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The Resident (2011)
Doctor Trained To Ask Patients Questions Caught In Two Traps Due To Questions About The Motives Of Others That She Doesn't Ask Herself!
Opening music, dark cinematography and the noisy reverberating disquiet of "The Resident" promise a killer of a thriller, but the potholes in character development promptly thrill it into the ground and reduce it to just another dumb-woman-victim skin-flick killer.
Hilary Swank plays physician Juliet Devereau who gave up her dream to follow a boyfriend to New York whose intentions not to marry her she didn't question...and then came home and found him in their bed of nothing with another woman. Eight years of academic schooling and acquisition of no personal wisdom...!
Consider: Jeffrey Dean Morgan has bedroom eyes, a lady-killer smile warm as the sun--and in his portrayal of Max, a George Clooney beard that says, "Feel me all night long!" Yet Hilary Swank's character of Juliet Devereau, M.D. buys it that a man of his looks and build from years of carpentering has no history with women? Oh, please!
The gory emergency room scenes showing Juliet's strength not to flinch at the sight of blood-overdone (patient would be dead at that careless a physician handling) and ease at sedating a crystal methamphetamine addict in full overdose mode contrasts against the apartment scenes showing her weakness not to flinch at the realization that the affable Max (what is his last name, anyway?) smiling his way out of a direct answer to every question is lying through his teeth, giving every evidence of crooked intent with her? Oh, please!
His family bought the building in the 1940s--yet all that exists of his family in 2011 is his eerie grandfather August (what was his last name, anyway?) with a morbid stare? Oh, please!
August, played by Christopher Lee has had a stroke, but on seeing a looker like Juliet has nothing praiseworthy to say of Max as a potential love interest for her and visa versa; warning Juliet rather, about being a single woman alone in the apartment surrounded by strangers before gloomily using "his" loneliness to invite her to come see "him"...? Oh, please!
When asked, Max states his parents died when he was very young, yet mentions no deceased grandmother and wife of August that must have raised him jointly...yet he wants to know EVERYTHING about Juliet's history, even asking her directly if she was avoiding answering his question about her middle name (Bliss)? Oh, please!
Again, in his role of carpenter with bulging muscles every woman loves to watch flex working, Max was too busy taking care of his family's building to have women involvement (a professed loner), with his parents been dead since he was a kid, no mention of his late grandmother and no mention of siblings? Oh, please!
Max shows up at Juliet's art function by happenstance--no previous invitation or mention from her...and in a clear come-on; and gives her another blanket response he's fixing to get going in a prompt for her to offer him her accompaniment on the walk home? And once back at her door, she makes the first move and kisses him...and he rejects her expectation of "rebound sex" with no explanation in the CLEAREST SIGNAL EVER OF TWISTED INTENTIONS FOR HER THAT SHE COULDN'T READ? Oh, please!
Unlike August's peculiar lack of praise of/and matchmaking of Juliet with his grandson Max and him with a woman the looks and build of her, Juliet's pregnant doctor friend Sydney appropriately gushes all over Max's good looks and him as a potential love interest for her, encouraging it with an offer to him to join them for drinks? Oh, please!
Max says he's not of the text-messaging Twitter crowd--that technology invites the sharing of deep dark secrets, and he thinks secrets should be secrets.... WHO WANTS TO BE WITH A PROFESSED KEEPER OF DARK SECRETS? Two seconds later, Juliet asks him what's his secret for not being married, he can't give her a straight answer to the statement he just made about being secretive; and she missed THAT big a clue he's an emasculated psychotic? Oh, please!
Next scene, Juliet, in her weakness and long overdue female need for sex is stripping the clothes off Max that she hasn't listened to and doesn't know and trust by heart and can't go through having sex with him, as it violates all the hurt feelings she still has for the boyfriend Jack that she let fool her and wants back. Oh, please!
Thus, thirty minutes into the plot, the scene is set for the obsequious and mysterious character of Max (what was his last name again, anyway?) to show the full extent of his sick obsession with and need to get back at her for her come-on, rejection of him and then taking back of/and bedding down her boyfriend Jack, with Max in jealous rage watching from the shadows! Oh, please!
If only the writers had given Doctor Juliet Devereau a brain and let her in on the "deep dark secrets" of Max's parents' death, his and his father's emasculation by his mother that had fed Max's sick obsessiveness and his need to avenge himself of every woman to kiss and burn him (which is why the murdered August had had no praise of his grandson) BEFORE Max's final attempt to kill her...!
For then, The Resident's drawn-out ending would have showcased Juliet's unflinching strength and determination to survive rather than serve as just another excuse for violence-overkill, since one slam or throw of a man the size, strength and conditioning of Max would have wiped out with one "twitter" mother and daughter Endora and Samantha Stevens of TV's Bewitched!
Jeannie, blink your eyes and pop me out of here, oh, please!
Buried (2010)
Buried Is...Dead With No Hope Of A Resurrection...!
With all the raves about this movie before its release, I KNEW it would be good and have sat waiting on pins and needles for it to reach my town. Now that it's here and I've seen it, I have never been so disappointed in a movie in my life!
Suspense only works when there's rescue and a pay-off! Hitchcock-like in its opening music and spacing of tension,"Buried" ends up as pointless as a mother who gives birth to a baby and then buries it in the back yard to all loss to her, where she and everyone around listens insensitively to it scream for a rescue, only to berate it for crying in distress and insisting it needs to calm down and change its attitude--baby whose loss of life she's paying for! Thirty years later, baby buried in its hole in the ground where Mama has left it is still crying to everyone in hearing distance to be saved--with no savior in sight and having been accused of deserving its abuse and neglect by everyone in a life just thrown away for no point!
Atypical of anyone who has no helper that has been overtaken by an enemy and left good as dead, Ryan's character of Paul Conroy sufficiently wastes the first THIRTY minutes of the movie trying to use the cell phone he was left with to get someone in the world to hear and understand that his truck had been seized and him buried in a coffin somewhere he couldn't pinpoint underground--all the frustration of answering machines and no one home, hold calls, hangups, the fight with his what--mother- or sister-in law as he tried to learn his wife's whereabouts, disconnects and reconnects...before inevitable contact by the embezzler that had buried him with the phone on the heels of a hostage negotiator determined to find him out of thin air--literally--I should have known then: all that suspense--just for the "call" to be dropped at the end with no further reconnect.... And after his 'indecent' "Proposal" of a movie with Sandra Bullock last year, I'd thought Reynolds had come into his own with this one--but it looks like it just got buried in its dirt! Waste your time watching it and you're going to be the same--buried in a hole of a cemetery plot-line with no way to dig yourself out! I can't understand how it is that so many reviewers here have found it divine!
Thus, successfully murdered by my hour and a half on this turkey of a before-Thanksgiving Dinner Cortés has served me for nothing, I'm going to get the life and blood pumping back into me by feasting on a reviewing of Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz' high octane summer comedy romance suspense adventure thrill-ride "Knight And Day." A REAL Thanksgiving for THAT happy meal...!
Taken (2008)
My Belief Is Suspended By Lack Of Character Development
I viewed this film on the recommendation of a friend who kept getting Liam Neeson's name mixed up with actor Leslie Nielsen of The Naked Gun series and other movie spoofs. Needless to say, Taken left me shaken. A great action film using a subject as serious as sex trafficking for entertainment value grabbed me from the beginning, but didn't set well in its grossness and vilification of Arabs, Albanians and the French as the single-minded prostitute trader/murder caricatures they portrayed. Nor, for that matter, did the writers' motivations of actor Liam Neeson as a one-man Mission: Impossible wrecking crew forced to save his daughter alone after she and her friend are targeted at the airport by a marker and later dragged from their rental home after being set up to the end of being dehumanized and marketed as prostitutes.
Of the 1966 TV show Mission: Impossible, Martin Landau played the character of Rollin Hand and was married in real life to Barbara Bain—-best female undercover Central Intelligence Agent/Federal Bureau of Investigation-or-whatever agent/spy in television who played the character of Cinnamon Carter. What would it have looked like had Landau's character of Rollin not married Cinnamon of his same knowledge, life experience and common interest but Peggy Bundy of Married: With Children and with the bubble-head that Peggy was having taken no interest in his work nor him teaching her any skills by which to save herself before or after their marriage; neither did Rollin make an effort to rouse her interest and teach her anything of himself and his work? Thus, after some time of them giving birth to Kelly, Peggy, then deciding she can't take any more of Rollin's long work absences away from them both, files for divorce and later nabs J.R. Ewing of Dallas for new trophy husband and rich stepfather for Kelly and then learns nothing of his work either except how to spend all his money!
And so sets the plot for Taken with empty-headed Mama Lenore (Famke Janssen) wanting to give her seventeen-year-old daughter Kim played by Maggie Grace the chance of a lifetime—travel to Paris with girlfriend and equal minor Amanda—if she can get ex-husband and CIA retiree Bryan (Neeson) that she dated and married yet never knew nor trusted and is still hardened against to give Kim, as equally empty-headed as her mother, consent. And to that end, Bryan doesn't like the idea from the get-go, as with his ex-wife, in all seventeen years of Kim's life he has taught her no intelligence whatsoever--NOTHING of his expertise of self-defense and how to read people and warns: "No—I know the world!" But in his assigned role of carrying the plot as a one-man vigilante good-guy, Bryan consents. Yet at the airport, he learns Kim and Mama have lied to him—the whole trip concerned Kim and Amanda's plan of tracking a U2 concert tour throughout Europe with some nineteen-year-old cousins—only later does gullible Kim realize distrusting Dad was right on learning trusted friend Amanda had lied to her—the cousins they were supposed have hooked up with were in Spain and they had the house to themselves
! Before Kim can tell Dad--whose promised call to him on her safe arrival she had not made--that Amanda had lied to her and they were in Paris alone, Bryan's worst fear is realized as Kim tells him from the bathroom that Amanda's being grabbed by two men and carried out screaming. With the traffickers coming for her also, Bryan instructs her over the phone to yell out what they're wearing, color of hair, their smells, body defects and the like as leads for him to follow as he tapes the call, with it ending in her giving him NONE. Yet as he then has to give his ex-wife the bad news Kim's been kidnapped by sex slave traders, to add meat to Bryan's role, rich second husband Stuart--who had just outdone his birthday gift to Kim of a Karaoke machine by giving her a Thoroughbred--is so equally a one-dimensional still drawing that he had no money and no one out of all his family and worldly business connections to call on in proper J.R.-speak and pay to infiltrate Paris behind Bryan in support of his Mission: Impossible of saving his stepdaughter COLLECTIVELY?
And in the process of escaping through fires, flipped cars, boats and every scrape with barely a scratch while killing every villain pursuing him with barely a gunshot wound, Bryan succeeds in saving Kim single-handedly--and with no lead given him from her—and empty-headed Lenore that had never fit him is so happy to have her daughter back safe and sound that she doesn't even ask the ex-husband she never knew nor respected how he found their daughter; and neither, for that matter, does 'bubble-head' Kim!
Abandoned (2010)
Bank Manager "Abandoned" Her Brain On This One!
If I have read a book or seen a movie so good, I have told everyone they had to read or see it and/or read it to or brought it to them to see for MY enjoyment. If I have had a boyfriend of four months so engrossed in a favored book that he has taken it everywhere we've gone, I've long read it equally to see its fascination. If I've taken no interest in his heartfelt appreciation of it, I neither know what's in his heart nor care. How, then, can I claim to love him whom I've chosen not to know...which is the unbelievable thread to this "THRILL HER WITH ABANDON" that screams corrupted script from the beginning.
Dean Cain's character of Kevin Peterson arrives at County Memorial Hospital as an outpatient to have orthopedic surgery. Yet he's drinking coffee, when nothing to eat or drink after midnight is the rule for every surgical patient. He begs girlfriend Mary (Brittany Murphy) to promise she won't leave him when he's under (anesthetic) when hospital procedure wouldn't allow him to be "put under" anesthetic without a second party in the waiting area to drive him home afterward, thus giving his fear of her abandoning him no basis in fact. Additionally, if Kevin has been prepped as an orthopedic outpatient, he's previously been to ORTHOPEDIC OUTPATIENT ADMISSIONS for before-prep, blood-work and so forth, with Mary accompanying him as his drive home. This protocol done BEFORE patient is taken to prep for ANY surgery is ASSURANCE patient AND admitting doctor are in the hospital COMPUTER!
But as manager of a Los Angeles bank and with the unread book Kevin's carried around the four months of their relationship in her purse to his added relief, Mary drops Kevin off at the door and tells him "I'll be right up," leaving him to enter the hospital alone when OUTPATIENT ADMISSIONS for every department is usually on the GROUND floor. She arrives at the reception desk behind him and he's not in a nearby waiting area, where he would be seated behind other patients waiting for an ADMISSIONS SECRETARY to call his name, confirm his surgery, get his signature both of consent and to administer blood if needed and fit him with a computer-printed PATIENT WRISTBAND identifying him by his name, age, the hospital's name, the doctor's name, the date and his room number, if applicable; Mary would then have taken a seat next to him and shared his wait to be admitted to before-op.
Yet in continued ignorance of the writers, rather than ask "Where is Kevin Peterson who's arrived here for orthopedic surgery with Dr. Whatever-His-First-Name-Is Harding?" when the nurse who is wearing no state-required picture ID tag asks how she can help, Mary asks, "Where is the OUTPATIENT DEPARTMENT?" She then buys the lie out of the nurse's mouth that the hospital is shutting down for renovations on Saturday—-and when the main office of EVERY business--including the bank she manages--is closed on Saturday and will apply equally to the construction company renovating the hospital Monday through Friday during business hours. And so, six minutes into the movie, bank manager Mary busy carrying out business on her phone, has missed ***TEN*** clues that she's being set up for foul play by the loving "boyfriend of four months" that she does not know and hasn't trusted her best girlfriend to meet yet as she falls for the nurse's continued lie that most of the hospital patients have already been moved west—-go through those doors and take the elevator up—-to ORTHOPEDIC OUTPATIENT ADMISSIONS Mary should have known the location of previously!
She steps off the elevator to an empty floor and proceeds to a non-numbered room where Kevin sits on a bed filling out presumed admissions forms that would have all his history printed thereon on no given hospital clipboard that Mary ignores as she raves about the girlfriend who wants to meet him over pizza. Smiling at the confidence by which she's ready to share him with her best friend, Kevin fakes trying to write his Social Security number on the form that Mary again neither catches nor takes interest in as she hands out of her purse his unread book for him to write on. Again wearing no state-required picture ID tag, nurse belatedly enters the room and announces her name as Amanda presumably to take his vitals AND prep Kevin for surgery, again without checking his wristband to confirm he's the patient, assigning him a bag or locker for his personal belongings or even leaving them in Mary's care as his confirmed drive home. Rather, announcing Dr. Harding will be in in a moment, Amanda asks Mary presumed to be Kevin's wife to leave while she "checks things out" for a whole hour...when again it would have been in Kevin's medical history he's not married and Amanda would not have made that error. Additionally, if Dr. Harding is going to be in behind Amanda in his before-op visit to Kevin and her in a moment, what's Amanda going to be "checking out" for a whole hour with no other hospital staff present that Mary is asked to leave Kevin, and with him still wearing no patient wristband as a statement "HE IS NO PATIENT IN THAT "ABANDONED" NECK OF THE HOSPITAL" and Mary's being set up by her own ignorance for his disappearance and resulting embezzlement by him, his fake nurse lover and a third accomplice to keep the lie crossed?
Loved the plot twist toward the end of this movie. But darn it: this last send-off to Brittany Murphy would have been one hell of a thrill ride had the writers stuck to TRUE hospital protocol from the beginning and then found a way to cross up the middle--and if Mary and Kevin had only known each other four DAYS, rather than four months for subject matter believability!
Killers (2010)
Worst Movie I've Seen Yet!
If this movie had been written as a dream—with Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher's characters of Jen Kornfeldt and Spencer Aimes awakened at the heat of their attempted killings by veteran actor Tom Selleck's 1980's Magnum P.I. TV show character of Magnum knocking on their bedroom door and saying to them: "Rise and shine, you sleepyheads, your mother and I've got breakfast on; T.C. and Roger will be over shortly!" that Jen then related in shocked amazement to an equally awakened Ashton to his equal wonder, followed by the same over breakfast to her mother and Tom's Magnum P.I. character to EQUALLY amazed disbelief from them, the surprise ending to this romantic comic thriller-turned Magnum P.I. 2010 TV action-drama would have been the BOMB that would have blown it up at the box office!!!!!
But to actually be enjoying this piece of fluff BEGINNING with three poorly-constructed main characters of weak acquiescent alcoholic Mama + controlling overprotective father = weak neurotic and unsure daughter set up to be DUPED, DUMBED and DONE without question by the first wrong force of circumstance—and when I'm thinking Selleck with all his Kornfeldt character's gun acumen might pull from his famous former TV Magnum P.I. role and have to team with Spencer to BEAT the assassins—for the whole 100-minute investment to . . . bomb . . . on learning as did Spencer that he had been targeted by his father-in-law--and then for Jen to learn that the father she'd kept wanting to run to for help was not only a former player and pilot in the same assassin game: but the intended victim in the helicopter crash Spencer had blown up at the movie's beginning who'd then set out to kill him—and her, his OWN daughter--over a three-year-period . . . by marrying her off to his ENEMY and then putting a $20 million-dollar bounty on his head at the first mistake . . . for him AND her to be targeted for assassination by every sleeper Dad had planted in town; and with Jen newly pregnant— and three year's time for them to likely have had children--with Kornfeldt's first grandchild . . . ! Movie starring a misused Tom Selleck no more thought out with a view to reality than that entire run-on-sentence
! I wish my viewing it had been a dream!
And lastly, after Dad's admission of his former life was told for Jen to wrap everything up into a neat little package with the lame acknowledgment that she had married her father without either "former assassin" or her or her alcoholic mother making effort to explain, move or remove one dead body of all the sleeper neighbors they'd killed and left strewn the house and town over
!
I may never watch a movie again
!
The Hottie & the Nottie (2008)
I Have Been Laughing At This Movie All Weekend!
I don't even remember how I stumbled on this movie I missed on its 2008 release two weeks ago March 21, but on reading its reviews and finding most to be as bad as they are, I had to see it for myself. I thus ordered it March 27, received it two days ago and have been a laughing at it all weekend! Paris Hilton was not the star of this comedy-fest from the beginning; Joel David Moore steals that designation as the fool-in-love geek out to claim the girl of his dreams that he hadn't seen since the first grade! Whoooo--ooh! I'm still laughing at the irony of such an unsightly guy being fed on how to gain the hand of the lovely and still single Cristobel from his fat geeky (and equally-named) friend Arno Blount, who has no girlfriend and lives with his presumed widowed decorator mother from another era Mrs. Blount in a blunt-trauma-to-the-head relationship smacking of son-worship! Writer was dead-on on this one: although I understand why it only brought $27,000+ U.S. box-office on its 2008 release
!
Being it that a person with bad teeth would not warrant the $27 value of a slave to the master who would not want to pay for the parents' negligence or disease, why is it that in this movie, writer Heidi Ferrer who did not do her research, went to great pains to show us how it was that Joel Moore's character of Nate Cooper fell in love with Paris Hilton's character of Cristobel Abbott in the first grade where her lifelong friendship with Christine Lakin's character of the repugnant June Phigg began but gave us no detail as to how it was that June was as equally repulsive twenty years later at twenty six? Was she born to parents in a hospital or hatched in a car trunk amidst a nest of chickens and raised thusly? Because for a woman to have alopecia, skin lesions, a hideous carbuncle on her chin with a whisker growing out of it, a disease-blackened toenail, no muscle tone in her entire body, no dress sense whatsoever and teeth as misaligned and rotted as June's in a statement she hadn't seen a dentist since they came in that way at age eleven, both her mother and her father implicated for criminal negligence and ruination of their daughter that could only get her a minimum-wage job after high school graduation at the city zoo cutting up raw fish to feed the animals or cleaning up toilets, if that, should both have been stabbed, shot, strangled, bludgeoned, quartered, eaten and then vomited back and flushed down any toilet that June left to go though life with a mouth as messed up as hers could not have gotten hired to clean up! I mean, even Johann Urb as the buff dentist that came to the rescue and took interest in correcting June's teeth caught Nate in his greatly detailed lie about having no pilot's license but taking children up in his plane and flying them recklessly for sport, which would be criminal negligence on the part of any UNLICENSED pilot!
Martin Lawrence did the rotten-teeth thing with his mock character of "player" Jerome to repugnant perfection in his 1990s TV show "Martin," but what woman ever dated Jerome? Not even Lawrence's brusque-spoken braid-sporting hard-voiced hairdresser alter-ego character of Shenaynay could have been paid the value of her salon to date Jerome! Perhaps had Ferrer factored into her script that June's parents and family had been murdered or abandoned her and June had been thrown away and thus left with the mess of her lack of beauty to correct on her own with no means to do so because no one would have dealings with anyone that physically repulsive, all who had hated this movie as the worst crime to be committed against an audience would have COMMISERATED with her misfortune and then derived HUMOR from all the funny shtick and lies ugly-duckling-geek himself Nate carried out to get her a date with a man little better than him in order to get next to Cristobel! And while the ending explained how it was that Nate suddenly found himself falling for June after her transformation from "nottie" to likely, not very many a guy with a no-name job or known salary would drive a loser car that wouldn't have made it to his home state line 3,000 miles across the U.S. and then offer to pay a guy $1,500.00 to date a cold-ugly woman in order to get next to her hot-gorgeous best friend holding out on every guy hitting her up to that end
and with the "hottie" friend having made no effort to beautify her "nottie" best-friend- since-the-first-grade in TWENTY YEARS!
And how Christine Lakin, beautiful tomboy daughter "Al" from the 1990s TV show "Step-By-Step" managed to work her jaws, lips and tongue around the awful prosthetics the makeup department fitted over her perfect teeth in order for her to speak as naturally as she did and let herself be laughed at in this hideous ugly-duckling-turned-incredibly- beautiful-swan mock-romantic comedy is beyond me—as the TRUE star in this satire, she should have taken home an award!
The Accidental Husband (2008)
Everything Works In This Movie From The Getgo!
Where was I when this movie was released two years ago, just found on DVD? Because for everyone who thinks he or she knows anything above love, this little gem I've watched eight times this week shows you know nothing!
Justina Machado's character of Sofia is too quiet and soft-spoken for Jeffrey Dean Morgan's character of Patrick's talkative and strong personality that would have overpowered her; that, she observes in him at the beginning of the movie, which is why she calls off her wedding to him on that weekend. For the same reason, Sofia's too afraid to tell Patrick the truth that he terrifies her. There was thus no reason for Patrick to pursue her any farther after that, which is why he forgot her as soon as their opening scene was over.
Then, there's Uma Thurman's character of the straight-laced love talk show host Dr. Emma Lloyd, who's engaged to marry her book publisher Richard, an upright but uptight man played by Colin Firth, who along with no sense of humor has an egregious habit of stress- eating to sickening proportion. For however long they've been together, theirs is a relationship established on no basis of fun anywhere; in fact, the cool-headed Dr. Lloyd has to keep his neurosis in check. Seeing Emma married to him, in labor with their first child and Richard in the kitchen stress-eating like a maniac instead of getting her to the hospital to deliver was an image in my mind I just couldn't stomach!
Thankfully, what Patrick then does to get back at Emma for presumably busting up his marriage to Sofia by faking himself as her husband saves her from that nauseating destiny in that it turns her in the direction of him, a New York firefighter who would be well up to the challenge of knocking a door down to get his in-labor wife to the hospital to have his child! The smoothness with which he then controls their first meeting, Emma matching his challenge with equal determination to win but losing on unfamiliar territory, which then throws her well-planned life into chaos the next day while she desperately tries to pull it back together but fails miserably, and with Patrick warmed to have a brain to work with then having to rescue her from the mess he's made her that's working for them both is the best fun I've had watching a movie in some time!
I also love the fun had by Emma's dad, played by Sam Shepard, who well enjoys her discomfiture in the mess not of her making while having his own mess of fun in secret that he's yet to tell her!
Dance 'Til Dawn (1988)
This Has Got To Be The Best Teen Movie Of All Time!
When this comic Made-For-TV movie was released in 1988 with all these stars from popular TV shows from all four networks, we didn't have a VCR and so, I couldn't tape it. But when it replayed in 1989, we did, and I taped it, but it was a bad recording--out-of focus picture all full of lines. In the 1990's, I got a better taping of it when it replayed on FOX, but frames had been cut out to allow for commercials that had been included in earlier viewings, ruining this recording. Two years ago with everything released to DVD these days, I took a chance and entered its title into my browser and was shocked to find it on video which I ordered from Amazon.com, only to discover upon its receipt that it had been released by Turner Broadcasting in 1993!
It has been two years since I received "Dawn" from Amazon.com, and I love it as much as I did the first time I saw it on TV back in 1988. Alan Thick as the insensitive psychiatrist dad to the misunderstood school nerd son Dan played by Chris Young; Kelsey Grammar as the overprotective pharmacist dad who along with wife Edie McClurg is hiding an eighteen-year-old secret from Angela; Mary Frann and Cliff De Young's outrageous bickering in the wake of trying to pacify spoiled daughter Christina Applegate's character Patrice; and Allyssa Milano as the harried girlfriend Shelly Sheridan forced to spend prom night hiding the fact that she and boyfriend Kevin McCrae had split up the day of the prom, because she could not sleep with him, from everyone. The way she found herself in the theater crying over her popcorn seated two rows down from class nerd Dan whose name she remembered as Don, only for him to have to rescue her while she is forced against her desire to use him to hide her out all night. What happened with them after that was inevitable and beautiful as she learned the fast lesson on a starry night that there was more to nerd Dan than met the naked eye without benefit of a telescope. And the whole idea of most popular guy Kevin McCrae asking nerdiest girl in school Angela Strull to take Shelly's place as his prom date because he was told that she was easy, only to find himself falling deeply in like with her as the evening progressed doubly enhanced the lesson that one can't judge a book by its cover.
In this, Brian Bloom's role of the guy who made a bet with his friends that he could get a girl to go out with him for the wrong purpose of sex at the last minute only to find himself falling for her is what every classic movie is made of; we have all experienced the angst of being targeted and taken advantage of by someone we have adulated. But writers Guerdat and Kreinberg had the same opportunity to write Bloom's character as changed and no longer out to hurt Angela, therein conveying the message of respect of girls and standing up to do what was right the same as had Elvis Presley in the 1960 movie, "G.I. Blues." When on furlough in West Germany, Elvis was roped in to replace an army buddy who had been shipped out at the last minute after making a bet with the entire army platoon that he could bed down a shapely dancer at The Club Europa who was played by the fabulous Juliet Prowse, whose character of Lily was spoken of as "an iceberg no man could melt." Elvis was not interested in the bet and didn't want to do it but had no choice other than capitulate, only to find himself liking too much this cold-hearted West German girl he was supposed to use and then dump who was not what he's thought she'd be. But when he saw that her learning the truth would hurt her, he did the most selfless and gracious thing and went against his own desires and broke it off with her, to the dismay of his entire army platoon and all their lost money. But because of Elvis' decency, he felt no remorse when a babysitting situation for a friend got out of control and he had no choice other than call back on Lily for help. Of course, when she learned the truth of his deception and thought he'd used the baby as a gimmick to get her a second time, she told him he'd underestimated his attraction and dumped him, but his action in foiling his friends' bet got him a commendation from the army along with Lily learning the baby had not been a plant. And thus, by his honesty, Elvis ended up getting the girl, with the movie ending with Juliet Prowse telling him that naturally she would marry him. But unlike Presley in "G.I. Blues," in "Dawn," Bloom's character of Kevin; in failing to recognize in his position of most popular guy in school, whose friends had all looked up to him anyway that he could have looked down on them and said no; by his cowardice and refusal to own up to the truth, turned Angela's most magical night into her worst nightmare while stabbing himself all over with pains when she dumped him without preamble even after he had apologized, told her he really liked her and begged for a second chance. Yet with the lesson to be learned stultified by his setup of himself to the mockery of the friends he had tried to impress, very few guys have learned the straightforward lesson Angela herself told Kevin in her hurt disappointment that "he should have liked her first."
The Jerk (1979)
This Has Got To Be The Biggest "Joke" In Entertainment History!
A poor black couple raises a family in a small town in Mississippi. They have provided food, clothing and barely shelter for the children, but nothing else, including a way out of their house and into their own lives at eighteen. As a result of that, they have at least three grown children still living in their house with them, including Ren Woods and Dick Anthony Williams, the married adult child, along with a bunch of younger children or possibly grandchildren and a grandparent. Steve, the white adopted child who can't be older than his black stepbrother played by Williams, is depressed by the blues music they favor, but after finding that he has a liking for the classics, happily decides that if that sort of variety is out there, he rightfully wants to taste what other good life may have to offer him.
And so, at at least thirty and way past the age of maturity, Steve sets out to find his life with nothing but a beat-up suitcase, while older brother Dick and sister Ren remain holed up in the house with their parents and grandmother with no more a way out than Steve, their parents having provided nothing in the way of protection, transportation or advancement for any of them. And thus, they lament piteously over dinner at the pathetic and stupid picture of Steve who's been standing at the mailbox all afternoon patiently waiting for a nonexistent car to come along from which to hitch a ride to the nearest city of St. Louis, his thumb raised up to get the attention of whatever potential driver may eventually show. And so, with night having approached, a guy finally comes along, who gives Steve a lift only as far as the next mailbox, where he is dropped off and again stuck with no way out of the sticks beyond his family's house next door. And all of this at just Scene 2 on the DVD. Yet finally, Steve manages to hitch a ride, gets a lift into St. Louis and is dropped off three minutes and eighteen seconds into the scene at a motel, where he then rents a room for the night WITH NO MONEY THAT HIS PARENTS HAVE NOT PROVIDED FOR HIM! That should rightfully have been the end of the movie right there! Just like everyone else in the world, I saw this movie when it first came out back in 1979, and it was truly stupid and launched Steve Martin's career far beyond all those skits and hosting gigs he did on Saturday Night Live, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and all other such comedy ventures. And I am still crazy today of the 2003 movie "Bringing Down The House" that he did with Queen Latifah and Eugene Levy. But it was not until last year when my then nineteen-year-old nephew who is enrolled in college to pursue a lifelong dream of being a comedian and screenwriter expressed an interest in this crazy movie that I then discovered had been released on DVD in 2005 and then bought in the interest of watching it and enjoying it all over again through the eyes of his youth.
Yet after seeing this movie uncensored and in its entirety for the first time in twenty six years, I did not laugh with Steve, I laughed at the unbelievability of Martin and the gullibility of us all in buying into this joke. How did Steve Martin get away with this mockery of every parent who have the responsibility of laying up for their children, of providing money and transportation for them to leave their homes on becoming adults so that they will be protected until they can provide for themselves? Had Steve been a black girl in Any Town, The World Over at any year in time, he would have been a victim to any and every predator who would have passed him walking down the street with mischief on their minds, and he certainly would have been if by dumb luck he had made it to the city, only to find himself with no money to pay for a hotel room, much less buy himself some food, and that has surely been the fate of too many runaways and throwaways that parents by their neglect, indifference and any other forms of emotional and physical irresponsibility have caused their children to become. And after reviewing this movie yet again this morning while knowing of adult children still suffering today as the result of parents who did not carry out this responsibility to provide for them to leave their homes with the protection of money and transportation, I continue to go unamused. No, I did not laugh with Steve this morning, nor will I ever again on this movie, and I can't believe that an actor as acclaimed as Richard Ward--and Mabel King too-consented to this sham that puts down any decent and responsible parents that remain out there. And to think Ward, who along with King, was carelessly setting his son out on his course in the face of whatever prevailing circumstances would snare and endanger him, had the nerve to demean everyone by giving Steve's character of Navin Johnson his last and only word of advice, which was to "Don't trust Whitey," who owns everything, including back then, Ward's contract! I am now going to go and happily re-watch "Bringing Down The House."
Ugly Betty (2006)
I Am Not Impressed!
I won't be surprised if this critique is rejected, because this is going to be ugly. In the process of throwing out all my old issues of TV Guide last evening, I came across the December 18-24, 2006's BEST OF 2006 issue on which "Ugly Betty's" America Fererra is prominently displayed on the cover, proudly showing off every metallic-braced perfect tooth in her head, while the caption emblazoned over her picture reads: "It's so wonderful to have a normal person be a romantic heroine!" I have not understood this TV show since its inception, wondering what real point is intended behind naming a show about a woman "UGLY BETTY," when every boy out there dreaming of the girl he will grow up and one day marry wants a "BEAUTFIFUL BELLA," which is why every ugly, or should I say "homely" girl is always picked last by the same boy looking to degrade her, and I don't care if the show is of Mexican-Latino origin or not. As such, the idea of making fun of a girl who is stout and not all that unattractive--in other words, exactly what Betty is--normal, is no issue, when consider that this is normal for most people worldwide. And the way they have attempted to impress further her disadvantage by playing up the braces thing is LUDICROUS! Who of us today who is as beautiful and svelte as Vanessa Williams or exquisite and voluptuous as Salma Hayak would get anywhere with cracked, decayed, broken, or even "NO" teeth due to deliberate parental neglect that we now will never get hired ANYWHERE to change for our OWN benefit, much less a not-as-beautiful and svelte or exquisite and voluptuous America Fererra whose parents took care of hers? No, it is not the world's view of a person's size, beauty, or the lack of it--all the way down to the braces on their teeth that makes a person "UGLY"; and if you think it is, look again at every movie and TV show in history where you will see people, the tall, the short, the thin, the fat, the black, the white and the green, the old and the young, the bold and the beautiful and the ugly and the sinful--it is the world's image of perfection that is so twisted that it would vomit out a young person who's trying to get back the life her parents threw away along with her teeth that she now will never get back because NO ONE will hire her for a job that she could live on, and with her being the smartest student that had grown up in her county; no man will want her for romance, ever--much less want to hire her for his company--never, and she will inevitably end up dying sick and alone in the gutter from disease that no job offering the medical insurance she'd needed to find it, much less the dental she'd needed to fix her teeth, had come along, which sadly has been the experience of a person very close to me sick and suffering to the point of death from her long neglected disease for over twenty years now.
Take another look at your TV screen and you won't see a soul on camera with teeth anything less than perfect, I don't care if they're yellow, irregular, encased in braces, false, whatever--not even a prime witness on the TV news that the camera will focus on for half a second before it pans away in pursuit of a lesser person who is not defaced or devalued by a lack of "perfect" teeth. It's time to wake up, people. No person was ever devalued for being "normal" beyond allowing all the skinny people he or she could whip to throw his or her worth into question, but there are too many people like this person close to me that have been throw away and then forgotten over the issue of bad teeth that was controlled by their parents and that this image- conscious world is now going to blame and penalize them for. America Fererra and everyone else out there crying over being "homely", less than svelte or curvaceous and/or having worn braces, should be so lucky to have (had) this problem of a "REAL" "UGLY BETTY."
The Lake House (2006)
Why Has This Not Been Done Before? And If It Has, Why Has No One Told Me!
I ordered this movie on DVD online Thursday, September 28, 2006, never having heard of it and simply because it was advertised at my DVD club website and I am well aware of these two actors' chemistry in 1994's "Speed," and thusly, thought it would be entertaining. Received it Friday, October 5, 2006 three days ago; finally got around to viewing it yesterday evening, Sunday, October 7, 2006. Why has this not been done before, and if it has why has no one told me! THIS IS THE BEST MOVIE I HAVE EVER SEEN! I am not into time travel anything because there's no such thing, but the way it is done in this movie blends fantasy, science fiction and romance in a way that grips you from the beginning and then bowls you over with all the 'speed' of a runaway bus! It is fantastic! There was not a scene in this movie that did not work, leaving me rooting for the characters of Dr. Kate Forster and architect Alex Wyler, getting to know each other through correspondence from her present year of 2006 and his present year of 2004 two years ago, to come together in of course, present day 2006 where he had not yet arrived. I had no idea where writer David Auburn was going with this movie even as I watched spellbound at what I perceived to be an original idea, but when it got toward the end, I screamed in excitement and anticipation of the happiness to come because I saw exactly were he was going and knew he was going to pull it off. And he did it brilliantly; in fact, I wish I had written this story! I don't know where I was when this movie opened in theaters earlier this year, but I am too thankful I found it at my DVD club two days after its release date which I just found to be September 26, 2006, my birthday! This is the best birthday present I ever got. Everybody should go and get this movie. Ten stars for writer David Auburn and the fabulous imagination that produced this blend of fantasy, science fiction and romance. And TEN STARS for stars Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves for finally giving us another one. Twelve years of waiting for them to co-star in another movie since they did 'Speed' in 1994, and in this release, they have topped themselves. 2006's 'The Lake House' was well worth the wait!
The Cartier Affair (1984)
A Very Funny And Romantic Pairing
I was quite surprised to find this made-for-TV movie on sale on DVD at Overstock.com Saturday, February 4, 2006 just one month ago, and naturally ordered it, receiving it just over a week later on Monday, February 13. Yet because I had seen it when it premiered on TV back in 1984, I had been in no immediate hurry to re-view it, and had thusly put it on the shelf and forgotten it. Well, Thursday night with nothing on TV but "American Idol" competition, I put it on, and it proved as entertaining as when all of America was introduced to it back then.
In "The Cartier Affair," David Hasselhoff plays ex-con Curt Taylor, who owes the number one prison convict Phil Drexler played by the deliciously slick-tongued and slick-headed Telly Savalas of "Kojak" fame---well, in effect, his life for protecting him in prison. Upon his release, he is given a tip about a job by an associate of Drexler, who steers him to an employment agent who is on the phone with the manager of Cartier Rand, over-the-top TV soap actress played by then-Dynasty soap diva Joan Collins, whose long-stressed secretary had finally snapped and been taken under arrest after shooting up Cartier's mansion and half of her possessions. Cartier, whose love life with long-time lover Morgan, played by the dapper Charles Napier, is as unsatisfying as her job and relationships with sycophant other associates, demands a replacement secretary in a hurry; yet rather than put her trust in another traitorous female, she requests that they send over a 'male.' Morgan, however, insists on a female secretary for his lady love because he is jealous of any other man who looks at her. However, the employment agent, looking for an opportunity to rip off Cartier of her jewels, takes one look at Curt who has just arrived in response to the job tip he had been given, and comes up with a ruse to satisfy them all---he tells Cartier's manager that he has the perfect secretary for her, a man, who is---in a word, gay. So very straight "Knightrider" Hasselhoff is roped into playing gay secretary to very straight Joan Collins, who thinks she'll be able to carry her distance to him off---that is, until he walks in her door, the cutest gay man she had ever seen walking on two legs. And it wasn't that the fabulously youthful Collins looked too old for Hasselhoff in this movie; at a height of---I believe---6'4", David was tall and all, but all gangly arms and legs and looked like had stepped straight out of high school, with his baby-doll smile and too mesmeric eyes for any man to have. With a padded resume that gave him a typing speed of a ridiculously impossible 120 words per minute, David is just there to get the goods on her security system and give them to his employment agent---until he starts finding himself falling for the woman so unlike her actress persona and as much in need of a real friend as he is. Naturally, a romantic pairing with this new employee that Joan herself terms a "gay secretary-turned straight gangster" is inevitable. But as what is wrong in both their lives unravels and is thrown into chaos, aided by the unexpected intrusion of a ridiculous ex-girlfriend of Curt and partner-in-crime played by an outrageous Randi Brooks, Curt and Cartier have to rely on each other to keep alive and exonerate themselves amid a most comical flee from Hollywood by limousine and trek to Mexico by Volkswagen to recover the jewels stolen by the crooked employment agent that is going to breathe life back into the despairing Cartier, having both been written off her soap opera and ripped off by her manager, who has extorted her money and run off with a stiff female associate. And once they have destroyed the bad guys and done just that in an even funnier plane ride finale and Cartier has gotten Curt off the hook with number one prison convict Drexler, the movie ends with the two so similar to each other staring blissfully at the moon under shelter of a cave in the middle of the desert, where they have not the slightest idea of how they're going to get back to Hollywood the next day. But with all the romantic possibilities that lay ahead of them secluded out there alone on a long balmy night---who cares?
Wedding Crashers (2005)
Agreement with previous comment as regards this movie's nudity
After receiving a selection from a DVD club last month, Dec. 29, 2005 because I neglected to reply before the decline date, I ordered this movie on its release date of January 3, 2006 to replace it because I had heard it was hilarious and would much rather pay for a movie I had wanted and could laugh at. But after waiting in anticipation for it to get here, it arrived today's date of Thursday, Jan. 12, 2006, I put it on in excitement, and have been literally "crashing" ever since. The nudity in this movie is so excessively gratuitous that I have yet to get past the wedding in scene two where several women (I was too appalled to count) hit the sheets with naked breasts flying everywhere with the lead characters in the space of seven seconds), and there are twenty one scenes to this two-hour-and-eight-minute movie. And this both on the Not Rated Uncorked edition and the Theatrical version! There was nothing in any of the advertising I've seen for this movie yet that suggested all such tasteless nudity, and I only regret I did NOT see the small square on the back of the DVD box stating below its "R" rating SEXUAL CONTENT/NUDITY AND LANGUAGE before I opened it. Hence, parents, keep your young children away from this movie that sadly includes young children it it! Far from flying high, The Wedding Crashers has crashed on takeoff, killing everyone on board! I am again out of $21.95 for another wasted movie I am not degraded enough to view!