281.
Total spoiler warning ahead because I have to unpack this crap heap. Henry is a boy genius who takes care of his single mother and his little brother by paying the bills, organizing the finances, taking care of everyone's duties and spying on his neighbor. Naomi Watts plays the mother and in a real movie she would be strung out on heroin or something so there would be a reason that she couldn't take care of herself. Here, she's just lazy, she likes to play video games after work rather than take care of her children and she leaves all housekeeping duties to Henry. Henry suspects that the girl next door is being beaten by her father so he tries to call the cops and child protective services but the man in question is the chief of police. Henry develops a brain tumor and dies and he leaves behind a book that details a plan to murder the next door neighbor. So "The Book Of Henry" is step by step instructions on how to commit the perfect murder. Naomi Watts takes the book and follows it to kill the man. This plot may have worked in a thriller, a horror film, maybe a dark comedy but this movie goes for heartwarming family dramedy. The instructions for murder are treated as comedy, isn't it cute that this child is orchestrating murder from beyond the grave? Very rarely does a premise strike me as icky. I think you can take any story, however dark, and make it work but this movie completely falls off the rails after Henry's death and I'm supposed to assume that this woman who couldn't take care of herself can step up to the plate and learn to be a sniper? She doesn't go through with the murder but she calls the FBI and as they are closing in on the neighbor he commits suicide and his daughter gets adopted by Naomi Watts. You know, the woman who thinks packing her child's lunch full of cupcakes is a good idea because her son wasn't there to tell her that kids need fruits and vegetables to survive. Henry is played by Jaeden Lieberher in a performance that ranges from coached to dull and after he dies we hear him in voice over narration that is completely monotone. From the director of the terrific Safety Not Guaranteed and the fun but flawed Jurassic World comes this, possibly the worst movie of 2017. 👎
282.
Do you like puns? Are you a 7 year old girl who for some reason fantasizes that the emojis on your iPhone could come to life. Then you probably wrote The Emoji Movie. Let's put aside the fact that making a movie about emojis seems like a bad idea and more of a commercial for Apple products and just focus on the stupid plot of this film. We follow the "meh" emoji who doesn't want to be meh. He has other feelings to express. In this world the emojis live in the iPhone and their job is to sit in a big box and when called upon by their owner they get scanned and whatever expression is on their face goes into the text message. Now Meh looks like every other emoji so my first question is, if they are getting scanned why can't one emoji do all the facial expressions? The central conflict doesn't need to be because Meh only needs to be "meh" when it's his time to do his job. He can be happy every other minute of the day. Doesn't really matter because the entire movie is just puns mostly involving the poop emoji who is either having a crappy day or chanting we're number 2. 👎
283.
I'm not sure what this is. I mean, technically it's a movie but I can't see anything that proves it. There's no plot, no character development and the dialogue is either nonsensical or action movie cliches. In the film's defense, I can't remember a single thing that happened in the first 4 Transformers films and now that every summer movie is a sequel I'm still trying to recall Pirates Of The Caribbean 3 and wasn't focusing on Transformers 2 so I'm not the target audience for this. It's all noise. I watched this movie in awe that so much money was spent on this and that if we gave a fraction of that to charity we could probably cure all diseases. Now the Transformers got me thinking about cancer. 👎
284.
At first I was thinking, this isn't bad for what I can only assume is an early 90s straight to video comedy. Then I find that this movie came out in the year 2000. This doesn't even look like a movie. Everything is shot at a weird angle with crazy sound effects added and the entire movie is just Super Dave doing ridiculous stunts and being replaced at the last minute with a dummy. There were times where I giggled at a stupid physical gag but nothing that could muster up a recommendation. 👎
285.
Half of this movie worked for me un-ironically. A young kid is picked on at school and learns karate through a wise old Japanese man, a Karate Kid ripoff, but effective. The other half is really stupid. He daydreams about being Chuck Norris's sidekick and we're not just talking daydreams, this kid is full on schizophrenic. He sees Chuck Norris in the same room as people who exist. He has no control of these dreams and they interfere with his daily life. The parts with Mako as the Mr. Miyagi-esque sensai are good and the Chuck Norris scenes are laughably bad so this movie works on two levels. I enjoyed the entire film either as a good movie or a bad movie especially the Looney Tunes-esque fight between Norris and Joe Piscopo at the end. 👍
286.
Do you have a deep abiding love for the characters in the Cars franchise? Yeah, me neither. I'll give credit to Pixar, even in an obvious cash grab like this they still pay attention to detail and make a visually interesting animated film. What used to set them apart from other cartoons is their stories. This is just Rocky 6 with cars. 👎
287.
This has been a movie that I have never seen but always felt like I should have. Diane Keaton plays a school teacher who after hours likes to do drugs and have casual sex, but that's not the crux of the story. It's like if Ryan Gosling smoked crack in Half Nelson but the movie wasn't about his crack addiction. It's a bit episodic and lacking a clear plot but it's worth it just for Diane Keaton. This came out the same year as Annie Hall and a lot of people think she deserved the Oscar for this movie instead. I can't go against Annie Hall but if this movie had come out a year later she should have won back to back Best Actress awards. 👍
288.
I liked parts of this movie. The two kids, voiced by Thomas Middleditch and Kevin Hart, enjoy making comic books and use their imagination to create fantastical worlds. The jokes are all very juvenile but reminded me of stories I would write when I was that age. I'm sure all my 3rd grade creative writing assignments included a poop or a fart joke. Then the movie just veers into ADD level noise. The energy of the movie got me tense in a way where I wanted it to slow down. I'm sure kids would love this and I wouldn't mind my child watching it but as a 35 year old man, I can safely say you can skip this one. 👎
289.
I had very low expectations for this due to my summer sequel fatigue but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this. It's your basic plot, people show up on a planet, start touching random shit and then are amazed and scared when they encounter aliens. There is still something innately terrifying about creatures crawling in your body and bursting through your chest and Ridley Scott stages the action and horror scenes very well. I don't think I need more of this series but it was an enjoyable watch. 👍
290.
Whenever I'm doing one of my Oscar Watch blogs there is always one movie nominated for Best Picture where I think, I have to watch this now? Dark Victory was that movie for 1939. Turns out, I was pleasantly surprised. Bette Davis plays a carefree socialite who falls off a horse and when she goes to a doctor they discover a brain tumor. She has maybe months to live so they decide not to tell her. So she goes about her days still smoking, drinking and living it up until eventually she discovers her death sentence and gets pissed off. It's not a terrific movie, certainly didn't need a Best Picture nomination, but is a good film and entirely watchable. I really liked seeing Humphrey Bogart in a rare non-heavy part. He's still got that Bogie attitude but he's playing a thoughtful stable master who looks out for Davis. This was before The Maltese Falcon or Casablanca so it's interesting to see a huge star in a role that is the exact opposite of what he became famous for. 👍
291.
A documentary about Werner Herzog and the perils he went through making his film Fitzcarraldo. I wonder if it's possible to have a normal conversation with Werner Herzog. Like, does he ever just talk about the weather and say, it's hot out today, or say something like, "That was a hell of a ballgame, huh?". If you like film and are interested in film-making this is a terrific movie to watch. Not only do you get to see the physical hardships but you get a peek at the artist's vision and how sometimes an idea can't quite make it to the canvas. 👍
292.
I really thought that this was just going to be 30 minutes of Werner Herzog silently eating a shoe. Instead it's about following through with a bet he made with fellow filmmaker Errol Morris that Herzog would eat his shoe if Morris ever got a movie completed. At the premiere of Morris's documentary Herzog seasoned and boiled his shoe and ate it. It's a 30 minute documentary so it's a quick watch, I'm not sure I got a lot out of it but I loved the community that existed between these documentary filmmakers. Herzog made a dumb bet with another director and another director filmed the payoff to that bet. 👍
293.
Why are period costume dramas appealing to people? There must be people who like these types of movies because these types of movies keep getting made. I find them incredibly boring. Nicole Kidman, who I generally like, is way out of her league here. This is just not a genre where she excels. The main reason I don't like these movies is because people just don't speak conversationally. You get a sense that these movies are supposed to be historically accurate but if you think about how dumb the average conversation is today, imagine 100 years ago and how dumb their talks must have been.
"Hey, do you think this open wound will cause my death?"
"Nah, put some leeches on it and you'll be fine."
That's what the typical conversation was probably like but in all these movies they are speaking in perfect Elizabethan dialogue concerned about manners and dignity. 👎
297.
Salma Hayek is a Mexican masseuse whose car breaks down at a client's house just before they are about to throw a big swanky dinner party. They let her stay but her personality doesn't clash with their guest of honor, a rich, white and powerful business man played with menacing perfection by John Lithgow. It's a simple movie that moves at a very nice pace and both Hayek and Lithgow, as well as Connie Britton and the entire ensemble, deliver marvelous performances. 👍
298.
Alec Baldwin starred and directed in this remake of The Devil And Daniel Webster and then complained that the movie was taken away from him during the editing process so he took his name off of it. I would argue that this film was directed by a space alien who didn't know anything about real human interactions. If you're unfamiliar with the source material it's about a farmer who sells his soul to the devil and then hires a lawyer when the devil comes to collect. There's a big trial in hell with the jury made up of dead American traitors, it was turned into a really wonderful film in 1941 starring Walter Huston as the devil. This movie updates it to a struggling writer who sells his soul to a sexy devil played by Jennifer Love Hewitt in return for meaningless success. The ending now makes no sense because instead of getting help from a successful lawyer he is defended by his boss, Anthony Hopkins, who turns out to be an ageless demon hunter or something. I would recommend checking out this movie if you want to know how films should not be made. Half of the movie is unnecessary slow motion and the other half is bizarrely composed shots edited by a mad man. This movie uses circle wipe transitions, for god sake. Baldwin should be so grateful that this movie never got a proper theatrical release. 👎
299.
I don't like horror movies and I loved this. The guy sitting next to me in the theater hated it, audibly, which usually diminishes my viewing experience, when someone is criticizing the movie right next to me, but I still loved this. It's scary and uses the visual effects sparingly, the biggest scares come simply from a creepy clown running right at you. What's really scary is how good these child actors are, at its heart the movie is a coming of age story and these kids are incredible. You want everyone of them to succeed, there's not one character that is expendable and when any of them are caused harm you feel for them. 👍
300.
I remember watching this movie as a kid because The Three Stooges were in it and I was a huge fan as a child. I was disappointed in this film then because they are supporting characters and are flanked by their former co-star Ted Healy, who is really not a charismatic or funny screen presence. The Stooges do their thing here but the movie mainly focuses on Jimmy Durante and Jack Pearl who are lost in Africa and then found. Pearl is assumed to be the great Baron Munchausen and is brought to America. He gives radio interviews and makes up stories about all his adventures. The Stooges are the janitors at the hotel he's at and cause a bunch of mischief, much to the chagrin of the always amusing Edna May Oliver. There's also a very risque dance number involving naked girls in showers. This was before the Hays Code was established so it's an interesting watch and there are a lot of good gags here, mostly coming from Durante. 👍
302.
Fredric March burns two witches at the stake and gets a curse put on him that all his descendants will be unlucky in love, such a shame when movies steal their plots from Ernest Scared Stupid. Years later one of March's offspring is about to get married and the spirits of the witches are freed. Veronica Lake and Cecil Kellaway play the witches and they want to torment March a little bit so Lake tries to seduce him away from his fiancee. Comical mischief ensues. I love Veronica Lake, I think she is one of the most beautiful women ever and she was quite a good actress too. I read up a little about this film and found out that very few of her male costars liked her at all in real life. The movie may have been better with someone with more comedic timing in March's role, Eddie Brakken comes to mind, but I liked the story, performances and the old school special effects right out of an episode of Bewitched. 👍
"Am I a cunt or an asshole?"
"Well in the dark, my husband can't tell the difference"
There's one promising scene with Paul Rudd and David Wain as pot dealers but it just goes on so long that it squanders all good will. 👎
304.
1940s biopic. Strike one. Costume melodrama. Strike two. This movie didn't do much of anything for me. Greer Garson plays a woman who makes it her life mission to find and place orphans. Apparently if your birth parents didn't want you in the 1940s you were treated as a second class citizen. Her sister kills herself just because an old white bitch calls out that she was adopted. It follows all the standard biopic tropes but is in wonderful technicolor. I had no idea Garson was a redhead until watching this film. 👎
309.
This film is only about 10 minutes long but since I watched Werner Herzog eat a shoe for 20 minutes I feel I can include this. The movie is about a train robbery, that's basically all it is, but it's fascinating to watch. I loved how the used all the special effects at their disposal to make this, and in retrospect they were probably just making this to show off what you could do with film. The robbers steal money from a train, they party in town, they go to bury their treasure and get killed. Then there's the final shot where one of the robbers points his gun at the camera and fires. It holds up and is short enough to hold your attention even without music, dialogue or sound effects. 👍
312.
This movie has been my own personal example of the Mandela Effect for quite some time. I saw this on HBO when I was a kid and have been searching for it ever since only to find no information about it. Finally I found a copy and watched it and can safely say that I not only live in this universe but this movie is stupid as all hell. Billy Zane plays Jo Dee Fostar and he is hunting down a serial killer with the help of Dr. Animal Cannibal Pizza. Meanwhile, his girlfriend has stolen a bunch of money from Rip Taylor and is hiding out in the Bates Motel. So we got Psycho and The Silence Of The Lambs and a few other movie parodies mixed in like Basic Instinct, Indecent Proposal and The Addams Family. First off, check out the cast to this thing. Charlene Tilton, Dom DeLuise, Martin Balsam, Phyllis Diller, John Astin, Bubba Smith, Larry Storch, Shelley Winters... I think Hollywood Squares was filming across the street and the director of this thing kidnapped them and dangled $50 on a fishing line to get them to say their lines. This movie is literally wall to wall gags, and that is not a good thing. Every line in the movie is a joke, most of them puns, movie references or wordplay, and it never stops to focus on characters or plot. While I was watching it I started looking at it as a parody of a parody movie. Then I started wondering what makes a good spoof movie and if any of the ones I enjoyed were really of quality. Then I realized that I was stoned watching a terrible parody movie from the early 90s so I calmed down a bit. To answer my question about what makes a good spoof movie, you have to spoof a genre not a particular scene in a successful film. Airplane! isn't a direct takeoff of Airport, it is a funny disaster movie that takes all the tropes of the genre and mocks it. Yes, there are movie references, like the Saturday Night Fever inspired scene, but they are still integrated into the plot. The movie doesn't stop everything it's doing just to parody another film. You still get character beats and plot beats within that parody. The same can be said for the great Mel Brooks films. Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein spoof a genre. The crappy Mel Brooks films, like Dracula: Dead And Loving It and Spaceballs, parody and reference specific scenes in movies. No matter what your movie is spoofing you still need characters that you can identify with. This movie has none. Sometimes we follow Billy Zane, sometimes we follow his girlfriend. The comedy in this movie is relentless and doesn't stop, never even slows down, for a while I thought I was watching the movie in fast motion because every line is either a gag or a set up to a gag. People had real conversations in The Naked Gun, right? I know that movie is funny in every scene but there are moments where they focus on the plot. I couldn't tell you what the plot to this thing was and I just watched it. 👎
286.
Do you have a deep abiding love for the characters in the Cars franchise? Yeah, me neither. I'll give credit to Pixar, even in an obvious cash grab like this they still pay attention to detail and make a visually interesting animated film. What used to set them apart from other cartoons is their stories. This is just Rocky 6 with cars. 👎
287.
This has been a movie that I have never seen but always felt like I should have. Diane Keaton plays a school teacher who after hours likes to do drugs and have casual sex, but that's not the crux of the story. It's like if Ryan Gosling smoked crack in Half Nelson but the movie wasn't about his crack addiction. It's a bit episodic and lacking a clear plot but it's worth it just for Diane Keaton. This came out the same year as Annie Hall and a lot of people think she deserved the Oscar for this movie instead. I can't go against Annie Hall but if this movie had come out a year later she should have won back to back Best Actress awards. 👍
288.
I liked parts of this movie. The two kids, voiced by Thomas Middleditch and Kevin Hart, enjoy making comic books and use their imagination to create fantastical worlds. The jokes are all very juvenile but reminded me of stories I would write when I was that age. I'm sure all my 3rd grade creative writing assignments included a poop or a fart joke. Then the movie just veers into ADD level noise. The energy of the movie got me tense in a way where I wanted it to slow down. I'm sure kids would love this and I wouldn't mind my child watching it but as a 35 year old man, I can safely say you can skip this one. 👎
289.
I had very low expectations for this due to my summer sequel fatigue but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this. It's your basic plot, people show up on a planet, start touching random shit and then are amazed and scared when they encounter aliens. There is still something innately terrifying about creatures crawling in your body and bursting through your chest and Ridley Scott stages the action and horror scenes very well. I don't think I need more of this series but it was an enjoyable watch. 👍
290.
Whenever I'm doing one of my Oscar Watch blogs there is always one movie nominated for Best Picture where I think, I have to watch this now? Dark Victory was that movie for 1939. Turns out, I was pleasantly surprised. Bette Davis plays a carefree socialite who falls off a horse and when she goes to a doctor they discover a brain tumor. She has maybe months to live so they decide not to tell her. So she goes about her days still smoking, drinking and living it up until eventually she discovers her death sentence and gets pissed off. It's not a terrific movie, certainly didn't need a Best Picture nomination, but is a good film and entirely watchable. I really liked seeing Humphrey Bogart in a rare non-heavy part. He's still got that Bogie attitude but he's playing a thoughtful stable master who looks out for Davis. This was before The Maltese Falcon or Casablanca so it's interesting to see a huge star in a role that is the exact opposite of what he became famous for. 👍
291.
A documentary about Werner Herzog and the perils he went through making his film Fitzcarraldo. I wonder if it's possible to have a normal conversation with Werner Herzog. Like, does he ever just talk about the weather and say, it's hot out today, or say something like, "That was a hell of a ballgame, huh?". If you like film and are interested in film-making this is a terrific movie to watch. Not only do you get to see the physical hardships but you get a peek at the artist's vision and how sometimes an idea can't quite make it to the canvas. 👍
292.
I really thought that this was just going to be 30 minutes of Werner Herzog silently eating a shoe. Instead it's about following through with a bet he made with fellow filmmaker Errol Morris that Herzog would eat his shoe if Morris ever got a movie completed. At the premiere of Morris's documentary Herzog seasoned and boiled his shoe and ate it. It's a 30 minute documentary so it's a quick watch, I'm not sure I got a lot out of it but I loved the community that existed between these documentary filmmakers. Herzog made a dumb bet with another director and another director filmed the payoff to that bet. 👍
293.
There are so many things wrong with Mr. Wrong. Ellen DeGeneres's self deprecating style of comedy just doesn't work for a main character, this movie makes absolutely no sense and it's not funny. There's three things wrong right there. How about Joan Cusack's over the top performance as Bill Pullman's ex girlfriend? Why does she has a sidekick named Bob that seems to be in love with her then secretly betray her at the end? Why is this movie told in flashback but the voice over narration disappears after 5 minutes? Bill Pullman actually has some funny moments as a comically deranged stalker but his character makes no sense because Ellen could break up with him at anytime, and she does, but for some reason everyone in this universe wants them to be together. 👎
294.
My girlfriend likes to call these types of movies "Hipster Films". I call them imaginative and whimsical. Dave is your typical slacker character who can never complete anything he starts until he builds an elaborate cardboard maze in the middle of his living room. His girlfriend and friends discover him trapped in the maze and go in after him. Every part of the maze has a different theme as they explore and there are booby traps, a Minotaur and they're also joined by a documentary film crew. The movie is just fun and inventive and uses the limitations of its budget to its advantage. The production design of this movie deserves an Oscar. 👍
295.
Rutger Hauer always struck me as a bargain basement Sylvester Stallone. You find his movies in the bin filled with Chuck Norris and Van Damme flicks. The more I see him the more I respect him. He is actually a very charismatic and talented actor and this movie is pure fun. Hauer plays a blind Vietnam vet who went MIA and trained to heighten his other senses. He goes to visit his army buddy and ends up taking care of his son after some mob toughs kill the mother. There are a lot of gags about Hauer being blind like he confuses an alligator with a dog or a kid gives him a rock and tells him it's candy but then Hauer will slice someone to bits with his samurai sword so I guess the last laugh is with him. 👍
296.Why are period costume dramas appealing to people? There must be people who like these types of movies because these types of movies keep getting made. I find them incredibly boring. Nicole Kidman, who I generally like, is way out of her league here. This is just not a genre where she excels. The main reason I don't like these movies is because people just don't speak conversationally. You get a sense that these movies are supposed to be historically accurate but if you think about how dumb the average conversation is today, imagine 100 years ago and how dumb their talks must have been.
"Hey, do you think this open wound will cause my death?"
"Nah, put some leeches on it and you'll be fine."
That's what the typical conversation was probably like but in all these movies they are speaking in perfect Elizabethan dialogue concerned about manners and dignity. 👎
297.
Salma Hayek is a Mexican masseuse whose car breaks down at a client's house just before they are about to throw a big swanky dinner party. They let her stay but her personality doesn't clash with their guest of honor, a rich, white and powerful business man played with menacing perfection by John Lithgow. It's a simple movie that moves at a very nice pace and both Hayek and Lithgow, as well as Connie Britton and the entire ensemble, deliver marvelous performances. 👍
Alec Baldwin starred and directed in this remake of The Devil And Daniel Webster and then complained that the movie was taken away from him during the editing process so he took his name off of it. I would argue that this film was directed by a space alien who didn't know anything about real human interactions. If you're unfamiliar with the source material it's about a farmer who sells his soul to the devil and then hires a lawyer when the devil comes to collect. There's a big trial in hell with the jury made up of dead American traitors, it was turned into a really wonderful film in 1941 starring Walter Huston as the devil. This movie updates it to a struggling writer who sells his soul to a sexy devil played by Jennifer Love Hewitt in return for meaningless success. The ending now makes no sense because instead of getting help from a successful lawyer he is defended by his boss, Anthony Hopkins, who turns out to be an ageless demon hunter or something. I would recommend checking out this movie if you want to know how films should not be made. Half of the movie is unnecessary slow motion and the other half is bizarrely composed shots edited by a mad man. This movie uses circle wipe transitions, for god sake. Baldwin should be so grateful that this movie never got a proper theatrical release. 👎
299.
I don't like horror movies and I loved this. The guy sitting next to me in the theater hated it, audibly, which usually diminishes my viewing experience, when someone is criticizing the movie right next to me, but I still loved this. It's scary and uses the visual effects sparingly, the biggest scares come simply from a creepy clown running right at you. What's really scary is how good these child actors are, at its heart the movie is a coming of age story and these kids are incredible. You want everyone of them to succeed, there's not one character that is expendable and when any of them are caused harm you feel for them. 👍
300.
I remember watching this movie as a kid because The Three Stooges were in it and I was a huge fan as a child. I was disappointed in this film then because they are supporting characters and are flanked by their former co-star Ted Healy, who is really not a charismatic or funny screen presence. The Stooges do their thing here but the movie mainly focuses on Jimmy Durante and Jack Pearl who are lost in Africa and then found. Pearl is assumed to be the great Baron Munchausen and is brought to America. He gives radio interviews and makes up stories about all his adventures. The Stooges are the janitors at the hotel he's at and cause a bunch of mischief, much to the chagrin of the always amusing Edna May Oliver. There's also a very risque dance number involving naked girls in showers. This was before the Hays Code was established so it's an interesting watch and there are a lot of good gags here, mostly coming from Durante. 👍
301.
Last month I watched The Star starring Bette Davis as a washed up actress. This month I went in for Bette Davis playing twins in A Stolen Life. Like I said last month, I like my Bette Davis movies campy as all hell and this movie squandered all potential to go for camp value and just made it a soap opera style love triangle. If only this movie were made 20 years later we could have had an unquestionable camp classic. 👎302.
Fredric March burns two witches at the stake and gets a curse put on him that all his descendants will be unlucky in love, such a shame when movies steal their plots from Ernest Scared Stupid. Years later one of March's offspring is about to get married and the spirits of the witches are freed. Veronica Lake and Cecil Kellaway play the witches and they want to torment March a little bit so Lake tries to seduce him away from his fiancee. Comical mischief ensues. I love Veronica Lake, I think she is one of the most beautiful women ever and she was quite a good actress too. I read up a little about this film and found out that very few of her male costars liked her at all in real life. The movie may have been better with someone with more comedic timing in March's role, Eddie Brakken comes to mind, but I liked the story, performances and the old school special effects right out of an episode of Bewitched. 👍
303.
It's unfair to compare a movie with another movie but this movie is like they took Bad Moms and removed all the humor and the characters. All the characters speak in the exact same voice, the jokes are the lowest hanging fruit.
"Am I a cunt or an asshole?"
"Well in the dark, my husband can't tell the difference"
There's one promising scene with Paul Rudd and David Wain as pot dealers but it just goes on so long that it squanders all good will. 👎
304.
1940s biopic. Strike one. Costume melodrama. Strike two. This movie didn't do much of anything for me. Greer Garson plays a woman who makes it her life mission to find and place orphans. Apparently if your birth parents didn't want you in the 1940s you were treated as a second class citizen. Her sister kills herself just because an old white bitch calls out that she was adopted. It follows all the standard biopic tropes but is in wonderful technicolor. I had no idea Garson was a redhead until watching this film. 👎
305.
Monty Woolley is an old curmudgeon saddled with sneaking kids past the Nazis in this really nice World War II film. This film was made before US involvement in the war so was used to drum up support against the Nazi movement. I didn't watch a bunch of Nazi movies because of Trump but these movies suddenly became relevant again 60 years later. This is just a really great story and Woolley is terrific in the lead role. Imagine if Mr. Belvedere had to sneak his family across a Nazi occupied border and you kind of have a sense of the film. 👍
306.
I like a bad movie. I like Christmas movies. I like bad Christmas movies. I can not recommend this movie at all because it is atrocious on every level, but I had fun watching it. Let me explain the plot. Hulk Hogan is a fitness guru who gets hit on the head and thinks he's Santa Claus, kind of, he's not sure who he is but he might be Santa. It's convoluted. Anyway, Ed Begley, Jr. is an evil scientist with Batman like henchmen. There's the woman with electric gloves, the scientist who likes the smell of farts and the evil archaeologist. They're trying to find a cave full of crystals that's underneath the orphanage where Hulk Hogan has forgotten both that he grew up there and that his best friend was Ed Begley, Jr. This is a terrible film but constantly had me screaming at the TV as to who thought anything in here was a good idea. And this thing was theatrically released. 👎
307.
I always forget how great this movie is. Just the amount of balls they had to make this movie in 1942 is amazing. The holocaust is going on currently and Jack Benny is dressed up as a Nazi making fun of Hitler. This film is fantastic and required watching for any actor because it not only has great performances but the main joke is on actors themselves. Jack Benny and Carole Lombard are married Polish actors and when Germany invades they have to use their acting skills for government espionage. Benny is constantly less concerned about the third Reich and more concerned about whether or not he is giving a great performance. The film mocks the pompousness of the theater as well as Hitler. One is obviously worse than the others but they're both fair targets. 👍
308.
This is a well made but standard war film from the 1940s. A bunch of soldiers are introduced and then most of them die. I think there was something with the tone and setup of this movie. Going into it I got the feeling that there wasn't a happy end for most of these guys. It's still very well made, if you're up for a WWII movie I would recommend but there are better options. 👍
309.
This film is only about 10 minutes long but since I watched Werner Herzog eat a shoe for 20 minutes I feel I can include this. The movie is about a train robbery, that's basically all it is, but it's fascinating to watch. I loved how the used all the special effects at their disposal to make this, and in retrospect they were probably just making this to show off what you could do with film. The robbers steal money from a train, they party in town, they go to bury their treasure and get killed. Then there's the final shot where one of the robbers points his gun at the camera and fires. It holds up and is short enough to hold your attention even without music, dialogue or sound effects. 👍
310.
This was the great Frank Capra's last film and it just feels like he is a dinosaur of a former era. His movies in the 30s and 40s were so great and if this film were in black and white and made in 1943 it may have worked better but as a movie from the swinging 60s it just looks dated, in a bad way. Glenn Ford is horribly miscast as a superstitious gangster who gets his luck from a bag lady's apples, played by Bette Davis. Peter Falk was Oscar nominated as Ford's exasperated henchman and while he's the best part of the film, there's still little reason to watch this. 👎
311.
This was just awful. Vivien Leigh is an aging actress who's husband dies suddenly. She is then set up with Warren Beatty who plays an Italian gigolo, with one of the worst accents you've ever heard in a movie. It's a May-December romance where the two leads have absolutely no chemistry. It's a real bummer to get through. 👎312.
There's so many reasons why this movie fails and most of them stem from the fact that it's a remake of a classic movie that you can't really make anymore. In the original, Charles Grodin is a flawed protagonist. He gets married without really being prepared for married life, realizes that all the little annoying things his new bride does irk the crap out of him and he meets a beautiful woman on his honeymoon. It doesn't matter how annoying your wife is, the one thing you can't and shouldn't do is cheat on her on your honeymoon. That's what the movie is about, the wandering male mind and how you may never fully accept if you are satisfied or not. This remake makes Ben Stiller a 40 year old man who should know better, he gets married because of a lie he was told and his wife is comically a monster. So here he's completely vindicated in his actions. Not only that, the new woman he meets is not just beautiful, she's a flawless woman who is perfect for him. So what choice does he have other than to cheat? This movie makes cheating on your wife look like the right thing to do. It also trades the Eddie Albert character for Danny McBride and throws in Carlos Mencia. 👎
314.
313.
I feel like I was expecting a different movie. This is an action/comedy that leans harder on the action than the comedy. In fact, the comedy isn't that great but the action is decent. If you're looking for a Lethal Weapon type film then this might be up your ally but I was expecting a comedy with some action mixed in. 👎
This movie has been my own personal example of the Mandela Effect for quite some time. I saw this on HBO when I was a kid and have been searching for it ever since only to find no information about it. Finally I found a copy and watched it and can safely say that I not only live in this universe but this movie is stupid as all hell. Billy Zane plays Jo Dee Fostar and he is hunting down a serial killer with the help of Dr. Animal Cannibal Pizza. Meanwhile, his girlfriend has stolen a bunch of money from Rip Taylor and is hiding out in the Bates Motel. So we got Psycho and The Silence Of The Lambs and a few other movie parodies mixed in like Basic Instinct, Indecent Proposal and The Addams Family. First off, check out the cast to this thing. Charlene Tilton, Dom DeLuise, Martin Balsam, Phyllis Diller, John Astin, Bubba Smith, Larry Storch, Shelley Winters... I think Hollywood Squares was filming across the street and the director of this thing kidnapped them and dangled $50 on a fishing line to get them to say their lines. This movie is literally wall to wall gags, and that is not a good thing. Every line in the movie is a joke, most of them puns, movie references or wordplay, and it never stops to focus on characters or plot. While I was watching it I started looking at it as a parody of a parody movie. Then I started wondering what makes a good spoof movie and if any of the ones I enjoyed were really of quality. Then I realized that I was stoned watching a terrible parody movie from the early 90s so I calmed down a bit. To answer my question about what makes a good spoof movie, you have to spoof a genre not a particular scene in a successful film. Airplane! isn't a direct takeoff of Airport, it is a funny disaster movie that takes all the tropes of the genre and mocks it. Yes, there are movie references, like the Saturday Night Fever inspired scene, but they are still integrated into the plot. The movie doesn't stop everything it's doing just to parody another film. You still get character beats and plot beats within that parody. The same can be said for the great Mel Brooks films. Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein spoof a genre. The crappy Mel Brooks films, like Dracula: Dead And Loving It and Spaceballs, parody and reference specific scenes in movies. No matter what your movie is spoofing you still need characters that you can identify with. This movie has none. Sometimes we follow Billy Zane, sometimes we follow his girlfriend. The comedy in this movie is relentless and doesn't stop, never even slows down, for a while I thought I was watching the movie in fast motion because every line is either a gag or a set up to a gag. People had real conversations in The Naked Gun, right? I know that movie is funny in every scene but there are moments where they focus on the plot. I couldn't tell you what the plot to this thing was and I just watched it. 👎
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