Ghost Town

In the comedy Ghost Town, Bertram Pincus (Ricky Gervais) is a man whose people skills leave much to be desired. When Pincus dies unexpectedly, but is miraculously revived after seven minutes, he wakes up to discover that he now has the annoying ability to see ghosts. Even worse, they all want something from him, particularly Frank Herlihy (Greg Kinnear), who pesters him into breaking up the impending marriage of his widow Gwen (Téa Leoni).

I really enjoyed this movie, even though it went in to the blatant heart string pulling realm and was very predictable. Ricky Gervais was so spot on as a miserable loner. His facial expressions of disgust and under his breath zingers were perfectly delivered. He also might be one of the funniest loners trying to hit on a girl ever. His ineptitude to flirt with Tea Leoni was hysterical. Besides the obvious laughs - this movie definitely hit you with something that makes you think about the whole death process with the ghosts "unfinished business". I don't really want to give it away to anyone who might want to see this movie. Its not like a big Sixth Sense type of swerve but it definitely makes you open your eyes and rethink some things about your life outside of the movie.

I fully recommend people checking this movie out. It is good laughs with a bunch of very touching moments and more than worth your time.

Igor

In a land of mad scientists and diabolical inventions, what do you do when you're born with a hunch on your back? You become an Igor. A hilarious twist on the classic monster movie, Igor tells the story of one Igor who's sick of being a lowly lab assistant with a Yes Master's degree and dreams of becoming a scientist. When his cruel master kicks the bucket a week before the annual Evil Science Fair, Igor finally gets his chance. With the help of two of his experimental creations - Brain, a brain in a jar who's a little light on brains, and Scamper, a cynical bunny brought back from being road kill, Igor embarks on building the most evil invention of all time, a huge, ferocious monster. Unfortunately, instead of turning out evil, the monster turns out as Eva, a giant aspiring actress who wouldn't hurt a fly. Just when the load on his back can't get any heavier, Igor and his band of monstrous misfits uncover an evil plot that threatens their world. Now, they must fight to save it and prove that heroes come in all shapes and sizes.

I really enjoyed this movie. I wasn't quite sure what to think because low profile animated movies tend to fall on the crap pile and the animation in this one definitely looked pretty quirky (those pointy Madonna boobs on the bad female?). However, the voice talents of John Cusack, Ricky Gervais, Steve Buscemi and Sean Hayes really carried this movie through any rough spots that I had expected. Sean Hayes as Brian/Brain especially had me laughing out loud numerous times. I also really liked that the movie didn't drag at all. It was a simple premise and quickly moved along at a 1 hour 25 minutes length.

I'd fully recommend this movie to everyone. Its a very enjoyable animated movie that the adults can like just as much (if not more) than the kids.

The Women

AKA . . . . Sex & The City decaf



Didn't see it.



Won't ever be seeing it.



You are on your own.

Righteous Kill

A pair of veteran New York City police detectives (Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino) are on the trail of a vigilante serial killer. After 30 years as partners in the pressure cooker environment of the NYPD, highly decorated Detectives David Fisk and Thomas Cowan should be ready for retirement, but aren't. Before they can hang up their badges, they are called in to investigate the murder of a notorious pimp, which appears to have ties to a case they solved years before. Like the original murder, the victim is a suspected criminal whose body is found accompanied by a four line poem justifying the killing. When additional crimes take place, it becomes clear the detectives are looking for a serial killer, one who targets criminals that have fallen through the cracks of the judicial system. His mission is to do what the cops can't do on their own--take the culprits off the streets for good.

It would pretty much be impossible for me to not enjoy a movie with Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro in it. They played off each other exceptionally well. I thoroughly enjoyed the first hour and a half of this movie even though it was so beyond predictable where it was going. The movie kind of fell flat at the end though because apparantly the filmmakers thought that they had duped all of us and needed to completely drag out the end by explaining everything. The whole theater knew two minutes in to the movie how it was going to turn out, yet the script included a play by play replay. It would be like at the end of The Sixth Sense if they decided to spend twenty minutes going over how Bruce Willis was one of the dead people that the kid was seeing. It kind of ruins the holy $hit moment that makes the movie so good . . . . . and there wasn't even that kind of moment at the end of Righteous Kill yet they still found it necessary to talk about the swerve ending for twenty minutes. There - the rant is out of my system. Sorry about that. Even with all the negativity that I spewed towards this movie - I still actually found myself enjoying it.

I don't know whether to recommend this or not. I enjoyed it because like I said before - its Pacino and DeNiro, but it does pull up pretty lame.

Burn After Reading

A dark spy-comedy starring the likes of George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton and John Malkovich from Academy Award winners Joel and Ethan Coen. An ousted CIA official's memoir accidentally falls into the hands of two unwise gym employees intent on exploiting their find.


I can't remember the last time that I watched a movie getting more and more frustrated at where it was going yet magically walking out of the theater cracking up and loving it. Its really hard to review the absolute joy of this movie without giving the whole thing away. Its a very quirky comedy with great over the top performances (especially by Brad Pitt) and it really just keeps going with no heads up to where it could possibly end up whatsoever. However, when the movie does culminate with two high up government officials having a conversation - it is one of the funniest scenes I've ever seen. They manage to completely mock the viewers as well as our crazy government and is exceptionally written.

This is a hard movie to recommend. I ended up truly enjoying it, but its not simple straight up laughs. It also takes a lot of patience to get to the huge payoff at the end. I would like to recommend it just because I liked it but it really depends on your kind of humor.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Two young American women, Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) come to Barcelona for a summer holiday. Vicky is sensible and engaged to be married; Cristina is emotionally and sexually adventurous. In Barcelona, they're drawn into a series of unconventional romantic entanglements with Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), a charismatic painter, who is still involved with his tempestuous ex-wife Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz).

For the record - I am not a big fan of Woddy Allen at all. I love his old school silly comedies, but find myself mostly bored with his recent string of character dramas. This movie was no different. As I stated in a prior posting, I decided to give this movie a twenty minute shot to see if I should bother renting the movie when it comes out to watch the rest of it. I will most definitely not be doing that. I fell asleep. I was so bored that I nodded off fifteen minutes in to this movie. Its essentially a character drama about how someone with a Spanish accent can easily get women to sleep with him.

I wouldn't recommend is movie to anyone. Although to be fair - I am not one of those Woody Allen junkies. I'm sure that those of you that are will love this movie but I fell asleep easier watching this than if I would have taken sleeping pills.

Hamlet 2

Steve Coogan portrays Dana Marschz. Dana is a failed actor-turned-high school drama teacher. Shortchanged in the talent department, Dana still harbors ambitions and passions. At work, that is; his personal life, with his dissatisfied wife Brie (Keener) and their boarder Gary (Arquette), leaves much to be desired. At Tucson, AZ's West Mesa High School, Dana sees himself as an inspirational teacher. After much perspiration, he conceives a sequel to Shakespeare's "Hamlet" – a musical-theater extravaganza that will disdain both political correctness and dramatic credibility. Rallying and rousing his class, Dana casts a wider net by recruiting transfer students for key roles. With rehearsals underway, objections from school officials and the community are soon raised, but Dana will not be denied his freedom of artistic expression. Dana gets unexpected support from ACLU attorney Cricket Feldstein (Poehler) and his favorite actress, Elisabeth Shue. Above all else, he fervently believes that his opus must be staged, and nothing can break his optimistic spirit.

Now is the time of year where it is soooooooooooooooo quiet at the movie theater that you start going insane if you don't find something to do. So what I've decided to do is give those movies that not even I would bother seeing in theaters a twenty minute window to capture my attention enough to make me want to bother renting this movie to see the rest of it in a couple of months. This was my initial test and it failed miserably. I was sitting there twenty minutes in to the movie having not the slightest clue why this movie was ever made. So, I threw in the towel and started finding other things to do when I remembered that I was told to specifically watch the musical at the end. So, I went and watched the last 1/2 hour of the movie and to be completely honest - that part was actually pretty funny. It was so over the top that you had no choice but to laugh at it. This also coincided with when Amy Poehler showed up in the movie. She is as funny as she always is and helped the movie end well. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is pretty much crapola.

I wouldn't really recommend this movie to anyone. The musical finale is really funny, but there's no reason to pay and watch the rest of the movie just to get there. This is totally a wait for cable movie.

Fly Me To The Moon 3D

The year is 1969 and like everyone else in the world, Nat (Trevor Gagnon) and his pals IQ (Philip Daniel Bolden) and Scooter (David Gore) are abuzz over the upcoming launch of the first manned mission to the moon. Inspired by his Grandpa's (Christopher Lloyd) oft-told tale of hiding aboard Amelia Earhart's plane during her famed solo cross-Atlantic flight, Nat hatches a secret plan for the three young flies to stow away on the Apollo 11 rocket.Thinking the trip will be over in a matter of minutes, the fly boys—and their earthbound families—are shocked to learn they will be in space for closer to a week. When a N.A.S.A. Ground Control official catches sight of the three winged stowaways, he instructs the astronauts to store them in a test tube for later study. But after an electrical short causes the ship’s engine to malfunction, the three intrepid insects manage to escape from their glass mini-brig just in time to discover the wiring problem and fix it.After a difficult lunar landing, Nat tags along with Neil Armstrong on his legendary moon walk. Although the flies face a few more close calls, the mission appears to be a success. At least until Grandpa’s old flame Nadia (Nicolette Sheridan) arrives from Russia to warn him that her government, angry over losing the space race, has dispatched fly-spy Yegor (Tim Curry) to Cape Canaveral to sabotage the computer flight plans. With the Apollo hurtling toward Earth, it falls to Nat’s family to save the mission—and the trio of brave flies—from disaster.

This movie was decent. It was definitely more for younger kids though. The story seemed like a kid friendly NASA tour movie. It could have easily been 1/2 hour long. What really saved the movie for me was the animation. It was awesome. The 3d effects were pretty cool as well. I wasn't sure what to think since this movie was barely advertised and didn't really get released wide. I couldn't figure out why they would do that for a movie with the whole 3d thing going on. I figured it was going to outright suck. But it was watchable.

I would lukewarmly recommend people seeing this . . . . . especially those with younger kids. However, I'm pretty sure it will be out of theaters within the next week or so and I'm usually not a big fan of 3d movies on dvd.

College

A new outrageous comedy, College is the story of three high school seniors (Drake Bell, Andrew Caldwell and Kevin Covais) who visit a local college campus as prospective freshman anticipating the best weekend of their lives. Once there, the rowdiest fraternity on campus (featuring Nick Zano, Gary Owen and Zach Cregger) decides to recruit the boys as pledges, subjecting them to endless humiliations, in return for granting them access to the no-holds-barred college party scene. But once the boys catch the eye of some of the older sorority girls (Haley Bennett, Camille Mana and Natalie Walker), the threatened Frat-boys increase the pre-frosh humiliation and blackmail them by threatening to expose their age. The boys decide to fight back, retaliating with a major revenge scheme that lands them on top.

I watched exactly four minutes of this movie and made the decision that I will NEVER be watching the remaining 86 minutes of it. The only reason that I bothered watching the 4 minutes is because I had exactly that amount of time to kill between stringing up movies in the projection booth. Yes - I can watch this thing for free and will under no circumstances do so. In the four minutes I watched - I saw really lame textbook "college movie" acting, projectile vomit all over a windshield, and a random three way happening on a mattress in the middle of the lawn in front of a building in the background while two of the characters were having a conversation. Seriously. Any time that a movie has to rely on the most over the top sight gags that have absolutely nothing to do with what you are actually supposed to be watching - they simply should have never bothered making the movie at all.

I would never recommend this movie to anyone. Crap like this is makes me hate being a movie addict.