Movie Diary
a) Hereafter
This is the kind of slow maudlin spiritual movie I almost never want to watch, but I put it on when I was in kind of a lousy mood and it suited me fine. The Matt Damon/Bryce Dallas Howard stuff is especially sweet and sad and well handled, and overall I didn't dislike the thrust of the movie as much as I feared, Eastwood at least set the mood well.
b) Vampires Suck
Everyone's justifiably tired of quickie parody flicks, especially Friedberg/Seltzer ones, but this is definitely one of the best things they've done. Partly that's because Twilight is so ripe for mockery (although I haven't seen it and my wife, who has and hated it, had to explain some of the jokes to me), partly because they actually do a pretty good job being faithful to the look and the casting of the original and just being really fun and over the top with it.
c)Step Up 3D
When I saw Step Up 2 The Streets, which I actually kind of liked, I joked about how these movies take place in Baltimore but in no way resemble the existing Bmore club dance culture. So it was funny to me that in the third movie in the series, which lacks even the modest charms of the last one, the franchise finally leaves Baltimore but you hear Rye Rye and Blaqstarr in the background of a scene.
d) Thirst
This movie really took the fun out of being a horror flick featuring Lacey Chabert in a tanktop the entire time by being a pretty realistic and grisly depiction of people getting stranded in the Mojave Desert and slowly dying of dehydration. And since it wasn't exactly 127 Hours in terms of the artistic merit of the filmmaking, it ended up just being kind of slow and punishing to watch.
e) The A-Team
This wasn't terrible but my indifference to this kind of '80s retro blockbuster bullshit is such that it was like 45 minutes before I remembered that this and G.I. Joe are two completely different movies (theoretically), I was actually waiting for Cobra Commander to show up.
f) Everybody's Fine
I put this on figuring it would be kind of light and pleasant but it turned out to be kind of a bummer, at least up to the stupid pat ending.
g) Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
My strange awakening of affection for Matthew McCoughnahey after The Lincoln Goddamn Lawyer resulted in me thinking hey maybe some of his non-Kate Hudson rom coms aren't all bad after all, and this one has Emma Stone in it so what the hell. And really it wasn't terrible but it was pretty douchey and not especially funny.
h) Middle of Nowhere
I watched this mainly because Eva Amurri is in it, for totally shallow reasons, figuring that it'd be a dull indie drama that I'd sit through just to gawk at the lead actress. But I was really a little bowled over by how good it was, the rare coming-of-age movie that actually reminded me of my own adolescence in some vague but undeniable way, feeling very true and lived in without being 'realistic' in any particularly way. And all this from the director of Turistas and Blue Crush, shockingly.
i) Hamlet 2
I rolled my eyes big time at this movie's commercials and feared it would be some big inescapable phenomenon, but since that didn't happen now I can watch it on TV and go ok, that wasn't bad, pretty funny in parts.
j) Long Weekend aka Nature's Grave
A really, really bad Jim Caviezel horror movie with the hilarious premise of nature 'taking revenge' on a couple of inconsiderate campers in the wilds of Australia, which kind of has a payoff in the crazy graphic death scene toward the end.
k) Game 6
This is a movie Michael Keaton and Robert Downey Jr. made a few years ago, at the height of each being kind of off the radar, and I think both guys are really talented and watchable, so I had high hopes for this. It had its moments, but mostly it's just appallingly poorly written for a movie about a playwright -- the way the dialogue drips with clumsy exposition in Keaton's first scene with Bebe Neuwirth is ridiculous (although Neuwirth looks pretty incredible), and the big climactic scene at the end is just plain stupid. Keaton's good, but Downey is kind of squandered.
l) Ed Wood
Somehow I never watched this whole movie before, and man it is just awesome.
This is the kind of slow maudlin spiritual movie I almost never want to watch, but I put it on when I was in kind of a lousy mood and it suited me fine. The Matt Damon/Bryce Dallas Howard stuff is especially sweet and sad and well handled, and overall I didn't dislike the thrust of the movie as much as I feared, Eastwood at least set the mood well.
b) Vampires Suck
Everyone's justifiably tired of quickie parody flicks, especially Friedberg/Seltzer ones, but this is definitely one of the best things they've done. Partly that's because Twilight is so ripe for mockery (although I haven't seen it and my wife, who has and hated it, had to explain some of the jokes to me), partly because they actually do a pretty good job being faithful to the look and the casting of the original and just being really fun and over the top with it.
c)Step Up 3D
When I saw Step Up 2 The Streets, which I actually kind of liked, I joked about how these movies take place in Baltimore but in no way resemble the existing Bmore club dance culture. So it was funny to me that in the third movie in the series, which lacks even the modest charms of the last one, the franchise finally leaves Baltimore but you hear Rye Rye and Blaqstarr in the background of a scene.
d) Thirst
This movie really took the fun out of being a horror flick featuring Lacey Chabert in a tanktop the entire time by being a pretty realistic and grisly depiction of people getting stranded in the Mojave Desert and slowly dying of dehydration. And since it wasn't exactly 127 Hours in terms of the artistic merit of the filmmaking, it ended up just being kind of slow and punishing to watch.
e) The A-Team
This wasn't terrible but my indifference to this kind of '80s retro blockbuster bullshit is such that it was like 45 minutes before I remembered that this and G.I. Joe are two completely different movies (theoretically), I was actually waiting for Cobra Commander to show up.
f) Everybody's Fine
I put this on figuring it would be kind of light and pleasant but it turned out to be kind of a bummer, at least up to the stupid pat ending.
g) Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
My strange awakening of affection for Matthew McCoughnahey after The Lincoln Goddamn Lawyer resulted in me thinking hey maybe some of his non-Kate Hudson rom coms aren't all bad after all, and this one has Emma Stone in it so what the hell. And really it wasn't terrible but it was pretty douchey and not especially funny.
h) Middle of Nowhere
I watched this mainly because Eva Amurri is in it, for totally shallow reasons, figuring that it'd be a dull indie drama that I'd sit through just to gawk at the lead actress. But I was really a little bowled over by how good it was, the rare coming-of-age movie that actually reminded me of my own adolescence in some vague but undeniable way, feeling very true and lived in without being 'realistic' in any particularly way. And all this from the director of Turistas and Blue Crush, shockingly.
i) Hamlet 2
I rolled my eyes big time at this movie's commercials and feared it would be some big inescapable phenomenon, but since that didn't happen now I can watch it on TV and go ok, that wasn't bad, pretty funny in parts.
j) Long Weekend aka Nature's Grave
A really, really bad Jim Caviezel horror movie with the hilarious premise of nature 'taking revenge' on a couple of inconsiderate campers in the wilds of Australia, which kind of has a payoff in the crazy graphic death scene toward the end.
k) Game 6
This is a movie Michael Keaton and Robert Downey Jr. made a few years ago, at the height of each being kind of off the radar, and I think both guys are really talented and watchable, so I had high hopes for this. It had its moments, but mostly it's just appallingly poorly written for a movie about a playwright -- the way the dialogue drips with clumsy exposition in Keaton's first scene with Bebe Neuwirth is ridiculous (although Neuwirth looks pretty incredible), and the big climactic scene at the end is just plain stupid. Keaton's good, but Downey is kind of squandered.
l) Ed Wood
Somehow I never watched this whole movie before, and man it is just awesome.
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