From Steven Soderbergh going back to his roots of sex, lies and videotape with this “movie about movies for people who love movies”. Stars Julia Roberts and David Duchovny.
Shot on digital film for most of the movie, it ends up being more distracting than being put to good use. I’ve seen other movies shot on digital film and it works fine because I am not paying attention to how different it looks compared to conventional film. I really couldn’t get past it in this movie.
It starts by listing all the people, their occupation, and if they were invited to a party by a guy who ends up being David Duchovny’s character. I am confused right away since I thought that I read that Julia Robert’s character was an actress, but she seems to be a reporter. I don’t get it until about 20 minutes into the movie that she is acting as a reporter for a film with Blair Underwood. It goes back and forth between their “film” and them going on in between takes. The main thing is it is all boring. Why do we have to watch the film within a film when it isn’t even exciting? Once you figure out what is going on, you wonder why your time is wasted watching it.
Catherine Keener is a successful HR director who really hates her job and her life. She is having an affair. She berates her husband (David Hyde Pierce) and left him a note that she is leaving him, but hides the note under his newspaper so he doesn’t see it until after she leaves. Nice! She meets up with her massage therapist sister and berates her for her gift-giving skills. She actually complains about the gifts her sister gives her for her birthday since they aren’t “special” enough. She does convince her sister to actually dress up for the big party at the end of the night.
There is a bit of a shocker ending, but it only made me laugh while all the characters were super sad. I didn’t really care since I was still annoyed about watching the film within a film thing and having to wait until the very end of the movie to see David Duchovny. I actually tried to fall asleep while watching it since I was too lazy to just turn it off, but unfortunately stayed awake the entire time. When David Duchovny does show up, that’s when I laughed.
Rating: D
Tracks the rise and fall of Factory Records in Manchester, England from the late 70's until the 90's.
I love bands from Manchester, like New Order, Stone Roses, Charlatans, and Happy Mondays. I wanted to see this movie since I love the city and it was going to talk about the guy that started the record label for New Order and Happy Mondays. He also started the Hacienda club, which I read about in Rolling Stone in 1989. It's where the rave culture started before it got over to the U.S. It wasn't dumb kids wearing pacifiers and listening to techno though. They still did lots of drugs over there, but they listened to better music. I wanted to go over there and check it out, but I was only a freshman in high school.
This movie started out really good with the future record label guy seeing the Sex Pistols for one of their first shows. It interspersed real footage with the movie so that was kinda neat. It showed him discovering Joy Division and signing them to his record label that he was starting. It dealt with the death of Ian Curtis and how that ended Joy Division. Then the movie just shifted. After that New Order was pretty much ignored. A little mention was made here and there. I wanted to hear more about them, but nope!
Then the rest of the movie was pretty much devoted to the Happy Mondays. I enjoyed them, but they weren't the best group of the bunch from that city. Not according to the record label guy. He loved them. It was funny how the band kept screwing him over since he loved them so, but they were a bunch of drugged out fuck-ups. I was surprised he made no mention how they were never able to tour the U.S. since they couldn't get their visas due to their drug problems. I know this because I had tickets to see them once and it was canceled due to that reason. Nothing about that at all.
The movie did talk about the Hacidenda a good amount. I wished that more of the movie spent time on the other Manchester bands, or at the very least New Order that were also on the label rather than spending so much time on Happy Mondays. I was a tad disappointed by that. Also, the movie spent too much time on record label guy's life, even though he kept mentioning the movie wasn't about him, but his love of Manchester. That was hard to tell when it was him, him, and Happy Mondays.
Rating: C+
Biopic of Bob Crane from Hogan's Hereos starring Greg Kinnear and his mysterious death that still remains unsolved.
Greg Kinnear played Bob Crane as very skittish kind of man. I really don't know anything about Bob Crane so he might have been like that, but it was a tad unnerving to watch. Crane was way into sex–taking pictures of it, filming it–but hid it for a long time. Then he just didn't care anymore. The more people were offended by it, the more he kept saying he was normal. He had a friend named John Carpenter (not the director guy) who was beyond creepy.
This movie was just creepy. I was wondering if they were going to do more with the whole murder and not knowing who killed him and whatnot, but it just had a little voiceover at the end. This was an odd movie. It wasn't horrible, but I don't think I'd recommend it to anyone.
Rating: C-
Michael Moore directs this documentary about guns and violence in the U.S.
It was better and different than what I expected. I thought it was going to be a gung-ho rant against guns and stuff, but it wasn't. I didn't know Michael Moore was a member of the NRA.
I would recommend this movie. It is interesting when he compares the U.S. to Canada and especially people's perception of the country on the other side of the border (both U.S. and Canadians). His interview with Charleton Heston is scary.
He also uses the song Take the Skinheads Bowling, but it isn't the Camper Van Beethoven version. Jer had never heard this song when I started singing along to it. Now we have it and he has heard what a lovely song it is thanks to this movie.
Rating: A
David Cronenberg makes a crazy movie. What you say? I know it's a shocker. This time a schizophrenic played by Ralph Fiennes is released from the hospital, but maybe he isn't quite ready.
Yes, I actually watched a movie with "spider" in the title, but there were no spiders shown in the movie. Thank god! It was Ralph Fiennes character's nickname when he was a boy since he was fascinated by spider webs. Weirdo.
If you have watched any of David Cronenberg's other movies (Naked Lunch, Crash, eXistenZ, Dead Ringers) then you know he is seriously messed up and his movies are quite disturbing to watch. This one wasn't really filmed like those movies. It was different.
Ralph Fiennes was awesome as a loony man. He mumbles through most of the movie. There are times when the movie hardly had any dialogue but I wasn't ever distracted. I was always thinking about what his character must be going through at that point trying to put together what happened to him when he was young and sent to the asylum. That part is quite messed up but not in the messed up way that Cronenberg's other movies are in that there is no weird bug thing spewing stuff. That's always lovely.
Rating: A-
Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson in the movie version of the old tv show.
I see I was super clever in my description of the movie when this came out. This started on cable one day and we decided to watch it.
It was more amusing than I thought it was going to be. It wasn't overly funny, but I think there was one laugh out loud moment. I would recommend watching it on cable. And it has Gary Cole in it! He's the stupid boss in Office Space so he's the coolest. He is super sleazy and slimy in this movie. That is funny.
We're going to need you to come in on Saturday and Sunday. Yeah….
Rating: B-
More killing of vampires and now reavers by Wesley Snipes.
This was viewed after a Friday night of hanging with Marci. We went out drinking and then came back to the house and continued to drink. This movie was very much a blur for me since I was very drunk.
Some killing and reaver things were involved. I tried to do an impression of their lips splitting open, but I was not very successful. I fell asleep towards the end due to too much alcohol. We quit watching it so I could go to bed because I'm exciting.
We watched the rest the next day and I was quite confused about what was going on but I didn't really care. This movie didn't have a cool New Order song in it so I was disappointed about that.
Rating: C
Girl's mother murders her love and gets sent to prison. Girl gets shuffled from foster home to foster home.
I didn't like the book that much. I heard that tons of changes were made from the book so I had a feeling that I might like the movie more. I did like the movie better than the book. It showed how evil and mean Michelle Pfeiffer was but it should have shown more how pathetic Rene Zellweger's character turned out to be after meeting Michelle Pfeiffer.
Other changes were the first guy was about 10 years younger than he was in the book and I guess they decided to cut out the sex scenes. The guy from Almost Famous was ugly in the book so I guess that's why they made him that way in the movie too. I could have sworn she ended up in Germany or somewhere at the end of the book, but I could be making it up or mixing it up with something else.
Overall, I thought the book became too boring and had no point and I think the movie did a better job of having a point. It was a lot more succint.
Rating: B
Three women in different times are all affected by Virginia Woolf's works. Starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore and the one you don't recognize in the movie poster is Nicole Kidman.
Wow this movie is slow. I kept reading about how hard it was to make this book into a movie. They kept saying it couldn't be done. Well, I can see how it was difficult, but I think the screenwriter did the best he could do with the material. I really liked the way it went from one time period to another because it bounced from Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) in 1923 to Laura Brown (Julianne Moore) in 1951 to Clarissa Vaughn (Meryl Streep) in 19?? seemed like the 80's but I missed that date flash on the screen.
It was interesting how they were all tied in together with Virginia writing Mrs. Dalloway, Laura Brown reading it and Clarissa almost living like Mrs. Dalloway. There were other ways they all tied together too, but I don't want to spoil it for those that might see it. I think it would have been better to read than to watch though because some parts just dragged and dragged and I fell asleep multiple times.
Rating: B-
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Director: George Clooney
George Clooney directs a script by Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation). It’s an adaptation of a memoir about the guy who hosted the Gong Show saying he used to be a CIA hitman.
Chuck Barris is the guy who hosted the Gong Show. He also created The Dating Game and the Newlywed Game. He is played by Sam Rockwell, who was Guy in Galaxy Quest. He does a great job being Chuck Barris. I only know him from those bad bad tuxes he would wear on the Gong Show and when he does those scenes, he could be him. Of course that is only a brief moment of the movie.
It starts out pretty disjointed. I actually forgot it was written by Charlie Kaufman, but for him it was pretty straightforward movie. I think George Clooney did a good job directing. There were some cool ways he did scenes, like once Barris was talking on the phone with a tv executive guy. Instead of the screen splitting to show him on one side and the tv guy on the other, the room that Barris was in kinda faded away so you could only see his face. In the background was the tv guy at his desk. Drew Barrymore, who was his girlfriend, was dancing around while he made this phone call and she goes dancing through the tv guy’s office in the middle of the phone call. I’m sure I described that all stupid, but it was pretty neat to watch.
Back to being disjointed, like I am being in this review. 
It started out that way and then finally got a rhythm when it showed him being recruited to be an independent consultant to the CIA. The movie never really tells you if that was true or not. It could have all been in his mind or real. Don’t know!
After the slow start, it was entertaining movie. Great cameos that I don’t want to spoil. Julia Roberts plays an assassin contact and her role is very funny. My favorite part though was when the FCC guy tells the Dating Game people about keeping their lewd comments to themselves or be fined. Apparently the Dating Game was too tacky to air and they had to reshoot the first few episodes before they aired. The FCC guy is way over the top and hilarious. That scene needs to be seen.
Grade: B
