05.26.08
Posted in comedy, action, reviews at 4:35 pm by FilmFemme
Indiana Jones: action! adventure! charm! thrills! cheesy piece of crap!
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull opens with a CGI prairie dog. I’m not 100% sure that the rodent is CGI, but it might as well be. I guess it’s a little bit cute, but it’s mostly like: 
Are you kidding me?
And believe it or not, it’s all downhill from there.
Plenty of ado has been made of Harrison Ford’s advanced age (65), but I think it might be Steven Spielberg that needs to be checked for senility. Because I can’t understand how or why this movie was made and how or why it was so bad. Ford is actually a bright spot, in all his creakiness (he looks great for 65, by the way) — but nearly ever other element is weak. Shia LaBeouf? More like Shia LaDork. How is this mop top doofus supposed to be Indy’s offspring? Karen Allen is passable returning as Marion, but the tête-à-tête that she and Indy engage in is tired and forced.
Even Cate Blanchett’s perfectly tuned icy communism can’t fill in plot holes and wild tangents that are fiercely irritating.
The crystal skull that they seek and carry with them for the duration of the movie looks like something you would buy at the Sharper Image if you were somehow forced to spend money at the Sharper Image.
The only parts that worked for me were the really repellent bug scenes that made me squirm and the occasional quip from Indy that made me smile. Otherwise, this movie is an exercise in truly horrible filmmaking and was nothing but boring and lame.
It’s going to make a great ride, though.
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05.17.08
Posted in romance, comedy, classic, reviews at 8:41 am by FilmFemme
A funny and wacky Billy Wilder sex comedy, Kiss Me, Stupid was a surprisingly filthy choice for me to watch on my last sick (hangover) day.
Dean Martin throws himself into his drunk and shockingly horny persona as lounge singer Dino who ends up stranded in Climax, Nevada on his way home from Vegas. But his misfortune is an opportunity of a lifetime for piano teacher and amateur songwriter Orville (Ray Walston — you will recognize him, but I still can’t figure out from what). With some scheming, Orville friend and lyricist Barney (Cliff Osmond) gets Dino to agree to shack up with Orville for the night. But the plan hits a snag because Orville, an already obsessively jealous husband, doesn’t want Dino and his brand of charm anywhere near his lovely and demure (and utterly devoted) wife, Zelda (Felicia Farr).
So what would you do in this situation? Be forthright? Or trusting? No, no, no. You’re in a Billy Wilder farce, remember? So what you do is go down to the local bar/brothel and pick up the sluttiest (but ultimately sweetest) girl there, Polly the Pistol (Kim Novak). Bring Polly back to your house while Dino is sleeping. Start a huge fight with your wife (on your anniversary!) to the point where she actually LEAVES YOU for at least the night and maybe forever, tell Dino that Polly is your wife and try to get him to seduce her anyway while you play him your songs in the hopes that he’ll buy one.
Believe it or not, the plan does not go off without a hitch. But along the way there are plenty of really dirty jokes, some really fun and catchy tunes and a heart. Kiss Me, Stupid definitely has a real heart with lessons about sex, loyalty, ambition, forgiveness and the triumph of love. No, really.
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05.16.08
Posted in comedy, reviews at 10:18 pm by FilmFemme
Kevin Kline has made a career out of playing charming motherfuckers. A lucrative, funny, compelling but somehow detestable career.
It started with Sophie’s Choice, really, when he played Nathan Landau: a passionate, accented, intellectual, sweaty, animalistic, violent, volatile, charming motherfucker who had an unyielding grasp on Meryl Streep’s Sophie.
Similar characters would follow in The Big Chill, A Fish Called Wanda and then — tonight’s choice — I Love You to Death.
In this movie, Kline plays Joey Boca, an Italian immigrant living in Seattle (for some reason) and running a pizza joint with his wife Rosalie (Tracey Ullman). Rosalie is a devoted wife, and despite warnings from her mother (Joan Plowright) and the pizza parlor employee who pines for her, Devo (River Phoenix) that Joey is cheating on her. In denial or just blissfully naive, Rosalie refuses to believe he is a philanderer until one day, she is at the library in a heinously awesome zebra sweatshirt and catches him feeling up another woman in the stacks. Rosalie makes her decision then and there: Joey must die.
What follow is a series of MISHAPS that leave Joey at various points scared, wounded, bleeding and sleepy, but not dead.
Kevin Kline is really hilarious as the philanderer. I love that the first act includes a scene of him picking up Phoebe Cates at a bar with some cheesy lines that the real Phoebe Cates surely wouldn’t fall for. It’s funny, I didn’t feel that much kind of electric chemistry between them — but maybe because there was already a certain comfort level. I also didn’t believe the ass shot was really Phoebe Cates. Though I hope it was because it was a really nice ass.
Anyway.
River Phoenix is also great as the sweet pizza boy who is in love with Rosalie. There was a little part where it seemed like he was going to get together with Heather Graham, but that never panned out for some reason. I guess because he got held up with Rosalie’s schemes (he had to hire William Hurt and Keanu Reeves to shoot Joey). Funny and endearing without being really great. Ultimately sweet and you want to watch it again even though you know you probably shouldn’t because you have better things to do with your time. Kind of, just, a charming motherfucker.
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05.13.08
Posted in armchair marketing, comedy, guest reviews at 8:48 am by spectacle_triage
…in a battle to see who makes me want to see this movie less.
That is an ad for the Sex and the City movie, as well as Skyy vodka. If you’re going to shoot for a new level of cross-marketing prostitution, at least choose a brand that’s not the well vodka at Hooters.
I’ll be in NYC tomorrow, paying bums to piss on these ads.
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04.20.08
Posted in indie, comedy, drama, reviews at 12:41 pm by FilmFemme
Apparently people that give titles to movies don’t actually want people to see the movies that they are titling. Because, let’s face it, even a smart person doesn’t want to see a movie called Smart People. As a matter of fact, I’m going to contend that the smarter you are, the more you hate smart people. All of this points to the fact that I am actually not as smart as I think I am because not only did I go see this movie, but I enjoyed it.
Dennis Quaid is Lawrence Wetherhold, an English professor at Carnegie Mellon. Ah, movies about professors. Thank god, I was starting to think there would never be another one. Oh, except for the last movie that I reviewed on this site. Anyway. He’s very curmudgeonly. He hates all his students. His son hates him. His daughter (Ellen Page) does her best to emulate him (except for some reason she’s a Republican) and he still carries a torch for his dead wife.
But one day all of that changes!! ZOMG!!
He has a seizure while he’s trying to get his car out of the impound and ends up the ER where his doctor is Sarah Jessica Parker on the same day that his deadbeat brother (Thomas Haden Church) moves in unannounced, unexpected and uninvited.
The quirky family story that follows hardly breaks new ground, but the expectedly adequate (and at times amazing) performances and solid writing make Smart People completely watchable and generally enjoyable.
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03.10.08
Posted in off topic, opinion, comedy, animated at 2:47 pm by FilmFemme
from the LA Times:
Sen. Barack Obama accused rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton today of attempting to “hoodwink” and “bamboozle” voters into thinking she was the front-runner by offering him the second slot on her ticket.
from yours truly:
Hoodwinked?
Bamboozled?
What are you trying to say? That supporting Hilary is akin to supporting bad CGI and implications of racism? Oh, actually, that makes sense.
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03.01.08
Posted in best of, indie, comedy, reviews at 10:31 pm by FilmFemme
You know what movies I LOVE? Igby Goes Down, Rushmore and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
This is none of those movies.
Charlie Bartlett was supposed to come out last summer but it didn’t. I’m not sure if it had anything to do with Virginia Tech, but maybe because of like psychoactive drugs and suicidal teenagers, they wanted to wait. Or maybe it was retooled or something. Who knows (OK, someone knows, but I’m not doing an investigation or something, I’m just trying to tell you about this awful movie). But now that it’s out - I hope it goes away really soon.
Charlie Bartlett (Anton Yelchin) gets kicked out of a bunch of private schools (a la Igby) so he moves home with his overly-medicated mom (Hope Davis) who is a single parent (Igby, Rushmore) and goes to public school (Rushmore). Though he doesn’t fit in at first (Rushmore), he slowly wins everyone with psychotherapy in the boys room and psychiatric medications over until he rules the school (Rushmore, Bueller). He also falls in love with Susan (Kat Dennings, the buxom daughter from 40 Year Old Virgin) who happens to be the principal’s (Robert Downey Jr.) daughter (kind of Bueller). There is some debacle with cameras in the student lounge and blah blah blah Charlie teaches everyone to love themselves, even the suicidal kid who OD’s on the drugs that he sold him: turns out he really just wanted someone to read his play! (Rushmore!)
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Posted in misogyny, family, comedy, animated, reviews at 8:09 pm by FilmFemme
Ratatouille just beat out Persepolis for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars (boo) and then it showed up from Netflix yesterday! Since it beat such an awesome (if subtitled) movie and has been advertised as The Best Reviewed Movie Of The Year, I was hoping it would be pretty great. But it was pretty mediocre.
The oh-so-complicated plot involves a rat named Remy (voiced by Patton Oswalt) who wants to be a chef so he teams up with this kid named Alfredo Linguini (oh, great name.) who has a job in a kitchen but is completely inept at cooking. Together, they have to save the restaurant without letting people know that a rat is actually doing the cooking. I know, you’re totally in suspense right now, but I’m not going to spoil it for you!
Ok, I will.
The restaurant gets shut down by the health inspector but it’s OK because they open a new restaurant that magically doesn’t have to adhere to health codes and everyone lives H.E.A. Also, they convince a critic to stop being a jerk and Alfredo falls in love with Jeanine Garafalo who has a French accent. (The movie takes place in Paris, but most of the people & rats aren’t French for some reason).
So, it’s no Toy Story - in terms of story or voice talents - but it’s OK, not bad, great for kids probably.
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02.29.08
Posted in indie, industry news, comedy, reviews at 2:52 pm by FilmFemme
Anyone who’s anyone - that is, anyone who reads Defamer - has heard about how the plot for Be Kind Rewind was (maybe) copied (probably just a coincidence) from an episode of Amanda “Ellen Page? Where the Fuck is My Oscar Nomination?!” Bynes’ old Nickelodeon show (the impeccably titled) The Amanda Show. I think this ’scandal’ is a little interesting (not as good as Katie Holmes Faked Running the NYC Marathon, but still pretty good) but since it’s probably just a coincidence, maybe it will, at the very least, serve to deflate Michel Gondry’s ego a little. No, you know, scratch that. I like to think of Michel Gondry as a kind of whimsical, artsy, aw shucks my movie isn’t that great kind of guy (don’t ask me to explain why I think this, it is probably way off base). So, maybe this accusation will devastate him completely! I definitely don’t want that.
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02.07.08
Posted in best of, romance, comedy, reviews at 11:05 pm by FilmFemme
So fool’s gold the thing is like a glittery rock that tricks idiots into thinking it’s actual gold. Fool’s Gold the movie has sexy fun posters, the presence of two hot and OK actors (Kate Hudson and Matthew McCona…MacConna…Mc…who gives a shit, just take off your shirt) who were pretty cute together in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and at least one good actor (Donald Sutherland) and tricks idiots (e.g., me) into thinking it might be a cute and fun movie.
Uh.
Not so much.
Holy shit, does Fool’s Gold blow. It is, honestly, one of the most poorly written movies I have ever ever seen. The opening sequence did live up to the fun beach romp with hot bod McC. But that was because no one talked during the first 3 minutes - there was just a fun Carribean soundtrack, some mishaps, and Theo from The Cosby Show drinking a beer. Cool, right?
It was downhill and in need of a runaway truck ramp from there. The story was retarded: Some lame/unrealistic divorce scene - but oh my god they totally don’t really want to get divorced because they are totally still in love they just both have lessons to learn - and then some totally lame treasure hunting story and then everyone is on Donald Sutherland’s huge boat and Kate and Matt convince him and his Paris Hiltonesque (but brunette) daughter (it’s worth mentioning that this chick is really good at being really annoying) to go looking for some retarded treasure only once they get there, Matt McC’s mentor is already there looking for the treasure on the tip of a scary rap star (BigBunny?) that got the tip from Matt before he sunk his boat and tried to drown him. Do they find the treasure? Do they get back together? Does everyone learn important lessons about themselves and what really matters in life? For their sake, I hope so, but I wouldn’t know because I couldn’t sit through another second of that POS so you’ll have to find out on your own. Or just like, go drink a cocktail of seawater and bad shellfish because that would probably actually be more fun.
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