Its been a long time since I was in love with the little green whore (thanks JC for the best summing up of marijuina I’ve heard in a long time) but I still get little pangs for it even after two years divorce. I can sometimes do the Howard Marks thing of thinking about feeling baked when straight and experiencing a little high but the days of living a smoke fuelled haze are now long behind me. Still, watching Harold and Kumar bong their way through another eventful week is akin to showing Pete Doherty a recut edition of Trainspotting with the nasty bits taken out.
Starting off only minutes after the first film ends, helpless Harold and hapless Kumar are on their way to Amsterdam to find Harolds newly aquired ladyfriend. As Kumar quips, “Its gonna be exactly like Eurotrip only its not gonna suck.” Well if they had just spent the film getting wasted in The Dam it probably would have sucked, more than a Dyson on full pelt. Thankfully though the same kind of ridiculously ridiculous turns of luck that fell upon them in the first film return for the second outing.
The original was such a pleasant surprise, walking that thin line between stupidity and genius, that word of a sequel made me go all funny in the head. And while it might not quite live up to its predecessor there’s still a ton of fun to be had. From Guantanamo Bay to the Deep South, from KKK rallies to the Presidents gamesroom, whenever Harold and Kumar are on screen together you’re guaranteed a chortle. Kal Penn as Kumar has some astonishingly good comic timing so much so that I’d struggle to find someone of his age that I’d cast in this kind of role above him. As the straighter of the two John Cho has less to do, but as Hardy, Wise, Little and Dec would attest its a harder job to pull off.
Theres a little bit of shark jumping when the pair land in POTUS’s house and the politics is played a touch too preachy at times but the nods to White Castle (Or Get the Munchies for us brits) are never overly done as you’d imagine they would be with such an inbuilt audience. Having Doogie come back might smack of unoriginality to some but when you’re blessed with a character who can mine more comedy gold than a million Kutchers, you don’t leave him sitting on the shelf. The best moment for me though sums up the puerile nature of this laugh a minute treat. When Harold kicks some obnoxious A-hole in the balls they drop to the floor unable to contain a little fart. Even completely wasted it shouldn’t be funny. But it is.
I’ve just spent the last half an hour Googling vaginal dryness. Thats right. Vaginal Dryness. My opening for this review was intended to make a point about how hideously malnurished Sarah Jessica Parker is, to the point where I literally retch when I see her semi naked. I’d been led to believe by Australian comedian Brendan Burns that ‘super skinny girls can’t get wet’. Researching this in a vain attempt to get people to stop admiring Carrie Bradshaw has led to nothing but dead ends, and a ‘google history’ of concerning content. While my ‘research’ has come up with bumpkis (i.e. nothing, not some new sexual term for rimming) I’m standing by the theory. So there.
If you are completely unaware of Sex and The City then you are very unfortunate indeed. Unfortunate not because you’re missing out on any high quality entertainment or an insightful cultural piece. No you’re unfortunate because it means you are a man that hasn’t had any contact with the female race in the last 10 years. Except of course gay men, they love this shit. But for those few sad, lonely masturbators (that didn’t tune in because it had Sex in the title) the show, and the film, is about four friends Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Samantha who all love shoes and cock.
A gross over simplification one might say. Well, one is a cretin for saying so because outside of shoes and cock NOTHING AT ALL happens. I don’t mean in a kind of Waking Life existential Samuel Beckett ‘nothing happens’ way. I mean in a bored to tears, where is the nearest exit i hope it has stairs to the roof so I can end this joke of a life, kind of way. While there may be two or three scenes that wake you up from your fashion induced coma they stand out so painfully you can feel your balls retreating. Case in point, the break up set piece. This will go down in history as the most overly melodramatic scene ever. Ever. Wailing orchestra, flowers dropping to the floor, slow motion, hysterical screaming, fainting. I bet people in the middle of the Chinese earthquake reacted calmer than she did when her wedding didn’t go exactly as planned.
What baffles me most is why women don’t get outrageously offended by this stuff. Women are portrayed as two dimensional, simpering idiots, with no capacity for rationality or change. They never take the time to listen to the other side of the story and after the aforementioned breakup the first thing she worries about is her fucking wardrobe! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!
But none of this ranting will stop this film making a gajillion bucks and sequels appearing like herpes on a hookers arse hole. Hopefully by the time those sequels do turn up I’ll have found the exit to the stairs on the roof and I’ll be enjoying my 7 second plummet to the ground.
Guys, I’ll see you there.
Years ago my mother used to say to me, she’d say, “In this world, Owen, you must be” – she always called me Owen – “In this world, Owen, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant.” Well, until I watched Smart People I’d have recommended the former. Now I will recommend the latter. Pleasantness over smarts any day. You may quote me.
This quirky-indie-comedy-dysfunctional-family-drama (you know the type Little Miss Sunshine, Sideways et al) deals with intellectual types that very rarely play at being nice to each other or anyone else around them. Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid) is the head of the family, an author/professor who is best summed up by his student evaluations; He’s an asshole. He lives with his Young Republican daughter and increasingly distant son. When his adopted brother, a 40 something directionless loser, comes to chaffeur him around his life starts to turn. Add into that a new romance and we have all the ingredients of a ‘life lesson to be learnt’.
Thankfully its quite a good life lesson. And I’m a big fan of life lessons in movies. Stories as education have been around forever and as long as the teaching isn’t along the lines of “Killing newborn babies is cool” or “Hey, have you tried drinking meths through your eyeball?” I’m happy to sit up and pay attention. In this case its not the story thats going to blow you away (well nothing in this movie is gonna ‘blow you away’ its not that kind of film) but good characters and a cast of reliable actors to help make them real is paramount. On the actor front, well, 3 out of 4 ain’t bad.
Dennis Quaid is suitably misanthropic. He is an asshole and no amount of, yeah but his wife is dead, is gonna give him sympathy. But you may just start to like him once he realises he’s a bit of a fraud. The key being he realises this himself. Thomas Haden Church is well cast as the ‘idiot’ brother, as is Ellen Page as the one who’ll do anything to impress her father. The scenes between these two are by far the best, adding a much needed cringeworthy creepiness to the procedings. The loose fourth wheel though is Sarah Jessica Parker, her being as necessary as Anusol on a prolapsed rectum. I would give the cinematic equivalent of Red Rum a bigger kicking but I’m saving that for my The Sex and The City review. In it I’ll be covering such topics as dangerously skinny women being unable to generate vaginal lubricant. Stay Tuned Kids!
I wanted one thing from Indy. Distraction. I didn’t want a carefully plotted movie. I didn’t care whether the best visual effects ever screamed at my eyeballs. I wasn’t bothered if the old man looked like he might rupture a disc and piss in his colostomy bag. I wasn’t even that concerned if my childhood was about ‘to be raped’ (fucking fanboys) by what I knew and loved being distorted into some sci-fi mindbender. I just wanted distraction. And Indy failed me. But I’ll give him this. He had a bloody good go.
Nuclear explosions, Lousie Brooks coiffed Russians, Conquistadors, Motorcycles in libraries, Back to the Future in jokes, Spaceships, self aware monkeys that know who the bad guys are, the most ‘London’ Ray Winstone performance yet, CGI Gophers, Shia weeping in every scene, Marriage, Death, Jim from Neighbours and the Janitor from Scrubs together at last, if you missed your kitchen sink you won’t find it anywhere else this year. So thank you Steve and George for the effort you put in.
Yes the fanboys will be up in arms about certain things, but fuck em its their job to bitch and whine about things thats just not Indy, or bits they would have done differently, etc, etc. If you’re unfortuante to be stuck in a room with one just remind them of the jumping out of the plane in a dinghy from Temple of Doom (although you can refer to it as simply Doom they’ll like that) or the birds as weapons in Crusade, or the… oh yeah there are no faults with Raiders. And thats why new Indy (in the same way new Star Wars) can never be what they want. Having this perfect ideal of a film means the fans should just stay away. Or lighten the fuck up.
The biggest gripe for some will be the end. And well, yeah, they may have a point. The myth and the legend of folklore seems to belong on this earth. While its fine to jump from hell and heaven and all that jazz, thats rooted in archealogy, its rooted in fortune and glory. Flying objects that are difficult to assign an identity too belong elsewhere. Like a scientology convention. But when all is said and done I can’t complain about a film as odd as this. Its unpredictable, in a good way, and that may be the rarest thing I see in the year 2008. A blockbuster where you can’t tell exactly whats going to happen? That or I may not have been concentrating enough.
There is no originality in the world. Not a single dose of newness left. We are constantly led to believe that everything is like something else. Brown is the new black, Cameron is the new Blair, Wisap is the new Wispa and Ashton Kutcher is the new Satan. If you’re aware of Charlie Bartletts existence (as I write this our print has already sailed long ago) you’ll know one thing. Charlie Bartlett is the new Ferris Bueller. Well he’s not. He’s just a kid trying to make the most of his time in, what is the most painful part of anyones life, high school. Comparing it to one of the only reasons the 80′s shouldn’t be permanently deleted from everyones memories is unfair for a film thats is quite new, quite funny and fo rthe most part quite enjoyable .
Charlie Bartlett comes from a long line of fast talking, quick thinking, movie Chucks (Charlie Wilson, Charlies Angels, Charlie Chaplin, A Charlie Brown Christmas) and this one is no exception. Kicked out from every private school going Charlie has to learn to deal with a ‘normal’ run of the mill school. Charlies main goal isn’t to survive this experience but to get the one thing that he dreams of. Popularity. He does this by dealing out prescription meds, conselling advice and boffing the headmasters daughter. Well done Charlie.
Your appreciatiation of any high school comedy with such a perky protagonist will no doubt hinge on the performance of the lead and newcomer Anton Yelchin manages to be both infuriating and likeable. Instantly annoying but willing to win you round by being the kind of guy you secretly wish you could have been when you had so much young poon around you. The poon in question is Kat Dennings who I’m starting to get a little crush on. A unique looking gal with a touch of the gothic. Not usually my peppermint, but, well, there it is. Although if Robert Downey Jr was her dad I might just date her to get to him such is my adoration of the man of iron. This is fast becoming a ‘who Owen wants to do’ review so I’m going to stop.
And return instead to the UnFerrisness of the movie. The biggest thing is the tone is way too dissimilar. Bueller was a romp (I can’t beleive I used that word) from start to finish with only one brief respite for Camerons breakdown. Bartlett is littered with real life anxieties. Prison, Suicide, Grief, none of these things seemed to trouble little Broderick as he surfed carival floats singing Twist and Shout. But because all film critics want to get on the movie poster with some easy one-liner they’ll plaster their reviews saying it is the new Ferris Bueller. But its not.
Its actually much more like the new Rushmore. Dammit.
You could be forgiven for thinking this was an Italian/American mob movie with guns and beatings such is the ambiguity if the title. But no, instead its the 387th romantic comedy of the year! Its the 152nd to centre around weddings! And lastly its the 93rd since I became single again. Each and every one a horrible painful reminder of the good and the bad times. Thanks for that Hollywood.
Tom (Patrick Dempsey) lives the life of Riley. I don’t know who Riley is but he must have a good life if it competes with Tom’s because he’s disgustingly rich, has friends that actually listen to his problems and has women fawning over him at every step. He also has a best friend in the form of Hannah (Michelle Monaghan) who is the quintessential perfect woman. She is stunning to look at, she’s smart and creative and best of all she is complicated. And for any cynics out there, they do exist. Tom only sees her as a friend until of course its too late then he has to win her back. And for any other optimists out there, the winning them back thing doesn’t exist.
Coming from the ‘you must be taking the piss’ school of aptly named film companies, the makers of Made of Honour are called Originals Films. Which is pretty damn laughable when this is just a retread of My Best Friends Wedding crossed with that episode of Friends where Ross comes back from China with Julie. In fact the writers of Friends should be given even more syndication money because almost 90% of big screen romcoms at the moment steal plot devices from the hit show.
While it lacks any originality, coming off the back of that bloody Kutcher/Diaz bullshit, Made of Honour is one of the better films of its kind. Up there with 27 Dresses but it does lack the cross gender appeal of something like Knocked Up. At the end of the day its the type of movie that you watch with a loved one and you tolerate it, at times even slipping into enjoying it, but most of all you know it makes them happy. I watched it alone. Then walked home alone. To an empty bed. And wept. Send your sympathy on a postcard to, Mr. Douchebag…
I hate Ashton Kutcher. I hate him so much a film such as this is my idea of an Austrain basement with a rather bad paternal figure. I hate his face. I hate his smugness. I hate his floppy hair and his grating voice. I hate every film he’s ever been in. Mainly because he’s in them. Also because they are shit. Really terrible shit most of the time. The Butterfly Effect, Guess Who, The Guardian, Just Married? The first question is how the fuck have I seen all these films and the second is how many times daily does he take the full length of beelzebub’s shaft up his asshole.
This may be the hardest premise to write because while I know it has something to do with the increasingly irritating Cameron Diaz marrying that pillock and then having to stay with him for a large sum of money, all I remember is playing my new game of how best to torture Ashton until he owns up to his crimes against humanity and begs for me to end his stupid worthless life. I’d start by shaving his preposterous attempts at a beard, but the razor would of course be blunt and I’d ‘inadvertently’ end up ripping half his face off.
Once his ‘cute’ looks have gone he’d know his life would be over and he’d begin to weep eternally. I say eternally but one day I’d catch a glimpse of The Guardian, my least favourite of all his tripe, and run down to the basement where I keep him and smash his face into the ground until it resembles paste and bone. The funny thing is in my head I start to miss his screams. They gave me so much joy and pleasure that now they’ve gone my life seems emptier. But my work is done, my reason for being on this earth is accompished. After a while all would be right with the world.
Apparently I have to put how this is all a joke and I wouldn’t really attempt to kill Mr. Kutcher. Or else I can get into trouble for ‘sending death threats’ and if Mr. Kutcher did turn up dead I could get blamed. Whatever happened to freedom of hatred? I remember the day when you could write detailed accounts of how you want to systematically torture A-Listers all day long. Barry Norman did an entire piece on Charlie Sheen and a blowtorch. Its political correctness gone mad. So anyway don’t kill Ashton. Maybe kick him in the shin though.
There is a long list of Hollywoods best demeaning themselves in front of a camera as soon as their own little moppets come of age to start staring at the silver screen. From the legendary Bill Murray to the, well just the, Ice Cube the cry to cover their collective backs is “I’m not selling out! I just want to do a film my kids can watch!” Now Jodie Foster is the latest gurning face to try and please her offspring with unothordox parenting. My folks never appeared in multi million dollar movies to cheer me up. That may explain a lot.
Nim (Abigail Breslin) lives on an island with her dad (Gerard Butler) and an assortment of live action and CGI animals, all of whom are self aware (even Gerard Butler although how he could have chosen to make P.S. I Love You if he was remains a mystery). When pops goes missing in a storm Nim writes to Alex Rider, an Indiana Jones-esque fictional character, for help. What she gets is writer Alexandra Rider (Jodie Foster), an agrophobe with shades of OCD. Unsuprisingly Jodie comes through and helps Nim.
While the main idea of having a little girl left alone on an island might have the McCanns winning parents of the year there is a half decent amount of danger in the concept. The problem is the film never really fulfils this danger. By danger I don’t mean the predatory emails that Alex Rider sends. For example, one such electronic message worryingly asks how old Nim is and whether she’s alone, I’d like to beleive that would be flagged instantly. No the danger I mean is suspense, drama, a feeling that all might not be okay in the end.
I think that Oscar nomination may have gone to Abigails head as she seems patronisingly adult. Gerard, or Geraaaard as the trailer calls him, plays dual roles reasonably well. As mentioned before Jodie gurns and mugs for all she’s worth, but shes worth a fair bit so we’ll let her off. But if I see one more falling over on a treadmill gag this year I may be forced to go on a stabby stabby rampage. Overall when it comes to kids films if its not adult enough I switch off. And I think, paradoxically, so do kids. I’m not suggesting sit the little ones in front of the Saw Trilogy but more Holes and Bridge to Terrabithias please. Less twee, safe tosh.
Oh dear. Oh dear, Oh dear. Where to begin with Fools Gold. Firstly an Olympic anology. The film is not Gold, nor Silver nor Bronze. In fact it would struggle to compete with the inside pant content of a Tibetan monk having seven shades of the brown stuff beaten out of him on a daily basis. The jokes die on their arses, zero suspense is built and the characters are as intolerable as living in Burma. Current Affairs? I like them. I think they’re good.
Matthew McConaughey is the fool of the title. A deep sea diver who is on the search for some famous Spainish crap or something. He’s recently divorced from fellow hunter Kate Hudson who now works for Donald Sutherland on a boat near the island where Fool is diving. Thats lucky, if they wanna get back together. As is every bloody plot point in the movie. At no point does anyone work out where the treasure is without dumb fucking luck helping them. The same dumb luck that keeps getting Matthew work I assume.
This Z grade Indiana Jones style treasure hunter has zero going for him yet every woman in the movie gets moist as soon as the prick flashes his inbred grin. His sexual prowess is referenced ad nauseum. I’m guessing M McC asks for this to be written in to the script before he signed on to dissuade the popular opinion that repeated cannabis use has left his penis as flaccid as a Cheesestring (available in all good stores, the Cheesestrings, not the flaccid penis).
Two good things come out of this movie. Firstly McConaughey gets slapped about a bit which has inspired in me a new game where I fantasise about torturing the male leads in bad movies (this will come in handy for all Ashton Kutcher movies). Secondly you get to feel really sorry for Kate Hudson. She was Miss Penny Lane for godsake. Maybe someone out there will see this shipwreck of a movie and feel the same pity I did and throw her a damned bone. In the meantime if you want sea-related highjinks check out her mum Goldies Overboard instead. Compared to this its Citizen fucking Kane.
I have a confession to make (hey thats the name of the blog!). For the first 20-30 minutes of this movie I was drfiting in and out of consciousness, or sleeping as some people call it. Then when I did wake up the resulting ‘reality’ was so unbelievably piss poor that I left the cinema to inhale nicotiny goodness, slowly, taking my time. This may sound like a failure in my mission then. I haven’t technically watched all of every film shown by my beloved multiplex. Well fuck you, I don’t care.
The inexplicable career of Radha Mitchell continues as she plays Snake Plissken a-like Eden Sinclair, a SWAT member that makes Colin Farrel look like a big gay softie. When Scotland is sealed off due to a head burstingly nasty plague Radha is sent in to find the cure. Along the way she meets gimps, punks and Malcolm McDowell in a world that puts the dysentry in distopia.
So we kick off with a plague of ‘angry diseased half dead people’ (but not rage infected zombies) that is not at all ripping of 28 days later. Then Scotland is annexed and becomes the kind of place that no-one can escape from except a person in an eye patch sent to work by a sinister government (completely different from Escape From New York). The heroine bandies a group of well trained military types together but their initial drive in an APC doesn’t go to plan in a way that doesn’t seem like a shot for shot remake of the exact same bloody scene from Aliens. And on and on and on it goes.
Mad Max, Lord of the Rings, The Warriors and even Robin Hood Prince of bloody Thieves are all given the ‘look I can do a bit from a movie I like’ treatment. I’m fine with a nod to other works now and again but the whole film feels like a British Date Movie or Meet the Spartans such is the blatant half inching of other peoples ideas. There is no worse criticism than that last sentence. After the average Dog Soldiers and the very good, and original, The Descent lets hope its a case of Neil Marshall thinking I’m gonna do a movie I want and screw everybody else, rather than a complete failing of any original ideas. Oh and those defending it as a comedy thats well funny, I’m not seeing the humour in a women tied up and beaten by a sneering pantomime villain. I’m also not seeing the humour in having to listen to Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
