Filmfemme

Let me just blow off a little of this dust...

Hi! You might remember me. I wrote movie reviews. About movies I saw. They were hilarious. You know what, don't even bother looking through them. Just trust me that you loved them and they were brilliant. I'm thinking about starting them up again. Like, maybe a little something in favor of Spiderman 3, which I actually enjoyed despite other critics, you know, criticism. I don't know. I'm just throwing this out there.

Eight Reviews in Eight Minutes!

The New World (2005)
This movie brought out the seventh grade girl who apparently lurks under my mature exterior. This is boring, she whined. Colin Farrell is a hottie, but that's just not enough. I mocked her for using the word hottie.

Match Point (2005)
I love Woody Allen, and I was thrilled by this. It's totally different from the comedies he's been doing. It's tense and nerve-wracking and really puts you through something. Plus this one also has a cute Irish boy.

King Kong (2005)
I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed this film. Sort of lovely... but with too many dinosaurs.

Fun with Dick and Jane (2005)
Not at all fun but it did include characters named Dick and Jane so it's only half a lie. I felt that the actors didn't have to work for anything. They just assumed the audience would naturally like them: a mistake.

Rumor Has It (2005)
When I see the name Kevin Costner on a movie poster, it might as well be the words DO NOT SEE THIS. Yet did I listen? No. I was too pulled in by Jennifer Aniston and Mark Ruffalo. The latter is truly the only high point of this film.

The Producers (2005)
I missed the opening scene because my friend and I got lost on the way to a new theater. My sister says it was a good scene. I can't imagine that it was so good that it could make up for my overall apathy though.

Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)
This is a very pretty movie, and I enjoyed watching it just as a visual pleasure. It also kind of made me wish I could wear a kimono in public. Even so, I'm not going to rave about this one because just being beautiful isn't enough.

I got an e-mail from livejournal saying that I hadn't updated in 28 weeks. That's an awfully long time, especially since this is a paid account. Therefore, I am giving myself assignments! Here are a few movies I've seen recently that I plan to review:

The New World, Match Point, King Kong, Fun with Dick and Jane, Rumor Has It, The Producers, and Memoirs of a Geisha

Maybe a couple more if I remember to do it.

I will now attempt to review seven movies in seven minutes. No editing. Just minute long reviews.

Batman Begins
This was good, and I loves me some Batman, but it still felt like it was missing something. Plus I just rewatched the first Tim Burton Batman, and now I'm confused. Who really killed Bruce Wayne's parents? Who?

Bewitched
Oh, Will Ferrell. You are hilarious. Nicole Kidman I can take or leave. As with Batman, I loved Bewitched as a child and had high hopes. They were only slightly crushed. Maybe dented. Dented dreams of movie loving.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith
Jennifer Aniston could not have played this part. Maybe it's why they broke up. Brad was like, "I could totally be an assassin, but could Jen? No way! What if I want to leave the business and be an assassin? Better break this off before it comes to that."

Madagascar
Penguin love! They're so cute, what with their plotting and their scheming. I wasn't so sure about the other plot. The moral of the story is... don't make a life change or you'll want to eat your friends? Yeah, I'm unclear on that.

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
Bad bad bad acting. Okay, that's a cheap shot. No one watches Star Wars for the acting. Are their OBGYNs in the future? Apparently not.

The Longest Yard
I weirdly liked this movie. Maybe I was in a good mood or something, but I felt entertained. Except for the random tragic death of one of the characters. It was like funny, funny, funny, tragic death, funny, funny.

Cinderella Man
Ron Howard is awesome, and not just because he's the narrator on Arrested Development. That's the main reason, but it's not the only reason! He also makes films that make me like Russell Crowe. I'm not sure about Renee Zellweger anymore. I used to love her, but now she seems to be on the verge of craziness. Anyway, even though the ending of this movie was a little obvious (who makes true stories about losers?), I still enjoyed going along for the ride.

Rating: **

Review: I sort of knew that I was doomed to hate this movie, but I saw it anyway. I was expecting a repeat of my Alexander agony, but I was surprised to find myself having a different reaction. Instead of feeling mounting panic that I might never escape the movie, I calmly accepted that I was bored and began daydreaming. I briefly recognized the suckiness of spending $7.50 to sit in a dark theater for no reason, but I got over it. Kingdom of Heaven brought out nothing but apathy in me. I didn't care about the characters or what happened to them. I didn't care that the love story hinted at in the trailer was practically non-existent. I just patiently waited for the lights to come back up. Therefore, I will give it two stars for not making me angry.

Rating: **1/2

Review: I probably would have seen this movie no matter what, but the fact that Arrested Development's Will Arnett was in it really sold me. Sadly, Will has very little screen time. He plays the groom's best friend, a role which is apparently not as important as the bride's friends. I often found myself wondering what Will's character might be doing while off-screen, knowing that it was probably funnier than what was happening on the screen. I don't necessarily hate Jennifer Lopez, but I wish she'd cut the cutesy act. She seems to believe herself to be adorable and sweet with just a bit of pluckiness. She is wrong. Her baby voice and false innocence is just irritating. Even worse was her fashion sense in this film. In one scene, her bright fuchsia lipstick made me feel like I was going to be sick. I couldn't stop thinking about a professional make-up artists choosing that; obviously that person wanted to make Jennifer and me suffer. Maybe it was the same person who made Jennifer wears dresses over pants. I remember that look from an issue of Seventeen I bought in junior high. Even at the age of twelve, I recognized the alleged trend as ridiculous. A dress with pants... come on. It looks stupid.

The movie is occasionally kind of funny, and it was nice to see Michael Vartan actually laugh and smile. Wanda Sykes deserves most of the credit for anything funny, along with those brief glimpses of Will Arnett action. In retrospect, I would wait for video release.

Rating: ***1/2

Review: I really liked this movie, but I can't quite say that I loved it. The directing is fantastic, especially when you take into consideration how many scenes there are and what they entail. I know I personally would never have the stamina to do all those airplane or night club scenes. It's unquestionably a big movie, and there's something pretty cool about that. It's also fun to see icons being portrayed on the screen by other actors, especially Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn. Leonardo DiCaprio's performance felt slightly uneven to me. During the scenes where Howard is in full recluse mode, I kept feeling like I was watching a sketch on The Ben Stiller Show, which I recognize is an really crazy comparison, but the show liked to poke fun at big movies like this. It felt like a parody in places when it clearly shouldn't have. Overall, the movie is really amazing with a few moments of not-so-greatness thrown in.

Rating: **1/2

Review: Are you allowed to skip the entire beginning of your film and never flashback to it? Shouldn't there be a rule preventing you from doing so? Throughout the first half of the film, I kept wondering what made them cut the exposition because I'm pretty sure it existed at one point. In the trailer, Debra Messing's Kat is getting ready while her mom's voice over the answering machine says something like, "Your sister wants to make sure you're bringing a date to her wedding. She doesn't want people feeling sorry for you on her day." This should then propel Kat into the date-for-hire scenario, but the answering machine message isn't in the film. If memory serves, either the trailer or the actual film show images of newspapers with possible dates circled, but we later discover--completely in passing, mind you--that Kat wanted the specific escort who wrote a magazine article about his job. It felt like sloppy editing to me, and I'm not going to let it off the hook because it's a schmoopy romantic comedy. They can be good, fun movies with plots that make sense.

If you don't care about the lack of a proper introduction to the situation, then perhaps you'll care that the movie is not especially funny, that the two stars have very little chemistry, and that the thing I absolutely liked best about the entire picture was that Debra Messing experimented with shades of purple make-up, which I found daring and more interesting than anything else I was being shown. There's also England, which makes a good setting, mainly because British accents are fun. All in all, I wanted to like it because I like Debra and Dermot, but I found that it fell short of my expectations.

Rating: ***

Review: Topher Grace, if I ever lose fifty pounds--maybe seventy--we are definitely getting married. I imagine you're about 90 to 130 pounds of cuteness and I don't want to crush you. I'm twenty-one, and sometimes I get mistaken for a high schooler; if you weren't famous, you would have the same problem. You're a talented boy-man, and together I think we'd have really youthful looking children. Enough about our future! Let's talk about In Good Company, a little movie about what happens when your business gets taken over, you're replaced by someone half your age, and your new boss falls for your daughter. First of all, this title should have been tossed out somewhere along the way. No one that I mentioned it to knew what I was talking about until I explained who was in it. They were familiar with the film but could not readily identify it with its title: a bad sign. Secondly, at just under two hours, this movie is too long. This is a small dose kind of film: a ninety minute story for sure. Dennis Quaid and Topher Grace are extremely likable guys. Scarlett Johansson, who certainly has her share of fans, just doesn't have the same air of easy friendliness in my opinion. The best way I can put it is this: It seems like Dennis or Topher would laugh at your jokes more than Scarlett would. They'd say hello in the hallway, and she might not. Anyway, I wasn't fond of her in this film. I think her personality worked fabulously in Lost in Translation, and she was lovely in that but I was bored by her in this. The movie had some good laughs (thanks to Topher, my future lovah), and I was even a little touched by the ten minutes proceeding the last two minutes, but overall I think I could have waited for DVD.

Rating: **3/4

Review: I like the original Meet the Parents a lot, which is probably why the sequel left me feeling a little torn. It has funny moments, sure, but it doesn't have the same spirit of the first film. Robert De Niro and Blythe Danner were good foils for Ben Stiller. They were intimidating and difficult to impress when he was obviously desperate to do just that. They had minor bits of quirkiness and oddity, but their restraint balanced them. In the sequel, Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand show no such restraint. They are pure quirk, which to many people will make them purely hilarious. It's a matter of opinion, but I've always preferred verbal comedy to physical humor. While Meet the Parents has its fair share of the latter, I feel that the jokes are sharper and more fresh.

Rating: *

Review: What is wrong with this movie? There's only one way to explain. That's right. A numbered list.

1.) It gave me Troy flashbacks, what with all the fighting and lack of funny characters. I think that's what gets me the most. What the hell is the point of life if you're not funny or you don't know anyone who is?
2.) Three hours? No movie should ever be this long.
3.) Take everything I love about Colin Farrell--his barely understandable Irish accent, his charm, his cute hair--and throw it away. Let's make him bland with big doe eyes. My Colin isn't some pretty boy; he's a man! A rogue! A brunette! I won't accept anything else.
4.) Everyone says this, but I'm bringing it up again. They aged Angelina Jolie, like, ten minutes or so over thirty years. It was the worst supposed makeup job I've ever seen. Worst of all, she'd sometimes whine about looking old. "Your father loved me when I looked twenty-six, but now that I look twenty-six and ten minutes, he's turned to younger women! Twenty-five year olds!"
5.) There were a few scenes where Angelina seemed to be saying, "How 'bout another Oscar, huh? The other one's getting lonely." She was totally hamming it up big time, and it was not pretty.
6.) Gay, straight, whatever. I don't care, but none of the romances seemed to ring true. Alexander had more sexual chemistry with his mom than anyone.
7.) The mind-numbing boredom.

The last three will be good things because I'm an optimist sometimes.
8.) Colin Farrell is my boyfriend, and he did what he could with the script. I could tell.
9.) It wasn't four hours.
10.) I liked the scene in which Alexander tames a wild horse. He was like Alexander the Horse Whisperer. That's a favorite film cliche of mine.

Rating: ****

Review: I love this movie. The first time I saw it, I was slightly disturbed because I didn't find it to be as much a comedy as a family drama--with superheroes. The second time I tried to lighten up a little, and I just enjoyed it. I especially enjoyed the beautiful voice of Jason Lee and a minor Mallrats shoutout early on in the film. Lately, and by lately I mean for the past year, I've found super heroes to be really interesting as possible comedic characters. I've been wanting to write something using them. Sadly, The Incredibles really beat me to the punch. I was this close to my own smash hit super hero concept, but now I'll have to hold off.

Anyway, if you haven't seen it... go.

Rating: ***

Review: After feeling the seeds of disappointment after my first viewing, I had to watch this movie again. I needed to give it a second chance. Right after my second viewing, I felt a wave of relief. It was funnier than I remembered. And now, several days later, I have forgotten why. This movie seems to give me memory loss. All I remember are the failed attempts to recapture the warmth and humor of the first film. This time around, Bridget’s embarrassments seem much less realistic, like a series of bad dreams. Television: A fireman’s pole is replaced by a skydiving screw-up. Public embarrassment: A not-turned-on microphone incident becomes a loud gaffe that isolates her in front of Mark’s law partners. Daniel Cleaver: A naked American is instead a prostitute. I’ve seen this all before, and I liked it better the first time.

Meanwhile, I just love hearing cute British men say my name over and over. Colin Firth is still adorable, and Hugh Grant is still funny. Their fight scene should probably go on my list of "been there, done that," but I still enjoyed it. "I Believe In a Thing Called Love" amuses me more than “It’s Raining Men,” even though it (along with “Crazy In Love”) does not fit in with the music motif created in the first film and carried over into The Edge of Reason.

The change in the Rebecca character (Bridget’s competition for Mark’s attention) from the book version neatens up the plot, but that’s not always a good thing. This movie could have used some actual conflict instead of repeatedly placing Bridget in embarrassing situations. (Her hairdresser makes her look crazy, she falls off a ledge, she puts blush all over her face, she pretends she can ski when she can’t, etc.) Overall, I like this movie and the characters, but I don’t love it the way I do the first one.

I'm really liking my gmail account. It's a nice e-mail system. It really is. I have five invitations if anyone out there would like one and hasn't found one yet.

Update: I have one left!

Rating: **1/4

Review: I liked this movie on the basis of its sports story. I love watching tennis and was excited that it was getting its own movie. I was happy with Paul Bettany as a tennis pro on the verge of retirement who makes an unexpected comeback at Wimbledon. That was a story I could get behind and enjoy in the way I'm sure other people do baseball movies. (You couldn't pay me to watch a baseball movie, but that's neither here not there.) The trouble with the movie is the love story. I don't have as much faith in love at first sight as the film requires a person to have. Paul Bettany knew Kirsten Dunst for all of twenty minutes when she changed his life forever. Please. I like the tennis but the love story was lame.

Rating: ***

Review: There's really only enough room in my heart for one movie about an understated, funny, misfit kid who wears dorky glasses. That, my friends, is a little film called Rushmore. I suppose that it's possible that the movie Napoleon Dynamite and I might have the occasional affair when Rushmore's out of town or something.

This is a quirky little movie, but it knows it's quirky. Everything in the film is built on this knowledge. A lot of it is funny, but I didn't laugh as much as I expected to laugh. I didn't want to run right back out and see it again. I do recommend it because there's a lot of good stuff here, but Rushmore it's not.

Rating: **

Review: For a comedy, this movie starts off on a down note. A guy dies, and his friends reunite for the funeral. A million laughs! Then they decide to take the trip the dead friend always wanted them to take. They leave their adult lives behind for a little while to go on an 80s-esque treasure hunt. Of course, everything goes wrong. They lose their boat, food, and clothing. There's a bear, which leads to an absolutely terrible moment for cinema in which Seth Green eats raw meat. There are crazy, shot-gun toting, weed growing hicks that want them dead. Most of this is not very funny, especially the annoying hicks. On the bright side, Matthew Lillard is really likable and the film has surprising heart.

Rating: **

Review: I gave up on video games a few years ago when I got stuck inside some sort of magical tree playing The Legend of Zelda on Nintendo 64. I longed for the simplicity of the original game, but I realized there was no going back. I tell you this because you might want to know that I've never played Resident Evil. I haven't watched anyone else play it either. I've seen parts of the first movie, but it was a bootleg playing in a creepy blood donation clinic, and I wasn't really focusing. That's another story for another day. The point is that I came into Resident Evil: Apocalypse with very little information.

I've found a new appreciation for zombie movies since watching Night of the Living Dead. I don't know if it was intentional, but I felt there were a few shoutouts to that film. In both movies, people steal abandoned trucks! Both movies have children turning into zombies! In both movies, people get attacked by zombies! Okay, that's all that comes to mind. This is one of my most roundabout reviews ever. I'm just not going to tell you what I thought about this movie. I'm going to tell you about my history with video games and compare this to another movie, and then I'm stopping.

P.S. You probably don't want to see this movie, unless you love the game or zombies. Plot? Dialogue? Character? Screw all of those things! We've got some zombies to fight.

Rating: **

Review: I love the original movie. A lot of people do. Did this new prequel ever have a chance of matching its predecessor? Not really. Therefore, it was no great shock to me that people booed when the credits rolled. For my part, I threw out a few yays to make the movie feel a little better. It didn't really deserve all that booing. It still gave us some disgusting images, some Satan action, and at least a little suspense. Unlike a few other horror movies that have come out in the past year or so, the foe is real and inhuman. There's nothing more disappointing for me than to see a movie about ghosts or monsters and to find out they aren't real. Rest assured, Satan is in Exorcist: The Beginning.

The movie has its problems. CGI hyenas are totally lame. The demonic possession could have used an update. The actors had crazy accents. On a side note, the movie made me realize that green eyes are scary. I hope mine don't look that freakish. When I watched S.W.A.T. last summer, I looked up at Colin Farrell and thought, You can only trust people with brown eyes. This was a strange thought coming from a green-eyed person with mainly blue-eyed friends. It's just one of those weird ideas that comes to mind. Anyway, I don't really recommend The Beginning exactly, but there are some good scares here and there.

Rating: ***1/2

Review: This isn't exactly my favorite genre of film, but I really enjoyed it. I think it's because I get attached to characters who have dreams, especially unrealistic ones. The less likely the dream, the sadder I get. This inevitably leads to a feeling of protectiveness for the character. In Collateral, this would be Jamie Foxx's cab driver Max. Sure, he's been driving for years, but he hasn't given up on owning a limousine service with island-themed limousines. When he talks about it, you can see the hope and pride he feels when he thinks about it. I really appreciate that in a character.

This movie is also an interesting little study in dark comedy. There were many times when people laughed at the violence being portrayed. I imagined them thinking, That guy got shot in the head! That is hilarious! Tom Cruise, you're such a kidder. There were seriously tons of moments that shouldn't necessarily have been funny but were, judging by the laughter. Situations that would be horrific in reality were suddenly comical, and I was left feeling curious. I mean, I laugh at Quentin Tarantino movies, but the laughs didn't feel as warranted here. Eh, it was still a really good movie. I liked it much more than I ever expected I would.