Leap Year

My girlfriend asked me to watch this with her. I might’ve said no, if not for Amy Adams. This is pretty much your run of the mill, “opposites attract” kind of romantic comedy. Y’know those romantic comedies that are neither romantic nor very funny. I admit I chuckled a couple of times and actually laughed once, but overall I was very stoic throughout the entire running time.


I would love to critique the film making or directing, but it is entirely phoned in. No wait! “Leap Year” is packed with green screen shots of sky or hills that are some of the worst green screen shots I’ve seen in a long time. Those shots were the funniest thing in the film.

As for acting, it’s rom-com acting. Amy Adams plays that same rom-com female character. She is a strong, in control, successful woman with a mediocre relationship and personality “quirks” that would send most men running. Matthew Goode plays that same rom-com male character. He’s easy going and slightly disheveled in a way that is supposed to be sexy and is anti-relationships. Naturally, these two can’t stand each other. So, they spend a lot of time together and through a series of mishaps come to find that they love each other, in spite of each other. (Personally, I’d rather watch two people who are good for each other fall in love, but I’m not a chick so what do I know about romance?)

Between this and “Watchmen,” I’m still waiting for Matthew Goode to impress me in something. I could watch Amy Adams on mute and still be happy. John Lithgow is wasted in this film as Adams’ father. (My girlfriend watched all the deleted scenes and says his role was basically cut from the movie.)

At the end of the day, if your lady likes sappy chick flicks: rent it and just shut up and watch it with her. She’ll appreciate it.

Rating: 6 out of 10 (would’ve been a 5 but for Amy Adams. She‘s an automatic booster.)

Crazy Heart

Finally got around to watching it. Last year was my absolute worst year ever for keeping up on films, especially Oscar nominees/winners. (I still haven’t seen “Hurt Locker” but that’ll be remedied soon.) Now I can check “Crazy Heart” off my list of Movies I Can’t Really Discuss And It Makes Me Feel Ashamed. After all the buzz and Academy accolades, can I say that “Crazy Heart” lives up to its hype? Kinda.


My girlfriend (who didn’t like this film) put it best when she asked me, “So this is basically ‘The Wrestler?’” And I found I couldn’t say, “No. It’s not.” Instead, I just replied, “Be quiet.”

“Crazy Heart” is just like “The Wrestler” with better music but ultimately not as good. The music really shocked me though. Most movies having anything to do with a musician have terrible, TERRIBLE songs. This movie had songs that really embodied true American old-school country. In fact, they were so country that I found it hard to believe that the super-star character Tommy Sweets would have found fame on contemporary country radio. That kind of music is not what is called country today. That was addressed briefly in the movie but I think that the film’s songwriter, Ryan Bingham, just doesn’t have a pop song with steel guitar in him.

Moving on, the cinematography is great. The southwest looks amazing. Also, I love the way the actor’s faces are shot and lit. “Crazy Heart” is definitely a movie that is nice to look at.

Every actor in this movie turns out a great performance too. Jeff Bridges is everything that the hype said. He may not turn in a performance that is high octane and super emotive, but he’s just so real. Sometimes, it’s not so much what a performance a role elicits from an actor; it’s what that performance elicits from the viewer. That, I think, is the essence of Jeff Bridges’ Bad Blake.

Maggie Gyllenhaal and Colin Farrell give great supporting performances too. They do their jobs well, but neither one bowled me over. However, Robert Duvall seemed to steal the show during his few scenes. I love Duvall. Every movie should have Robert Duvall in it. End of story.

All in all, a good show. I saw better last year. I saw worse.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Videodrome

Had a hard time sleeping last night, so I decided to watch a movie and hopefully fall asleep to it. I don’t know why, but my choice was “Videodrome.” Now, I’ve seen “Videodrome” probably a dozen times. I know what I’m getting into. And somehow, I thought that should be my lullaby. Needless to say, I didn’t fall asleep. I was, as always, hypnotized.


If you’ve never seen “Videodrome,” please, please, please rent/buy it. This is Cronenberg at his best. I’ll admit that it is not an easy movie to watch. It’s gruesome and crude and really fucking smart. I still have a hard time getting friends to watch this movie. Mostly because I don’t want to give away the whole thing when they ask, “What’s it about?” My answer to that is usually something like, “It’s about a guy who watches a pirated broadcast of a show called ‘Videodrome’ and it causes him to begin hallucinating and before too long he grows a six-inch vagina in his abdomen and people put video tapes in the vagina to brainwash him.” Only one of my friends has watched it.

Regardless, I fucking love this movie. “Videodrome” is prophecy come true. The paranoia about television and people’s lives through exposure to and on media is incredibly poignant today. And this even before the (at the time non-existent) internet, which, when factored in, makes Cronenberg’s script seem like a goddamn crystal for the new millennium.

I want to keep this review short so as to not give much of the movie away because nearly every scene is a revelation. Every word rings scarily true. Every effects shot trumps any CG magic. (Consider CGI when listening to Professor O’Blivion and you’ll get shivers at the implications.)

This is one of the great, little-seen classics. Get a hold of it, watch it, then show it to your friends and wow them with its awesomeness. LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH!

Rating: 10 out of 10 (I need to review a bad movie here soon.)

Hot Tub Time Machine

Got out and went to a movie last night. I’d been meaning to see “Hot Tub Time Machine” since before it came out, but just never seemed to get around to it. Well, it finally went to our local second-run discount theater. I figure a three dollar ticket price couldn’t hurt what already looked to be a fun flick.


My girlfriend and I had some friends over and we all wanted to see a movie. The girls were a bit indecisive and the guys were firmly in favor of “Hot Tub Time Machine.” We made a pact to go hot tubbing after the movie and it was off to the cinema.

We arrive and behind us in line were a group of 5 or 6 loud, rowdy teenagers trying to decide whether to see “Hot Tub” or “Kick Ass.” I can’t stand loud, obnoxious people in the theater, so I very firmly recommend they all see “Kick Ass.” They agree. Awesome.

A few, rather forgettable, trailers later, we’re starting the movie .

For those of you who didn’t see (and judging by the total box office, that’s plenty), this is a film about four guys who go back to the 80’s in a hot tub. It’s as retarded and awesome as that sounds. Usually, when you’re partying in a hot tub, you wake up in the future.

More specifically, it’s about three friends who are not at all where they want to be in their early 40s. Lou (Rob Corddry) is wild and self-destructive and spends a drunken night singing in his garage with the car on. This is mistaken for a suicide attempt and his friends, Adam and Nick (John Cusack and Craig Robinson), decide that they should all spend a weekend at a ski lodge where they enjoyed all their best weekends. Adam also drags along his nephew, Jacob (Clark Duke), just to get him off the computer and out of the house. The four find the ski town dilapidated and make the most of it by boozing in the room’s hot tub. One debauched montage later, they awake in 1986 during a weekend in which choices they made determined the course of their lives forever. However, they decide to make all the same choices again in order to protect the future. But they find it very hard to fuck up their lives all over again. Hilarity ensues.

Truth be told, the hilarity is in full force long before Reagan and pink spandex make an appearance. This was a movie that I went into with high expectations and got more than I bargained more. While this film didn’t receive the audience attention that “The Hangover” did, it deserves to be recognized as its near equal. The characters are so honest and relatable that guys will laugh at how much they have in common with them (especially the way that they justify and attempt to understand time travel through movies they’ve seen). The ladies can laugh at how much these guys are like their boyfriends/husbands.

I can’t recommend this movie enough. Every actor is so spot on. The supporting cast really shines at making it feel not so much that you’re in the 80s but in an 80s movie. Chevy Chase is odd but fun to watch. Crispin Glover steals every second of screen time he is afforded. I cannot wait for this to hit Blu-Ray.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Bigger Than Life

Today’s movie, which I picked up a the library, was Nicholas Ray’s “Bigger Than Life.” I should probably be reviewing “Prince of Persia” or “Sex and the City 2” to get people to notice the new site but that’s not what I watched.


I’ve been on a Criterion Collection kick lately. I tend to watch movies in short, obsessive spurts of some connecting property. While the Criterion Collection releases a wide variety of films and don‘t really connect outside of the brand name, that has been my obsession lately. A few weeks ago it was Anthony Mann westerns. Who knows what I’ll glom onto next.

Let me get back to “Bigger Than Life.” Wow. This is not exactly a well known movie outside of cinephile circuits, but it should be. Produced by and starring James Mason, I was blown away by the power of the performances, the lighting, the direction. If you love “American Beauty” or know someone who does, this is a film that destroys the nuclear, suburban family with much greater ferocity.

“Bigger Than Life” was released in 1956 during the height of the very idealism it works so hard to tear down. This caused considerable controversy at the time and audiences stayed away. The story revolves around a school teacher, Ed Avery, who must begin taking an experimental new drug to ward off a rare arterial inflammation that will claim his life. That drug is cortisone. Soon, Avery is taking more than the recommended dosage to keep the pain away and a descent in to addiction and madness begins.

The use of cortisone did bother me a little. Probably because today we use cortisone in various forms like it’s nothing. Side effects do exist with prolonged use but it still seemed like an odd choice of drug. Regardless, James Mason pulls off a performance of a life-time. In an age of film when the acting style seems to me to be a little over the top (maybe due to the relative proximity to vaudeville and silent film), Mason and actress Barbara Rush (portraying his wife) give incredibly subtle, realistic performances. This aspect may help contemporary audiences (many of whom have a problem with old movies) connect with the film. The acting just feels modern.

Ed Avery is established as a teacher loved and respected by both his students and fellow teachers. Before too long, his chronic pain begins to show (the episodes of pain are a little melodramatic). As if this isn’t enough, he is hurting for money and must work a second job as a cab dispatcher at night. Pride keeps him from telling his wife the truth of his nightly absence. The compounding stress of finances, two jobs, a nervous wife, and a neglected son pushes his condition to require hospitalization. There the doctors inform him that he has months to live, unless he wants to try a new “miracle drug.” Despite the stated side effects, Avery agrees to go on a cortisone regimen. Soon, his life is everything it should be. He tells his wife the truth of his night job and begins doting on her. He has energy and time to connect with his son. Once the perfect 50s family is established, Nicholas Ray starts showing us how fragile and unsustainable that ideal is. Avery’s addiction is more like a manic-depressive on meth and Mason pulls it off with an unearthly ease. His erratic behavior affords plenty of opportunity to chip away at marriage, family, and even education in the 50s, while the filmmakers can hide behind his “psychosis.” The deconstruction of this nuclear family is all the more heartbreaking when we see what is being destroyed. He has a loving wife who refuses to let him take the suburban dream away and a son who reveres him. The film cranks up to 11 when the increasingly large and menacing shadows Avery casts culminate in a decision that the only way to save his son is to murder him.

Let it be known that Mason’s performance in “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” is one of my all-time favorites. However, his work in this is infinitely better. He plays the loving father/husband so well that his fall alone is torture, say nothing of its effect on his family. But his addiction is the real high point of this film. He still has all the sinister air that makes “20,000 Leagues” or his turn in “North by Northwest” so compelling. But when a mind so deranged and calculating is turned on a family, it becomes monstrous. The shot of him staring at his reflection in a broken mirror is stuck in my head.

Enough about Mason. Much of this movie’s power comes from the incredible direction of Nicholas Ray. The way he shoots this film is very simple. Plenty of still shots and idyllic settings. The magic lies in the lighting. Avery glows when he first begins taking his pills. As he becomes more unhinged, his shadow and the shadows on his face become darker, bigger, more menacing until he is an ogre in his own home.

The perfect marriage of director/actor/material harkens back to Ray’s “Rebel Without a Cause.” “Rebel” certainly makes its jabs at life in the 50s but it is more a work of empathy for the juvenile delinquents. “Bigger Than Life” is a work of destruction. Ray builds an ideal world and then crushes it. He even brings the Bible in as the final push that convinces Avery to commit murder. The movie does have a happy ending but regardless of the content, that’s par for the course of films of that time.

All in all, “Bigger Than Life” is an incredibly good movie. I can’t recommend it enough. It has all the power of modern drug movies and is an awesome display of subversion. As a bonus, a very young Walter Matthau gives a great turn as Avery’s best friend.


Rating: 9 of 10

The Beginning

First post. I’ve been trying to get some gig writing movie reviews here in Wyoming but most of the publishers are as square as the state. So here I go striking out on my own. I’m only about 10 years late on the blog scene and up against God knows how many movie sites. If you’re reading this, thanks.

Here’s how this site will work. I usually watch at least one movie a day. The formats vary of course. Most days I try to catch up on the vast history of cinema via Netflix or my public library. I try to get to the theaters as much as possible but time is not kind to me (night shift). Everytime I watch a movie, I will post a review. Even if I’ve seen a particular film before, it will get a review.

Feel free to give me recommendations for movies to watch and review. I love recommendations. Also, feel free to comment on my reviews. Like most film nerds, my opinions are infallible but I love a good argument.

Again, thanks for reading. Let’s get started.