Best Laid Plans

Remember my mission to see all of Reese's movies? Well, here's another one I just saw.

When former college friend Bryce (Josh Brolin) shows up, he's treated to an evening of drinking with his old college buddy Nick (Alessandro Nivola), and some sexy romance with a girl he meets (Reese Witherspoon). However, after he wakes up and doesn't remember the evening, things start going horribly wrong. The movie then unfolds into an intricate web of deception, conspiracy, and double-crossing. Will Nick be able to help Bryce get out of this mess? Any more information than this may spoil the plot.

Best Laid Plans is Rated R for violence, adult themes, nudity (not Reese), language, and drug abuse. This psychological thriller from 1999 was directed by Mike Barker, who's best known for American Dad, and is a whopping 93 minutes long.

Best Laid Plans had a lot of potential. The plot is really not that bad - up until the end. When I got to the end, I was so disappointed that I was mad at the movie. "Are you kidding me?" I shouted. I understand that it is difficult to create a plot-twisting dramatic ending, but this ending seems like it was written by a high school drama team 10 minutes before class. 'Hey, we wrote this great movie, but the story is due at 11:30. How should we end it?'

As I stated before, if you like ole Reese, then you would certainly tolerate, if not enjoy, this movie right up until the end. But you can certainly do better than this movie. I give Best Plaid Plans 2.5 stars. Boooooooo.....

Fear

I may have mentioned before that one of my objectives is to watch all of Reese Witherspoon's movies. When I came to the realization that I liked her and looked her library of movies, there really aren't that many big hits. Sweat Home Alabama and Walk the Line come to mind. Both are a couple of my all-time favorite movies.

So thus began my mission to watch all of her movies. I've now seen her ealiest movies that she made as a child (The Man in the Moon (actually, this one was pretty good), Wildflower, Twilight (which I think is the only movie in which she gets naked), and Pleasantville).

This week I watched Fear. In Fear she plays a high school girl (she's actually 20 years old when she plays this role). She's a bit of a party girl and when her parent's decide to leave her home for the weekend, she uses the opportunity to bring home a boy. Little does she know that this boy, Dave (Mark Wahlberg) is a raging lunatic. But as any guy who's been to high school can tell you, the pretty girls always go for the crazy, mean, and stupid guys. What's the attraction???

Eventually, David moves into the family relationship and Nicole's father Steven (William Paterson) starts to question this guy. He's seems awfully chummy with his wife Laura (Amy Brenneman). Nicole starts to realize that David is not who she thinks he is when she sees him with her friend Margo (Alyssa Milano - remember when she was cute? Now she's just kind of weird).

When the family decides that it's time for David to go, David does not go quietly.

Fear is rated R for violence, sexuality, language and unemotional acting. The movie is 96 minutes long.

I say unemotional, because when your life is on the line, or you think something terrible is going to happen, your reaction isn't going to be, "Hmmm....what do we do?" It's going to be a blood-curdling scream. And it's not like the people in the movie were able to contain their emotion. They just lacked it.

The movie's only redeeming quality was the roller coaster scene. You could probably lift that off of the Internet. You'll never think of a roller coaster the same way. And did I mention that she's in a bikini in several scenes???

I did accomplish one objective - I watched another Reese Witherspoon movie. What I did not accomplish was watching a good movie. I can only give Fear 2.3 stars. It really isn't worth watching this movie unless you're a big Witherspoon fan.

L.A. Confidential

On the list of movies I need to get around to seeing, I finally got around to seeing L.A. Confidential. Based on the book of the same name by James Elloy, L.A. Confidential is set in, surprisingly enough, Los Angeles.

Set in the 1950's, Los Angeles is competing with Chicago and Washington, D.C. to be the most crooked city in America. Not only is their a lot of organized crime, but organized crime within the police department. But then Guy Pearce (Edmund Exley) is promoted to Detective Lt. He has it set in his mind that he's going to do his job the right way and without corrupting influences, much to the chagrin of Captain Dudley Smith (James Cromwell).

When a disgraced former cop ends up dead, Exley wants to solve the case, but is butting heads with Detect Sgt. Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) and Officer But White (Russell Crowe). But in this case of cops versus cops, Exley's investigation is turning up more than he bargained for. And he better be careful, because people close to the case start ending up dead.

L.A. Confidential has an all-star cast. In addition to those previously mentioned, Danny DeVito stars as Sid Hudgens, the magazine insider who works with the police for inside tips on hot stories, Kim Basinger, as Lynn Bracken, the love interest of many a man, and David Strathairn as Pierce Patchett, the local pimp lord.

Directed by Curtis Hanson, L.A. Confidential is Rated R for violence, language, violence, sexuality, and violence. The movie is about 2 1/2 hours long, so if you've never seen it make sure you block out a good chunk of time to watch it because you'll be glued to the screen.

I LOVED this movie and would easily watch it again. I'm actually disappointed that I never saw this movie earlier than I did. The movie was nominated for 9 Academy awards, including Best Picture. Kim Basinger won for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, and Curtis Hanson and Brian Helgeland won for Best Adapted Screenplay. Additional nominations were Best Original Dramatic Score, Best Director, Best Art Director, Best Cinematography, and Best Film Editing.

For the above reasons, I give L.A. Confidential the sparsely distributed 5 Stars.

Dangerous Minds

Now and then, as previously mentioned, Netflix decides that I've seen enough newly released movies and will send me something from the bottom of my queue. At the bottom of my queue - Dangerous Minds.

I've always had a slight thing for Michelle Pfeiffer. I mean, wasn't she pretty hot in Batman Returns? And who can forget Grease 2? Or Scarface?

In Dangerous Minds, Pfeiffer unknowingly takes the toughest job at the local high school, teaching the kids that are bussed in from the BAD part of town. Intitially dejected, she returns with the will not to be defeated.

Pfeiffer changes her strategy and decides to connect with the kids using some bribery and some unconventional teaching methods, much to the objection of the by-the-book douche-bag Principal. After some more failures, she begins to make some strides. However, there are gang wars putting outside pressure on the students that have the potential to destroy everything that she had gained.

Dangerous Minds is rated R for language and some adult situations. Directed by John N. Smith, the movie is only an hour and a half long.

The plot is a bit thin and in my mind inconclusive. It seems as if the movie ended without any conflict resolution. The best part of the movie is the Coolio soundtrack.

Often considered an "inspirational movie", this movie was only inspired me to give it 3 stars.

Chasing Amy

I'm not sure which of my friends recommended this movie, but when I figure it out I'm going to punch them in the nose.

Now and then you get a movie recommendation that is absolutely wrong. I know one of my friends, or perhaps several of them, recommended the Kevin Smith movie Chasing Amy to me. I've seen several of his other movies including Clerks, Mallrats, Dogma, and Clerks 2, so I figured it was a safe pick. Boy was I wrong.

My first mistake was thinking that Chasing Amy was a comedy. With nearly an hour and 18 minutes of Ben Afflac and Gay Joey screaming at each other trying to make the other feel guilty I came to realize that the movie is actually a romantic drama, because that's what they do in romantic dramas - scream at each other for long periods of time while trying to make each other feel guilty.

Chasing Amy stars the usual suspects for any Kevin Smith movie, including Kevin Smith, Ben Affleck, Jason Lee, Matt Damon, Brian O'Halloran, and Jason Mewes.

Chasing Amy is rated R for language and drug use, if you can believe that in a Kevin Smith movie, and some sexual content. The movie is 113 minutes long.

Outside of some of the Jason Lee parts and the Jay and Silent Bob bit, the rest of the movie sucked. I give this movie 2 stars. If you ever hear me recommending this movie to anyone please smash my Big Mac into my face. This movie is not as funny as anyone will report it to be. And the worst part about it is I wasted a Netflix spot for it. I could have had Emmanuelle 2!