Movies

Spanglish is a revelation: Touching, genuine, intimate, and involving, it’s the “small” picture at its best. The story is one of integration and separation, as a single latino mother (the stunning Paz Vega) makes a way for herself and her daughter in the swankiest parts of Los Angeles, amid a family tearing itself apart. The mother is a control-freak basket-case (Tea Leoni, taking a page from Annette Benning’s character in American Beauty), the father (Adam Sandler) an irresolute chef afraid of his own restaurant’s success. Their two children are amazingly well adjusted, considering. ...

Reservoir Dogs is one very, very disturbing movie

Lots of randomness today: Something irks me about “The Western Whitehouse,” George Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. The man’s the leader of the free world and commander of the most powerful army the world has ever known, but he’s still AN ELECTED OFFICIAL. We the people pay his salary, and he has a nice place to live near that’s in proximity to the rest of the government…the ACTUAL whitehouse. (Pic taken at the aforementioned WWW:) ...

Watched The Whole Ten Yards up at Whitney’s on Saturday night. It’s embarrasingly bad, as neither the plot nor characters make any sense. There were maybe two or three funny lines in the whole movie.

Zardoz Key learning: When your somewhat-off, reminds-you-of-your-freaky-ex-roomate friend at work says a movie is “kinda weird”, don’t watch it. Sean Connery wears a diaper (or sumo garb, take your pick) throughout, and basically the screenwriter creates a vision of “Brave New World” crossed with “A Clockwork Orange”. Definitely some cool moments, but not worth much. Thankfully, with netflix, it’s free. :D

Ronin This movie is alot of flash for not much substance, but it’s watchable, with Robert DeNiro doing his best Sean Penn impersonation and statuesque eye candy from Natascha McElhone. The car chases are incredible, and make a decent spy thriller exceptional. By the end, nothing seems resolved, save many dead, stereotype characters.

Okay, it’s a Swedish movie (with subtitles) that describes a budding romance between two lesbian teenagers, but for some reason I love Show Me Love The film’s a grainy wisp of a story, shot hand-held with no budget, but I find both the main characters captivating in their own way: Agnes, the misfit who’s a hopeless romantic, and the instensely beautiful, utterly bored Elin. I guess the film hits home with me because of the way I fell in love with my darling, on a long cold night nearly 5 years ago. We were from two intensely different worlds, destined for two different (yet reconvergent) paths, but I can still remember the shockwave that went through me when she told me she loved me. ...

Watched Stargate last night. I’ve seen it before, of course, but it seemed like a neat addition to my Netflix queue. I watched the ‘Ultimate Edition’, and it should’ve been called “They didn’t edit anything” edition. Scenes dragged on and on, but overall a very worthy movie to watch if you happen to come across it on basic cable. Side note: You can see the wires they used to “fly” the model flying machines around during the blue screen scenes at the end.

Submitted for your approval: Godzilla, the 1998 remake of the 1954 monster-movie classic. It was awful…I somehow avoided seeing this disaster during the summer between my Freshman & Sophomore year of college, but I thought, “I’ve got Netflix, so why not?” In any case, I can now join in the complaints about this movie that promised so much, but delivered so little. My main problem with the film is its unoriginality: In changing nearly everything about the classic Godzilla, you’d think they’d come-up with some original stuff. Instead, you see stolen bits from other movies here: The eggs in Madison Square Garden, reminiscent of “Aliens”, the desperate escape from young that they lifted wholesale from “Jurassic Park”. And why is it raining the WHOLE TIME? I felt sorry for Matthew Broderick having to endure 6 weeks of shooting under rain machines. ...

Latest Neflix: Dr. Strangelove (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb) Kubrick’s satiric masterpiece, aided by Peter Sellers (a.k.a. Inspector Clouseau), George C Scott, and the unforgettable Slim Pickins, the movie delights and terrifies. Though we face a world fraught with terrorism and uncertainty, this movie is a window into the time of Mutually Assured Destruction, when the only certainty was the concept of global annihilation in 30 minutes or less. ...

Today on the Netflix bandwagon: Chicago Full disclosure: Whitney hates this movie, and has been very vocal about it, so that’s probably colored my view here. What we have here is an opera/musical that centers around Roxie Hart, philandering wife of a lowly mechanic who figures to sleep her way to a shot at Vaudeville fame. When her lover comes clean about being a furniture salesman who fed her a line to bed her, she shoots him in a jealous rage. The plot describes her time in prison, the environment of 1920’s Chicago, and the role of media in justice (or, in this case, injustice). ...

Thanks to NetFlix I’ve seen one of the best films ever made: The Godfather Words really don’t do justice to the mastery of this film. From the first moment at the Corleone wedding, Coppola presents us with dozens of interesting, round characters. He captures not only the story, but also several picturesque locations: 1946 New York, Sicily. Color, texture, and smell flow from the screen to your cortex. The main thread of the story involves the Corleone family, most prominent of organized crime’s “5 Families”. As the story opens we see Brando as Don Corleone, aged patriarch, founder of the family. His three sons, hot-head Sonny (James Caan), simpleton Fredo, and college-kid-cum-war-hero Michael (Al Pachino) lead the magnificent cast of surrounding characters. Mainly, we see the story through Michael’s eye, his feelings of duty, honor, loss, rage. As he becomes first a pawn, then a killer, then a victim, then a calculating leader, we go through the changes with him. By then end, I was scheming with him. ...

Well, saw my lovely last night and we went to see Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. Thoughts: Why in the world does everyone expect thoughts to be in a bulletted-list? Is this the “POWERPOINT EFFECT”? :D Anyway, I thought it was a decent film, if utterly pointless. I had quite a bit of fun, and there’s more there than the PG rating would imply: Fart jokes, skimpy outfits from the two female leads. Lots of guilty pleasures here, mostly revolving around SMG doing a Buffy-esque fight with the Black Knight Ghost, and Linda Cardellini….well, all of Linda Cardellini. ...