Movie Reviews Found: Interesting, funny, weird, whatever!

brianlux

Show us some noteworthy movie reviews you run into.  Here's a sad/hilarious one off of Netflix:

Movie: "The Dog's Way Home".

The review:   "The critics said this is a story about love. It is, and loss. Lots of loss. We just left the movie theater and my wife and I are talking about how many children were crying the entire movie. In the infamous words of five-year-old Susie sitting two rows behind me, “oh no it’s time to be sad again”. Why don’t we go ahead and tell them tomorrow we’ll be nuked by North Korea, or explain how babies are made in the middle of the movie, or go ahead and tell them Santa isn’t real. Just get it all out in one sitting. Long gone are the days of the dog just dying from rabies at the end of the movie. I miss Ol Yeller. On the upside if you’re ready for your child to get ready for the “real world” with a splash of LGBT, then you should rent this movie. PS: it’s not a pit bull."

Who Princess

I'm sure I've posted this before but I've never needed to watch Sex and the City 2, thanks to this review.

PJ_Soul

brianlux said:

Show us some noteworthy movie reviews you run into.  Here's a sad/hilarious one off of Netflix:

Movie: "The Dog's Way Home".

The review:   "The critics said this is a story about love. It is, and loss. Lots of loss. We just left the movie theater and my wife and I are talking about how many children were crying the entire movie. In the infamous words of five-year-old Susie sitting two rows behind me, “oh no it’s time to be sad again”. Why don’t we go ahead and tell them tomorrow we’ll be nuked by North Korea, or explain how babies are made in the middle of the movie, or go ahead and tell them Santa isn’t real. Just get it all out in one sitting. Long gone are the days of the dog just dying from rabies at the end of the movie. I miss Ol Yeller. On the upside if you’re ready for your child to get ready for the “real world” with a splash of LGBT, then you should rent this movie. PS: it’s not a pit bull."

My friend just told me a couple of days ago that he took his kids to this, and his 7 year old daughter was crying her eyes out for a great deal of the movie, lol. I personally consider this a good thing of course, not a bad thing. And he, as someone with a brother who is gay, was perfectly happy to see a kids movie normalizing homosexuality.

dankind

One of my faves: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/movies/08leap.html

brianlux

PJ_Soul said:

brianlux said:

Show us some noteworthy movie reviews you run into.  Here's a sad/hilarious one off of Netflix:

Movie: "The Dog's Way Home".

The review:   "The critics said this is a story about love. It is, and loss. Lots of loss. We just left the movie theater and my wife and I are talking about how many children were crying the entire movie. In the infamous words of five-year-old Susie sitting two rows behind me, “oh no it’s time to be sad again”. Why don’t we go ahead and tell them tomorrow we’ll be nuked by North Korea, or explain how babies are made in the middle of the movie, or go ahead and tell them Santa isn’t real. Just get it all out in one sitting. Long gone are the days of the dog just dying from rabies at the end of the movie. I miss Ol Yeller. On the upside if you’re ready for your child to get ready for the “real world” with a splash of LGBT, then you should rent this movie. PS: it’s not a pit bull."

My friend just told me a couple of days ago that he took his kids to this, and his 7 year old daughter was crying her eyes out for a great deal of the movie, lol. I personally consider this a good thing of course, not a bad thing. And he, as someone with a brother who is gay, was perfectly happy to see a kids movie normalizing homosexuality.

No problem with normalizing homosexuality here- I found that inclusion in the review unnecessary but copied and pasted it in its entirety anyway.   I don't think crying over a movie is a bad thing- did it as a kid, done it as an adult.  But through the whole movie?  I don't think that's good.  I might have to see this movie just to see for myself, but it sounds like it might emphasize negativity more than I would care for.  I'm for more of a balance that way.

brianlux

Who Princess said:

I'm sure I've posted this before but I've never needed to watch Sex and the City 2, thanks to this review.

Bitch, bitch bitch,... let's drink! 

brianlux

dankind said:

One of my faves: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/movies/08leap.html

Ooops, all I got was "server error".

PJ_Soul

brianlux said:

PJ_Soul said:

brianlux said:

Show us some noteworthy movie reviews you run into.  Here's a sad/hilarious one off of Netflix:

Movie: "The Dog's Way Home".

The review:   "The critics said this is a story about love. It is, and loss. Lots of loss. We just left the movie theater and my wife and I are talking about how many children were crying the entire movie. In the infamous words of five-year-old Susie sitting two rows behind me, “oh no it’s time to be sad again”. Why don’t we go ahead and tell them tomorrow we’ll be nuked by North Korea, or explain how babies are made in the middle of the movie, or go ahead and tell them Santa isn’t real. Just get it all out in one sitting. Long gone are the days of the dog just dying from rabies at the end of the movie. I miss Ol Yeller. On the upside if you’re ready for your child to get ready for the “real world” with a splash of LGBT, then you should rent this movie. PS: it’s not a pit bull."

My friend just told me a couple of days ago that he took his kids to this, and his 7 year old daughter was crying her eyes out for a great deal of the movie, lol. I personally consider this a good thing of course, not a bad thing. And he, as someone with a brother who is gay, was perfectly happy to see a kids movie normalizing homosexuality.

No problem with normalizing homosexuality here- I found that inclusion in the review unnecessary but copied and pasted it in its entirety anyway.   I don't think crying over a movie is a bad thing- did it as a kid, done it as an adult.  But through the whole movie?  I don't think that's good.  I might have to see this movie just to see for myself, but it sounds like it might emphasize negativity more than I would care for.  I'm for more of a balance that way.

I think that any really strong emotional reaction to a movie is a good thing, be it lots of crying, or tons of laughing, or anger, or fear, or whatever. That is certainly not for everyone... But it also can't hurt. For me, extreme emotional reactions to films is a sure sign of it being a good movie, because the filmmakers were so effective in affecting the audience. 

I also have NO issues with kids movies bringing real issues to kids, even when it highlights the sad, hard parts of life. I am not a believer of shielding kids in that way at all, and in fact don't believe in really any censorship when it comes to movies kids watch (barring obvious extreme exceptions). I know I'm in the minority on that one, but it's the way I was raised and I think it truly benefited me. In any case, with this movie in particular, it just sounds like it didn't shy away from the very real suffering that animals can be exposed to if they aren't properly taken care of, and the kind of joy that comes from rescuing them from that suffering (i.e. the happy end of the movie). That's a good message to send to kids IMO.

dankind

brianlux said:

dankind said:

One of my faves: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/movies/08leap.html

Ooops, all I got was "server error".

Ireland in February, With Romance in the Air, Manure on the Ground

By A. O. Scott

A few weeks ago I resolved, in the spirit of the season, to adopt a more positive outlook in the new year. In particular I vowed to break the habit of seizing on every bad movie as a sign that civilization was collapsing. There is already so much doomsaying and apocalypse mongering going around. Why add to it?

Then I saw “Leap Year.” The worst movie of 2010? Well, yes, but since it was, at the time, the only movie I’d seen in 2010, that isn’t really the point. And, in truth, there have been worse in recent months: “Did You Hear About the Morgans?,” for example, as potent an inducement to general cultural despair as anyone could ever want. Others just as bad are sure to follow.

What makes “Leap Year” so singularly dispiriting is precisely that it is bad without distinction — so witless, charmless and unimaginative that it can be described as a movie only in a strictly technical sense. And what is disconcerting about this sorry state of affairs is that the director, Anand Tucker, is hardly a hack, having done good and varied work in “Shopgirl,” “When Did You Last See Your Father?” and his portion of the soon-to-be-released “Red Riding” trilogy. The stars too — Amy Adams and Matthew Goode — have plenty of talent and appeal.

“Leap Year,” written by Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont (“Josie and the Pussycats,” “A Very Brady Sequel”), does not fail to make use of these performers’ gifts. It doesn’t even try. Ms. Adams, who is never less than adorable (even if, after “Junebug,” she has rarely bothered to be more), plays Anna, a generic young American city dweller tossed into a life-changing wallow through the old sod of Ireland.

She arrives there to propose to her longtime boyfriend (Adam Scott), whose heeliness is signaled by his workaholic attachment to his BlackBerry and by the fact that he gives Anna diamond earrings instead of the engagement ring she had been expecting. The cad! Also, his name is Jeremy, and the laws of Hollywood dictate that no romantic comedy heroine will ever wed a high-achieving Jeremy when, let’s say, a scruffy Declan is available.

Learning that every four years in Ireland, on the 29th of February, a woman may propose marriage to a man — imagine! — Anna follows Jeremy to that country, where he has conveniently gone for a medical conference. Blown off course by weather and transit problems, she lands in the company of the aforesaid Declan, hirsutely and monosyllabically played by the handsome Mr. Goode, who seems eager to show off his gruff manliness but unsure of just how to go about it.

His solution — or rather, that offered by the filmmakers — is to insult, ignore and mock his co-star until a decent interval passes and he can fall in love with her. Ms. Adams, meanwhile, is subjected to a series of humiliations that quickly come to seem arbitrary and cruel. Anna may be a privileged North American career gal, but Ms. Adams, with her soft features and trembling overbite, is not cut out to play the steely, entitled princess who might deserve the rustic comeuppance that Anna receives. Deserving or not, she is subjected to mud, rain, hail, cow manure, vomit and other indignities.

No effort is made to provide either Anna or Declan with coherent personalities, or even interesting foibles. We know that she is an obsessive planner who leaves nothing to chance, but then again she seems to have crossed the ocean with a pair of expensive and impractical high-heeled shoes as her only footwear. The reasons for this are obvious enough: The shoes complement the tight skirts that Ms. Adams also wears in bad weather and hostile terrain, and also sink comically into muck, sand and other nasty stuff.

As for Declan, he mopes and sneers and calls her an “eedjit” until she can resist his charms no longer. Their initial antagonism might be promising — hostility is often the catalyst for romantic-comedy bliss — if either one did or said anything funny, clever, provocative or even slightly memorable. Instead there are exchanges like the following, on the subject of the supposed tradition that gives this movie its title.

Declan: It’s a load of poo.

Anna: No it isn’t. It’s romantic.

Much as one hates to contradict a lady, the gentleman has a point.

“Leap Year” is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). No sex. No jokes. No serious swearing. No violence. Nothing.

markymark550

Who Princess said:

I'm sure I've posted this before but I've never needed to watch Sex and the City 2, thanks to this review.

That was hilarious and spot on.

Who Princess

Oh lord, my husband decided to stream Leap Year one evening on Netflix.  Don't know why, he usually goes for movies where lots of stuff gets blowed up.  I further don't know why we sat and watched the entire thing.  It wasn't even bad enough to be funny.

PJ_Soul

I remember I once saw a critic's review of Transformers 2, and he said it was literally like having someone bash pots and pans together next to his head for two hours straight. Funny cuz true!

F Me In The Brain

dankind said:

brianlux said:

dankind said:

One of my faves: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/movies/08leap.html

Ooops, all I got was "server error".

Ireland in February, With Romance in the Air, Manure on the Ground

By A. O. Scott

A few weeks ago I resolved, in the spirit of the season, to adopt a more positive outlook in the new year. In particular I vowed to break the habit of seizing on every bad movie as a sign that civilization was collapsing. There is already so much doomsaying and apocalypse mongering going around. Why add to it?

Then I saw “Leap Year.” The worst movie of 2010? Well, yes, but since it was, at the time, the only movie I’d seen in 2010, that isn’t really the point. And, in truth, there have been worse in recent months: “Did You Hear About the Morgans?,” for example, as potent an inducement to general cultural despair as anyone could ever want. Others just as bad are sure to follow.

What makes “Leap Year” so singularly dispiriting is precisely that it is bad without distinction — so witless, charmless and unimaginative that it can be described as a movie only in a strictly technical sense. And what is disconcerting about this sorry state of affairs is that the director, Anand Tucker, is hardly a hack, having done good and varied work in “Shopgirl,” “When Did You Last See Your Father?” and his portion of the soon-to-be-released “Red Riding” trilogy. The stars too — Amy Adams and Matthew Goode — have plenty of talent and appeal.

“Leap Year,” written by Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont (“Josie and the Pussycats,” “A Very Brady Sequel”), does not fail to make use of these performers’ gifts. It doesn’t even try. Ms. Adams, who is never less than adorable (even if, after “Junebug,” she has rarely bothered to be more), plays Anna, a generic young American city dweller tossed into a life-changing wallow through the old sod of Ireland.

She arrives there to propose to her longtime boyfriend (Adam Scott), whose heeliness is signaled by his workaholic attachment to his BlackBerry and by the fact that he gives Anna diamond earrings instead of the engagement ring she had been expecting. The cad! Also, his name is Jeremy, and the laws of Hollywood dictate that no romantic comedy heroine will ever wed a high-achieving Jeremy when, let’s say, a scruffy Declan is available.

Learning that every four years in Ireland, on the 29th of February, a woman may propose marriage to a man — imagine! — Anna follows Jeremy to that country, where he has conveniently gone for a medical conference. Blown off course by weather and transit problems, she lands in the company of the aforesaid Declan, hirsutely and monosyllabically played by the handsome Mr. Goode, who seems eager to show off his gruff manliness but unsure of just how to go about it.

His solution — or rather, that offered by the filmmakers — is to insult, ignore and mock his co-star until a decent interval passes and he can fall in love with her. Ms. Adams, meanwhile, is subjected to a series of humiliations that quickly come to seem arbitrary and cruel. Anna may be a privileged North American career gal, but Ms. Adams, with her soft features and trembling overbite, is not cut out to play the steely, entitled princess who might deserve the rustic comeuppance that Anna receives. Deserving or not, she is subjected to mud, rain, hail, cow manure, vomit and other indignities.

No effort is made to provide either Anna or Declan with coherent personalities, or even interesting foibles. We know that she is an obsessive planner who leaves nothing to chance, but then again she seems to have crossed the ocean with a pair of expensive and impractical high-heeled shoes as her only footwear. The reasons for this are obvious enough: The shoes complement the tight skirts that Ms. Adams also wears in bad weather and hostile terrain, and also sink comically into muck, sand and other nasty stuff.

As for Declan, he mopes and sneers and calls her an “eedjit” until she can resist his charms no longer. Their initial antagonism might be promising — hostility is often the catalyst for romantic-comedy bliss — if either one did or said anything funny, clever, provocative or even slightly memorable. Instead there are exchanges like the following, on the subject of the supposed tradition that gives this movie its title.

Declan: It’s a load of poo.

Anna: No it isn’t. It’s romantic.

Much as one hates to contradict a lady, the gentleman has a point.

“Leap Year” is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). No sex. No jokes. No serious swearing. No violence. Nothing.

That is awesome!

markymark550

Play It Again - Weird Science

By Simon Miraudo

July 17, 2012

Though the late John Hughes is remembered with glowing affection by plenty, his films have been subjected to claims of misogyny, racism, and homophobia over the last few decades. I figured they were unfair, clinging desperately to my memories of childhood favourites. Since growing out of adolescence (physically, if not mentally; and perhaps only barely physically), I revisited The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and found they mostly rise above those criticisms (mostly). It’s hard, however, to argue in defence of Weird Science, a severely dated and unpleasant comedy in which a grown woman continually offers sex to a couple of 15-year-old boys.

That grown woman, Lisa (Kelly LeBrock), is the invention of nerdlingers Gary (Anthony Michael Hall) and Wyatt (Ilan Mitchell-Smith). Having spent their day lusting over the female gymnasts at school – and shamed by bullies (Robert Rusler and … Robert Downey Jr.?) – they decide to create for themselves a girlfriend of their own; one that answers to their every whim. Inspired by a late-night screening of Frankenstein, and utilising hilariously improbable 80s technology that includes uploading pictures of Playboy models, Albert Einstein, and David Lee Roth into a supercomputer, the final product emerges from their bathroom in skimpy underpants and a cut-off shirt. “You control me,” the cheeky Lisa informs them. Oh boy.

LeBrock walks away from the movie unscathed, thanks to her knowing ability to transcend sex symbol status and take charge of every scene and scenario in chaotic manner. The same can’t be said of Hall and Mitchell-Smith, who reminded me more of the awful teenage protagonists in Project X than the realistic and deep-down-secretly-sweet heroes from Superbad.

Watching Weird Science again in the harsh light of my 20s was like catching up with an old friend who I had recalled as a raucous party animal, but was now clearly a shaky meth addict with no teeth. All that hold up are the theme song and Bill Paxton‘s wonderfully douchey performance as Wyatt’s brother Chet. I dare not dig out the TV show spin-off, for fear of ruining the mental image of that too.

That last paragraph is gold. Found at https://www.quickflix.com.au/News/PlayItAgain/WeirdScience/8978

PJ_Soul

^^^^ I really disagree with that one, just because I hate when people decide to review old movies using today's standards. I mean yeah, of couse Gary and Wyatt come off as little creeps now, and their girlfriends are cows. And of course the entire crew from Revenge of the nerds are despicable (one is even a rapist, and the rest are guilty of sexual assault, voyeurism, B&E, and theft), and those are the good guys. The bad guys are actually better people - all they do is destroy property and commit simple assault, lol. But am I going to ruin all my favorite 80s movies by applying today's much advanced standards and norms about equality and appropriate behaviour? Hell no. I just can't bear to take life THAT seriously.

HesCalledDyer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTzfMxj-q3k