Category Archives: Movies

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On The Couch #29: The Blind Side

Back during Oscar season, I really wanted to watch The Blind Side. But as soon as the Oscars aired, my drive to catch the nominees I hadn’t seen yet dropped dramatically. I had already seen the ones I was very interested in, which left The Blind Side and the movie I will probably never watch, Precious, to fall by the wayside.

I was in Cape Cod this past week on vacation. After a long day of driving, I looked forward to doing something low key our first night there.

Enter: The Red Box. I haven’t had much experience with these rental-DVD vending machines in the past. A friend once showed me that you can look up what’s in a particular Red Box on the internet, which I thought was amazingly cool, but outside of that, I had never used one myself.

I thought it would be difficult to find a movie that my mom, dad, brother, his fiancé, my girlfriend or I hadn’t see already (sorry Youth in Revolt), would want to see (sorry Repo Men), and was family-appropriate (sorry The Crazies). Somehow none of us had seen The Blind Side.

I didn’t realize The Blind Side was based on a book by Michael Lewis until a credit popped up on the screen saying so. Before that, I thought Sandra Bullock’s opening monologue sounded like it was written by a sports writer and not a mom. Turns out it was.

Sandra Bullock was good in The Blind Side, but it’s her character’s young son who steals the show. Jae Head as S.J. Tuohy is so energetic and cute that he should be an honorary Culkin.

If they make a Kathie Lee biopic, this picture alone should get Bullock the part.

Another highlight was seeing the cameo appearances of numerous college coaches, playing themselves at the schools they were coaching at the time. I’m not the biggest fan of college football and could only recognize a couple of them, but I’ve always enjoyed people who aren’t actors playing themselves.

The real life Michael Oher wasn’t too happy with the movie because it portrayed him as barely understanding football before joining his high school team. I can understand his frustration here. But every Hollywood biopic is going to take liberties with the real lives of the people involved, so I guess that was to be expected.

Little know fact: Sandra Bullock was originally cast to play Cyclops in X-Men. Contract disputes caused her to be replaced by James Marsden.

The Blind Side is entertaining. There was surprisingly little football in the first hour of the movie, but the last 20 minutes is pretty much all football. If anything, it’s a good way to spend a couple of hours with your family during a night in Cape Cod.

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On The Couch #28: Risky Business

This is one of those “What do you mean you never saw ______?” movies that I’m trying to clear through over the course of this blog. I’m not sure why I never saw Risky Business. I guess I came late to the Tom Cruise party. The first movie I remember watching with Tom Cruise in it was Cocktail. If that last line caused a bulb to light in your head, that’s right, besides never seeing Risky Business, I’ve never seen Top Gun either. But oh man, did I watch Cocktail. I was obsessed with that movie when I was 12. I owned it on VHS and watched it over and over again. I recently watched it again. It’s not very good. I think 12 year old me was a little too hung up on the soundtrack’s one-two punch of Kokomo and Don’t Worry, Be Happy to notice how weak this movie really is.

What’s sadder? How much I was obsessed with this movie when I was 12 or the fact that I probably wouldn’t turn it off if it came on TV right now?

Risky Business is like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off from Cameron’s point of view. Despite being the more handsome of the pair, Tom Cruise’s Joel is definitely the Cameron to Curtis (BOOGER!!!!) Armstrong’s Miles. It’s Miles who calls the first hooker. It’s Miles who tells Joel “Sometimes you just have to say what the fuck.” Meanwhile, it’s Joel who has the dad who’s obsessed over his expensive sports car. And its’ Joel who is a whiny stick in the mud in every scene except for when he’s getting action from Rebecca De Mornay’s Lana.

At least the movie gave us that Bob Seger Old Time Rock N’ Roll dance scene, which for years I didn’t know originated with in this movie.

Sorry, Tom. Heidi Klum does it better.
Was this also the first movie to give us the Tom Cruise patented “Is he cocky or crazy face?” (Please see Exhibit A)
Exhibit A.

If I knew Bronson Pinchot was in this movie, I would have seen it years ago. But for some reason, I find it weird whenever he’s not talking in his Balki voice. I don’t care if he was born in New York City and not Mypos, every time I see him, I expect the Balki voice and it’s always jarring when he’s not speaking in it (which is 99% of his non-Perfect Strangers career).

I cannot think of Bronson Pinchot without his America or Burst sign.

A few years ago, I was stuck trying to figure out a Christmas present for a friend. Enter my brother, who recommended Risky Business on DVD, because every girl loves Risky Business. My friend gave me a weird look when she unwrapped Risky Business, so you might want to think twice before you use it as your go-to Christmas gift.

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On The Couch #27: Mystery Team

I saw Donald Glover do stand-up in NYC at Comix not too long ago. He was hilarious. If he comes to your town, you should definitely go see him perform. When I heard that he co-wrote and starred in Mystery Team (along with the other members of his sketch comedy group Derrick), I immediately moved it to the top of my queue. You should too. This movie is really funny.

It’s full of one-liners that I can definitely see being quoted over and over again, similar to the way I treated Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The State and My Blue Heaven in high school (and beyond).

It’s a vegetable.

The movie is about three Encyclopedia Brown-esque detectives. Emotionally, they’re 18 going on 12. And they just graduated to their first murder case, which proves to be a little more difficult than figuring out who stuck his finger in a neighbor’s pie.

You know you’ve made it when your bike matches your Chucks.

If you’re a fan of NBC’s Thursday night comedies, you’ll recognize at least one person from each show in this movie. You’ve got Donald Glover from Community, Aubrey Plaza from Parks & Rec and Ellie Kemper from The Office. 30 Rock gets represented twice, with Kevin Brown and John Lutz. It was impressive to watch John Lutz play a character not named J. Lutz. SNL’s Bobby Moynihan is great as the local convenience store clerk who has a very unnatural fixation on Donald Glover’s character.

I don’t know what’s funnier, Bobby Moynihan trying to get his hand in the pile or the Ground Round sign hastily put up over the counter.

This is the first movie this year that I watched the movie again with the commentary track on the day after watching the movie the first time around. The commentary track is great. The members of Derrick are funny here too and have good stories about making Mystery Team.

Derrick. The group.

You really should see this. It’s one of the best comedies I’ve seen so far this year.

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At The Theater #29: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Big thanks to my friend ST for hooking me up with an advance screening ticket to Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. You should check out ST’s blog Dear Times Square, which deals with the utter ridiculousness that is Times Square.

I loved the Scott Pilgrim movie. I read all six Scott Pilgrim books, but I don’t think they’re a prerequisite for watching this movie. It definitely stands on its own. The screenwriters did a great job of condensing all six books into a 90 minute movie and keeping the quality very high.

True story: Evil Ex #2 Lucas Lee was based on skater turned actor Jason Lee.

The casting was phenomenal. Top to bottom, every role was cast perfectly, especially the evil exes, who were so perfectly over the top.

I feel like most guys have this meter in their heads. Unfortunately, ours are most often set at “No Clue.”

Little Things I Liked Best About The Scott Pilgrim Movie:

The black bar over Julie Powers’ mouth every time she cursed. This made me laugh each time. And I love that one of the characters asked her how she did that thing with her mouth.

The vegan police. This was one of my favorite bits in the comic and I’m glad that it made its way into the movie largely intact. Evil ex #3 is a vegan and gains mental abilities from it. The extent of his betrayal of Envy Adams was cut down, but this whole fight was great.

Before this, I always though vegans only possessed the power of disdain.

Scott vs. Nega-Scott. I think they improved over the book in this case. The Nega-Scott fight in book 6 was a little too new-agey and a little too expository. But the movie scene of Scott and Nega-Scott walking out of Club Chaos together and making plans to hang out was perfect. And the explanation made perfect sense; it turns out they have a lot in common.

The lady I overheard while walking to the bathroom after the movie. She was yelling at her friend “Scott’s sister! The whole time I’m watching the movie, I’m asking myself where I know her from! Where?! The whole movie! Where do I know her?!? Who is she?” I made it to the men’s room before she finished her story, but after I got out my friend let me know she finished by yelling “TWILIGHT!!!” I was hoping she’d yell “UP IN THE AIR! That was totally George Clooney’s coworker!!!”

The pixelated Universal logo at the beginning of the movie. As soon as that popped up, with the accompanying 8-bit version of the Universal theme, a smile crossed my face. Weird thing though…In the credits, a line read “Animated Universal Logo copyright 1997 Universal Films.” What film used this logo in 1997? Does anyone know?

The 8-bit music score. Maybe I’ve been listening to The Nerdist podcast too much recently, but I really dug the 8-bit score playing throughout the movie.

You can stream both the score and soundtrack for free at Spinner.

There is a Scott Pilgrim vs. The World video game that was released for the Playstation Network. It’s great. It’s an old-school side-scrolling action game in the same vein as River City Ransom or The Simpsons Arcade Game. You can play as Scott, Ramona, Steven Stills or Kim. The character select screen is straight out of Super Mario Bros 2 and the world map is in the style of Super Mario Bros 3. It features HD 16-Bit graphics, which sounds a little oxymoronic, but I’ll go with it.

Yay for video game tie-ins that don’t suck!

There’s also a secret survival-horror Scott vs. Zombies mode in the game if you enter the following code at the title screen: down, up, right, down, up, right, down, up, right, right, right. Fighting zombies is always fun, but I can’t help but think it would be more enjoyable to have Scott and friends beating up glittery, abstinent vampires instead.

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On The Couch #26: She’s Out of My League

She’s Out of My League opened the same weekend as Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. I chose to see Alice and clearly made the wrong decision. She’s Out of My League and Alice and Wonderland are polar opposites when it comes to expectation and actual experience. My expectations for Alice in Wonderland were very high and it really failed to deliver. My expectations for She’s Out of My League couldn’t have been lower. The trailer made it look like a Maxim dating article come to life. But She’s Out of My League ended up being a very enjoyably cute romantic comedy, one that I wouldn’t mind watching again (something I can’t say about Alice in Wonderland).

I chose…poorly.

Having spent some time in Pittsburgh, I thought it was cool that the filmmakers decided to incorporate the city into the movie. The two main characters, Kirk (Jay Baruchel) and Molly (Alice Eve) spend a date at a Penguins game and another atop Mt. Washington, or Mt. Worshington as the locals call it.

I actually had this wear-the-same-jacket-on-a-date-as-the-waitstaff thing happen to me. Not the best feeling.

But if you’re going to set a movie in a city as unique as Pittsburgh, go all the way with it.

Where’s the Steelers gear? I have it on good authority that everyone in Pittsburgh is required to own no fewer than two Stilllers tee-shirts, and that really is a bare minimum. This doesn’t include Steelers caps, hats, sweatpants and XXL fatty Starter jackets. The last time I was in Pittsburgh I overheard a woman describe a t-shirt stand in the Strip District as “They have great Stillers shirts, but they don’t have any in womens’ sizes.” She was wearing a Cleveland Sucks t-shirt. In her party were five other people, four of whom were wearing Steelers shirt. The other guy was in a Pitt shirt. This seems like the right ratio that the costume design department should have gone with for She’s Out of My League. Filming a movie in Pittsburgh without anyone in Steelers shirts is like filming a movie at Fenway Park without inbred Red Sox fans.

At least 4 of these people should be in Steelers gear.

Where’s the Pittsburgh accent? Everyone in this movie is supposedly a Pittsburgh native, but nobody had a Pittsburgh accent. A lot of the cast did have accents, but they were cobbled together from everywhere but Pittsburgh. Kirk’s mom sounds like she’s from Minnesota and his brother sounds like he’s from the east coast. A lot of time is spent downtown, but no one calls it dahntahn. Not once did someone use the word yinz.

Where’s the Pittsburgh food? Pittsburgh is full of some of tastiest high caloric food in the country. You’re not born able to fit into a XXL fatty Steelers Starter jacket. You have to earn it through multiple trips to Pamela’s for pancake breakfasts, sandwiches stuffed with fries and coleslaw at Primanti Brothers, cheese cake from Gullifty’s, and smiley face Eat N’ Park cookies. I’m amazed more of this movie didn’t take place in an Eat N’ Park. Kirk and his slacker friends look like they would frequent midnight breakfast pretty often.

The Eat N’ Park smiley face cookie. So happy. So tasty.

Finally, where’s The Exchange? I’m pretty sure I spotted a stack of NES games behind Jay Baruchel’s head in one scene. He clearly like to blow his hard earned TSA pay at Pittsburgh’s mecca of used video games, The Exchange.

I think America is ready for a movie that really takes place in Pittsburgh. A movie where people go to Jynt Igle for their chipped ham sammitches n’at to eat at The Point.

Despite wanting more Pittsburgh in the movie, I still rate She’s Out of My League as positively Razzy Fresh!

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At The Theater #28: Despicable Me

Warning: Before going to see Despicable Me, if you decide to eat lunch at Mile End, my new favorite smoked meat restaurant in Brooklyn, you have a 33% chance of falling asleep during the movie. The combination of all that meat, the long walk in the hot sun from Mile End to Cobble Hill Cinemas and the darkened movie theater proved too much for a member of our party. I’m basing this off a sample size of three, which is clearly scientifically significant. The sandwiches at Mile End are delicious, so it might be a risk worth taking. They also make some delicious poutine for you Montrealers out there.

Note: This sandwich may cause drowsiness.

2010 has been a really weak year for movies, but I think it’s been a very strong one for animated films. Toy Story 3 is currently my Movie of the Year. How to Train Your Dragon was great. And while it came out late last year, I didn’t get around to seeing The Fantastic Mr. Fox until this year (You can decide yourself if that one counts towards my current thesis).

I’m not saying every animated movie this year has been great. I haven’t seen Shrek 4-The-Money, but from what I hear it’s as disappointing as most of this summer’s films.

Add Despicable Me to the good list. I really liked it. I want my own minion. No, I want my own 5-10 minions. I don’t need a whole army, but I think 5-10 minions would be perfect for getting things done and they even cuter in groups than they are alone. They’re half the size of Oompa-Loompas and infinitely less creepy.

When I say I need more minions, that means I need more minions.

Best Buy has a free IPhone app available that translates what the minions are saying during the end credits of the movie. Maybe there was a glitch with mine, but it didn’t work for me. After three hours, the movie was long over, the app still said “Enjoy the show. You phone will vibrate when it’s time to translate,” and a battery at 10% power. Hopefully your results will vary.

This movie is very funny. Steve Carell is great as Gru, the world’s former number one villain turned number two villain by Jason Siegel voicing the geekiest looking super-villain ever. My favorite non-minion part of the movie may have been Gru showing us how a super villain orders coffee in the morning.

Is the story the most original thing in the world? No. But it is very well done, very funny and will probably have you laughing from the opening scene to the close. If only more movies were like that this summer!

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At The Theater #27: Oceans

How awesome is the pizza at Reel Pizza? So awesome that I thought about checking out The Karate Kid here just to get the pizza again. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing The Karate Kid, so I was happy to see it replaced by Oceans before we left Bar Harbor.

Despite what you may have heard, Oceans is not the prequel to Ocean’s 13.

And despite it being made by Disney, don’t be fooled into thinking this a movie you should take your lil’ precious to. I base this on the six year old sitting next to us who wanted to be anywhere but in this theater watching this movie. At least that’s what I picked up from her actions: banging her head into the back of her seat, talking loudly about random stuff, wandering back and forth from her mom’s seat behind our couch to the easy chair next us, and nearly climbing over the back of the occupied couch in front of us.

Bar Harbor is the perfect place to see Oceans. The beauty of the sea life is astounding to watch and if you’re like me, you’ll be sitting there in awe, thinking…dinner. Oh, how lucky I was to see this in Maine.

If you’re ever in Maine, do yourself a favor and go to Red’s Eats for a lobster roll. You will be happy.

My mouth was watering by the end of Oceans. Mmmm, those fighting crabs would look delightful in cake form.

Or made into stuffing and then coated around a halibut as I would discover less than 24 hours later.

Even lobster ice cream is delicious.

The one downside to Oceans, and it’s only a downside if you’re seeing it at Reel Pizza, is that it’s only 1 hour and 15 minutes long, which means no intermission. No intermission means we couldn’t get that second pizza we were planning to order.

That smoked salmon and mussels pizza would have been thematically delicious.

There’s another movie theater in downtown Bar Harbor. I’ve never seen a movie there. It looks like a cool, old style movie house. Unfortunately they were showing The Last Airbender all week, which is well below even The Karate Kid on my list of movies to see. Maybe next time, other Bar Harbor movie theater.

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At The Theater #26: Inception

SPOILER WARNING – I’m going to talk about Inception in detail here, including the ending. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, you might want to skip this post until you see it.

Inception is a total mind-fuck. I think this was well expressed by the audience at the theater where I saw it. As soon as the credits rolled, there was a loud wail of anguish from people in the crowd. This wasn’t the same wail of anguish you’d hear at a Last Airbender screening; it wasn’t coming from a poor quality standpoint. The camera just stays on that damn spinning top for so long, then it starts wobbling and…black.  Was Leo awake? Was he still dreaming? To quote a teen in the lobby after the movie: “Christopher Nolan must die!” Again, I think this was coming from a different place than when that was said about M. Night Shamalan from teens after seeing a different movie across town.

 Random Thought #1: The snow-scape dream fortress looked a lot like the sniper board in Metal Gear Solid for the PS1. 

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I really liked Inception. It was like a combination of Lost’s sideways reality, The Matrix and The Sixth Sense. For a very exposition-heavy movie, I think Nolan did a good job of interspersing the exposition so that Inception didn’t feel weighed down by it.

I liked the open-ended ending. At first it looked like that top was going to keep spinning forever and he was still dreaming. But then it starts wobbling and I really hoped it would fall down, because I wanted a happy ending for the guy. But it ended before we could get our answer. Does it even matter? Leo walks away from the top before it stops spinning. It’s as if he said, “this is my real world,” reunited with his kids. If you wake up in heaven, do you question it? Leo risks everything to return to his family, and in the end he’s satisfied that he’s reunited with them to the point that he doesn’t even glance back at the top. But we do. Not that we have a choice, the camera is staring right at, spinning and wobbling away.

 Random Thought #2: Joseph Gordon Levitt in this movie has caused me to want to start wearing vests.

I want to see this movie a second time, largely to watch the wake-up scene on the plane again. I don’t remember what the order was of people waking up. Maybe that gives us some clue as to whether or not Leo was actually awake in the end. Was he the last one to wake up? If he wasn’t, I think would lean heavily towards him being still asleep. Everyone else should have made it out of the dream before him, right?
Inception reminded me a lot of The Matrix, to the point that I’m really hoping they don’t mess up any sequels the way that the ball was completely dropped with the two Matrix sequels. Then again, I have faith in Christopher Nolan. The Dark Knight was my favorite movie of 2008, so I know the guy can do sequels well. But really, I can’t even see where you’d go with this movie in a second one. It works so well on its own. We don’t need Inception 2: The Search for Leo.

Tuesday Night Movies is on a road trip! We saw Inception at Reel Pizza in Bar Harbor, Maine. I love this movie theater. This might be my favorite movie theater. It’s this or LA’s Arclight.

What makes Reel Pizza so great? Basically, it’s the concession stand. While other theaters have branched out from popcorn and candy to include nachos and pretzel bites, you can order pizzas at Reel Pizza. The topping list is extensive. Don’t feel like pepperoni tonight? Why not go for mussels, artichoke hearts or goat cheese? Need something to wash it down with? How about a beer? That’s right, beer. And it’s good beer too. They offer Guinness and selections from local breweries, all for cheaper than what a Bud Light would run you in NYC.

The two theaters were designed with the concession stand in mind. Each row of seats has a counter in front of it to put your pizza tray and beer. The first three rows of taken up by couches and easy chairs. These seats are usually the first to go. TV trays are available for viewers lucky enough to snag these seats. When your pizza is ready, a BINGO board on the side wall silently announces your number to let you know that your pizza is waiting for you in the lobby. They even throw an intermission into each movie so that you can grab another beer, or if you’re hungry, another pizza.

 The Reel Pizza bingo board of pizza readiness.

I haven’t been to Bar Harbor without going to Reel Pizza. If you’re there, it’s a must-stop-at destination.

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At The Theater #25: Grease Sing-A-Long

I was really impressed by how the makers of Grease Sing-A-Long handled the sing-a-long parts of the movie. I was expecting plain text and a bouncing ball. Instead the audience is treated to much more. The words are animated all over the screen in interesting fonts and take on a life of their own. They are accompanied by other animations that thematically go with the music, sometimes even silently commenting on the psyches of the characters.

Cha Cha – Either she was left back 30 times or smoking is REALLY bad for you.

Because of this, I would say that Grease Sing-A-Long is a different movie than Grease, in the same way that the original Star Wars in a different movie than the special edition. Grease Sing-A-Long is very much largely the same as Grease, but different, and unlike Greedo shooting first, the changes only add to the movie.
I was really surprised how empty the theater was for this movie. It was a very limited run in New York and we were at a Friday night show. I expected a sold out crowd, but the theater was maybe half full (I’m an optimist).

The manager at the 3rd Ave AMC is really nice. They ran out of the Grease Sing-A-Long souvenior pins that I had no idea they were giving out on our way into the movie, but promised to find more for us if we stopped by after the movie. Sure enough, they did. It’s little things like this that have me looking forward to being a repeat customer at this theater. I don’t think we would have received this treatment at Court St. I do think part of the reason we got hooked up is because we dressed up in costume.

 You should have seen our Up In The Air costumes.

I was also surprised by how few people dressed up as Grease characters for this. The most common question when you’re wearing tight black jeans, a white tee shirt and a leather jacket in the middle of the summer in a movie theater where Grease Sing-A-Long is playing is “Are you here for Grease?” My most common answer was “No, The Last Airbender. And it rocked.”

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At The Theater #24: Cyrus

The title character in Cyrus is one of the best movie villains I’ve seen in the theater this year. Jonah Hill is the overly coddled son of single-mother Molly (played by Marissa Tomei) is as manipulative as he is jealous. He’s great at pushing all the right buttons to get what he wants. There were times I felt really sorry for John C. Reilly’s character John, Molly’s new boyfriend who Cyrus targets as a threat. This kid is evil. I guess he’s not really a kid. The man-child is evil.

Ladies, this movie is a warning against breast feeding too long.

What Cyrus really does well is highlight the awkwardness that comes at the beginning of a new relationship. Nothing seemed clichéd during John and Molly’s courtship. It felt honest and real, while still being entertaining to watch. Mademoiselle Chambon, are you paying attention?

Catherine Keener plays John’s ex-wife. Since the last thing I saw her in was An American Crime, I felt on edge every time she walked on the screen. I knew it was only a matter of time before John was going to have cigarettes burned out on his arm —SPOILER!!! (KIDDING!)

We saw Cyrus at the movie theater at the Brooklyn Academy of Music aka BAM. I’ve seen 4 movies at BAM Rose Cinemas over the years and I think She’s Got to Have It has been playing there every time I go. Does Spike Lee have compromising pictures of BAM’s board of directors?

No matter when you’re reading this, it’s probably playing at BAM.

Just as a FYI about their concession stand, the caramel popcorn is $8. Now that you’re aware, when you order it your eyes won’t widen like mine did or say “I only wanted one,” like I almost did.

This has been a very tough summer movies season. There are so many bad movies clogging the multiplexes. The good thing is that this year a lot of the junk is easy to identify. Skip that stuff and see Cyrus instead. And then leave a comment below.