Boogie Woogie

When I first saw that Heather Graham was in this movie, I thought to myself, 'this is the second movie she's starred in with the word "boogie" (Boogie Nights was the other). It has nothing to do with nasal drippings. It has to do with dancing and art.


Boogie Woogie is considered a cerebral drama, based in London. Heather Graham plays the role of Beth Freemantle, the assistant and rising star at an art gallery. She works for Art Spindle (Danny Huston), the arrogant and manipulative studio owner. But more importantly, Amanda Seyfried is in the movie starring as a hired assistant named Paige Oppenheimer. Also important to the movie is Alan Cumming as Dewey Dalamanatousis, the flamboyant artist who wants to get his art displayed.

The film tracks these different members of different classes of society. The money rules, and those struggling want some of that money.

The plot of this movie is fairly thin. However, the characters are awesome. Dewey is that weenie of a guy that you really can't stand, but yet harbour sympathy for the fight against the way he is treated. Danny Huston is at the top of his game. He is such an absolute ass and he has an intolerable, yet catching laugh. "ha-ha. HA_HA!!" I find myself repeating it often. It's so phony, but so awesome.

And of course we have both the lovely Amanda Seifried and Heather Graham. The movie also stars Gillian Anderson, Stellen Skarsgard, Jack Huston, and Charlotte Rampling, whom you may remember being totally nude in The Swimming Pool.

Boogie Woogie is Rated R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity (genitals), language, and drug use. Boogie Woogie is 94 minutes long. Fairly short for a non-romantic comedy.

By the way, Boogie Woogie is the name of the famous painting in the movie that they were pursuing. It was owned by Mr Alfred Rhinegold (Christopher Lee), an impoverished gentleman who is being pushed to sell the valuable painting.

Overall, the movie was okay. Like I said, the plot is thin, but the characters are excellent. I would watch this movie again, but need to give it some time. Ha-ha. HA-HA!!! I give it 3.3 stars.

Hall Pass

Hall Pass is a movie that most middle-aged men can relate to. And don't use prepositions to end sentences with.

Rick (Owen Wilson) and Fred (Jason Sudeikis) are two middle aged men who are unhappy with their sex lives. Their wives, Grace (Christina Applegate) and Maggie (Jenna Fischer) get tired of catching them looking at other women and surfing porn. They talk with their friend Dr. Lucy (Joy Behar, who I swear her real name is Joy Blowhard) and Dr. Lucy suggests giving their husbands hall passes. This is a pass to do whatever they want for one week and it will save their marriage. This pass includes flirting with women, kissing women, and having sex with other women. In this age of sexually transmitted diseases, this seems to be a big turnoff to me, but if you can be shallow and just look at the intent without the consequences, this could be interesting.

The wives skip town with their kids and the boys are left at home to do as they please. However, they soon realize that they are not 20 anymore. Picking up girls isn't that easy when you're in your 40's. The movie is pretty funny throughout much of the first half. Seeing the guys drinking at the bar that turns out to be Applebee's cracked me up!

The movie has a nice twist when the women put their guard down and start meeting men. At this point I figured out the rest of the movie.

Hall Pass is definitely funnier in the first half compared to the second half. It lacks direction past the first hour and seems to be mostly filler until they can come to a conclusion.

The movie has cameos by former Who's the Boss starlet Alyssa Milano and former Red Sox and Baltimore Orioles player Dwight Evans, in addition to comedian Bo Burnham, and J.B. Smoove.

Hall Pass is directed by the Farrelly brothers, Peter and Bobby. You'll recognize their other romantic comedies and regular comedies, such as Dumb and Dumber, Something About Mary, Me, Myself, and Irene, Shallow Hal, and Fever Pitch.

Hall Pass is Rated R and is 105 minutes long. For those of you who attended Baltimore City public schools this is an hour and 45 minutes. The R-Rating is for some language and nudity, but the straight guys will be disappointed as it was penises. For you gay guys, you'll be super excited!

I did get a few good laughs in this movie, so despite that they came in the first 55 minutes, I'll give Hall Pass 3 stars.

Kill the Irishman

Based on a really interesting true story, Kill the Irishman stars Ray Stevenson as Danny Greene, an Irishman who rises to power in the mafia in Cleveland. The movie opens being set in the 1960's on the Cleveland waterfront. Tired of being bullied and overworked, Danny takes the necessary steps to help his union. This eventually leads him to bigger and better things, until eventually he's basically running the Cleveland mafia

Danny Greene's fate is obvious, and it's his murder and investigation that helped the Justice Department bring down the notorious mobster families in New York. Those cases were tried by future New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani.

In addition to Ray Stevenson, the movie stars Vincent D'Onofrio as Greene's closest ally. You'll remember D'Onofrio from his younger days when he played Private Pyle in Full Metal Jacket. Also starring in the moving is Christopher Walken as on of the mob connections in Cleveland who helps run money from New York, Val Kilmer as the Cleveland detective, Linda Cardellini as his first wife (remember her from Freaks and Geeks?), Tony Darrow, a real-life mobster who also starred in The Sopranos, Paul Sorvino, from Law and Order and he played a mobster in Goodfellas, and finally Laura Ramsey, the very attractive girlfriend of Danny Greene.

The movie was directed by Jonathan Hensleigh, but I read a review of the movie in the Cleveland Plain Dealer that humorously said 'had Danny Greene lived and operated in New York, he would have been a higher profile gangster and the movie would ultimately have been directed by Martin Scorsese and starred Robert de Niro.

Kill the Irishman is Rated R for strong violence (shootings and car bombs), language, and nudity (Laura Ramsey...gggrrrrr)

I really liked this movie. I'd have to say this is one of the better movies that I've seen this year. Had I realized that this movie was based on a true story prior to watching it, I probably would have enjoyed it even more. As it was, once the movie finished and those closing comments came on the screen, I thought, "Oh, crap! I didn't know that!"

Given what I know now and how much I liked this movie while watching it without the historical benefit, I give Kill the Irishman 4.5 stars.

Love and Other Drugs

You may say that this is just another romantic drama with Anne Hathaway batting her big brown eyes at the camera and putting every male with a sex-drive into a sinful trance. Well, you'd be partially correct. However, in this romantic drama, we get to see a lot of her personal real estate, so to speak.

Love and Other Drugs, a movie based on the non-fiction book Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman, stars Anne Hathaway as Maggie Murdock, a Parkinson's patient. She crosses paths with drug salesman Jamie Reidy (Jake Gyllenhaal). Mr. Reidy is a bit of an underachiever in his family, but an aggressive overachieving drug salesman shark.

After their initial encounter, Jamie pursues Maggie, despite her outrage at his behavior and abuse of his position. However, they eventually come to like each other, despite her long-term prognosis and expected fate. Jamie, however, meets someone at a convention for people with Parkinson's who is a spouse of a patient, who gave him the advise to run and leave her now. Now Jamie begins to have doubts about their relationship.

Despite the grim circumstances of the movie, Jamie and Maggie have quite an interesting relationship. And their relationship is graphically depicted with lots of nudity. Who knew that Anne Hathaway like to be so naked? Full backal-nudity. (is that a word? Is it the opposite of full-frontal nudity???). I'd say only about 5% of her was not shown on camera in this movie. And I'm not ashamed to say it was fantastic.

For the ladies, or the guys who enjoyed Broke Back Mountain, Jamie shows a bit of butt.

Directed by renowned director Edward Zwick (Glory, Legends of the Fall, Courage Under Fire, The Last Samurai, and Blood Diamond), Love and Other Drugs is Rated R for nudity, strong sexual situations, nudity, language, nudity, drug use, and nudity.

Also staring in Love and Other Drugs was Oliver Platt, Hank Azaria, and some others I don't know.

Overall, this movie is just average, perhaps about a 3.3 on a 5 scale. But if you're looking for "cinematography", this one is a solid 4.3.

Gulliver's Travels

Here's a movie that I got formy kids. If Jack Black is in it, you know it's goofy and most likely a kid-friendly movie.

The movie sort of follows the book of the same name, but with a modern spin and a lot of the added antics that you would expect from Jack Black.

As you may know, Gulliver travels by sea, but gets hit by a storm and ends up on the island of Lilliput. Lilliput is full of little people, just like in Ireland, but these people are called Lilliputians. They initially fear Gulliver because of his ginormous size, but he helps to save them at one point and earns their respect - the respect of everyone except for the Princess' fiance that is. Gulliver then abuses his new-found fame, and to his chagrin, the Princess' fiance exposes him. Now he must fight to regain their trust. And it could happen when the Princess' fiance goes rogue.

Gulliver's Travels is full of quasi-famous actors, including Jason Segal, one of the original Freaks and Geeks, Emily Blunt as the Princess, the always lovely Amanda Peet, Gulliver's long-time crush, and Billy Connolly as the King (remember him from Head of the Class? He replaced (succeeded?) Howard Hessman).

Gulliver's Travels was produced by Rob Letterman, not sure if he's related to David Letterman. Letterman, the former, also produced the mildly entertaining Monsters vs. Aliens, which is not to be confused with Alien vs. Predator. The latter is a midly entertaining aging talk show host.

The movie is rated PG for some crude humor, a naked butt (nope, not Amanda Peete's nor Emily Blunts - sorry!), and some mild language.

If I had watched this movie on my own, I would not have liked it too much. But watching it with my kids and hearing them laugh made me laugh. Therefore, it was worth it. I'll give this an even 3 stars. It met the expectations of the intended audience.

Fair Game

Fair game is the movie based on the true story of Valerie Plame and her exposure as a CIA operative when her husband Joe Wilson admonishes the Bush Administration for going to war in Iraq under false pretenses. Ambassador Joe Wilson is played by Sean Penn. I swear I watched the entire movie thinking, "Is that Sean Penn?" If he only would have said, "Whoa, Mr. Hand!", then I would have known who it was. Valerie Plame is portrayed by Naomi Watts. The story is well-known, especially if you haven't been living under a rock for the past 10 years. Plame is doing undercover work and communicating with operatives in foreign rogue nations. Joe Wilson is in touch with the international community and knows what's going on. When the Bush Administration says that they know Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and are working on a nuclear bomb, he goes on the record on many talk shows dismissing this false rumor. Scooter Libby, the trusted Bush aide, exposes Plame as a secret operative in retaliation. Through government intimidation (White House and CIA), the family is pushed to the brink of what any family can tolerate. Also starring in the movie are David Andrews as Scooter Libby, Geoffrey Cantor as Ari Fleischer, James Rutledge and Andy Card, and Sam Shepard as Sam Plame. Fair Game is 108 minutes long and is rated PG-13 for some language. I was afraid that this movie would have super strong liberal overtones and be anti-Republican, but they did a good job of presenting the facts as they were and not trying to spin it in any way. The movie was a bit slow, but not too bad. Overall I enjoyed this averagely. I will give it 3 stars.

The Lost Weekend

I haven't reviewed an old movie in a while. So here you go. The Lost Weekend is the Academy Award-winning movie from 1945 starring Ray Milland and Jane Wyman. For those of you born after 1980, Jane Wyman was the first wife of former President Ronald Reagan. She also holds the distinction of being the only person to win an Oscar and marry a future President. That's quite an honor! Hillary Clinton never won an Oscar!

In this black and white classic, Ray Milland plays Don Birnem, a alcoholic writer who is left alone for the weekend. His girlfriend and brother try to do what they can to help keep him from drinking, but Birnem is a smart drunk. The movie follows him all weekend from buying more rye, going to the bar, reminiscences of the past, and a hospitalization. Birnem discusses taking his own life and mentions a gun he once had that he hocked for more money for alcohol.

The Lost Weekend was directed by the famous Billy Wilder and is an hour and 40 minutes long. The movie also stars lesser known (to me at least) actors such as Phillip Terry, Howard Da Silva, Doris Dowling, and Frank Faylen.

I definitely like classic movies and I have been trying to watch all of the Academy Award winning movies. Unfortunately, I have to say that this will not be on the top of my list of great movies from the era. The subject matter of the movie is serious, but it lacks an element of thematic drama (is that a real thing?) or maybe some subtle humor to keep the audience in tune.

The Lost Weekend wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't the kind of movie I'll want to watch again. I'll give it just 3 stars.