MotW: While We’re Young. Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts, Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried.
The older couple befriend the younger couple. Problems ensue.
Stiller is a stuck-in-a-rut documentary maker. Watts is the daughter of a famous documentarian (played by the always wonderfully grumpy Charles Grodin) and the latter’s producer. Driver is a wanna-be documentary maker with Seyfried his wife/partner.
There are two parts to the movie: The problems and ethics of documentary making, etc. And the awareness of getting older and not wanting to give up on youth. The latter is the real story. It’s what at the heart. The former is merely the framework around which it is told. And, despite taking up a lot of screen time, it nicely doesn’t get in the way of the real topic.
It’s labeled as a comedy-drama but it’s mainly a drama with a few lighter moments. BTW: of the main 4 cast members, Watts doesn’t really do the lighter stuff well. The other 3 are great. Should’ve gone with someone else.
Basically a very decent film. Worth watching. 84% at RT. Slightly higher than I would have predicted.
This week: Danny Collins (or “Collin” as he is sometimes called in the movie).
Pretty good cast: Al Pacino, Annette Bening, Bobby Cannavale, Jennifer Garner and Christopher Plummer.
Pacino is the title character. An aging once great singer/songwriter now living off his decades old fame. He decides to look up a son he never met and emotions ensue.
Based on reviews I was expecting a decent enough film and it more than delivered. Quite well done for the most part. The biggest problem is Pacino doing the same old Pacino he’s been doing the last 20 years. But since he has to pretend to be a pop star, he’s forced to change it up at least a little bit.
Lots of good background music, especially by John Lennon. (Which is a key to the movie’s story.)
Bening is just amazing.
78% at RT. I’d say that’s a reasonable rating.
(Brian Smith, “Zack” from The Big Bang Theory, has now done scenes with Al Pacino and Mayim Bialik! His name is so common that on IMDb he is Brian Smith XXIX.)
I’d agree with the comments about Kingsman, but all in all it was good fun. I’d watch a sequel if it got halfway-decent reviews.
I’ve recently seen:
Escape from New York
Kurt Russell stars as a Special Forces officer gone bad who has to rescue the President after Air Force One crashes in Manhattan, which in the near future has been turned into a massive prison. Directed by John Carpenter. A silly, low-budget but occasionally entertaining dsytopic adventure.
Nothing Lasts Forever
Unfunny, deservedly obscure B&W comedy about a bus trip to the Moon. Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd both appear (and probably wish they hadn’t).
Inside Out
The latest Pixar movie, a bittersweet dramedy about what’s really going on inside the head of a teenage girl. Richard Kind has the standout role, as the voice of her imaginary childhood friend. Recommended, but The Incredibles remains my favorite Pixar movie.
Spank the Monkey
Black comedy about a premed student unhappily stuck at home caring for his hot youngish mom, who’s broken her leg, one summer. One night they both drink too much, one thing leads to another and they have sex. Not sure I can recommend this movie, although it did have its moments.
St. Vincent
Bill Murray stars as a gambling, lying, thieving, hard-drinking Vietnam vet whose long-buried better qualities are brought out by a little boy living next door. Jaeden Lieberher is outstanding as the kid, Melissa McCarthy plays the boy’s harried, hardworking mom, and Naomi Watts is also quite good as a pregnant Russian hooker with (you guessed it) a heart of gold. Despite a major plot hole, I loved this movie. Just the right balance between sweet and bitter.
Minor nitpick, the title is actually Spanking The Monkey. This was the first feature directed by David O. Russell. The subject matter is pretty cringe-inducing and it’s a bit tough to watch at times, but it’s worth checking out. I saw it when it came out in 1994 and still remember some of my reaction when watching it. If you like Russell’s films you should definitely give it a look. The songs on the soundtrack are by Morphine, one of my favorite bands.
Places in the Heart was on the other day. I hadn’t seen it, and it was an Oscar nominated film, with a win for Sally Field. I have no idea why it won best picture or best actress, unless the competition was really that poor. Character development was poor, the personal relationships seemed flat, and the story was contrived.
By some of the folks who did Flight Of The Conchords.
A mockumentary about vampires living in New Zealand.
Meh. It was really stretched out. The jokes were few and weak. If it had been a half-hour show, it would have been halfway funny.
I should have known from the “mockumentary” part to avoid it. That schtick is really wearing thin. And in this case, the “documentary crew” had to be huge, prescient and invisible to most people/creatures. Should have done a straightforward film.
OTOH, Taika Waititi as one of the lead vampires is someone to watch. According to IMDb “He is of Maori and European-Jewish descent.” Well, that explains that. Guaranteed to be funny right there.
“The To-Do List” is a raunchy teen comedy starring Aubrey Plaza of “Parks & Recs” as a straightlaced, virginal valedictorian who decides to get her sexy game on as she faces college. Her older sister, who is not straighlaced, virginal or a valedictorian informs her that she’s going to have to know all sorts of sexy things before she goes to college. Being a super-organized type she decides to do this by making up a To-Do list of sexual acts to complete over the summer before she goes to college. And rather than get a steady boyfriend to do her experimenting with, she just hits on her geeky male friends for the various things on her list, and the dopey guys at the swimming pool she works at.
I found it fun in a pointless kinda way, with lots of scenes where she surprises the hell out of geeky guys she hangs with by asking them to finger her and such. Lots of awkward sex and teen concerns. There are a lot of stereotyped characters: hot hunky guy the lead is attracted to but can’t see her, handsome but not hunky geek guy who is attracted to her, but whom she can’t see, that kind of thing. Where the movie may be just a tad subversive is in separating out particular sex acts as achievements rather than personal things just shared between lovers, the typical approach taken by teen movies, if they’re approached at all.
Three sisters reunite after the death of their mother. Starring nobody you’ve heard of. (Unless the actress who played Angela Darmody on Boardwalk Empire counts.)
Lots of rebirth and such references.
Shot in fake documentary style. One of the sisters is supposedly filming it.
Ergo, lots of the usual crap: shaky cam, poor framing, pointlessly long static shots, etc. Plus the usual implausible right-place/right-time stuff. If I had known about this going in, I would not have watched it. I’m really, really sick of this.
Long, drawn out, pointless. Not worth it. I thought 91% at RT would ensure that it wouldn’t be all that bad. (Although that’s a small number of critics: 11.) I’m getting really disappointed at RT. Not just the numbers, but I’ve been checking into sample reviews to make sure a movie is not a secret dud. Definitely picked the wrong ones here.
Our MotW the previous week as Inside Out, btw. Review here.
“Spy” with Melissa McCarthy and Jason Statham. Ok it’s a Melissa McCarthy movie but I thought she was hilarious in Identity Thief. In Spy she is relatively competent and not there for fat jokes and physical comedy. Even though I’m a big Statham fan his role in this movie wasn’t as good as I expected. Don’t go in expecting logical exposition, but overall I thought it was very funny and would watch it again.
“Seven Psychopaths” It’s trying to be Tarantino-esque but mostly failing. It is also a movie within a story within a movie, or something like that. Colin Farrell and Christopher Walken do well in their roles, and Tom Waits even has a farily small but important part. It was good but not as clever or funny as I had expected from the trailer.
“The First Turn-On” A 1983 Kaufman/Troma film, but this is more about sex than weirdness or gore. I had never heard of it, just happened to see it on Amazon Prime. I thought it was an interesting and funny take on the “teens having wild times and sex at camp” genre.
Saw “Sorority Sex House” on late night cable. It was very strange. It was rated R, made in 2014, direct to video, so I figured, soft core porn. And it had just the sort of storyline you’d expect from softcore. The acting was a little better than you’d expect from softcore, and the actresses were not as attractive as you generally get in softcore but … there was no porn. No sex scenes! Just a few scenes of the actresses getting naked.
So what this movie wound up being was the plot filler bits that serve to link the sex scenes together in a softcore porn movie, with just bits of female nudity to substitute for the porn. Sort of like teen movies back in the 70s and 80s, you know, before there was Internet porn and cable porn. Except this movie was made in 2014. I have NO idea who the filmmakers thought was gonna watch this movie. At least softcore porn has the porn elements to redeem it. This movie has nothin’ … but it IS a strange little curiousity piece.
Some original stuff here and there, but good grief, I’ve seen a lot of this movie before. Plus the implausibility of the lone guy developing all this out in the tullies, even if he did have Amazon Prime.
Really blew some of the tech talk badly a couple times, etc.
Overall, it would have been a good movie if only …
This very short film is quite possibly the dumbest thing you will ever see, in every possible way. The acting, camera work, editing, and story are horrifically stupid. I could have made a far better film on my frikkin’ Droid, with my cat playing a cameo.
It is totally SFW and may actually be a good cure for insomnia.
P.S. What's even more stunning to me is that I know the person responsible. I never would have expected this.
It was funny and cute at the same time 