Wknd Box Office: John Carter, A Thousand Words, Friends With Kids, Rampart, We Need to Talk About Kevin

Here is an interesting article from http://www.debbieschlussel.com/  reviewing some of the movies that came out over the past weekend. This follows this post some of the movies from last week and  THIS POST about some movies that have been released over the past few years that you might have missed!  This all  follows this post about guidelines to chosing good movies to watch yourself!





Wknd Box Office: John Carter, A Thousand Words, Friends With Kids, Rampart, We Need to Talk About Kevin

By Debbie Schlussel



As you’ll see below, it’s a Netflix weekend because I really didn’t like any of the new movies debuting in theaters, this weekend. I did not see “Silent House” because the screening was late at night, and I didn’t want to attend with a trial early in the morning the next day with over an hour drive to get to the trial. Sorry. I’ll try to see it over the weekend and post my review, so stay tuned. Here’s what I did see:




* “John Carter“: Sorry, but I was bored to tears by this “Star Wars: Phantom Menace” “rip-off.”  I put the word “rip-off” in quotation  marks because the author, Edgar Rice Burroughs (who also created and wrote “Tarzan”), was really ahead of his time (back in the late 1800s) in writing science fiction involving a Civil War veteran mysteriously transported to Mars and involved in wars between various species-nations.  He dreamed this stuff up when it was new and exciting, more than a century ago.  But now that his work is finally a movie, it’s old hat, passe, the same old thing we’ve seen a million times before.  The aliens look almost exactly like Jar-Jar Binks or the “Avatar” (read my review) creatures. The pet “dogs” look like miniature Jabba The Hutts (or is that, “Jabbas The Hutt?”).



The story, aside from also being all-too familiar, is also boring, uninspired, and extremely confusing. I don’t speak “alien,” and haven’t a clue what they were fighting for or why. Nor did I care. I was so bored that I was trying to come up with a drinking game for each time Dominic West (who plays a villain) came on screen and noted how he didn’t look nearly as handsome as in HBO’s “The Wire.” Yup, that’s what a girl like me thinks about when the story is so dull and I’m trying to find a way to stay awake and pass the time. And West is one of the biggest names in the movie, which should tell you something.



I liked the first and last ten minutes of this movie. The rest was a custom-made excuse for a double shot of espresso. Yaaawn.



HALF A REAGAN




* “A Thousand Words“: More evidence that some things from the ’80s don’t stand the test of time and shouldn’t make a come back. And I’m not talking the ghost of Michael Jackson, neon clothes, or leg warmers. Nope, this time around it’s Eddie Murphy, the star of this boring, unfunny “comedy.” Sorry, but he’s just not funny anymore. His ’80s-style dopey humor just isn’t funny in 2012. At least, it wasn’t in this movie.



I can’t say the message in this movie is so bad, but if you need this movie–or any movie–to figure out that money and ambition aren’t more important than love and family, well you probably won’t get it, anyway. I mean, it’s not exactly a novel or genius insight.



Murphy plays a wealthy, high-powered Los Angeles literary agent who tries to hook a New Age Indian guru (think Deepak Chopra, and just as phony) as his latest author. Murphy is very materialistic and cares more about money and status than about his wife, his son, and his Alzheimer’s-stricken mother. He’s also bitter about his father, who left them when he was young. The Indian guru makes a tree appear in his yard that loses leaves with each word Murphy speaks. The tree is an extension of Murphy, and when it loses all its leaves and dies, so will he, so he stops speaking.



You can probably figure out the predictable ending. The movie was silly, boring, and I barely laughed. Sorry, Eddie, but even “Beverly Hills Cop 17″ or “Five More 48 Hours” would be more exciting. Your time has come and gone.



HALF A REAGAN




* “Friends With Kids“: Real-life unmarried “life partners” Jennifer Westfeldt and Jon Hamm made this unoriginal, annoying movie glorifying random sex and kids in unconventional single mother households. Yes, it has a predictable ending with a decent message, but getting there wasn’t worth it. Mostly, this was just a really long, repetitive, raunchy movie starring two very unattractive people in a chick flick. The guy, Adam Scott, looks like Liza Minnelli. The woman, Westfeldt, looks like an aging warped Cabbage Patch doll. It was painful to watch two such unattractive people in what you know will finally turn out to be a sappy romance. It’s not that I’m vain. It’s that I enjoy unenjoyable, liberal-minded movies even less when they feature such weird looking people in a “romance.” Even the real-life alter ego of the very hot Don Draper, Jon Hamm, looks terrible.



And who on earth can take a movie that features married couples shrieking, fighting, yelling, and otherwise connipting in nearly every other scene? No thinks. I can wait outside divorce court and see much better fireworks and arguments. This is “comedy?” Riiiight.



The story: a guy (Scott) and a girl (Westfeldt) are close friends who share every detail about their sex lives, but they aren’t sexually attracted to each other. Their other friends are all married with kids, but miserable because they have kids. So Scott and Westfeldt decide, since they don’t want to ruin their dating relationships and romances, that they should have a kid together and continue to date other people. It works out well for most of the movie, until, well . . . if you can’t see the predictable movie ending coming, you’ve never seen a movie. There have already been several equally or only slightly less annoying movies with nearly or exactly the same story line.



In real life, lefties Hamm and Westfeldt (both produced the movie, and she wrote, directed and stars, while he co-stars) don’t believe in marriage and have lived together for ten years. They also don’t believe in kids. And that’s kind of the message they are sending here, despite the predictable, sappy, annoying ending.



Skip at all cost . . . unless you like non-stop, overwrought melodrama and chick flicks at their worst mixed with vile filth that just isn’t funny.



FOUR MARXES PLUS FOUR BETTY FRIEDANS




* “Rampart“: This is (very loosely) based on the true story of corruption among real life Los Angeles police officers in the late ’90s, Woody Harrelson plays a corrupt L.A. cop in 1999. He sets up criminals, kills innocent and not so innocent people, is involved in robberies, stealing, and drugs, and cheats on his wife with various women. He’s violent, dishonest, and a piece of crap who drinks, etc. He is married to the sister of his first wife, and has kids with both of the sisters, who live in the same compound. The movie was depressing, boring, and pointless. Plus, the corrupt cop thing has been done to death already and done better in “Training Day,” “Internal Affairs,” “Serpico,” and a host of others.



Skipworthy.



FOUR MARXES



* “We Need to Talk About Kevin“: The weird-but-talented actress, Tilda Swinton, was nominated for an Oscar for her starring role in this creepy and pointless movie. But there’s little acting. It’s more like brooding and looking sweaty and emotionally barren. In fact, to me, Jasper Newell, the actor who plays her son, Kevin, as a little kid, is the real star of this movie. For such a young kid to get the wicked nature of a person so spot on–well, that’s great acting. Sadly, the great acting was in a horrifying movie not worth the time you’ll waste. It’s way too artsy and herky-jerky, tells you very little, and what it does tell and show you, you’d rather not see.



Later, another actually plays Kevin in a movie that eventually shows us he’s a horrifyingly violent person who commits unspeakable acts against his family and others. Not worth watching unless you are the guy who is selecting Gitmo cinema-torture. An arthouse movie best skipped.



THREE MARXES