First of all, I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and got a visit from Santa.
I thought I'd do something I haven't done in the proverbial coon's age---review some movies! Because of the vacation time that I've actually had a chance to take advantage of, I've been watching some movies lately.
1) Batman Begins---****---I was really surprised, because I liked this movie a LOT.
Christian Bale makes an excellent Batman, Liam Neeson is a sinister villian and Katie Holmes is, well.....she's pretty hot and you can see why Tom Cruise would want to hook up with her--other than that, she's window dressing. A special mention however, goes out to Cillian Murphy, who is absolutely TERRIFIC in his roll as the scary psychologist//Sandman. Way, WAY better than any other Batman film. I realize that may not be saying a lot, but this is as good as the recent Spiderman movies.
2) Must Love Dogs--**1/2---okay, so if I told you that we had a romantic comedy, and it starred Diane Lane & John Cusack--certainly two of the most likeable movie stars working today--and had solid support from fine actors like Stockard Channing, Christopher Plummer & Elizabeth Perkins.....wouldn't you think that you had a date movie classic forthcoming? So would I. And its not that it wasn't "okay"....it just wasn't as good as the sum of its parts. I liked the romance between Lane & Cusack, but could've cared less about Lane's family and all its foibles. Merely okay.
3) The 40-Year-Old Virgin--now, here's a movie with a concept that is pretty funny.
Guy manages to go through his whole life (well, up until he's funny), and just never meets the right woman...and his friends find out and what happens next. Right away you have a movie that should be funny just from the plot, especially if you have the right cast (Steve Correll--from t.v.'s The Daily Show & The Office is going to become a huge, huge star). But by taking the plot, and making it raunchy...and by that I mean REALLY really raunchy...and still managing to keep the romantic subplot sweet and believeable....you've created a modern classic. This is one funny movie--both ways.
Raunchy & sweet. You don't find that in many movies. ****1/2
4) Deuce Bigalow--European Gigolo--aha! Now here is an example of a movie that is raunchy and TRIES to have a sweet side--but it just doesn't work. There are plenty of raunchy parts, and some are pretty funny and some are either gross or don't work, but the sweet side is totally ridiculous and unbelieveable. Its amazing to me that Adam Sandler has become a huge movie star. Its even more amazing to me that Rob Schneider found a niche to even make movies based on his "talent". The first movie in this series was fairly raunchy and disgusting, but had enough funny sight gags to make it a fun 90 minute deversion. Compared to this film, that film was practically a Woody Allen film. * (that's one star)
Later,
Jeff
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