Into the Blu

In watching the film that is the subject of this review, a number of sports cliches came to mind. You know, like “You’ll get them next time”, “You can’t win them all”, ‘Even a .300 hitter makes an out 7 out of t0 times.” For the sake of cliche completeness, you can also thrown in “Nobody’s perfect”. Well these cliches are all certainly applicable to the film that is the subject of today’s review, Woody Allen’s latest film, “You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger”. Woody, as my dad would tell me when I struck out in Little League, better luck next time. Continue Reading

It has certainly been quite a stretch since I first began reviewing The Mel Brooks Collection.  Through many movies I had seen before, and more that I had not seen, I gained a true appreciation for the craft of Mel Brooks.

For my last movie, I held back Blazing Saddles, the film that truly rocketed Mel Brooks to fame, and earned him the financial chops to produce atypical films such as Young Frankenstein and Silent Movie.

It has been more than two decades since I had seen this movie, and I was extremely curious to see how much I had remembered about it, and if it was as funny and crude as I thought. Continue Reading

The old saying goes that life is full of missed opportunities. While that is certainly the case from personal experience, the same can just as readily be said about the movie business. You see a great trailer, a film with a great cast and/or an interesting or promising premise and are disappointed when you actually see the film. Sometimes it is the trailer which is edited and presented in such a way as to give the viewer a false or at best a misleading look at the film. In some cases, that great cast isn’t so great and simply mails it in. In other cases, while the idea for the film is a good one, the script is just not up to the task. Sometimes the fault lies with one of these areas and at times a combination or all three. The result, a missed opportunity. Just such a missed opportunity is the subject of this review, You Again. Continue Reading

I was reading an article on the web the other day asking why anyone casts Jennifer Anniston in a movie anymore given that she is box office poison these days. The question asked was just how many more bombs would it take before she has a hard time getting any work. Given that she continues to get work, we clearly haven’t reached that point yet. Maybe soon give the trailer I have seen for her new film with Adam Sandler “Just Go With It”. In pondering this issue, which is not exactly one of the great issues of the day, it quickly dawned on me that Jennifer Anniston was far from the only one to ask this question about. Continue Reading

Lottery Ticket is brought to us by Erik White who has in the past primarily done music videos, this in fact being his first jaunt onto the big screen. While I’m not particularly a fan of anyone in this movie the previews I’ve seen for it appear decent. Will Lottery Ticket be a diamond in the rough, or a bust? Continue Reading

Romantic comedies are always hit and miss; there is rarely a perfect combination of laughter and believable romance. While the genre seems to be fading away in terms of quality there have been a few winners over the year, but ultimately I just see them as comedies now. While I never was interested in seeing this film in its theatrical run I am looking forward to it now. Casted with Justin Long (Waiting, Live Free or Die Hard) and Drew Berrymore (Whip It, Fever Pitch) it definitely has potential to be a funny movie in that quirky kind of way. Backing them up are Kristina Applegate, Jason Sudeikis, Charlie Day, and Ron Livingston. So will Going the Distance go the distance? Let’s find out. Continue Reading

It seems like Adam Sandler has pretty well given up on his vintage comedy style. With Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison over a decade old it appears like a whole new generation doesn’t know the Adam Sandler of Saturday Night Live and slapstick comedies like the aforementioned titles. Instead he’s done a plethora of family style comedies; Bedtime Stories, Click, Spanglish, etc. Initially I was hoping that Grown Ups would reunite a group of classic SNL alumni and be a laugh riot; do they come through? Starring Kevin James, Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, David Spade, and Rob Schneider the expectations are really high. Continue Reading

There was a time where spoofs were memorable and engaging films. Classics like Naked Gun, Hot Shots, and Scary Movie come to mind but nowadays the market is flooded with all too many of these films with all too little laughs. About every movie and genre gets its own spoof but this movie pretty much puts all its eggs in one basket, a very popular basket; the Twilight franchise. Vampires Suck is directed by the same guys who brought us Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, and Disaster Movie. I’ll let you decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Continue Reading

Knight and Day came out amidst action films such as The Last Airbender and Jonah Hex in the summer of 2010, with company like that my expectations were pretty low for the film and when I originally saw the trailer prior to its theatrical release it didn’t excite me even though I have enjoyed Tom Cruise’s other recent efforts with J.J. Abram’s MI:3. Were my initial expectations right or did I judge unfairly?

Continue Reading

I guess it is due to the fact that I am now what you might call middle aged (you know, too old to be young but not old enough to be really old), I can’t say that the though of another teen comedy had all that much appeal to me. However, I had to admit that the idea of a John Hughes style teen comedy crossed with a classic piece of literature, i.e. The Scarlet Letter, did sound interesting. The subject of that interesting cross pollination is the subject of this review, the highly entertaining Easy A. Continue Reading

I can’t say that I am fan of the HBO series Sex and the City. Perhaps it is a chick thing but I just don’t get it. The women, for the most part, are attractive enough, especially the scintillating Kim Cattrall, but I find their characters on the whole, uninteresting. While my wife is a fan of the series, she was less than thrilled with the first film, which was a just a a longer and more expensive version of one of the HBO episodes and didn’t exactly meet with much critical success. However, given that the film was a commercial success and further that Hollywood being Hollywood, can’t leave well enough alone, a sequel was inevitable and has now arrived on Blu-ray. Continue Reading

Most of my exposure to Janeane Garofalo has been to her appearances on politically tinged TV talk/news programs along with her appearance on the final season of 24. While I was aware of her short lived career as a radio talker on the now defunct Air America network.When I had the opportunity to request a Blu-ray review copy of one of her concert performances, I decided to give it a look to see what all the fuss is about. Was it worth it? Only if you are a fan. Continue Reading