I think I did my last movie review in like...1994 or something....but I've recently caught a few so I thought I'd give my opinion---free of charge!! Hey, ya can't beat the price.
1) Live Free--Die Hard: Its the 4th installment of the Bruce Willis blockbuster series, and if you are a fan, you'll like it. He's back yet again as John McClane, hard boiled detective for the NYPD, ready to just get the bejezus knocked out of him but a ruthless gang of...um...thieves? I guess that's what they are. The best of the Die Hard series are always the ones with the best villians. Every great hero needs a great bad guy to play off of. That's why the first Die Hard was the best--who's going to be better than Alan Rickman? Here they offer us Timothy Olyphant, who's the star of the HBO series "Deadwood" (one of my personal favorites)--although on that show he's the hero. Here he's some sort of super-uber computer whiz who's upset that the U.S. government didn't listen to him regarding certain warning signs before 9/11....so now he's going to essentially bring the government to its knees....literally and metaphorically. But the real reason the movie is so much fun is the verbal interplay between Willis and Justin Long, who plays a young hacker that is forced to help the good guys--ya know--beat the bad guys. Best Die Hard ever? Naaah. Worst? Nope. I'd place it as 3rd best. Not quite as good as Die Hard 3 (Jeremy Irons was terrific) but better than Die Hard 2 (weak villian with the "rogue" U.S. general plot). ***3/4
2) Transformers--who knew? Who knew when I was taking the family to the movie, and was goofing on my son that this was probably going to be the WORST movie I would watch all summer (hang on...I'm getting to that one)....that this movie would be so much freakin fun?!!? An absolutely terrific thrill ride of a movie. Plot? Oh, come on!
Giant robots come to earth--some to help us, some to ENSLAVE us. Who cares about the plot? What makes the movie so much fun is that it doesn't take itself too seriously, has tons of action...and a star making turn by young Shia LeBouf was the film's lead.
Seriously--the kid is in the next Indiana Jones movie--he's going to be a big star.
****1/2
3) Devil Wears Prada--Should I officially turn in my man-card for even watching this?
Does it count if I only watched it on cable and didn't actually pay to watch it? Cuz I figure that's my only chance. Hey, Meryl Streep is fantastic in the role of the royal bitch supreme of a boss, and Anne Hathaway has....um, huge teeth. Good chick flick. Hey, I recommended it to my mom, okay? ***1/2
4) Crank--okay, let me just say that Jason Statham has done some really good work in The Transporter and is one of those guys that I thought would've made a great replacement for Pierce Brosnan as the new James Bond. Okay? I just wanted to say that because, this.....this movie....is a real piece of crap. I mean, very little redeeming social value. The plot (as it were) has Statham as a assassin-for-hire who awakes to find that he's been poisoned and has about an hour and a half to live (coinicidentally the running time of the movie--amazing, huh?). He wants desperately to get revenge on the guy who has poisoned him (another gangster) and begins to basically mow down anyone and everyone in his path to get there. This plot has been done a couple of times as "D.O.A." with Edmond O'Brien in the 50's and Dennis Quaid in the 80's--the twist here is that Statham can extend his time above ground by raising his adreneline level to extreme levels---which is, I guess---why things are so wild and out of control. Basically though, the film is just a mess. * 1/2
So the other night, one of the channels was having a Jack Webb marathon and I taped (I do not have a TIVO, thank you very much) about 3 hours worth of old Dragnet shows from the late 60's. They are an absolute hoot of over-the-top propaganda about the evils of drug use and just about anything associated with being under the age of 30.
There's one episode in particular, where Webb is lecturing this couple on how marijuana leads to essentially EVERYTHING, and will leave you a helpless quivering addict.
Mind you, he's saying all of this as he chains smokes his way through a pack of cigarettes. Addiction indeed.
Mr. Webb, uh....was a lifelong suffering of asthma and died of a massive heart attack.
Maybe it was do to that 3-pack a day cigarette habit that he couldn't shake.
Later,
Jeff
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