints about her accent and that it was difficult to understand her, but I didn't have that problem.  They get points for acting their way reasonably well through a story that is a bit too long, has a bit too many subplots and counterpoints, and doesn't really seem to make all that much sense except that it's Crockett and Tubbs fighting narcotics and skinheads and random other folks in Miami.

I love how the major bad guys are dealt with, which is calm and casual.  Like Michael Meyers in Halloween.  You've never seen Michael Meyers run.  He's always walking after his running victims, biding his time.  Freddy ran.  Ghostface ran all the damned time; it's why he's always getting thrown into wall or down stairs.  Michael, like the bad guy here, is calm and collected, not wasting energy on killing sprees, screaming, or any of the normal shenanigans that always seem to lead to capture.

There are some really slick details, but they're bogged down by the dead weight of the story.  You can miss this without feeling any guilt, and if you were or are a fan of the Miami Vice TV show, you probably WANT to miss this one. 

Day 195: Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

PG, 1 hr. 59 min.  Directed by: Guy Hamilton.  Release Date: December 17, 1971. DVD Release Date: October 17, 2000.

To my French readers, happy Bastille Day.  To everybody else, happy Thursday.

This is probably the only Connery Bond movie that I can't find any reason to enjoy.  It seems a little tainted by the time in which it was made, so that's probably got some influence on the tone of the film.  It's crazy campy, barely bothering to take itself seriously, even when it probably should.  Now, there's still some of the things I expect and love from Connery's Bond:  there are so many single entendres that it's hard not to laugh.  A lot.

Most of the characters introduced in this movie are... unsettling.  Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd, the homosexual (and maybe partnered?) enforcers for The Spangled Mob are running around waffling between murder and dabbing their wrists with perfume.  No, seriously.  There's even a moment of jealousy (I think) that passes between the two men when one of them mentions how attractive Bond babe Tiffani Case is "for a lady".  The two are so odd that they've inspired repeating villains on Cartoon Network's Code Name: Kids Next Door and gave their names to the "power lesbian, rockstar/astronaut" couple on Sex and Death.  Speaking of Ms. Case, it's more than a little creepy that she's running around swapping out various wigs all the time.  It reminds me of that villain from Return to Oz.

The story is the real problem.  It jumps around, seemingly without rhyme or reason.  People area dropping like a zombie movie, and no one seems to be overly worried about it. There are a lot of weak details in the film, lots of weak details.  Consider the elephant found near "Nairobi, South Africa."  Someone clearly needs to get the folks at EON an atlas.  It makes me wonder how the film crew got around, since they filmed at least PART of this movie in what I suspect was the Karoo. 

So, I wouldn't waste too much time on this one.  If you have to see a Bond movie, there are better options.  Lots of them.

Day 194: Hitman (2007)

R, 1 hr. 33 min.  Directed by: Xavier Gens.  Release Date: November 21, 2007.  DVD Release Date: March 14, 2008.

I watched this a million years ago in the theater and liked it, but I wasn’t wild about it.  I decided a long time ago to see it again, and the poor movie has steadily worked its way up my Netflix queue over the last year or so.  It has a good cast, and it has been well thought out, but something keeps this from being a movie I really enjoy.

I have lots of mixed feelings about this movie.  It’s a bit like an “If They Mated” between the Bond franchise and The Saint.  Sure, the offspring is a bit… retarded, but it does manage to be more sophisticated in nature than the latter parent and less sophisticated than the former.  For a spy movie, this is... slick, not very slick, but slick enough.  What keeps this from being better is that there are a few major holes in the basic premise.  In what city isn’t your average person going to notice some dude running around with a bar code tattooed on the back of his bald dome?  Even in New York that would attract stares and raised eyebrows.  Since an organization of hitmen would be fighting to stay unnoticed by both the rank-and-file and authorities, this represented a problem in keeping my disbelief in even the mildest of suspensions.

I happen to LOVE Timothy Oliphant in this role.  I watch a lot of his movies, and I really dig him as a bad… or at least a ruthless kind of guy.  There’s something about him that always makes me think there’s something lurking just behind his eyes that isn’t pleasant.  It’s probably decent facial acting and a bunch of less-than-nice roles, but I see it even when he’s playing the hero, which thankfully, isn’t often.  I have this hope that Mr. Oliphant will take over for Christopher Walken as the go-to bad guy for most movies.  We sure won’t be disappointed

The global backdrops and the technology make me equate this with the Bond franchise, although both are far less in your face than Bond has ever been.  I have to say that the Turkish scenery that we’re treated to, however briefly, manages to pull off exotic and breathtaking.  There’s even a Bond-caliber girl, although I think she’d have been a bigger part if this was a Bond movie.  I love that she’s sassy despite the back story describing her life in virtual slavery at the hands of a politician gone wrong in Mother Russia.  It is the involvement with the Russians, some of the religious overtones, and the childhood explanation for the life led astray.  What separates this film is that it FEELS like a video game story somehow.  I can’t explain it, but I recognized from the beginning that there was a video game story at work.  It made for an edgier spy story than what we normally get and it keeps this from being too lackluster.  I think this movie failed in the style versus substance debate, but only just.  It could have been hip and still had something to say.

Oh, I learned in the 90s that “tovarische” has gone out of fashion among the Russians… shouldn’t these guys have caught on?

Day 193: Billy Madison (1995)

PG-13, 1 hr. 29 min.  Directed by: Tamra Davis.  Release Date: February 10, 1995. DVD Release Date: January 2, 2002.

I saw this for the first time in South Africa; taking a ride on the local Greyhound service between Port Elizabeth, which served as my home in country, and Cape Town, where I had decided to spend my spring break.  I rode the bus with my friend Sihaam, although we'd part in Cape Town, because I had sightseeing to do and she had a bunch of familial obligations to observe.  The bus driver, or whatever genius at Greyhound picked our entertainment selection had been spot on, grabbing VHS copies of Happy Gilmore, Black Sheep, and this.  It made the very long drive a bit more bearable, and when you've spent more than 10 hours cramped into a bus, entertainment stays revolution.

I'm told that the coastal drive between PE and Cape Town is one of the most beautiful stretches of highway in South Africa.  There are quaint, idyllic little beach towns, a few major surfing venues, and long stretch of "wild" coast where the waves break against the rocky shore in foamy masses.  Yeah, that might have been true, but I didn't see it.  I was too busy focusing on what was happening on the screen.

In the 90s, Sandler redefined comedy.  If you'd asked me then who I thought the funniest man alive was, it would have been Sandler.  In recent years, I think he's struggling to find roles and a comic style that are more in keeping with his age, so my appreciation for his efforts has dulled a bit.  But Billy Madison was Sandler on his A game.  This movie is so remarkable, so quotable that just a few months ago, I saw one of my cousin's teenaged friends write "stop looking at me, swan" on her wall.  Not many movies have the kind of appeal that spans a generation.

I was surprised by how much I still enjoyed this.  I haven't watched the movie in awhile, largely because I can't remember the last time I liked Sandler in a comic role.  It might have been Spanglish, but I'm thinking there might be something a bit more recent and I haven't bothered to do the research.  This is way over the top funny, but not in a way that makes me roll my eyes and groan.  Is the set-up weird and impossible.  You bet, but it's also spawned an episode of Family Guy, which means it's pretty funny.

Day 192: Wedding Crashers (2005)

R, 1 hr. 59 min.   Directed by: David Dobkin.  Release Date: July 15, 2005.  DVD Release Date: January 3, 2006.

Today starts my revised ratings system, which you can learn more about by going here.  The green, yellow and red system just wasn't providing me the shades of gray that I would have liked.

I went to see this in theaters with my friends Genna and Jimmie.  After the movie was over, the three of us had a little disagreement.  Jimmie and I thought this was a very guy comedy, and Genna thought it was a chick flick.  At the time, I thought she was completely out of her mind, but years (and several viewings) later, I realized that we were both right.  This was a hybrid attempt, but within the same genre, an attempt to appeal to the musings of both male and female audience members.  The cast:  Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn, Rachel McAdams (pant, pant) and Isla Fisher were all cast to appeal to different facets of the male psyche.  Most of the humor specifically targets those of us who pee standing up as well.  Then, when it's too late to go and get your money back, the movie makes a sharp turn and suddenly you're knee deep in romantic speeches, passionate (and embarrassing) declarations of love, and a sudden and sharp decline in the nudity quotient.  Those are characteristics I would certainly associate with romantic comedies (aka chic flicks).

If you look at the advertisements for the movie, you'd expect that it was 2005's The Hangover, that bust a gut laughing sort of comedy that most of us love.  I didn't feel that way.  The movie has a few scenes that are funny, but I get the impression that there was someone just outside the camera's field of vision that was encouraging or demanding some restraint.  With Wilson and Vaughn in the film, I'd have suggested letting one or both men have their own leads and see what happens, but hey, I'm not a director.

Earlier this month, I griped about Christopher Walken and how he'd pretty much phoned in his generic bad guy role in The Rundown.  That sort of applies here, even though he spends most of his time trying to convince folks that his family is the second coming of the Kennedys.  He's better than I've seen him in a few years, but the performances that made him a star seem to all be the distant recesses of film history.  I'd like to see something a little more current, because I know that the talent is in there somewhere.

Despite its faults, this movie is still totally worth visiting, or revisiting as the case may be.  It's funny and has a sense of whimsy that most movies of its ilk no longer possess.  I would have preferred if the movie could figure out what it was going to be and run with it, but it was good as is.

Day 191: The Scorpion King (2002)

PG-13, 1 hr. 31 min.  Directed by: Charles Russell, Chuck Russell.  Release Date: April 19, 2002. DVD Release Date: October 1, 2002.

I've been tossing and turning for the last several hours, and I decided that I might as well watch today's movie earlier than normal... or later than normal depending on your point of view.  When I stumbled across this on Netflix's streaming menu, I figured if nothing else, it would put me to sleep.  However,  I suspect watching this movie delivered the headache that I'm now suffering through and I'm no closer to sleep now than I was at 1am when I popped this in.

I should have known better after my lukewarm reaction to the second installment of The Mummy franchise and knowing how very, very much I despised the third installation in the series.  I should have left well-enough alone.  But no, I rationalized to myself in a dialogue that took probably ten minutes.  I'd never seen this all the way through and I should probably see it all before I really got critical.  Kelly Hu is remarkably nice to look at.  There was even a camel that did tricks.  So I sat through this in its 91 minute entirety.

If Beastmaster had a baby with Live & Let Die, it would look a lot like this.  You have some guy with lots of muscles and not enough clothing with an affinity for animals other than sheep.  He takes on some local bad guy bent on ruling the world and crushing the little people beneath his boot.  He "takes" the woman that "belongs" to said bad guy and unleashes what should be a world of hurt on himself and his ferrets.  I should probably note that in this case the ferrets were human, and there were considerably more of them... although most had fewer lines than the ferrets.  Add in the Live & Let Die aspects:  a sexy woman in a completely ludicrous costume with the ability to tell the future... so long as her virginity is intact.  Who comes up with that crap?  What a bore.  300's approach to that problem was MUCH better.  Said woman belongs to the bad guy and he guards her jealously, frequently threatening to ruin her gift himself if she mouths off too much.  Blah blah, cobras, blah blah tarot cards.  Blah.

If I subtract out the details, what you get is a well-used sword and sorcery bit.  The story of a warrior who does all the right things for vengeance, who is rewarded beyond his wildest dreams, and who bags the babe in the process.  I know I saw it on a ton of fantasy back in the 80s, and I'm guessing that at least some of the costuming was recycled.  Thank the powers that be that someone thought to wash those get-ups.  

If you want to see The Rock lose an argument to a camel, check this out.  If you're under 16, you'll probably appreciate the, um, finer points of the film, by which I mean a semi-nude Kelly Hu, the rest of us have probably seen it before.  If you're looking for special effects, a story, or an actual point, keep lookin'.  

Day 190: Three Men and a Baby (1987)

PG, 1 hr. 42 min.  Directed by: Leonard Nimoy.  Release Date: November 25, 1987.  DVD Release Date: April 2, 2002. 

When I give any significant thought to the 1980s, the movies I grew up on, Three Men and a Baby comes somewhere near the forefront of the process.  I would have been 10 when I saw this for the first time; as is common for me in those days, I remember seeing the movie, but I don't remember who took me.  Once upon a time, this was a part of my VHS movie collection, and it's another movie that I haven't gotten around to replacing on DVD, although given my reaction to the movie today, I probably should make the time for that.  One of these days, I'll be making a list of the DVDs I need to add to my collection.

I've been told a great many times that should I ever choose to become a parent, that the reaction to the baby is immediate and very, very emotional.  At the moment, I believe firmly in a zero reproduction policy, although there are those out there who suggest that my anti-child stance is merely because I haven't met the right woman (to which I usually make a rude and sarcastic reply).  I like kids. Especially OTHER PEOPLES' kids, but babies scare me like being trapped in a room with Freddy, Jason, and Ghostface where the walls are closing in.  I could see myself being the kind of dad we see here:  error upon error upon potentially baby-endangering error.  I can't see myself giving up my own life up like these guys eventually did, although the slow adaptation of Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg, and eventually Ted Danson makes me suspect that most parents actually do have that immediate and overwhelming rush in reaction to the arrival of their new baby.

It's hard not to like this movie.  Three Men and a Baby is cute, funny, and it feels (for the most part) like it's based on things that actually could happen to people.  I'm a little on the fence about the whole accidental drug mule thing, but I'm very much on board with the rest.  Even better than all of this is how deeply entrenched the movie is in 80s sensibilities, and to date, the 80s have been my favorite decade.  For me, watching this movie instantly reverts me to childhood, and in all the right ways.  

I'm still trying to find the urban legendy appearance of the hanging ghost or whatever it is that's supposed to be happening in (I think) one of the windows of the apartment shared by the three men.  Next time I watch the movie, I'll have to actually put on glasses or contacts to make sure I don't miss the details.  My List of the Month for October will talk about the best movie urban legends, and don't doubt for a second that this movie will make a reappearance then.

If you haven't checked this out yet, you should.  Bottom line.