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On The Couch #5: Julie & Julia

I need to apologize to anyone who ever watches a movie with me that has location shoots in any places that mean anything to me. There we’ll be, quietly watching a movie together, like say Julie & Julia, and a character gets off the subway at 45 Road/Courthouse Square in Queens and I yell out “Hey! That’s Long Island City!” This is followed by confused silence from my movie-watching companions. “That’s grandma’s old building in the background; the red brick one! And there’s the diner!” Which is usually given the sarcastic response of “Great…” or the non-sarcastic response of “Uh huh, so?” Amy Adams’ Julie Powell gets on and off that subway stop a few times in Julie & Julia, so…sorry.

-“Look! It’s Long Island City!”
-“Um, great.”

I thought Julie & Julia was quite good. Amy Adams plays Julie Powell, who starts a blog about going through every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. There are 524 recipes in the book and she gives herself a deadline of 1 year, so she has her work cut out for her. She’s motivated by her dissatisfaction with her job and and of her apartment in Queens. I get the job bit; that job looked torturous. But Queens? Come on. She acts like it’s Staten Island.

Meryl Streep was excellent as Julia Child. This performance has me circling her name in any Oscar pool I’m in this year. The two storylines dovetail well together, often playing off the same themes, and, as this is a movie about one person writing the same cookbook the other is reading, the same recipes.

The book that started it all.
But even more so than Streep, how awesome in Stanley Tucci? In this movie, he plays Julia Child’s husband Paul. He’s great here, but what I really mean is how awesome is her in every movie? He wins the Tuesday Night Movies J.K. Simmons Award for Making Whatever Movie He’s in Better. So congratulations, Stanley. You deserve it.

A toast…to Tucci.

Worst part of the movie? Amy Adams’s haircut. I get it. The filmmakers don’t want her to be glamorous Amy Adams, they want her to be everyday woman Julie Powell. But man, that was one unflattering haircut. Then I think about it some more and remember how bad my hair looked in 2002 and 2003 and I really get it. They weren’t trying to make Amy Adams look dumpy. They were commenting on how ugly hairstyles were in the early part of the last decade. Well played Nora Ephron.

The blu-ray for Julie & Julia is packed with content, maybe too much content. The cooking videos with Julia Child were very cool, spotlighting Julia’s take on recipes that were used in the movie, but the behind-the-scenes featurette on the movie was way too long. I say this mainly because I couldn’t sit through the whole thing. I don’t know how much more I had left to go with it, but I think I was about 20 minutes in and the end looked far off.

Someone once asked if this blog was inspired by watching Julie & Julia and my answer was “Huh?” At the time, the only things I knew about the movie was that Meryl Streep was receiving rave reviews for her portrayal of Julia Child, and that Amy Adams played a woman who was going through all the recipes in Julia Childs’ cookbook. “And she blogs about it,” I was told. Oh. Right. No, this blog wasn’t inspired by Julie & Julia. But it did inspire an idea I had for a continuation of this blog in 2011. It would be much more challenging than my 52 movies in the theater and 52 movies at home challenge, but the more I think about it, the more I think it’s a good idea. Before I reveal on how I want to make this harder for myself, maybe I get through this current challenge first. So, more to come on that on a later date…maybe.

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At The Movies #6: An Education

My main reason for wanting to see An Education was that the screenplay was written by Nick Hornby, author of two of my favorite books: High Fidelity and About a Boy. I read all of his novels, so the completist in me felt the need to see this movie. I didn’t know it was based on a memoir by Lynn Barber until the movie started. This let me down a little because going into it I was excited to see Nick Hornby’s first original screenplay, one that wasn’t a movie based on one of his books. But it looks like I’ll still have to wait for that because while this wasn’t based on one of his books, it was based on someone else’s.

An Education was playing at my local movie theater, The Brooklyn Heights Cinema, for a while at the end of last year, but I didn’t manage to catch it. Thankfully, the Oscar nomination for best picture brought it back there. A word to the wise about The Brooklyn Heights Cinema: the two theaters aren’t labeled, but one is the left of the ticket window and one is to the right. You can tell which theater to walk into by looking at the arrows next to the movie’s name on the ticket window. If more people noticed that, half the people in our theater wouldn’t have missed the first 7 minutes of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus when they realized they were in the wrong theater.

The premise of An Education is very straightforward. An honors student, bored with here life of studying is swept off her feet by Peter, a sharply dressed, smooth talking playboy. The initial problem is that he’s nearly twice her age. But Jenny is mature and Peter is very sweet, so sweet that not only does their romance flourish, but Jenny finds herself having to choose between her new love or the track she’s been on her whole life, being accepted to Oxford.

‘Cause every girl’s crazy ’bout a sharp dressed man.

Peter is your classic silver tongued devil. He’s able to convince Jenny’s parents not only that they should let him date her, but words it in such a way that they end up thinking it’s their idea. The problem is that Jenny doesn’t realize until she’s gone too far down Peter’s road that if he’s so good at lying to her parents that it’s indiscernible to tell truth from fiction when he’s talking to them, that maybe he’s not being completely honest with her as well.

My favorite parts of An Education were any scene where Jenny was having a conversation with Peter’s friend Helen. Helen is very pretty, but not exactly what anyone would call smart, and anytime Jenny would innocently say something intelligent, Helen would say something dumb and I would laugh.
 
Every conversation between these two is good for a laugh. 
I liked An Education. I’m happy that six movies into this project, I haven’t seen a bad one yet at the theater. Do I think An Education should win the Oscar this year? No. It’s good, but it’s not movie of the year good. While I was watching it, I felt like I was watching Mona Lisa Smile, but told from the point of view of Julia Stiles’s character. I haven’t seen all of the Oscar nominees for best picture yet, but out of the ones I have seen: Avatar, Inglourious Basterds, Up and Up in the Air, I would put An Education at the bottom of that list.

What An Education might want you to do is book a trip to Paris. The city of lights is painted so beautifully in it that I wouldn’t be surprised if the Parisian Tourism Bureau was a sponsor of the film. While Peter and Jenny were watching the sunset on the Seine, my date turned to me and said “When are you taking me to Paris?”
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On The Couch #4: Funny People

Wow, I had Funny People sitting next to my DVD player for a long time. I received it from Netflix in late November and finally watched it on Friday. The weird thing is I really wanted to see this movie. I pushed it to the top of queue is late November, knowing that I would watch it the day it came; I was that excited about this movie.

But the disc went neglected in the lead-up to Christmas and New Year’s, always sitting atop an empty spot on the television stand, never completely out of sight, never completely out of mind. Even having off from work the week between Christmas and New Year’s didn’t help. There was always some reason not to watch it.

One night around New Year’s we invited over Andrew and Jen, two good friends who were visiting from California. They were just sitting down to watch a DVD though, and would be over after that. I said “Think they’ll want to watch Funny People after that?” They did not. Because the DVD they were watching was Funny People. Son of a – !

When they came over to hang out, Andrew warned that the movie was really long. They turned it off with a half hour left in order to come to our place. “Eric Bana doesn’t show up until about two hours in, and he’s in the commercials,” Andrew warned, “It’s like two movies in one.” Sure enough, I checked the DVD sleeve. 2 hours and 38 minutes! Damn!

Andrew’s warning and seeing the length of time on the DVD sleeve aided in my delay. Once I returned to work, it was hard to work in a 2 hour and 38 minute movie. If we started it at 8 PM, then it wouldn’t finish until around 10:40 PM. Finally Julie gave me an ultimatum: “You have to watch this before you watch disc 2 of Weeds.” That worked, because I really wanted to see how season 5 of Weeds ended. “Okay,” I said, “we’re going to watch this Friday night.” And we did, followed by a couple of episodes of Weeds.

I’m sorry I waited so long to watch Funny People. I think it’s a great movie. It excels both as a drama and a comedy, showing the inner turmoil of people who get paid (or try to get paid) to make others laugh. Seth Rogen and Adam Sandler are both great in it. Rogen takes a major turn from his usually overly sarcastic characters and comes across as very real. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been a fan of Seth Rogen since the first time I saw him in Freaks and Geeks. But it was refreshing to see him play someone who is 180 degree turn from his usual characters. I thought both he and Sandler were overlooked not getting an Academy Award nomination for their roles in Funny People.
Freaks.                            Geeks.
Aubrey Plaza and Aziz Ansari from Parks and Rec both play aspiring comedians in the movie. I like both of them and it’s always cool to see them in different things, this movie being no exception. Aubrey plays Seth Rogen’s love interest and Aziz plays basically a much more annoying version of himself. I thought Human Giant, Aziz’s sketch comedy show with Rob Huebel and Paul Scherer, was MTV’s best program in years. Hopefully they come back with a second season of that. And I have thought Aubrey was funny ever since I saw her Kaplowee! video a couple of years ago.

Funny People also has plenty of guest stars, both major and minor, making cameos. I don’t want to spoil the “Oh, cool” surprise factor for anyone though (Ha-ha! Look at me act like my readership is more than a few friends who I know already saw this movie). But there is a very funny argument between a rapper and a former CBS sitcom star that stood out as one of the best parts of the movie.
This is another disc that utilizes the Pocket BLU iPhone app. I have to say, I really like using my iPhone as my Blu-ray player’s remote, even if the actual remote is sitting right by me. I haven’t gotten over the novelty of this just yet.

What I also liked about the disc is that the theatrical version is included with the unrated version. When it comes to comedies, I’ve found that most of the time the theatrical version wins. Unrated versions of most comedies seem to just include jokes that weren’t that great to begin with. I came to this understanding when I saw Wedding Crashers. I first saw it on DVD and thought it was 20 minutes too long and had stretches that were a bit boring. Then I saw it again and cable and loved it. And realized it was a bit shorter. I don’t think with the unrated version of the majority of movies that you’re getting more for your money. Sometimes more is less.

Longer? Yes. Funnier? Eh…

It’s been pointed out to me that I am not living up to my post-within-24-hours-viewing promise. I think I overreached with that one. Revised promise: the post will be up the same week that I see the movie, though I’ll always try to get these up as quickly as I can.

Up next from Netflix: Julie and Juila and District 9. I’m excited to see both. Hopefully that doesn’t mean they sit on my shelf for two months.

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At The Theater #5: Youth in Revolt

I have a new favorite movie of the year, and it is Youth in Revolt. I’m really surprised that Youth in Revolt didn’t do better both financially and with critics. I thought this movie was hilarious and would label it a must-see. It is the story of Nick Twisp, a nice guy who can’t get the girl. Nick, played by Michael Cera, invents a new personality for himself named Francois Dillinger. Francois is everything that Nick isn’t, namely cool and more aggressive. He’s like a teenage Tyler Durden, compsenating for Nick’s shortcomings, sometimes to extremes.
Francois makes me almost want to reverse my stance on moustaches.
Francois does such a good job of transforming Nick that I wouldn’t be surprised if skinny white pants and pencil thin moustaches become the standard look for nerds trying to make a stand. At least it’s a better look than modeling yourself after Napoleon Dynamite. If you’ve got $800 to spare and a yearning to really wear Michael Cera’s clothes, you can buy the whole Francois outfit package here. But you could probably also by the same outfit for 1/10 that price at H&M too.
The new look for bad boy nerds?

I think that Youth in Revolt will be remembered as the movie where Michael Cera stopped being so Michael Cera-like. There’s plenty of Michael Cera being Michael Cera for anyone who can’t enough of Michael Cera’s trademark awkwardness. Nick Twisp is basically George Michael Bluth or Paulie Bleeker. But Francois Dillinger definitely isn’t. He’s something new, and if you’ve grown a little tired of Michael Cera being Michael Cera, this is definitely worth seeing.
I was really happy to see Adhir Kalyan show up, playing Nick’s school friend Vijay Joshi. I was fan of his short lived TV series Aliens in America, so it was cool to see him here. In their first scene together, Nick and Vijay don’t look too dissimilar from Justin and Raj from Aliens in America, except Justin never had a Francois Dillinger and Vijay isn’t quite as pure as Raj.
I miss this show.
Jean Smart is really carving a place for herself as the go to actress for white trash moms. Her role as Nick’s mother Michelle is almost identical to her role as Mark’s mom in Garden State. I half expected Jim Parsons to show up in a full suit of armor because her two roles were so similar.
The worst part of Youth in Revolt was the previews beforehand. Wow, there are some seriously bad looking movies making their way to a theater near you in the near future. The previews were so bad that I started being worried about the movie I was about to see. Most of them were unmemorable, with the exception of Repo, whose preview was too bad to forget. I seriously doubt I’ll be writing about that movie this year.
I saw Youth in Revolt at the Regal Cinemas Union Square 14.  A note to the frugal, on Mondays all candy is only $1 and if you buy a large soda anytime, you can get free refills. Another note to the frugal, movies here are $12.50, which might kill your candy and soda budget.

Have you seen a good movie lately? Hit me up with the title, because the pickings look pretty slim right now. My plan is to see the An Education this coming week and maybe The Hurt Locker the following week. But after that? Hopefully not Repo.

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At the Theater #4: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

I have to hand it to Terry Gilliam. Having one of your main actors die in the middle of filming is a big hurdle to overcome. But Gilliam came up with a very creative way to deal with it. Since half of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus takes place in an fantasy world of the mind’s imagination, Gilliam cast the trio of Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell to play the part of the late Heath Ledger’s character Tony, who Ledger plays in the real world scenes. I wasn’t aware of this heading into the movie. I thought Ledger’s death would have been handled the same way as Brandon Lee’s for The Crow: a body double and plenty of shadows. When Tony steps into the Imaginarium, I thought to myself “Wow, Heath Ledger really looks like Johnny Depp here.” And then said, “Wait, is that Johnny Depp?” Watching Depp, Law and Farrell play Tony in the imaginarium was very cool, but finding out afterwards that the three of them gave their paychecks from this movie to Heath Ledger’s young daughter Mathilda was every cooler. Each of them showed some real class with that.

Not Heath Ledger.       Also not Heath Ledger

Heath Ledger’s final film shows off his charm. The amnesiac Tony quickly takes up with Dr. Parnassus and his roving sideshow and goes to work as their caller, bringing in new customers to help win Doctor Parnassus’s bet with the devil. Ledger’s physical and verbal deftness during his first scene as a member of Dr. Parnassus’s crew reminded me of Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow from The Pirates of the Caribbean movies, which I think helped confuse me when Johnny Depp appeared as Tony in the next scene. I’ve been a fan Ledger’s work for some time. He was a great actor who will definitely be missed. His portrayal of the Joker in The Dark Knight helped me name that my top movie of 2008.

“I wish I could quit you.”

My problems with The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus are what Terry Gilliam leaves out. A big deal is made about the arcane symbols on Tony’s forehead, with multiple characters (and the audience) wondering their meaning. But the audience is left wondering, as this is never explained.

“By the way, it says “balls” on your face.”

Also never explained is why the devil wants Tony dead, a problematic Deus Ex Machina at the end of the movie. Dr. Parnassus has lost his bet with the devil and forfeited his daughter’s soul, but the devil tells him that if he kills Tony, he can have his daughter back. The devil says he always wanted Tony dead, but Tony kept escaping him. Before this, the devil showed no animosity towards Tony and seemed initially to even be the reason that Tony appeared in front of Dr. Parnassus’s crew. So why does the devil suddenly want him dead? This made the ending seem a little weak for what was otherwise a very cool movie. I give The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus three stars out of five, meaning I liked it.

I caught The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus at the Brooklyn Heights Cinema, at the corner of Henry St and Orange St in Brooklyn Heights. I definitely recommend seeing movies here. It’s a very old school two screen theater, but it’s kept in impeccable shape. It is a shrine to movie-going. The lobby has reading copies of Zoetrope and other film magazines, as well as comfortable couches to read them on if you arrive a little early for your movie. The seats in the theater are nicely cushioned and in good shape. The staff is friendly. The concession stand has more than your usual popcorn, candy boxes and soda options. There are some high-end chocolate bars for sale, a wide choice of tea, and Italian sodas. It’s usually a staff of two on any given night, with the projectionist or ticket seller also doing double-duty at the concession stand.

Most importantly about the concession stand, the popcorn tastes fresh. After working in a now-defunct movie theater in high school, I learned something that I never suspected. When there is popcorn leftover at the end of the night, we were instructed to bag it up in long plastic bags. Those bags would be emptied in the glass bins in front of the concession stand the next night and sold to unsuspecting customers, unless those customers specifically asked for fresh popcorn. The process would continue night after night, with popcorn of varying degrees of staleness being passed off as just made. Since then, I’ve been leery of movie theater popcorn. There are plenty of theaters in the city that definitely serve stale popcorn and I’ll be calling them out as this blog continues week to week, but the popcorn at Brooklyn Heights Cinema is good. Do yourself a favor and catch a movie there followed by dinner at one of the nearby Henry St. restaurants.

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At the Theater #3: Up in the Air

The central theme of Up in the Air is rejection. Ryan Bingham, played by George Clooney, rejects anything that will keep him tied down: his family, a furnished apartment, a closet full of clothes, preferring to live in the places in between. Those places in-between are sky high, in the first class section of American Airlines. Ryan’s best friends are the magnetic stripes of his various loyalty program cards, allowing him to rush past lines. What he’s rushing to isn’t his destination though, it’s his first class airline seat.
No one is immune to rejection to the movie. As a professional firer, Clooney delivers corporate rejection. His protégé and nemesis, Cornell grad and corporate up and comer Natalie, played by Twilight’s Anna Kendrick, is initially rejected by Clooney and faces further rejection as the film goes on. Clooney’s family starts out being rejected by him and it isn’t long before they start rejecting each other. Anyone is any kind of relationship, familial, romantic or corporate, is sent through the ringer.

It’s a very good movie and it wouldn’t be surprising to see Clooney get as many award nominations for this as he did for Michael Clayton two years ago.

But if any actor in this movie deserves an award, it’s J.K. Simmons. He makes every movie he’s in better. Jason Reitman knows this and was smart to cast him again. Whenever I see his name in a film’s opening credits, I smile, because not matter what part he’s given, his scenes shine. He has a small part here, as a father of two who laid off by Ryan and Natalie but man does he shine.

He has to be the most under-rated actor working in Hollywood today. If any actor makes the transition over in the Spider-Man reboot from the old franchise to the new one, I really hope it is J.K. He was J. Jonah Jameson come to life right off the comic book page.

J.K. as J.J.J.

He was great as Juno’s dad in Jason Reitman’s first film. He had the best lines in the Coen brothers’ Burn After Reading. This blog is officially a fan of J.K. Simmons.

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On the Couch #3: Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds is Tarantino’s takes on the World War Two adventure film. It’s like Indiana Jones by way of Reservoir Dogs. If you’re a fan of Quentin Tarantino, you’ll find more to like here. If you’re not a fan of the violence that characterizes Tarantino’s movies, this is one to be avoided. It’s not as over-the-top violent as the Kill Bill movies, but it’s easily as bloody as either Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction.
Looking at the poster, you really have no excuse for not thinking it’s going to get bloody.

What sets this film apart from most World War 2 movies, the characters here speak their native languages. Unlike Valkyrie’s Germans who all spoke English with American or British accents, in Inglourious Basterds, the Germans speak German, the French speak French and the Americans speak very butchered Italian. It’s worth watching this movie just to hear Brad Pitt’s character, Lt. Aldo Raine, say “buongiorno” with a heavy southern twang.

The movie tells two stories, both of revenge. The Basterds are a group of Jewish American soldiers who go to Europe with one mission, killin’ Nazis. The second story revolves around Shoshana, an orphan of the war, who hatches a plan to avenge the murder of her family by the Nazis. Both sets of protagonists are instantly relatable. This is due to who they are fighting. It’s impossible to root for the Nazis in any movie, they represent the worst in man, especially here. The opening scene, showing Shoshana’s origin, is one of the most tense movie scenes I’ve seen in a long time.  Christoph Waltz is despicable as main bad guy Col. Hans Landa. If Sherlock Holmes were a Nazi with a mean streak, he’d be Col. Hans Landa. The pure evil of the Nazis gives a very visceral pleasure to watching the Basterds collect their scalps.

Like I said before, if you’ve liked any of Tarantino’s films in the past, you’ll find more to like here.

I downloaded a cool iPhone app at the start of the movie. It’s called Pocket BLU. If you have an iPhone or iTouch and a wi-fi enabled blu-ray player, download this app! It turns your iPhone into a remote control for your blu-ray player.

Pocket BLU also tells you how much time is left in the movie on your phone’s screen. It also has unlockable content for each disc that supports it, letting you watch a lot of the disc’s bonus features right on your phone. Best part? It’s free.

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At The Movies #2: The Fantastic Mr. Fox

First off, I apologize for the delay is getting this post out. When George Clooney heard I was going to blow the whistle on The Fantastic Mr. Fox’s true motivation, he did everything in his power to keep me from posting this. I still walk down the street looking over my shoulder, knowing that he’s out there, ready to take me out with a Facts of Life Boxed Set.

It took me a little time, but I figured out the true purpose of The Fantastic Mr. Fox. It is to ready children to accept George Clooney as their heist movie star of choice. It was a cunning move on Mr. Clooney’s part. After seeing competition emerging from Clive Owen and Jason Statham, Clooney, using his Danny Ocean-like razor sharp mind, decided that the true way to box office gold is through the next generation.

I didn’t know that The Fantastic Mr. Fox revolved around a heist when I entered the Brooklyn Heights Cinema to see it. I never read the Roald Dahl book. And Mr. Fox’s uncanny resemblance to Nintendo character Star Fox caused me to unintentionally think the movie took place in outer space.

    Wrong Mr. Fox

But once the movie gets underway, it’s easy to spot this as a children’s primer for Ocean’s 11. It could have been called Fox’s 11 with no problem. Clooney’s Mr. Fox, just like his Danny Ocean, assembles a team of individuals of various backgrounds, sizes and abilities to take what he wants. Casino chips are replaced with chickens, but the plot is basically the same. The mole even bears a more than passing resemblance to Carl Reiner.

Same Person?

The similarities don’t end there. Danny Ocean is a snappy dresser. As is Mr. Fox.

                                                               
You would be hard pressed to find a more dapper fictional fox than Mr. Fox.

Sorry, Br’er Fox, but you just don’t cut it.

                                                         
The end result of George Clooney’s plan? After seeing The Fantasic Mr. Fox, a kid goes home and catches Ocean’s 11, 12 and 13 marathon on TBS. He clamors for more movies featuring George Clooney outwitting the rich and powerful for monetary gain. So he starts a small blog extolling the virtues of George Clooney as a heist movie star. Multiply this by every child who sees The Fantastic Mr. Fox and the Ocean’s franchise ends up with more movies than Star Trek, with fans wondering just how the writers fit in all those characters for Ocean’s 67 in 2032.

The worst part? The Fantastic Mr. Fox is a cussing great movie. Kids and adults alike loved this movie on the night I saw it. We’re cussing doomed. All is Danny Ocean. Danny Ocean is all. Cuss.

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What’s in a name?

As you may have noticed, this little blog isn’t called 52×2 anymore. I was a fan of the name. It was short, sweet and to the point. Well, maybe it was only to the point if you knew what the point was already: me seeing 52 movies in the theater and another 52 movies at home during 2010. But as it’s been pointed out to me, it looks more like the title to a math blog, not a movie blog. I knew I needed a new name, but for the life of me, I couldn’t come up with one that wasn’t cliche, already taken or both.

Tuesday Night Movies came as a perfect suggestion when someone asked if we were still doing “Tuesday Night Movies” this year. When we first did a movie a week in 2008, Tuesday was the night we usually went to the movies. Looking at 2010, that will most likely remain true. Tuesday isn’t the only day I’ll go to the movies, but it definitely will be the most common one.

For the math-minded of you though, 52×2=2010 still remains true.

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At The Movies: #1 Sherlock Holmes

At a Foo Fighters concert I attended at MSG, lead singer Dave Grohl yelled to the audience “I hope you went to the bathroom already, because we’re going to rock three hours non-stop!” The same warning should be given at the beginning of Sherlock Holmes.

I’m serious here. After gulping down a water and a green tea (really trying to get over my cold) before the movie, by five minutes in I really had to go. I mean, I REALLY HAD TO GO. But there was never a good time to jump up and run to the men’s room. It’s not that the movie is a thrill-a-minute nail biter. It’s not. This isn’t Crank (Thank God). It’s just very engaging. The majority of Holmes and Watson’s best lines come in the slower scenes, which is why over an hour into the movie, with my bladder feeling like it would burst, I was still glued to my seat. But the fast paced fight scenes aren’t a good time either, because they’re awesome too.
It wasn’t until the 1 hour and 15 minute mark that I finally succumbed to my bodily needs and ran out and back in as quickly as possible. I found out afterwards from my friend that I missed Rachel McAdams‘ disrobing scene in the two minutes I was gone. So I repeat my advice: Go to the bathroom before the movie starts. Either you’ll sit in pain for 2 hours and 14 minutes and possibly cause kidney damage to yourself or you’ll do what I did and miss the only scene in the movie where Rachel McAdams isn’t covered head to toe in Victorian era garb. It’s a lose-lose if you don’t go before the start.
Unlike most big star blockbusters that are all hype in the trailers and all regret when watching, Sherlock Holmes delivers. It’s got something for everyone: Robert Downey Jr for the girls, Rachel McAdams for the guys and Jude Law’s moustache for the hipsters. It’s really not fair how well Jude Law pulls off that moustache. Guys, please, after seeing this movie, while listening to your girlfriend fawn over Jude Law, don’t try to emulate his look by growing your own ‘stache. Because chances are you will only look like a child molester.

Note: As far as I know, this guy is not actually a child molester, so please don’t assume that he is. But with that moustache, it’s a little hard not to, right?

And if you’re even slightly overweight, you’ll look less like this…

And more like this, Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation.

Instead, if you want to be more like Jude Law in the eyes of your girlfriend, have sex with your nanny.
I wasn’t the only one in our group that noticed that with one exception, Robert Downey Jr is always referred to as Holmes, never as Sherlock. Which is weird, because when you think about it, Sherlock is a much more unique name than Holmes. You probably know more than one person with the last name Holmes. I know I do. But you, like I, probably know of no one named Sherlock. Next time you’re naming a child, keep that in mind. If names like Michael or Tony are too common for you, maybe it’s time to give Sherlock a try.

My advice to you: 1. See Sherlock Holmes. 2. Go #1 beforehand. 3. Don’t grow a moustache. 4. Name your next child Sherlock; it’s more unique than you thought.