Defendor

Not a well-publicized movie, but an interesting movie, nonetheless.

Defendor stars Woody Harrelson as Arthur Poppington, a man of lower intelligence under the grasp of demons from his childhood. Now a man, Arthur decides to go after the people that are bad - the kinds of people that hurt his mother and made his life scary.

Poppington dresses up in a superhero disguise, calls himself Defendor, but has no special powers. But he does have a lot of nifty ideas. Marbles anyone?

The story is told from memory as Poppington is talking to a psychiatrist (Sandra Oh). When Defendor seeks to destroy the Empire of Industry he comes across a prostitute (Kat Dennings) whom he suspects is being harmed, so he saves her. And she subsequently becomes the love interest.

However, in his quest to rid the town of the bad guys, he accidentally comes across a crooked cop and some actual bad guys. Not having real powers, Defedor finds himself in a tough situation, more than good friend Paul (Michael Kelly) has the ability to help him. Defendor now needs to find a way to win and he's not going to let anything stop him.

Defendor is rated R for violence, language, and some sexual situations. Directed by Peter Stebbings, the movie is an hour and 40 minutes long.

I give Defendor 3 stars. It was a combination of an action movie, a drama, and a comedy. There were parts of the movie that were very sad. Other parts were just plain old silly. As the poster correctly shows - "Darkly Funny". That is a very accurate description of Defendor. Not a bad movie.

Leap Year

Just because I haven't posted a movie review in over a month does not mean that I haven't been watching movies. To the contrary - I've watched a lot of movies. But I'd rather watch movies than write about them. Not to say I don't enjoy writing about the movies. It's like choosing between Reese Witherspoon and Anne Hathaway. I enjoy both.

So anyway, last Friday I watched another Amy Adams movie - Leap Year. It was a romantic comedy - like nearly all of Amy Adams' movies.

In Leap Year, Amy is a pretentious stick in the mud who is dating a pretentious businessman who little convincing aptitude for love. After a disappointing night where she expected to get engaged, she decides that she will propose to him - while in Ireland - on February 29th - leap year.

This is where Amy runs into a series of unfortunate events. Stranded in a town in Southern Ireland, she meets up with Declan (Matthew Goode), whom she convinces to help her get to Dublin so that she can propose.

Declan, however, can see right threw her and is more in touch with what is going on that she realizes, or cares to accept. So you can already tell what is going to happen. She spends a lot of time with him in her journey to get to Dublin. And he drives her crazy.

Predictable. Very predictable. But again, it's a romantic comedy. They are supposed to be soft non-thinking movies. And that it is.

The movie also stars John Lithgow as Amy's father and Adam Scott as her boyfriend.

Directed by Anand Tucker, Leap Year is rated PG. I think this was because 2 unmarried people slept in the same bed and there was some kissing later in the movie. And she got mad a lot. You could totally let your 10 year old watch this movie.

At an hour and 37 minutes long, it is the perfect length.

I give Leap Year 3 stars. Average. It met the formula for a romantic comedy, thus achieving mediocrity.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

One of over 400 movies that George Clooney starred in during 2009, Fantastic Mr. Fox is a stop-motion movie about Mr. Fox who raids farms and steals birds. To eat, of course. His wife, Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep), talks him out of stealing and he eventually becomes a writer for the local newspaper.

Feeling like his life is going nowhere, Fox plans to start raiding farms again. However, the farmers are on to him and they begin to make life hard on the animals. Now it's up to Mr. Fox to save the day.

The movie is an animated adaptation of the Roald Dohl children's book. The movie also stars the voices of Bill Murry, the opossum, Jason Schwartzman, Cate Blanchett, Willem Defoe, and Owen Wilson.

The movie was directed by Wes Anderson, who is known for The Darjeerling Limited, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Rushmore. The Fantastic Mr. Fox is rated PG for smoking (gasp!), smoking, and some mild violence (including shooting of guns - gasp!).

The Fantastic Mr. Fox is very melodramatic. There is very little inflection in the dialog and the humor is very dry. VERY dry. It's drier than a $4 bottle of white wine. Both of my kids watched the movie and neither got into it very much. And neither did their Papa.

This was not my favorite kids movie, nor my favorite dry humor movie. I just didn't find it all that funny. For this I can only give it 2 stars.

Did You Hear About the Morgans?

For some reason I had it in my head that this movie starred Morgan Freeman, even though a split second later after each time I thought that I knew it didn't.

Did You Hear About the Morgan's is actually a romantic comedy that stars Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker as Paul and Meryl Morgan. Though going through a divorce, they happen to witness a murder by a wanted mafia lord, so in order to protect them, the FBI puts them into the Witness Protection Program. Unfortunately for this divorcing couple, they are sent to Wyoming together.

Once in Wyoming, they hook up with the local Sheriff and his wife, Clay and Emma Wheeler (Sam Elliott and Mary Steenburgen) who hide them until the case is solved.

One of the driving themes of the movie is that the Morgan's are raging liberals dropped into the middle of hill-billy redneck country, a place where Republicans live.

While hiding out, Paul and Meryl are forced to be with each other, while simultaneously trying to run their businesses from afar and not getting found by the mafia.

Watchers of the movie will be on the edge of their seats to find out if they will be able to solve all three problems without a hitch.

Directed by Marc Lawrence, who also directed Music and Lyrics and Two Week Notice, two other Hugh Grant movies, Did You Hear About the Morgans? is rated PG-13 for some sexual references, some minor violence, and a bad Sarah Palin quip. The movie is an hour and 43 minutes long.

The movie was corny and stereotyped rednecks and Republicans (who, according to the movie are one in the same). Less concerning was the movie's total predictability. As romantic comedies go, this one was not that good. I did laugh out loud a couple of times, saving this movie from being terrible. I give Did You Hear About the Morgans? two stars.

Hardbodies

Every now and then I feel the need to indulge in some guilty pleasures. Outside of porn, what fits this bill better than an 80's beach sex comedy? And Hardbodies it is.

I remember sneaking down into the basement at like 2 in the morning when I was 12 or 13 in order to watch this movie. There was no way my parents were going to let me watch this. Well, a very very remote chance that my dad would have let me watch it if I didn't tell anyone, so my best shot was scoping the TV Guide for movies in the middle of the night. You did this, too, right?

And as far as Hardbodies is concerned, I mean, just looking at the cover of the movie you know what you're getting. And at 13 I wasn't disappointed. This was one of my favorite movies of all time. And then I saw it as an adult.

I really didn't remember the plot, just that there was a lot of skin, but as it happens, a young beach bum with glorious feathered hair gets kicked out of his place and needs to find another one in which to live. Meanwhile, 3 "older" men show up looking for a good time (Hunter, Rounder, and Ashby; Gary Wood, Michael Rapport, and Sorrells Pickens, respectively). The most notable person in the movie is probably the red-headed Courtney Gains who went on to play bit roles in several prominent movies.

Anyway, unable to pick up girls and sensing these old men needed help, Scotty (Grant Cramer) plots to manipulate them and convinces them to put him up and teach them the way to get hot girls. Tension builds, however, when Scotty's girlfriend Kristi (Teal Roberts) thinks he's having too much fun with all the naked girls.

If you're looking for a thin plot, bad acting, and lots of bouncing round boobs, then you've found your movie. If you want a hysterical romantic comedy full of anecdotes and creative use of dialog, then you are way off.

Directed by Mark Griffith, who was known for other big hits such as Beethoven's 5th and National Lampoon's Going the Distance, Hardbodies is about an hour and a half long and is rated R for boobies, language, some fisticuffs, boobs, butts, and bouncing boobs.

What is funny is that many of my friends are eager to borrow this movie. I think it's the 13 year old in my friends that wants to sneak downstairs at 2am to see this movie. And that 13 year old would give this movie 5 stars, but his 37 year old alter ego gives it no better than 3 stars, and that generous rating is due to the many bouncing boobies.

Up In the Air

One of my friends has a man-crush on George Clooney. He doesn't really. But the story is funny. One time at lunch with our boss we were talking about some movie that starred Angelina Jolie. My friend mentioned that he understand what what all the hype was about her. Um, duh. She's hot! My boss then said, "What? Do you prefer George Clooney?" And so the joke started.

Up In the Air does star George Clooney. And, of course, I mentioned to my friend that I was going to watch the movie and I knew he would be jealous.

Clooney stars as Ryan Bingham, a consultant who is hired to go to companies and fire people. The job requires him to be on the road a lot, so he's 'up in the air', so to speak - a lot. His goal in life is to rack up 10,000,000 miles on his frequent flier card. As he is nearing his goal a new-hire at his company, where his boss is Craig Gregory (Jason Bateman), the new hire, Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) has a great idea: instead of flying to all of these companies to lay off people, they will do it via a new online video-conferencing program.

While on the road, Bingham picked up a love interest in Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga), also a consultant always on the road. And I'm not sure if it was a butt-double or if Vera really showed us that nice shot of her back-side, but I honestly don't care. I'll take it for what it is - a nice rump.

Meanwhile, Natalie has been assigned to work with Ryan and learn the business and determine how to train new consultants the techniques needed to be able to fire people online. However, she learns that the business is not as easy as creating a process and following it. There's more of an art to it.

Up in the Air, despite being a movie about firing people, is actually a very inspiring movie. It sets the tone for cutting the ties to something you don't like and being free to pursue your dreams, a theme that arises throughout the movie.

Rated R for booty and language, Up In the Air was directed by Jason Reitman, who also directed Juno and Thank You for Smoking. The movie is an hour and 49 minutes long. Also staring in the movie are Sam Elliott, Amy Morton, and Danny R. McBride.

Additionally, Up In the Air was nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Director, though it didn't win any of them.

I like Clooney myself, though I don't have a man-crush on him. And as I've mentioned before, I've seen a lot of Jason Bateman movies, and I don't think I have a man-crush on him either. But I can comfortably say that I like Vera Farminga. And her butt. Or whomever's butt that was.

I give Up In the Air 4 stars.

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is a movie based on a novel of the same name by Rebecca Miller. In the movie, we go back and forth between the current and the past as Pippa struggles with life.

The older Pippa is played by Robin Wright Penn, who you may remember as Forrest Gump's girlfriend, who later went on to marry liberal extremist Hollywood lunatic Sean Penn. The younger Pippa is played by the lovely Blake Lively who was the blond in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

The young Pippa grew up with a mother that was going through some serious problems, including being addicted to amphetamines. Her father, on the other hand, was a preacher who looked the other way, driving Pippa to run away from home and live with her lesbian aunt. She then falls into what every runaway experiences - lots of sex and drugs.

Pippa eventually hooks up with Herb (Alan Arkin), who decides to leave his wife for her, which should be a sign of things to come. Significantly older than Pippa, he begins to resent the way she treats him like he's an old man, despite the fact that he's an old man. She then begins to think about her life and her relationship with her mother and the relationship she now has with her own daughter and realizes that they are very similar.

Pippa soon runs into Chris (Keenu Reeves - who doesn't say 'dude' through the entire movie), a 35 year-old neighbor who's lost his way in life, but she quickly befriends him. However, things quickly unravel in her life, only to come back together in a quasi-acceptable manner.

It's difficult to say too much about this movie without giving it away. The characters are intriguing and kept my interest. In addition to those already mentioned, the movie also stars Julianne Moore as Kat, her aunt, Maria Bello as Suky, her sister (I think), Winona Ryder as Sandra Dulles, and Monica Bellucci as Gigi.

Directed and written by Rebecca Miller, Pippa Lee was produced by Brad Pitt, of all people. The movie is rated R for nudity, sexuality, language, drug use, and implied violence and is 97 minutes long.

I liked the movie, though it was somewhat depressing. But there's always something about an attractive crazy woman with a lost soul. It doesn't hurt that Robin Wright Penn, Blake Lively, Monica Bellucci, and Maria Bello are all very attractive. And Alan Arkin is one of my favorite old people actors. He's the perfect curmudgeon with the perfect voice.

For these reasons I will give Pippa Lee 3 3/4 stars. How's that for unconventional?