Whooooooooooooo. Greetings from your favorite limousine-ridin', jet-flyin', kiss-stealin', wheelin', dealin' son of a gun. What's the good word? Juno is out on DVD today ... I hate how that movie has such a backlash against it - it was a great movie! Who cares if the dialogue is unrealistic? So is the dialogue in almot every great movie ever made, honest to blog. Screw the haters, Juno was one of 2007's best films in a year that overflowed with great films. I'll tell you another great movie that you shouldn't overlook -- Walk Hard. I keep seeing negative reviews of the DVD, but come on, it was hilarious! Any comedy fan should check it out ASAP.
Man, summer movie season can't get here fast enough. So many bigtime flicks coming over the next few months, I can barely concentrate on any one in particular. As regular readers know I have a compulsive need to rank things, so ... here's what I'm most looking forward to:
1. The Dark Knight
2. The X-Files 2
3. Iron Man
4. Indiana Jones
5. Wall-E
6. Speed Racer
7. Hellboy 2
8. Tropic Thunder
9. Prince Caspian
10. Kung-Fu Panda
And that's not even including some other big films like The Incredible Hulk and Wanted and Pineapple Express. I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch of others as well ... but, there you go.
- By the way, I may have alluded to this previously, but partly in the name of being film geeks and partly in the name of honoring the passing of a great actor, some friends and I decided to partake in a Charlton Heston mini movie-thon this past weekend, since none of us had ever seen two of his most famous forays into the sci-fi genre, SOYLENT GREEN and THE OMEGA MAN. My quick reviews? Well, Soylent Green is legitimately a pretty cool movie - a good performance from Heston and a really well-realized vision of a dystopian future that's coming apart at the seems. As for Omega Man, holy lord. I suspect that you need to be under the influence of various mind-altering chemicals to enjoy it - it made I Am Legend look like a masterpiece in comparison. I mean, the vampires / creatures in the movie are just NORMAL PEOPLE with white skin. On one hand they talk and think rationally, yet on the other had they spend every night, and I mean EVERY night standing outside of Heston's home, moaning, clawing, and hurling the occasional flaming object at his windows. Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?!?! Man, what a strange, strange movie.
Anyways, I've got a movie review of 21 for ya', but first some TV STUFF:
- Sunday's episode of THE SIMPSONS seems to have been a bit divisive. Some are claiming it was a good to very good episode, especially relative to most episodes from the latter-day Simpsons output. But others, like me, for one, sat through this episode enjoying a few clever lines here and there, but mostly just shaking my head in disappointment at how much most of the humor missed the mark. The fact that this episode seemed to have pretty grand ambitions only made its ultimate failure that much more painful to watch. I mean, this ep, in theory, pulled out all the stops. It brought back a beloved one-off character from the show's glory days - Lurleen Lumpkin. It had a musical number. It even had a guest-turn from The Dixie Chicks. But what can I say, the ep just never really clicked. The opening, an oddly dark bit in which Homer fantasizes about killing his dad, was disturbingly random. And I guess that if you look at the original Lurleen episode, it was really not so much about Lurleen, and much more so about Homer and his temptation to go off with this other woman - the episode is a classic precisely because I think it surprised people with how many complex themes it pushed into an animated series. In this episode, there was really none of that complexity. Lurleen's daddy issues were dealt with broadly and swiftly, and Homer's relationship with her was pretty much glossed over. The humor did work in parts - I liked how all of Lurleen's post-Homer boyfriends were basically thnic versions of Homer - but too many of the jokes felt limp. In any case, this was one of those Simpsons episodes that was decent, but by evoking a classic episode, it really painted a tale of two shows - one that was effortlessly funny and multi-layered, and another that is gimmicky and seems to just be coasting along.
My Grade: C+
- I thought KING OF THE HILL had a similar feel, where it just felt a little off despit a premise that seemed to have some potential. The idea of Joseph leaving public school to go to a fancier private one seemed rife with comedic possibilities, but the episode seemed pulled in a lot of different directions, touching on the relationship between Joseph and Dale, Dale and Hank, and Dale and Nancy's newfound role as high-society prep school parents. Conspicuous by his absence was John Redcorn - you'd think it'd only be natural for him to show up in an episode that so heavily emphasized Dale's belief that Joseph's football talent was a result of his good genes. Plus, as has been pointed out, Hank did seem a little bit callous about Bobby's best friend changing schools. It's been a while since we've seen Hank and Bobby have much interaction, so it seemed like a missed opportunity.
My Grade: B -
- As for this Saturday's SNL featuring guest host Ashton Kutcher ... um, yeah ... the less said the better. Or, to take a page from Fred Armisen's recurring news-commentator character ... "Well, the thing is, I mean, we have to, don't you see?, the problem!, if I can be frank, dolphins!, throughout our history, and that's exactly what, when push comes to shove.
Okay, onto movies.
21 Review:
- First off, I'll open with the following preamble: Perhaps the coolest thing about 21, for me, was the fact that much of the movie was shot at Boston U. So throughout the film, I recognized familiar classrooms, hallways, and exteriors from my school, which was pretty sweet. Sure, the locations were used as a stand-in for one of those "grand institutions across the river," namely, MIT, but still, go BU!
Anyways, 21 is one of those movies that was surprising in that it could have been a lot worse, but also at least a little disappointing in that it never really amounted to anything more than a pretty by-the-numbers teen thriller. The movie tells the drawn-from-true-life tale of a couple of MIT students who, under the tutelage of a scheming professor, form a club of high rollers who travel to Vegas on weekends and use their penchant for number-crunching to beat the system and win big at blackjack. It's an intriguing story, but the movie spends a lot of time on flashy shots of Vegas and not enough time examining its principle characters and their motivations for embarking on such a risky and potentially dangerous endeavor.
The big upside here is the young cast, particularly Jim Sturgess as the lead. Sturgess' performance here reminds me a lot of some of the recent, breakthrough performances we've seen from Casey Aflleck. There's something in his work that goes deeper than we're accustomed to to seeing in this type of film - a nuance, a maturity. While the material he's given to work with isn't always particularly subtle, Sturgess nonetheless brings subtlety to the role. It's not a breakthrough film, per se, but it may just be that type of attention-grabbing performance for Sturgess.
As for Kevin Spacey as the students' sleazy cardshark / professor / ringleader, well, to his credit, his work here reminded me a little of some of his classic scumbag roles in movies like Glengary Glenross and LA Confidential. I'm still pissed off at him for sucking so bad as Lex Luthor in Superman Returns, but I guess that's only partially his fault ... In any case, Spacey brings some zip to the proceedings, but his character is ultimately kind of a generic antagonist, and almost a little too sketchy to be believable. Part of the problem is that the pull he has over his group of student math prodigies is never quite defined in a satisfactory manner. This means that when the inevitable dissention i nthe ranks happens later in the film, it's all feels a bit forced, as we were never quite sure what this guy's deal was in the first place, or who these students were that they were so drawn to him. In fact, this almost seems like the more interesting angle to approach the film from, but instead ...
... We get a pretty lifeless romance between Sturgess and Kate Bosworth's character, a fairly cold cardshark who is basically there as the token object of lust. We also get lots of light scenes with Sturgess and his MIT friends, a couple of geeky braniacs who don't understand where their friend jets off to on weekends or why he isn't that into their create-your-own robot contest thing anyomore. One of his friends is that Chris Farley-esque guy from FOX's Back to You, who looks a lot like the late great Farley except not really as funny. I guess that's one kind of general complaint about the film -- it could have bene a pretty intense character study and thriller, but it keeps throwing in little bits of annoying humor, the kind of stuff that brought down similarly "look-at-me-I'm-so-cool" movies like Disturbia. You know - goofy sidekicks, blank-slate girlfriend characters, etc.
Overall though, I was entertained. The systems that the students used to beat the house at blackjack were pretty interesting in theory, and between Sturgess' brooding intensity and Spacey's hammy intensity, there was enough intensity to keep me attentive and curious about what would happen next. On the other hand, it seemed like every chance the film had to really turn things up a notch, all it delivered were yet more extraneous shots of flashing casino names. Vegas has bright lights - we get it.
My Grade: B -
- Okay, until next time ...
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