Saturday, August 02, 2008

The League considers movies

Me am smrt 2! Me like Hulk movie!

Have you seen this new ad for "Brideshead Revisited?"

The one that says "The movie intelligent filmgoers have waited for all year!" by Rex Reed.

Wow. Isn't that kind of an insult to anyone who enjoyed any other movie this year? I mean, its one thing for Reed to make the statement (and he did like the movie), but isn't this a weird way to appeal to a mass audience on TV?

I'm not even disputing that the movie is good, or that Reed isn't right. But how many stories of Victorian-style class issues am I supposed to sit through, watching a middle-aged, respectable actress do her passive-aggressive thing over tea while our Pip stand in sits there and squirms?

I read "Great Expectations". I get it. You can't crack the upper class in Britain, and you don't want to, because Victorian stuffiness rots you from inside. Got it. Thanks.

I mostly just don't really think that it makes me a genius for going and seeing yet another Merchant-Ivory knock-off with lovely period outfits.

You know, I kinda sorta thought this would be a good one to go do for a matinee sometime next week, but I don't now if I really want to see a movie when the marketing team decided to suggest was my only intelligent choice this year.


Step Brothers

Which is why I went to go see the new John C. Reilly/ Will Ferrell movie, Step Brothers.

Which, is NOT going to be for everybody. Or most anybody. It's dumb and juvenile, and it made me want to buy a Wookie mask. And maybe hit a little close to home sometimes... But I don't think you can go wrong seeing a movie that makes you laugh until you get those little tears coming up. Mostly because what you're seeing on screen is so very, very wrong.

Step Brothers is part of the Apatow collective's steady stream of comedies (I am looking forward to "Pineapple Express"), and having others playing along certainly helps Ferrell. I liked the man in "Semi-Pro" and "Blades of Glory", but I felt like he was doing it all himself. In an Apatow movie, everybody gets to play. It's not the Robin Williams comedies of the 80's where a coked-up Williams was wound up and set loose on the squares. Part of the comedy comes from everyone's participation.

I think Mary Steenburgen is a lovely woman and fine actress, but she's never made me laugh before this movie. Not that I can recall. And the whole cast pitches in. Especially Kathryn Hahn, who plays Ferrell's sister-in-law.

Anyhoo, I was slightly appalled that a ticket this summer at Westgate is now $9.00, so that seemed a little steep, but I think its definitely worth a matinee, or rental.

Doesn't live up to the hype

The other day I took a gamble and DVR'd a movie off cable. "They Came from Beyond Space". Here's the description: Caped spacemen need slaves on the moon; a physicist and his girlfriend deal with them.

What isn't awesome about that?

Well, pretty much everything. And the caped aliens aren't really wearing capes, its more like neon colored robes. And they don't even show up until the last five minutes. And then they're represented by this old British character actor who really could have done without all the cigarettes and tea, if the color of his teeth is any indication.

I gotta say, when you're thinking of watching 1967 Brit Sci-Fi epic "They Came From Beyond Space", you might want to just skip it and save yourself the trouble.

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