IT'S HARD LIVING ON A STRICT BUDGIE

MOVIE REVIEW

"MOONRISE KINGDOM"

 
Peace loving softies everywhere were eagerly anticipating the release of this film ever since creator Wes Anderson's last film The Fantastic Mr. Fox gave them something to talk about over tea and tears.

This new one is about two twelve year-olds who run away together because no one they know approves of their love. Damn right. They don't know what they're doing. You never hear anyone say "It's ridiculous that legal marriage age isn't 10". I guess it's supposed to be cute. I'll tell you what's cute -- Yoda as a baby.

The little boy is a precocious, orphaned boy scout who seems to know what he's doing even though he looks young enough to be my son. No one likes him except his steady girl and he doesn't seem to give a shit about anything but her. Someone show this kid a water slide!

The little girl is an arty and depressed. Have you seen Royal Tenenbaums? She's exactly like Gwenyth Paltrow in that thing. I'm naturally weary of any kid who likes anything but Christmas, candy and toys. I don't even think this girl mentions chocolate once for Heaven's sake.

Shit! You know what would be cool? If in the next Fast and Furious movie, the preview goes "Warning, this preview contains spoilers" and then the next shot is a slow pan across the back of all these oUtRagEous sports cars and they all have cool spoilers. Have they done that already? You could do the same with a movie about rats or bees, or even one about milk and the sun. OH! And if Mel Brooks ever makes a movie again, the poster should say "Mel Brooks Resents... " because that's just his style.

Anyway, everything in this movie looks crisp and plaid. Typical of the Wes-ster, no one in it ever watches TV or talks about stuff regular old stuff like groceries or wrestling. All they ever do is read, listen to French records and cheat on each other. I bet when you go to Wes' house you're not allowed to use the bathroom. And I bet he took out his shower and added a train set or something. His toilet paper is probably yellow fabric.

Bill Murray reprises his role as an intelligent, wealthy depressed man whose wife is of course cheating on him with the Island's policeman played by the Bruce "Iron Goose" Willis. Neither of these two famous sex machines were particularly memorable, which is good for me because I needed that space in my brain to remember how much mayonnaise goes into a pound of coleslaw.

I give this movie about a 6.5 out of 10. It wasn't a watch-checker but I did find my mind wandering from time to time. I didn't get any snacks but I did get some pizza and wings after the show. The next morning my butt hurt.

IN THE GAME OF LIFE THERE ARE GOALIES AND REFEREES

FILM REVIEW

'DRIVE'

Here's a new movie starring Ryan Gosling about a guy who just loves to drive. Like that's all he does.

He has two jobs -- mechanic of cars and Hollywood stunt driver, also of cars. When he's bored he either drives or fixes a carburetor on his kitchen table. When he's a bit horny, he visits his blonde neighbour, played by presumably licensed driver Carrie Mulligan, watches TV with her son, then goes out and drives for a bit.

His best friend is also a mechanic and stunt driving coordinator, played by real life dad, Bryan Cranston, and there isn't much to their relationship besides their love of driving and cars (they don't kiss in the movie).

The Driver (you never learn Gosling's character's real name, but in early versions of the script it was Ford Taurus) almost always wears his white scorpion driving jacket that he manages to dry clean between every blood-splattered murder he commits and won't drive a car or punch a guy without his brown leather driving gloves. Early in the film, he also likes chewing tooth picks, but halfway through he stops, probably because he realized it doesn't have anything to do with cars. Or maybe he just ran out, I don't know.

In the beginning of the film, life is going pretty good for our hero -- he owns a car, he can drive whenever, his buddy Bryan Cranston buys a stock car using Albert Brooks' mob money and wants him to drive it, and his neighbour wants to hang out with him while her husband is in jail. If all a poet needs is his guitar and his dog, all The Driver needs is a car and his scorpion jacket.

Liv said "the only good thing about Drive is the font"

Things get "funky" once the husband is released from prison and is forced into robbing a pawn shop by this bald man who protected his punk ass while in jail. The Driver decides to help him out either because he just loves driving, or because he feels bad about watching TV with his son while he was away.

Things go wrong, but not really too wrong considering it was a heist, and the Driver has to kill everyone that knows him if he wants to stay alive and keep driving.

CONCLUSION

Expectation going in - a gritty action thriller with good car chases, the odd tit, and quotable lines such as "I'm driven.... to drive" and "I've got plenty of gas and my car loves to fart".

Reality - This baby was artier and slower than I thought it would be. That being said, the actors were all great and the opening scene was really good.

Final Grade - 583 out of 937

Notes

- I saw Yuk Yuk's Mark Breslin in the audience. All I could think of when I saw him was "this guy is so rich that going to the movies for him is like buying sour keys for me." Then I thought "I wonder if he thinks this is going to be funny?"

- The lady beside me got up twice in the last ten minutes. Diarrhea? Barf?

- The ladies behind me brought what sounded like an entire picnic dinner -- pop cans opening, bags opening, closing and krinkling, things being crunched.

GOOD OLD FASHIONED CHALK SALE

MOVIE REVIEW
❤❤❤❤VALLEY GIRL❤❤❤❤❤

The film is about a girl from the Valley who falls in love with a man not from the Valley, which spells bad news for the girl's social status but good news for the man's boner index. I don't know what happens in the last part of this movie because I fell asleep. While I was awake, I had trouble understanding the dialogue, not because I don't understand Valley, but because the sound on this DVD was horrendous. It didn't help that I've been trying really hard not to hear lately because this goddamn bird keeps chirping right outside my window every morning at 8:30am, so it was hard for me to go back into 'listening intently' mode.

There were quite a few shots of bare breasts, and some good old fashioned 80's fun, but as a whole I didn't really like this movie. Nicholas Cage is supposed be this bad boy hunk, but he comes across as more of a gawky brush-headed weenis whose teeth were unfortunately still years away from being veneered. The ladies of the film do a good job being naive, sexy, 25 year old looking teenagers, but the aforementioned is as easy to come by in movies as wet pavement and angry police chiefs.

But who am I to lambast a movie aimed at teenaged girls that came out almost 30 years ago? Actually, if you were to ask anyone who's played the "Movie Game" with me they'd tell you that's one of my areas of expertise. So eat shit and die Valley Girl. You wasted and hour or so of time I could've used to compile a list of local nerds I plan on laughing at.

Since I don't know how this movie ends, I'm going to guess:

The guy and the girl decide to keep seeing each other because of love. Then she realizes he's actually poor.

Everyone dances at the mall, even the pretzel guy with the mustache who is at first all like "hey!" then some babes grab him and he's like "hhhOOOOhhoooookay!"

Nic Cage gets a Valley makeover but no one recognizes him anymore so he moves to Texas and raises beef

Cage teaches the girl the word "menial" and she won't stop using it

The last line is Cage saying "That's why you're the Valley Girl and I'm the Mountain Dude"

The high school is playing a big football game and Cage runs on the field, eats the ball, then grabs the girl and spikes her in the end zone.

There's a spaghetti eating contest

The girl realizes he was one of the original Grousekateers and takes him back

I realized I haven't been sharing very much personal information with the Internet lately, so I gave you that tidbit about the bird to keep all the gossip hounds off my IP address.

WHY CAN'T BABIES JUST EAT WHAT DOGS DO?

Film Review

CATFISH

Like most people, I went into much hyped buzz machine Catfish thinking I was about to see Blair With Project meets the Matrix meets Jaws. Instead, I saw what felt like an after school special from the year 1999 about people on the Internet not being who they say they are.

The film's marketing campaign instructs you to make sure NOT to find out what this movie is about before you see it. This is wrong information. The only reason they did this was to trick teens and me into seeing it. And like, what the hell? How can they get away with this? It's like telling people "buy my book, but don't find out what it's about. Trust me, it's sick." and then you buy it and it's just a bunch of stories about a red wagon that gets passed down through generations, told through the eyes of the wagon itself and then in the end the wagon is a metaphor.

I would've liked it much more had I known what it was about because my expectations would have been met. When I was a kid I was happy if a movie had adventure or Paul Hogan. Nowadays, I like a movie if it meets or exceeds expectations and hate it if it doesn't, no matter how many nipples are in it. Admittedly, it isn't fair to hate a film if it's totally my fault for imagining it to be something it's not, but I have a wild imagination and I know what I want in life (all you can eat fries, movies with wizards). That's why Catfish is such a dickhead!

If you're like me and want to see a movie about magic and thrills, then Catfish is not for you. If you're a sap who has never watched Dateline and doesn't know that most of the stuff on the Internet is fake and find pretty boy romantic types pretty, then go see Catfish. And there is no actual catfish in the movie. This guy just mentions them at the end in some analogy. It would be kind of a nice part if not for the fact that I expected the "catfish" in Catfish to be a codeword to a treasure barge, sort of like the movie Swordfish but with a treasure barge, or like the main guy is murdered and his body is found in a catfish pond and it seems like the catfish know something.

In conclusion, I can't wait for Jackass 3D.

HECTIC RECTUMS

FILM REVIEW

Christopher Nolan's INCEPTION

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio

Spoilers Ahead

INCEPTION. Where to start? Here we have a film helmed by the same man who had the audacity to tell Batman what to do on TWO separate occasions. In this one he orders around the world's most famous Italian-American, Leonardo DiCaprio, who once again shows us that a River Phoenix haircut and a plot about a dead wife is what he's all about.

INCEPTION follows some snazzy dressers who fall asleep on a plane and then play serious games in each other's dreams. Leo, the most stylish of the bunch, is all topsy turvy because his wife keeps showing up in his dream games and doesn't once show him her "T-Balls". Him and his model friends, plus Ellen "Stephen" Page, are on a mission to make Cillian Murphy forget that his dead dad hates him so that Ken Watanabe's business doesn't go under. I don't remember/wasn't told what his business is, so let's go ahead and assume he manufactures hose.

Meanwhile, Leo faces murder charges back in his hometown of America, and Ken promises he'll have the charges pooed away if Leo can successfully brainwash Murphy without his clothed wife scaring him too bad. Watanabe must be one hell of a hose man to wield that kind of power. "Welcome to Ken's Hose - We hose the world (you know, that green kind of hose that everyone has)."

The Hollywood Machine

This movie is better than "A Nightmare on Elm Street", worse than the "Matrix", and better than "Willow", which my friends Andy and Greg claim is the best movie to judge other movies against.

PROS

- Even though the dream sequences in the movie don't look like my dreams (not enough surf boards and candy buffets), they were still done very well. Christopher Nolan wrote this guy himself, so one can only assume that the dreamscapes in the film are based on his own, meaning he dreams about upside down cities, James Bond snow fortresses and handsome men in suits with cool jobs.

JOES

- Learning the rules of dream-playing was like learning how to piss -- you have to learn it to better understand the world around you, but you'd rather just piss your pants. No, wait.... well it's kind of the same thing. Better than Willow.

I give this movie an "a-okay" and a "neat camerawork, Chris". I want Leo to do a comedy next because I think the public views him as a well-respected Principal type who always shows up to football games but never to the annual silly fashion show where there's always a nude or two. Did your school have those? Yeah, mine neither.