Category Archives: Movies

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Summer’s End and the Movies I Missed

Summer’s over, and with it so is the summer blockbuster movie season. I caught some of the big ones, but managed to still miss out on movies that should be hitting us on DVD and Blu-Ray in time for the holidays. Movies like…

Green Lantern

How did I miss it? I love comic books. I mean I LOVE comic books. When it was announced that Green Lantern, currently one of my favorite comics, was coming to the big screen I was psyched. I thought they went with the wrong Two Guys & A Girl alum when they cast Ryan Reynolds over Nathan Fillion as Hal Jordan, but that didn’t sway my excitement. But then the movie came out. And the best review I heard of it was “It’s nowhere near as bad as Transformers 2.” That doesn’t inspire confidence.

Will I See It? I don’t know. I haven’t seen a lot of the less than great comic book movies out there (Fantastic Four 2, Ghost Rider, Punisher: No Mercy). But I’m more likely to see this than any of those.

Captain America

How did I miss it? Like I said, I love comic books. And I’ve been buying Captain America every month since writer Ed Brubaker started on the title a few years ago. Growing up, the Mark Gruenwald era of Captain America was one of my favorite comics. So how did I miss this movie? At the beginning of the summer, one of my closest friends complained about suffering from superhero movie fatigue. I thought he was nuts. But then Captain America came out and while it looked cool, I just didn’t have the desire to see it. After X-Men and Thor, maybe I OD’d on comic book movies. Or maybe Green Lantern just killed the idea of seeing a superhero movie for me this summer.

Will I see it? No doubt I’ll catch in on DVD. It does look good. I actually would have liked to see this in the theater.

Transformers 3:  Dark of the Moon

How did I miss it? Better question, how did anyone not miss this movie? After Transformers 2: Revenge of Fallen, anyone who went back to the theater to see Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon is like someone who goes back to their lying, abusive spouse. You know it’s a bad idea walking in and it’s not going to end well. Can we stop paying Shia LaBeouf to further ruin our beloved 1980s franchises?

Will I see it? Only if I lose a bet.

Horrible Bosses

How did I miss it? It was either Horrible Bosses or Midnight in Paris when we went to Reel Pizza in Bar Harbor this year. I was really happy with Midnight in Paris, so I can’t complain about missing Horrible Bosses. Sadly, once we got back from Bar Harbor, it was no longer playing at my neighborhood theater.

Will I see it? Definitely. Just looking at this poster makes me laugh.

The Help

How did I miss it? I heard the movie was great. I heard the book was great. I even bought the book for my mom for her birthday.  I just wasn’t that excited for it.

Will I see it? I might read the book first, but yes, I’m sure I’ll catch it at some point, either on DVD or TBS.

Crazy Stupid Love

How did I miss it? These large ensemble cast romantic comedies that have become popular over the last few years have made a lot of money for the studios, but have pretty much been movies worth avoiding, so I wasn’t excited to see Crazy Stupid Love despite Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone being in it.

Will I see it? After it was released, I heard it was good. So…yes.

Have you seen a movie that was awesome this summer that I haven’t blogged about? Let me know, as I’m always on the hunt for something good to see. Likewise, if you saw something I should avoid, I’d appreciate the warning.

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On The Couch 2011 #24: Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement

The look on Anne Hathaway’s face in the poster for Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement isn’t a look of surprise about having to marry to obtain the throne, it’s a look directed at the movie’s viewer, asking “Are you sure you want to watch this? I’ve been in much better movies.” Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement should be shown in the classrooms of film schools around the country so that the future writers and directors of tomorrow can learn what to avoid when crafting their future projects. The jokes in the movie are the perfect storm of corny, dumb and over-explained.

I get that I’m not in the target audience for Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, but that doesn’t make it any less a terrible movie. There are plenty of movies that are aimed at children that can be enjoyed by adults, some even with Princess in their names (The Princess Bride, anyone?) so clearly it can be done. I wasn’t expecting to particularly like Princess Diaries 2, but I also wasn’t expecting to hate it this much either.

What’s remarkable about Princess Diaries 2 is the number of high quality actors it took to help make such a bad movie. Anne Hathaway, Julie Andrews, Hector Elizondo, John Rhys Davies and a very big-haired Chris Pine all share this stinker on their resume.

Trim that bush, Chris Pine!

Without a doubt, the best part of Princess Diaries 2 is Director Garry Marshall explaining during the deleted scenes of why he really liked a scene that wasn’t good enough to make it into this movie that is entirely made of scenes that aren’t good enough to make it into a movie.

Stanley Tucci is not in Princess Diaries 2, despite me thinking he was. But even The Tooch couldn’t make this a good movie. A better movie? Definitely. A good movie? Even The Tooch has his limits.

See this movie if you want to learn how not to write. Or if you have the Rifftrax. Or if you think I’m joking about how bad it is.

The only thing preventing me from ranking this lower than Wedding Daze on the list of movies I’ve seen this year is that Princess Diaries 2 had a song by Julie Andrews in it, her first since her throat surgery in 1997. Though the follow-up duet with Raven-Symone has me second guessing whether or not Wedding Daze was actually the worse movie.

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At The Theater 2011 #11: Conan the Barbarian

A teenage obsession with Magic: the Gathering and a friend who really liked the Arnold Schwarzenegger Conan the Barbarian led to me seeing the new Conan the Barbarian. The Rotten Tomatoes score of 24 had me not expected much. But I’m happy to say I enjoyed Conan the Barbarian. I don’t think it deserves its very low score of 24 on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s a fun summer blockbuster, though with its $10 million first weekend take, I guess blockbuster is the wrong choice of words. But I thought it was good. I enjoyed it a hell of a lot more than I did 300. There were thankfully no extended slo-mo scenes in Conan like 300 used ad nauseum. If I had to choose between Conan and the upcoming Immortals, I’d definitely go with Conan, but maybe that has more to do with Immortals looking like they took 300 and changed the name to Immortals.

We saw the 2D version of Conan the Barbarian. From what I understand, only 20% of the 3D version is actually in 3D. While watching it in 2D, I couldn’t figure out where the 3D parts would be in the movie. Nothing really jumped out at me as an obvious choice.

I think what helped me like Conan was the amount of humor the movie had. It wasn’t as slapstick as Thor, but it had some funny lines throughout that helped make the movie more enjoyable. My favorite line is the movie came right after Conan was about to kill a particularly goblin-looking bad guy, but was stopped by his eventual love interest Tamara. Then the following exchange happens:

Bad guy: You lie, whore!
Tamara: (to Conan) You can kill him now.

There was some unintentional humor in the movie as well. Tamara and the other women who were being guarded by the monks all reminded me of Zoot and her compatriots that Galahad encounters in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I kept waiting for one of them to say “Bad, bad Zoot! Wicked, naughty Zoot.”

The other unintentional piece of humor in the film was Jason Mamoa’s resemblance to Brendan Fraser playing Encino Man during a few scenes in the movie. Basically any time Mamoa was looking up with his head facing down, he looked like Encino Man. I think he did this to look grim, but I just expected the Wuh-hees-el to jump out behind him. Actually, that would have been an awesome cameo, Pauly Shore in barbarian gear. Almost everyone else in the cast looks like they just stepped off the stage of an 80’s hair band concert; the Weasel might have fit right in.

Actual footage from Conan the Barbarian.

Mamoa is an awesome Conan though, and really feels like he’s the character brought to life. Besides just being freaking huge, he’s a good actor.

Rose McGowan plays the evil witch Marique. She looks very, very strange in this movie. Unfortunately, I don’t know how much of it is Marique and how much of it is her own botched plastic surgery. Anyone else see how strange she looked in Law & Order: SVU last season? It’s sad, because I used to have a huge crush on Rose McGowan. She used to be very pretty.

Note: This is not her Conan make-up. Rose, what happened?!?

At one point in Conan the Barbarian, our titular hero has to hunt down the bad guys who are holed up in Skull Cave, which to its credit, looks like a skull. I get the feeling that caves shaped like skulls are as common in Hyboria as Hudson News are in Penn Station. Maybe it would help to name your skull caves a little more specifically so that Conan doesn’t show up at the wrong Skull Cave, which causes him to fail to save the girl and stop the evil wizard, thus sending us into a dark age like no other. This particular skull cave had a water fall coming out of its lower jaw. Why not call it Drooling Skull Cave?

Conan the Barbarian is definitely very bloody. The movie begins with Conan literally being born on the battlefield. Later in the movie, Conan sticks his fingers into the cavity of where one of his adversary’s nose used to be. I cringed. It was awesome.

If you’re looking for a fun movie and like a bit of sword and sorcery mixed with your action, Conan the Barbarian may be the movie for you.s

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On The Couch 2011 #23: Young@Heart

Young@Heart hooked me right at the open. An elderly woman with a British accent is belting out The Clash’s Should I Stay or Should I Go almost as if it were spoken word poetry before being joined in at the chorus by the rest of her choir.

You haven’t heard “Should I Stay or Should I Go” until you’ve heard this lady sing it.

While watching Young@Heart, I couldn’t help but wish that I have the high levels of energy and enthusiasm that these senior citizens have on display throughout the entire film. Even when their choir director Bob picks a song for them that they don’t initially like, they jump into it, learn it and end up singing it in a way that I think any of the writers of the songs featured in the movie ever envisioned them being sung.

But man, Young@Heart is vicious movie. Unlike The Expendables, not everyone is makes it out of this documentary in the end. It was like watching Lost: as soon as I was really into one of the people in the movie, they died. The fact that these are real people and not characters made it even harder to accept. But Young@Heart turns the deaths in the movies into positive messages. At its core, the movie is about living life to its fullest, and picking up and carrying on when a loved one passes away.

I immediately gave this movie five stars after watching it. I kind of want some of the songs on my iPod as well.

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At The Theater 2011 #10: Midnight in Paris

Thankfully we were still in Bar Harbor when Midnight in Paris opened up at Reel Pizza. Woo-hoo! Another excuse to eat pizza and watch a movie in a theater. We didn’t line up early enough for Midnight in Paris. There was a sizable crowd outside the theater when we showed up, which unfortunately meant our group of five would have to split up. Fortunately, it meant that we could make use of the couches in the first two rows of the theater. No one couch there is big enough for five people, but when you divide up across two couches suddenly I’m splayed out like I’m at home in my living room.

Reel Pizza has a new pie on their menu, with fresh basil and goat cheese. It is awesome. If we made any mistake in this trip to Reel Pizza, it wasn’t showing up too late to get seats together, it was ordering a small instead of a large on the basil and goat cheese pie. It went quickly.

I haven’t seen every Woody Allen movie. Actually, I could probably count on one hand the number of Woody Allen movies I’ve seen. That said, I loved Midnight in Paris. It was stellar. It’s funny, it’s romantic. Owen Wilson is great. But the real stars of the movie are the actors playing the historical figures that he meets. Corey Stall as Hemingway was definitely my favorite, with Adrien Brody’s Dali coming in a close second.

“Rhinoceros!”
“Dali!”

The one odd thing about Midnight in Paris is that Owen Wilson’s character Gil is obsessed with Paris in the 20’s, but with the exception of Marion Cotillard’s fictional character Adriana, every other person he meets in a real life American or Spaniard.
Marion Cotillard is beyond charming. If she asked me to stay in pre-1900 Paris with her, I would have a hard time saying no. 

Would you give up Angry Birds for a French bird?

Go see Midnight in Paris. Highest possible recommendation.

And go see movies at Reel Pizza. Beyond highest possible recommendation.

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At The Theater 2011 #9: Submarine

There’s a lot to be said for a great movie theater. When I’m in Los Angeles, I feel the need to see a movie at the Arclight. And when I travel to Bar Harbor, ME, I need to see a movie at Reel Pizza. I have never made a trip to Bar Harbor without seeing at least one movie at Reel Pizza.

I was looking forward to seeing Horrible Bosses or Midnight in Paris at Reel Pizza when we arrived in Bar Harbor. Unfortunately, I read the schedule wrong and those two movies weren’t showing up until later in the week, so we had our choice of Tree of Life and Submarine.

I didn’t know anything about Submarine before heading into the theater. I’d only seen the poster, which is pretty much just the face and torso of a Welsh teenager. But I did hear things about Tree of Life, mainly that it was long, boring and hard to understand. So Submarine it is!

Submarine is great. I definitely recommend watching it. If you like the humor that comes from awkward situations, like the kind found in Louis C.K.’s show Louis, I think you will enjoy Submarine a lot. Submarine captures the awkwardness of being a teenager, especially an unpopular one, very well.

Ah, young love. Young, awkward love.

If you have quick eyes, you might be able to catch Ben Stiller’s cameo in the movie. It’s faster than Rebecca Romajin’s cameo in X-Men: First Class.

I thought this was Ben Stiller. But it’s not.

My favorite pizza at Reel Pizza is the Hawaii 5-0. We had a larger group with us in Maine this time around, so we ventured out of our usual and added a large Godfather to our order. The Godfather pie is good, but I think the Hawaii 5-0 is still king there.

For more on why you need to see a movie at Reel Pizza, please check out my reviews of Inception and Oceans.

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On The Couch 2011 #22: The Expendables

When I first saw the poster for The Expendables, I thought, “Who is going to see that?” And then the movie came out and it was box office gold. I was shocked it did so well. The trailer made it look like the schlockiest, overdone action movie in years. I didn’t understand how there was this much demand for 1980s action nostalgia. But that was back before I dove into the glory that is the Rambo universe. I may divide my life into Before Seeing Rambo (BSR) and After Seeing Rambo (ASR) going forward. After watching Rambo III, I immediately wanted to watch Rambo followed by The Expendables. After seeing Rambo (First Blood Pt. 4, not Part 2), I thought I could wait a little before seeing The Expendables. Is this all the proof you need that Rambo III is better than Rambo?

For a movie called The Expendables, they’re all surprisingly resilient. I was surprised to see none of the team members die, not even in an inspiring “I die so you can live” scenario. Even team betrayer and all around psycho Gunner Jensen, played by The Punisher’s Dolph Lundgren survives a vicious stabbing AND is allowed back on the team! How do you make room for fresh faces in the sequel if everyone makes it out this time around?

Speaking of Dolph Lundren, if there is anything that has degraded more amazingly since the 1980’s than Domino’s Mickey Rourke’s looks, it’s Dolph Lundgren’s acting ability. How this is possible when you consider how bad an actor Dolph was even at the top of his game is beyond me. But it’s true.

Sylvester Stallone with Christina Aguilera on the set of her video for Beautiful.

If any of The Expendables was expendable, it was definitely Get Smart’s Terry Crews. I kept asking myself, “Am I forgetting the iconic action role that Terry Crews played to get him a spot in this movie?” And then I remembered, he was the dad on Everybody Hates Chris. Sorry for the hassle, Mr. Crews. My bad. You action hero legacy is justified.

The weird thing about The Expendables is that while it didn’t do much for me, I already find myself interested in the sequel that’s in the works for 2012. Replicant’s Jean-Claude Van Damme and Sidekick’s Chuck Norris are both listed on the IMDB page as possibly being in it. I have some more suggestions for the producers: 1. Steven Segal (needs to lose weight first), 2. Jackie Chan (needs to lose Chris Tucker first) and 3. Danny Glover (as Sugartits).

“If you don’t put me in the sequel, I will eat this snake’s butt!”
He’s not kidding! I’ve seen him do it!

The Expendables has something for everybody, regardless if you’re a fan of 1980s action stars, 1990s action stars or 2000s action stars. That’s everybody, right?

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On the Couch 2011 #21: City Island

City Island is one of those movies that if you grew up in New York City, you need to see, especially if you grew up in an Italian section of one of the outer boroughs. The majority of the movie takes place on City Island, small former fishing village off the coast of the Bronx, but it’s not a Bronx movie. It could just have easily taken place in Brooklyn or Long Island City, Queens. This is one of those movies that I expect my relatives to enjoy, especially those in my parents’ generation, because the characters could easily be people they know.

The plot of City Island didn’t play out like I expected it to. When a cop makes the decision to take a con home to live with his family, it sounds like the makings of a Cape Fear-esque thriller. But City Island turns this plot device on its head. The young con, who is also unaware he is the son of the cop taking him home, serves as a character playing out the audience’s POV. He is the stranger in this very strange family, finding out their deceptions to each other, like husband and wife Andy Garcia and Julianna Margulies both lying to each other about quitting smoking. No one in the family is telling the truth to each other, with the exception of con Tony, played expertly by Steven Strait

Even reading must be done in secret on City Island. Shhhh.

There is plenty of humor to be found in City Island. Whether it’s Andy Garcia’s prison guard (er, I mean…Corrections Officer) turned actor Vince Rizzo attending his first audition or his teenage son finding out that the object of his internet affection lives directly across the street, you will find something to laugh at. The humor is sharp, and comments well on both the lies we tell ourselves and the lies we tell those closest to us.

City Island should be at the top of your movies to see at home list.

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At The Theater 2011 #8: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

For more of my thoughts on the new Harry Potter movie, including who I think are the top 5 actors of the franchise, download episode 2 of my new podcast, The Billy and Bryan Show, available for free on iTunes! While you’re there, download the first episode too!

Unlike when I saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, aka Hermione Granger and Red Dress of Awesomeness, I somehow managed to keep my awesome British accent in check while walking around in Harry Potter glasses before seeing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, which surprised my friends who were bracing for a night full of cockney from me.

Sadly, the red dress of awesomeness was no where to be found in Hermione Granger and the Red Dress of Awesomeness Part 2. But we did get this outfit, so who am I to complain?

The new Harry Potter movie was great; the crowd that was in the movie theater with us was not. A big group of us caught it at the Union Square Regal on the Friday night of opening weekend. I found the staff at the Regal to be nice and friendly, but I cannot recommend going there to see a major blockbuster like this on opening weekend. There were about 8 people ahead of us on line on the sidewalk when we were let in, but somehow there was a mass of people already in the theater when we walked in. It seems that Regal had people queuing up on the sidewalk outside, while also having people on line next to the doors of the theater inside, and other people just hanging around inside waiting to pounce once people started being let in. Line management is not their forte. The other major frustration of the night was that the group of people behind us would not shut up throughout the entire movie. It was like they opened up a Regal Court St embassy in the middle of our theater in Union Square! My friend Sarv almost went all Umbridge on the people behind us!

I’m happy to report that I found the movie to be great. I made the conscious decision to not reread the book before seeing the movie, because even by splitting the book into two movies, I knew there would be some changes, plus I wanted to be surprised by what was happening on the screen. Before the movie started, the only things I remembered from the book were that Harry and Voldemort fight and 19 years later, Harry’s kids are heading off heading to Hogwarts.

Kiss him, you fool!

Speaking of the epilogue, I thought they did a good job with it, but man did they make the Hogwarts crew age in unflattering ways. Ron, what happened to you? Have your wife whip you up a fitness charm and get rid of that gut! Also, how are there any bald wizards in The Wizarding World? I’m looking at you, Draco Malfoy. You’d think male pattern baldness would have been eliminated centuries ago! Time travel? Check! Resurrections? Check! A cure for baldness? “Eh…we’re wizards, not miracle workers.” Hermione needs to tweak that polyjuice potion that went awry and turned her into Catgirl and market it to the folliclely challenged.

No more Hermione?!?! Noooo!!!
I’m going to miss heading to the theater with my friends for new Harry Potter movies. But I’m sure there will be more franchises that we’ll get wrapped up in, and more opening weekend outings. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 was the movie I was anticipating since the beginning of the year. Now that it’s passed, I’m not sure what new or upcoming release to latch my excitement onto. Captain America? Cowboy and Aliens? Both look great, but I’m not counting down the days until I see them. Actually, I know what movie has just replaced Harry Potter in my Can’t Wait List…
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At The Theater 2011 #7: Attack the Block

Saw the new Harry Potter and are still jonesing for a cast of Brits fighting against the unworldly? Then you need to go see Attack the Block.

It was hard to get behind the protagonists initially in Attack of the Block. They start the movie robbing a woman at knife point and follow that up by acting like the loud, obnoxious teenagers that they are. I won’t lie, for a little while I was rooting for the aliens to dismember them and took a fair amount of glee when the aliens took out the teen who I found the most annoying. The aliens aren’t picky about who they kill though; a likable character is just as likely to buy it as a highly unlikeable one. Well, maybe not just as likely, but still very high.

The aliens are very cool looking in Attack the Block. They’re these eyeless ape-dog hybrids with rows and rows sharp, iridescent teeth and fur that’s darker than the night. They’re vicious, speedy and deadly, which made for a movie full of great thrills.

Nick Frost is hilarious as a constantly stoned pot dealer.

I’m used to Nick Frost movies being really funny, but Attack the Block doesn’t have as much humor as Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz did, and if you go to this movie expecting amount of humor from those movies, you might be disappointed. But it works great as a thriller. If you’re a fan of movies like Gremlins or Aliens, I highly recommend it. Catch it while you can in the theater.