Harvey: 1950 comedy directed by Harry Koster and starring Jimmy Stewart, Josephine Hull, and Victoria Horne. Elwood P. Dowd (Stewart) is a charming, friendly, eccentric drunk whose best friend is a giant invisible rabbit named Harvey. His sister Veta (Hull) and niece Myrtle Mae (Horne) are desperate to keep Harvey under wraps, which makes it difficult for them to have any sort of social life. Fed up with his shenanigans, Veta attempts to have Elwood committed at the local sanitarium, which of course leads to adorable misadventures. It’s a really cute movie. I like Stewart in every movie I’ve seen him in. I think a lesser actor could have pushed Elwood’s drunk aloofness to an intolerable place, but Stewart nails it, as always.
Battlefield Earth: 2001 sci-fi based on the novel by L. Ron Hubbard (duh), directed by Roger Christian and starring John Travolta, Forest Whitaker, and Barry Pepper. It’s the year 3000, and Earth is under the rule of the Psychlos (such a clever name), a race of neon green liquid-drinking, dreadlocked, huge-handed aliens who dress like it’s Industrial Night at the local dance club. Humans have reverted to their hunter-gatherer roots and do their best to avoid the aliens, who frequently enslave the humans to man their mining operations. Barry Pepper leads a revolt after reading an ancient text called the Declaration of Independence. Not hard to figure out what happens from there. This movie is so bad. I often like really terrible movies (Starship Troopers, for example), but Travolta pretty much ruined the whole thing for me. If he were just slightly less annoying I would have been all over it. But damn if Pepper isn’t just as sincere and honest as he could be in this ridiculous mess of a movie.
Descent: 2007 thriller directed by Talia Lugacy and starring Rosario Dawson and Chad Faust (the pleasant gay boyfriend in Saved). Maya (Dawson) is date raped by Jared (Faust) and tries to heal herself by working a crappy retail job and hanging out with DJs. This is a terrible movie. It’s awful. I’m gonna go ahead and spoil it for you, because I highly recommend you never see this: she gets her DJ friend to rape and torture her rapist. That’s how the movie ends. She lures him on a second date, and gets her revenge. That’s it. Nothing after that. We don’t see how she gets on with her life, or what happens to Jared; the movie simply ends. Just . . . no. OK? No.
The single redeeming thing is that Dawson is actually really great in it, considering what she has to work with. Which is huge in my book, because I’m trying really hard to get past my irrational dislike of her.
The City of Lost Children: 1995 French fantasy directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet and starring Ron Perlman, Judith Vittet, Daniel Emilfork, and Dominique Pinon. There’s a lot going on here, but I’ll try to sum up. One (Perlman) is a circus performer whose adopted little brother is kidnapped by Krank (Emilfork) and his bizarre evil scientist family so they can steal the boy’s dreams. One enlists the help of adorable street urchin Miette (Vittet) to get his brother back. See everything Jeunet has ever done. I mean it. The man is brilliant. I haven’t seen all of his movies yet, but I’ve loved the ones I have seen: Amelie, A Very Long Engagement, and this. My tolerance for whimsy is very low, but there’s something about his movies that’s whimsical and not at all precious.
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: 1994 Australian dramedy directed by Stephan Elliot and starring Guy Pearce, Hugo Weaving, and Terence Stamp. Three drag queens on a vision quest through the Australian Outback? OF COURSE I liked it. This movie manages to cover both stereotypical and less-common issues in the LGBT community without being too preachy (I think, anyway). And I've been friends with at least one Adam (Pearce) in my life: uber-bitchy, semi-cruel, mildly obnoxious, and the most fun to be around. Not to name names. Bryan.
It’s obvious at times, and often ridiculous, but who cares? It’s adorable. It’s fun. It’s To Wong Foo in Australia. Loved it.
It’s obvious at times, and often ridiculous, but who cares? It’s adorable. It’s fun. It’s To Wong Foo in Australia. Loved it.
Play Misty for Me: 1971 thriller directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, with Jessica Walter (Lucille on “Arrested Development”) and Donna Mills. Dave Garver (Eastwood) is a late night DJ for a jazz radio station who is trying to get back together with the girlfriend he cheated on (Mills). But that doesn’t stop him from having a little fling with his number one fan, Evelyn Draper (Walter), who of course turns out to be totally nuts. I enjoyed how epically ‘70s it was, and it was definitely entertaining, but I had a very hard time mustering sympathy for Garver. His stalker’s moves were totally predictable, but his weren’t. At every turn he does the exact opposite of the sane thing to do. He keeps letting her back into his life, and his interactions with the police are ludicrous. Yeah, let’s get pissy with the detective who’s trying to save your ass. Dipshit.
Easy A: 2010 teen comedy directed by Will Gluck and starring Emma Stone, Penn Badgley, and Amanda Bynes. Olive (Stone) tells a little white lie to her best friend that travels the gossip grapevine and turns her into the school slut overnight. This snowballs into helping various guys at her school gain a better reputation by pretending to have sex with her, which garners her the attention of a group of overzealous Christian teens, led by Marianne (Bynes). She also manages to catch the eye of a former crush, Todd (Badgley); but is he interested in her for her or for her notoriety?
It’s super cute. Lots of intentional nods to John Hughes, an irrelevant but satisfying song-and-dance number, ridiculous ensembles. Amanda Bynes doesn’t do the Christian cheerleader thing quite as well as Mandy Moore in Saved (yes, I’m referencing that movie again, it’s also cute if a little heavy-handed at times, you should see it, Macaulay Culkin is great in it). But other than that the acting is really goodfor a teen movie.
Fat, Sick, & Nearly Dead: 2011 documentary by Joe Cross. Cross is an Australian businessman and filmmaker who decides to turn his life and poor health around by embarking on a juice fast and cross-country trip across America. On the way, he meets a truck driver who has similar ailments, and who later calls on him for assistance in his own juice fast. I liked it okay, in the same way I like “Biggest Loser.” Both men are very charming, and they don’t push their agenda too hard on the people they talk to about fasting. There are some cartoon interludes during the narration that weren’t my cup of tea, but it wasn’t super annoying.
Sidenote: I ate a beef brisket sandwich while watching this movie. And it was delicious.
The Last Rites of Ransom Pride: 2010 B-Western directed by Tiller Russell and starring Lizzy Caplan, Dwight Yoakam, and Jon Foster. Ransom Pride (played by the oh-so-delicious Scott Speedman) is dead, and his former-prostitute/current-badass widow (Caplan) has promised to bring his body back from Mexico to be buried alongside his mother. She enlists the help of his brother Champ (Foster), much to the chagrin of his drunk preacher father, Early (Yoakam). Jason Priestly, the amazing Peter Dinklage, and Kris Kristofferson also have smaller roles. It’s just great. If you like bad action movies or bad westerns or Dwight Yoakam you should totally see it.
Shampoo: 1975 satire directed by Hal Ashby and starring Warren Beatty, Goldie Hawn, and Julie Christie. George (Beatty) is a womanizing hairdresser in Beverly Hills, who is trying to juggle the women he’s womanizing, raise capital to start his own salon, and dress the hell out of some ‘70s hair. It’s the most depressing comedy I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure I can say I disliked it. But I might have disliked it.
The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T: No, it’s not porn. Nor is it a sequel to Dr. T & The Women. It’s a 1953 children’s musical written by Dr. Seuss, directed by Roy Rowland, and starring Tommy Rettig, Mary Healy, and Peter Lind Hayes. Bart (Rettig) hates practicing the piano. He dozes off and has a totally crazy dream about being trapped by an evil piano teacher in a totally crazy Seussian world. It’s one of those movies that I probably would have liked more if I’d seen it as a kid. I imagine that a lot of children could relate to this movie, but not me. I really liked my piano teacher. Mrs. Blonek was awesome.
Rewatch! Hackers: 1995 thriller directed by Iain Softley and starring Johnny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, Matthew Lillard, and Fisher Stevens. A corporate jerk is trying to embezzle millions of dollars and blame it on innocent hackers. So the hackers unite to take down The Man. Also involves Marc Anthony at his scrawniest, a very young Jesse Bradford, Penn Jillette, and Lorraine Brocco. I hadn’t seen this movie in a really long time, and it totally holds up. It’s hysterical. Totally '90s in the best possible, dated way.
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