a) Foo Fighters: Back And Forth
Even if the Foo Fighters aren't that 'important' in the grand scheme of things I feel like they made a really good subject for a documentary like this, was interesting to look back at all the early lineup changes and uncomfortable moments like Dave Grohl owning up to re-doing Goldsmith's drums on the second album and that. Also the whole home recording setup for Wasting Light really does look like the coolest possible way to make an album.

b) Burlesque
I rolled my eyes when my wife put this on but the truth is I'm not above enjoying a silly song-and-dance movie with some T&A, and this had its moments, and Kristen Bell just looks ridic in it.

c) All American Orgy
The title of this movie (and the cover of the DVD on the IMDb page) make this seem like it's going to be the most typical low brow sex comedy, but it was surprisingly a kind of impressive, realistic little flick that just occasionally at the right moments went ridiculous and over the top.

d) Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole
The mere existence of this movie is so hilarious that I was unprepared for how much I enjoyed this, I liked that it was less cartoony than the average talking animal computer animation flick but still pretty cute and very visually dazzling.

e) Going The Distance
I feel like whatever minor dislike I have for Justin Long and Drew Barrymore was somehow compounded by their being a couple, but I caught myself watching a bit of this movie and not hating it, had some funny moments.

f) Toy Story 3
I dug this alright, was definitely a solid entry into the series, but the Toy Story movies have never been a particular favorite of mine ever since Pixar did so many other things that surpassed them.

g) Our Family Wedding
America Ferrara doesn't get to do enough movies where she's treated like a gorgeous woman and has a love interest and everything. That alone was enough to compel me to watch this movie. Most of the boilerplate wedding movie stuff, with Carlos Mencia as her dad, did not reward my interest.

h) Bedrooms
A vaguely novel indie drama with lots of tense bedroom arguments and lovers' quarrels that ends up in such realistic raw nerve territory that I ended up kind of hating it, especially some of the weird directorial choices.

i) Sorority Row
This is all I could want in a bad horror movie: hot chicks and gruesome deaths.

j) 9
Sometimes it's easy to get a little blase about how uniformly amazing looking but also uniformly similar looking computer animated movies out there, so this really grabbed my attention with a totally different look, and even if it wasn't especially funny and the plot was a little thin, I still thought it was just fantastic to watch.

k) Bandslam
Surprisingly decent, moderately charming movie considering how irksome I tend to find it whenever a bunch of cute showbiz moppets try to tell a story about music obsessed adolescent outcasts, mostly because I get all "I was one and that is not what we are like!"

l) Brief Interviews With Hideous Men
I'd had mixed feelings about this project ever since it was announced years and years ago, mainly because David Foster Wallace seems like such an unadaptable author and that guy from "The Office" hardly seemed like the one to try it. But while Brief Interviews was always maybe my least favorite of his books I underestimated how much its monologue-heavy format translates well to the screen, since there's a pretty impressive lineup of actors and it kind of is a surprising joy to see some of Wallace's endless sentences given a dramatic reading. Still kind of a minor, forgettable flick, but much better than I expected it to be.

m) Explicit Ills
One thing about becoming a parent is that movies like this that feature a small child in extreme pain and peril are really hard for me to watch now, this movie kind of upset me too much to judge it by any other metric.

n) Adventures of Power
It's weird that the guy who directed and stars in this movie, Ari Gold, has the same name as Jeremy Piven's character in "Entourage," and it feels even weirder when Adrian Grenier shows up here in a supporting role. Anyway it's kind of a cheesy LOL '80s movie about air drumming feels like a less clever attempt at what Hot Rod did so well.

o) Finding Amanda
A dark comedy starring Matthew Broderick in a role that echoes his performance in Election in so many ways that it feels a bit too much like a calculated follow-up. Otherwise it had its moments of good shock humor, though.

p) Kung Fu Hustle
I know this movie is supposed to be awesome and fun, but I dunno, it didn't really do anything for me. I'm pretty terrible with subtitles, though, just have never gotten used to watching movies that way, total closed-minded American shit, I know.

q) The Saddest Music In The World
I really like seeing Mark McKinney in non-"Kids In The Hall" projects and this seemed promising, but it ultimately felt stylized to death -- if they didn't shoot the whole thing in fake-fuzzy old timey black & white and held back on the affectations a little bit, I think this could've been a lot better.

r) Backstage
The late '90s commercial domination of Roc-A-Fella and Ruff Ryders was a big deal to me at the time and still is, so it's kind of crazy that it took me over a decade to finally see this movie. It's really interesting to see Jay in particular right at the beginning of his superstardom, makes a real contrast to Fade To Black, and it's just fun to see all these crews at their peak.

s) One Crazy Summer
I'd always heard this was kind of a minor follow-up to the '80s teen movie classic Better Off Dead, and indeed it's definitely not as good, but still enjoyable for many of the same reasons. Joe Flaherty's speech alone is classic.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 16, 2011 at 2:32 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.