Secondhand Lions

Secondhand Lions

"13 year old Walter has had a hard life, with his no good floozy of a mother getting together with many equally despicable men. Before going on yet another husband-hunting trip, she drops him off at the house of his great-uncles Hub and Garth. They disappeared for quite a while in their youth, and are rumored to have acquired a great fortune, which Walter's mother hopes to get her hands on if he can ingratiate himself enough to the two cantankerous men. Though reluctant to put up with him at first, Hub and Garth grow to accept Walter, and even tell him fantastic stories of what they were up to while they went missing. When his mother returns, Walter must take charge of his own life, and decide what he's going to do with it."

2 stars

Now, I know what you're thinking, "Todd, what the hell are you doing reviewing this movie? It doesn't really fall into the category of movies you spend your immensely valuable time on." To you sir, (not ma'am because lets face it, a woman's opinion doesn't matter) I say don't judge so quickly! Wouldn't you like it if a quiet little movie like this were able to fly under the radar and then somehow, as if pulled by the hand of fate, find its way into your life at the exact right time? A time at which, due to your emotional state, you were able to identify so much with it that it automatically becomes a touching, personal favorite that is down right life altering. And a movie that had such an impact that you will be sitting in your living room one day years from now with your starry-eyed grandson on your knee while you play this wonderful film in an effort to connect with your kin and hopefully share a moment that he will remember long after you've passed into the Great Beyond? Well, friend I too share that dream, but unfortunately this wasn't it.

Secondhand Lions is probably pretty much what you think it is, and anyone that has graduated the 4th grade would probably be able to guess the entire plot based on just reading the summary blurb above. I can't say I'm that disappointed because I really didn't have any desire to see it in the first place. I actually only saw it because it was playing during Jury Duty. Between trying to strike up an conversation with the hot girl next to me and vehemently praying to Allah that I didn't get selected to actually sit on the "exercise in human de-evolution" that is an American Jury, I really had nothing better to do than watch the movie that County Clerk Bernice (I swear that was her name) told us Judge Roberts had hand-picked for us.

The plot actually wasn't unbearable and maybe could have managed a little entertainment if anyone involved with the film actually gave a flying fuck. As legendary as they are, Michael Caine and Robert Duval probably wouldn't disagree with you if you accused them of "phoning in" their respective performances. They also weren't able to create enough of a dichotomy between the characters. Michael Caine was supposed to portray the younger, more timid brother. But, as anyone who had seen in him in other films knows, he pretty much owns any room that he walks into, so both Duval and him pretty much ended up playing the same role. Conversely, it seemed like Haley Joel Osment was actually trying, and it was almost unwatchable at times. He looked like he was attempting to remember everything he possibly learned in the acting courses that he undoubtedly had to take once his voice finally cracked and he realized he couldn't make it on his boyish looks and creepy one-liners to Bruce Willis. But it just wasn't that good and frankly it made you feel like you were watching something at a community theatre. Wait, what's that?! Listen children, if you're very, very quiet you may just be able to make out the sound of a child actor's career being quietly suffocated in its sleep.

Again, while it's not horrible, I can't really justify telling you to spend any of your time watching it. If you accidentally end up with the DVD in your possession, maybe it's worth fast forwarding through just to see Emmanuelle Vaugier (one of the sexiest women in Hollywood today) spend some scenes as an Arab harem girl. But overall, the dialogue makes most Disney movies look like a Tarantino film and the pace is about as dull as a party at Sad Keanu Reeves' house.

Vantage Point

Vantage Point

"The President of the United States is in Salamanca, Spain, about to address the city in a public square. We see a plain-clothes cop, his girlfriend with another man, a mother and child, an American tourist with a video camera, and a Secret Service agent newly returned from medical leave. Shots ring out and the President falls; a few minutes later, we hear a distant explosion, then a bomb goes off in the square. Those minutes are retold, several times, emphasizing different characters' actions. Gradually, we discover who's behind the plot. Is the Secret Service one step ahead, or have the President's adversaries thought of everything?"

1 star

I had almost forgotten about this movie until I saw a preview for it coming up on the FX network this weekend. After re-watching about 10 minutes of the movie, I realized that I hadn't forgotten about it as much as I had intentionally blocked its lackluster existence from my memory. This movie is bad, like eye rolling bad. There are plenty of movies out there that are awful, but some of them are at least aware of it (American Pie 4,5,&6 I'm looking at you). But because a movie is aware of its shittiness, it doesn't take itself too seriously and sometimes it can actually pass for watchable fare. Unfortunately someone forgot to tell this to the filmmakers of Vantage Point because the movie's own pretentiousness does nothing more than add to the already copious amount of nails in this particular cinematic coffin.

Once again I was disappointed by a movie whose trailer looked bad ass. The premise seemed to have a lot of potential and the fact that the movie was set in Salamanca (where I studied for a summer) made this a movie I actually went to see in theaters. If only I had known . . .

The film, predictably, relies too heavily on the "replay gimmick". The assassination is basically a 10 minute segment that is replayed 8 times from 8 different perspectives. Had the plot been halfway intriguing or at least provided enough mystery to keep the audience engaged then maybe the movie could have been saved. Instead it's just dull, so much so that the audience I was with actually started laughing by the time the 5th replay started. It was clear we all knew that this was a piece of crap and the mood changed to everyone trying to guess in their heads just how much longer this exercise in futility was going to take to roll over and die. As you might have guessed, the "twist ending" wasn't a "twist" at all and had it come about 45 mintutes sooner, we would have all been a lot happier.

I'll go ahead and make a statement that I will stick by in ALL future reviews. There are only 2 movies out there that revolved around a distinctive narrative style and were still able to be thoroughly entertaining despite the fact that they contained relatively mediocre plot lines. Those film would be Pulp Fiction and Memento. Everything else, this movie in particular, just couldn't quite pull it off. I hate panning this movie so hard especially since Forest Whitaker is in it and I'm a big fan of his. But luckily he had the good sense to pass on directing this one so his sin was only limited to the acting arena.

Scent of a Woman

Scent of a Woman

"Charlie Simms is a boy from Oregon who attends Baird School a Boys boarding school. Not unlike most of the other boys who come from affluent backgrounds Simms is there on a scholarship. He hangs around with George Willis, who's a daddy's boy, and his friends. Now George's friends decides to pull a little prank on the pompous headmaster. The headmaster learns that Charlie and George know who pulled the prank and they refuse to say who. He gives the Thanksgiving Holiday to think about it. He also tells Charlie that he's recommending him to an Ivy League College. Charlie then goes off to a Thanksgiving job--taking care of retired Colonel Frank Slade who's blind when his family goes to visit some family for Thanksgiving. After they leave Slade tells Charlie that he's taking him to New York for his own Thanksgiving celebration."

4.5 stars

Lt. Colonel Frank Slade: Clear them little bottles off. And when I get off the phone here, call the bell man and tell him I want it wall to wall with John Daniels.

Charlie Simms: Don’t you mean Jack Daniels?

Lt. Colonel Frank Slade: He may be Jack to you son, but when you've known him as long as I have...

This was one of the quotes from the first 30 minutes of this film. Needless to say, after this line I WAS IN. Not only does Lt. Colonel Slade (Al Pacino) appreciate the finer things in life like the decadence of a hotel room at The Plaza or the taste of a freshly cut Montecristo cigar, he shares my infatuation with all the mysteries that are women; the way they move, the way they laugh, and (most important to a blind man) the way they smell.

Now, I realize this is an old movie, but I have really never seen the entire film. Sure, I have caught pieces of it while flipping through the channels on a Sunday afternoon, but that is the television version. A version, apparently, that director Martin Brest has disowned because it suffers from censorship and time editing. That’s why I wanted to watch the unabridged, unadulterated version to see what the fuss was all about. Needless to say, the movie did not disappoint. Everything worked in this movie ranging from the setting (New York, New York) to the writing to the music to the acting. Pacino was superb in his portrayal of a tortured War Hero and was able to evoke scenes of such raw emotion that I found myself going 3-4 minutes without blinking. I do feel that I was slighted a little bit just because I am so late to the party in viewing this film. His exclamation of “Hoo-wah!” and unique speaking style in the movie have been emulated and parodied so many times since the movie was released in 1993 that it almost elicited a comedic reaction for me at several points that should have come across as more dramatic. But I can’t place any blame on him because if I had seen the movie when it actually came out I probably would have had a more appropriate response. Then again, I was only 8.

The only two complaints I have with the film are relatively minor. For about 2 hours of the movie, I thought that Chris O’Donnell was the perfect casting choice for the role of Charlie Simms. His boyish demeanor and glaring insecurities were consistent with that of a small town kid from the wrong side of the tracks trying to assimilate into the world of over-privileged children and their powerful families. But the whole point of the movie is to witness Charlie’s transition from adolescence to manhood. While I think O’Donnell did the best he could, the transition is supposed to be exhibited in the penultimate scene of the movie. Well, Pacino definitely puts forth his all and THEN some in the scene, but O’Donnell just doesn’t dig quite deep enough and it left me wanting. My second complaint is about the nature of the “crime” itself. The final scene has a great message about leadership and integrity, but I felt like the actions of Charlie’s colleagues could have been more sinister and, in turn, produced a more complicated and powerful moral dilemma for him. As it stands, the “crime” is just pouring paint on the car of the Headmaster.

Nevertheless, it is a great film worthy of our time and appreciation, if only for the appearance of Gabrielle Anwar. Honestly, I thought she was going to be in the entire movie based on her billing and the fact that she is the main thing I remembered about the movie before watching the entire version. It turns out she is only on the screen for literally 5 minutes. But, needless to say, she makes the most of them.

Pacino basically personified the term “pimp” when it came to his dealings with women in this movie and I think every guy out there would admit either openly or just to themselves that his swagger is something we all want to have. This personification may best be described in the advice he give his cat when Charlie and he are about to leave the house for New York. “When in doubt . . . fuck.”

This Film is Not Yet Rated

This Film is Not Yet Rated

"Documents a history of the MPAA ratings board. Talks to numerous directors and actors about the censorship of their movies before they could be released. Includes directors, Kevin Smith, Matt Stone, John Waters, Darren Aronosfsky, Maria Bello, Atom Egoyan. Director, Kirby Dick hires a lesbian family of private investigators to find out the names of the MPAA ratings board and see if the raters are actually parents of children 5-17 like the MPAA tells American parents they are."

DISCLAIMER: My 3 Star rating of this film is soley based on the artistic nature. It is my firm belief that everyone should see this film.

3.5 Stars

I don’t think this film is really going to SHOCK anyone. In this day and age, we have come to realize and (unfortunately) accept that many aspects of our day to day lives are controlled by large corporations, and the film industry is no different. But even though it may not shock you, the things revealed in this documentary will present you with some very sobering facts.

Filmmaker Kirby Dick tries to expose the hypocrisy and secrecy of the MPAA ratings board who assign the ratings to all movies released in the United States and he does a pretty good job. One major drawback for me was the private investigator he hires to try and gain access to (and later gather more information about) the MPAA. She is, in one word, amateur. Just from watching television and movies, I could have done a better job than this woman. And there is even a random, seemingly pointless conversation in the movie where she talks about how she thinks she may be a lesbian . . . huh? How does that relate to anything?

Regardless, she more or less gets the job done and is able to find the information that the filmmaker is looking for, most importantly the true identities of the MPAA raters. The MPAA goes to such lengths to keep their identities secret because, they claim, it prevents the people from being harassed or influenced (a fact that is contested later in the film). This was my only major disagreement with the filmmaker. I got over the fact that Kirby is a bit of a prick and that the film seemed to be a little more “dramaticized” than a documentary needs to be, but he hurts the wrong people with the information. The raters themselves are just parents making a whopping $30,000 per year. While I am not so glib to assume that the raters don’t know what’s going on or that they may not be getting other forms of compensation under the table, I really don’t think he needed to expose them. Screwing the people at the bottom of the totem pole doesn’t result in hurting the big guys, it just results in NEW people at the bottom of the totem pole.

One of the most interesting points in the movie, though, is the argument made about the way sex and violence are dealt with in the ratings. While we have all heard the arguments over and over about how American society is downright Puritanical when it comes to sex, it never really hit me how much disparity there is in dealing with sex versus violence. Case in point, the movie Saw can show dismemberment, castration, and many other acts of graphic violence and receive and R while a movie whose only offense is to show a woman’s vagina receives an NC-17. I could go off on a tangent here about what’s a bigger social problem today in America violence or nudity . . . but I won’t. The disparity in ratings of love scenes between homosexuals and heterosexuals is also glaringly obvious, but that’s almost worth an entirely different film.

As you would expect, the filmmaker eventually submits his documentary to the MPAA for a rating and (surprise, surprise) it comes back with an NC-17 rating. So, he goes through the appeals process to try and get an R rating. One of the most ironic moments in the film comes at the end where we find out the identities of this “appeals board”. While I shouldn’t have been surprised by who the people ended up being, I still had to shake my head in disbelief.

Now, you might ask what’s the big deal about an NC-17 rating? It’s just a guideline for parents and if the film is still good people will hear about it. Well, unfortunately that’s not the case. If you get the NC-17 no major studio is going to produce the movie or advertise for it or even really promote it. On top of that, Blockbuster, Movie Gallery, and all the other chain video stores won’t carry it. So, while you may not realize the importance of the MPAA ratings, after this film you will come to realize that they have the American filmmaker by the balls.

100 Girls

100 Girls

"This sexy, teen-comedy is about a freshman, Matthew, at college who meets his dream girl in a dorm elevator during a blackout. He never sees her face, but instantly falls in love. In the morning, the power is restored, but the "dream girl" has vanished. All Matthew knows is that she lives in an all-girls dorm. He sets out on a semester-long journey to find his mystery girl amongst a hundred female suspects. Could it be Wendy? Dora? Arlene? Patty? Cynthia? Or the 95 other girls, any of whom could have been in that elevator with Matthew."

1 Star

“Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God.” This is the mantra I kept repeating to myself out loud while watching this movie? Why did I do this you ask? Well, the simple answer is I had to preoccupy my mind with something so that I wouldn’t grab the ball point pen laying two feet across from me and proceed to jam it in my eye. I’m still new to Netflix but Robyn has hyped it up so much, that I finally thought I would give it a try. One of the features they offer is suggesting movies you may like based on previous movies that you have rated highly. Well, someone needs to check the algorithm that produces these suggestions because the damn thing’s broken.

It was bad, and I mean BAD bad. Some of the reviews I read afterwards said that it was a Teen movie, but should have been more geared towards adults. I’m gonna go in the exact opposite direction. It was as if the writer was a 12 year old boy, and all he really knew of college was the stereotypes he garnered from, well, other teen movies. Now, don’t get me wrong, I know that all teen movies are chocked full of stereotypes, but most of them are at least somewhat self aware of this fact. This movie tried to paint itself as penetrating and insightful. I hate to break it to the writer, but every “revelation” that he tries to convey to us through the main character is one that 99.9% of college freshmen guys have come to realize by the third month of school. Hell, most guys probably have made these revelations by their senior year in high school. It just takes some of us a little longer because we weren’t in the Ultra-kid cool clique in high school. Instead we were pretty involved in clubs and student government. And, come on, that’s just as cool in its own right. I mean, I’m not talking about me, I’m just saying hypothetically . . . shut up.

Anyway, I wish I could recommend this movie just so the guys out there could see Jaime Pressly, Larisa Oleynik (remember Alex Mack? Don’t lie, you had a rush on her too), Katherine Heigl, and Emmanuelle Chriqui in the same place at one time. Let’s be honest, when Sloan from Entourage is in ANYTHING, you suck it up and go see the movie. Alas, I still can’t bring myself to do it. If you do see this movie you will end up wanting the same thing I did . . . your hour and a half back.

Post Grad

Post Grad
"Ryden Malby (Alexis Bledel) always assumed it would be easy to find a job with a college diploma. But when nothing materializes after graduation, she's forced to move back in with her dysfunctional family and work full-time at maintaining her sanity. The only bright spot is her steady relationship with her best friend, Adam (Zach Gilford), but even that's starting to feel a little awkward."

2.5 of stars

A pretty standard movie with a pretty standard storyline. Naive girl with big plans, forced to adapt when things don't go her way, with a 90-minute-mark revelation of true love. 

I like Alexis Bledel, but she plays the same character all the time (variations on Rory Gilmore). Michael Keaton and Carol Burnett as the father and grandmother were entertaining, though written as caricatures. Jane Lynch is seriously miscast the mother - does she strike you as maternal at all?! There's also an extraneous little brother, a sexy next-door neighbor, and a surprisingly funny scene about burying a cat in a pizza box. But that's about it. Inoffensive and unmemorable.

Run, Fatboy, Run

Run Fatboy Run
"After leaving his pregnant fiancée, Libby (Thandie Newton), at the altar five years ago, a remorseful Dennis (Simon Pegg) tries to repair the damage and win Libby away from her sleazy new boyfriend (Hank Azaria) by training for a marathon. Trouble is, he's hopelessly out of shape. Will losing the pounds and catching his breath be enough to get her back?"

3 of stars

Tonite's review is in honor of Valentine's Day (and Simon Pegg's birthday!). I didn't realize this was a romantic comedy - I figured since it was starring Simon Pegg it was going to be raunchier. But I was pleasantly surprised. It's got a Nick Hornby flavor, told from the man-boy's point of view.

Dennis (Pegg) has always regretted leaving his pregnant girlfriend (Thandie Newton) at the altar five years earlier. He's a bit of a screw-up, working as a security guard, when his ex starts dating Whit (Hank Azaria). Azaria plays the nice guy/smarmy asshole well - and after a scene in the locker room, who knew he was so ripped?! Dennis decides that anything Whit can do, he can do better, and decides to run a marathon (despite a pack-a-day habit and a three-week deadline). Typical training montages and hilarity ensue, with a heartwarming, if predictable, ending.