Movie Diary
1. Cloverfield
I went to Transformers opening night last summer, and have been on the bandwagon and dying to see more since the moment the trailer for this ended. I followed the viral promo online a little, but I always knew (or just hoped) that it wouldn't really integral to seeing or enjoying the movie, and just wanted to get in the theatre and see it before anything was really spoiled for me, and I did. And for the most part, I was pretty damn happy with it. The beastie was cool, and they attained a good balance of suspense and ambiguity by slowly showing you more but never letting you see or know too much. I had mixed feelings about the cast and characterization, but as I expected liked Lizzy Caplan (the only good thing about TV's cancelled "The Class") and T.J. Miller (the only good thing about TV's soon-to-be-cancelled "Carpoolers"). Also I've been talking about the movie all morning on here, so I'll refrain from rehashing all the things I said there.
2. I Am Legend
The biggest problem with Cloverfield, really, was that this came out a month earlier (and I saw it only a week earlier). I mean, they're different enough in approach that a side-by-side comparison is kind of pointless, but there were still some major deja vu moments. This was really good, though, and I thought this matched up pretty well with Francis Lawrence's previous movie, Constantine, which looked great, took questionable liberties with its source material, and managed to at least slightly transcend any similiarities to its star's many other films in the same genre. One thing I can't believe I hadn't heard about at all online was the fact that Mike Patton voiced the creatures in this movie.
3. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
I thought this was at times pretty much hysterical, although I can see why this more or less bombed, since its appeal isn't necessarily to people who saw Walk The Line or Ray (which is a lot of people) but to people who recognized those movies as kind of inherently ridiculous, and think of biopics in general as a pretty goofy genre (for reasons that are outlined pretty well here). I think it could've been better ("Let's Duet" was really the only song that was funny), but I still really enjoyed it, especially the Beatles bit and the "goddamn this is a dark fucking period"/"that was early Dewey, this is middle Dewey" stuff.
4. Superbad
I saw Walk Hard over the holidays with my brother, who was appalled that I hadn't seen Superbad yet and sent it to me for my birthday. I wouldn't put this quite on the same level as Knocked Up or Walk Hard, but there were a few really funny bits. The best part about R-rated comedies is that it's pretty much the only way for a movie to not get all the best jokes spoiled by the trailer.
5. Futurama: Bender's Big Score
I wasn't a huge fan of "Futurama" when it was on the air, a couple years of J.G. watching reruns on the Cartoon Network every night slowly made me appreciate it more, and so it was nice to hear that they were bringing it back as a series of direct-to-DVD movies, the first of which I got for J.G. for Christmas. This was kind of a nice way to bring it back, too, some of the cheesier romance aspects of the show brought to the forefront, but still pretty much as funny as ever. The way this movie acted as if it was obligated to bring in a cameo of every other recurring character was kind of lame, though, especially since they didn't even get John Goodman to voice Robot Santa again.
6. Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project
Too often, fond remembrances of showbiz veterans are posthumous, but thankfully, Rickles was (and is) still alive to participate in this, which keeps it from being more saccharine than would suit someone with such a caustic, mean sense of humor. Landis offers a lot of Rickles just being onstage and doing what he does best, and very lightly trickles in the life story through the mid section enough to show what Don is really like as a person without totally debunking his persona.
7. Let's Go To Prison
Another one that my brother enthusiastically endorsed that I'd previously assumed would be crap, based on a crappy trailer and 2 leads I haven't particularly liked in the past (as well as "The State" alums behind the camera, which is usually a red flag for me). But it was actually really good, hitting most of the same marks as jail scenes in a lot of other comedies (Half Baked in particular) while actually going a little further into some really bleak and surprisingly realistic territory. It's not quite black humor, since it's all still handled with a kind of light touch, but all the laugh lines are incredibly brutal stuff. Even Chi McBride makes a really stock character work really well.
8. Lord Of War
I got the impression, I'm not sure where, that this was that one in every 10 or so movies Nicolas Cage makes these days that isn't complete shit. And it was, but it wasn't really very good, either. It kind of fits in with what I was saying a while back about Thank You For Smoking and American Psycho, another first person narrative from someone who does horrible amoral things but kind of rationalizes and comes off totally upbeat about it, in this case an arms dealer. I guess it's supposed to be subversive and satirical but I dunno, instead it makes those 2 hours you spend with them feel kind of lightweight and pointless, although this movie does a better job than those other ones of lending some weight and grit to the subject matter. It's also one of those really problematic movies that spans a period of over 25 years, but none of the three principals (Cage and Jared Leto and Bridget Moynahan) really seem to age at all between the beginning and end of the movie. Which is OK, really, maybe better than caking them in bad old people makeup, but still kind of funny, like they just didn't even give a shit about anyone noticing that.
I went to Transformers opening night last summer, and have been on the bandwagon and dying to see more since the moment the trailer for this ended. I followed the viral promo online a little, but I always knew (or just hoped) that it wouldn't really integral to seeing or enjoying the movie, and just wanted to get in the theatre and see it before anything was really spoiled for me, and I did. And for the most part, I was pretty damn happy with it. The beastie was cool, and they attained a good balance of suspense and ambiguity by slowly showing you more but never letting you see or know too much. I had mixed feelings about the cast and characterization, but as I expected liked Lizzy Caplan (the only good thing about TV's cancelled "The Class") and T.J. Miller (the only good thing about TV's soon-to-be-cancelled "Carpoolers"). Also I've been talking about the movie all morning on here, so I'll refrain from rehashing all the things I said there.
2. I Am Legend
The biggest problem with Cloverfield, really, was that this came out a month earlier (and I saw it only a week earlier). I mean, they're different enough in approach that a side-by-side comparison is kind of pointless, but there were still some major deja vu moments. This was really good, though, and I thought this matched up pretty well with Francis Lawrence's previous movie, Constantine, which looked great, took questionable liberties with its source material, and managed to at least slightly transcend any similiarities to its star's many other films in the same genre. One thing I can't believe I hadn't heard about at all online was the fact that Mike Patton voiced the creatures in this movie.
3. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
I thought this was at times pretty much hysterical, although I can see why this more or less bombed, since its appeal isn't necessarily to people who saw Walk The Line or Ray (which is a lot of people) but to people who recognized those movies as kind of inherently ridiculous, and think of biopics in general as a pretty goofy genre (for reasons that are outlined pretty well here). I think it could've been better ("Let's Duet" was really the only song that was funny), but I still really enjoyed it, especially the Beatles bit and the "goddamn this is a dark fucking period"/"that was early Dewey, this is middle Dewey" stuff.
4. Superbad
I saw Walk Hard over the holidays with my brother, who was appalled that I hadn't seen Superbad yet and sent it to me for my birthday. I wouldn't put this quite on the same level as Knocked Up or Walk Hard, but there were a few really funny bits. The best part about R-rated comedies is that it's pretty much the only way for a movie to not get all the best jokes spoiled by the trailer.
5. Futurama: Bender's Big Score
I wasn't a huge fan of "Futurama" when it was on the air, a couple years of J.G. watching reruns on the Cartoon Network every night slowly made me appreciate it more, and so it was nice to hear that they were bringing it back as a series of direct-to-DVD movies, the first of which I got for J.G. for Christmas. This was kind of a nice way to bring it back, too, some of the cheesier romance aspects of the show brought to the forefront, but still pretty much as funny as ever. The way this movie acted as if it was obligated to bring in a cameo of every other recurring character was kind of lame, though, especially since they didn't even get John Goodman to voice Robot Santa again.
6. Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project
Too often, fond remembrances of showbiz veterans are posthumous, but thankfully, Rickles was (and is) still alive to participate in this, which keeps it from being more saccharine than would suit someone with such a caustic, mean sense of humor. Landis offers a lot of Rickles just being onstage and doing what he does best, and very lightly trickles in the life story through the mid section enough to show what Don is really like as a person without totally debunking his persona.
7. Let's Go To Prison
Another one that my brother enthusiastically endorsed that I'd previously assumed would be crap, based on a crappy trailer and 2 leads I haven't particularly liked in the past (as well as "The State" alums behind the camera, which is usually a red flag for me). But it was actually really good, hitting most of the same marks as jail scenes in a lot of other comedies (Half Baked in particular) while actually going a little further into some really bleak and surprisingly realistic territory. It's not quite black humor, since it's all still handled with a kind of light touch, but all the laugh lines are incredibly brutal stuff. Even Chi McBride makes a really stock character work really well.
8. Lord Of War
I got the impression, I'm not sure where, that this was that one in every 10 or so movies Nicolas Cage makes these days that isn't complete shit. And it was, but it wasn't really very good, either. It kind of fits in with what I was saying a while back about Thank You For Smoking and American Psycho, another first person narrative from someone who does horrible amoral things but kind of rationalizes and comes off totally upbeat about it, in this case an arms dealer. I guess it's supposed to be subversive and satirical but I dunno, instead it makes those 2 hours you spend with them feel kind of lightweight and pointless, although this movie does a better job than those other ones of lending some weight and grit to the subject matter. It's also one of those really problematic movies that spans a period of over 25 years, but none of the three principals (Cage and Jared Leto and Bridget Moynahan) really seem to age at all between the beginning and end of the movie. Which is OK, really, maybe better than caking them in bad old people makeup, but still kind of funny, like they just didn't even give a shit about anyone noticing that.
This entry was posted
on Monday, January 21, 2008 at 12:30 PM.
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Anonymous : 11:36 PM