Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 17th, 2003
If ever a movie could be negatively affected by monstrous box office numbers, it’s My Big Fat Greek Wedding. When a five million dollar film rides a tsunami of critical buzz and excellent word-of-mouth past the two hundred million dollar box office gross (finally ending somewhere over $230 million), it’s impossible to see it for the first time completely free of expectation. Perhaps this was my mistake, because I went into my first viewing of the king of sleeper hits excited to a super-duper romantic comedy. ...I’m not sure exactly what I was hoping for. Was it a hearty helping of belly laughs? This film offers sparse and modest chuckles at best. Perhaps it was some sort of originality within its predictable story arc. Instead, this is a by-the-numbers romcom with by-the-numbers romcom characters. Maybe I was hoping for a film that could at least approach capturing the profundity of love, or the reality of struggles with culturally divergent family values. Whatever it was, I felt pretty unfulfilled by the time it was all over, even though I found the movie reasonably enjoyable.
Toula, as the film’s narrator, is probably the closest the film gets to a real person, thanks in large part to Nia Vardalos’s writing and performance. Vardalos plays Toula with a fantastic knack for deadpan and a real sincerity about her that makes her a likable and identifiable woman. Her insecurity post-makeover, pre-engagement is particularly noteworthy. It’s everyone around her that I found annoying and worse, poorly drawn. The relatives are all stereotypes (but no one is gay!), funny accents and idiosyncrasies, from father to annoying cousin. Her aunts are all busybodies, her uncles all drink Uzo, everyone is in everyone’s face…they stop just short of having Baklava all over their faces and wearing togas. The character who lacks the most, though, is the betrothed, poor Ian himself.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 15th, 2003
Film
The film starts out in a comic convention, where we are introduced to Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck) and Banky Edwards (Jason Lee), the co-creators of the smash hit book “Bluntman and Chronic.” Holden is an artist who feels trapped into his commercial success, afraid he’ll always be known as “the guy who invented Bluntman and Chronic.” His partner and best friend of 20 years, Banky, is justifiably unapologetic for their success; he likes having his name on something that everyone recognizes. It’s ...t this convention that Holden has his first encounter with the endearing Alyssa Jones. A week after the encounter, a phone call from their mutual friend and fellow author, Hooper, informs Holden that Alyssa has invited him to a bar in the city.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 13th, 2003
Synopsis
Rosalie Boca is married to Joey, a pizza maker and womanizer. When she catches him with another woman she decides that he must go. With the help of her mother, the new age busboy and drug-addled cousins Harlan and Marlon, she attempts to send Joey on his way to the big pizza pie in the sky. Based on a true story truth really is stranger then fiction in this story of love and infidelity.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 13th, 2003
The In-Laws was one of those films that just never fit neatly into any safe category. Recently I’ve been ask to describe it to others who had not seen it before. If your only point of reference is the recent remake with Michael Douglas, run to your nearest rental store and look up this gem of an original. Peter Falk is best known, of course, for the rumpled-raincoat detective, Columbo. While many of his Columbo mannerisms are in evidence in this film (that outstretched hand to the head and his gravelly low mumbles) the character is really quite removed from Columbo. Alan Arkin provides a perfect straight man to Falk’s erratic and seemingly dangerous CIA operative.
Synopsis
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 11th, 2003
Synopsis
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 11th, 2003
Joyously unhinged and very inventive, O Brother Where Art Thou? is the latest film from the imaginative minds of the Coen brothers. Based very roughly (and loosely) on Homer’s “Odyssey”, it’s a Depression-era musical about three convicts who escape from a chain gang to unearth a buried treasure, get one of the men home to be reunited with his wife, become overnight musical sensations as “The Soggy Bottom Boys”, and at the same time, elude a bloodthirsty team of Mississippi lawmen. For those of you who don’t ...uite remember Homer’s tale, it doesn’t really matter too much here. However, for those interested in a quick history lesson, Homer composed “The Odyssey” around 700 B.C. as the epic poem takes place over a decade and focuses on Odysseus (aka Ulysses) and his journey home to his wife Penelope after fighting in the Trojan War.
The main character is a loquacious, debonair fellow named Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney) who is part of a Mississippi chain gang during the Depression. When he's not slicking back his locks with Dapper Dan hair pomade, admiring the pencil-line precision of his Smilin' Jack mustache, or squeezing nine-dollar words out of his 50-cent brain, he continually thinks he has it all figured out. Ulysses uses the lure of a bogus hidden treasure to con two of his simple-minded chain-gang buddies into escaping with him. He takes charge of this gang because, as he tells his cohorts, he “has the capacity for abstract thought”. Our other tragic heroes in this tale are Pete Hogwallop (John Turturro) and Delmar O'Donnel (Tim Blake Nelson), who make a getaway that seems far easier than the one Ulysses himself made from the ashes of Troy. Out on the lam, they encounter a series of obstacles and lucky breaks, bizarre characters and aberrations of nature.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 9th, 2003
Synopsis
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 9th, 2003
UHF is one of those cult films that has gained quite a following over the years. Fans of the film have been clamoring for a DVD release for many months now and somewhere in the hallowed halls of MGM, someone did something about it. The company is going to release a full-blown DVD of the film on June 4th that will appease the dozens and dozens of “Weird Al” Yankovic fans everywhere.
UHF is total satire and plays almost like the old Landis Kentucky Fried Movie from the 70’s. It’s target... much like Wayne’s World, is small town, local access television and in order to have fun with the premise of a loser taking over a small UHF station, Yankovic strings together parody after parody after parody to get a laugh – some work, some don’t. (What frightens me is that many of you reading this review don’t even know what a UHF station is! Whipper Snappers!) I would imagine that your all out and total enjoyment of the film depends heavily on your enjoyment of Weird Al in general.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 7th, 2003
To be completely fair, Dude, Where's My Car? was neither the worst movie of last year, nor the worst movie of its kind during the year. Heck, at times, it even showed signs of comedic inspiration. However, before I seem too kind, Dude, Where's My Car? is as dumb and crass as its title implies.
Taking obvious cues from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure from years gone by, Danny Leiner’s Dude, Where’s My Car? follows in those same footsteps of the past in an almost slavish manne.... Here, we substitute Bill and Ted for Jesse (Ashton Kutcher) and Chester (Seann William Scott), who employ pretty much the same speech patterns and slack-jawed surprise in circumstances. It seems that the main reason for Dude, Where’s My Car? is to simply update the genre with two new brain-dead dweebs to chuckle at – however, it’s questionable whether these two stars will ever hit the heights that Keanu Reeves has.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 6th, 2003
I could sit here and type away for hours, deconstructing the finer points (using the term loosely) of the latest Ice Cube project, All About the Benjamins, were I so inclined. I could tell you about Bucum the bounty hunter (Cube), his target-turned-partner Reggie (Mike Epps, otherwise known as “Hey, that isn’t Chris Tucker!”) losing a sixty million-dollar lottery ticket and accidentally learning about a diamond heist while being relentlessly pursued. I could tell you about Bucum’s complicated motivation for ...anting to solve the diamond heist and ensuing murders before the Miami PD (after all, it’s all about the Benjamins!). I could tell you all about the chase scenes featuring several bazookas, a ridiculous dog track sequence, or a scene lifted right out of Scarface, the last surprising no one. I believe that when a rapper hits it big, a poster of Scarface comes in the “Opulence for Beginners” kit that the producers of MTV Cribs provides, so I suppose some of them must have actually seen the movie. I could try all of that, or I could save us both the time, and boil it down to this: All About the Benjamins is basically 48 hrs + Miami Vice. If you’ve seen one buddy comedy with a tough guy and a funnyman, you’ve seen them all. To that end, you’ve seen All About The Benjamins.
Of course, it would be irresponsible of me to simply assert that “this movie sucked,” and move on. Besides the lukewarm jokes, predictably bad action sequences and some extremely annoying characters (cough MIKE EPPS cough), one aspect of the Benjamins juts out as jarringly bad: Mr. Bray’s direction of this boat wreck. Bray’s directorial roots are in music videos, and if no one ever told you, you’d STILL know it beyond a reasonable doubt. One can recognize the frenetic fast cut style from a mile off. Certain sequences are repeated several times over, even though they only actually occur once (i.e., someone throws the diamonds in the air three times), a technique that becomes annoying the second time it’s used. Of course, there are plenty of girls in bikinis, fancy cars, camera angles right out of Batman: The TV show, and finally, every single action sequence seems to be in slow motion. Ice Cube running toward the camera? Slow motion. Gun flying through the air? Slow motion. Bad guy exiting car? Slow motion. Boat speeding across the Biscayne Bay? Slow motion. Mike Epps looking in the refrigerator? You guessed it: slow motion.
