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: Our Idiot Brother, Another Earth, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Colombiana, Names of Love
By Debbie Schlussel
The best new movie actually came out a couple of weeks ago, but I missed the screening and didn’t get to it ’til now. The other great movie is the one that makes fun of every left-wing and PC group of people.
* “Our Idiot Brother“: I enjoyed this adult look at the morons who make up left-wing, politically-correct America. The “idiot brother” in the title is, in fact, the smarter of all his orthodox liberal siblings. But, yes, he’s still a moron. And it’s funny (but raunchy and not for kids).
Paul Rudd is an organic, er . . . “bio-dynamic” (which is supposed to be super-organic) farmer, living with his dreadlock-haired girlfriend and their dog, “Willie Nelson.” But, at a farmer’s market, he sells pot to a uniformed cop and gets sent to jail for eight months. When he returns, his girlfriend has a new hippie airhead boyfriend, and he needs a place to stay. He is shuttled between the dwellings of his three sisters and their crazy, selfish, liberal lives.
Among the “highlights” is his married sister, whose husband is a documentary filmmaker. They refuse to allow their son to eat any sugar beyond a single cupcake a week, and they won’t let him take karate classes or play games involving play-fighting. Instead, he is forced to take a girl’s modern dance class, full of–what else!–girls, while his male schoolmates are all in karate. The “idiot brother” commits the crime of all crimes teaching his nephew fighting moves and how to play video games.
Another of the idiot brother’s sisters is a lesbian who constantly cheats on her butch lover with real men. She holds parties where her brother is accosted by unwanted advances from swingers, and then she takes him to a “therapist” who makes them sit in a steam-filled wind tent.
And finally there is the ambitious sister (Elizabeth Banks) who is so selfish that she uses confidential things her brother got from a source in order to make her career. She is so annoying that she makes sure to tell a server that her two soft-serve ice cream flavors must be “side by side, not swirled.”
It’s far funnier than my telling of it. But, rest assured, you’ll be happy to see a movie like this that makes fun of the fruits, nuts, and flakes, anything goes, PC, granola crowd. Did Hollywood really make this? And why is it being released in movie pet cemetery August?
TWO REAGANS
* “Another Earth“: I absolutely loved this. It’s like a modern-day version of “The Twilight Zone,” with maybe a little too much melodrama thrown in. Still loved it, anyway. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen, and I like original movies, especially when there’s a sci-fi element thrown in. The ending was perfect, too.
The story: a smart high school senior interested in astronomy gets into MIT, and she is very cocky because her life is set to go to great heights. But she drives drunk and kills a college professor’s wife and son, after she crashes into them. After four years of prison, she is released and becomes a high school janitor, embarrassed over what she made of her once-promising life. She makes a failed attempt to apologize to the man whose family she killed. When she goes to his house, she doesn’t have the guts to say who she is or apologize, and instead says she’s from a maid service. She begins cleaning his house and a relationship of sorts develops.
In the meantime, another planet has descended and come into full view of Earth. It’s soon determined that the planet, “Earth 2,” is a mirror image of ours with all of the same people who led the same lives . . . or did they? A contest is being held for one lucky earthling to go to the new planet. And the two stories intertwine.
If a little slow at first, the movie really builds up to an exciting second half. Kept me rapt at attention to the movie screen and what happens next. Like I said, the ending is perfect. Way better than an August flick.
FOUR REAGANS
* “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark“: I never saw the original 1973 TV movie of which this is a remake. But this was fine. It wasn’t that scary, but it was entertaining enough. Once the monsters are revealed, it was even less scary, but I enjoyed the architecture of the old house and artwork in this. Both play key roles in the plot.
The story: an architect (Guy Pearce) and his interior designer girlfriend (Katie Holmes) are almost done rehabbing an old mansion, when the man’s daughter from his now-concluded marriage comes to live with them. The daughter doesn’t like the old house and finds it creepy. Plus she feels the couple doesn’t want her there. They are busy with the house, which they need as a showplace to restore their careers and finances. While they are busy restoring the home, the daughter finds a long lost basement and soon begins hearing voices calling to her in the darkness.
Nothing offensive about this, and it wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t great. But it’s fine for under two hours of escaping real life. This is also better than an August movie.
ONE-AND-A-HALF REAGANS
* “Colombiana“: This wasn’t screened for critics, so I paid my own way to see it, and it wasn’t that bad. However, I wince at movies featuring a teeny-tiny skinny girl kicking big guys’–trained assassins’–butts. It just ain’t believable.
Real-life whiner, Zoe “Hollywood is Racist Against Me” Saldana, plays a little girl in Colombia whose parents are murdered by the drug cartel in which her father was a major player. She escapes to Chicago, where she is raised by her gangster Hispanic father (who is played by a Maori actor with a bad Latino accent). She tells him she wants to grow up to be a killer, so she can kill those who murdered her parents. The movie becomes a bloodfest with unbelievable feats by Soldana, but it’s still entertaining, though completely mindless, fighting and action stuff.
I can see why they didn’t screen this for critics, but it wasn’t all bad, and I’ve screened much worse. Not a great movie or even close. But it’s adequate if you like straight, uncomplicated action adventure mixed with a lot of killing. It’s very clever at times, but mostly your average action flick involving a killer.
The part I most detested about this is that the killer, Saldana, is made into some kind of hero, when she isn’t. She’s just as bad as those she kills, so it’s really a zero sum game with no one to root for.
ONE-HALF REAGAN
* “The Names of Love [Le Nom Des Gens]“: I absolutely hated this movie. But it’s a wet dream for the interfaith dialogue, multi-cultural types who think 9/11 was perpetrated by a ghost. It’s supposed to be a comedy, but I didn’t laugh once, and for good reason: it ain’t funny.
A silly, stupid, free-spirited half-Algerian Muslim Arab liberal falls for the atheist son of a Jewish Holocaust survivor, and together they have lots of sex. But that’s after she sleeps with all the right-wingers in France to try to make them liberals. And after she walks around France in full-frontal nudity and marries Muslim illegal aliens so they can become citizens of France and avoid deportation. Oh, and she shows the Jewish guy a Holocaust memorial and encourages him to ask his mother about the past. We are the world, we are the children, can’t we all just get along, blah, blah, blah. The end.
Remember, this is a comedy. Haha, funny. Where’s Joe Pesci’s character from “Goodfellas” when I need him? And a barf bag, too–also very much needed for this really awful piece of vomit-inducing crap.
FOUR MARXES
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