Movie Diary
a) Grown Ups
I tried watching this and didn't get very far. I wish I could've watched a movie with some of the supporting players like Chris Rock and Maya Rudolph without them being under the pall of mediocrity that shadows every Happy Madison production.
b) Get Him To The Greek
For me the whole appeal of Aldous Snow in Forgetting Sarah Marshall was that he was a minor comic relief character, with a lot of amusing fish-out-of-water humor with the rock star in an un-rock star environment having banal arguments with his girlfriend. Making that character the center of a movie that places him back in his element is then a huge misstep from my point of view, but really Jonah Hill being the protagonist turned out to be a far bigger problem. That guy is simply not equipped to carry a movie, to an even greater degree than Brand. Diddy is so hilarious that it's still worth seeing though, and Rose Byrne is a nice surprise.
c) The Green Zone
I tried to watch this a couple times and probably wasn't giving it my full attention either time, but this just kinda washed over me. You'd think something from the Bourne people would be more attention grabbing.
d) Pirate Radio
I never knew anything about the British pirate radio scene until I read the 33 1/3 book on The Who Sell Out and found it all really fascinating, so the first time I saw the trailer for this movie I got really excited. Then with every subsequent ad I kept noticing how trite it looked and how much historically inaccurate music they used that wasn't recorded until years later. The actual experience of the movie was somewhere between that initial excitement and subsequent disappointment.
e) The Fourth Kind
This was alright, I liked the way they combined documentary-style 'footage' and more cinematic scenes, but the way they bent over backwards to sell the Blair Witch-style concept was just lame and unnecessary.
f) Powder Blue
I had a total lizard brain moment of 'oh hey this is the movie where Jessica Biel plays a stripper right?' when I decided to watch this, and I would feel guilty about that if the movie had any redeeming value beyond her amazing body. Basically it's just an especially miserable entry in the endless series of "interlocking narratives involving a bunch of seedy Los Angeles residents" movies we've been inundated with since Pulp Fiction.
g) Dark House
Very low budget horror flick with a few nice cheap laughs and gory deaths.
h) Still Bill
I finally got around to watching this after reading a lengthy and very engaging Bill Withers interview, and unfortunately the interview ending up feeling like a spoiler for most of the movie's charms. Nice flick about a really admirable musician, though, put forth some pretty interesting ideas about his whole attitude toward music and fame.
i) Rock Slyde
I love Patrick Warburton so much that I'll even watch him in some sketchy detective comedy with Andy Dick. This actually had some pretty prime Warburton moments though, among some of the dumber more obvious gags, and Rena Sofer is so beautiful it's almost unreal.
j) Birds of America
Nice if fairly cliched indie family dramedy but I liked the cast.
k) Motherhood
One of those movies that's all about the experience of having young children so I felt like I should identify and occasionally did but mostly found it kind of hollow and banal, although Uma Thurman carried the movie well, she could definitely do more light comedy like this.
l) I Hate Valentine's Day
This was terrible, I think I only put it on because it has Zoe Kazan in it and I thought she was very cute in It's Complicated.
m) Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out
I've always really liked Stewart Copeland both as a drummer and as a personality, and it's really fun to see this history of the Police's tours through his eyes and Super 8 camera, it's very spastic and low budget but it's cool to see such a huge band play huge shows through that kind of lens.
n) Blue Velvet
I'm still slowly working my way through David Lynch's body of work and figuring out how I feel about it, and this was good but so much of his stuff features variations on the same themes over and over that the more I see, the more redundant it all starts to feel.
I tried watching this and didn't get very far. I wish I could've watched a movie with some of the supporting players like Chris Rock and Maya Rudolph without them being under the pall of mediocrity that shadows every Happy Madison production.
b) Get Him To The Greek
For me the whole appeal of Aldous Snow in Forgetting Sarah Marshall was that he was a minor comic relief character, with a lot of amusing fish-out-of-water humor with the rock star in an un-rock star environment having banal arguments with his girlfriend. Making that character the center of a movie that places him back in his element is then a huge misstep from my point of view, but really Jonah Hill being the protagonist turned out to be a far bigger problem. That guy is simply not equipped to carry a movie, to an even greater degree than Brand. Diddy is so hilarious that it's still worth seeing though, and Rose Byrne is a nice surprise.
c) The Green Zone
I tried to watch this a couple times and probably wasn't giving it my full attention either time, but this just kinda washed over me. You'd think something from the Bourne people would be more attention grabbing.
d) Pirate Radio
I never knew anything about the British pirate radio scene until I read the 33 1/3 book on The Who Sell Out and found it all really fascinating, so the first time I saw the trailer for this movie I got really excited. Then with every subsequent ad I kept noticing how trite it looked and how much historically inaccurate music they used that wasn't recorded until years later. The actual experience of the movie was somewhere between that initial excitement and subsequent disappointment.
e) The Fourth Kind
This was alright, I liked the way they combined documentary-style 'footage' and more cinematic scenes, but the way they bent over backwards to sell the Blair Witch-style concept was just lame and unnecessary.
f) Powder Blue
I had a total lizard brain moment of 'oh hey this is the movie where Jessica Biel plays a stripper right?' when I decided to watch this, and I would feel guilty about that if the movie had any redeeming value beyond her amazing body. Basically it's just an especially miserable entry in the endless series of "interlocking narratives involving a bunch of seedy Los Angeles residents" movies we've been inundated with since Pulp Fiction.
g) Dark House
Very low budget horror flick with a few nice cheap laughs and gory deaths.
h) Still Bill
I finally got around to watching this after reading a lengthy and very engaging Bill Withers interview, and unfortunately the interview ending up feeling like a spoiler for most of the movie's charms. Nice flick about a really admirable musician, though, put forth some pretty interesting ideas about his whole attitude toward music and fame.
i) Rock Slyde
I love Patrick Warburton so much that I'll even watch him in some sketchy detective comedy with Andy Dick. This actually had some pretty prime Warburton moments though, among some of the dumber more obvious gags, and Rena Sofer is so beautiful it's almost unreal.
j) Birds of America
Nice if fairly cliched indie family dramedy but I liked the cast.
k) Motherhood
One of those movies that's all about the experience of having young children so I felt like I should identify and occasionally did but mostly found it kind of hollow and banal, although Uma Thurman carried the movie well, she could definitely do more light comedy like this.
l) I Hate Valentine's Day
This was terrible, I think I only put it on because it has Zoe Kazan in it and I thought she was very cute in It's Complicated.
m) Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out
I've always really liked Stewart Copeland both as a drummer and as a personality, and it's really fun to see this history of the Police's tours through his eyes and Super 8 camera, it's very spastic and low budget but it's cool to see such a huge band play huge shows through that kind of lens.
n) Blue Velvet
I'm still slowly working my way through David Lynch's body of work and figuring out how I feel about it, and this was good but so much of his stuff features variations on the same themes over and over that the more I see, the more redundant it all starts to feel.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, June 09, 2011 at 8:58 PM.
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PenDragon : 11:35 AM