06.15.08
Posted in action, reviews at 9:20 pm by FilmFemme
So, I saw two movies in the row where Liv Tyler ends up in a plaid shirt, struggling to move while she’s face down on the ground. That’s kind of odd.
I liked The Strangers. I hated The Incredible Hulk. So I still don’t know how I feel about Liv Tyler on the ground.
I didn’t see Ang Lee’s last attempt at bringing this big green guy to the big silver screen, but I like Edward Norton, the aforementioned Ms. Tyler, William Hurt and Tim Roth, so I thought, “How could I go wrong with The Incredible Hulk? It must be at least half as entertaining as Iron Man.” Wrong again, FilmFemme, wrong again.
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06.13.08
Posted in thriller, horror, reviews at 8:36 am by FilmFemme
When I saw the trailer (btw, don’t click past the trailer on the official site, because there are spoilers galore) for The Strangers (which, if I recall correctly, was played before Baby Mama for some reason) it was seriously one of the scariest trailers I have ever seen. I was so scared, that my moviegoing companion actually said “I…I can’t tell if you’re kidding…” But I wasn’t kidding. So, needless to say, I was completely psyched to see it! Ah!
It wasn’t flawless and it didn’t reinvent the genre, but The Strangers was solidly scary with above average art direction and surprisingly beautiful cinematography. As the debut feature for writer/director Bryan Bertino (who, by the way, is decidedly sexy himself) it’s really impressive.
One of the awesome things that Bertino does is nearly make you forget you’re about to see a horror movie for the first 20-25 minutes. Instead, Kristen (Liv Tyler) and James (Scott Speedman) are returning to the family summer home after a wedding at which they had somewhat of a falling out. But in the throes of their conflict, they are interrupted by a loud knock. The movie then proceeds to be wholly creepy, with 3 masked strangers (ooh! like the title!) appearing at the house to stalk, scare and torture the couple for the next hour. This hour includes at least 3 really good, well-placed shock moments that made me literally jump out of my seat and either gasp or yell. And I definitely wasn’t the only one in the theatre that was freaked out.
Of course, the movie did suffer from some stereotypical horror movie pitfalls (e.g., me wanting to scream “TURN AROUND!!” or “WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING INTO THE GARAGE??!??”), a few of which were pretty distracting and unrealistic, even in light of the crisis Kristen and James were facing. But between the OMG moments and the dark, neutral, contrastingly pretty cinematography (and pretty Liv Tyler and her disgustingly pretty hair), I had a really good time at The Strangers and hope that Bryan “sexy” Bertino gets to direct something else.
A footnote: supposedly the movie was based on “true events,” and all internet sources (OK, just Wikipedia) point to the Keddie Cabin murders, but this could have just been added by someone who wanted publicity for their Keddie Cabin documentary. I dunno, but that’s a scary story too, so check out the site if you’re morbid like me.
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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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05.12.08
Posted in action, sci fi, reviews at 10:26 am by FilmFemme
Lights, Camera, Holy Shit Tons of Bright Colors Everywhere! It’s like a rainbow drank too many Jell-O Shots and Barfed!
Speed Racer is a fun time. Speed Racer is a little kid (Nicholas Elia, a child actor that really bears an uncanny resemblance to Emile Hirsch) who can’t concentrate on anything in school because all he can think about it RACING.
His older brother, Rex (Scott Porter – the hot but paralyzed quarterback from Friday Night Lights) sometimes takes him the the crazy futuristic race track and lets him drive even though he’s only like 8 or something. Then one day Rex dies and everyone is like, so sad.
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05.02.08
Posted in action, sci fi, reviews at 8:08 am by FilmFemme
Iron Man? Two Words: Fucking Rad.
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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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04.17.08
Posted in drama, reviews at 1:15 pm by FilmFemme
(This review has spoilers. Let’s face it, no one is going to see this movie anyway.)
Do you like M. Night Shymalan movies (”no!”), but you really wish that the twist was spoiled RIGHT AWAY? Like IN THE TITLE? Then Vadim Perelman’s The Life Before Her Eyes is the perfect springtime movie for you!
At the beginning of the movie, Evan Rachel Wood is a 16 year old Diana. She is young, ridiculously hot, carefree, rebellious and confused about what direction her life is taking her in. We immediately see her become BFF with Maureen (Eva Amurri) even though Diana is kind of a slut and Maureen is kind of a goody goody (but she has huge tits, so it’s A-OK). Early on - like within the first 10 minutes, I think - the pair is confronted with a crisis: there is a school shooting at their high school and they find themselves face to face with the killer (played with hyperventilating stoicism by Adam Chanler-Berat [don’t people use stage names anymore? jeez]). This is the linchpin of the rest of the story as we’re then taken into the future where Diana lives peacefully with her professor husband and her daughter Emma, teaching art history to high schoolers and trying to keep the pretty, smart ones from being sluts like she was. Peacefully but for the traumatic flashbacks she suffers as well and the paranoid delusions that ultimately get her hit by a Mack truck (or maybe it’s a bus). Yeah, real peaceful.
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04.02.08
Posted in family, reviews at 6:24 pm by FilmFemme
There are remakes that are done for the right reason - that truly bring something new and different - a new perspective or a new twist - to the table that is cinema. Nim’s Island does none of these things. But the real tragedy is that it’s not even a remake.
Nim Rusoe (Abigail Breslin) is an 11 year old girl who lives on a remote island with her scientist/widower father, Jack (Gerard Butler). One suspiciously sunny day, Jack is scheduled to go on a sea expedition and Nim refuses to go along, insisting she stay alone on the island and help hatch the sea turtle’s eggs. With an ominous “See you in two days,” Jack sets out to sea. The first night Jack is gone, a storm hits! Deceptively plucky Nim survives it just fine, but Jack is not so lucky and gets stranded at sea. Nim’s only hope for survival (not to mention to save her island from rowdy, drunken, uncouth and overweight Americ…I mean, Australian tourists) is Nim’s favorite adventurer on paper, one Alex Rover. But Nim doesn’t know that the rugged and courageous Alex is actually a creation of obsessive compulsive San Fransican Alexandra Rover (Jodie Foster) who has been emailing Jack for help with her latest book. Despite her fears, neuroses and tightly wound urbanity, Alexandra decides to track down Nim and help her. What follows (and, to be fair, what precedes) is a jumbled, predictable, uneven, hypersentimental mess that leaves a smudge across Jodie Foster’s Oscars more noticeable than her impossibly toned legs.
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