movie reviews. i feel a drive to do this when it’s really busy at work. spoilers ahead.

the assassination of jesse james by the coward robert ford
this movie is phenomenal. it starts really slow, but by the end of the like 9 hours, i was so engrossed. brad pitt is AWESOME in this movie, but maybe more impressive – casey affleck carries this flick. it’s kinda shocking that this is a true story. i feel like pitt as james cast a shadow throughout, like hannibal lecter in silence of the lambs, don corleone in the godfather, or al capone in the untouchables.

three scenes stand out as flawless to me: the assassination scene could not have been better, the scene where jesse beats up that little kid, and the scene where robert ford is drunk listening to a guy sing a song about him, and he shoots his gun at the floor and goes, “i’m robert ford.” DAMN. american filmmaking at its finest.

wheels on meals
i saw this when i was in high school on VHS, and revisited it again while looking for the greatest movie fight scene of all time. (i know, my hobbies pwn your hobbies.) greatest fight scene of all time? definitely one of – the tranformation jackie goes thru to be able to win that fight is slick. actually this is a good jackie chan movie for people who don’t like jackie chan. it’s yuen biao’s show tho – he does the lovestruck thing really well, and is actually the goofy guy here and jackie gets to be the harder more asshole-like dude. i also like most things that sammo hung has directed.

the lookout
it’s good and joseph gordon-levitt was actually very good in this – the three male leads are all perfect for their roles. but one thing bothered me, and it’s pretty important. did isla fisher’s character know or not know the plan? because she seems to know until halfway through, then she seems not to have known. what happened?

“am i dead? i must be dead. nobody’s answering me.”
“you’re not dead.”
“oh thank god.”

school of rock
never saw this movie before. it was good, but i wish it rocked a little harder.

ghajini
i have not seen a hindi movie all the way through in more than 10 years. but this one – which actually is a remake of a tamil movie – was so highly recommended that i watched it. so aamir khan is obviously very worked out for this movie, and it was kinda ridiculous during scenes when he was like wearing a suit with no sleeves to show off his triceps.

but i really liked the flick, and as with all the bollywood films, the lead actress is gorgeous. after we saw this, my wife & i checked ou aamir khan’s website and the guestbook has so many very asian comments like “ghajini is good, boring at parts though” and “you’re not my favorite actor but you are ok” and “i think you should have done a better job choosing your roles. you could be a bigger star now.” damn folks! give a dude a break!

my friend sham pointed me to this page, where you can buy an aamir khan in ghajini action figure. i love how they show it from different angles as though that will affect your decision to buy it.

cj7
stephen chow’s most recent movie. he’s always been an excellent filmmaker, back to like the early 90s or the 80s. but after kung fu hustle and shaolin soccer, he had to come with something more family friendly. so it doesn’t thrill on the level like previous films have, but it’s good nonetheless.

the child actor who plays his son is dope. but crazier still, it is a girl. she is an extremely talented comic actor. one subtle scene i loved is when the son misbehaves, so the father looks for something to beat him with, so while he’s scolding him, he picks up like a piece of wood and a wrench or something, and finally just takes some newspaper and rolls it up because he doesn’t want to hurt him. they don’t say anything about it, it just happens in the background. but it’s very sweet.

and the CGI alien looks like this cat.

the stepbrothers
i heard a lot of bad reviews of this, but actually i loved it. it was absolutely implausible, but…who wants plausible? I love that they basically said to hell with a storyline, let’s just put Reilly and Ferrell in as many positions as possible to act completely ridiculous.

Even stuff that wasn’t very funny was still very funny. Like “Boats and hos…” in the hands of any other actors I would probably have been annoyed, but with them, I just loved it. in addition, I watched it again with the commentary – and that was almost as funny as the movie!

the aristocrats
I kinda expected to dislike this movie, but also kinda expected it to blow me away. It was kinda right in the middle. not great, but better than I expected. The joke itself is eh, but the insight into the nature of comedy was dope though – depending who was talking. George Carlin: A+. Penn Jillette: F-. Everyone else is between them. It was noticeable how there is very little representation from comics of color. Whoopi Goldberg was as good as she’s been in anything recently. Chris Rock appeared for maybe 20 seconds? Rob Schneider can be seen in the background of some scenes. I feel like that was it.

Bob Saget lives up to his representation as being awfully disgusting. Doug Stanhope actually was more appealing than I’ve ever seen him. But more than all that, I was pretty saddened by Richard Jeni’s screentime. he didn’t look happy, and knowing in retrospect how his life ended, it was kind of depressing.

righteous kill
this stars two legitimately great actors: deniro and pacino. unfortunately: fuck this movie.

be kind rewind
the last time i saw a movie that made me feel this happy to be alive, it was dave chappelle’s block party. lo and behold, this movie was inspired by the time dave and michel gondry spent making that documentary – and they wanted to make a feature that recreated that vibe! they succeeded. but dave ended up dropping out of that flick so mos took over for him. he did an admirable job too.

there were definitely things about it that were problematic to me, but still the overall earnestness and community feel of it made me glad to be a movie fan, more, just glad to recognize things in my own life in the film.

Tags: movies

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