Mamma Mia!

Director: Phyllida Lloyd
Writer: Catherine Johnson
Released: 2008
Cast: Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgård, Christine Baranski, Amanda Seyfried

Trust the Man

Director: Bart Freundlich
Writer: Bart Freundlich
Released: 2005
Cast: David Duchovny, Julianne Moore, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Billy Crudup

St. Elmo's Fire

Director: Joel Schumacher
Writers: Joel Schumacher, Carl Kurlander
Released: 1985
Cast: Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Mare Winningham

Loser

Director: Amy Heckerling
Writer: Amy Heckerling
Released: 2000
Cast: Jason Biggs, Mena Suvari, Greg Kinnear, Tom Sadoski, Zak Orth, Jimmi Simpson

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Director: Martin Scorsese
Writer: Robert Getchell
Released: 1974
Cast: Ellen Burstyn, Alfred Lutter, Kris Kristofferson, Diane Ladd, Harvey Keitel

Hope Floats

Director: Forrest Whitaker
Writer: Steven Rogers
Released: 1998
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Harry Connick Jr., Gena Rowlands, Mae Whitman, Michael Paré

Harold and Maude

Director: Hal Ashby
Writer: Colin Higgins
Released: 1971
Cast: Bud Cort, Ruth Gordon, Vivian Pickles, Charles Tyner

Dellamorte Dellamore

Director: Michele Soavi
Writer: Gianni Romoli
Released: 1994
Cast: Rupert Everett, Anna Falchi, François Hadji-Lazaro, Mickey Knox

STEVE says: Sorry, did I say things could only go downhill after The Exorcist? My mistake. I didn't anticipate Dellamorte Dellamore being our second film.

Released in the States as Cemetery Man in 1996, I gave it a miss because the ads just made it look silly, and even back then I was sick to death of horror comedies. Five years later, my friend M'ike coerced me into watching his imported copy of the original Dellamorte cut, and I'll never be able to repay him. It was so incredible, so beautiful, so fucking amazing, I sat through the credits, rewound the tape, and watched it again. I watched it again the next day, and again the day after that, never tiring of it, never ceasing to find it enthralling.

And to this day, I still have no idea what it's really all about. To be honest, I don't want to know. It's like a Rorschach test: different people are going to see different things. But Martin Scorsese reckons it's one of the best Italian films of the 1990s, and if Marty likes it, I feel pretty secure in rating it as I do.

4.5/5

Smart People

Director: Noam Murro
Writer: Mark Poirier
Released: 2008
Cast: Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker, Thomas Haden Church, Ellen Page

NIKKI says: How does Hollywood let an audience know characters are smart? By having them use big or obscure words. Dennis Quaid knows the meaning of the word "eft" -- he must be a genius.

I'm really starting to hate Hollywood's idea of the "smart person". Seems those of us who might be book-schooled a bit more than the rest of the world also need to be repressed and smart-assy, and entirely unable to have any fun.

Take this movie... Dennis Quaid is the smartest professor in the world and he just snaps at the lower class, and thinks he's just so above everyone. His daughter is the same way -- super-smart, and a super-bitch, mean to people for no reason because life is too short to deal with, well, anyone else. Even Sarah Jessica Parker gets the treatment here -- she's smart, too, and a doctor no less, and you can tell from her limp hair, make-up-less face, and desire to sneak a cigarette when she's upset that she's also horribly repressed.

Who does it take to come into the fold and make everyone's lives happy again? A dope-smoking sponge, without any education whatsoever. If only life were so simple.

I found myself surprised at many turns in the story, which I put down to poor development. I didn't get a sense of why Sarah Jessica and Dennis Quaid even had their affair. I didn't get what prompted Juno to kiss Ned. And just for the life of me I don't understand the drama at the end when Sarah Jessica thinks she's pregnant. Why did she suddenly become a cruel bitch? She went into the affair knowing this man was utterly self-involved. So, why am I shocked when she finds out he's still that way later on?

No, the more I think about it, the less this worked for me. It's another one of those Squid and the Whale type movies where we're supposed to think all involved are on a higher plain but they just go around acting like assholes for no real, deep reasons.

2/5

Tootsie

Director: Sydney Pollack
Writers: Murray Schisgal, Larry Gelbart
Released: 1982
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange, Teri Garr, Dabney Coleman, Bill Murray, Charles Durning

NIKKI says: I need someone to explain to me the infatuation the world seems to have with this movie! I had never seen it -- something about Dustin Hoffman in that horrible outfit just turned me off. I own it on video, but had never actually sat down to watch it. You know, I've seen so many clips from award shows and film retrospective programs that I felt like I'd seen it anyway.

Well, I was in the mood for old school comedy, and I went with this. Oh my god, I cannot believe how bad the film is. Worse, I can't get over how revered it is in the film world. An American Comedy Classic, this is supposed to be. But it's not -- it's a badly plotted, poorly developed, unrealistic, sexist waste of two hours. And what's worse is that is postures itself as the complete opposite.

It might be easy to fall back on, "it was the time", but I just don't see how this movie with a man parading as a woman on a TV set full of sexist males and showing them how to stand up for themselves can rightly call itself female empowerment film in an age where we had Norma Rae and Silkwood. It's offensive that we need this MAN to stand up for women on the set -- and that the man is himself an insufferable jerk. He was a jerk in the beginning and I don't really think he changed all that much at the end. And it was never fully realised as far as why he fell in love with Jessica Lange, other than the shape of her ass. She was sweet, but he was dressed as an old woman the whole time they were together. And then she just goes off with him at the end? She doesn't even know him! And what she does know is that he's a massive liar who took extreme advantage of her.

And the relationship between Lange and Tootsie was so hokey and unrealistic. I've got girlfriends, really close ones that I've shared some fairly intimate moments with -- but never, ever, ever have I licked cake mix off their fingers. Any girl I'd do that to, I'd be fucking later. You know? The movie's idea of female connection is devastatingly misguided.

Oh, so much I hated about this. Hoffman's apparently convincing outfit was probably the most bothersome thing. He looks like man in drag. The voice, the walk -- it's just ridiculous and not at all funny. This is not an American Comedy Classic. It's not a female empowerment film. It probably meant well, but it just went about everything the wrong way. What does Michael learn in the end? What lesson did he really learn? And how was I supposed to feel sympathy for him when the one character he was developed as connecting with (Teri Garr) he treated like stupid child? He just fucked her to get out of an embarrassing situation and then she fell for him and then she was the ditz he had to avoid. Where's the female empowerment there?

That's it -- I'm done with this one. Terrible film. Embarrassing.

1/5

STEVE says: Watching Tootsie again for the first time in decades was like running in to an old high school friend, only to learn that he's a dick - and worse, always has been.

I remembered liking this movie! I hated the implication that Hoffman hooks up with Jessica Lange in the end (I wanted him to get together with Teri Garr), but remembered it fondly as a classic. Looking at it now, I can see just how simplistic and condescending it is.

Tootsie is supposed to be a female-empowerment flick, but using a man dressed as a woman to empower females seems kind of backwards. Reminds me of a quote from Twin Peaks: "Using a stuffed animal to represent an endangered species as an ecological protest constitutes the supreme incongruity." And that's what's going on here. I cannot understand the accolades this film received - indeed, still receives. It's ridiculous and embarrassing.

1/5

Days of Wine and Roses

Director: Blake Edwards
Writer: JP Miller
Released: 1962
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick, Charles Bickford, Jack Klugman

NIKKI says: You know, the humour wasn't lost on me that I watched this movie with a hangover. In the beginning, too, I understood the lure of alcohol for these people; the use of it as a means of escape, of obtaining highs, of freeing oneself of inhibitions and fears. Life looks more fun when all of those things come together. And bourbon just tastes so good.

But like all seedy relationships, all is not what it seems. There is a downside. And this movie is about that downside. So much so that it's somewhat of an advertisement for Alcoholics Anonymous, and an absolute smear campaign against alcohol in general. When the film shifts from a story about two people losing control to this other thing involving long monologues about the dangers of alcohol and what it can do to people it loses much of its appeal. Perhaps it's the era, but subtle this film is not.

It's a pity, too, because everything else is right where it needs to be. The acting is especially brilliant. Jack Lemmon just mesmerises me. I don't know how he does it. The transitions here from happy-go-lucky workman to violent drunk to crazed DT-sufferer to sober father are really something to see. He is a fascinating performer. His energy kept me going through the preachier parts of the movie.

I was disappointed in the end, leaving Lee Remick with the scarlet letter firmly stuck to her of woman to drag Jack down. Is the film about the dangers of alcohol, or women? There's even a point in this film where a link is made between women and addictive personalities, and that spun me out a bit. The movie goes all PC, and then just pulls right back and goes, nope, Lee Remick can stay on the downward path -- dirty femme-ale. Well...

So, I'm glad I watched it. It's truly one of the best acted films I've seen. But, really, it's far too preachy and simplistic to really feel like a true comment on alcoholism. The Lost Weekend is the movie for that.

2/5

George Lucas in Love

Director: Joe Nussbaum
Writers: Joe Nussbaum, Daniel Shere
Released: 1999
Cast: Martin Hynes, Lisa Jakub

STEVE says: I took this 9-minute short to a friend's house a few months back because I thought he'd get a kick out of it. He'd seen Family Guy's Blue Harvest episode and the Robot Chicken Star Wars Special (had turned me on to both, in fact), so I wanted to reciprocate by sharing one of my favorite Star Wars themed shorts.

Denied!

He had no time for a "fan-boy" movie, he told me (although he's got the entire Kevin Smith catalog, so I don't know what to make of that), and quickly turned my attention to the new Gnarls Barkley video, which I apparently had to see.

It's a shame he missed out because this is one of the better Star Wars shorts out there, along with Troops, Trooper Clerks, and possibly Thumb Wars. What's different about George Lucas in Love - and what makes it so great - is that it's not a parody. It doesn't make fun of the Star Wars universe or Lucas (well, maybe a little bit with Lucas), but uses Lucas' USC days as a backdrop for a greater story, one of a writer who's run out of ideas, and how true love inspires him to write his greatest work ever. And if that sounds suspiciously like the synopsis for Shakespeare in Love, well-spotted.

Familiar characters fill the campus at USC; prototypes for Han and Chewie, C-3PO and R2, Ben Kenobi, Yoda and Jabba the Hutt all make fleeting appearances, and it's fun to see how they fit in to young Lucas' life.

What makes this movie most remarkable is Martin Hynes' portrayal of Lucas. Nerdy and awkward, almost as if he's channeling Woody Allen, Hynes nails Lucas without making him into a punchline.

There are some issues, of course. The girl Lucas falls in love with is named Marion - the only reference to Raiders of the Lost Ark, and quite out of place among all the Star Wars characters. If, as it turns out, they're actually brother and sister (somehow kept apart all these years by a woman they both recognize as their mother), why not just have her named Leia. Or Leah. Or Leigh, something. And the lame reference to Howard the Duck I could have done without.

All that aside, though, I rate this one pretty high. Too bad it's longer than my friend's attention span. Maybe if there were some dick jokes...

4/5

About Last Night...

Director: Edward Zwick
Writers: Tim Kazurinsky, Denise DeClue
Released: 1986
Cast: Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, James Belushi, Elizabeth Perkins

What Happens in Vegas, dir. Tom Vaughan (2008)

NIKKI says:
It was an impulse buy, like getting a Freddo at the supermarket. You don't need a Freddo, you had no intention of buying a Freddo, but when you see it there in its shiny Crunchie-flavour-emblazoned wrapper, suddenly you've just got to have a Freddo.

What Happens in Vegas was just sitting on the counter, looking like candy. So we did it. I think the conversation went like this:

Me: "What Happens in Vegas"
Steve: "Absolutely not. But okay."

See, he was feeling it. Sugar-craving.

UH... I guess I'd better talk about the movie. Well, it was everything I expected and so much more. Predictable, tacky, slapstick-y, unrealistic, over-the-top, and entirely un-romantic. Still, I had a few hearty laughs, courtesy of Rob Corddry and Zach Galifianakis as the weird best friends.

Let's look at each of these issues individually shall we?

PREDICTABLE: Obviously, they fall in love. But this was worse. Not only did they hook up at the end, but they did so at the very place we expected, with speeches to give each other that Steve and I practically mimed along with them. I understand there are only seven stories, but you can individualise them a little, can't you? Cameron and Ashton were such carbon copies of every other romantic comedy duo that their journeys here are laid out from the start. The movie is just a by-the-numbers path to that lighthouse.

TACKY: Cameron doesn't want to eat popcorn that's flavoured with the sweat of Ashton's ball sack. That's her worst line since "I swallowed your cum!" in Vanilla Sky. And as funny as it was to see Ashton peeing in the sink, well... Ashton pees in the sink. This is the depth of these characters. I hate you because you stink and leave the toilet seat up, not because you show any sort of human complexity whatsoever.

SLAPSTICK-Y: The couple argues by throwing tomatoes at each other. They have an all-out Three Stooges-like war through NYC, pushing each other around and slipping over. It's meant to be really funny, only it isn't. And Cameron falls all over the place, which was cute when she was younger. Now, at, like, 40 or however close to that she is, kinda looks odd and pathetic.

UNREALISTIC AND OVER-THE-TOP: A judge forces the two to make something of a drunken wedding in Vegas or they lose their money? It was a drunken wedding in Vegas, why should they be expected to care at all about each other? Why not agree to separate and split the money? And then they go on to fight and bicker for the time they have to pretend to love each other where they should have just agreed to live together in some kind of harmony until the end of the agreed upon period and just split the money then. So many people read this script, and still, it got made. Boggles the mind.

ENTIRELY UN-ROMANTIC: Young and spunky Ashton works in a role like this. Older, sinewy Cameron does not. Kate Hudson maybe -- someone fresh, who should be in that phase of her career where she's falling down for a man. Cameron is way past it. And her face is so tanned that any freshness left there has disappeared behind years of Malibu-roasting. I didn't see this couple as anything but conveniently thrown together for name value. They thought we wouldn't notice Cameron being six years older than Ashton when he's married to someone nearly 15 years older than himself in "real" life. Sorry, filmmakers -- it was just as weird.

So, there you have it. A play-by-play of this film's faults. Now, to conclude, the funniest line in the movie:

Zach: "Do you even know how to drive an automatic?"

Ninety minutes of lame for that? It's like the unnecessary but exciting candy bar amid all the boring weekly groceries.

2/5

Death Defying Acts, dir. Gillian Armstrong (2007)

The Fisher King, dir. Terry Gilliam (1991)

Rushmore, dir. Wes Anderson (1998)

Sex and Breakfast, dir. Miles Brandman (2007)

NIKKI says:

Well, this was a surprise. I was expecting a titillating story of young people and their ultra-standard sex lives. In other words, a movie I would not at all have picked up had Eliza Dushku not been in it.

Points again for Eliza, because this was an interesting meditation on what happens when the sex lives of pretty young people gets a bit on the boring side. And nothing that happens is really all that standard. Clearly, the writer has a bit of real-time experience with this because the dialogue and the situations felt genuine.

The movie is basically about two young couples. One is suffering from basic sexual boredom. Eliza says at one point, "I don't want us to become masturbators." In the other couple, the girl can't come with Macaulay Culkin, so they're looking for some adventure, too. Both couples end up trying out group sex therapy, which is kind of extreme, but both have their reasons -- excitement, adventure, something different.

But what will the ramifications be? Is it ever just sex? Can couples share and still be happy? What does it mean to share? What does it mean to consider sharing in the first place? All these questions come up, and the paths the couples and the movie take are not quite as expected. It was also good to see young couples going through these things rather than just boring old ones.

I really enjoyed it. I thought it was very smart, quite funny, and it finally allowed me to see Macaulay Culkin as possibly a good adult actor. Who knew?

3/5

Someone to Watch Over Me, dir. Ridley Scott (1987)

STEVE says:

More and more, I'm convinced by this project that I've lived with some sort of bizarre Total Recall implanted memory for the first 30-odd years of my life. I had seen Someone to Watch Over Me before, and I remembered it as being a good movie, a suspenseful neo-noir with a dash of sex... Sadly, none of that was to be the case this time around.

In my memory, Mimi Rogers witnesses a murder and Tom Berenger is assigned to protect her. During the course of this, the murderer makes several attempts on her life, as she and Berenger become romantically linked, therefore compromising his ability to protect her. In the broadest sense, that's pretty much what happens. But I remembered nothing about Berenger having a wife and kid, nothing about the underdevelopment of the Berenger/Rogers relationship, and nothing about the drawn out stretches of "drama" between the attempts on Rogers' life. I did remember the final confrontation between Berenger and the killer taking place at a swanky indoor pool, but it turns out that was the inciting incident where Rogers witnesses the killer killing her friend, and Berenger wasn't yet involved, so only half points for remembering that.

Had this been a Movie of the Week, or some direct-to-video thing, it might not have been so bad. Replace Berenger with Michael Nouri (or, you know, not), up the skin quotient, and you got yourself a Cinemax fave. But this is a Ridley Scott movie. This followed Legend, Blade Runner, Alien and The Duellists. Why would he lower himself to this level of late-night melodrama? Sad, really.

1.5/5

NIKKI says:

Amen to all that. It was just lame, and it felt like it was going to be from the opening few minutes. It all felt really Andrew Stevens-y. I was like Steve -- this is Ridley Scott? Is it because people were just so coked up in the '80s? It made very little sense, and the character development was just so poor as to be non-existent. I kinda spent the last two thirds just waiting for it all to be over with. And I'm sorry but whoever cast Mimi Rogers as this irresistible, beautiful femme fatale was doing more coke than anyone else because anyone of sound mind can see Lorraine Bracco is far hotter.

1/5

Popcorn, dir. Darren Fisher (2007)