Imagine You and Me

If you have not guessed yet, I also have a thing for Piper Parabo. Yes, the list of ladies I like is long, but so is...the list of movies I've seen. Yes, that's it.

Imagine You and Me, the lyrics of the love song So Happy Together by The Turtles, which also happens to be my parents' wedding song, stars Piper as a British lady named Rachel who is getting married to Heck (Matthew Goode). However, during her walk down the aisle she makes eye contact with the florist who's walking out and has an instant attraction to her. There's something to be said for love at first site, though in this case it's lesbian love, not that there's anything wrong with that.

During the wedding reception, Rachel decides to meet up with the florist, who is played by Lena Headey. She finds that they have a mutual attraction and after the honeymoon decide to meet up again. While their love for each other grows, so does the suspicion from her husband. As time passes, Rachel realizes that she must make a decision - her husband or her girlfriend.

This isn't the first time Piper has played a woman with lesbian tendencies. The other movie was Lost and Delirious.

Piper did a good job with her British accent, as does Lena Headey, who actually happens to be from the Isle across the big pond. Headey is probably best known for playing Sarah Conner in the Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles.

Directed by Ol Parker, Imagine You and Me is 93 minutes long, is rated PG-13 for language and a bunch of lesbian sexuality.

There is nothing thrilling about the 2001 movie, though maybe some parts are intriguing. The ending is as I expected, but they got there using a different path than expected. Overall. not a bad movie. I give it 3 stars.

Rumor Has It

This is one of those movies that ties its story-line to another movie, sort of like how Sleepless In Seattle followed the 1957 hit An Affair To Remember staring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. In Rumor Has It, Jennifer Aniston's character Sarah Huttinger suspects that the her family is the subject of the 1967 movie The Graduate, which starred a young Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft.

Throughout her life, Sarah suspects that something's just not right. She looks like no one in her family and she acts nothing like them. Then at her sister's wedding she starts to hear rumors. She then decides to investigate those rumors and learns more than she really wanted to know, especially about her mom. And, of course, she needs to find out everything before her own wedding to Mark Ruffalo, who rolls with Buffalo.

In the process, she meets the man that her mother met before her mother got married. This seedy old guy, played by Kevin Costner, has his own secrets and is interested in making some more secrets.

The movie is a clever play on The Graduate. Having seen The Graduate makes Rumor Has It a lot more understandable, so if you plan on seeing Rumor Has It, watch The Graduate first. The acting is as you would expect from your typical romantic comedy. And, being labeled a romantic comedy, it has to turn out as expected, right?

The movie is directed by Rob Reiner and you'll be happy to know that there are no left-wing punches at the right in the movie. The movie also stars Shirley MacClaine, whose brother is so vain, as Sarah's grandmother and Kathy Bates as one of Sarah's mother's friends.

As far as romantic comedies go, this one is okay. There is some nonconformist sexual situations and a drug use giving the movie a PG-13 rating, the standard for romantic comedies.

You won't lose much by missing this movie, but if you have some time to burn, this one's not too bad. I give this movie 3 stars.

Wanted

I used to think that Angelina Jolie was pretty hot. She's still okay, but many fine young ladies have pole-vaulted in front of her. But that doesn't mean I won't watch a good Jolie movie, even if she has 15 kids of every different color.

Wanted is about a fraternity of hitmen (and women, but not drunk college kids) that assassinate people around the world as they are instructed. One day Wesley Gibson's, played by James McAvoy (Last King of Scotland, Atonement, and Narnia) father is assassinated. Gibson finds himself targeted and recruited at the same time while trying to live his normal boring pathetic life.

Jolie and Sloan (Morgan Freeman) recruit Wesley into the fraternity of assassins, but Wesley finds out that life as an assassin isn't quite what he thought it was going to be.

The movie is more fantasy than anything, but it is certainly action-packed. From bullet bending, to leaping from building to building, to an outrageous and unbelievable car chase, this movie should keep your attention for the full hour and 40 minutes. I was a bit surprised by the ending, which I love. I can't stand it when a movie is super-predictable. This movie is not.

Morgan Freeman again does a good job as the bad guy. (Remember his work in Lucky Number Slevin?). Jolie is tough, sexy, and unflappable. You'll find yourself cheering for McEvoy as he goes from LOSER to tough villain back to the point where he wonders how he got to where he is.

The movie is rated R for tons of violence, including frequent slow-motion bloody bullet shots to the head, language (pervasive language according to MPAA), and some sexuality. I think we got a fair shot of Jolie's butt as she was getting into the tub.

The movie is directed by Timur Bekmambetov who has brought you nothing that you ever heard of. I give this movie a 4 star rating. Good plain fun movie.

W.

Anyone that knows me or reads my other blog knows that politically I lean slightly to the right. Okay - a little more than slightly, but that's not the point. When I saw that Oliver Stone was producing a movie about George W. Bush, I could only picture the worst. After all, Old Olly is known for his conspiracy movies and I was a bit afraid that he would pal up with Michael Moore and prove how George W. Bush created Hurricane Katrina and directed it to the 7th Ward in New Orleans.

Stone Cold Oliver is known for his conspiracy movies. Remember JFK, The Doors, Born on the 4th of July, Nixon? Though he has put out some good ones - Platoon, Wall Street. But he's also produced some duds - Camera, Alexander. I've never seen Natural Born Killers, so I cannot comment on that one.

W. stars Josh Brolin as the W. I'll have to admit, he did a good job with the voice. He really did sound like the former President. However, I must admit that on the whole, the acting sucked. Thandie Newton's performance as Condileeza Rice was comical to the point where I really was "LOL". Jeffrey Wright as Colin Powell was nearly as bad. James Cromwell, the 9 ft tall thespian, made no attempt to impersonate George H. W. Bush, but that was probably okay. Elizabeth Banks, who I have a slight attraction, did a fair job as Laura Bush, and again, made little attempt to actually impersonate her. Richard Dreyfuss, on the other hand, had perhaps his best performance since Jaws. He portrayed Dick Cheney and portrayed him as we would think of him.

Now, we all know that W is a bit of a doofus. Okay, he's a huge doofus. His grammar is horrible, he stumbles in his speeches, he makes up words, he can't think on his feet. We get that. However, Stone made it a point to get every gaff W's ever said into 2 hours. It was like watching David Letterman's daily Bush-bashing, but not funny. And the result of this is 2 hours of the worst movie ever made. At several points I though about turning the movie off and pouring Tabasco sauce in my eyes - something that would me more enjoyable.

W. is rated PG-13 for piss-poor acting, drug and alcohol references, and a liberal agenda, but more on that in my political blog. The movie is 129 minutes long, but that's 115 minutes too long. I do not recommend this movie. In fact, I recommend that you avoid it at all costs. Go rent some gardening documentaries. You'll get more out of it. I give his piece of junk movie the lowest rating - 1 Star.

Das Boot

As we all know, VHS tapes are on the out and DVD's are here for a bit longer. We'll probably all be watching movies digitally in the next few years. However, in that time I still have my VCR and a few VHS tapes. I decided to watch them again for posterity sake while I still own a VCR.

The movie I dug out of my box for this weekend was Das Boot, the German movie about World War II - from their perspective. As any historian will tell you, history is told by the victors. In this case, the Germans decided they wanted to show what it was like for German seamen of the submarine flotilla, or Kriegsmarine.

The movie starts out with a party in some French town and everyone is totally out of their mind stupid drunk. However, they know what they're getting into. Nearly three-quarters of all Germans who went out on a submarine never returned. Most knew that there was a good chance that they would never see land again.

The next day, Captain Leutenant Henrich Lehmann-Willenbrock is led to his new boat, U-96 and they head off to sea to intercept ship convoys and sink their prey.

What is interesting about the movie is that there is a strong anti-Nazi feel amongst the men. Most seem to understand that they are being led by an ego-maniac and eminent death awaits the country.

In reading about the movie, the actors were confined to the submarine model that was created for the movie for many hours and denied sunlight. This was to help give a more realistic sense of the anxiety and darkness that the sailors would have experience at sea.

Truly a military movie classic, this is a must see. The only actor that would be known to Americans is Jürgen Prochnow who was in The English Patient, Beverly Hills Cop II, and Dune.

Das Boot is Rated R for violence, language, and tense situations. The movie is long - it's 209 minutes, which for people that attended Baltimore City Public Schools - that's 3 hours and 29 minutes. I give this movie the maximum rating - 5 stars.

Synecdoche, New York

If you are a fan of artistic movies, then you're dumb and you're not going to like this blog entry.

I got Synecdoche, New York from Netflix recently. If you don't get it yet, it's a play on Schenectady, New York. Schenectady being an economically shrinking town in New York full of formerly employed New Yorkers who do not want to live in the state capital of Albany.

Synecdoche, on the other hand, is a part of speech, a term denoting a part of something that is used to refer to the whole. I think of the term Nazi, which when heard conjurs up impages of German soldiers in World War II and a general refrence to Germany as a whole. However, this is not entirely accurate as Nazi was a political party and I think you could argue that most people that lived in Germany were not Nazis, though most were conscripted into service and fought for their cause. Do you think that the Germans would talk about how the Democrats were bombing Berlin?

Back to the movie. Synecdoche, New York stars Philip Seymour-Hoffman, who I think is taking cues from Robert De Niro. Hoffman has starred in 7 movies in less than 2 1/2 years, including Charlie Wilson's War, The Savages, and Before the Devil Knows Your Dead. Also starring in the movie is Catherine Keener, also taking cues from RDN, with 9 movies since 2007, including What Just Happened, with RDN, The Soloist, and Into the Wild. Minor roles include Jennifer Jason Leigh, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, and Diane West.

The movie tracks the life of director Caden Cotard who is staging an autobiographic play of his life. He was won a grant that endows him unlimited resources to produce his play. However, the play never seems to get completed. Cotard ages, his child grows up to participate in unsavory activities, and his wife leaves him. Cotard becomes neurotic and a hypochondirac.

Meanwhile, the set for his play becomes larger and larger, eventually occupying a reall large warehouse that comes to include a miniature cut-out of New York City. He hires an actor to play him, who, in an attempt to recreate Cotard, hires an actor to play the actor who plays Cotard.

I get the humor in the movie. I'm sure this would have made a hysterical book. However, the movie is long and drawn out. It's sort of dark humor or tragic comedy. And, yes, spoiler alert, nearly everyone dies in the end, but don't we all die in the end?

Synecdoche, New York is rated R for language, sexual content and nudity, and confusing dialog. Fortunately, this movie cuts out right near the 2 hour mark and not the 40 year mark like the play.

I am not a huge fan of the artistic movies, nor of the dark comedies. I didn't care for Broken Roses. Didn't like Burn After Reading. I did understand the comedy, but I was just not a fan of it. I give this movie 2 stars.

What Just Happened?

What Just Happened? (WJH?) is the 2nd of two movies released this year staring Robert De Niro, the other being Righteous Kill. As one of my co-workers said, "I think Robert De Niro is trying to see how many movies he can make." Based on this movie, he's not being too picky about the scripts that he accepts.

WJH stars RDN as a producer of a movie that is currently being presented in front of test audiences for reaction. The audience does not like the final scene, so the backers of the movie request that the director change the ending. The director goes nuts (which is kind of funny).

Meanwhile, RDN has several former relationships that he is trying to maintain, though unsuccessfully. He spends most of the movie driving from one place to another trying to catch up with everyone via his cell phone.

Moreover, negotiations for a new movie are not going well because Bruce Willis refuses to shave his beard. He begins acting like those brats on The Real World, which is about as real as professional wrestling.

Back at movie land, the director is finally convinced to change his movie and the ending, though predictable, is somewhat funny. However, it took a long time for the movie to get there.

The dialog in this movie is horrible and has no fluency to it. The scenes are choppy from one to another and the constant tension between all of the characters makes for a movie of no protagonists, just a bunch of loosely connected antagonists.

The movie stars, in addition to De Niro and Willis, Sean Penn, his wife Robin Wright Penn, and Catherine Keener. The movie was directed by Baltimore native Barry Levinson, known for such good movies as The Natural, Diner, Wag the Dog, and Bee Movie. Chalk this one up as 'Not one of his Best Works'.

The movie is Rated R for language, depicted violence, sexual content, drug use, and bad acting. Fortunately the movie is 104 minutes long and not 120.

Based on the fact that I was looking forward to the end of the movie, I would have to say that it was not a good one. The comical scenes with the director saved this movie from a 1 star and earned it a 2 star. Be forewarned. Hopefully the 5 movies that De Niro makes next year will be better.