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 about 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 choosing good movies to watch yourself!

Weekend Box Office: Need for Speed, The Bag Man, Jimmy P.

By Debbie Schlussel
Another ho-hum weekend at the box office, in terms of new offerings. I did not see, “Veronica Mars,” as it was not screened for most critics.


* “Need For Speed“: This movie is very thin on story, but the reason to see it is the fast-paced, heart-pumping car racing, or as radio talk show host Brett Winterble calls it, “auto porn.” There are a lot of cool cars, high speed chases and racing, and fabulous, death-defying stunts. And this is one of the few movies I recommend seeing in 3D. It makes all the difference. The movie is sort of a mix of the earlier “Fast & Furious” movies, “Cannonball Run,” and “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”
I enjoyed the auto racing part of this movie and the cool cars–I’d never before heard of or seen a Koenigsegg (my new favorite car), until I saw this movie. What a cool car. And the movie features a rebuilt $3 million Shelby and other very high end sports cars. If you like those, you’ll probably like this.

The story: a gearhead mechanic (“Breaking Bad’s” Aaron Paul, in his first major feature film starring role) who works on expensive, high end sports cars out of his professional garage, owes a lot of money in unpaid bills. He loves to street race for money and has an offer from a wealthy rival to rebuild a Shelby. He rebuilds it in exchange for a cut of the sales price, but gets caught up in a winner-takes-all street race with the racing rival. In the process, Paul’s best friend is killed, and he is framed for the death by the wealthy rival.
But after getting out of prison, he manages to get the new owner of the Shelby to allow him to use it in a big illegal street race known as the “De Leon.” The race is promoted and broadcast by a cheesy, wealthy guy with an online racing broadcast (Michael Keaton). Most of the movie is spent showing Paul and a girl trying to get the car across the country in time for the race, with the aid of a friend of his who flies helicopters and small planes and scouts out the police and traffic.
As I said, the story is thin, and who would risk jail time to win an illegal street race? Somebody stupid and crazy (and criminal). That’s who. And I didn’t like the many scenes in which police are flouted and even hurt in car accidents, some of them fiery and likely fatal, as Paul tries to get across the country and win the race. That was troubling, especially when the audience cheered that stuff. Also troubling: the illegal use of a U.S. military helicopter to aid Paul in reaching the race destination. I’m supposed to cheer this stuff? That’s the usual “quality” stuff you get when a movie is based on a video game, as this is. But the story isn’t the reason you go to see a movie like this. It’s the cool cars and stunts.
And that’s why I give it . . .
ONE REAGAN



* “The Bag Man“: This long, slow, boring movie was pointless and a complete waste of time. What sounded like an interesting story was just a gratuitous killing spree of blood, guts, and gore for what reason? Beats me. I couldn’t care less for anyone in the movie, as none of the characters is likable or interesting in any way.
John Cusack plays a hitman for a wealthy mobster (Robert De Niro in a new and novel role for him). The mobster orders him to get a bag, not look in the bag, and wait in a seedy motel room for the mobster to arrive. Cusack kills several people in the process of getting the bag, holding onto it, and staying alive at the motel. In the process of this, Cusack gets to know a Slavic prostitute and kills her midget and full-sized pimps (am I allowed to use the word “midget” anymore?). He also kills an FBI agent, the hotel manager, two corrupt cops, etc., etc., etc. Who cares? Not me.
Skip this.
TWO-AND-A-HALF MARXES



* “Jimmy P.“: If the most left-wing anti-American college anthropology professor made a movie and insisted you see it, it would be this horribly long, boring, pointless waste of time. High-quality Gitmo torture. Just awful.
“Based on a true story,” Jimmy P. is an American Indian, er . . . “Native American!” played by Benicio Del Toro (yes, I know he’s Puerto Rican, but apparently the casting director thinks “they all look alike,” or something.) Jimmy P. is an Indian who fought in World War II and suffers headaches and nightmares because of a wartime injury. Because he’s a Blackfoot Indian, the Veterans Administration gets a faux-French anthropologist of Mojave Indians (apparently, they are similar to the Blackfoot) to try to help him.
Soon, we are taken on ridiculous, boring, and sleep-inducing tangents into the anthropologist’s life, his married girlfriend’s life, and her husband in France’s life. I could not have cared less about any of them or their stuff. Then, we’re taken back to the Indian dude, who describes his weird sexual experiences and traumas as a kid on the reservation and his refusal to marry the mother of his child. Then, the anthropologist gives a lecture to the V.A. doctors about the Indian’s penis envy. Oy vey. Why on earth did I sit through this weird bleep?
There can only be one reason: So. You. Don’t. Have. To.
TWO-AND-A-HALF MARXES

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 about 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 choosing good movies to watch yourself!

Christmas Box Office: Grudge Match, Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Wolf of Wall Street

By Debbie Schlussel
The grinches who dominate Hollywood don’t offer you much good or cheery at movie theaters today:


* “Grudge Match“: I didn’t particularly care for this movie, but I didn’t completely hate it like some movie critics did. It is mildly–very mildly–entertaining, BUT . . . . The jokes were mostly stupid–I laughed only a few times–and it has sexual themes, so you can’t really take your kids to see it. Plus, what is the point of a movie about two old guys in their 60s and 70s–one of whom is partially blind–preparing to fight each other? It’s not exciting to watch. It’s painful. Also, I could have done without the silly, trumped up melodrama story about two guys fighting over a girl who cheated on one of them with the other. This is Christmas fare? Really?
Here’s a tip, Hollywood: just because two famous actors once played boxers in successful movies, doesn’t mean it’s a sure fire formula for success to make them aging, senior citizen boxers doing a rematch when they are in their 60s and 70s. I mean, I don’t wanna see “Rocky XCMVII.” Do you?

 

The story: Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro play former champion boxers who were about to have a rematch in their prime. But the Stallone character retired before the match to get back at De Niro for sleeping with his girlfriend (Kim Basinger). De Niro also got the girlfriend pregnant and abandoned the kid. Yay, another “fathers suck” movie from Hollywood–Merry Christmas! Now it is years later,and both are old. Stallone still doesn’t want to do the rematch, but he needs the money. He spent all his boxing winnings and just got laid off from the plant where he works. He has a lot of overdue bills to pay. So, he agrees to the fight, and both he and De Niro begin training.
Predictably, De Niro becomes reunited with the kid he abandoned and Stallone gets reunited with the girlfriend he dumped after she cheated. Also, De Niro and Stallone get into repeated fights on the street in videos that go viral, making their boxing match a popular attraction.
Did I really need to see 70-year-old De Niro having sex in the middle of an SUV with some young woman, while his grandson catches them? Did I need to see a partially blind man get repeatedly slugged in his blind spot? And this is a comedy?
This isn’t Christmas entertainment. It’s two old actors doing whatever it takes–minus any scruples–to get a paycheck.
ONE MARX

Watch the trailer . . .

* “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty“: This is a remake (of sorts) of the 1947 Danny Kaye movie, but it’s less a remake than a new version of the James Thurber short story upon which the Kaye movie was based. I found it entertaining enough, but kind of dopey, and I wouldn’t pay ten bucks-plus to see it. Plus Sean Uber-Communist Penn is in it in a positive role. And the movie is anti-business, too. On top of all of that, eHarmony.com is a major part of the plot (with Papa John’s blatantly thrown in, too)–so it’s a commercial for a website and you pay ten bucks-plus and two hours to see it. The best part of the movie is a hilarious scene with the TSA. Other than that, it’s just okay. It’s not nearly as funny as typical Ben Stiller fare. Not even close.
The story: Ben Stiller plays Walter Mitty, who fantasizes about being heroic and doing larger than life things. In reality, he is a nerdy photo editor at Life Magazine. He learns that Life will publish its last hard copy issue and many employees will lose their jobs, since the company has been bought out. A new management team headed by Adam Scott (who, as I’ve noted on this site before, looks like Liza Minnelli) comes in and is obnoxious to everyone. He constantly has run-ins with Mitty and is mean-spirited and mocking in tone. A famous photographer (Penn), whose photos are used by Life, sends Stiller the negative for the final photo (he refuses to do digital). But Stiller cannot find the negative, and the boss threatens to fire him. So, he travels around the world and does things like skateboarding and running from a volcano to track down the photographer. (When he finally finds the photog, they watch Pakistanis in the middle of the mountains play soccer–and the peaceful Pakistani Muslims are so nice and inviting, they invite Mitty and Penn to join in. Like that really happens in real life. They (the Pakis) would kill them (Mitty and the photog) and use their head as the soccer ball.)
All throughout this story, Mitty is also trying to catch the eye of Cheryl (Kristen Wiig), who is a single mother and is on eHarmony. Mitty is constantly on the phone with the eHarmony customer service guy, trying to enhance Mitty’s online profile.
The end of the movie is touching, but the rest of it feels like it was mostly phoned in. I never saw the Danny Kaye version from beginning to end, just snippets, but I can’t imagine this version is better.
ONE REAGAN

Watch the trailer . . .

* “The Wolf of Wall Street“: I absolutely HATED this movie. Total garbage. And I’m disgusted that this movie celebrating crime and utter depravity was shown at the Obama White House.
The movie is way too long (THREE HOURS!!!), repetitive, boring, and full of illegal drug use, full-frontal nudity, disgustingly kinky sex scenes (Leonardo DiCRAPio’s butt up in the air with a lit candle sticking out of it as a dominatrix whips him), and anti-Wall Street crap. If you’ve seen “Boiler Room” and “Wall Street” and any other Hollywood movies attacking investment houses, you’ve already seen this unoriginal movie a gazillion times. I know I have. And while the movie goes out of its way to let you know that the main crooks here are Jews (one of them even wears a Jewish “Chai” necklace charm), they don’t tell you that the real-life JINO (Jew in Name Only) scumbag portrayed in this movie, Jordan Belfort, repeatedly describes each Jew he knows as a “savage Jew” in the book upon which this movie is based. As I said in my review of “American Hustle,” we Jews are only about 2.1% of the American population (to which we made many wonderful contributions throughout American history), but we are nearly 100% of the criminals in the Christmastime movies, this year.
And while the movie is an attack on Wall Street, most of Belfort’s crime was as an off-Wall-Street boiler room king in Long Island. Plus, the people involved with this movie, including that schmuck Jonah Hill a/k/a Jonah Hill Feldstein, actually reward Belfort for his disgusting, sleazy, criminal behavior because they paid him a boatload to use his book as a basis for the script–yes, the same book that refers to Jews as “savage Jew[s].” And the movie essentially sympathizes and laughs with Belfort, who is played by Leonardo DiCaprio).
The story: Jordan Belfort is the middle-class son of suburban New Yorkers (his father is an accountant played by Rob Reiner, in this movie), and he’s an aspiring investment adviser. But, just as he’s rising up the chain of command at the dishonest Wall Street firm where he works (and is encouraged to rip off customers), Black Monday happens (the late 1980s one-day big stock market crash), and he loses his job. His then-wife encourages him to apply for a job at a boiler room, and he soon realizes he can make even more money ripping people off on penny stocks. He soon opens his own such company with Jonah Hill and illegally, artificially pumps up stock prices, then sells his own shares, leaving his customers with worthless paper (this tactic is called “pump and dump”). Belfort does this with Steve Madden shoes stock, which was an interesting real life story that the movie could have explored but didn’t do much with. The real life Steve Madden went to jail over that. But this piece of trash movie doesn’t go into that part.
Belfort, upon becoming rich, flaunts it with extravagant taste in cars, homes, boats, etc., and he dumps his wife for a blonde model. He also flaunts his lifestyle in an attempt to taunt the FBI agent investigating him for insider trading and other illegal activities. He’s an obnoxious and an extremely offensive and unlikable character. And he’s a criminal beyond the insider trading and pump and dump schemes. He uses his wife’s elderly English aunt to launder and hide the money in Swiss bank accounts and tries to have sex with the aunt. Uggh. And Uggh is the key descriptor for this entire toilet bowl full of excrement disguised as a movie.
I regret that the real Jordan Belfort served very little jail time and is free and making more money off of his book and, now, this movie, glamorizing his criminal behavior and activities. He’s laughing all the way to the bank. Crime pays, apparently.
The real wolves in America are not the successful on Wall Street (many of whom, by the way, are liberals and Obama supporters). They are the producers and directors of Hollywood that bring this crap to the tarnished silver screen on a regular basis. I used to think Martin Scorsese was a talented director. What the hell was I thinking?
There’s nothing new in this movie. You’ve seen this anti-business rant on screen a million times. Don’t make it a million and one.
FOUR MARXES PLUS FOUR OBAMAS PLUS FOUR BIN LADENS

 

Wknd Box Office: About Time, Ender’s Game, Last Vegas, Capital

BLOGGERS NOTE: I WILL BE MOVING FROM FACEBOOK TO TWITTER AND BLOGSPOT SOON!

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 about 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 choosing good movies to watch yourself!

Wknd Box Office: About Time, Ender’s Game, Last Vegas, Capital

By Debbie Schlussel

One absolutely terrific new movie debuting at theaters today:

* “About Time“: I loved this movie! It features something of a dinosaur, unfortunately, in today’s movies: a loving, terrific father in a nuclear family. Imagine that (instead of the Marxist Hollywood decades-long push to demonize fathers in movies–portraying them absent, deadbeats, dopes, losers, cheaters, and/or criminals–so that big government can take dad’s place).




When he turns 21, Tim (Domhnall Gleason) learns from his father (the always excellent Bill Nighy) that the males in the family have a special power: they can travel back in time (but not into the future) and back to the present. Thereafter, Tim uses this power to go back in time to fix things for himself and friends and to make sure he meets the woman of his dreams (Rachel McAdams). While the movie may sound like it’s about superpowers and science fiction, it is really about the love of a father for his son and the love of a son for his father.



The movie is a comedy, a drama, and fabulous science fiction all rolled up into one. Extremely touching. If you are close to your dad, as I was, you’ll really like this. And even if you were not, it’s a great movie anyway. Very funny and entertaining. I laughed a lot.



Beware, though: this isn’t for kids. There is one stupid joke about oral sex (which took away from the movie, in my view), and it’s an adult movie, with adult themes. While not a family viewing movie, it’s a great movie for adults.



FOUR REAGANS


 “Ender’s Game“: This is based on a series of futuristic, science fiction books aimed at young adults by Orson Scott Card (who is under attack for being anti-gay). It’s been compared to “The Hunger Games,” although I liked it much better than “The Hunger Games” movie (read my review).

I had mixed feelings about this movie. I loved the first two-thirds of it. During that part, the movie is about logic and smarts, and rewarding those who employ them. But it eventually turns into a peacenik flick. I felt like I was watching a movie in which Israel finally destroys the Palestinians but then its top general goes back to bring them back to life, or America destroys Islamic extremists completely and then its top commander goes back to resurrect them. That’s essentially what happens in this movie (without Israel or Islam). In the end, the enemy is the “helpless” victim, despite attacks and attempts to destroy Earth. Not my kind of message. Also, isn’t it interesting that the one boy who is nice to the main character is, the movie makes very clear, a Muslim? Please, Hollywood, enough of the blatant propaganda.


The main character, Ender, is played by Asa Butterfield, a terrific English actor whom I’ve liked and praised since he starred, at age nine, in “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” (read my review). Now 16, he does a great American accent.

It’s the future, and Earth has been attacked by aliens from another planet (the aliens resemble giant moths). The aliens nearly destroyed Earth and are likely to attack again, as they’ve been using another nearby planet as a base for training. Therefore, the general (Harrison Ford) recruits the best, smartest young kids to train as warriors to fight the aliens and keep them from taking over the earth.




Ender who is quite young and small is smart and logical beyond his years. He already thinks like a commander, and Ford sees that. Ender is promoted to special advanced training for warfare against the aliens. All of the other kids in the training resent Ender because they know he is better and smarter than they are and will beat them to the top. At this point, the only kid who is nice to Ender is a Muslim kid, who wishes him, “As Salaam Aleikum,” the Muslim greeting of “peace be unto you.” Bullying, the use of young children as warriors, and other issues are also part of the movie.



The movie has terrific special effects and is riveting and suspenseful. But, like I said, its peacenik, anti-war message in the end is annoying and harmful. There is nothing wrong with eliminating an enemy bent on destroying you. When (and if) the West finally realizes that, we’ll all be better off.



ONE REAGAN

 “Last Vegas“: This is another movie about which I had mixed emotions. But, mostly, I didn’t like it. Four older guys who’ve been friends since high school, Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline, and Robert De Niro, get together in Las Vegas for the wedding of Michael Douglas (who is about to turn 71 in this movie) to his 30-something girlfriend.

This movie has been described as “The Hangover” (read my review) for old men, and in many ways it is. That’s what I hated about it. Kline–who was made to look even older than his 66 years–is creepy as an oversexed old man walking around with a condom and Viagra (given to him by his wife) and constantly seeking sex with young women (encouraged to do so by his wife). And I could have done without the melodrama. The only likable characters are De Niro, who is a widower still hung up on the death of the love of his life, his childhood sweetheart, and Freeman, who is struggling to break away from his hovering, over-protective son. De Niro and Douglas–who is some sort of successful Hollywood figure in this movie–have some sort of feud, which seems manufactured for the movie (and it is).

While the senior citizens market at the movies has been neglected, and Hollywood is now trying to take advantage of this, I found this movie to be more cheesy, corny, and dopey than endearing, even with the happy ending and Mary Steenburgen thrown in as the classy age-appropriate love interest. Yes, some of this movie is endearing and funny, but most of it just isn’t.




Leave “The Hangover” to the younger crowd. Or, better yet, just leave it altogether.



HALF A MARX

* “Le Capital [Capital]: This mostly French movie (some of it is in English) with English subtitles is mildly entertaining and is supposed to be comical (though it isn’t much). But, overall, it’s your typical French socialist attack on American capitalism.




Marc (Gad Elmaleh) is the assistant to the CEO of a French bank and has ghostwritten his books. But when the CEO’s testicular cancer (the movie’s subtitle calls it “balls cancer”) comes to light, Marc is appointed to take the CEO’s place temporarily. The knives are out for Marc, and he’s expected to do as he’s told while a real CEO successor is sought. But, instead, Marc takes the job by the reins and does the bidding of the bank’s American hedge fund investors (headed by Gabriel Byrne), who want large cuts in staff to make their stock shares in the bank and profits to go up. He does the cuts, but only after making it seem like he’s championing the views of the workers and firing those execs whom the workers don’t like.



Soon the Americans want Marc to buy a worthless Japanese bank so that the bank stock will sink and they can pick up the rest of the bank stock cheaply. Marc will be the fall guy for all of this, and he knows it. Throughout the story, Marc is chasing after a black supermodel, who is using him for money and keeps teasing him.



The movie’s message is that American capitalists make French business leaders act in horrible ways, make massive firings, and ruin people’s lives. The French socialist ways of waste are “better.”



Um, no thanks.



TWO MARXES PLUS AN OBAMA

Weekend Box Office: The Family, Austenland, Adore

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 about 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 choosing good movies to watch yourself!

Weekend Box Office: The Family, Austenland, Adore


By Debbie Schlussel

Nothing that great and new at the movies, this weekend. I did not see “Insidious 2,” as the screening was at the same time as “The Family.”

* “The Family“: I had mixed feelings about this. Luc Besson, a director whose stuff I usually admire, was also at the helm of this one. But the movie fell flat in a few ways. It’s incredibly, unnecessarily violent, and for a dark comedy, it’s not that funny. It’s not a movie for kids, and not just because of the violence, but the language. It’s full of F-bombs and so on. On the other hand, it is a light, relaxing movie, but I’m not sure what the point was. None of the characters are likable, and it’s kind of a waste of time.

Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer, in novel roles for them, play, respectively, a mobster and his wife. Yes, I’m being sarcastic. Seems like that’s all they play. Ever. They and their two kids–a son and a daughter–are in the witness protection program and keep having to be relocated by their handler, Tommy Lee Jones, because De Niro keeps roughing up the locals throughout Europe. Now, they are in Normandy and bored to death. Meanwhile, the mobsters whom De Niro ratted out–particularly the Don–are plotting to find and murder De Niro and his family in revenge.

If you are a De Niro superfan, you might like this. And like I said, it’s light and entertaining, but distastefully violent and pointless. And just not entertaining enough to spend ten bucks-plus on. It might be better to be estranged from “The Family.”

HALF A REAGAN







* “Austenland“: Help, I’ve been dropped in a Jane Austen concentration camp, and they won’t let me out!

This is another one I had mixed feelings about, but mostly on the negative side. Keri Russell plays “Jane,” one of those women who is obsessed with Jane Austen books and fantasizes about living in that time and romancing Mr. Darcy. So, she spends her life savings to attend “Austenland,” a fantasy vacation world in England, owned and operated by Jane Seymour, where no modern appliances or accoutrements are allowed, and actors are hired to “romance” the guests. Jane is treated shabbily by Seymour because she only purchased a “copper” package, not the more expensive “platinum” one. Forced to compete with the other guests for two male actors, she falls for the help.

I’m making the movie sound far better than it is. It’s mostly dopey and like a bad ’80s movie, with a bad ’80s (and ’90s) soundtrack to boot. The jokes are silly, the characters–particularly one played by the awful Jennifer Coolidge (whose “acting” career should be shot and put out of its misery)–are annoying and stupid. And I felt like I was trapped on a dumb episode of “The Love Boat,” Jane Austen edition.

The idea for this movie–a woman facing her unrealistic fantasies taken from classic novels and finally growing up to live in the real world–was interesting and could have made for a very interesting flick. But the execution was just uber-vapid and ludicrous.

The ending isn’t bad, and the movie gets better in the last fifth or so. But it’s just so bad to begin with that all things are relative. And it’s weird that a dumb comedy with so much stupidity suddenly gets too serious and likable in the last moments. But that doesn’t make this nearly worth sitting through. This is supposed to be a comedy, but, amidst the moronism, there are few genuine laughs to be had. Except on the ticket buyer. The joke’s on you, even if you are a Jane Austen obsessive-compulsive.

By the way, I think I can hear the sound of the whale bones in Jane Austen’s corset crackling as she turns over in her grave.

HALF A MARX







* “Adore“: This is possibly the most warped, incestuous, weird movie I’ve seen. Or at least in that category with only a few others. If this movie were made with the genders reversed, there would be holy hell to pay about men having sick, nearly-incestuous, very creepy relationships with young women who are like their daughters. And, yet, this is promoted and pimped on us by celeb magazines as a “steamy soap opera.” And The Guardian incredibly called the movie, “brave” and “masterclass.” But, hey, if you use the concept of “cougars,” it’s a-okay, right? Yay, feminism!

Two Australian best friends from childhood (Robin Wright–the ex-Mrs. Sean Penn who does a crappy Aussie accent–and Naomi Watts) are now middle-aged women with gorgeous, barely legal, surfing Adonises, who are only 17 or 18. One (Watts) is a widow, and the other (Wright) is growing apart from her husband, who wants to move to Sydney. Both the women live on the Australian coast in fabulous houses and have fabulous jobs in addition to their fabulous, hunky sons (Xavier Samuel, James Frecheville). Soon, each finds herself having a sexual relationship with the other’s son. Ultimately, they end their warped sexual relationships with the two adonises–or do they?–when one of them falls for a girl his own age and decides to marry her.

This movie is so messed up, I cannot put it into words. But it draws you in with its glamour and unlikely symmetry of fabulous lives of the Australian well-to-do and the nice scenery–natural and human. But it’s still just sick. By the way, this “Fifty Shades of Greying Women Bleached Blonde” is based on a book called, “The Grandmothers .” (And I think one point of this movie is to show us that “grandmothers” Wright and Watts still have good enough bodies to sport bikinis and bed male teen hotties.)

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to know about any grandmas’ pedophiliac fantasies, and I don’t wanna see ‘em onscreen. There ain’t nothin’ “Adore”-able here. Not even close.

See, if only Ariel Castro had written a novel about his exploits and made a movie. And if only he and his captives were better looking, they’d have a movie, right? Yeah, that’s the ticket.

The West is now so warped that this is now “high-brow” cinema.

THREE MARXES PLUS FOUR BETTY FRIEDANS

Wknd Box Office (& DVD Review): Mud, Pain & Gain, Pawn, The Big Wedding

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 about 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 (& DVD Review): Mud, Pain & Gain, Pawn, The Big Wedding


By Debbie Schlussel



I only liked one of the new movies debuting in theaters today. And I liked another movie which is out on DVD this week and for which I attended a special Detroit screening, last week. But, oh the crap I sit through so you don’t have to.


* “Mud“: This is the best new movie in theaters, this weekend. But in this case, it’s not “relative.” This is a great movie in its own right, and very cute, too (though I wouldn’t take kids to see it because of language issues). I found this adventure/thriller/coming of age movie (it’s all three in one) to be charming, entertaining, relaxing, enjoyable, and a nice slice of small rivertown Southern life in America.


The movie focuses on two young boys from working class families in a small Arkansas town on the Mississippi River. Their families make a living from fishing in the river. The main character is Ellis (played by terrific 16-year-old newcomer Tye Sheridan), who lives on a houseboat with his parents (the father is played by Sam Shepard), who are in a troubled marriage. The government threatens to take their houseboat away in an attempt to “clear” the river. Ellis’ best friend is a constantly-swearing kid, nicknamed “Neckbone,” or “Neck” for short (Jacob Lofland). He lives with his uncle (Michael Shannon), who also fishes for a living, going underwater to capture shellfish.



The two boys like to take a small motorboat to a small, abandoned, forested island nearby. There they discover Mud (Matthew McConaughey), who appears to be a homeless man. He tells them that he is on the island to meet up with the love of his life, Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), who is in town. Mud promises the kids his boat, if they will get him food and supplies and other items he needs while he is on the island, but soon they learn that Mud isn’t exactly who he says he is. Ellis also learns about finding love and losing it (his parents’ rocky marriage), and he and Neck’s friendship grows stronger through their adventures in helping Mud.



I don’t want to say more, or it will give away this terrific movie. If you are scared of snakes, there is a brief, scary scene with them. But if you saw “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” this is nothing.



The movie’s pace is a little slow, but it’s enjoyable and entertaining anyway. This is what fun, escapist movies are all about. And the kids are so cute and such great actors. They steal the movie from the bigger names involved. (The trailer, below, makes the movie seem a lot darker and more melodramatic than it is, so take it with a grain of salt.)



THREE REAGANS


* “Pain & Gain“: They should have stuck with just the first word of this title for accuracy’s sake, because this movie is all pain–and painful to watch. It’s a miserable, disgusting two hours and ten minutes of torture and killing porn. Just horrible. The movie shows people being tortured, murdered, dismembered, and their limbs literally being barbecued on a grill. And if that’s not bad enough, it also presents grotesque visions, including a very hairy girl getting a bikini wax, front and center. Um, no thanks. Oh, and it’s anti-Christian.



“Based” on a true story, real-life attempted murderer Mark Wahlberg plays Daniel Lugo, a Miami physical trainer who is jealous of his wealthy clients at the gym where he works. He attends the seminar of a Tony Robbins-esque motivational speaker and decides to make money by kidnapping his clients and torturing and/or killing them to get their assets. He recruits fellow steroid-using meatheads, including Anthony Mackie and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who help him kidnap Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub–who is an anti-Israel Lebanese Arab in real life, so it’s interesting he’s playing a negative, anti-Semitic stereotype of a Jew), one of the wealthy customers at the gym.



They repeatedly torture Kershaw whom they’ve kidnapped and are holding hostage at a sex toys warehouse. But he refuses to sign over his assets to them until he’s near death. Then, they cause a car he is in to crash, douse it with gasoline and set it on fire, and after that, repeatedly run him over. But he gets away, and police don’t believe his story. So Kershaw has to hire a private detective to build a case to take to police. Meanwhile, Lugo and the gang take over Kershaw’s home and businesses and plot to get money from another wealthy person. They murder the new mark and his girlfriend, and dismember them.



The character played by “The Rock”–who is a made-up composite character–is very Christian (he wears hats and t-shirts that say things like, “Team Jesus” and goes to church) and very stupid, no coincidence. It’s yet another gratuitous Hollywood attack on Christianity. Unnecessary and extremely defamatory of the Christian faith.



Family members of the real-life murder victims of Daniel Lugo and his gang are outraged by this movie because they say it portrays them as likeable-but-dumb crooks in a comedy movie, when they are really cold-blooded killers in a very serious and dastardly set of crimes. I don’t agree that anyone in this movie is portrayed as likeable. They’re all unlikable, and the movie is pointless and disturbing. And, frankly, I don’t think this “comedy” was very funny. Just awful. Still, I understand the outrage over this movie, and I feel the same way. It’s just despicable and depraved.



Mark Wahlberg is promoting his new line of protein and energy bars in connection with this piece of trash movie. Don’t buy them. And if you waste ten bucks and 130 minutes of your life on this pointless exercise in graphic violence, you’re a sucker. And part of the problem with America, not the solution. Skip it.



I used to walk out on movies like this, and I’m mad at myself that I didn’t this time. If you like this movie, there’s something seriously wrong with you.



FOUR MARXES PLUS FOUR OBAMAS PLUS FOUR BIN LADENS


* “Pawn“: This came out on DVD on Tuesday, and I was invited to a special Detroit screening with the screenwriter, Jay Anthony White who is a native Detroiter. It features an ensemble case, including Ray Liotta (in a novel role for him: mobster), Michael Chiklis, and Forest Whitaker. It’s a caper/thriller movie about a restaurant and its customers taken hostage by a group of British robbers. While the movie is a little bloody and violent, I enjoyed it because the bad guys get theirs in the end and the good guys win (for the most part).



A man (Sean Faris) is returning from a brief stint in jail for car theft. He and his pregnant wife want to start over, and he goes to a diner to discuss some business with someone there. But once he’s there, a group of thugs invade the place and start killing hostages. The plan was to rob the place, but they are really after much more than the restaurant’s cash. And on the outside there is intrigue involving cops, mobsters, and relatives of hostages, as well as confusion regarding the identities of the robbers.



Entertaining and good for some escapist adventure. Not completely bloodless, but I’ve seen far worse in the violence department. A good Netflix rental or DVD purchase for a weekend thriller.



TWO REAGANS



* “The Big Wedding“: This movie was on the shelf for a long time, and that’s where it should have stayed. It’s unwatchable. Unbearable. And just plain stupid and annoying. Someone who saw it with me said they thought it was a “TV movie.” But that’s an insult to TV movies, most of which are far superior to this crappy, groan-inducing waste of time. Filled with inane, silly, sex-laced dumb jokes and the dumbest story ever, it’s yet another wedding movie starring Katherine Heigl (this time as a minor co-star). Plus it mocks religious Catholics–and as reader Sean M correctly points out, it also mocks Hispanics. Robert De Niro, Susan Sarandon, and Diane Keaton must’ve received a big paycheck for this absolute waste of time.



The story (if you can call it that): a divorced couple (De Niro, Keaton) are about to host the wedding of their adopted son. He is from Colombia, and his birth mother and sister and coming to the wedding. But the birth mother, a devout Catholic, feels it’s Satanic (or something) for the parents of the groom to be divorced, so the divorced parents pretend they are married. The divorced dad’s girlfriend (Sarandon) is mad about this. Meanwhile, everyone in the movie is sex-obsessed and let’s us all know with dumb, groanworthy sex-laden dialogue that isn’t funny. Oh, and there are lots of orgasm noises.



A complete disaster and waste of time. Skip at all cost.



FOUR MARXES

Wknd Box Office: New Year’s Eve, The Sitter

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: New Year’s Eve, The Sitter

By Debbie Schlussel



It’s yet another Netflix/video rental/take-a-video-out-of-your-local-public-library weekend. The two new releases at theaters today are absolutely awful:









* “New Year’s Eve“: This is director Garry Marshal’s “sequel” (well, not really–all the characters are different) to the pretty awful  “Valentine’s Day” (read my review). This is just a tiny hair better and not by much. It stank. The movie is filled with a gazillion famous actors and actresses (if you call Alyssa Milano, who has a cameo role, still famous). But there’s just nothing there. It’s “The Love Boat” 2011. A bunch of celebrities have intertwining stories, none of which are worth retelling here, but all of which center around New Year’s Eve (the ball drop and a huge party held by a record company), when the movie takes place. There’s Sarah Jess-Equine Parker, Josh Duhamel, Jessica Biel, Hillary Swank, Robert De Niro, Zac Efron, Ashton Kutcher, Halle Berry, a very de-glammed Michelle Pfeiffer, Jessica Biel, Katherine Heigl, and the acting-challenged Jon Bon Jovi, among others.





The only touching story is the one with Robert De Niro as a dying man wanting to see the ball drop in Times Square one more time–but is seeing the ball drop one more time, really a reason to want to live? If that’s all you have to live for, you should probably pull the plug, as they should do on drivel-filled movies like this. To call this, “schmaltzy,” would be an insult to schmaltz. The flick is dopey, cheesy, silly, and a time-bandit, which robbed you of two hours of your life you’ll never get back. If this is New Year’s Eve, it’s best to stay home.



TWO-AND-A-HALF MARXES




* “The Sitter“: This wasn’t screened for Detroit-area critics, so I went to last night’s Midnight show and saw why. It stinks. This raunchy, disgusting, stupid rip-off of a million far-more-charming babysitter movies plus the Harold & Kumar Christmas bomb–read my review) is absolutely awful. It begins with a scene of Jonah Hill giving oral sex to an equally ugly girl. And the movie gets worse from there. Hill plays a loser whose father has left him and his mother for a new family, and his mother wants to go to a fancy party to meet a doctor with whom she’s being set up. Hill has to babysit his mother’s friends’ three kids, or the mother can’t go to the party. So, he agrees, then takes the crazy, dysfunctional kids on a wild trip through Manhattan, as he tries to score cocaine for the girl he wants to have sex with and escape from the drug dealer who sold it to him.



One of the kids is an adopted kid from Latin America, who constantly explodes bombs in the toilets of public places. Do you think they’d ever do a movie with an adopted Muslim kid who does that (which would be far more applicable than a Latino kid doing so)? Dream on. Latinos (and Whites, men, and Jews) are fair game in politically correct Hollywood, and Muslims are sacred. While this “comedy” had a few funny lines, it was mostly groanworthy and repulsive. Jonah Hill executive produced this crap filled with equally crappy, no-name actors. What a waste of my time . . . and yours, if you ignore this review and go see this garbage anyway.



FOUR MARXES PLUS

Wknd Box Office: Killer Elite, Dolphin Tale, Moneyball

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: Killer Elite, Dolphin Tale, Moneyball

By Debbie Schlussel



It’s kinda like a three-fer weekend because there’s a fantastic family movie and a so-so movie from Hollywood that actually portrays Muslims for the murderous, anti-Western scum that they are.  Yeah, Jason Statham!  I knew I liked that dude.  And the sports movie starring Palestina Jolie’s wife ain’t bad either.   I did not see “Abduction,” starring “Team Jacob” a/k/a the talentless Taylor Lautner because they did not screen it for Detroit-area movie critics.  Since they screened even the horrid “Creature” (read my review) for us, you know what that means.

















* “Killer Elite“: The best thing about this movie is when Muslims get a hitman to kill an innocent men, and when he confronts them, one of the Muslims responds with a dismissive laugh and says, “Such is allah’s will.” You know that’s how all Muslims think whenever an innocent non-Muslim (or even an innocent Muslim, of which there are very few) is killed. And I’m glad Hollywood is finally letting a movie actually have dialogue in this. Must have snuck past the HAMAS CAIR Action Network censors of all reality and facts. The second best part of this movie is when Clive Owen gives a Muslim sheikh treatment similar to (but more delicious than) the Navy SEALS Team Six treatment for Bin Laden.

















Jason Statham and Robert De Niro are elite hitmen who kill for a living. But when Statham almost kills a kid, he decides he’s had enough and retires to the Australian outback. De Niro stays in it . . . for the money, and that’s his downfall. One day, Statham finds a photo of De Niro being held hostage and he must go to the kidnappers to find him.



The kidnappers are a dethroned Muslim sheikh, who is the exiled leader of a Gulf state, and his spoiled son, the prince. The sheikh looks like a cross between the Shoe Bomber and Bin Laden at age 80. The Oman-based sheikh and his son tell Statham that he must kill the three British men from the SAS (Special Air Service) who murdered his three other jihadist sons (in Iraq or Afghanistan or somewhere). If he does that, and provides proof, plus their admissions of killing his sons, then De Niro can go free. If not, well, you know what these Muslim royals do when they don’t get their way from infidels: they slaughter us. Spoiler Alert: in a ripped-from-headlines kind of twist there is a British oil deal connected with all this. Hey, remember the British release of the Lockerbie bomber in exchange for oil deals?



This movie has lots of action and chases, but I didn’t really like the clumsy, herky-jerky story in this movie. It wasn’t tightly written and seemed a little long. Plus a lot of the stunts just weren’t believable. It was also very bloody and violent. And I just wasn’t that into it. Even the reality check on Muslims wasn’t enough to make it a good movie. It was just okay.



ONE REAGAN



* “Dolphin Tale“: Aside from the presence of TrAshley “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” Judd, this is a great movie for family viewing. Great for kids, great for your whole family, and the adults will like it, too. I enjoyed it. And it’s also patriotic, with a military element. It’s based on the true story of the dolphin that got the prosthetic fin, when its real fin had to be amputated due to injuries.



A young boy who is shy and introverted sees a beached dolphin, caught in a crab trap, on his way to summer school. He tries to help the dolphin and the whale responds with affinity. After the dolphin is rescued by the local non-profit marine hospital, he visits the dolphin and develops a relationship with it (this is strictly platonic, G-rated stuff) and becomes friendly with the young daughter of the marine biologist (Harry Connick, Jr.) who is trying to help nurse the dolphin back to health. The formerly introverted boy comes alive in this setting. But the ailing dolphin’s tail must be amputated, and the marine hospital is struggling financially. After a hurricane, it’s unlikely the hospital will remain open, and no institutions want an amputee dolphin.



Meanwhile, the young boy’s cousin, a state swimming champ and Army soldier, is wounded in Iraq (or Afghanistan–can’t remember which). The young boy visits the military hospital, meets a doctor (Morgan Freeman) who specializes in prosthetics for soldiers, and the wheels start turning.



The movie is far more charming than can be conveyed in this brief review. It’s wholesome, cute, and very entertaining. If I had one problem with it, it’s that, per usual, the kid has an absentee “bad dad.” We’re told that the boy’s dad just left one day when he was young and they never heard from him again. “He doesn’t call, he doesn’t write,” the boy says. Since this is based on a true story, I wonder what actually happened to the real-life boy’s dad.



Also, in real life, the doctors (plural) who saved the whale by getting the prosthetic tale were two White doctors, that were combined into one Black guy in the movie. Yes, at the end, they show photos of the doctors, and I noticed they are obviously White. Racial politics? Probably. That’s Hollywood.



But other than that, it’s fine and enjoyable.



THREE REAGANS





* “Moneyball“: Even though I loathe Brad Pitt a/k/a Angelina Jolie’s trophy wife and find baseball to be almost as boring as curling, this was still a decent movie, though a little long and slow. Jonah Hill a/k/a Jonah Hill Feldstein was the best part of it. Even when he’s not supposed to be funny, he’s funny. The absolute best dialogue in the movie is at the beginning, when a baseball scout for the Oakland A’s voices his opposition to the drafting of a particular player because the player’s girlfriend is ugly (“only a 6″), and that shows the player has no confidence. The movie is based on the book of the same name by Michael Lewis.



It’s the early 2000′s, as the Oakland As lost the World Series, and all of their great players have signed for bigger money elsewhere. Pitt is Billy Beane, a former teen baseball phenom who chose the money over a scholarship at Stanford and didn’t make it in Major League Baseball. He became a scout for the As and is now general manager of the team. With a smaller budget of only a few tens of millions, there is no way the As can compete with rich teams like the New York Yankees until . . . until Beane meets Peter Brand (Hill), who is an employee of another team and has an economics degree from Yale.



Beane hires Brand away and makes him assistant general manager of the As, where the two of them put together a team of underrated (and, thus, low-paid) players with proven records of getting on base through walks and other non-hit methods.  It’s known as “sabremetrics,” even though I can’t remember hearing that term once in the movie, and it’s based solely on statistics, complicated mathematical formulas, and computer number-crunching.  Beane has to fight a recalcitrant scouting and coaching staff as he puts into play this new method.  Will it work?  Will Beane win the World Series with the As?  Google it, read the book, or see the movie.  Your pick.  Or, you can read this column, “The ‘Moneyball’ Myth,” by the Wall Street Journal’s Allen Barra, which says it’s not true.



I could have done without the part at the end, in which Beane’s young daughter (he is divorced) sings to him that he’s a loser. But I guess he is, because–Spoiler Alert–after all this, he turned down a $12.5 million to become GM of the Boston Red Sox.



Enjoyable and entertaining even if you don’t like sports. It’s no “The Natural, ” but good enough.



TWO REAGANS

Wknd Box Office: Limitless, Lincoln Lawyer, Paul

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: Limitless, Lincoln Lawyer, Paul


By Debbie Schlussel



Incredibly, there are two GREAT new movies at the theater, this weekend:



* “Limitless“: This is a great movie. I enjoyed every single second of it (except the ending, which had some giant gaping holes in it). I’m normally not a fan of Bradley Cooper, but his acting was perfect in this interesting flick. This is bloody and violent and not for kids, despite the PG-13 rating. But it’s a fun, escapist film for adults. And a good moral message about how there is no “perfect drug,” even if that message gets kinda muddled at the end.


As you probably know, humans use only a limited portion of the brain. Who wouldn’t want to take a pill that allows you to use all areas of your brain, become more efficient, and get things done? That’s what Cooper’s character does. A down and out writer, he’s a loser who isn’t making it in life, and is resigned to likely failure. But then he runs into his ex-brother-in-law, a drug dealer, who gives him a pill that utilizes all areas of the brain. Suddenly, he’s staying up all night cleaning up his apartment, quickly writing the brilliant novel he dreamed of, and effortlessly putting together formulas that help him win in the stock market. It’s kind of like friends I’ve had who take Adderall, the ADD drug. At first, they are very efficient and hyper-focused.


Cooper’s life is going swimmingly, and he soon finds himself joining forces with a corporate titan, a billionaire played by Robert De Niro (who proudly attended the UN showing of the anti-Semitic, anti-Israel movie, “Miral,” this week). But, then, there are more than a few serious obstacles in the form of people and symptoms that come his way. Saying anything else about the plot will spoil the movie.


This is not just a great thriller. It’s also great science fiction. I’m told that the book on which it is based, Alan Glynn’s The Dark Fields, has a darker ending, which I’d have preferred. Still, I recommend it highly. Movies like this are the reason people leave their stress-filled lives to enjoy a night out at the movies.



THREE-AND-A-HALF REAGANS




* “The Lincoln Lawyer“: As a practicing attorney who does some criminal defense work, I always look to see if legal thrillers pass the smell test. Do they pull things that a real lawyer never would or could do? Does stuff happen in court that’s just not credible when juxtaposed with real life? This one not only passes that smell test, but it’s a fun thriller, starring a terrific actor, Matthew McConaughey (even if he’s nutty in real life). It’s bloody and violent and not for kids (thus, the R rating). But it’s a good adult night out at the movies.



No, this has nothing to do with Abraham Lincoln or Lincoln, Nebraska. McConaughey is a sleazy criminal defense attorney who conducts his law practice out of the back seat of a chauffeur-driven early 1980s model Lincoln Continental Town Car (my late father drove the same car–nice ride!). He works with the help of an investigator, played by William H. Macy. Meanwhile, McConaughey’s ex-wife, Marisa Tomei, is a prosecutor who works for the District Attorney. The stuff McConaughey pulls I’ve seen too many lawyers pull. It’s all believable. He’s all about the Benjamins, like far too many lawyers.



McConaughey is hired by Ryan Phillippe, the son of a rich Beverly Hills real estate investor, who is charged with attempted murder of a prostitute he met at a bar. But, as with all legal thrillers, things are not as they seem. And McConaughey finds that his current client’s case is inextricably tied into a past client’s legal entanglement.



The tempo in this movie is great, and while it has a great deal of action, it also shows some of the real predicaments in which defense lawyers often find themselves. It’s clever and well done, even though we’ve seen similar plot lines before in previous legal thrillers.



THREE REAGANS



Paul“: What could have been a great movie and started out with such hilarity and promise, turned into a non-stop blatant attack on religious Christians, gun owners, Second Amendment advocates, and middle Americans with main street values. Oh, and it’s chock full of four-letter words, which dominate the lines.



Two British comic book geeks, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (the anti-Christian bigots who wrote this script), are in the U.S. for Comic-Con (the comic book/sci-fi convention) and then drive cross-country to see their favorite UFO/alien/sci-fi spots, such as Area 51. The opening scene at Comic-Con is hilarious. But it’s all downhill from there. Along the way, they meet typically violent, backward, homophobic gun owners (is there any other kind of gun owner in Hollywood?) and backward cops who “stupidly” question why British cops don’t have guns (yeah, that’s “real stupid” . . . if you’re a liberal).



Soon, they encounter an animated extraterrestrial alien, “Paul,” voiced by Seth Rogen (which should be enough to scare you away), who has escaped from U.S. government custody after a long imprisonment. He is being chased by a government agent (Jason Bateman) and his boss (Susan “Sigourney” Weaver). Pegg and Frost help hid Paul in their RV and take him on some unspecified mission to a destination the identity of which they do not know. At one stop early on in the movie, they spend the night at a trailer park run by a “nutty” fundamentalist Christian father and daughter with the last name of Buggs. Pegg, Frost, and Paul entice the daughter (Kristen Wiig) to give up her “backward” Christian ways and Bible in favor of swearing like a sailor and speaking graphically ad nauseam about having sex.



Do you really care what happens next? I didn’t. It’s basically a “Let’s Make Fun of Christians and Gun-Owners” flick. They would never make a movie like this with Islam and Muslims mocked the way Christians and Christianity are in this piece of crap. It’s yet another reminder why Republicans winning the House doesn’t make a damn bit of difference if conservatives flail in the culture wars. “Bitter gun and Bible clingers” don’t have even a foot in Hollywood’s door.



FOUR MARXES PLUS AN OBAMA PLUS A BIN LADEN