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Post by Eddie Love on Sept 26, 2010 13:51:58 GMT -5
In the event you're ever made to watch any of the below (and you know what I mean), some thoughts:
LEAP YEAR – Awful. A prissy, workingwoman from Boston heads to Ireland the one day of the year it’s acceptable for a woman to ask her beau to get married. She’s forced to go on a road trip to meet her live-in boyfriend in Dublin, and for some completely unexplainable reason a dreamy Irishman agrees to accompany her. The leads are capable enough, but are saddled with a script that is relentlessly wan and charmless.
WHEN IN ROME – Awful. A laborious high concept where a woman removes the coins tossed into a Roman fountain and is then stalked by the love-starved men who put them there. (How these men whose coins she retrieved know who did it and where she lives, is never explained.) But is the dreamy guy she met in Rome similarly deluded, or is he, in fact: the one? I like Kristen Bell…
…and she's cute, and I found Josh Duhamel as the male lead engaging. As bad as this movie is, it at least attempts to do something farcical, if not screwball, as opposed to just relying on the charms of the cast. However, it’s aggressively not funny.
VALENTINE’S DAY – A drag, but not nearly as bad as the reviews that branded this unwatchable. A multi-story L.A. take on the irritating LOVE, ACTUALLY, with an all-star cast, most of whom just coast on their charm – no one particularly shines. I did really like the surprising, climactic reveal for both the Bradley Cooper and Julia Roberts characters. Otherwise, I don’t recall much else of this long movie -- it’s an inoffensive time waster. (Plus, it's a little irritating that the film introduces both a gay and an interracial couple, but doesn't have the balls to show either kiss. Oh, and Jessica Biel has to be the most improbably desperate and lovelorn, sad-sack, yet gorgeous career girl in the whole history of this tired rom-com cliche.)
WHY DID I GET MARRIED, TOO – this rom-com-dram follow up to Tyler Perry’s look at a group of buppie couples is really off the mark. Things are less even-handed this time around, and it’s almost misogynistic in its disdain for the female characters, who are the cause of each couple’s problems. Plus, this movie ends with a character doing one of the most hateful, jaw-dropping things I’ve ever seen in a movie. And not only are they immediately shown to be redeemed, all the other characters forgive this person, and the film even ends with a feel good hook-up with a hot, un-billed star in a cameo. So weird.
MY LIFE IN RUINS – the romantic and career foibles of an American scholar toiling as a threadbare tour guide in Greece. This picture tries to re-start the career of Nia Vardelas who had a spectacular debut as the writer and star of MY BIG, FAT GREEK WEDDING. It’s admirable to see a movie with a woman pushing 50, and she has an unconventionally sexy presence, even if she’s a rather self-conscious actress. The romance at the heart of this story isn’t any great shakes, but I really liked that this was a solidly structured, unpretentious and uncluttered script. If it were actually funny, it would be a real treat. (Though, I bet this would have been a hit back in the 60s or 70s.) As it is, it’s merely agreeable, but I also really liked that it doesn’t have the tired preoccupation with affluence that you see in most Rom-Coms.
SHE’S OUT OF MY LEAGUE – a Pittsburgh-based nebbish who works as airport security improbably scores with a super-hot, blond party-planner, much to the astonishment of his family and friends. Crude humor abounds in what is clearly designed to ape the output of the Apatow factory, but I found this surprisingly enjoyable. No, you never really buy the romance at the center of the story, but things play out in a way that’s actually fairly thoughtful. When the couple has their inevitable bump-in-the-road conflict that pulls them apart towards the end, it’s very smartly written and well played. Plus, the scenes with the hero’s buddies and his dysfunctional family are broadly comic, but not mean-spirited. I bought them as a group of friends. The supporting cast works in concert, as opposed to what I find in the Apatow films where everyone in the (always talented) cast seems bent on doing their own thing and it feels like they’re in some kind of competition. I laughed out loud more than a few times, and would actually recommend this.
KILLERS -- This much maligned romantic, action comedy isn't nearly as bad as it was made out to be, in fact it's a good bit better than the strangely more popular DATE NIGHT. The premise seems to be to dress up a Coen Brothers style black comedy with a coat of slick, rom-com veneer, and while that's not wholly successfully, it's well-played by the two leads and never boring. The action scenes may not be thrilling, but they're executed in a cartoon-y fashion that doesn't distract by being overly violent. Katherine Heigl plays that Hollywood mainstay; the gratingly insecure knockout. She's quite good at it, too, and when the story jumps ahead in time, she's believably more confident and secure. Ashton Kutcher always strikes me as smug, but he's likable. Normally, watching couples squabble onscreen is always draining, even when it's supposed to be funny (see the aforementioned DATE NIGHT), but I didn't mind it here. The two have a strong chemistry. (As performers, but not physically as we barely see them kiss.) Plus, the production makes effective usage of some stunning locales. I don't want to over-sell it. Keep expectations low and you might enjoy.
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Post by tombitd on Sept 26, 2010 18:00:30 GMT -5
WHEN IN ROME – Awful. A laborious high concept where a woman removes the coins tossed into a Roman fountain and is then stalked by the love-starved men who put them there. (How these men whose coins she retrieved know who did it and where she lives, is never explained.) But is the dreamy guy she met in Rome similarly deluded, or is he, in fact: the one? I like Kristen Bell… …and she's cute, but frankly I found Josh Duhamel as the male lead a bit more engaging. As bad as this movie is, it at least attempts to do something farcical, if not screwball, as opposed to just relying on the charms of the cast. However, it’s aggressively not funny. The reason I passed on seeing this one (as opposed to the bland and thorooughly sleep inducing You, Again?[/i}...at all, to be honest, even despite the presence of The Beautiful One, was primarily due to learning it was written and directby by Mark Steven "Daredevil/Ghost Rider' Johnson. I had been burned by this guy twice, and I wasn't going to give him a chance to burn me a third time...
plus, there was also that jaw dropping moment in the video press book that was forced on me as part of the Regal Firstlook where Kristin says in an interview that her character is a young career woman who has no time for a personal life...at which point we cut to a scene where she is described by the goth-looking gal who's apparently her best friend that her problem is she's a career woman with no time for a personal life. Seeing a prime example of how the film walked The Script so unvarnishedly was enough to convince me to stay away.
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Post by Eddie Love on Sept 26, 2010 18:19:24 GMT -5
(I just tweaked this a bit, as I'd earlier said I liked Josh more than Kristen, which I re-considered.) But, yes, agreed -- you can skip it. Maybe what most irritated me about it was that in the closing credits there's a lively dance number performed by the cast which has more entertainment value than anything that's preceded it, and is meant to convince us that we've all just enjoyed a marvelous confection. Meanwhile, the filmaking fits into the throughly generic style of his comic book movies. (And while DAREDEVIL's a guilty pleasure of mine, his commentary is soporific and he seems to have no vitality.)
Also, were you aware that the head of Regal Entertainment who brought us the odious Regal First Look is a gay-bashing, right-wing pr--k? I just learned that this week.
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Post by tombitd on Sept 29, 2010 5:23:54 GMT -5
[quote author=luvnjustice board=listenersreviews thread=541 post=2243 time=1285543164 Maybe what most irritated me about it was that in the closing credits there's a lively dance number performed by the cast which has more entertainment value than anything that's preceded it, and is meant to convince us that we've all just enjoyed a marvelous confection. [/quote]
And you know what? You, Again? ends with....a lively dance sequence performed by the cast glimpses through a series of frames that are supposed to be pictures in a high school yearbook meant to convince us that we've all just enjoyed a marvelous confection.
No wonder Kristin Bell is desperate to get a Veronica Mars movie jumpstarted....she must think she's in a perpetual loop of romcom hell.
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Post by Eddie Love on Nov 26, 2010 23:34:14 GMT -5
Maybe not rom-coms so much as chick flicks, but here are some other titles I was subjected to lately:
IT'S COMPLICATED: I'm not gonna say if this was really good or bad necessarily, but God I couldn't stand it. This revenge fantasy for affluent women is by the same director who made the similarly themed but much better SOMETHINGS GOTTA GIVE, which, as I remember had a near brilliant facility for shifting the point of view from the female to male lead. Here, the male protagonist, a divorced man who becomes enamored with his ex wife, is so clueless that he's impossible to believe. (As is the notion this man could maintain an affair under the nose of a wife who won't let him take his cell phone into the bathroom.) Alec Baldwin and Meryl Streep never have a single believable conversation during the course of their affair. Steve Martin is her alternate suitor and he's supposedly the adult, but we get a labored scene where he gets high in order to inject some semblance of comedy into his role. The rest of the cast is made up of the wife's thoughtless and cliche friends and astonishingly, emotionally immature children all of whom appear to be multi-millionaires. I don't think there's a single person of color with a speaking role in this film and watching this felt like being locked in a gated community.
Who would have thought that child of Hollywood Drew Barrymore would be able to offer up a woman's picture that actually felt like it was made by people living in the real world? WHIP-IT, about a high-school girl's foray into the world of women's roller derby was a genuine surprise. It's a remarkable first effort by Barrymore as director. She gets uniformly good work from the cast and has an assured handle on the physical scenes and wonderful, atmospheric flavor of small town Texas. The picture's pretty predicable (think BEND IT LIKE JUNO) but highly enjoyable. The marvelous cast hits all the right notes, without any condescension or cliche -- especially the lead Ellen Page who I felt was even better here than she was in JUNO. The movie is a little long, but very enjoyable and well acted.
Lastly, something called POST-GRAD a trivial and innocuous tale of a 22 year-old girl's struggles in today's job market. Nothing much here, but the supporting cast features some genuine comic heavy-hitters like Jane Lynch, Michael Keaton, JK Simmons and Carol Burnett. They have a couple good bits and the female lead Alexis Bledel is hard-working and likable. Unfortunately her platonic-best-friend-who-she-needs-to-wake-up-and-realize-is-her-soul-mate is an incredibly whiny little bitch with no game. I was actually rooting for her to wind up with the slick-South-American-who's-all-wrong-for-her who at least behaved, and treated her, like an adult.
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Dino
Full Member
Tai-Pan
Posts: 166
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Post by Dino on Dec 12, 2010 6:13:56 GMT -5
I really liked It's Complicated.
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Post by Eddie Love on Dec 12, 2010 8:33:58 GMT -5
I really liked It's Complicated. A lot of people did. Everything about it rubbed me with the wrong way to the point where I could seriously go off ala The Full Deja. It just stuns me that in this time of The Great Recession Hollywood would make this live action version of the Williams-Sonoma catalog. The whole time watching these characters I kept thinking to myself "Please, please Mr. President -- raise these people's marginal tax rates to Clinton-era levels!!!"
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Post by Derrick on Dec 13, 2010 2:03:26 GMT -5
I really liked It's Complicated. A lot of people did. Everything about it rubbed me with the wrong way to the point where I could seriously go off ala The Full Deja. It just stuns me that in this time of The Great Recession Hollywood would make this live action version of the Williams-Sonoma catalog. The whole time watching these characters I kept thinking to myself "Please, please Mr. President -- raise these people's marginal tax rates to Clinton-era levels!!!" I wonder if the success of IT'S COMPLICATED had to do with the over 40/50 year old crowd finally had a romantic comedy with actors/characters their on age.
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Post by Eddie Love on Jan 23, 2011 19:08:38 GMT -5
THE UGLY TRUTH. Ugly indeed. Katherine Heigl, who criticized her hit KNOCKED-UP for being sexist, returns in a “comedy” (produced by herself – and her mother!) where she not only hangs upside down from a tree such that her face lands in a guy's nude cock, but she also receives remote-controlled clitoral stimulation in public, administered by a pre-teen boy. Noel Coward this a'int. The plot concerns her playing – wait for it, wait for it!!! – a gorgeous, successful woman who’s hopelessly single and ends up taking dating advice from the sexist pig she works with, played with little charm and an awful “American” accent by Gerard Butler. There’s nothing wrong with the central premise, but, of course, everything has to play out on the public stage of the main character’s local television jobs, so whatever real-world insight into the war-between-the sexes becomes instantly unrelatable. When the main couple finally stop bickering and start courting, it's at least fairly interesting. Otherwise, everything else is so generic they're hardly even trying; the sassy best friend is simply made up to look exactly like go-to sassy best friend Judy Greer. Hard to believe this is from the director of LEGALLY BLONDE.
In THE BACK-UP PLAN Jenifer Lopez plays a – wait for it, wait for it!! -- – gorgeous, successful woman who’s hopelessly single and ends up choosing to be artificially inseminated and raise a child on her own. The same day of the procedure – she meets and falls for Mr. Right in the form of a dreamy goat-cheese maker, played by the new McGarrett from 5-0. What commences as the two sort out the situation isn’t particularly funny, but it's believable given the scenario the two would have their inevitable falling out, and these complications are more compelling then the roadblocks we typically get. It’s an inoffensive picture that coasts on Lopez’s charms and she's positively enchanting. She’s wonderful here, game and physical without much vanity, but managing to be sexy and adorable throughout. Seriously, she makes a film every 4 years while Jennifer Anniston makes one a month? Explain this. (But don’t get me started on the bizarre efforts taken in each of her vehicles to play down J-Lo’s Hispanic parentage. Here, naturally, her parents are dead and her only family member we meet is that striking Latina – Linda Lavin!)
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Post by Derrick on Jan 23, 2011 19:30:52 GMT -5
I can picture Jennifer Anniston and Katherine Heigl sitting in a bar somewhere BMW'ing together and wondering wha hoppen?
Wha hoppened was that the both of them listened to somebody who convinced the both of them that they had what it took to become major movie stars and they just don't have it. I will admit that I did like Jennifer Anniston in OFFICE SPACE and MANANGEMENT and I think that she could probably carve out a nice little career in independent film if she concentrated on that and stop trying way too hard to be America's Sweetheart.
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Post by tombitd on Jan 23, 2011 20:26:15 GMT -5
Well, you all know my theory on why Katherine Hiegl isn't a sucessful movie star.
It's because she has a stupid face.
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Post by Eddie Love on Jan 24, 2011 19:46:14 GMT -5
I'm no Heigl hater, I'm actually looking forward to her stab at starting a Stephanie Plum franchise this summer. I think she's a good actress and I like her ample figure, a throwback to a Kim Novak type.
But the Annisten thing just mystifies me. I look at her list of films and she has no vehicles I have the remotest interest in seeing. (Although I did see THE BREAK-UP. )
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Post by Derrick on Jan 24, 2011 22:22:58 GMT -5
I'm no Heigl hater, I'm actually looking forward to her stab at starting a Stephanie Plum franchise this summer. I think she's a good actress and I like her ample figure, a throwback to a Kim Novak type. But the Annisten thing just mystifies me. I look at her list of films and she has no vehicles I have the remotest interest in seeing. (Although I did see THE BREAK-UP. ) I hear you. I feel the same way about Katherine Heigl. I just think that like Kristen Bell she's getting bad career advice from somebody with the IQ of a Warner Bros. executive. Katherine Heigl is at least likable. Jennifer Anniston is not. She's not even all that attractive to me and it always mystifies me when she's described as being so incredibly beautiful. Every other chick on FRIENDS had her beat by a country mile in the looks department.
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Post by Eddie Love on Feb 13, 2011 10:52:27 GMT -5
EASY A is a hip, high-school comedy in the JUNO mold and it’s quick and enjoyable. It's about a teenage girl who surrenders her reputation, but not her actual virginity, for fun and profit. Emma Stone plays the precocious lead this time and she’s so charismatic and charming we overlook the fact that her character does some really stupid and thoughtless things. Towards the end our heroine starts a sweet romance with a fellow student, and it’s kind of off-putting, as, while Stone looks believably 17, this guy looks to be about 25. Plus, given how deft and laconic Stone’s comic style is, the rest of cast is strangely high energy. All told, this picture is fun and actually comes pretty close to being as good as the trailer for it.
Not a comedy, but rather a really odd and stilted drama, THE TIME-TRAVELER’S WIFE stars the radiant Rachel McAdams in the title role. Her decades-skipping spouse is Eric Bana and he’s completely unequipped to convey any of the emotional details that could make this elaborate, high concept work. He gets no assist from a tone-deaf production where scenes that, I guess, are supposed to be amusing or absurd are served up at the same bland temperature as the big, tear-jerking pay-offs. It’s all framed in a staid, affluent production design that feels not so much artificial as simply unreal. Plus, there are these creepy scenes where the guy travels back in time – nude, I might add – to court his wife as a child. Shudder.
Dickens gets the battle-of-the-sexes / wedding comedy overhaul in GHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS PAST with Mathew McConneghey in the womanizing Scrooge role. Never actually funny, but pretty clever, this picture looks great and McConneghey has actual chemistry with Jennifer Garner as “the one who got away” who he reconnects with at his brother’s wedding. Michael Douglas plays the Jacob Marley role, a sleazy, Bob Evans style lothario showing our hero the error of his man-whore ways, and Douglas is quite good. Some of MM’s physical comic business gets wearisome fast, but his big sentimental post-ghost epiphanies are well played. The reviews I read of this bemoaned how unlikable his character was – well no shit, would you register the same complaint about Scrooge in an adaptation of A CHRISTMAS CAROL?
ADVENTURELAND is a period piece set in the late 80s as a young college grad slogs out a summer at a bargain basement amusment park where he bonds with buddies and falls for the troubled beauty who works along side him. I’m pretty much a contemporary of these characters and I could relate to a lot of what goes on here, I liked the evocation of the period – all the music is perfect. But the tone shifts uncomfortably from Indie naturalism to broad, obvious turns from some SNL cast-members that fall flat. I enjoyed this, but it lacks that certain “oomph” of a DINER or a FAST TIMES, the characters just aren’t vivid enough, not enough happens.
GOING THE DISTANCE is an agreeable but decidedly low-key comedy about the long distance relationship between Drew Barrymore and Justin Long as a couple who try and make it work form both coasts. I liked how this film wasn’t exactly raunchy, but was really foul-mouthed. The overall tone is pretty believable and the two leads very natural. It has a sleepy, Indie vibe even as it somewhat reluctantly hits all the mainstream rom-com beats. And I like that the leads are (were?) an actual couple, so they seem to really kiss, something you never see. (Barrymore’s tongue is halfway down his throat.) Some genuine laughs, too.
A neurotic gynecologist (Julianne Moore) hires a ravishingly tempting young call girl (Amanda Seyfried) to test the bounds of her relentlessly flirtatious spouse (Liam Neeson) in CHLOE, not a rom-com, but rather an austere, chilly Lifetime movie for the Angelica Film Center set. The two actresses are both superb and the set-up is kind of trashy if artfully rendered. I bet this is the kind of coyly erotic picture that would have caused a stir 20 years ago, before the mainlining of porn. Unfortunately, the sophisticated melodramatics shift to a ridiculously lurid Cinemax-thriller-stlye climax in the final 20 minutes that is likely to appall those people digging this kinky take on the woman’s picture and hardly satisfy those looking for the latest FATAL ATTRACTION rip-off who would probably have avoided this in the first place.
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Post by Eddie Love on Apr 16, 2011 9:28:09 GMT -5
THE ROMANTICS – this is the type of 20-something relationship dramedy with the mournful alt-rock soundtrack that was the mainstay of Indie filmmaking about 15 years ago. A tribe of friends assembles for the wedding of two of their number, but the groom (Josh Duhamel) and the bookish maid of honor (Katie Holmes) have lots of unfinished business. There’s way too much time spent with the secondary characters as they get stoned and hook up the evening before the ceremony. But the heart of the picture – the confrontation between Holmes and Duhamel – is pretty involving, if over-written with plenty of ham-fisted expository passages ala – “Remember the time you…?” Neither actor may put you in mind of neurotic academics, necessarily, but they’re good – especially Holmes who’s never been better.
EAT PRAY LOVE. Punishing. Exhausting. An irritating Julia Roberts treks across the globe to feed her stomach and eventually her inner self. The locations are enticing, but there’s almost no actual atmosphere. And even as this woman “finds herself” she still manages to hit all the rom-com beats of denying her feelings for her one true love before finally coming to her senses. Whatever. I understand I’m not the audience for this but God, it was an endurance test to sit through. And aren’t there enough real stories written by women who things actually happened to, rather than, as is the case here (or in JULIE AND JULIA), stories where a woman decides to write about her life in the event that something interesting happens? Not really the same thing…
THE TWILIGHT SAGA evidences the laws of diminishing returns in ECLIPSE which serves up more bland mythology-heavy teen vampire lore, now with more tacky CGI and far less atmosphere or the believably angsty high school drama that kicked off the series. Also, strangely, Kristen Stewart who’s a really good actor and who enlivened the earlier pictures with her mannered but serious dramatic turns, seems to have had her look distractingly glammed up here to better fit the CW starlet mold.
AWAY WE GO from the overrated Sam Mendes follows a rootless and bedraggled couple on a road trip as they search for the spot to raise the child they’re expecting. Maya Rudolph as the wife is marvelous, but much of the rest of the cast overacts wildly as they pound out one caricature after another, all served with a condescending and smugly anti-American slant, as our heroes find solace only when they go to hipster Canada or find some spot in total isolation away our nation’s population of loud freaks. The picture is awash in mopey, alt-rock song cues that play out every single scene. Despite the indie film world bona fides, this picture wasn’t as good as similar commercial fare like FOUR CHRISTMASSES, which it in some way resembles and which was a good bit funnier. (I'm now wary for BOND 23.)
YOU AGAIN boasts one of the most remarkably rancid plots for a rom-com ever as MEAN GIRL-style high school rivalries crash a bland wedding comedy. Tom took this picture to task, and it’s really dreadful, just unpleasant and generic and with a terrible musical score. The actors seem directed to avoid the pretense of anything approaching recognizable human behavior. Only Jamie Leigh Curtis briefly skirts the realm of the noticeably believable.
A gorgeous, tastefully furnished six-bedroom colonial on half an acre in the suburbs of Atlanta stars in LIFE AS WE KNOW IT. Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel provide support as a mismatched couple (he’s a sloppy man-whore who works in sports / she’s a gorgeous but uptight bakery owner) who, for entirely unaccountable reasons, are the guardians to the newly orphaned infant of their best friends. No sooner are mom and dad in the ground, but the aren’t-babies-lifestyle-crimping-messes hijinks ensue. The two leads are well matched, but they spend the first hour convincing us they're all wrong for each other and I took them at their word. Their subsequent romance just felt false in this way too tidy, affluence-obsessed weepy. And, oh yeah: Two. Solid. Hours.
Also hellishly overlong was the X-ina Aguilar musical BURLESQUE, which reminded me of one of those perpetual motion machines that sit on people’s desk, if you can imagine instead of steel balls, movie clichés ceaselessly clacking back and forth. And at least at the start of this picture, it’s fun and they do seem to realize that they’re trafficking in things we’ve seen a million times. But for all her strenuous singing, Aguilera, just isn’t an appealing presence, and when the picture needs to stand on its own, she never get’s it fully upright. A drippy male lead doesn’t help. Cher didn’t scare me as much as some people said, and she delivers, as does go-to-gay sidekick Stanley Tucci. Roughly enjoyable, but no way able to merit its epic length.
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