The Hammer

Adam Carolla is one of the funniest people I know. First from his days of Love Line on the radio while I was in grad school. Then it was Love Line on MTV. Finally, the Man Show. This guy is the genius of blue-collar humor. Who else can intertwine construction humor into a comedy routine?

The Hammer, ironically, is about a construction worker, Jerry Ferro, who just turned 40, got fired from his job, and dumped by his girlfriend. He does, however, have a side job as a boxing instructor at the local gym where he starts to build a relationship with Heather (Lindsay Pratt).

While sparring for practice, a top-tier boxing coach spots him and offers him a position with his organization to train for the Olympics. With a little coaxing from his newfound love, he decides to go for it.

Jerry ends up training with 2 other boxers, 1 of which does not get along with him. In fact, they are both in the same weight class. Adam is a southpaw, while the other is a righty.

Unbeknownst to Jerry, the trainer who spotted him has other plans in mind. They plan on going to regionals, then finals to see if they make the team. Will Jerry honestly make the team? Will he learn of the fiendish plot?

This movie is hysterical, especially if you subscribe to Adam's style of humor. The debate in the cashier line at the hardware store is typical Carolla and very funny. Who else can make humor about J-bolts?

The movie is rated R for brief language and some violence. Image a boxing movie with some violence. Additionally, The Hammer is only an hour and a half long. I dig this movie, so I give it 4 stars.

Just Like Heaven

Yes, I'm the guy that's a sucker for a decent chick-flick. And why not? There's not a chick-flick that doesn't contain a good looking girl. Isn't that why it's called a chick-flick?

So anyway, Just Like Heaven stars Reese Witherspoon, my favorite sub 5'2" actress, along with Mark Ruffalo. Reese plays Dr. Elizabeth, an aspiring and caring young doctor who has just been given a position at the hospital, much to the dismay of heartless Dr. Brett who thinks the position belongs to him. Will this heartless doctor come back to haunt her? Hmmmm.....foreshadowing. On her way to her sister's house for a blind date she is involved in a car accident.

The scene switches over to Mark Ruffalo (David) who is moving into the area after his wife passed away and is looking for an apartment. After some comical apartment showcases with his overbearing real estate agent ("My stars! Look at this cute place!"), David finally settles on Elizabeth's old apartment. At this point we assume something must have happened to her.

However, at different points Elizabeth starts showing up and yelling at David to get out of her apartment, but then abruptly disappears. This goes on for a couple of weeks and David begins to think that he's lost his mind. He decides to figure out who this is so that he can deal with this ghost. But strangely over time, they start to become attracted to each other.

Will David find out who she really is and is she really a ghost or is she real? Of course this movie has a happy ending. The funny thing is that my wife kept insisting that I've seen this movie. "Don't you remember the scene in the garden?" "No." Over and over again. None of the movie seemed familiar. Perhaps it's the Alzheimer's.

Just Like Heaven is rated PG-13 for some sexual situations and some potty language. The movie is 95 minutes long. I give this 'chick-flick' 4 stars. Check it out!

Netflix Again

I turned in my movie on Friday, so they got it early Monday morning. There was only one decent movie releasing on Tuesday, What Happens In Vegas. Anticipating that EVERYONE would want that movie I also moved The Man in the Moon right behind it. It said it's availability was "Now".

All day it just sat there. "We expect to ship your next movie today." Finally around 3pm it says that we are getting The Hammer with Adam Corolla. This was like 4th on my list. Whatever. I then get this email:

If the movie was not available, then why are they sending it to me? So now I'm back to getting 1 movie this week.

Star Wars - The Clone Wars

The much anticipated Clone Wars was released in theaters on Friday August 15th. It just so happened that I was on vacation during that week and it also just so happened that my 6 year-old son is a huge Star Wars fan. He begged me to take him and I quickly complied.

Clone Wars in an animated movie with the support of George Lucas that depicts the wars fought between the Republic and the Trade Federation prior to Anakin succumbing to the dark side of the force and creating the evil Russian Empire.

For those that do not know, The Clone Wars is Japanimation. Think Speed Racer and Pokemon meet Star Wars. Movements are accelerated and unrealistic, facial features are exaggerated, and sounds are magnified.

In this movie, Annakin and Obi-Wan Kenobi are busy fighting off an invasion of the battle droids on some planet. Meanwhile, Jabba the Hut's larvae son has been kidnapped. The Jedi suspect Count Dooku is involved, but they must get Kenobi back to help. Meanwhile, Padma Amadala gets wind of the plot and decides to help.

Anakin learns during the battle that he has a Padawan named Ahsoka Tano, which he must teach. However, like himself, she is overly confident and ambitious. Their relationship is a constant struggle throughout the movie.

Things I liked about the movie - the integration of the characters and plot lines that existed in the original 6 Star Wars movies and the fact that my kids and my nephew were glued to the screen for the entire movie.

Things I disliked about the movie - the Japanimation, the fact that they gave the battle droids personalities, and unintelligent personalities at that, the characters' ability to jump upward for 10 stories, and down onto moving objects without falling or missing a step - much like the Chinese in gymnastics (that's another story). And many of the circumstances were way too convenient.

Finally, as you would remember from The Attack of the Clones, the Storm Troopers are clones of Jango Fett. Therefore, they should all look and sound the same, right? Well, Rex, the head Storm Trooper, is clearly from Australia, which is think is on Tatooine, and has a thick accent that the other troopers do not have.

However, I must keep in mind that this movie is more intended for kids and fat single guys who have no life, whereas the original movies are intended for nerds like myself (and fat single guys who have no life).

The movie is rated PG for animated violence, some language, smoking (I think that was Jabba), and some other activities that may contribute to global warming. Clone Wars is 98 minutes long, which for you Baltimore City School students is an hour and a half.

Overall, I thought this movie was not that great. I would probably give it 2 1/2 stars. However, since I was not the intended audience, I let my son rate it. He gives it 5 stars and says that it was the best of all the Star Wars movies.

The FBI Story

Not a very well known movie, but one that I found on the shelf at the library. And I'm a sucker for old movies.

The FBI Story stars Jimmy Stewart as Michael "Chip" Hardesty who joins the FBI just prior to J. Edgar Hoover's reign. The movie then unfolds through his years in the FBI and how it affects his family. His wife Lucy, played by Vera Miles, is torn with his career and her fear of losing him and the constant hopping from one town to another and her desire for a stable happy family.

Stewart is giving a lecture to a new class of recruits and tells his story, which is a narrative of his life. He has run-ins with the Chicago mafia, Nazi's in South America, oil busters in Oklahoma, and bank fraud.

In one interesting scene, indicative of the time, he is chasing the communists. These communists were being un-American, trying to unionize workers to help increase living standards and wages and stand up against the exploitative big businesses. In the 1950's, this was a communist activity. Today, we call this collective bargaining. So it appears that even Jimmy Stewart was anti-working man back in the day.

The movie is a bit long at 2 1/2 hours, but for the time, many movies were that long. (think Lawrence of Arabia and Ben-Hur.) The movie is not rated because it's older than the MPAA and their stupid little rating system, but I would suspect that it would get a PG or PG-13 rating. Jimmy Stewart was caught saying, "Shucks", "Gosh", and the ever explicit "Darn" several times. And there is some gun violence, but no blood, but the victims grasping themselves as they are shot and falling to the ground could be disturbing to some mild-mannered church ladies.

I give this movie 4 stars, because despite the things that I mentioned, it does tell a good story and the story for the most part is accurate. And it's classic Jimmy Stewart. I don't think movie critics are allowed to give Jimmy Stewart movies a rating of less than 4 stars.

Netflix Delay

Despite being on vacation for a week and not seeing any movies during this time....and despite my son losing a movie for several days causing me to not see 2 movies last week...Netflix decided to pretend that the several movies listed at the top of my queue were unavailable after they received my DVD on Tuesday. Therefore, they are sending The Other Boleyn Girl today. So now I will only get 1 movie again this week. I guess when Netflix decides to throttle you, they throttle you hard.

The Bank Job

I always enjoy a good movie where the bloke gets his rump kicked by a bunch of wankers. If this sounds like your kind of movie, then you'll love The Bank Job.

This movie is based on true events that occurred in London during 1971 that are commonly called the Baker Street Robbery. In this event, robbers tunnelled from a store front, under a Chicken Fast restaurant, and then under the vault of a bank on the corner. There they pilfered the boxes of all of the contents, including some scandalous photos.

Some of the photos obtained were purportedly of Princess Margaret getting naked and romping the room with some Jamaican drug trafficker. The problem is that while the bank robbery is going down, a ham-radio operator hears what is going on and reports it to the bobbies. Unfortunately, he has no idea where it's coming from, so the authorities have to go to every bank in the area and check them out.

What was interesting was in the credits, they gave an update as to what really happened. Of the x hundreds of boxes that were robbed, the majority of the owners refused to file a police report and identify the missing contents. I would suspect that it contained lots of blackmail material that no one wanted identified.

Subplots in the movie are the romance between 2 of the robbers (yes, one is a woman), the relationship between said woman and a member of M5 or M6 or whatever, the mafia guy and his relationship to Terry (Jason Stratham), the Mafia's tie to the Jamaican, the mafias tie to the Royal Family, etc, etc, etc...

As you can probably expect, there will some shootings, some torture, some arrests, and some people running from the law with hopes of living a new life under a new identity - because they can't arrest everyone or shoot everyone, well they did in Reservoir Dogs, but that's a different movie.

The movie also stars Saffron Burrows as (Martine Love, oh how fitting), Daniel Mays as Dave (pronounced Dive), and a smattering of some other British actors that I've never heard of, but do a good job.

Overall, I would say that this is one of the top 5 movies that I've seen this year. I must admit that the first 30 minutes seemed a little slow, but the rest of the movie grasped my attention and I could not look away. The Bank Job Rated R for violence - lots of it, nudity, violence, British cursing, occasionally incoherent British conversation, and, of course, more violence and language. The movie is 110 minutes long.

I give this movie 4 stars and recommend that you put this in your Netflix queue if you haven't already.