Recently saw Dinner for Schmucks highly recommend this film but next on my list will be The Other Guys tomorrow. Heard good things about it and i love will ferril so im stoked and will give my short opinion on it later on the Recently seen thread.
Put simply, this movie is da bomb! Or at least the BOB-OMB. Breathlessly yet wonderfully stylized and self-conscious, constantly amusing, effortless hipster doofusness, post-post-modern mash-up of romantic angst, deadpan comedy, a Musical and '90s Nintendo-era video games. Michael Cera is Pilgrim, a twenty-two-year-old Toronto lad who is in a band and dating a high schooler, still nursing the broken heart from his now-famous ex, the lead singer in a popular band. But he meets his dream girl, Romona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and quickly after becoming smitten realizes he must do literal battle with her legion of seven evil exes if he is to win her hand or heart or whatever. The fight sequences structurally work the way songs and dances did in the golden age of Hollywood Musicals, substituting gravity-defying Kung Fu and the like for melodic interludes. It may sound incongruous, and it probably should be, but somehow Edgar Wright and company manage to pull it off in an energetic and satisfying cocktail.
I read the comics when they first hit the scene in the mid-two thousandsies, and while I liked some of what was going on the Manga-infused adventures never quite pulled me in all the way. But the movie's mixture of all those disparate memes and modes had me hooked right away. Terrific young ensemble, including Alison Pill, Mark Webber, Kieran Culkin, Ellen Wong, Aubrey Plaza, Anna Kendrick, Chris Evans, Brandon Routh and Jason Schwartzman with an amusing cameo by Thomas Jane and Clifton Collins Jr. It's a heck of a lot of fun, I'll be seeing it again soon.
GRADE: B+
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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
Good acting abounds in this amiable but ultimately a bit too lightweight fable about regret. Set in a small backwoods town in Depression Era Tennessee, Robert Duvall is Mr. Felix Bush, a cranky hermit with a rifle-popping greeting to strangers and no use for people, just him and his mule living on his dense, untended acreage. One day he ventures into town looking for the preacher, hoping to arrange his own funeral. The twist is he wants to have it while he's still alive. The church wants nothing to do with it, but the local undertaker, Frank Quinn (Bill Murray), and his earnest assistant Buddy (Lucas Black) are willing to take on the task, especially as people don't seem to be dying at a rate that will keep the business solvent. Bush wants to invite anybody and everybody from the town or surrounding counties who will tell stories about him, 99% of which are local tall tales and dark rumors. There's also going to be a raffle, and whoever wins will legally inherit his timber-rich land when he kicks. While there is understandable reluctance at first, soon everyone is in a tizzy. Most everyone. There's one woman, Mattie Darrow (Sissy Spacek), recently returned to town, who seems to be one of the few humans who actually knows of him before he became the ill-tempered aged recluse.
It has a nice set-up, loving period detail, and all of the principle actors, including the venerable Bill Cobbs who plays a Reverend from the next State who knows some of Felix's darkest secrets, are just tops. Unfortunately the finale, that big funeral "party", is quite anti-climactic, and by the time the weary character is cleansing his soul all of the wit and steam have been replaced by a rather flat Hallmark Hall of Fame style conclusion. Cinematographer turned director Aaron Schneider's debut is beautifully shot and the assemblage of actors is impressive, but the script by Chris Provenzano and C. Gaby Mitchell doesn't have the conviction to either stick with the dark comedy until the bitter end or, barring that, layer in some legitimately emotional Capraesque fantasy. Despite the efforts of the strong cast, the ending is quite hollow and uninspiring.
While the flaws of the film's final third will keep it from becoming any kind of classic, the positives definitely make it worth a look, especially for previous Oscar winners Bobby Duvall and Sissy Spacek as well as former nominee Billy Murray, all of whom will be in the running for various prizes this coming awards season. Too bad the film as a whole isn't as good as the three of them.
The last movie I saw in a theater was "The League Of Extrordinary Gentlemen".
I can't say I cared for it.
I don't know, they just never "hooked" me, I found myself just not giving a damn, and that's about the most scathing review I think a movie can have: indifference.
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