VH Corner

In the Gobi Desert, one of the nomad’s camels gives birth to a rare white camel, which she rejects as soon as it is born.

I needed to see this movie because I love funny looking animals like camels and check out the face on the poster! You can’t pass that by.

What I think happened was some documentarians set out to document Mongols in the Gobi desert–to show how they live and how they do incorporate some modern devices like radios and televisions. Then the camel story came about so they decided to make a movie about that story. I’m glad they did since the rest of it might be interesting for them, but not so much for a movie.

The story picks up when all the camels are giving birth to colts. A new mother has the very last colt born. She has a difficult birth and then her colt comes out white when she is brown. She immediately rejects it. It’s so very sad. The camel does actually weep.

The rest of the movie shows how the nomads try to get the mother to love her colt so it can be fed from her and bond to her, like all the other mothers and colts. They also seek outside help for the situation.

The movie was quite slow, but it fit the movie. It is pretty easy to do something else while watching it though. It is subtitled, but there isn’t a lot of talking in the movie. We were really paying attention when the camels were on the screen and not so much when it was showing the tribe of people. They weren’t boring, but not as entertaining as the camels.

Finally, the camels are hilarious in general. They make really funny noises and faces all the time.

Rating: B+

Holly Hunter is mother to a young girl who starts using drugs, having sex, and doing all sorts of other bad things cuz of her new cool, bad friend. The friend was also the co-screenwriter of this movie, at the ripe old age of 14.

I expected this movie to be as horrifying to watch as Kids was. It is nowhere near as bad. I’m not sure what one would think of this movie if they had never seen Kids. It might scare parents about what thirteen-year-old girls can be like.

Continue reading “Thirteen”

Val Kilmer and William H. Macy are detectives assigned to rescuing the president’s kidnapped daughter. In the process, they find out about another crime happening within the White House.

The trailer must have been misleading to cause me to think William H. Macy was in the movie very much. I think he was in one or two scenes total. This movie didn’t explain too much that was going on. I never heard them say it was the president’s daughter and you never saw the president.

I thought this movie was horrible, stupid and boring. We stopped ourselves from fast-forwarding through it or stopping it, but after watching it all, that wouldn’t have been a bad thing. I read some critic reviews talking about the sharp dialogue. I must have been deaf to miss it all, but nothing stood out to me. I am blaming the script and director (same guy) for making Val Kilmer into a horrible actor. I’ve seen him act before. I know he can do it, but he sounded like a guy up in his first role in a movie. He was saying his lines with no emotion whatsoever.

You could make this movie into a drinking game of anyone that hung out with Val Kilmer’s character too long will end up dead. Then you drink. We tried to warn some people in the movie, but they didn’t listen.

There is a supposed twist of the other crime happening, but you can guess what it is. When the movie is trying to make you think everything is done and tied up, it is only half over, so you know something else has to happen to make it continue or it might be only an hour long movie. Just another reason why the movie is lame.

Rating: F

Documentary following emporer penguins in Antarctica as they get together to mate and raise their offspring.

A couple of FRANCH guys filmed the penguins while they came up out of the water at the end of their summer to make the march to the breeding ground, find a mate, and then try to successfully raise a new baby penguin in freezing Antarctica.

Since it is a documentary, there is some sadness when some eggs, penguins and babies don’t make it. The documentary doesn’t dwell on it so it isn’t too bad. Also, you do have the extreme overwhelming cuteness of the baby penguins. They make the entire movie.

At one point, they are talking about male and female penguins and I can’t tell which is which. When they are talking about them, they are telling a story about there being more female than male penguins so the females fight over the males. I was guessing all the fighting penguins were females, but when they weren’t fighting, I still have no idea who was male and who was female. The penguins fighting were hilarious since they just beat each other with their flippers. Too funny!

Rating: A

Four people, two couples and a lot of intermingle over the course of four years. Starring Jude Law, Clive Owen, Natalie Portman, and Julia Roberts.

Julia Roberts bugs me. She didn’t used to, but she has bugged very much in the past few years. Her character was supposed to be played by Cate Blanchett, but she got pregnant or something like that and dropped out. Julia Roberts took her place. I really wish it was Cate Blanchett instead.

Beyond not liking her, I did like this movie. After it was over, I found out that it was a play. That made sense since there was so much talking. Everyone was always talking with one another and trying to analyze what was going on with each other. There was also a lot of talk about sex in the movie, yet we never got to see any sex. I think the audience got screwed in that end of the deal.

Months and years passed with each scene, and I liked the way time passing would be introduced. There werent titles on the screen saying “six months” or “a year later”. It would be in the conversation about how someone hadn’t seen someone else in six months, or something happened a year ago (and that was the last scene that was shown). I’m guessing that was also left over from the play since there was no screen to show how time passed.

I also learned that Clive Owen was in the original play version and he played the character that Jude Law played. I’m sure he did a fabulous job of being the younger slimy guy, but they thought he was too old for that role and needed to play the older doctor guy. I think Clive and Jude look around the same age to me, but what do I know. According to IMDB, Clive is 8 years older. Speaking of Jude Law’s character, after watching Alfie and then this movie, I’m seeing a trend between him cheating and his real life. Bad Jude Law!

As a side note, Jer started watching this movie and declared it boring a third of the way through. He got up and played Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas instead. He missed Natalie Portman’s stripping scene.

Rating: B+

Katie Holmes is the girl that couldn’t wait to get out of the suburbs. She is determined to make Thanksgiving dinner for her estranged parents in her tiny Lower East Side New York apartment where everything that could go wrong does.

Katie Holmes is good in this movie. She doesn’t make that weird ass grin that she has. She’s pretty depressed most of the movie or just fed up with everything that’s going wrong and the fact that her family is coming to visit.

She’s making them Thanksgiving dinner in her very tiny, sleazy apartment. Her family live out somewhere else in either upper New York or New Jersey or someplace where they have to drive a few hours to get there. None of them seem to want to come. Well, her dad and her brother do, but her mom or sister would rather forget she ever existed.

We learn why the dinner is taking place and what the issues are between Katie Holmes and her mom. It comes out slowly in the movie, so I don’t want to give the entire plot away. I didn’t really buy that Katie Holmes’ character was so awful growing up that her family made her out to be since she doesn’t seem so awful now. Either she did a lot of growing up or she just doesn’t have the range as an actress to show someone that has a hint of meanness in her. Her boyfriend in the movie is awesome. He’s just very cute with her and wanting everything to be perfect for her parents because he knows how much it means to her.

Finally, Jack from Will & Grace is in the movie as a creepy guy with a funny Pug dog.

Rating: B-

I remember watching this movie when I was younger and couldn’t wait to see this latest version. Kat and I went from Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants straight into this movie. What a difference in genre!

For those who didn’t see the original or don’t know the concept – Paul “Wrecking” Crewe (Adam Sandler) was a big time quarter back who got thrown out of the NFL because he threw a game for money. A couple years later when his fame has run out he gets into a arguement with his girlfriend (Courtney Cox with bigger boobs) whom he locks in a closet and steals her fancy car. Being quite intoxicated he runs from police and then crashes the fancy car into many of the police cars. He gets thrown in jail – where the Warden “pulled strings” to get him placed in his prison. Warden basically forces him to put together a team to “test” the Warden’s team of Guards. So Crewe puts together a group of guys with the help of Caretaker (Chris Rock) and a former Coach (Burt Reynolds.) He proves himself to the other inmates and may have a chance against the guards, if the Warden will stay out of the way.

I have never seen so many beautiful arms in my life. These guys TOWERED over Sandler. One guy, Dalip Singh, is 7″ and 400 pounds. It was great to see Sandler reach up and grab him by the face mask and tell him what for. The movie was great! It barely strayed from the original. Kat and I went from crying in SoTP to crying from laughing in this movie.

LamW – 0

Tommy Lee Jones comes back to New Mexico to make amends with his daughter, Cate Blanchett. Then her daughter, Evan Rachel Wood is kidnapped in this 19th-century drama directed by Ron Howard.

The acting in this movie was really good. The story wasn’t all that interesting. It could have been, but it just dragged in places and seemed disjointed in others. It was overall very weird.

It might have been the direction. It seemed like the characters were going in various directions and didn’t seem like the actors were able to stay in their characters in various scenes. It didn’t seem like it was an actor problem, but more of a directing one.

Rating: C+

Topher Grace plays the 26-year-old boss to Dennis Quaid’s 51-year-old character. He also has a thing for Quaid’s daughter Scarlett Johansson.

I highly recommend this movie. Dennis Quaid and Topher Grace are great in it. Scarlett Johansson didn’t have much to do in the movie so it could have been another girl that he was enamoured with in it, but it was fine that she was there.

Dennis Quaid has a great sense of humor and comic timing. There were some lines in the movie that just could have come out as just another line to move the story along, but he said them in such a dry manner, that they were hilarious. He’s really the entire movie. You can see why Topher Grace’s character looks up to him so much.

I think it’s good that goofy-named boy is leaving That 70′s Show. He needs to keep doing movies like these because they are good ones.

Rating: A