VH Corner

Global warming decides to destroy Earth while making Donnie Darko star in a disaster flick. Bad global warming!

I kept telling Donnie Darko to travel back in time and fix stuff or maybe the tornadoes in L.A. were just looking for him. The movies were a bit similar: end of the world, tornados or cyclones in the clouds leading up to airplanes about to crash, Jake Gyllenhaal. hmmmm…..

Continue reading “The Day After Tomorrow”

Earth is about to be destroyed due to an intergalatic highway coming through so Arthur Dent is taken on an adventure through the galaxy by Ford Prefect.

I just recently read the first book after many years of starting to read someone else’s copy of it and then not being able to finish it before I am shooed out of their house or something similar. Loved the book and the humor. I went into the movie with trepidation.

It was a fun, little movie and I think it had most of the parts of the first book in there and some of the second book too, which I haven’t read yet. I laughed out loud at parts of the book, but watching them in the movie, I wasn’t laughing. I could have been that it was very familiar to me and I knew what they were going to say. I think that was it because some parts that they changed slightly but kept the same tone made me laugh. Also, when they had parts that were in later books that I hadn’t read yet, I was laughing. I think people that have never read the books will enjoy it for that reason.

I didn’t buy Trillian though. I like Zooey Deschanel, but she just didn’t get into this character. Her voice grated on me the entire movie and she had no chemistry with the lead actor. I can believe him fawning over here, but didn’t buy her seeing anything in him. Mos Def as Ford Prefect was awesome and Alan Rickman as Marvin was great. Sam Rockwell as Zaphod was also really good. I thought all the other casting was good except for Zooey. She just wasn’t good for the role.

Grade: B

A bitter recent divorcee befriends her ex-husband’s friend and tries to deal with her four almost grown daughters.

This movie made me want to drink. It was not driving me to drink due to it being awful. Joan Allen and Kevin Costner’s characters are high-functioning alcoholics and were always drinking something. I just wanted to join them in their daily routines while drinking, but alas I was not at a beer theater and no alcoholic beverage was to be had.

Joan Allen was great. You could feel sorry for her one moment and then want to hit her like some of her daughters did the next. Then you could really sympathize with what she was going through but also wanted her to get over herself. Kevin Costner is very cute and his character is the most patient man to deal with her character while she is going over her husband leaving her and raising four daughters.

Speaking of her daughters, they are all great in the little bit you were able to see them, but I had wished more time was spent with them. Actually, the entire movie would be a great premise for a television drama. There was one subplot involving the Felicity girl getting too stressed out over everything, but she seemed to get better by laughing. That was not believable. Beyond that moment though, everything else was believable and had a nice pace to it.

It was a nice, sweet movie with a not-so-happy ending, but still a good one.

Grade: B+

Robots are personal assistants and one is accused of murder. Robots are taking over!

Will Smith plays the typical Will Smith character, which is the one he played in Men in Black. He’s the same guy, except this guy doesn’t trust robots. In the world he lives in, everyone has some kind of personal assistant robot, but he doesn’t trust them. He thinks they are going to take over. He’s super conflicted since he has robot parts in his arm and they are keeping him alive or functioning or something like that. I can’t really remember, but he’s very conflicted about robot parts in him and hating robots. I got that point.

The guy who created all these fabulous robots is found dead. It looks like suicide by jumping from his high office window, but Will Smith knows it was a robot. Now he has to find out why. His boss tells him to stop with the crazy robot murdering nonsense, but Will Smith knows best. He will find out the truth while dressing like vintage-2004 in this futuristic time. He has “old” sneakers and doesn’t like the cars that drive themselves. He needs to drive them manually, which is considered insane (!) by everyone else.

I love futuristic movies, like Minority Report, when they actual have futuristic stuff that isn’t generic. The futuristic stuff in this movie is pretty generic, so the people that worked on it didn’t have big imaginations. Beyond that and the generic characters in the movie, it was pretty entertaining. It was going along well, until the very end when we find out what really happened and it turns all sappy. The moral of the story is humans are dumb and destroying themselves. Don’t we already know that?

Grade: C+

Chris Nolan, who directed Memento, is taking charge of this interpretation of how Christian Bale became Batman.

We saw this on Jeremy’s birthday in Sioux Falls, SD. Even though it was the day after it opened, that town isn’t very big so the theater wasn’t very crowded. We walked in 10 min. late and saw the movie just as it was beginning. Good timing!

I really enjoyed this movie. I liked seeing how he decided to become batman than the rushed feeling that the previous movies gave us where it just jumped right into him fighting crime. There was a bit more going on here.

I loved the sense of humor in the movie where he was rude to the rich snobs and the newspaper headlines about him being a drunken millionaire. It was great. Michael Caine as Alfred was perfect. I always liked Alfred best, no matter what version of the movie I am watching so it was good to continue liking him.

Morgan Freeman was also very cool in his role of Q from James Bond. Oh wait, wrong movie but that’s pretty much what he did–give Batman toys.

It was weird seeing Gary Oldman playing Commissioner Gordan except he’s not a Commissioner yet. He was just a detective when we see him in the movie and he’s also pretty timid. It’s very different role than what I am used to see him play. He’s usually a bad guy or just psycho so it was nice to see him playing something different and pulling it off.

The bad guys in the movie aren’t the major part of the movie, but they are there. I don’t want to give too much away with the bad guys but they are cool.

Finally, if anyone is a fan of the band James, the lead singer Tim Booth is in the movie in a non-speaking role. He’s in the courtroom at the beginning of the movie. I recognized the guy but couldn’t place him. Then there is a long close-up on his face later on when he’s about to attack a kid. That’s when I recognized him. Afterwards, I had to watch all the credits until I saw his name to see if I was right and I was! It was so odd that he was in the movie too. James is Jer’s favorite band so I think that was his birthday present for him.

P.S. Katie Holmes is in the movie too and she was mildly annoying in it. He needs to get a better girlfriend.

Rating: A

Don Cheadle is a psychologist at a mental health center for young adults. Joseph Gordan-Levitt is the lead angry guy.

I had a feeling that this movie would have a good premise, but be too predictable. I actually really enjoyed it. Don Cheadle, Joseph Gordan-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel were all excellent.

Almost everyone in the center is very, very angry and you get to learn why each one has problems. Some get better and some don’t. It isn’t happy endings for a lot of people. The main guy thinks he doesn’t need to be there and you get to watch him resist it while others accept that they need to be there. I liked that you were able to see Cheadle’s character get frustrated and wonder if he’s actually making a difference in these kids’ lives.

The ending you could see coming a bit, but I’m glad it ended that way or it would make the movie seem like it had no point.

Rating: B+