Movie Reviews

Pretty in Pink

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Marie Antoinette
  • IMDb: link

Marie AntoinetteThis is what a film should look like.  Visually, it’s a cinematic treat in the purest meaning; a vacation for your eyes from the copious dull white streets of suburbia, the stacks of rows of white cubicles, the houses with white trim and white refrigerators.  Marie Antoinette is an assault on the visually dull, attacking the viewer with dulled but somehow vibrant colors that are all too often shunned from our modern world.

Marie (Kirsten Dunst) is just your average teenager.  She lives with her parents, loves her dog and has a prolific wardrobe to say the least.  Really, the only thing that sets her apart is that she marries a Prince and eventually becomes the Queen of France; but that’s it really.

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Terry’s Train Wreck

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  • Title: Tideland
  • IMDb: link

TidelandTideland is so bad you honestly wonder if it was made as a joke.  It makes Running Scared (if you forgot how much I detested that film check out the review) look merely mediocre.  It’s dreadful, and one of the worst films ever made.

The film opens with the heroin-addicted couple who use their daughter Jeliza-Rose (Jodelle Ferland) to prepare their needles.  After the mother (Jennifer Tily) dies of and overdose, Noah (Jeff Bridges) takes his daughter to the country to the abandoned farmhouse where he grew up.

There he promptly overdoes himself leaving Jeliza-Rose alone with his decomposing corpse in the middle of the living room.  She’s so screwed-up she doesn’t notice and walks around in her own fantasy world with her only friends, the detached heads of a handful of dolls.  Of course she has to periodically return and give the decomposing body a big hug.

Out one day she runs into a retarded young man named Dickens (Brendan Fletcher), and the evil-crone who takes care of him (Janet McTeer), who are just as screwed-up as she is, if not more so.  They also seem to live in a bizarre world not unlike young Jeliza-Rose.

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Elizabethtown disappoints

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  • Title: Elizabethtown
  • IMDB: link

elizabethtown-posterElizabethtown has everything going for it, good stars, a diverse supporting cast, awesome music, and many of Cameron Crowe’s little trademark touches.  So why did I leave the theater so disappointed? 

The more I thought about the film my disappointment turned to anger.  The only story line that hasn’t been stolen from one of his earlier films, the effect of the death of your father, is constantly interrupted by an overly cute love story and a collection of the oddest and nicest group of hicks you will ever meet.  I guess everyone who grew up in Mayberry moved to Elizabehtown.

Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) is having a bad week.  First he is fired after some kind of tremendous blunder that has something to do with shoes, his shallow girlfriend (Jessica Biel) leaves him, and his boss (Alec Baldwin) makes him give an interview accepting total responsibility for the failure. 

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Man of the Year

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  • Title: Man of the Year
  • IMDB: link

Man of the YearWe’ve seen this done before, and done better.  Man of the Year doesn’t come close to Levinson’s direction of David Mamet’s wickedly humorous satire Wag the Dog and lacks the warmth of Dave.  It falls apart in the second act, seemingly written and directed by a studio exec’s retarded grandson, as the film losses all it’s momentum as the comedy is shelved for a thrill-less thriller.

Tom Dobbs (Robin Williams) is a comedian with his own late-night political show, think Bill Maher or Jon Stewart amped up on caffeine.  An offhand remark by a audience member begins a series of unusual and unbelievable circumstances leading this funny man to become the President of the United States.

It has a perfect set-up.  As Dobbs runs just to stir the pot, which no one takes seriously, Elanor Green (Laura Linney), an employee of the Diebold-like maker of the new voting machines, discovers a slight flaw in the system.  When she presents her findings to the CEO she is told the problem is being worked on and will be corrected.

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Nakey, Nakey

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Shortbus
  • IMDB: link

ShortbusSex is a compelling subject in film, books, and television.  In discussing, and showing, sex you know you’ve got the audiences attention.  Shortbus knows how to grab us early, but soon fails to perform to expectations as it blows it’s wad in the first eight minutes.

The film opens with a voyeuristic journey as the film, seemingly at random, looks through windows into the sexual lives of a select few of the millions in New York City.  The shock and strangeness of the situation immediately will make you take notice and, depending on your moral stance, possibly be appalled.

It’s the perfect choice to bring you into this world.  Sadly though, once here, writer/director John Cameron Mitchell has very little to say.

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