Monthly Archives: December 2010

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At The Theater #39: Love and Other Drugs

“1996” is the first thing you see on the screen at the start of Love and Other Drugs. The first thing you hear is Two Princes by Spin Doctors. I immediately thought to myself, “Why?” Two Princes hit the height of its popularity a couple of years earlier was so overplayed that by 1996 no one could stand it. True story: It wasn’t until 2005 that I was able to listen to Two Princes again without rolling my eyes. But here is Jake Gyllenhaal, dancing away to Two Princes in this small electronics store where he works.

It took awhile for me to figure out why Love and Other Drugs takes place in 1996 instead of 2010. Best Buy has replaced the small electronics store, but it’s basically the same place. Pharmaceutical companies are still pumping out new and improved antidepressants. There’s still no cure for Parkinson’s. Love interests that don’t want relationships still work in coffee shops. Why 1996? It wasn’t until about halfway through Love and Other Drugs that I got my answer, Viagra.

Looking at this ad might make you need Viagra.
Slick marketing, Pfizer.

When Viagra first comes up in Love and Other Drugs, it’s still in development at Pfizer and Jake Gyllenhaal, now a struggling Pfizer sales rep, has a serious hard-on to sell it. I thought it was going to be a one-off joke, similar to his showing off a Star-Tac earlier while he was working at the electronics store. But the second half of the movie largely becomes the Viagra movie. Every character gets caught up in the Viagra tidal wave. Jake Gyllenhaal and girlfriend Anne Hathaway cheer when it’s mentioned on Conan, doctors who previously snubbed Gyllenhaal beg him for hookups, and the little blue pill powers a crazy pharma-sex party that would have probably sent all my college friends into pharmaceuticals if Love and Other Drugs was released in when it takes place. There’s even a great “when Viagra goes wrong” bit that was one of the funniest parts of the movie.

Josh Gad plays Jake Gyllenhaal’s brother in Love and Other Drugs. If Jesse Eisenberg is the poor man’s Michael Cera, Josh Gad is the poor man’s Jack Black. If they make a sequel to Year One and can’t get Cera and Black, I think it would be kind of awesome if they got Gad and Eisenberg. I would definitely go see Year Two if it starred the poor man’s Michael Cera and the poor man’s Jack Black. That might be the only way I’d go see Year Two.

Josh Gad can also be the poor man’s Zach Galifianakis.

Love and Other Drugs has been getting a lot of press for both Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway having partial nude scenes in the movie. When Anne Hathaway’s bare breast first makes an appearance during a visit with Dr. Hank Azaria (not using his Dr. Nick voice), I thought “That wasn’t that big a deal. That was onscreen, what, five seconds?” I spoke (or thought in this case) too soon. Anne Hathaway’s breasts are in this movie more than Hank Azaria or Oliver Platt. Anne Hathaway’s breasts should have received third billing in the credits under Gyllenhaal and Hathaway. I hear they may be nominated for a Supporting Actress award this year.

Okay, put them away already.

Jake Gyllenhaal spends a lot of time disrobed as well in Love and Other Drugs. They are many shots of Gyllenbuutt and when he’s walking around in his underwear, I said out loud “Gyllenbaalls.”

I walked away liking Love and Other Drugs much more than I thought I would. If you’re looking for a good romantic comedy, try this one. It’s not cheesy, it will fulfill any questions you had about Anne Hathaway’s nipples, and you’ll get see the Gyllenbaalls you can take.
 
And if you really like Love and Other Drugs, Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman have a clone of it coming out soon called No Strings Attached. The preview was so much like Love and Other Drugs that I thought Love and Other Drugs repeated a joke during the movie and realized no, a very similar joke was in the No Strings Attached preview.

Love and Other Drugs – Anne Hathaway’s breasts = No Strings Attached.
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At The Theater #38: Megamind 3D

Sometimes when you’re behind on a deadline, you resort to desperate measures. Like you haven’t watched enough movies at the theater this year, so you go catch Megamind 3D, a movie you weren’t that excited about, at the UA Court Street in Downtown Brooklyn, a theater that you have repeatedly called the worst movie theater in New York City.

And sometimes, those desperate measures pay off big time. I loved Megamind 3D. It exceeded my expectations in every way. I think it is one of the funniest movies I’ve seen this year and is definitely the best superhero movie not named Iron Man 2 of the year.

Also, the UA Court St proved to be a great place to see a movie. Yeah, I never thought I’d say that either. I think you just have to follow certain rules if you want to see a movie there, namely:

  1. Avoid the ticket window. There is consistently a long line that stretches sometimes to the Barnes & Noble next door, but there’s never a line at the ticket vending machines indoors. Do that people who frequent this theater not have credit cards? Do they fear technology? Are they wary of an inevitable robot uprising? I have no idea.
  2. Never go to the UA Court St on the opening weekend of the movie you want to see.
  3. Or the opening weekend of any movie for that matter. If your movie has been out for awhile, but a new movie is opening up that same weekend, skip this theater.
  4. You know what, just avoid the place anytime Friday through Sunday.
  5. The earlier you go on a weekday, the better. I saw Megamind 3D at 4:45 on a Wednesday afternoon and there were only 6 of us in the theater, and more importantly, no one was psycho.

You should take these rules as seriously as you would rules about feeding mogwai. Heed them and you can avoid the nightmare situations I’ve experienced at the UA Court St, like the time I sat next to a woman who was giving a play by play of Sea Biscuit’s race on her cell phone.

If you are a comic book fan, you need to to see Megamind 3D. Besides taking the familiar Superman vs. Lex Luthor/Brainiac scenario and turning it on its head, Megamind 3D has plenty of injokes for the comic book enthusiast. The best being Megamind’s disguise as Space Dad when he’s training Tighten. It’s straight up Brando from Superman: The Movie. Megamind even talks in a Godfather voice to drive it home.

Space Dad (and Space Step-Mom).

And how funny is the name Tighten? “It’s the only name I could trademark,” says Megamind. Was it supposed to be Titan and Jonah Hill’s character was just too dumb? Or was it Tighten the whole time?

David Cross is hilarious as Minion. I don’t know which minion was better, David Cross’s alien fish in a robot body Minion from Megamind or the minions from Despicable Me. But without a doubt, 2010 is the year of the minion.

I kind of want this.
And this.

Megamind shares a lot in common with J!m, that main character in Go Mutants!, Larry Doyle’s second novel. Both have over-sized blue craniums. Both were judged and ridiculed for their appearance by their small-minded peers growing up. This led to teen rebellion for J!m and the desire for domination over Metro City for Megamind, which when you think about it is the supervillain equivalent of teenage rebellion.

I love this poster.

I can’t be the only one who thought that Tina Fey’s character, the Lois Lane-alike Roxanne Ritchi, looked a lot like Alexis Bledel, but with short hair. If the animators are going to make Roxanne look like Alexis Bledel, why not just cast Alexis Bledel instead of Tina Fey? It was a little weird to hear Tina Fey’s voice come out of Alexis Bledel’s mouth.

I will not be surprised when it is revealed that the lead animator of Megamind has a crush on Alexis Bledel.

Speaking of celebrities voicing animated characters, I feel like it doesn’t always work. Usually when it doesn’t work for me is when it’s a celebrity with a very distinctive voice, like Tina Fey or Jonah Hill, playing a character that they don’t look like in real life. Because they’re both so famous, I keep expecting to see their faces attached to their voices. But I didn’t have this problem with David Cross and Will Ferrell in Megamind. Thinking about it, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s because their two characters, a talking alien fish and a blue alien with a over-large cranium, were far enough away from being human that I didn’t feel the need for their voices and their faces to match up.

Megamind 3D gets a definite “see it in the theater” rating. If you enjoyed Despicable Me earlier this year, you’ll no doubt like Megamind 3D as well.

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At The Theater #37: 127 Hours

Did you like the self-mutilation in Black Swan, but weren’t really into the lesbian make-out scene? Then Fox Searchlight has the movie for you: 127 Hours!
I’m only kind of joking here. 127 Hours is a very graphic movie. But you have to expect that going into a movie about Aron Ralston, the hiker who had to cut off his own arm to save his own life.

The first 20 minutes of 127 hours show the beauty of nature. It will make you want to visit your nearest national park and take in the natural splendor that our country is full of. How awesome is that underground pool that James Franco brings Kate Mara and Amber Tamblyn to?

The next hour and 15 minutes are all about how nature is something to be feared. Because nature will fuck you from behind the first chance it gets. And it will donkey punch you while it’s doing it. And it won’t call you the next day.

It will be hard to go hiking and not think of this.

I wondered how Danny Boyle was going to keep the audience’s interest up throughout the movie. Aron gets trapped fairly early on and his only companions are a couple of ants and his own hallucinations. But Danny Boyle and James Franco did a great job. I was never bored during 127 Hours. Boyle used the perfect mix of problem solving on Ralston’s part for getting out of his situation and flashbacks to Ralston’s life leading up to this moment. And Franco was wonderful as Ralston, immediately portraying him as both likable and fallible, basically making him human. I think it’s an easy pick for both Boyle and Franco to receive Oscar nominations for 127 Hours.

I was really happy to hear Plastic Bertrand’s Ca Plane Pour Moi during the movie. Everyone needs this French punk song on their iPods.

Download it.

Little things stand out. I thought it was really cool that Danny Boyle used the distinctive whirring sound made by the tape loader in Canon DV video cameras whenever James Franco turned on his video camera. I know that sound all too well from owning one of them. Boyle also used the same on-screen icons from Canon’s camera when we were seeing things from Ralston’s video camera’s point of view.

Aron Ralston is amazing. 127 Hours is a testament to the huge amounts of hope and willpower Aron had to have in order to survive being trapped in the wilderness on his own. Even when his situation was at its bleakest, he never gave up. The guy is the epitome of willpower. Forget Hal Jordan. Aron Ralston should be the Green Lantern of Earth.

Geek to English translation: Green Lantern’s power ring is powered by his own willpower.

The most shocking part of the movie isn’t when James Franco does what you knew all along was coming, namely getting to the business of removing his own arm, it’s at the very end, when it’s shown that the real Aron Ralston is still at it doing hard hikes in the wilderness after all that he went through. He’s even fitted his stump arm with an awesome looking claw tool for digging in ice. I broke my wrist a couple of years ago snowboarding and never put on snowboarding boots again. Maybe I should rethink that.

Bad-Ass.

I believe there are five lessons to take away from 127 Hours: 1. Hike with a buddy. 2. Return phone calls, especially from your mom. 3. Spend an extra five minutes looking for your Swiss Army Knife. 4. Never give up. 5. When you fall down, not matter how hard, get back up and live life on your own terms.

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With One Month Left, I Realize Just How Far Behind I Am…

It’s December 1. Right now I should have watched 47 movies at the theater and 47 movies on the couch. How am I doing? 44 on the couch. Not bad, just a little behind there. And 36 at the theater. Uh-oh. That’s 11 less than where I should be.

What happened? How did I get so far behind at the theater? I partially blame it on this year’s batch of movies. Watching 52 movies in the theater two years ago was rough at times, but I remember there being many more enticing movies than this year.

I fell behind early this year and never caught up. The summer exasperated this. What happened to the summer movie season this year? It was awful. Despite it being insanely hot out this summer, I seldom went to the movie theater to seek air conditioned solace. And then there were the movies that I thought for sure I’d be seeing in the theater, the being-a-good-boyfriend movies like Sex and the City 2 and the latest Twilight that I managed to somehow avoid. It’s too bad. Those would have knocked two more off the list, and I had a really good idea for a post for Sex and the City 2.

But I deserve far more blame that Hollywood. Clearly I suffer from poor planning. I should have used a less stressful month like September to catch up. But now it’s crunch time, right as the holiday season has begun, full of all of which it entails: shopping for presents, parties, watching A Charlie Brown Christmas for the 30th time. These things can really cut into movie-watching time.

Now before I get too down about falling behind, I want to let it be known that I will be finishing what I started. 52 movies will be watched at the theater and another 52 will be watched on the couch by December 31.

Including today, there are 31 days left full of movie watching potential. 16 more at the theater and 8 more on the couch. 24 in total. The planned couch movies are pretty much all taken, but I could use some help with suggestions on what to catch at the theater. I went through the listings today, and including movies that haven’t been released yet this year, I’m having a hard time coming up with 16 titles to look forward to seeing. Have you seen a good movie at the theater recently that I haven’t covered on the blog already? Recommend it and there’s a good chance I’ll catch it.

Expect plenty of updates this month, 24 more to be exact.