Day 334: The Stand (1994)

Unrated, 6 hours.  No director information available.  No release date available.

I’m cheating here a little, since this was originally aired on… I think ABC as a week-long miniseries.  But, I feel like it fits the definitions of a movie rather than a television show, so deal with it.  This is, to the best of my knowledge, the only Stephen King novel that I’ve ever enjoyed, even at like 1400 pages.   I also think this was one of a number of really good adaptations of his work for television.  For those of you who enjoy this, there are some rumors floating around the ‘net that this is going to be made into a feature film… but I can’t figure out how.

It takes a lot of time to convey this message.  The film (fortunately) removed a lot of the detail work that Mr. King left in his novel:  I one time counted the pages devoted to the aftermath involving characters that weren’t involved in the actual development of story.  Don’t judge.  You try being stuck in coach on a flight between New York and Johannesburg, 27 straight hours with one very brief stop in the Cape Verde Islands.  As I recall, there were over 100.  All that’s been streamlined out, but even then, the first three hours are set up, with the primary characters meeting and rebuilding in the wake of the super-flu holocaust.  

This has a lot of actors who were famous in the 90s (which sort of dates the production), but there was one pretty amazing stand out.  For me, that was Rob Lowe.  The man’s had a rocky career, but he plays a deaf mute without losing a translation on the performance.  I don’t want to say you could follow every thought running through his mind, but the impact of his role was very close to that.  I think he only has two spoken lines (said in dream) in the entire movie and you never, ever lose track of his character.  It’s not just because Nick is a major player, because even in a group, you’re always aware of what he’s silently doing.  This may have been the best role of his career, and it was for a TV miniseries.  I know it got him the job when they did a miniseries for Salem’s Lot.

Whenever I watch this movie (or read the book) I wonder how accurate a portrayal of human behavior this was.  In my life time, I’ve seen looting in response to natural disasters, which is seen here.  But I’ve never seen a rampage like we see in New York… well, I guess it is New York, so anything’s possible.  I also have wondered about whether, and to what extent, our government is involved in biological warfare research… and whether something like this is even possible.  Not the whole Randall Flagg, hand of God thing, but the spread of a disease like this.  It’s not that often I run across a movie that makes me think, so I give them props for that.

I had a few problems with the course of the film, most of them being inconsistencies with what might be explained as reasonable human behavior.  It’s the middle of a plague which is killing 99% of mankind, and yet the highways are cram packed with people who all died at approximately the same, some of whom seemed to go so fast they were involved in other, regular tasks when they fell.  Maybe it’s because I’ve never lived through a plague, but I would think most people would have died in their sick beds, not in the driveways of wedding chapels, or fleeing cities.  

All in all, I think this a great (if long) film.  I’m looking forward to the theater release if and when it happens.  If you haven’t seen this, check it out, but watch it in segments… or on a day (like today) where you’re feeling under the weather and not likely to be doing anything productive.

Day 333: Sliver (1993)

R, 1 hr. 46 min.  Directed by: Phillip Noyce.  Release Date: May 21, 1993.  DVD Release Date: March 28, 2006.

This was one of those movies that gathered a lot of media attention back in the day.  It hadn't been so long since Sharon Stone let us know her feelings on the use of underwear in Basic Instinct, a highly controversial movie in its day (for reasons I've never quite figured out), but the media was hot on the scent of film and nudity that wasn't quite porn.  Sliver received some of the same publicity, and basically, Sharon Stone was in yet another movie where she flashed around a lot of skin.  There was some discussion about the objectification of women.  Then the studio came back with Alec Baldwin getting MORE naked than his co-star.  Strangely, no one said a word about the objectification of men.  Sometimes, I feel like we couldn't fit all the double standards in this world in a supertanker.

Back in '93, I thought this was only an okay movie.  I was confused about all the negative publicity, since there was nothing I saw here that I hadn't already seen on film.  But seriously, the controversial nudity and sexual content was pretty much the extent of Sliver's offerings.  It fell in to that trap that was so common to "thrillers" in the 90s, back when you saw the terms "psychological thriller" and your brain had to interpret the words as "soft core," because it was almost impossible to tell the one from the other. with the possible exception being that the psychological thrillers had casts that you'd actually heard of before.

My one question regarding this movie was how did someone who was supposed to be smart and educated allow this crap to escalate?  When you find out that half your high-rise not only has a key to your apartment, but feels free to come and go at will, you call the cops and change the locks.  You get a dog or a gun.  Maybe both, since this took place in New York.  You don't have dinner with the people breaking in.  Maybe I've just never had a relationship where that much free-floating passion was in the air, so I wouldn't know what it's like to leave rational thought (above the waist) at the door.

I get the allure of watching people, although I thought an hour covering that was a bit excessive.  It was a bit creepy thinking that the whole building was wired like that.  Sliver also convinced me that all the Baldwins but Alec should vanish.  Strangely, this reminds me a little bit of one of my favorite movies, Rear Window.  Part of the disturbing part of that movie was Jimmy Stewart's "perversion" of scoping out his neighbors with a telescope or a telephoto lens.  In less than 50 years, telescopes to spy on neighbors was so common as to be passe... although I wouldn't dream of owning a telescope for that purpose. 

Day 332: Men In Black II (2002)

PG-13, 1 hr. 28 min.  Directed by: Barry Sonnenfeld.  Release Date: September 6, 2002.  DVD Release Date: November 26, 2002.

In the grand scheme of things, Will Smith has the best racket ever going on.  He works a few months out of the year, releases one picture a year, and makes millions of dollars for his effort.  Seriously, when you were a kid and thought Fresh Prince of Bel Air had redeeming qualities, or when you were 10 and heard Parents Just Don't Understand for the first time, did you think he was going to make it big?  I sure didn't, even though I've enjoyed a good chunk of his work to date.  Even now, when I think about it, sarcasm kicks in with the response, "oh sure, and DJ Jazzy Jeff will be president."  Then I think about the behavior of American voters over the last two decades and I strongly consider prayer.  But here's the thing, while I appreciate the economic theory behind Mr. Smith's decision to minimize exposure in a bid to avoid "leboeufing" himself, I think that if your an actor with a reasonable amount of talent and generally the ability to pick your scripts, you could have done a better job than this.

I get that funny sci-fi is one of film's rarest unicorns.  Only funny spoofs seem to be more difficult to pull off.  And, to be fair, there are elements of funny in the movie that all gravitate around Will Smith.  He was given a pretty big job, and I don't blame him for not really being up to the challenge.  I blame him for taking this on in the first place.  

MIB was a fun movie, but not a great movie.  MIB II was suspiciously like a 90 minute Burger King add.  The 4Ps of marketing aside, it really, really burns my ass when movies not only spend time advertising for companies, but aren't even subtle about it.  I get that occasionally in movies there will be the need for product placement.  It's annoying when it looks like that lengthy scene from Wayne's World.  Having people eating Burger King once would be okay, or having them MEET in a Burger King is also okay.  Placing a Burger King in MIB HQ is ridiculous, even by the standards of the film in question.

I liked Lara Flynn Boyle, who seems to mostly play these relatively fragile creatures, in this role of supervillain and all around badass.  She was quirky, only a little campy, and a lot seductive.  I liked Rosario Dawson as the flip side to that coin.  Ms. Dawson usually plays relatively tough ladies on screen, and it was nice seeing her play something that was a bit more delicate, and in some ways a personality that was braver than her usual role because she wasn't tough.

I thought the alien features and running jokes about celebrities being aliens matched the standard set by the original.  I thought the special effects were also on par, but I found the story and the conflict between the Krylothians and Xarthosians, or whatever the aliens were, to be mildly uninteresting.  I was also bored by the concept that what we were looking for during the course of the film wasn't really what we thought it would be, which was a precedent set by the original.  Then, the "universe" was a bauble on a cat's collar and now we were looking for a "light" which was not exactly a flashlight.

Kids probably love this stuff.  They're probably the only reason to watch this movie. 

Day 331: Scent of a Woman (1992)

R, 2 hr. 37 min.  Directed by: Martin Brest.  Release Date: December 23, 1992.  DVD Release Date: April 28, 1998.

My dad took me to see this in the theaters back in '92.  He took me kicking and screaming, because I couldn't possibly like any of the boring movies he wanted to see, right?  Well, it turned out that I loved this movie, but it was years before I let him know it.  Al Pacino is a master of his craft, and this performance proves it.  I had to watch this today in order to get over having seen him stink up the joint yesterday in Jack & Jill.  

I'm a sucker for a good story, and Scent of a Woman has that down cold:  a young man goes to a fancy prep school his family cannot afford, earning his keep by doing jobs in the town around the school.  Babysitting Colonel Slade, a miserable, blind, drunken excuse for a former Army officer, is one of those jobs.  Out of what begins as a hostile working relationship grows a friendship that few of us will ever have the joy of experiencing.  It would be almost twenty years before the term "bromance" would unfortunately be coined, but I think it may have started here.

I've never been a Chris O'Donnell fan, although I admit that I tend to like the movies he was in, but I loved him in this movie.  In the mid-90s, when so many of us were trying to shuck anything about us that might have resembled freshness or innocence, Chris O'Donnell was embracing those qualities about himself.  His portrayal of this young main was almost painful in its sincerity.  Al Pacino was... brilliant.  No other words can possibly explain it.  The two of them together are gold.

In my own mind, this movie is a celebration of what can happen when two people come in to each others' life, the changes that can happen even in the most casual, or temporary of relationships.  I've heard the term "character study" many times, and I suspect this is what is meant by that, because the whole story is the evolution of these two men, an evolution that is caused because of their interactions with each other.  Slade turns away from his hate and bile, takes on some of Charlie Simms' warmth.  Simms learns to stand up for himself, and develops a personal code of honor that he might never have had without his time with Slade.

Scent of a Woman is smart, has a mild irreverence, and is devilishly funny.  It combines the best of a drama, a comedy, and a coming-of-age film, taking all the strengths of each.  Certainly, if you haven't seen this modern masterpiece, you probably should take the time to see it.

Day 330: Jack & Jill (2011)

PG, 1 hr. 33 min.  Directed by: Dennis Dugan.  Release Date: November 11, 2011.

I did another episode of the LAMBcast today, the podcast for the Large Association of Movie Blogs (LAMB)... of which I am a member.  I felt the need to defend this a little bit, and in fact, I've felt the need to defend Adam Sandler many times over the last ten years or so, because the man's humor was a major part of my life for most of my teens and twenties.

Right away, this was a terrible movie.  In fact, I haven't liked an Adam Sandler comedy since... I'm pretty sure Happy Gilmore was the last one of these movies I really liked, but it's been a long, long time.  I get what's happening.  Sandler's got more hair on his back and coming out of his ears than he has on his head.  He's speedballing gracelessly from a guy in his twenties that is ridiculously uncouth, to a guy well in to his forties that hasn't changed since his twenties.  That's a sad thing.  When we see Sandler do a movie that's more grown up, I like it.  Reign of Fire is a great example, and even though I didn't love Funny People, I thought he was good in it.  Sandler needs to figure out who the grown up version of himself is and just run with it, and stop trying to live up to the expectations of his original fans (most of whom are too old to have much interest in watching his 2 hour fart jokes anyway).

But on to this nightmare.  The cast, to a man, is terrible.  The best parts of this movie?  Yeah, they're on the trailer.  Just Youtube that sucka and save yourself 90 minutes of Katie Holmes trying to be winsome and pretending that she wasn't some guy's beard for the better part of a decade.  Although I have to admit, this might be the best Katie Holmes movie since Disturbing Behavior, which says a LOT about what has passed for her career.  Pacino was even terrible, but it was such a consistent sort of terrible that I'm guessing it was directed, rather than a lack of skill.

Did I want to like this?  Yeah.  I would have settled for a couple of cheap laughs.  I got that, but only barely, and they really, really had to reach deep to get it there for me.  I had little interest in the story.  I had less interest in all the gross things that went down with Jill.  My mythology about women gets shattered every day.  I don't need help with that.

On the other hand, given the crop of movies this year, Poopsie might just get the nod at Oscar time.

Day 329: J. Edgar (2011)

R, 2 hr. 17 min. Directed by: Clint Eastwood.  Release Date: November 9, 2011.

This was a first for me.  It took me almost as long to determine which Futurama character should grace the movie poster on this post as it did to watch the movie.   My dilemma here is one that's probably going to get me to put some thought into a more refined rating system.  Probably one that is tiered, as movies speak to us in different ways, and for different reasons, and now, as it did earlier this year when I adopted a "rating" system, a single rating seems unequal to the task.  It also seems vaguely unfair of me to give a movie like this such a low score.  It's not that I didn't like it.  Basically, I just didn't think the movie was entertaining, and the reality here is that I'm probably about a decade too young to really get anything out of a J. Edgar Hoover biopic... which I have a hard time faulting the cast or crew for.

For me, this movie spoke to me differently in different places.  In my head, I found that this movie was only vaguely interesting.  I have little knowledge of J. Edgar Hoover.  I knew he created the modern FBI and stood as it's director for many decades.  In my perspective, he was a bit of a fear-mongerer, a tactic still familiar to politicos of all walks of life.  I know the joke from Clue about J. Edgar Hoover on your phone, and I'd heard other jokes about him cross-dressing, which I'd mostly dismissed as a way for him to be declawed by political enemies.  That was it.  So first, imagine my surprise when this VERY well made and acted out film turns into another day of Brokeback Bureau and J. Edgar Hoover and his second in command are portrayed, well, to put it bluntly, as bitchy queens (Oh no I didn't!).  But then, in later years, they remind me of those old guys from The Muppets.  But then, I guess "bitchy queens" could apply there, too.

Eastwood has directed another movie that I just couldn't find the pulse on.  Don't get me wrong, it's spectacularly detailed and has an amazing cast.  I'm told that DiCaprio has more than a passing resemblance to Hoover after the makeup was handled.  But, this story never really reached out and grabbed me.  I couldn't get into it, and when I would start to, the story would jerk away and spin in a different direction.

In a nutshell, I thought this was boring.

Some of that is attributable to my age.  I suspect in thirty years when the J. Lo biopic comes out and a thirty-something walks in, he or she would have this same disconnect.  This person never touched their lives.  It's not like Amelia Earheart or Alexander the Great.  Hoover isn't really studied in school so much as avoided.  I don't remember him being mentioned in any of my history classes, perhaps in fear that the use of his name will summon him, like Lord Voldemort.  Maybe as my generation begins to claim the teaching jobs, that will change.  But then again, maybe not.  The FBI isn't exactly common table-talk in most American homes.

Hoover isn't necessarily someone we can admire, even though he did some amazing things at a relatively young age.  By the end of the movie, I was able to... feel sorry for one of the most powerful men ever to walk the Earth.  He made presidents nervous, and he worked hard at it, but he comes off as a little pathetic, which doesn't seem to have been the intention.

So my final words are go see this, but you have to go with an open mind and (probably) an interest in this man whose reach truly has extended from beyond the grave.... coincidentally not unlike Versace.  Okay, that was a bad joke.  Anyway, check it out, but don't look for fun.  This is a FILM, not a movie.

Day 328: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part Yawn, I Mean One

PG-13, 1 hr. 57 min.  Directed by: Bill Condon.  Release Date: November 18, 2011.

On another blog I follow, which I think might have been John Likes Movies, I saw a review which included a quote from a Twihard, which called this something like "the best movie in the series."  Having seen the whole thing so I could laugh (and occasionally throw popcorn) at the Tourette's-driven on screen antics of Kristen Stewart, I'm inclined to agree.  However, that honor is a bit like being, if I can steal another quote, the smartest person with Down's Syndrome.

I'll start with what I liked, mostly because it's a short list.  I still dig Alice, I think her name is, the vampire that can see the future, although she had a ridiculously small part in this tale.  Alice needs more parts in movies that don't suck, or, she can just come hang out with me so I can look at her. I also still think the werewolf "phasing" is pretty slick, but I want to write death threats on Stephanie Meyer's Facebook wall every time I hear the cast use the term.  Not really, but kind of.  I also still think Taylor Lautner does the best with the crap he's been given, but four years later, I'm no longer convinced he has a career in front of him without nudity.  He'll be Generation Whine's Matthew McConnaughey.  I'm now sure of it.

What went wrong?  Apparently, the "minds" behind this series saw the money that Harry Potter made by breaking up its final installment and decided that copycatting was the best way to seal the deal on this pile of garbage.  They neglected to think of two things:  (1) that Harry Potter doesn't suck, and (2) that two hours of Kristen Stewart is MORE than enough to last us a few years.  Even I'm not sure I'm going to stick it out for the final film, and I'm pretty sure THIS was the funniest movie I saw in 2011.  There are several scenes here where the dialogue is so stilted, and at least one of the folks with speaking parts looks so very constipated that I was laughing when it was highly inappropriate.  Imagine something like this:

The dad vampire:  "Bella, the baby's too powerful.  You're going to die before delivery."
Me:  "Bwahahaha! I hope it eats her before she dies."
Audience:  "Shhhhhh!"
Rude chick who hasn't stopped texting since she sat down in front of me:  "@#*!ing jerk."
Me:  "You should text that idiot what a @#!#ing jerk I am."
Rude chick:  Fiendish texting.

But, I digress.  Stephanie Meyer, you are a pox on pulp fiction writers everywhere.  Your prose is... hackneyed and sophomoric, and you try to couch that in big words that sound deep, even when the idiotic stars of this movie speaks it.  There are whole exchanges that make no sense.  Bella and Jacob's encounter at the Cullen's house is one such example.  They're both saying random shit with such passion, that if I was, or had ever been a 15 year old girl, I might buy it as tragically romantic.  But, since neither of those apply, I thought it laughable.

When this book was split into two parts, the screenplay writer also forgot to remember that every good story has a beginning, a middle, and an end.  This story has a beginning, some middle, some more middle, and then, oh, more middle.  This is NOT a cliff hanger, since (1) I know jack about Twilight and even I knew what was going to happen and (2) we know part 2's going to bore us to death next year.  They also removed most of the action, which was dumb, since there's not enough real talent her to overlook that fact, and there's no nudity involved to blind us to that fact.

So, skip it.  Unless you're one of those folks who thinks this garbage is actually romantic. Then, I just don't have the words.

Day 327: So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993)

PG-13, 1 hr. 33 min.  Directed by: Thomas Schlamme.  Release Date: July 30, 1993. DVD Release Date: June 1, 1999.

I saw this movie for the first time in this tiny little theater in Nice.  I had just started my stay in France, but school hadn't started yet, so I needed something to do.  I went with two or three other people from my high school who were on the same foreign exchange program I was.  It was one of the few moments in my stay where I could spot the Americans in a crowd without hearing the English.  We were the ones laughing at the Thighmaster jokes.  

I've known people who thought this was Mike Meyers' best comedy.  If your only comparison is The Love Guru, then you're probably right.  If you're looking at Austin Powers... not so much.  This is cute, and it has laugh out loud moments, but in my opinion, it's not his best work.  I like the blending of mystery and humor, it reminds me of Clue, one of my childhood favorites.  I actually don't think I've seen Nancy Travis where I liked her better than this, but that doesn't really cover a lot of ground, since I think I've only seen two or three of her movies.

There are a few things here that I could have done without.  Unfortunately, they are things that I could have done without got repeated:  the beatnik poetry makes the top of my list.  Who actually did that in the 90s?  No one.  I was there and living in one of the coffee clatch culture centers, and no one was out there reading that crap and snapping.  I could have done without the interminable Only You performance.  Ms. Travis has a fine voice, but one language was more than sufficient.  Although, when I saw this in France, the dubbing combined with the subtitles were a little funny when they got to the French portion of the song.

Other than that, this wasn't terrible.  It wasn't as funny now as it was...almost 20 years ago, but it's still worth pulling it out of my DVD collection now and then.

Day 326: Casablanca (1943)

PG, 1 hr. 42 min.  Directed by: Michael Curtiz.  Release Date: June 1, 1943.  DVD Release Date: February 15, 2000.

For a long time, longer than is really seemly, I dismissed movies made before my own time as irrelevant to my life.  I hadn't grown up with the classics in my life, even though I knew a bit about the greats, like Casablanca  and Gone With the Wind, mostly from what I'd seen in cinematic montages or spoofs.  I wish I hadn't waited until a former co-worker of mine and I were talking about favorite movies and she looked aghast that I hadn't seen this or Gone With the Wind.  At her insistence, I put both of them on my Netflix queue.  What Erin demonstrated to me was that I couldn't call myself a cinephile without reaching into film's history, without seeing what past generations contributed to that bank of entertainment.  It seems to be a problem that all of us go through; people claiming to love movies, but rarely watching films created before they were born.  There are but a few people I see actively pursuing the classics along with the blockbusters, and I have a great respect for their discipline.

There is little not to love about this movie.  For me, the first thing that comes to notice is the exotic location, even if it limited to what is obviously a set made to resemble an active bar.  But, I do love that Morocco makes a somewhat sorted, seedy backdrop for a tale of romance and espionage that would have felt ill at ease even in the metropolitan cities in the United States.

The performances assembled were no less than movie going audiences would have expected, whether those audiences were seeing this in 1943 or today.  Bogart has played better parts, but not many, and even then "better" is not much better than what we see in this movie.  As far as I'm concerned this is Ingrid Bergman's seminal role, although she had many fine parts to play over the course of her career.

There was significant star power assembled for this film, and this was back when celebrity was, more often than not, in close company with talent, and so the results were predictable.

If you haven't seen this movie, you should.  Even if only once.  Having seen this myself almost a dozen times since I was initially introduced to the film four years ago, it never gets less enjoyable.  I notice new things of interest.  Unlike many of my newer favorites, this movie never gets old.

Day 325: Spy Kids (2001)

PG, 1 hr. 28 min.  Directed by: Robert Rodriguez.  Release Date: March 30, 2001.  DVD Release Date: September 18, 2001.

It’s rough being a kid.  Lots of things happen that you don’t understand.  Everyone bosses you around.  You’re in a constant phase of flux on so many levels.  It’s no wonder so many adults wander around from trauma caused during their formative years.  Because of this, it’s absolutely amazing to see a movie where kids are so… empowered.  Granted, I don’t have children myself, so it’s possible that I appreciate this empowerment because I don’t know what it’s like when the seven year old tries to assert him- or herself when they feel like they’ve been wronged.  Part of childhood is socialization, understanding the behavior that is expected of you from your parents, your teachers, your family, and your friends, and that much constant attention can be a nightmare, and there are kids that occasionally remind me of primates in the zoo.  You know the ones I’m talking about, the ones who have been stared at so long that they’re dull and listless, staring pointedly in to a corner, or attempting to hide from view.  It’s a hard thing, and I think grown-ups forget that, so I say go kid power.

This isn’t a great movie.  But it’s fun and unapologetic that it focuses solely on its target audience, which I’m guessing is the 8-12 market.  One of the major complaints about the movie that I've heard over the years is that it's too kid friendly.  My usual reply is "duh."  

For once, the child stars aren’t usurped or in competition with their adult counterparts.  Spy Kids is all about the kids in a way that Home Alone wasn’t entirely about Kevin.  The adults occasionally enter in to the stream of things, but even when they get the spotlight on them, it’s only a moment or two before something happens and the kids have to save the day.

There are some interesting special effects in the movie, but I found the setting to be a bit distracting, especially as the story winds down to its inevitable ending.  Spy Kids borrows heavily from the Bond franchise for its momentum and plot devices, but the bright lights and colors of the final showdown weren’t quite in keeping with the inspiration, but if I was 10 and watching this for the first time, it might just blow my mind. 

Day 324: The Graduate (1967)

PG, 1 hr. 46 min.  Directed by: Mike Nichols.  Release Date: December 21, 1967.  DVD Release Date: June 19, 2001.

I'm always amazed when I meet people who have nothing positive to say about this movie, because in many ways I think it represents some of the finest performances since film was in its heyday back in the 40s and 50s.  Do I get a little weirded out at Dustin Hoffman so young and on the make?  Totally.  And I try not to remember that I know Anne Bancroft better as Ms. Havisham in Great Expectations.  That way lies madness.  

I also find it amazing when I run across someone who feels like this movie no longer has any bearing on modern life... to which my answer is, succinctly, something akin to "say what?!"  In some ways, The Graduate has reflected my own life so strongly that if The Graduate and Post Grad mated, that would actually be the story of my life.

Let's think about this.  A young man has just finished college and is questioning his future.  From what I've seen, most people who are just finishing their undergraduate education are wondering why they bothered to go to school.  They're struggling to find work of any kind and are competing for entry level with people (like me) with Master's degrees or who have 5-10 years of work experience under their belt.  Their futures are just as uncertain as Benjamin's.  

Who would reject the advances of an older woman at that age?  Certainly not me, although the way my life has been going the last few years I'd be suspicious of any woman who made such advances.  And look at it this way... Benjamin's family is so eternally boring (especially when you consider that this was filmed and set in the 60s, which should have been more interesting by accident) that Mrs. Robinson is really the only character that has even the smallest spark of life.  Well, I guess their interaction is questionable, but it all goes back to that point where poor Benjamin is eternally boring and occasionally insufferable.  

But still, I've learned to love this movie over the years, and each time I watch it I learn to love it a little more and find various applications for its tale on my own existence.  So to you naysayers, since when are these decisions that have to be made as we exit childhood and enter the adult world no longer applicable to our lives?  Even if we made them years ago, we should be able to find some parallel between what happens in this film and what happens in our own lives.

Day 323: Sleepover (2004)

PG, 1 hr. 29 min.  Directed by: Joe Nussbaum.  Release Date: July 9, 2004.  DVD Release Date: November 23, 2004.

I got lured away from my traditional look by the new stuff coming down the pipeline from Blogger.  Unfortunately, while I liked what I saw on the samples, I hated the result on my blog.  So, I spent the morning redoing my blog's appearance (kind of) to what it looked like before and I needed something that wasn't going to interfere too much with that process.  This is what I found.

Sleepover is only the second teen movie I've ever seen where there are no major male parts.  The first was Mean Girls, which I believe came out this same year, and which I believe, more or less served as the inspiration for Sleepover.  Well, by that, I mean that the one inspired the all-girl teen comedy thing for the other.  There's a fairly complicated relationship between the two movies and they have a lot in common.  The only major differences are that this time the story is told from the perspective of the "loser" group and that the age of these girls is several years younger than their Plastics counterparts.  This might be the first movie I've ever seen that was actually aimed at a 'tween audience, rather than a teen audience (as suggested both by the ages of the stars and the PG rating).  

If you're looking for something new, you're probably not going to find it inside the run time of Sleepover.  It's a fairly formulaic approach to the teen film:  two conflicting social groups decide to compete for something that's totally meaning in both the real world and in anything other than the very short term.  There are a number of problems with how the actual story flows, there are way too many coincidences to take at face value, and there's even the object of competition:  what school would put lunch tables right next to a dumpster?

The lack of originality extends to the characters.  We've seen these pretty blonde girls and their evil minions do battle with "independent thinkers" before (and I've seen it better almost every time).  I think I've talked about these kinds of movies four or five other times since I started blogging three years ago.  Each actress fulfills variants on a theme to the point where it's hard to get too worked up about identifying, or even liking, any of them.  

Sean Faris was cast as the male lead, and we're apparently expected to believe that upperclassmen will date incoming Freshmen without ulterior, nefarious motives in mind (if you've ever been a teenaged boy, or have learned how to think like one, you know what I'm talking about).  It certainly wasn't true in my day.  And while I'm talking about Sean Faris, does anyone else do the Goldmember "moley moley moley" thing every time he appears on screen?

If this movie has a saving grace, it's that it's sweet.  The material was well-designed for kids between the ages of 11 and 14, in my opinion.  There was an obvious effort not to offend, in both action and dialogue.  This may have cost them some box office dollars, but I bet this means DVD sales will run for longer than a traditional teen flick.

Day 322: Affair of the Necklace (2001)

R, 2 hr.  Directed by: Charles Shyer.  Release Date: November 30, 2001.  DVD Release Date: June 25, 2002. 

Watching a movie starring Hilary Swank is a bit of a roller coaster.  I said back in May, when I was writing about Amelia, that watching her movies is a bit of a hit-or-miss proposition.  I usually find her performances breathtaking and wrapped in a movie that's lavish and rich, a style-over-substance trade off that I inevitably find less than satisfying.  If I had to design a movie (and a part) for Hilary Swank, it would look something like this:  like me, she seems to like biopics.  The more outrageous the character, the more she seems to like them, and if the character is... infamous or famous for something unique, that's even better.  

Unlike Amelia, I really enjoyed this movie.  Is it riddled with historical errors and an obvious effort at creative license?  Oh, yeah.  While these events were inspired by true events, the filmmakers took a lot of liberties with the details in order to maximize the possible audience.  And let's just agree that this was a MUCH better telling of this tale than that dribble we just saw roll through in The Three Musketeers.  While Swank may not be the looker that Jovovovivich is, she's certainly the better actress.

The movie reflects other movies from the same period, such as Marie Antoinette, with one major exception.  Whereas Marie Antoinette was jazzed up for the post-Austin Powers world, everything in this movie was designed to be beautiful, sometimes in a beauty-over-function way, which is very right for both the period and the location.  Occasionally, this crosses the line into gaudy, but otherwise the scenes remind me of my own time in France, which included touring Versailles and other manor houses.  

The cast is awesome.  Joely Richardson was great as Marie Antoinette, although I think I'd seen her in a similar role in some other movie.  There are excellent supporting roles from Simon Baker, Christopher Walker, Brian Cox, Adrian Brody, and Jonathan Pryce.  There wasn't a single person I didn't like in their role, and for a few of them, like Adrian Brody, I thought this might be their best role to date.

The movie's a bit long, and follows a twisted path rooted in the politics of the French court.  For some, that's going to be a losing deal, but I dug the intrigue.  I think there's a story about the same events out there somewhere, maybe written by Alexandre Dumas, that's also worth checking out.

Day 321: Star Trek The Motion Picture (1979)

G, 2 hr. 23 min.  Directed by: Robert Wise.  Release Date: December 7, 1979.  DVD Release Date: November 6, 2001. 

Do you ever see a movie that's so bad, that even with an ending that presupposes a sequel, your first reaction is "hell no, a sequel will never see the light of day."  For me, if I had seen this in 1979, that would have been my thought.  I'm a moderate Star Trek fan with the occasional obsessive tendency, where I'll watch half the series or follow one of those marathons on Spike.  But, I'm not enough of a fan to overlook the horror that was Star Trek:  The Motion Picture.

 

A frequent complaint of mine when television shows break into film is that the film in question feels like a long episode.  In this case, the episode was too long, too dumb, and didn't seem to take into account anything that had ever been used to make Star Trek in the past.  I suspect this has to do with the fact that the director of this movie was completely unfamiliar with the series before taking on this project.  I've seen this movie spoofed more than once, most recently in a Futurama episode in which the Voyager space probe combines with an FCC censorship satellite to make V-GINY, a sentient artificial intelligence bent on censoring the planet Earth.  The episode was nearly as bad as this movie.

Even the cast seemed unsure of what to do, and these were roles they had played for a long time, although it had been a long time since they'd last worn these costumes (as evidenced by the significant new girth on Scotty), it wasn't like any of them were overly burgeoned by a career in the intervening years.  T.J. Hooker doesn't count.

You can be a fan and never watch this movie.  You won't miss a thing.  Remember the mantra:  even numbered Treks don't suck. 

Day 320: Immortals (2011)

R, 1 hr. 50 min. Directed by: Tarsem Singh.  Release Date: November 11, 2011.

Forty-five more days left in this journey of mine.  In the wake of relatively recent re-employment, it's been rough, and those of you who have been repeat visitors have probably noticed that my posting times are a bit... random.

I walked in to this movie knowing two things:  the first is that Immortals had a serious case of living up to do, in this case to it's big brother, 300.  The second was that this movie had to live down the travesty that was the 2010 Clash of the Titans debacle.  Immortals has some significantly similar vibes to both of those films, but about halfway through, you realize that Singh isn't trying to recreate (or improve) upon anything that's come before.  He's doing something entirely different and even unique in my experience.  The real issue is that I'm not entirely sure he succeeded.  

The martial prowess and fighting choreography echo 300 many ways, but Immortals was, to my un-contact lensed eyes, far more visually impressive (and don't get me wrong, I thought 300 had amazing visual effects).  It lacked something else I was missing:  a single likable character.  Theseus, the hero of legend, and main character, is stiff and unyielding throughout the film.  I get the whys of his behavior, but he was well, kind of a jerk, even when it was well deserved, and that makes for fail storytelling.  There also was a whole lot less violence than I was expecting, and even the violence we witness felt... gentrified somehow, all cleaned up for the camera.  Immortals lacked a savagery I expected (and wanted) to see.  

And, it had some commonalities with Clash of the Titans that extended past the Greek myth base.  A relatively unlikable lead character (not to be confused with the actor who plays the character), at least in the 2010 version.  An epic story that is rich in that strange tragedy that seems so common in classic works.  A bunch of people running around half-naked.  Immortals, also like Clash of the Titans, has absolutely no reason to be playing in 3D except to bilk people out of an extra $3-$5.  In the two hours, exactly three things popped off the screen:  Henry Cavill's nipples, Freida Pinto's rear, and an imploding Titan in the final moments of the film.  So not worth the extra cash.

Additionally, I thought this was slow and filled with things that didn't make sense.  Why is there a sea filled with oil?  It would still be more than a thousand years before the Exxon Valdez could run aground.  Why not use a real weapon from Greek mythology (or at least, I've never heard of the Episus bow, and I've read more than a few of these stories in my time)?  Why is Athena the only goddess shown in the film?  Why have Kellan Lutz involved in this for any reason?  The mind boggling list just goes on and on.  

Now, I did think the fighting choreography was BEAUTIFUL, as was the scenery and the filming of the movie.  It's rare that I don't notice cigarette burns in the wake of Fight Club, but I didn't notice any here.  I loved the buildings and the artwork that's all over the place.  I even thought the story was okay, if I didn't think too hard about the details.  I sort of liked Mickey Rourke, and I liked looking at Freida Pinto.  

My last question is this:  where else have I seen that metal bull before?  Was it 300?

Day 319: Return From Witch Mountain (1978)

G, 1 hr. 33 min.  Directed by: John Hough.  Release Date: March 10, 1978.  DVD Release Date: March 10, 2009. 

I'm giving this a positive review, despite the large number of problems I think the film had, because Disney provided us with yet another live action movie that's really suitable for all audiences.  Is this a little darker than Escape to Witch Mountain?  Undoubtedly.  There's a little more violence, most of which is handled with a bit of slapstick to it.  There's a lot of darkness, and this may be a little less appropriate for smaller kids than the first or even third movie in this series.  There's also what is arguably the most revolting costuming in the history of film going on.  The 70s were an evil, evil time.  I don't care what we think we know because of That 70s Show.

Some of my enjoyment of this movie centers around Bette Davis.  The lady played some strange parts, and this is no exception, but even on a bad day she was one HELL of an actress.  Much of the darkness in this movie, but not all of it, uses her as an epicenter.  I have no doubt that's why she was selected for the part, because Ms. Davis could handle it all and make it not look stupid, which was a real danger in this movie.

I'm not sure how Los Angeles, and I'm not talking WEST Los Angeles, got selected for the setting here.  I just turned the DVD off, and I can't even remember why these kids, now well into their late teens, have returned to the normal world away from their alien compound or commune or whatever you want to call it.  Whatever plans they had terminate pretty quickly thanks to that do-gooder streak of theirs and this film descends into madness in the same way that every Home Alone movie does once it's for sure that family is going on vacation.  Regardless, it feels off.  There was a highly Pacific Northwest quality to the original movie, say Oregon, somewhere away from Portland... and I don't think the transport to a gritty urban setting, complete with geek gangs, was a good approach.

This is still fun to watch.  It puts a smile on my face, but it turned away from the more purely wholesome approach of the first film.  Check it out, but you may not want the younger kids involved.  If the first one scared them a little, this one could scare them a lot.

Day 318: Two Weeks Notice (2002)

PG-13, 1 hr. 41 min.  Directed by: Marc Lawrence.  Release Date: December 20, 2002.  DVD Release Date: April 29, 2003.

There are reasons why Sandra Bullock is the Queen of the romantic comedy.  I give her a lot of crap for playing the same role over and over, but she plays it well.  Granted, on those occasions she plays something else, she plays those parts even better, but it's not my career, and she seems to be having a good time, professionally at least.  That's no less true in Two Weeks Notice, where she plays yet another strong, otherwise sensible woman who falls for a total jerk (because he has massive amounts of cash).  Hugh Grant, the jerk in question, reforms a bit by the end, but the basic personality of jerk still applies.

Like nearly every romantic comedy since It Happened One Night back in... 1938 or so, we've been able to walk in to a romantic comedy and know basically how the story will go.  These two folks hate each other, they fight and scheme and embarrass each other.  If we're lucky, one of them gets thrown into the trunk of a car or something like that.  Then, suddenly, our leading couple finds out what we've known for the last 90 minutes.  They're desperately in love and it's a little sickening to behold.

There's kind of a comfort to that.  It's why I don't balk when it's suggested that I watch one of these.  They're total crap, and have little relationship to real life, but there's a comfort in knowing what's going to happen.  There's probably a comfort for the cast, too, which explains why so many actors have chosen to make a career out romantic comedies.  For the cast, there's little effort involved, and the roles are very uncomplicated, requiring less effort than other parts.  

Two Weeks Notice has better than average dialogue for a romcom.  In particular, I thought Sandra Bullock's delivery of her snarky dialogue with Hugh Grant was well written.  Other than that, I didn't think there was much to set this apart from a career worth of romantic comedies for both Grant and Bullock.  There were a lot of smiles and a few laughs to be had, which is never a bad thing.  '

I won't rave about this, because it wasn't that type of movie.  But it is worth watching once, whether you like romantic comedies or not.  

Day 317: Jurassic Park III (2001)

PG-13, 1 hr. 32 min.  Directed by: Joe Johnston.  Release Date: July 18, 2001.  DVD Release Date: December 11, 2001. 

Once upon a time, in a theater with broken air conditioning in California's summer heat, I watched Jurassic Park.  At the time, the dinosaurs in that movie were the most perfect piece of movie magic I'd seen.  I still think it's the best animatronic work I've ever seen in a movie... or in theme parks, for that matter.  Those dinosaurs were BRILLIANT.  They were light years ahead of what other people were doing and revamped special effects for awhile.

Was that enough to warrant not only one sequel, but a third installment in the franchise?  Probably not.  Jurassic Park was a decent novel.  The Lost World was less decent.  It showed in the film adaptation.  When Jurassic Park III was released, bereft of a subtitle, but with most of its important roles still holdovers from the original movie, I was anxious.  I did some thinking and decided to wait for DVD.  I simply couldn't justify the $8 ticket price when I was so very, very afraid of what the final product was going to be.  I suspect that I made the right choice.

This movie has generally what attracted me to the original in the installment.  One of my favorite things about movies is when they can suspend my disbelief visually, without uttering a word.  Did I care that you can't really harvest DNA from bugs trapped in amber?  Nope.  Did I care that real geneticists might have worried about what substituting dino-DNA for amphibian DNA might not only be technically impossible, but if it were impossible, it might trigger that little trick where frogs switch genders in a sexually homogenous environment?  Not so much.  What I cared about was that it looked cool, and they provided more species of dinos from my freak-out amusement.

But I would have hoped that they'd have come up with a story that actually made sense.  I know that wasn't possible with The Lost World, even with the novel to fall back on, but I had hope that they'd come to their senses.  Instead, what we got was about an hour of velociraptor attacks, proving systematically that humans are too dumb to survive in their own natural environment.  If we'd left any major, land-based predator off the endangered species list, we'd be gone.

There was so much going on, so many dangers, so many plots and counter plots involved in what should have been a simple story that I eventually tuned out, watching only for the next dinosaur to fill the screen.  There are a few good scares, and a few good lines, and that's about it.

Day 316: The Skulls (2000)

PG-13, 1 hr. 46 min.  Directed by: Rob Cohen.  Release Date: April 1, 2000.  DVD Release Date: October 24, 2000.

I'm probably the only person in America who liked this movie.  Granted, I had just finished four years of college where I was in a fraternity, which had more than a little to do with it, and I tended to like this movie for all the wrong reasons.  Still, I liked it.  Why wouldn't I like a movie where Joshua Jackson gets the crap beat out of him for more than an hour?  I watch this movie for the same reason I watch the movie Toy Soldiers, which is primarily for the scene where I can watch Wesley Crusher, whose name I can never quite remember, get mowed down with an automatic rifle.  

There are few other reasons to watch this movie.  I have little interest in the "secret societies" and "study clubs" of the Ivy League.  Even had I chosen to go to a university on the east coast, I probably would have had little but derision for those groups.  Too much formality, too many traditions are always a problem for me.  I also to struggle with the concept that the wealthy elite of the Ivy League would take an interest in a young man who can row a boat, but also works in the school cafeteria as part of covering his tuition expenses.

There's a lot about this movie that doesn't make sense.  I rarely watch it when I'm feeling pensive or when I'm looking to have my thought processes prodded.  It utterly fails as a thriller, but I have to be honest, I tend to find it funny.  The money and power that are thrown about casually by the senior members of The Skulls is ludicrous to contemplate.  If I was part of the membership of Yale's Skull and Bones society, I'd probably have tried to sue for slander.  

This isn't terrible, and if you're possessed of the right sort of twisted sense of humor, you might find reasons to smile at the stupidity that passes as action in this movie.  If you like to see Joshua Jackson humiliated or injured, this also isn't a bad place to look.  If you're looking for a great movie, you'll have to keep looking.

Day 315: Queen of the Damned (2002)

R, 1 hr. 41 min.  Directed by: Michael Rymer.  Release Date: February 22, 2002.  DVD Release Date: August 27, 2002.

I loved Interview With A Vampire, although I’m never able to remember whether it’s “with A vampire” or “with THE vampire,” which we’ll just call old age and leave the hell alone.  I loathe Anne Rice and every word she’s ever printed, which makes for a wonderful contradiction in my life, because the film version of her first novel is in my Top 50 movies of all time, despite its many Rice-ish faults.  When Queen of the Damned started making its appearances in theaters as a trailer, I was hesitant.  I worked in a Barnes & Noble for a long time, so I know my books, even the ones that suck.  I remember that even fans of Rice’s series didn’t particularly love this entry.

This movie helped me determine a watch priority for sequels.  Sequels get a lot of bad press, and for a lot of good reasons.  Sequels tend to be a “Hollywood” effort to bilk the global movie-going population out of money based solely on the quality of the original picture.  Most sequels seem to be quiet things, not to find its way on to their Netflix recommendations list?  Who else didn’t realize there are now like 90 American Pie DVDs in circulation.  Okay, admittedly, that one’s an exaggeration, but not by much.  The trick is learning to determine whether you’re going to see a GOOD sequel or a BAD sequel, and I think I have some good rules of thumb for telling the difference:

1.       

1.  If less than half of the sequel cast is from the original… be cautious.  If no original cast members reappear, flee.  
2. If major characters seem to have gone through a personality blender to create something ridiculous, flee.  
3. If the cast is filled out with no-names or people who are not known for acting, flee.  
4. If the sequel seems to repeat, ad nauseum, the story of the original without adding any new material, flee.  
5. If the sequel has a lower budget (which requires some internet research) than the original, flee.

Let’s apply these rules to Queen of the Damned.  (1)  No cast members from the original film return.  Even worse, only one character from the original reappears.  Does anyone else wonder WTH happened to Louis?  (2)  Throughout Interview, we see Tom Cruise, as Lestat, stress the importance of living in secrecy.  At the end, we watch him maul (but unfortunately not kill) Christian Slater in what appears to be early 1990s New Orleans.  In Queen, Lestat has apparently been asleep for a century in what appears to be 2000-ish and acting as the openly-vampiric front man for a rock band.  (3)  Lena Olin and Claudia Black are the only cast members with names I recognized, and both of them are sufficiently good at their craft to lend some strength to any project (they both also suffer from extended cameos here).  The late Aaliyah was a noted singer, and her talents did not seem to extend to the screen… although she looked wonderful in her quasi-Egyptian retro getups, you just have to pretend she doesn’t look like she’s suffering from some physical aspect of Tourette’s while she’s on camera.  The rest of the cast… sucks.  (4) Queen is totally new material, it just didn’t flow well with the Riceverse that we’d already been introduced to in Interview.  (5) I did the research and yes, this was a serious drop from the original in the series, probably because they weren’t paying for either Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise to sit around, look pretty, and throw semi-lusty glances at each other.

Judgment passed:  FLEE.  Queen is a different entry in the Riceverse than Interview.  Where the latter was opulent and glamorous, the former is gritty and dark, lacking any of the charms we’ve come to expect from these adaptations of the unfortunately popular series.  I suspect Queen is the reason that the rumored production of The Vampire Lestat never congealed from the ether.

The one awesome thing about this movie is the soundtrack, which was probably my favorite soundtrack released in 2002.  Now, I don’t mean the versions we see IN the film, where Stuart Townsend croaks out the lyrics like they taste bad… or something’s happened to the back of his throat and he’s going on anyway.  I bought this on CD back in ’02, and I keep meaning to put about two-thirds of the songs here on my iPod at some point.  I suspect about half their budget came in the form of royalties:  with various contributors from bands like Korn, Linkin Park, Orgy, Disturbed and the Deftones, it really is kind of a treasure trove of early turn of the millennium rock.

Day 314: Star Wars Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)

PG, 2 hr. 13 min.  Directed by: Richard Marquand.  Release Date: May 25, 1983.  DVD Release Date: September 12, 2006.

I remember seeing this in the theaters for the first time, back in '83.  I don't remember who took me, and I would have needed an attendant, as I was six, but I have a clear picture of walking in to the theater and it was already dark, the audience was hushed, and Luke Skywalker was trying to talk his way in to Jabba's palace.  I think I'd seen Star Wars at that point, but I know I hadn't seen Empire.  I remember loving this from start to finish, which can be a problem, because a lot of those movies I loved as a child have lost their freshness with subsequent viewings and the changing of my tastes in cinema.  I still loved this movie when it was re-released and remastered in the mid-90s, when I went with a group of my fraternity brothers to see it.  What surprised me was that now, a million years and viewings later, I still love this movie.

Good sci-fi is hard to make.  If the special effects are off, or the cast isn't up to helping the audience with disbelief suspension, then the movie's over long before it hits the theaters.  Plenty of filmmakers have found that out the hard way, and we've all sat through a terrible bit of science fiction in our day.  George Lucas has a knack for producing good, or at least adequate science fiction.  He wraps his... silly (when you think about it) concepts in the themes that mankind has loved in stories from those days when we were telling stories around campfires.  I had a classical mythology class in my first undergrad where the teacher routinely told us stories in class.  It was so common that I almost always had a pillow and blanky with me in the class.  She spent a week telling us "myths" that turned out to be a generic Star Wars recreation.  To my knowledge, no one in the class had figured out what was going on until the big reveal, but it was one HELL of a week.  I actually got to class early to make sure I could get a good seat for story time.

Return of the Jedi, would probably, if I gave it some thought for one of my Lists of the Month, rank in my top ten favorite science fiction movies.  I like Revenge of the Sith a little better, but just a little.  Return keeps up a relatively wicked pace for such a long film, bouncing routinely from action scene to action scene, almost in apology for breaking that unwritten rule between American audiences and filmmakers about films not exceeding two hours long.  

If you look at the "original" three Star Wars films as a single unit, it seems odd to me that so much character development was put on hold until the very, very end.  It seems odd to me that such major bombs are dropped with only a few minutes to spare in the film.  It seems odd to me that these people, all connected in that six degrees way, would manage to find each other in the vastness of space.  But, it does work.  In retrospect, it would work better if they had worked harder to foreshadow the events that were revealed in the course of this film, but it still works in such a way as to be satisfying, even to the casual viewer.

I haven't loved the entirety of this franchise, and while I own the lot, there are a few I never watch unless someone else demands I watch it.  This isn't one of those.  Whether you somehow have managed not to see all of these movies and need to finish out the saga, or whether you're just looking for something a bit futuristic to fill some mood niche, Return is certainly worth consideration.

Day 313: Robin Hood (1973)

G, 1 hr. 23 min.  Directed by: Wolfgang Reitherman.  Release Date: November 8, 1973. DVD Release Date: July 4, 2000.

 I have to admit that this was a childhood favorite.  I watched this a lot while I dragged through Sundays spent at my dad's house.  It always made me smile and sometimes made me laugh.  But, I liked the story, too.  I was interested in the concept of a man (or a fox) who would give up everything he had in order to fight a wrong that he saw committed by someone who had the power to do wrong and get away with it.

As an adult, I have a few problems with the movie that never would have occurred to me as a child.  I own this for purely nostalgic reasons.  I rarely dust it off the shelf unless I'm trying to find something suitable for the kids in my family to watch.  Sometimes, if I'm having trouble sleeping, I'll pop this in my DVD player and watch for a few minutes before falling asleep, but it doesn't exactly fill a niche for me anymore and I'm not totally sure why.

Robin Hood is a rare movie in the Disney line-up.  It makes almost no attempt to appease the adults in the audience, preferring an endless array of humor attempts that never get more sophisticated than juvenile.  There are an abundance of characters, but outside of Robin Hood and Little John, none of them get much time in the spotlight and only a handful get more than a half-hearted attempt at development.  We're expected to accept that these characters are supposed to do what they're doing, even if their actions don't make much sense.  I suspect this in an effort to make the ethical and moral implications of Robin Hood's tale less confusing for the kids, but it makes the movie fray around the edges a little bit.

It's not just story where this falls flat.  The animation isn't really on par with the standards had set in the 70s.  There are some beautifully done scenes, don't get me wrong, but the overall picture is somewhat underwhelming.  I'm also not sure who in their right mind would have the guardian of a fox be a chicken.  Was that some effort at irony?  If so, it missed the mark.

This isn't a terrible movie, but it's far from Disney's best work.  There's no real hurry to see this if it wasn't a staple in your home growing up.  Your kids might like it though, especially if they're still in the 7 and under age range.

Day 312: Orgazmo (1998)

NC-17, 2 hr.  Directed by: Trey Parker.  Release Date: October 23, 1998. DVD Release Date: March 29, 2005.

I'm not a prude by any means, but I was a bit concerned when someone brought this to my attention back in the late-90s and mentioned that it was (1) made by the comedy duo that brings us South Park and (2) a porn parody.  I wasn't sure how anyone could have gotten away with that combination of events, but Trey Parker and Matt Stone pulled it off.  

The trick, apparently, is to be as offensive as possible without actually being graphic.  If you can make every setting ridiculous, it helps to enhance the character (and comedy) of your movie that much further.  I also noticed that they peppered the cast with people I know by name to be actors in the adult film business.  Ron Jeremy has the most significant part, but his impact is made stupid by a scene wherein a very rotund little man demonstrates martial prowess and a dexterity that are probably unlikely at best and impossible at worst.  

Really, what this movie is made up of is 120 minutes of absolute pandemonium with a highly sexual charge.  The scenes which could have truly offended are rendered more passive by ensuring that the audience is very aware that no one in the film takes what they're doing very seriously.  The cast delivers some low-brow entertaining performances, although the dialogue has a tendency to be recited stiffly.  What's funny is how stupid these guys kept the scenes, probably in an effort to keep people from noticing the things that are being said and done.

This really isn't going to be to everyone's tastes.  If you can't laugh at things like an old lady humping a walker, or things of that nature, you're probably not going to be overly interested in this movie.  It's pretty raw, even by the terms of Trey Parker and Matt Stone.  This isn't a movie where they've worried about doing anything but shocking the audience as much and as frequently as possible.  I'm surprised that I like it as much as I do.  

Day 311: Liar Liar (1997)

PG-13, 1 hr. 27 min.  Directed by: Tom Shadyac.  Release Date: June 1, 1997.  DVD Release Date: January 20, 1998.

Liar Liar holds a special place in my heart.  Not because it's particularly great, or because it's heartwarming, or even because of a few good performances.  It holds a special place in my heart because it remains, as of the writing of this blog entry, the only Jim Carrey movie that I like, even a little bit.  I'm not sure why this one stands up, but unlike other example of Carrey's work, I find his overacted, over-reaching efforts at humor actually entertaining.  He's still the same spastic man in front of the camera that we've been forced to watch since he started working on In Living Color, but this time around, the formula just worked for me.  It's possible that supported by a cadre of real actors (to include the little boy who played his son) that the inanity that he usually brings to his work just wasn't so glaring.  

Roger Ebert said something to the effect that Jim Carrey was beginning to grow on him (not unlike a fungus) after watching this movie.  I was very briefly inclined to agree, but now that 15 years have passed, I have come to the realization that Carrey's broken clock won't strike twice, although I hope to find that second strike, and have wasted a lot of time watching Carrey's movies in the search.  I figure that there HAS to be a reason why people love him.

It's hard not to understand that love in Liar Liar, but anything that isn't repeatable is a fluke.  The movie's cute, and even with Carrey's clownish, slapstick-heavy performance, it's funny.  It feels a little bit like a criticism of how the modern family is operating.  Dad goes out and earns a living to the point where he basically forgets about his family until its way too late, then does some very, very dumb things in an effort to not only reclaim himself, but to reforge ties with his ex-wife and their child.  Depressing as the thought is, the first half of that equation speaks of my own family history, although my father never mentally rebounded from his divorce and cut as many ties as he could on a fairly permanent basis.  But, the movie also makes fun of life in general and Jim Carrey in specific.  Some people do, indeed make a fine living making funny faces and looking stupid.

This is the ONLY Jim Carrey movie I recommend to people I like.  If I ever recommend The Truman Show or The Majestic, it means I hate you and want you to suffer, because the only thing worse than Jim Carrey being "funny" is Jim Carrey being "serious."  

Day 310: Last King of Scotland (2006)

R, 2 hr. 3 min.  Directed by: Kevin Macdonald.  Release Date: September 27, 2006.  DVD Release Date: April 17, 2007.

When I was living in South Africa, I met a girl who was born in Uganda, a few years before the end of Idi Amin's reign of terror.  She was three when her parents, fearing their deaths because they were not of the same ethic group and Idi Amin, packed her and her little brother into suitcases, putting down layers of clothes over them, and then fled.  They successfully crossed first into Tanzania and then moved south before eventually immigrating to South Africa.  When I met her, she was completing her final year of her undergraduate degree at University of Port Elizabeth.  She'd come a long way.

Watching The Last King of Scotland always reminds me of her.  I haven't talked to her since 1999, when I left South Africa and my new-found friends gathered to say good-bye in the terminal, but even now I wonder where she is every time I see this.

The most interesting part about this movie, other than it's a very well-done adaptation of a book, is that it mixes the fictional with the factual.  Of course Idi Amin and most of the things portrayed in the movie happened,  although the role played by James McAvoy Dr. Nicholas Garrigan, never existed.  He has a basis on a real person, a former British soldier who interacted with Idi Amin, but there are only a few similarities.  

The story depicted in the movie is dark and unsettling.  It unfortunately draws on all of those horrible political upheavals that are the only things that ever receive media coverage in the United States, and for most Americans, this is the only side of Africa that is known.  Forest Whitaker, as Idi Amin, was mesmerizing.  His blend of charm, intensity, and chilling bouts of plain old evil.  There are several times during the course of the film where his performance makes my blood run cold.  Dramatic, but accurate.  James McAvoy provides a youthful and fresh slant to the film, the perfect counterpart to the insanity that marked Idi Amin's tyrannical rule in Uganda.

This isn't a pretty movie, although it's technically beautifully.  It's a disturbing story that's made more so because it's based on real events.  It's humanity's worst nightmare, trotted out as a form of entertainment and a reminder not to let this happen again.