Stone

Stone (2010)

Writer: Angus MacLachlan
Director: John Curran
Starring:Edward Norton, Robert De Niro, Mila Jovovovovich, Francis Conroy

Synopsis
a parole conselor preparer report guy can't get one of the inmates out of his brain. inmate guy gets his wife on the case of trying to manipulate counselor preparer report guy. inmate guy has some sort of epiphany. counselor preparer guy goes through a downward spiral. but he wasn't that high up there to begin with, he just thought he was.

The Woman
not bad, not excellent. i'll probably forget i watched it. it was acted and directed well, and there was a lot of intentional, cerebral choices made. i don't really care for philosophical, inner purpose movies. i appreciate them, i just don't enjoy them. there was a lot of subtlety in this, but there were also the smack you in the face imagery and metaphor. i took film classes people. if i had taken finding the meaning of you in film i probably would have had to write a paper on this one. oh, dr. o'hara, i will never forget your classes. you are the only one who ever graced me with an "a" on a paper in my entire educational history. that paper stayed on my fridge through two moves and ten years.

back to the movie. it wasn't slow, but it wasn't exciting. if you can dig. you can dig.

Paris Je T'Aime

Paris Je T'Aime (2006)
24 Directors
25 Writers
73 Actors

Synopsis
24 tiny little bits of beginnings....for 2 fucking hours


MOster
Five minutes doesn't really leave a lot for a viewer, director, writer to do; and the challenge there is what probably made it interesting for them.  There are varying levels of success in the telling of these stories. The more successful shorts were those which explored first meetings rather than those which attempted to encapsulate long histories in expository dialog and follow that recap with a quick bit of status qua.


What I found most interesting here was not the variation between the directors from piece to piece, but the variation between typical work by these directors and what they put forth in their shorts.  Cuaron, Craven, and the Cohens (ah, accidental alliteration...) each provided us with pieces that are far outside their normal styles and I like seeing that such divergence is possible.

One of the many things we learn from this film is that some directors (and/or writers) just don't do well with austerity in storytelling.  While they definitely had budget to play with, I appreciate how difficult it must have been to keep the production value so high. In fact, I wonder if some of the LA-based players were selected due to their presence in Europe for some other venture.

In spending so much time allocating their nickles, I think the producers didn't make enough choices in the editing room.  I don't know much about the process--and I don't care to do any research--but I wonder if there was an agreed script approval framework prior to filming; and I wish they would have been allowed to (and had cared to) pay some people but not include their material. The film would benefit greatly from removal of four or five of these segments.

The Woman
if you couldn't tell by the synopsis i disliked this. a lot. some of these were amusing, but then i was just annoyed that the story didn't continue. i called them commercials. it was a whole 2 hours of love commercials that took place in paris. i stopped paying attention by approximately the 3rd commercial so that would put the ticker at minute 6. i feel ripped off. i don't want to watch a movie of 24 full length movie pitches. it aggravates me. it also, because of it's total length juxtaposed (art points for me using the artist statement golden word) to the two minute, sometimes less, segments made it seem like it was a 6 hour movie. and i use the term "movie" loosely. i was complaining so much that moster actually turned it off and said he would watch it while i wasn't around, but that is practically never so i turned it back on so we could check it of the list and move the fuck on.

Mary and Max

Mary and Max (2009)
Written by Adam Elliot
Directed by Adam Elliot
Starring Bethany Whitmore, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, not really TonI Collette

Synopsis
Through her loneliness and boredom, a young Aussie girl begins a pen pal friendship with an older man in New York.  They kind of grow up in parallel.

The Woman
i enjoyed this one. two oddballs brought together by desstiny. mary's perception in her childhood is highly amusing to me. the randomness that makes sense to children was written well. the art direction was cool, the story a bit depressing, but good depressing. sooo yep. good way to spend the morning hours of a saturday. if this is really a true story, i approve.

MOster
This was a cute, "just fine" experience.  In the roughly two days since we watched this, my esteem for it has waned a little; but that could be more my general mood than anything else.  There was some good structure here, and it's somewhat difficult to differentiate it from what one might classify as a student effort.  The parallel development was quite direct--the travails of each main character were difficult to say the least--and the ending was not my favorite kind of ending.  I found myself drifting a bit around the one-hour mark and while I knew what was going on I wasn't super-invested in a lot of the details that brought Mary in particular the rest of the way to where she logically had to go.

Part of that is the story itself, and part of that is the animation.  The style of the animation was not exactly unique, but it was a less frequent kind of different.  The choice to do Australia in Sepia and New York in grey was a wise one, but it paid off in just a single shot.  As a narrative differentiator it was utterly unnecessary, and it actually took away from the other ways in which the styles used to depict the two locales varied.

Those locales were fully realized as separate entities, due in equal parts to choices made by the production team and the actors.  Toni Collette gets second billing, when aside from the fact that she does the most talking of an character, young Ms. Whitmore's easy, natural performance might even surpass Hoffman's very well put on accent.  She gets the first ten minutes of the movie mostly to herself, and she uses every minute to bring us into Mary's head in a way that we never really get from Max.  (There are other reasons for this, sure, but attributing those to the filmmakers might be stretching things a bit too much.)

Anyway, you should probably discount most of what I've written as the 5:00 AM ramblings of a grump and just watch this fucking movie.

Mad Detective

Mad Detective (2007)


Writer: Ka-Fai Wai, Kin-Yee Au
Director: Johnnie To, Kai-Fai Wai
Starring: Ching Wan Lau, Andy On

Synopsis
Severly messed-up detective goes to great lengths to solve his cases.  He's eventually fired, for good cause, but he can't get away and ends up coming back to advise a detective on a case about the disappearance of a fellow officer.


The Woman
like most asian cinema nowadays, i found this to be pretty excellent. it was a great perspective on the way things went down and like moster said as we were watching it, it was an actual, seldom stumbled upon, original idea. you really had to pay attention because of the difference in the way things were percieved by (ret) det. bun's brain in the beginning. but by the end it was like a new vocabulary that you picked up on. the ending was also not a let down. good job chinese guys involved in this. i think the koreans have one up on you, but i think you might be neck and neck with the japanese in my opinion of your films.

MOster
Indeed.


This was pretty great;  and the second "pretty great" in our house in a row it should be celebrated by a Roman orgy. 


The story itself was fairly unique, and while it played indirect homage to directors such as Fincher it did so respectfully.  This is another rare film in which we really didn't know exactly how it was going to end, almost down to the last frame.  The "meta" element of the discussion of the characters is of equal or greater importance than the "whodunnit" aspect.  This could only have been conveyed by actors who are equal to the story, and no key or supporting player was deficient in this sense.  Ching in particular was fantastic.


There were some really great shots here, and production value was very high.  Some of the scenes requried a fair amount of trickiness to pull off, and it wasn't lost on us.


Again, a movie which you should watch if you can handle subtitles; and given the readership of this blog I think that's pretty likely.


ETA: I love my woman's discussion of the merits of Asian cinema.

The Life of Reilly

The Life of Reilly (2007)

Writer: Paul Linke, Charles Nelson Reilly
Director: Frank L. Anderson, Barry Poltermann
Starring: Charles Nelson Reilly


Synopsis
a filming of charles nelson reilly's one man, autobiographical stage show with edits and text to keep you up to date.

MOster
This did nothing but solidify my love for CNR.  Having come upon him through Match Game reruns, it was a great pleasure to see him really get to act; and from his naturalistic performance (befitting an autobiographical one-man show) of most of the material through a nifty bit of Shakespeare, he beat the hell out of this thing.  Like most biographies, his story has it share of tragedy to balance the joy, but he comes off as an excellent product of his travails.


Technically, the film was very good.  My opinion on the cinematography vacillated as we watched the film, but I've concluded that the odd angles and changing views did a great service to the telling of the story.  Cutaways to film which were very likely shown on a screen behind the stage were done nicely as well. 


Our big complaint is that we only saw 90 of the roughly 180 minutes of the show; and I feel we missed out on many important elements of his life.  That said, it's rare of either of us to want MORE of a movie.


Highly recommended.

The Woman
i highly enjoyed this. i saw it on the instant queue, and my jaw hung open for a few minutes. we love charles nelson reilly in this house. he's faaaabulous. the cuts and text bothered me a little because i was so into the play that the text and the breaks and animations took you out of the moment. i kind of wish it was just the three hour play filmed in it's entirety. i would have sat through that. i think most people who would watch this would. i also have some issue with the use of "match game" in the promotional things, i.e. the poster, and it was not mentioned at all. i would have liked to hear his take on what was going on behind the scenes and how he and brett got along, because they seemed so tight on the show. you know it was discussed in the play. it had to have been. it just ended up on the cutting room floor. that's ok, but don't then turn around and use it's imagery for the poster.

i would also recommend checking out charles nelson reilly's picture on imdb. it's fantastic. i think he would highly approve.

Vanishing on 7th Street

Vanishing on 7th Street (2010)

Writer: Anthony Jaswinski
Director: Brad Anderson
Starring: future oscar nominee Hayden Christensen, Thandie Newton, John Leguizamo

Synopsis
the power goes out and everybody disappears becoming shadowy people. there are only a few people left who had lights on them at the time of the power outage. what? the big shadowy collection of people, if they touch you make you disappear. batteries begin to drain quickly and the sun starts coming up later and going down sooner.
what?

The Woman
this was way dumb. i should have known by the fact of hayden christensen being involved in this movie. it should have been a dead giveaway. all these questions were brought up. what is this? what's going on? why is this happening? what caused this? will it end? why us? why did we survive? is there a point to it all?and NONE of those questions are answered. why bring them up if you're not going to answer them. especially when it's the main fucking focus and discussion of the movie. the lost colony of roanoke was brought up. why? because the same thing happened there...maybe. what happened there? i don't know! stupid. and then this little girl with a flashlight kept popping up like she maybe had some answers or knew something, but no. she just took the lone survivor out of the city on a found horse to go to chicago where maybe there might have been a few survivors that were only mentioned briefly in the beginning of the movie. oh and she had a flashlight that was solar chargeable, as if they were saved, but it was discussed earlier in the movie that it didn't matter because the sun was only up for a couple hours and soon it probably wouldn't come up at all. it didn't make sense. it was brought up and presented like a mystery, but it wasn't solved. that makes this movie stupid.

oh, and why was it called vanishing on 7th street? because that was where the bar that still had a working generator was. it turns out that only john leguizamo vanished on 7th street and the rest vanished on other streets around the 7th streets near by blocks. oh, and why was john leguizamo taken by the shadow people for three days and not turned into a shadow person? was he special? was it some sort of plot point to tell the survivors who these things were and how to fight them? no. because he was the first to go. i'm taking back my two stars and giving it a one. i hated this.

(500) Days of Summer

(500) Days of Summer (2009)


Writer: Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber
Director: Marc Webb
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel

Synopsis
the tale of a guys relationship and subsequent dumping.

The Woman
better than i expected. i had hesitated watching this for a long time because i figured the part of moster that likes watching romance might want to watch it. but the other day he scoffed at it when he saw it on the demand list, so whatevs, i watched that biotch. i enjoyed that biotch. it was different from the way it was portrayed and i think that's kind of a shame. maybe that's just the way i perceived it's advertising. it's all about perception isn't it....

anyway. this was a believable tale of love and loss, but not loss, loss. just loss. movin' on. yep. i felt really bad for young JGL, and yet i didn't quite hate zooey deschanel. hey, that rhymes. sorry. i'm really distracted on this review. i like that it was narrated. this plus other factors gave it that storybook quality even though it was so realish. juxtaposition. (my must art word)

this was one of those movies where i wish there were fractions in the netflix rating. i would have given this a 3 3/4


p.s. the end was pretty hokey, but subtle hokey. i'll let it slide.

Knight and Day

Knight and Day (2010)

Writer: Patrick O'Neill
Director: James Mangold
Starring: Tom Cruise (douchebag), Cameron Diaz (super annoying)

Synopsis
spy meets chick. uses chick for a second. grows to like chick. chick becomes involved in spy adventure. chick becomes indispensable. chick thinks spy is lying. chick betrays spy. chick finds out she's wrong. reconciliation. gun fight. the end.

The Woman
when i watched the preview for this i hemmed and hawed about putting it on the queue because of my total disdain for tom cruise and my utter dislike of cameron diaz. i don't like them. yet. i enjoyed. this. movie. this is not to say it was a good movie. it was terrible. but i reveled in that horribleness. i could recognize when i was supposed to laugh or what was supposed to be funny. i didn't laugh. not even a smile. and yet, it was such brainlessness that it was like the marijuana to my brain. it wasn't hardcore enough to be called crack or heroin just a little high that blocked my brain from proper perception. i would not ever tell anyone they should expose themselves to this. i'm just saying it hit my eyeballs at the right moment.

i still want to vomit when i see tom cruise has made another movie, and i still roll my eyes at the thought of cameron diaz. this was just the bermuda triangle of movies to me.

Black Death

Black Death (2010)

Writer: Dario Poloni
Director: Christopher Smith
Starring: Eddie Redmayne(which may i add is the most appropriate surname i've ever heard. it means for a bijillion years the family redmayne have been gingers. i love genetics.) , Sean Bean


Synopsis
a monk goes with a band of church bounty hunters to kill the head witch of a mystical town that has not been affected by the plague.

The Woman
i don't know what i was expecting from this movie, but it certainly wasn't a slow moving historicalish account of the bubonic years. wait. yes i do. i was expecting some outrageous action/horror movie because of the way this was advertised. this was kind of really boring. there was a lot of blah, blah, blah, interrupted by a few moments of blood spray and drawing and quartering. it went on far too long and had at least two missed ending points. i walked away with a who cares? sort of an attitude. that's not really good. there's no way to piss off an audience more than to advertise action and present historical. oh well, on to the next one.

The New York Ripper

The New York Ripper (1982)
Written by Gianfranco Clerci, Lucio Fulci, Vincenzo Mannino, Dardano Saccheti
Directed by Lucio Fulci
Starring Jack Hedley, Almata Suska, Howard Ross


Synopsis
A knife-weilding maniac wreaks havoc on early-80s New York by killing a bunch of women.  There are some other odd characters involved at various points.


The Woman
entertaining. not a must. it wasn't as gruesome as moster expected and therefore i expected. with the one exception of the slicing in half of a nipple that made me squirm a little. all in all, shme. i think i dozed a little during the middle somewhere too. not for long, but the fact that it happened says something. it was a silly, early 80's, slasher film with a lot of nudity and a mildly predictable ending.

MOster
This was something of a letdown for me, which is not fair to the movie.  To begin with, this had been in the queue since before we moved out of Woodbury, because it was billed as so super violent and depraved.  Due in part to my level of jadedness, and in part to how cinematic tastes have evolved in the last 30 (!) years, it just wasn't sharp enough.

All things considered, it's actually quite a technical achievement.  People in Europe, especially in the 80s, didn't care about having perfect synchronization between audio and video, and it doesn't matter one bit.  Really, this wasn't bad and it wasn't a failure.  It came from a standpoint of art and craft, and those attributes are apparent throughout the production.  Acting was pretty OK, direction and cinematography were certainly present, accounted for, and in good working order.  And the story had some depth and a pretty silly twist. There were even some red herrings.

This is not a movie to seek, because it just isn't.  But that doesn't make it one to avoid.

Not Quite Hollywood

Not Quite Hollywood: the untold story of ozploitation (2008)


Director: Mark Hartley

Synopsis
a documentary about the austrailian film industry from the 70s and 80s and how outrageous they were. sex and violence and cars.

MOster 
I liked this one.  It was pretty great.  Informative, engaging, comprehensible.  A good doc.


Not doing a very good job of reading the description, I had expected this to be a discussion of the more serious side of recent Aussie fare such as Baz Lurhman.  It was only a pleasant surprise to see the true development of the film industry down there, especially as it was these sort of "*sploitation" movies that made the newer works possible.  Narration by Tarantino was really cool, and not just because I love me some Tarantino; he had a real point of view and it was obvious that he knew his material.


I added probably a few too many movies to the queue as we were watching this; but since before we started el Woman and I had a discussion of this notion I feel no real qualms.


The Woman
pretty awesome. i don't have much to say about this one because it was good, and well done. it made me want to watch a lot of terrible exploitation      movies.

Jason X

Jason X (2001)


Writer: Todd Farmer?
Director: James Isaac
Starring: some people. mostly the local community theater community's worst

Synopsis
Is this entirely necessary?  OK.

Jason Voorhees has been captured and imprisoned in some kind of special underground laboratory; and the intelligent scientist is about to freeze him when the government steps in and fucks everything up.  Due to some contrivances, both the scientist and Jason are cryogenically frozen for 400 years, until a ship can come from Earth II and claim them as highly valuable scientific material.

Once on the ship, additional contrivances cause Jason to revive and wreak havok.  Simultaneously, people fuck and expose their breasts (these sets intersect but do not overlap fully).
The Woman
predictable, but that didn't matter. this was truly a sy-fy original quality film. it's actually really hard to believe this was released to theaters on a major scale. i think i might have been pissed if, in 2001, i paid $8 to see this. but since we have netflix i count this one as a freebie. i do feel it could have been slightly gorier. lots of the cool stuff happen off screen, like the person sucked through a grate to become a floating mass of mush in outerspace. i would have liked to have seen that process. i think it shows a lack in budget and/or the lack of creativity on the special effects staff. oh well. it was fun though.

MOster
This is a Friday the 13th movie, and within that context it fell a little short of my expectations in that there were too few breasts on display. 


Other than that I guess it was fine.  There was some halfway-decent suspense, though it was all tempered by the whole, "why don't they just..." factor which is a common theme when we watch these sorts of films.  Leila's assessment of the cast is spot-on.

Lover Come Back

Lover Come Back (1961)


Writer: Stanley Shapiro, Paul Henning
Director: Delbert Mann
Starring: Rock Hudson, Doris Day, Tony Randall

Synopsis
Female ad executive (who can't manage her way out of a paper bag) resents the success of a competing male ad executive because he takes his clients and prospects out for pussy.  There is a case of mistaken identity.


The Woman 
thanks go to moster for putting this atrocious movie on the queue. this movie made "send me no flowers" look like a feminazi women's lib propaganda movie. it was gross and unbelievable. the sad part is, i think they were trying to be progressive by having doris day be an ad executive on madison ave. it back fired tremendously. her character came off as a teetotaler amateur who would rather rat someone out than outsmart them. probably because she was incapable of outsmarting, since she was, after all, just a silly woman. horrible. i hope that is the last doris day/ rock hudson/ tony randall movie i ever have to watch. it done me in.


MOster
OK. I'm going to try to be objective first.  Objectively, this was a good movie.  Objectively, while not quite original the story was decent. It included secondary characters and some of those characters had arcs which ended in development. Objectively, the scenes and locations were the epitome of the Technicolor era. Objectively, there was a cute score which underlined the points that needed underlining. Objectively, the acting matched the aesthetic of early 1960s filmmaking to a T.

The problem here is that this movie is kind of like Birth of a Nation.  It portrays women as ineffective dopes trying to make it in a man's world, and failing because they just don't understand the rules.  It portrays men as either predatory or facile.  It portrays society as complicit in a manner which is just not feasible. It glamorizes the glory taken by the men and it revels in the retardation of the women.  There is not a single scene in which Doris Day's ambition is treated like an asset.  There's one spot where she does well for herself in being mean to the dude but immediately afterwards she's just overrun by his success.  Only when she's about to become a mother does it appear that her opinion has any weight whatsoever; but even that is undermined by the likelihood that she's been doped up beyond belief.

Devil

Devil (2010)

Writer: Brian Nelson (screenplay), shama-llama-ding-dong ("story")
Director: John Erick Dowdle
Starring: Chris Messina,....it doesn't matter

Synopsis
the devil comes to earth and traps 5 people in the elevator to torture them in a game of whodunnit. my guess was colonel mustard in the billiard room with his stupid wiener, but i was wrong.

The Woman
this was just dumb. i have nothing more to say on the subject.

Killers

Killers (2010)


Writer: Bob DeRosa, Ted Griffin,
Director: Robert Luketic
Starring: Katherine Heigl, Ashton Kutcher

Synopsis
"true lies" but with ashton kutcher and katherine heigl in the roles of schwarzenegger and curtis. he also is not technically in the biz anymore.

The Woman
T-E-R-R-I-B-L-E. TERRIBLE. terrible. not only was this movie lame, stupid, and boring, it was TERRIBLE! filled with things like a wife who is paranoid that her husband of 3 years doesn't love her anymore because she's been wearing her "fat" jeans (because katherine heigl is such a fucking cow) and letting her fancy parts perhaps, maybe, go untrimmed. what-the-FUCK. i can't even begin. if you can't be comfortable being yourself because you know your partner loves you because it's you, and god forbid you gain 5 or 30 lbs and let the bush go jungle then prepare for a lifetime of neurosis, self loathing and divorce. oh and the plot was shit to boot. there was no real "action" dudes a spy. has a ton of spies coming to kill him, and yet he doesn't even get a scratch. it's like the power rangers. goody- goody at everything gets a little boring. not that i should be comparing because it's apples and heroin, but john mcclane gets seriously messed up and he's way more awesome.

have i mentioned that not only did katherine heigl not get cool and spy-ey by the end, she just bitched and whined through the entire movie. that's ok though, because she was pregnant. we all know how those silly females get when their pregnant, right? yeah. it's a good thing sandra bullock won an oscar so she can move onto more serious work because all her crappy romantic comedy roles have been handed down to katherine heigl. only katherine heigl is not nearly as endearing.

i looked at the timer at 8 minutes 36 seconds, ashton kutcher, full of the douchey mcdouchestein vibe, was hanging off of a copter, or repelling down a cable, i sighed and said a jeebus, this is crap. can i possibly get through another hour and a half? i did, folks. yes. i. did.

Letters to Juliet

Letters to Juliet (2010)

Writer: Jose Rivera, Tim Sullivan

Director: Gary Winick

Starring: Amanda Seyfried, Christopher Egan, Vanessa Redgrave

Synopsis

a chick who works for the new yorker, aspiring to be a writer rather than a lowly fact checker, goes to verona with her self centered fiancée. she eventually ends up on adventure, sans fiancée, trying to find a womans long lost love...and finds love herself. teehee.

The Woman

eeewwwwwww. i can't believe i'm going to type a positive review of this movie. it dug down deep like the head of a tick and found that one girly atom that rarely reveals itself. gross. i think MOster would perhaps, being the sentimental lady that he is, enjoy this movie too. it was all about the old couple to me. i couldn't really give two craps about amanda seyfried and christopher egan. it's strange too because generally i hate movies with a geriatric couple falling in loooove. it's a waste i can't over look to find a soul mate in the twilight of your life. perhaps i am just cold as ice....paradise...i couldn't understand wrinkle cream and the obsession with looking younger when i was a teenager either, and now if you look in my bathroom there will always be some sort of daily moisturizer that helps with  the reduction of fine lines located there. i got to be on top of that shit you know. anyway, all of this is a moot point because i didn't mind the senior quest for love in this. it was actually endearing. eeww.

Following

Following (1998)


Writer: Christopher Nolan
Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Jeremy Theobald, Alex Haw

Synopsis
a guy follows people for fun until he follows a guy who follows people to break into their apartments and mess with their heads. he then becomes this guys student and learns his ways.

[I picked the Japanese poster because it was the first hit, not for any strange/subtle humor. -MOster]

MOster
There were some interesting things going on in this movie, and it's easy to see how it fed into Memento.  However, given that Memento is its successor, you can imagine how much money was available to Following.

I suppose they did what they could with that constraint, but the writing and the direction definitely outpaced the acting.  This was a movie full of unlikeable characters doing shitty things largely for no discernible reason, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.  But it didn't really leave me with anything special.

When you're writing your paper about the eleventh Batman rereboot movie, be sure to watch this.



The Woman
meh. i was not in the mood for this sort of a movie. moster picked it because there was nothing on the television and it's length is only a little over an hour. unfortunately, it was a little too heavy and too black and white noir for what i was feeling that night so i only partially paid an annoyed attention. i don't think it was anything special. and i'm sticking to that.

Interview

Interview (2007)


Writer: Steve Buscemi, David Schechter, (screenplay) Theodor Holman (original screenplay)
Director: Steve Buscemi
Starring: Steve Buscemi, Sienna Miller

Synopsis
Washington reporter gets stuck doing a semi-fluff piece interviewing a popular TV / movie star.  After a shitty start, circumstances conspire (as they often do in film) to bring them into her apartment for a second chance.


The Woman
meh. i fell asleep a little i must admit. it seemed very play to me. one set, two actors, character analysis and all that. very deliberate in every way. after sitting in the sun all morning watching the parade i guess i just wasn't feeling it. it was the complete opposite of a michael bay action movie. not quite as boring as "my dinner with andre" but there were similarities. it wasn't bad, but it could be skippable.

MOster
I liked this one pretty well.  It gets a solid 3 from me.  While the credits say it was based on a movie--and some of the digging which I actually bothered to do supports that assertion--it really does feel like a play.  The vast majority of the movie is set in one location and it's a story of two people who are essentially lying to each other.

This was acted well, directed well, and shot well.  It also had an ambiguous ending, and I'm a sucker for a lack of closure.

Send Me No Flowers

Send Me No Flowers (1964)


Writer: Norman Barasch & Carroll Moore (play) Julius Epstein (screenplay)
Director: Norman Jewison
Starring: Rock Hudson, Doris Day, Tony Randall

Synopsis
a hypochondriac thinks he's dying and conspires with his best friend/neighbor to make sure his wife is taken care of after he dies.

MOster
We have one more of these in the house, and I think after that I'll be cured of my Hudson/Day curiosity.  A lot of this was funny and the way the misunderstanding continued to play out was pretty good, until an ending which embodies all the worst marriage stereotypes.  The actors, Paul Lynde in particular, all appear to have had a good time.  Tony Randall was great as a lush of a husband on his own while the family vacations.  There was also some good social commentary on the need to medicate the fuck out of every condition imaginable.


This is one of those prototypical movies where it seems to me like the plot was a lot newer 45 years ago than it is today.  Maybe not; maybe my dissatisfaction with the modern movie industry is bleeding into my opinion; that certainly happens all the time.


The Woman
funny in parts. the beginning was way more entertaining than the middle and the middle was way more entertaining than the end. if you can't tell by this description it started to get old and drag after awhile. it was interesting to see the drastic changes that have happened in domestic life in the past 50 years. this is where i started to find issue with some of the things that were going on. for example: the whole husband + affair= just turn your head the other way and try and forget about it thing. this movie made it seem like a very commonplace thing. in fact, the best friend was quite the lovable character to me until it comes to light casually towards the end that he's had a couple flings outside of his marriage. no biggie. it was just little things like that which prevent me from saying i really liked this movie. i guess you take it with a grain of salt because of the era, but still. it's a doris day movie. all sunshine and fun...and housewifey. perhaps this should be a must watch for the artist collective i'm in....mental note.

Saint John of Las Vegas

Saint John of Las Vegas (2009)


Writer: Hugh Rhodes
Director: Hugh Rhodes
Starring: Steve Buscemi, Romany Malco, Sarah Silverman, Dinklage!

Synopsis
Sad-sack insurance adjuster aspires to become a happy-sack (or, at least, contended-sack) fraud investigator.  He travels with the star investigator of his employer and learns things about the world and himself.  There is also a romance.



The Woman
i thought this was just going to be yet another indie slightly boring indie movie. you know what i mean. it was not. i was pretty entertained! it was a great quest sort of a movie. i like quests. i like steve buscemi. i love myself some peter dinklage! yay!

MOster
I'm a big ol' Buscemi fan, but there are times when I feel like he ends up being typecast as one particular kind of sketchy dude.  When he has the right material, however, he really brings the depth of that type and differentiates it from other roles which on paper appear to be quite similar.  I'm happy to say that this was one of those times.

And it was a good time.  Buscemi's loser is the eye of a tornado of B-list stars (and a couple of arguably A-list cameos) in this C-budget production.  Traveling the road with Malco's super-cool-yet-fairly-odd office star they encounter some great characters and have some odd times, all of which is brought together by decent work behind the scenes.

This was fun.  Don't go out of your way to watch it, but don't skip it if you're surfing the guide.