Categotry Archives: Movie Reviews

me watching this movie basically just became a squeal fest everytime sean astin came on the screen in a fishnet shirt with his speech impediment and flexing pecs and ass muscles. every time i’d go all “hobbit! hobbit! fish-net! hee hee hee hee hee!!!!” it just degenerated from there. much like that time i started screaming “legos” for “legolas” while watching return of the king.

but sean astin was not the main character of this movie. no, drew barrymore’s head injury was. she got in a car accident see, and now has no long-term memory so she keeps re-living the same sunday over and over again. and then adam sandler spots her and falls in love and makes videotapes to show her how she should remember him the next day instead of him having to start all over every day to impress her with his ability to make lodgings out of waffles in a diner with toothpicks.

the interesting thing about this movie, i felt, was that it didn’t offer a cure at the end and make everything completely better. no, she still had no long-term memory except they got married anyway and had a kid and live on a boat in alaska or somewhere with ice floes and penguins anyway. that right there was possibly a huge spoiler. sorry. this movie was funny and sweet though and had a lot of funny parts so i recommend it. not now though when you’re all pissed at me for giving away the ending.

jacob and dianna got me the book (out of which this movie sprang like an alien) for my 25th birthday and i read it immediately and loved it. so i went into the movie theatre with an excited face and happy wiggle. then my parade got rained on. in the book, adam (friend) has dreadlocks and a pierced nose. in the movie, adam (love interest) is “normal” looking. bah, i say. give us the alt boy! this bothers me because it’s like a lot of mainstream things where anything conceived of as too “different” is done away with and replaced with something tame. although, don’t get me wrong, the boy playing adam was still mighty cute. lola, (main character) watches him walk away and there’s a close-up of his ass (at which point a kid in the audience in front of me said, “ew!”, later they also giggled in delighted horror at the kissing scene).

i enjoyed lindsay lohan singing in the school musical’s adaptation of pygmalion (she was a check-out girl in a supermarket in new york. oh eliza.) i actually really like lindsay lohan. except for all the freckles. i’m not a freckle fan. do freckled people look diseased? or is that just me? but even though i like her and think she’s a way better singer than hilary duff (damn her), this movie still kind of sucked ass.

initial reaction to the third and final installment of the matrix movie: the feelings of a small child who has stubbed her toe and dropped her ice cream. which translate to angry sobbing and crushing disappointment. i just walked into my brother’s room as he is planning on seeing it tomorrow. and i just looked at him a while–in defeat knowing he would see it anyway and a sense of resentment for this 24 additional hours of purity he’s still got left.

what happened to this trilogy? what happened? why didn’t they just let it stop at the first one if this is what they’re going to put us thru? when i saw the matrix for the very first time i walked into the parking lot a new girl. it completely rearranged my head and the way i thought. i loved it so much i didn’t even have words. the second one came out and i was duly impressed, but not joyous. not overwhelmed. and now this. this which just makes me want to scream out, “WHY?! WHY?!” underwhelmed is a serious understatement. (“i know you can be overwhelmed and underwhelmed. but can you ever just be whelmed?” you know it’s bad when i’m quoting 10 things i hate about you rather than discuss it.)

what is good about this movie? almost nothing. the very end of neo and agent smith’s fight i will give due credit to. well not their fighting so much as the whole clever deletion aspect. it’s sad when the other good part about a movie is the machines. the only other thing which i thought was really good was the sentinels in the dock. they fucking stole this movie. which wasn’t hard with such abysmal acting and writing to contend with. metal calamari with no vocal cords kind of had an unfair advantage in that respect.

what is bad about this movie? the fact that it was one long fight scene. the fact that the writing stank. the fact that trinity DIED. the fact that cool martial arts were seldom used and lots of metal machinery replaced it. the fact that zion people are irritating. the fact that they changed oracles. what happened to her? i’m sorry if she passed away.

uuuurrrrrgghhh anyway whatever. i’m going to stop thinking about it now. maybe i’ll even try to see it again. i could like it better next time…i’m sure. it’s just so hard to accept that the incredible innovation and creativity that went into the first one has lost so much lustre and become my dirty dropped ice cream cone.

this is my one-hundredth movie review on this page. none too shabby.

the jury which runs away with you! i would run anywhere with a jury made up of john cusack and rachel weisz. so yeah this movie is a john grisham book/movie which makes it not so great. but cusack, weisz, and dustin hoffman definitely make it work for me. sigh. such cuties. hoffman has some appeal. i wouldn’t sleep with him but i would run away with him. he’s so wacky. nuala had a harder time seeing his appeal. but nuts to her. the plot wasn’t bad, even at times clever. and they all did a great job acting. i really saw this a long time ago and was slow on the review uptake so that’s pretty much all i have to say.

fucking amazing. honestly. such a great idea and really intelligent writing with the pathos and the serious and the comic. sigh. so good. i am completely in love.

all right, now that i’ve said how much i loved it i want to confess how hard i find it to write about this movie without going straight to hell. because, what is this movie about? it’s about a midget. only, not a midget, ok? a “dwarf”. and he works on toy trains in the city (hoboken! jason! see this movie!) and then he moves to the country (although what part of new jersey is not the country? come on. new jersey. garden state. i did a report in 6th grade, i’ll have you know.) and he lives in an abandoned train depot that he inherited. makes all sorts of friends. great friends. great. and that’s pretty much it.

but see he’s a dwarf so there’s all this dwarf slander and ill will and staring. and who does that? jesus. i feel no need to stare at dwarfs. they’re not that exciting. fascination aside, i’ve really never had a point to my obsession of involving them in every game of balderdash. it’s not a real obsession. it’s one of those fake ones. i’m just a big fat faker. heh. but now i’ve got to consider the point of sex with a dwarf because of course they bring it up. and it’s fascinating.

fin and joe are sitting on top of the train in the yard talking, ok? and it goes a little something like this:

joe: can i ask you a personal question?

fin: ok.

joe: have you ever had sex?

fin: yeah.

joe: with a normal size chick?

fin: yeah, with a normal size chick.

joe: what about a chick your size?

fin: i don’t want to talk about this.

joe: what? why?

fin: joe, i just don’t want to talk about this.

this is both titillating and sad. on the one hand it brings up the whole question of, what is THAT like? and would it count for a couple’s exotic sex pact? but then also the fact that fin either had sex with another dwarf and it was bad or has never had sex with a woman his size and was upset by that. i don’t know. i don’t know what it was but it was kind of terrible.

the movie on the whole though is just really, really sweet. the three main characters of fin–the taciturn dwarf, joe–the loud-mouthed heart of gold traveling food cart vendor (even if at times from a distance he resembled vin diesel to me, i still love him), and olivia–the distressed middle age woman were just all PERFECT. they build a friendship and become family. plus they’re funny. this movie had some incredibly funny lines. made even more funny by deadpan delivery and the quiet lead-up. i’m trying to think now of some of said lines, but out of context they’re really not as funny. package deal! see the package! i highly recommend this movie. it’s good good good!

GROOOOOOSSSSS. like boogers. only worse.

but if a movie’s main appeal seems to be watching the girl from 7th heaven’s midsection and ass parade around and run screaming from the ugly skin diseased boy then right on, movie, you have done your job and done it well. wear that shitty mtv movie award for best bellybutton with PRIDE.

i liked the hicks nature of the texan family who we “met” in this movie. they were brilliantly rendered. i’ve never seen the original, so i can’t say how they compared. were they as good? i really liked them.

i think i was less scared of this movie than i should have been due to the fact that i had just watched eliza dushku in wrong turn get chased around by inbred freaks in west virginia. that movie was so sick. i was shuddering in disgusted horror for the whole latter half of it. i mean, inbreeding is just not a pretty sight. especially when they get all violent and hoot like monkeys. i’m sorry, i digressed into reviewing another movie there. texas chainsaw massacre, yes, not that good. not that scary. pretty stomach. the end.

my mom just kept complaining about how this movie is nothing like the book. never having read the book i have no opinion on that. it had a cute kitten, pretty italian countryside, and some good supporting character parts (her gay best friend pattie and the polish guy named pawel). it wasn’t great or anything and the woman’s mid-life depression was both depressing and irritating, but for a movie i saw for free i’m not going to complain. well except for the ending which was contrived and stupid. i could complain about that. plus the platitudes and the culture stereotypes. and the fellini references. heh. and i’m not a huge diane lane fan. neither do i have anything against her though. she does have nice cheekbones. this movie is relatively unremarkable in the end though. it’s not bad. it’s not great. it’s kind of useless.