Reefer Madness
My college roommate and his buddies used to get really uh, HUNGRY! when they watched this. 
Friday Night Lights
After the postscript, I jump and yelled: “They made a movie about the wrong underdog”
Basically, it was a scrappy underdog team overcomes obstacles, learns to play as a team, and loses on the final play in slow motion. But, darn it, they made it this far…
But then the stupid postscript made a far more interesting movie than the one I was watching. Yeah, this team in the movie made it close, but still lost. HOWEVER, the postscript said “next year’s Odessa Permian went on to win the title.”
There, folks, is the true underdog story! What made it more remarkable is they did it with a new quarterback (QB was a senior) and without two of their best defensive players (seniors Chavez and the sullen black guy).
A far, far more remarkable story.
You’re right that the next team might have made for a more satisfying ending, but it was base on a non-fiction book, and the book was based on the season the author spent with the team. It wasn’t like this teamwas intentionally chosen over the championship team, it was just the luck of the draw that it was the season that H.G. Bissinger happened to be there. The real story was even more anticlimactic than the movie. The movie turned the championship game into a last second nailbiter. The reality was that Odessa got pounded and it was never really a contest.
A question about this movie- I’ve only seen bits and pieces of it on TV. Is it supposed to be a revelation that “this is really the story about you and me!”, because I literally just assumed that from reading the description of it on the back of the box. If so, that’s a pretty anti-climactic revelation.
What I love about “gotta love that stalker” movies like (I’m told) this, BIG FISH and others where the guy without the money stalks the girl til he wins her is that the guy is always a stud (Ewan MacGregor or John Cusack or Robert Downey Jr. or Ryan Gosling]). It’d be interesting to see if the same chick-flick-diggers dug it if the stalker was played by Jon Lovitz or Ethan Supplee or DJ Qualls (three guys who aren’t associated with any evil but just aren’t people you’d wanna see nekkid or think of as romantic) how quickly they’d say “ewww”.
Yeah, it’s supposed to be a revelation.James Garner, for some reason, gets called “Duke,” while Ryan Gosling gets called “Noah.” I think Rowlands gets called “Mrs Whatever.”
Now that I think about, I’m not sure if it was supposed to a be a surprise that Gena Rowlands is Rachel McAdams so much as we’re supposed to be on pins and needles about whether James Garner is Ryan Gosling or James Marsden (the rich fiance). I seem to remember that it was played as a big revelation when Gena Rowands suddenly remembers running to Gosling’s restored mansion (there’s a whole subplot about Gosling wanting to restore some dilapidated old mansion in the town) with her luggage to live happily ever after…or at least until she got Alzheimer’s. I was kind of in and out on this movie and snoozed a bit during the WWII stuff so I might be remembering it wrong.
In any case, yeah, it wasn’t much of a surprise, but I suppose it probably let some people feel smart that they “figured it out” before the end.
Fast Food Nation made me want steak so badly. Man, just thinking about that movie makes me crave a big hunk of beef.
Who Killed the Electric Car? made me want to go out and kill an electric car.
Bowling For Columbine made me want to buy an Uzi just to piss off Michael Moore, and I don’t even live in the US.
I’ve come in to third, fourth, fifth, whatever Rent. I swear that play will make me a Republican one day. Catchy songs, but I want to drown Maureen, shake her girlfriend, and generally kick the crap out of everybody else. I did like the scene where Angel gave the tourists directions, though (I think that was in this movie?). I watched it with a couple of girls in their early twenties and I couldn’t bear to say “My God, I hate everyone in this movie and wish they’d all die EXCEPT FOR THE PEOPLE WHO DO.”
Also, Pirates of the Caribbean.
Warning for long and spoily, if you’re the one person in the world who hasn’t watched any of these:
Spoilt rich girl is as a twelve year old fascinated with the idea of the pirates roaming free over the open sea. Executing the people who rape, pillage, and murder the islands she’s going to live on is just Too Awful because one of them might be this cute boy they found! Flash forward to being eighteen or so: here we have this admittedly stuffy dude, favorite of her father, maybe too old for her considering she grew up with him, and over here we have the swordsmith’s apprentice.
Okay, I’ll give her that. Closer to her age, wasn’t an adult when she was still in little girl clothes, and going out to stop Barbossa when he was attacking the city could even be seen as noble. But SHOCKINGLY ENOUGH, pirates can’t be held to their word, illustrating pretty clearly to Elizabeth that her romantic ideas about these guys are really, really stupid, and off they go adventuring. Meanwhile, here’s Will, frantic because the pretty girl went away and he has no earthly clue where she is or how he can rescue her. But wait! These guys were pirates, and that guy in jail is a pirate, so (immense leap here) surely he’s trustworthy and knows where those other pirate fellows have gone and will be glad to take us to them because trustworthy though he is he’ll happily betray them all!
Norrington, having more brains than a lima bean, tells Will he’s smoking crack and dismisses him. Will decides that the pretty girl’s father and the other dude in love with her obviously don’t care enough about getting her back, so he breaks the pirate out of prison and steals a ship to go find her. This would officially make him a criminal at the very least, and stealing a military vessel and putting it in the hands of a notorious pirate is pretty well enough to get the death sentence on twelve systems – which Will surely knew when he was setting out. He probably also knew that Commodore N is a humorless chappie when it comes to people stealing his stuff (ship, girl, it’s all the same) but rather than find a less suicidal way to chase the girl, decided to Romantically Risk His Life for True Love.
All this is standard romantic action fare and I could excuse it for the sake of Johnny Depp alone except for one of the scenes apparently deleted because Keira Knightley thought it made her character look like too much of a nasty venal bitch. A little after she promises to marry Norrington if he’ll just please not kill her boyfriend (which really, how stupid is this man if he thinks he’s going to marry Lizzie and she’s not going to get a little sword-boy action on the side?) he takes her aside and essentially says “Look, frankly it’s my duty to bring him back anyway, if for no other reason than to be tried for his crimes. He’s a citizen of Port Royal, I’m sworn to protect him, so don’t go marrying me just because you think I’m going to let this boy die otherwise.” Elizabeth, probably worried that he’s going to reply “GOTCHA YA! FIRE AT WILL!” if she retracts her promise (and this is the one time that pun works), tells Norrington not to be silly, of course she wants to marry him. The look on his face after that – this sort of boyish unbelieving delight – is absolutely heartbreaking, and all the more so when he lets her go at the end. The better man, by far, even if he is the villain.
In the second movie, when Elizabeth finds him dishonored and disgraced and covered in pig poop, she sighs “Oh James, what has the world done to you?” It was an effort of serious willpower not to stand up in the theater and yell “They calling you the world now, girlie?”
pant pant pant I feel better now.
I think that’s a big part of it. Put someone like Johnny Depp in the lead and the fangirls will happily ignore all his faults, even if those faults include murdering people and selling the meat.
The reporter would be sent to prison for obstruction of justice, and probably charged with negligent homicide or voluntary manslaughter as well. He/she (I haven’t seen the movie) deliberately witheld evidence that someone had been wrongly convicted of a crime. That’s a crime, and a very serious one at that. (Ask the prosecutor in the Duke lacrosse team case.)
At a very minimum, the reporter has committed one of the worst ethical violations imaginable, and would be fired, and probably blacklisted by every reputable media outlet in the country.
Also true! But that aside, assuming I read the summary correctly - an anonymous person drops off a video at the reporter’s house and she “can’t use it” because “Off the Record” is written on the tape? That’s not how that works! How can you promise confidentiality when you don’t even know who your source is? The plot summary also notes that Gale was paid for the story, which is generally considered unethical.
Also The Blair Witch Project. I have never seen a movie with so many unsympathetic characters. I was hoping they would all get killed right away and some new characters I could root for would appear. As the original miserable bunch of characters were being hunted down and killed, I was rooting for the witch.
All you RENT bashers can ask yourself if the musical would have taken off had Jonathan Larsen not died. His first effort tick…tick…BOOM didn’t go anywhere.
My own personal gag-me-with-a-spoon is any movie where children who have been knocked around in the foster care system learn they are going to be adopted and react with the idea of “Marvelous. My life is gonna be perfect from now on.” A more honest reaction would be “Yeah, right. How long before these people throw me out for being a piece of garbage?”
Okay, further information needs to be given, since you say you haven’t seen the movie: the videotape that the reporter receives, which shows David Gale planting fake evidence to prove his guilt, arrives by mail at the reporter’s office several days after Gale’s execution. She (played by Kate Winslet) didn’t have the tape prior to his death. The tape she discovers prior to the execution shows the suicide, but doesn’t have Gale on it at all. She tries to use that tape to halt his execution, but oh-so-dramatically just can’t quite make it there due to a broken-down car.
In Rules of Engagement, Sam Jackson’s character, a career combat officer, commits a war crime. When he’s in court, we get a flashback to him committing a previous war crime decades earlier in Vietnam. Somehow (I think) it’s supposed to add up to some kind of exoneration. I ended the movie thinking that he kinda should be in prison.
Hi. First film which springs to mind is the last Rambo film. You could tell Stallone wanted to create something which highlighted and commented on the waste of war, particularly in that region of the world, but what we ended up with was a gratuitous gore-fest of the tallest order. That film is yet another to add the growing heap of culture trash we’re unfortunate enough to be living with. And another few hundred million dollars up in smoke.
I saw the last Rambo movie and I never thought Stallone was going for anything but a gratuitous gore-fest.
He didn’t commit a war crime at the American Embassy. He was taking fire from the mob on the ground - the state department goon destroyed the video tape that showed rioters firing from there.
True, he did execute a prisoner while in combat in Vietnam, but managed to save his platoon by doing so.
Ditto. I mean, something like 70% of the movie’s running time is devoted to Rambo killing people. We also never really spend any time with any of the victims aside from the pretty blonde girl, and the movie’s solution to violence and oppression is to literally kill everything that moves. I don’t think that happened by accident.
And yes, I thought the movie was awesome.