Iro's One Movie a Day Thread

I enjoyed Armageddon. And I enjoy Michael Bay. Sure - his movies are abit over the top, but there incredibly fun. I always shed a tea at the end of this movie aswell.

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I didn't care much for Giant. I preferred it when they made it as Dallas. I thought Armageddon was really crap.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

I do like Giant a lot

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Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.
Buddha

#211 - Bull Durham
Rod Shelton, 1988



Focuses on two players for a minor-league baseball team - one an impulsive rookie pitcher, the other a cynical veteran catcher - and the obsessive fan who tries to start affairs with both of them.

Supposedly, Bull Durham is one of the greatest sports-themed comedies ever made - or at least that's what the hype says. I figured I could look past the fact that it's about baseball, a sport I don't find especially engaging, as long as the plot, characters and humour were solid enough. It's not like its three leads - Kevin Costner as the veteran, Tim Robbins as the rookie, and Susan Sarandon as the fan - haven't turned in amusing performances during their careers either. While I can sort of appreciate how it would have earned its reputation as a minor classic, I ended up finding Bull Durham something of a disappointment.

The concept's got some legs, I guess. Sarandon plays a minor-league fan whose near-religious devotion of the game extends to her beginning a romantic affair with a different player each season, rationalising it as her way of giving players a crash course in life experiences and thus making them into better baseball players as a result. During the current season, she ends up having to choose between Robbins and Costner. Though much of the film is filtered through her viewpoint (she even narrates at specific intervals), not even the many quirks she displays make her all that interesting or engaging as a character. Robbins and Costner, meanwhile, have a prickly relationship of their own as Costner's new job upon transferring to the Durham Bulls is to teach Robbins how to harness his considerable pitching talent. What follows is a fairly stock example of a grouchy mentor using unorthodox methods that gradually sink in with an insolent student. Fortunately, Costner is able to sell his side of the conflict well enough with his trademark apple-pie charisma that's been given an edge by the years of disillusionment that his character has undergone, and he's still got the best lines in the movie (his "I believe..." monologue is probably the high point of the film - and it's about a third of the way into the running time). Robbins, by comparison, doesn't get to do much of note except be the ditzy plaything of both Costner and Sarandon, who both demand a lot from him in different ways.

Beyond the interplay between the three leads, there's not all that much of interest to me here. Baseball humour, I guess, which explains why a lot of this movie sounds so flat to me. Not even a simple gag like Costner instructing Robbins to deliberately pitch at the rival team's mascot got anything out of me. So, yes, I am giving this film a very negative rating, but it's not that I hate it, it's just that it does next to nothing for me. It may very well do a good job at capturing the various colourful characters that congregate in and around the world of minor-league baseball, but that doesn't necessarily mean the end result is an interesting one or even a consistently entertaining one. Not even the bizarre love triangle at the heart of the film does anything except give me the chance to witness Costner's considerable talent being wasted on an extremely mediocre (if not necessarily generic) rom-com plot.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

#212 - The Natural
Barry Levinson, 1984



A talented young baseball player is seriously wounded and doesn't get to play professionally until he is much older, yet he still has enough ability to win games and earn people's attention.

Despite my unfavourable impression of Bull Durham, I decided to follow it up with the other baseball movie on my DVR. The Natural covers similar ground in that it's about a baseball player who never got to reach the big-time. Here, the player (Robert Redford) is not beset by a relative lack of talent, but instead by tragic circumstance as he is unexpectedly shot and wounded, torpedoing his promising career for over a decade. When he finally ends up playing baseball again after sixteen years, it's for a losing team stacked with old, unknown players. It's due to Redford's incredible batting talent that the team starts to win games, which draws the attention of an incredibly corrupt judge (Robert Prosky) who wants Redford to start throwing matches for his own gain.

The Natural is a movie I have rather mixed opinions about. The underdog narrative makes enough sense given the plight of Redford's character and the team he joins, but the plot doesn't get any variations that totally justify the film being 140 minutes. There are a couple of romantic complications such as Redford being torn between his childhood sweetheart (Glenn Close) and an upscale city woman (Kim Basinger), though they are carried more by the performances than the writing. The same could be said of the rest of the cast, with strong actors like Robert Duvall and Richard Farnsworth elevating the somewhat average material. Though it plods along for the most part, it does generate some serious tension during its third act. The period setting is adequately captured through decent costume design and heavily filtered cinematography, but not enough so to compensate for a rather dry script.

#213 - Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures
Jan Harlan, 2001



A documentary about the life and filmmaking career of Stanley Kubrick.

I'm one of those exceptionally boring film fans who cites Kubrick as one of his favourite directors and I've seen almost everything he's made (I haven't seen anything he's made prior to The Killing...yet). Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures is a documentary made about the late director that brings together a wide variety of loved ones, collaborators, and big-name fans in order to discuss the man's genius and trace his life from his childhood in New York through his original career as a photographer before becoming a film director until his 1999 passing. Fortunately, the film is aided in this pursuit by the fact that there have been many a picture or film taken of Kubrick from his earliest years onwards, fleshing out the film considerably with all sorts of behind-the-scenes imagery to complement the talking heads and excerpts from virtually every one of Kubrick's cinematic undertakings (it does skim over a couple of his lesser pre-Killing films, though this is rather understandable).

A Life in Pictures plays out in chronological order and devotes a good few minutes to each film along with cursory examinations of his personal life both during and between each project. The people who knew and worked with Kubrick offer some insight into his creative process (for better or worse, as Shelley Duvall will certainly testify), while family members and friends will recount what he was like as a person (perhaps unsurprisingly, his perfectionist tendencies are present even when he is filming home movies of his young children playing). The "fans", few though they are, at least consist of directors who are well-respected in their own right such as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, and Sydney Pollack (though the latter also worked on Eyes Wide Shut and thus a considerable amount of his screen time is focused on his own Kubrick anecdotes). In that regard, Scorsese easily comes across as the best commentator as he enthusiastically expounds on just what he loved about each and every Kubrick film he saw - Spielberg and Allen, not so much. It's a shame that we didn't get to hear more from Spielberg considering his friendship with Kubrick.

Unfortunately, A Life in Pictures is let down by the fact that, unlike most of Kubrick's actual films, it doesn't do anything revolutionary when it comes to filmmaking (though this can probably be credited to the fact that the director is Kubrick's brother-in-law and an executive producer on several of his films, whose only other directorial credit happens to be a documentary about A Clockwork Orange's Malcolm McDowell). It's well over two hours in length, so your interest in such a film will naturally be determined by how much you care about Kubrick; even then, it doesn't go into too much depth about its subject and instead just covers the basics of his life story and his directing with the aid of guest stars. Eyes Wide Shut star Tom Cruise narrates the film, but his attempt to convey an air of impartiality comes across as dull and monotonous. Worth a look if you're interested in a superficial summary of the complicated individual that was Stanley Kubrick and his colourful career, otherwise it will most definitely not be of interest.

#214 - Mean Girls 2
Melanie Mayron, 2011



A tomboy high school student transfers to a new school and is quickly wrapped up in a war with the "Plastics", a trio of popular girls who more or less run the school.

The original Mean Girls was a surprisingly clever comedy underneath its potentially alienating PG-13 high school comedy surface thanks to a highly quotable script and some good casting for great characters. Mean Girls 2 is a straight-to-video sequel that is considerably lacking in terms of both great writing and acting. I know by now that sequels to hit comedies rarely pan out, especially if they don't even bring back the original cast or creators, but I still figured that Mean Girls 2 was at least worth a shot.

At first, the film seems different enough by having protagonist Jo be the only child of a single father (played by the guy who played Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat) who was constantly transferring due to the dad's job as a racecar mechanic, which also resulted in Jo becoming skilled with technical studies but left her somewhat socially impaired. There's also the angle involving the millionaire father of a constantly-bullied wallflower paying off Jo to be said wallflower's friend in a way that you know will blow up later. Of major note is the fact that the protagonist's interaction with the Plastics (who do follow the same "nasty leader/neurotic offsider/promiscuous ditz" template from the original) is less about joining their group in order to sabotage it and more about getting into a constantly-escalating prank war that leads to the formation of an anti-Plastic clique, and so on and so forth. Also, she meets a guy, because of course she does. Despite the considerable amount of variations, this film follows a lot of the exact same beats when it comes to developing its narrative, especially during the second half (though this film resolves itself in a much more clichéd and uninspired manner). All the sizzle, but not enough steak.

Unsurprisingly, Mean Girls 2's biggest problem is that it just isn't funny. While it took a couple of viewings for the first film to truly grow on me as a comedy, there's nothing here that really sounds like it'd improve on repeat viewings or even inspire me to actually watch this a second time. The generally poor quality of the acting isn't a big help either - while the first film was loaded with solid comedic personalities, the second one is full of stilted performances from its younger cast members and the bulk of them don't even have enough character development to make up for that. The only actual laughs I got out of this film happened to come from Tim Meadows reprising his role as the incredibly worn-out and frustrated principal from the first film. He deadpans his way through the thing like he knows just what he's gotten himself into. So Mean Girls 2 ended up being more or less how I imagined. Despite its obvious badness, part of me wanted to like it - in its defence, it's not a totally hateable film. Unfortunately, it feels like it's coasting on the charm of its predecessor and uses that in order to get away with a film that frequently alternates being a simplified copy and a generic straight-to-video high school comedy.

First When Harry Met Sally and now Bull Durham. Stay away from rom-coms, Iro. They're not you friend.

#215 - Charlie's Angels
McG, 2000



Focuses on the titular trio of secret agents who work for a reclusive millionaire and must work to solve a case involving a kidnapped inventor.

In my review for 21 Jump Street, I noted how the film tried to pass self-deprecating judgment on itself by having a character remark about the fundamentally terrible concept of sequels and remakes. This cinematic remake of Charlie's Angels pulls the same stunt as part of its cold open - I suppose that's supposed to let this film off the hook, but no such luck here. The entire concept of Charlie's Angels may have been so campy even in 2000 that they more or less had to give the remake a more pronounced comedic edge, but they still went ahead and proceeded to make the film a fairly straightforward action film with the overtly comic elements seeming like they were grafted onto an already-finished product at times. Despite that (and the fact that two of the three stars are best-known for making comedic movies), it's still pretty low on laughs. Extremely on-the-nose music choices (at one point the Angels go undercover at a Japanese-themed massage parlour and the soundtrack to the scene is none other than "Turning Japanese"), awkward romantic sub-plots (Cameron Diaz's fling with Luke Wilson's easy-going bartender being the one given the most attention) and one-liners I'd have to look up the film's IMDb page in order to reference because they're so forgettable. Not even the presence of Bill Murray and his capacity for flat yet effective sarcasm is enough to endear me to this film's comical side

Which leaves the action side to be considered. What action there is ends up being pretty standard at best and at worst rendered too implausible for the sake of comedy (case in point - Drew Barrymore being tied to a chair and telling a group of henchmen to stop attacking until she can free herself, then attacking them anyway), and as I've mentioned before, the comedy doesn't do much for me anyway. There's a lot of the usual stuff - car chases, explosions, fight scenes (considering how close together the two films were released, I have to wonder if the tendency towards capturing physics-defying martials arts in slow-motion was supposed to be a rip-off of The Matrix or not - there is at least one scene that uses similar-looking "bullet-time" effects, so it's quite possible). Some of the fight scenes are alright, but they can't really salvage this extremely tedious and unfunny excuse at trying to adapt the series for the modern generation.

#216 - Disaster Movie
Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, 2008



When disaster strikes New York City, a young man must venture into harm's way in order to find a way to stop the disaster.

When it comes to rating a piece of entertainment, I avoid using the zero rating, but every once in a while I end up watching a movie that makes me reconsider that rule. Disaster Movie is one such movie - it is yet another release by the notorious duo of Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg, who have been churning out a number of comedies that only do the most basic parodies of hit movies (sadly, this extends to comedies as well) using seriously witless jokes. Given the horrendously negative reputation of both these filmmakers and their cinematic output, it seemed almost inevitable that my tendency towards watching bad movies would lead me to watch at least one of their works, if only out of extremely morbid curiosity. With that in mind, why not make it their absolute worst one yet? All we are is dust in the wind, after all.

Even if your sense of humour leans toward the politically incorrect, even you might struggle to find anything remotely amusing about the jokes in Disaster Movie. Should you bring yourself to leave aside the more blatantly offensive jokes (such as the film's Carrie Bradshaw substitute being played by a man, the reveal that the movie's version of Princess Giselle from Enchanted is a transvestite, or even the various gay-panic jokes made about a totally naked Beowulf), you still have to contend with the fact that this movie is an incoherent mishmash of shallow pop culture references that get milked (quite literally, in one scene featuring the titular protagonist of Juno) for punchlines as crude as a PG-13 rating will allow - and then it turns out I've watched the unrated cut so they get even worse. This much is evident by the movie's finale, which is a recreation of the "I'm F***ing Matt Damon" song featuring every single character in the movie - and even after it's over there's still eleven minutes of closing credits (in a movie that doesn't even reach ninety minutes). How does that happen? I ask that question rhetorically, but the actual answer is apparently a gag reel that's just as bereft of laughs as the rest of the movie.

The movie frequently involves instances where the parodies merely consists of having its caricatures of characters recite actual lines from the original movies verbatim before a totally left-field punchline happens (such as several characters being crushed by Twister-style flying cows mere seconds after appearing). Some of them end up being a nightmarish kind of unfunny, such as the demonic Alvin and the Chipmunks wannabes that appear about halfway through the movie. As if the jokes aren't the most poorly written ones I've seen or heard in quite some time, not even the movie's cast can do good enough impressions in order to sell them at all (except possibly the movie's Juno substitute, but considering what the original was like that's hardly a point in this movie's favour). Disaster Movie deservedly earns its reputation as one of the worst movies ever made. The acting is horrendous, coherent plotting is sacrificed for the sake of humour that is painfully obvious at best and horribly distasteful at worst, the technical elements are terrible, and of course the musical numbers are atrocious. This is a strong contender for the worst movie I've ever seen and it actually has the lack of quality necessary to back up such a claim. Seriously the worst.

Why even bother with something like this? it's not even so bad it's funny, it's just BAD.

I had to know.

Iro reminds me of Nostalgia Critic IMO. It almost seems like he enjoys bashing bad movies.

Oh and great review of Charlie's Angels. I agree with everything you said. Can't wait for a good HK response, if it isn't fun I'll be extremely disappointed.

He enjoys bashing good movies too. Not that I'd classify any of the most recently reviewed films as good, except Bull Durham. I like that one.

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But his best reviews are always a good criticism of crap movies. Which is why Iro is similar to him. His score and review of Up is boring compared to the Disaster Movie review.

Speaking of NC bashing good movies recently, The Matrix?

Yet my positive reviews generally get more +rep from people anyway - I gave The Straight Story a and it got +12, which I'm pretty sure is the most repped review I've written since this thread's inception.

Yeah people tend to rep reviews about films they've seen and tend to like a positive view to a film, especially if it's one they like. Unfortunate, but it also means when you're in a rep drought you always have a way to get out of it.

#217 - Shane
George Stevens, 1953



A drifter rides into town and befriends a farmer and his family before drawing the ire of a local land baron.

It's pretty clear why Shane is considered one of the most iconic Westerns in cinema history. The narrative is a tried-and-true one about the seemingly amoral protagonist defending the virtuous yet helpless good folk of the land against the corruption of a local tyrant and his unambiguously vicious offsiders. Said protagonist, the titular drifter, also shows he has a heart by bonding with one family in particular, with an undercurrent of romantic tension with a farmer's wife and becoming something of an adventurous hero to a small boy. Though Alan Ladd hits all the right notes when it comes to playing the laconic anti-hero with a soft side, he is but one part of a strong ensemble of both heroes and villains - the other good characters are decent enough (even the kid isn't totally annoying), but the villains really do stand out in this film. Jack Palance in particular steals almost every scene he's in as an especially nasty henchman who naturally wears dark colours and oozes menace in every frame.

The work behind the camera is decent as well, showing some serious quality without overshadowing its story. In that regard, it's about par for the course as far as Westerns from the 1950s go. Though the narrative may be a bit too rudimentary for its own good, it's packed out reasonably well with some good performances and decent action sequences - a prolonged bar brawl here, a tense quick-draw there - and is definitely worth watching if you're interested in American film in general, let alone Westerns.

#218 - On the Town
Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1949



Three sailors have one day of shore leave in New York City and decide to go looking for adventure and romance.

Though I'm still not all that well-versed in the works of Gene Kelly - I think this is the only other film of his I've seen other than Singin' in the Rain, which I did like - I hold out hope that his films, while not exactly the most profound or thought-provoking of films, are at least fun and make for dazzling visual feasts. On the Town may not quite reach the level of Singin' in the Rain, but it at least delivers reasonably well on its promise of a fun little romp as it follows its three plucky protagonists (Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munshin) as they get into all sorts of hijinks during one day in New York. They all manage to find some counterparts - Kelly spends much of the film searching for Vera-Allen's poster girl after they have a meet-cute in a train station, Munshin manages to attract the attention of Ann Miller's Neanderthal-loving anthropologist, while Sinatra is initially more interested in visiting the city's landmarks than the amourous advances of Betty Garrett's taxi driver. Shenanigans (and song-and-dance numbers) ensue.

Obviously, On the Town is the kind of old-school Hollywood musical where you have to suspend some considerable disbelief and the fact that much of the film is overly cheerful to the point of becoming grating. Fortunately, the quality of the numbers - both in terms of the songs and the choreography - is enough to overcome that (with the possible exception of "Prehistoric Man", which was perhaps a bit too silly for my liking, and to a lesser extent the "Comedy in Three Acts" fantasy sequence). The same goes for the between-numbers scenes, which are carried by the considerable abilities of the lead actors and actresses. The humour is also warm and solid - I don't think I'm likely to forget that one scene where one of the heroes tries to evade the police while at the top of the Empire State Building any time soon. It's definitely worthwhile if you have more than a passing interest in classic Hollywood musicals - even if it's not, it's good enough that it might just sway your opinion a little.

I haven't watched the Nostalgia Critic like since November. Doug is a very funny man. I'm not a fan of his newer episodes, however, though they aren't completely bad, just inferior to his prime. Hell I haven't even bother to finish up the Korra vlogs or watch Ghibli-cember.