Netflix Diary
1. Shoot 'Em Up
Sometimes the lead actor of a film can bring to mind parallels with their previous work that probably wouldn't occur to me if it was anyone else in the role (which, admittedly, might just mean those aren't relevent points of comparison after all). But watching this as another Clive Owen vehicle makes it feel a bit like Children Of Men through the intentionally campy lens of Sin City, so much so that I'm surprised that he took a role that runs the risk of seeming so redundant in the context of his career. But at the same time, I'm not complaining, because I liked both of those movies, and I like this one a lot as well, so if he does get in a groove of samey movies for a while, they're probably destined to be better than the constant deja vu of new Nic Cage or Keanu Reeves movies. I feel weird about this new school of self-aware action movies sometimes, like I don't know if they're smarter than they're made out to be, or dumber than they pretend to be. But this kind of straight-ahead, visceral approach at least beats the hell out of 10 years of Pulp Fiction ripoffs that haphazardly juggle multiple plotlines. Instead, here we get 3 strong leads (turns out I like Giamatti when he's asked to be odious and conniving), and an approach to gun violence that's as over the top and hysterically funny as the gore in Dead Alive. It's just one utterly insane, inspired action setpiece and ridiculous one-liner after another (with great familiar but not overly obvious hard rock soundtrack choices like "Ace Of Spades" and "Breed" and "Kickstard My Heart"), and I wish more 'serious' action movies were paced this relentlessly.
2. Beerfest
Super Troopers really grew on me over the course of multiple viewings and has become one of those comedies I can quote at length, and I was in pretty much the perfect mood to watch this since I'd just watched ST earlier that day with a friend who'd never seen it before. But this still pretty much pales in comparison aside from a few isolated moments of funny, kind of glad that their next movie is going to be a Super Troopers sequel.
3. The Brothers Solomon
I always liked Will Forte's work on "Saturday Night Live" and was pretty interested to see if his first co-starring vehicle (which he also wrote) was any good, despite the fact that it had the thick stench of B-list SNL movies. Even though the title characters aren't from an "SNL" skit, they feel highly derivative of a long line of romantically doomed, disconcertingly cheerful fraternal pairs that originated on "SNL": Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd's Festrunk brothers, Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan's Butabi brothers, Jimmy Fallon and Chris Parnell's Bloater brothers. I don't know what attracts all these guys to that formula, because it isn't really that inherently funny, but Forte and Will Arnett make it work for them most of the time here (at the very least, it beats the shit out of A Night At The Roxbury, but that goes without saying). There's a few jokes that I feel like I've seen too many times before, and it sometimes shows the seams of a writer more accustomed to sketch comedy, but the deliberately odd pacing means that the big laughs kinda come out of nowhere, in a good way. After seeing her play nothing but bizarro caricatures on "SNL," it's nice to see Kristen Wiig play the straight man, as it were, and she's actually really convincing. Malin Akerman should not be in comedies, though.
Sometimes the lead actor of a film can bring to mind parallels with their previous work that probably wouldn't occur to me if it was anyone else in the role (which, admittedly, might just mean those aren't relevent points of comparison after all). But watching this as another Clive Owen vehicle makes it feel a bit like Children Of Men through the intentionally campy lens of Sin City, so much so that I'm surprised that he took a role that runs the risk of seeming so redundant in the context of his career. But at the same time, I'm not complaining, because I liked both of those movies, and I like this one a lot as well, so if he does get in a groove of samey movies for a while, they're probably destined to be better than the constant deja vu of new Nic Cage or Keanu Reeves movies. I feel weird about this new school of self-aware action movies sometimes, like I don't know if they're smarter than they're made out to be, or dumber than they pretend to be. But this kind of straight-ahead, visceral approach at least beats the hell out of 10 years of Pulp Fiction ripoffs that haphazardly juggle multiple plotlines. Instead, here we get 3 strong leads (turns out I like Giamatti when he's asked to be odious and conniving), and an approach to gun violence that's as over the top and hysterically funny as the gore in Dead Alive. It's just one utterly insane, inspired action setpiece and ridiculous one-liner after another (with great familiar but not overly obvious hard rock soundtrack choices like "Ace Of Spades" and "Breed" and "Kickstard My Heart"), and I wish more 'serious' action movies were paced this relentlessly.
2. Beerfest
Super Troopers really grew on me over the course of multiple viewings and has become one of those comedies I can quote at length, and I was in pretty much the perfect mood to watch this since I'd just watched ST earlier that day with a friend who'd never seen it before. But this still pretty much pales in comparison aside from a few isolated moments of funny, kind of glad that their next movie is going to be a Super Troopers sequel.
3. The Brothers Solomon
I always liked Will Forte's work on "Saturday Night Live" and was pretty interested to see if his first co-starring vehicle (which he also wrote) was any good, despite the fact that it had the thick stench of B-list SNL movies. Even though the title characters aren't from an "SNL" skit, they feel highly derivative of a long line of romantically doomed, disconcertingly cheerful fraternal pairs that originated on "SNL": Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd's Festrunk brothers, Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan's Butabi brothers, Jimmy Fallon and Chris Parnell's Bloater brothers. I don't know what attracts all these guys to that formula, because it isn't really that inherently funny, but Forte and Will Arnett make it work for them most of the time here (at the very least, it beats the shit out of A Night At The Roxbury, but that goes without saying). There's a few jokes that I feel like I've seen too many times before, and it sometimes shows the seams of a writer more accustomed to sketch comedy, but the deliberately odd pacing means that the big laughs kinda come out of nowhere, in a good way. After seeing her play nothing but bizarro caricatures on "SNL," it's nice to see Kristen Wiig play the straight man, as it were, and she's actually really convincing. Malin Akerman should not be in comedies, though.
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on Friday, February 08, 2008 at 1:20 AM.
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Anonymous : 8:12 PM