Gideon58's Reviews

Have not seen Beckett, but I have never heard of it either SO I AM STILL OUTRAGED!

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Fear and Loathing in MoFo... The Gunslinger 45's Top 50 Favorite Films

In the 10 Ring: Gunslinger45's reviews

I have seen Becket and believe me, the screenplay did not deserve the Oscar over Dr. Strangelove.

Ghostbusters II is the surprisingly effective 1989 sequel to the 1984 box office smash which actually meets most of my criteria for a good sequel (see my review of The Dark Knight Rises) despite a few unexplained plotholes that gnawed at me throughout, but did not interfere with the entertainment the film undeniably provides.

I love that the film addresses the fact that even though our boys were heroes at the end of the first film, the realities of the damage they did to Manhattan are dealt with. The damage they did to the city resulted in several lawsuits and the eventual disbanding of the ghostbusters. However, the boys are forced to rally when a 15th century demon named Vigo has targeted Dana Barrett's baby.

Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis have constructed a viable screenplay which borrows a lot from the first film, but doesn't really rehash and, with the help of Bill Murray's loopy charm as Peter Venkman, make the film feel like a vacation to your hometown where you're catching up with old friends.

Sigourney Weaver is again an intelligent damsel in distress and Rick Moranis and Annie Potts provide some giggles as they reprise their roles as Louis and Janine. Also enjoyed David Margulies' return as the mayor, Kurt Fuller as his slimey assistant, and Harris Yulin as a judge with a very short fuse.

Though the film provides laughs and the same first rate special effects the first film did, I found it hard to get behind the film because the whole idea of a baby in danger was very unsettling for me and made it hard to fully commit to what happens here. And even though it might be considered nitpicking, I couldn't get past the fact that the Ghostbusters vehicle had the logo for the second film painted on the side and the film does have more endings than necessary, but it is a fairly entertaining ride and as far as sequels go, I've seen a lot worse. I've heard rumblings that plans are in the work to revive this franchise, but without the late Harold Ramis, that would just be wrong.

I still enjoyed Ghostbusters II, but I do not revisit it as much as I do the first one. Very well put.

Cowboys & Aliens is an outrageous and unprecedented melding of the western and science fiction genres that has all the ingredients for a first rate popcorn movie except for one thing...a story that makes sense.

The 2011 film opens with us encountering Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig), a cowboy who wakes up in an 1873 Arizona desert with no memory of who he is, a serious wound on his side, and a futuristic looking weapon attached to one of his wrists. Jake travels to a nearby western hamlet called Absolution where it is revealed he is a wanted man on multiple charges. En route to facing a federal Marshall, the town is attacked by a group of alien space ships that snatch up several citizens in the town, but Jake is somehow able to fend them off with his wrist weapon. Jake then teams up with a group of Absolution citizens, led by a military colonel/cattle baron (Harrison Ford), whose son (Paul Dano) was abducted by the aliens. Throw into the mix a mysterious prostitute (Olivia Wilde) who claims a vague connection to Jake and her own agenda regarding these bizarre events.

The story also involves a woman from Jake's past whose death he feels responsible for and a large cache of gold and a large gang of criminal cowboys who apparently were led by Jake who are torn by Jake's alleged reappearance in their gang, though Jake seems to have no recall of his association with them.

If this sounds confusing, it's because it is...this story is a valiant attempt at trying something off the cinematic beaten path, but there is WAY too much left unexplained. We're never sure if Jake is really from the 1870's west or from the future, where the gold came from and if it is real gold as we see it morph into an explosive device that blows a roof off a building or why a group of futuristic space aliens want control of an 1870's western town. I kept watching and waiting for that one scene or moment in the film that would pull everything together for me, but that moment never came, not even after the bloody and terrifying final act where the wild west and outer space have their final showdown.

As confusing as I found the story to be, I kept watching. I found this film absolutely riveting and could not take my eyes off the screen. Steven Spielberg and Jon Favreau served as executive producers of this film and Favreau also took on the mammoth directorial responsibility involved in the mounting of such an elaborate story, though Spielberg's touch is all over this...this is the kind of fantasy/adventure that Spielberg likes to produce and I'm sure he had Favreau's ear throughout production.

This film is expensively mounted with a great deal of care and detail and the casting works for the most part. Daniel Craig is the most durable action hero since John McClane and Harrison Ford shows he still has the chops to command the screen. Olivia Wilde makes the most of her most substantial screen role and there is also a solid supporting turn from Sam Rockwell as a saloon owner whose wife was also abducted by the aliens. There is some entertainment value to be gleaned from this film, as long as you don't think about it or try to figure it out.

That sounds a lot like my thoughts after I saw Cowboys & Aliens. It's a strange story that doesn't seem to have any real direction, but it's interesting enough to watch it to the end of the movie anyway.

I found Cowboys vs Aliens to be a huge disappointment. The pace was too slow, I agree the story was too ambiguous, and for such a cool title, the pay off was ultimately lacking for me in the end.

Words and Music was a big, splashy and mostly fictionalized biography of composers Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, whose Broadway successes included "The Boys from Syracuse", "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court", and "Pal Joey", but was really just one of those lavish music revues that MGM used to mount to show off their stable of stars.

If you're looking for actual information about the songwriting team of Rodgers and Hart, I suggest you go to the internet. If you want to see an entertaining musical featuring the best of MGM's talent, you needn't look any further than this one.

The plot follows the first meeting of the pair and a scattered look at their various successes on Broadway and in Hollywood and their romantic lives, particularly Rodgers' failed romance with the lovely Dorothy and Hart's with Peggy O'Neill.

Tom Drake was his usual bland self as Rodgers and Mickey Rooney's hyper-active Lorenzo Hart is a little on the annoying side, but Janet Leigh is lovely as Dorothy and Betty Garrett is fun as Peggy O'Neill, despite a definite lack of chemistry with Rooney.

The various musical guest stars include June Allyson performing "Thou Swell" from "Connecticut Yankee", Mel Torme singing "Blue Moon" and Judy Garland singing "Johnny One Note". Garland also performs a duet with Rooney called "I Wish I were in Love Again", which turned out to be the final time Garland and Rooney would perform onscreen together. There is also an elaborate ballet set to "Slaughter on 10th Avenue" featuring Gene Kelly and Vera-Ellen.

A fun time waster for musical lovers and Rooney lovers will be in heaven.

Slaughter On Tenth Avenue is my all time favorite dance number. I've watched it many times, it's brilliant and moving. Each movement by the dancers tells a small part of the story.

Evan Almighty is the 2007 sequel to the 2004 Jim Carrey comedy Bruce Almighty, though, technically, I wouldn't consider it a sequel because it really has nothing to do with the first film. This film plucks two characters from the first film and drops them in the middle of a completely different story. The film actually bears more of a resemblance to 1977's Oh God! than the Carrey film.

This infectious comic romp stars Steve Carell as Evan Baxter, the anchorman from the first film who has just been elected to the US congress, running on a "Change the World" platform. Just as Baxter moves his family to DC and begins working with a shady senior congressman (John Goodman), he is visited by God (Morgan Freeman) who feels Evan's campaign platform makes him the perfect candidate to be a modern day Noah. He commands Evan to build an ark in preparation for a great flood that's coming. Evan feels he has enough on his plate at this time and ignores the heavenly request, but as you can imagine, God is not taking no for an answer and Evan finds strong hints being dropped his way, like a HUGE order of lumber being delivered to his house, God giving him a copy of "Ark Building for Dummies", and a beard that no matter how many times he shaves, it instantly re-appears.

I found this film way more entertaining than the Jim Carrey film, primarily because Evan's character is more likable than Carrey's, even though, Evan Baxter was an obnoxious creep in the first film. Evan has been refashioned as a perfectly nice guy for this film, evoking more sympathy for the character, though the thought did cross my mind how different this film would have been with the Evan from the first film at the center of it, but it did not deter from my enjoyment of this film.

Steve Oedekerk's screenplay is clever, though, like Oh God!, I was somewhat troubled by the situations that God puts Evan in without having his back until the climax, which features some first-rate special effects. Carell is charming, as usual, and gets solid support from Goodman, Lauren Graham as his wife, and Wanda Sykes, John Michael Higgins, and Jonah Hill as congressional aides of Evan's. As suspected, Morgan Freeman is class personified as the Almighty, just as he was in the first film.

This is an entertaining comedy that avoids a lot of the preachiness that such a story could invoke and make sure you stay tuned through the closing credits.

After 35 years as a movie star, Jeff Bridges finally won an Outstanding Lead Actor Oscar for his performance in Crazy Heart, a rather somber and slow-moving drama with music that is pretty much a rehash of better movies of the past, primarily 1983's Tender Mercies.

The film, produced, written, and directed by Scott Cooper and based on a novel by Thomas Cobb, stars Bridges as Bad Blake (one of the worst character names ever, but a minor problem compared to the rest of the movie), an alcoholic country singer whose best days are definitely behind him, who takes way too long to reassess the mess his life and career have become, despite the possibility of a new beginning with an attractive young writer (Maggie Gyllenhaal) with a young son.

As mentioned, the film bears more than a passing resemblance to Tender Mercies because Mac Sledge, that film's main character, was also a faded country star except that Sledge knows from the beginning of the movie that his music career is a thing of the past, unlike Blake, who is deeply in denial about the fact and because he wants to sustain his career on his own terms, he continually ignores career lifelines that are thrown to him as well as ignoring the circumstances of his lifestyle.

Cooper's cliche-ridden screenplay delivers a lot of negative and unflattering messages and tries to provide easy fixes. I was troubled by Blake ignoring a doctor's warning to stop drinking but after breaking up with Gyllenhaal's character over his own actions, suddenly decides that he wants to get sober. I'm so over alcoholic movie characters who decide to get sober for the wrong reasons...getting sober only works if the alcoholic is doing it for himself and no one else.

Bridges delivers a solid performance in the lead role, but I think this Oscar was a "Body of Work" Oscar, honoring the actor for his career because he has definitely done better work (Fearless, The Door in the Floor, and The Contender come to mind). Gyllenhaal makes the most of an underwritten role and I personally didn't feel a lot of chemistry with Bridges but Colin Farrell is fine as a current country superstar who tries to help Blake and the Tender Mercies comparison is driven home with a brief appearance from that film's star, Robert Duvall, who also served as one of the producers, which surprised me as I can't believe he didn't see the parallels between this film and his 1983 triumph.

As a big Jeff Bridges fan, I was hugely disappointed by this film that was sadly just a rehash of better films of the past and my rating is based purely on my respect for the film's star.

I myself thought Evan Almighty was okay. Wanda Sykes was hilarious though. Then again she is rarely not funny.

As a country music fan, I was looking forward to the movie Crazy Heart, but while I enjoyed the music, I didn't really care much for the movie itself.

And I was very surprised to find out that Colin Farrell can sing.

For my money, the best film of 1955 was the lilting and romantic melodrama Picnic, Josh Logan's effective film version of William Inge's classic play that effectively blended small town Americana atmosphere with realistically drawn characters and one of the most sexual non-sexual love stories ever produced on film.

The film presents several different characters who are all citizens in a small Kansas town as they prepare for the town's labor day picnic and what happens when this event coincides with the arrival of a charismatic drifter named Hal (William Holden) who finds himself drawn to a romantic dreamer named Madge (Kim Novak).

Josh Logan has beautifully captured small town sensibilities as the backdrop for one of the most sexually charged romances put on film during the 1950's, despite the fact that the characters don't actually have sex. The chemistry created by Holden and Novak burns a hole in the screen and was unlike anything seen on the screen prior to this...their romantic dance to "Moonglow" is a classic within itself. I have never been much of a Novak fan, but she is just hypnotic here.

The other major story presented concerns Rosemary (Rosalind Russell), a lonely spinster who is putting serious pressure on her boyfriend Howard (Arthur O'Connell) to marry her. Russell nails the loneliness and desperation of this character in a performance that evokes sympathy and should have won her an Oscar.

Betty Field, Cliff Robertson, and Susan Strasberg deserve mention as Madge's mother, Hal's best friend and Madge's sister. A classic in every sense of the word. Remade for cable television in 1986.

La Bamba is the relatively entertaining 1987 biopic about Ritchie Valens, the rock and roll singer who died at the age of 17 in a plane crash, along with Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper.

The film chronicles Ritchie Valenzuela's humble upbringing as a child of an immigrant farm family, most notably an intense relationship with his older brother, who had always resented Ritchie's position as the prodigal son even before he started getting famous, the somewhat shaky beginning of his musical career, and his romance with one Donna Ludwig, who was the subject of one of Ritchie's biggest hit records.

Director/screenwriter Luis Valdez has mounted a cliche-ridden biopic that travels all the well-worn roads that movies of this ilk travel and seems to believe that we might not notice because several of the central characters are Latino, but sadly, we do.

Lou DIamond Phillips perfectly embodies young Ritchie and gets solid support from Elizabeth Pena, Rosanna DeSoto, and Joe Pantoliano, but it is Esai Morales' explosive performance as Ritchie's troubled older brother that it is the film's most watchable element.

It is the scenes between Phillips and Morales that make this film sizzle even though Ritchie is painted as a saint and his brother as the devil incarnate and, needless, to say, the film is sort of anti-climactic since we all know what's going to happen but Phillips is wonderful in that climactic scene where he makes the fatal decision to get on that plane because of how important it is to his career, despite his deathly fear of flying, but thanks to Phillips and Morales, interest is sustained for most of the running time.

Some delicious, over-the-top scenery chewing by the divine Meryl Streep is the primary reason to check out a bizarre black comedy from 1989 called She-Devil.

The film stars Roseanne Barr as Ruth, a frumpy and insecure housewife and mother who is crushed to learn that her accountant/husband, Bob (Ed Begley Jr.) has begun to have an affair with a glamorous romance novelist named Mary Fisher (Streep). When Bob finally decides to leave Ruth, she then sets out on an elaborate plan to exact revenge on her scummy husband, beginning with burning their home to the ground and sending her children to live with Bob and Mary.

This film was made during Roseanne's hiatus from the first season of her classic sitcom and was intended to make a movie star out of her, but failed dismally, primarily due to the fact that the character Roseanne plays here is not as smart or appealing as Roseanne Conner and it's hard to get behind a lot of Ruth's actions in this movie. It's a little hard to believe that a wronged wife would actually destroy her children's home merely as a way of getting back at her husband, which is also hard to buy because the character of Bob is really a jerk and why Ruth cares about his feelings or why Mary finds herself attracted to him are a mystery as well, which for me was the primary problem with this story...the character of Bob was just not worth these two women fighting over.

Director Susan Seidleman, who scored a bullseye five years earlier with Desperately Seeking Susan really misses here, but she is hampered by a screenplay that is kind of all over the place and some really unlikable characters, especially Barr's Ruth, who is supposed to evoke sympathy from the viewer, but does just the opposite.

What this film does have going for it is a perfectly executed comedy turn from the fabulous Meryl Streep, who manages to mine every bit of humor out of her character that the screenplay provides. As for the rest of the cast, Ed Begley Jr. is miscast as Bob and some minor laughs are provided along the way by Sylvia Miles as Mary's mother, who loves to tell anyone who will listen what a loser her daughter is and A Martinez as Mary's manservant/boy toy, but this is Streep's show all the way and without her, this film would have been impossible to get through.

Director Ron Howard nailed family dysfunction and the difficulties of parenting with a warm and entertaining 1989 comedy called Parenthood.

This episodic comedy centers on the Buckman family, led by one Gil Buckman (Steve Martin) and his wife Karen (Mary Steenburgen), who serve as the centerpiece for a dysfunctional family that includes Gil's hard-drinking father (Jason Robards), who took Gil to baseball games as a child and used to leave him alone and pay ushers to watch him. Dianne Wiest plays Gil's divorced sister, Helen, who is the mother of two teenagers, one a horny high-schooler (Martha Plimpton) sleeping with her boyfriend (Keanu Reeves) and the other (Joaquin Phoenix) wants to live with his father.

Tom Hulce plays the proverbial black sheep brother who has returned home with an illegitimate son and a get rich quick plan. Rick Moranis is effectively cast against type as a stuffed shirt married to Gil's other sister (Harley Kozack) who is raising his toddler like she's a sophomore in college.

The screenplay by longtime Howard collaborators Lowell Ganz and Babloo Mandel might play like an extended sitcom, but it is a very entertaining one, that provides consistent laughs without sacrificing realism or realistic situations. The screenplay is insightful and clever and well-served by Howard's hand-picked cast, who give uniformly fine performances down the line, with a standout performance from Wiest that earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Thanks to a smart screenplay, sensitive direction, some offbeat casting, and some fun performances, this is a very special comedy that got by a lot of people but is worth checking out. Later turned into a television series.

Dinner for Schmucks is a rambling, overlong, and unfunny comedy that is even worse than its title implies.

This pointless 2010 comedy stars Paul Rudd as Tim, a business executive who is promised a promotion if he brings the right person to a monthly dinner held by his boss, where his employees are instructed to bring the biggest idiot they can find so that they can make fun of the dumbest guest and actually give him a trophy as the evening's biggest idiot. Tim accidentally meets Barry (Steve Carell), a nerd who is into mouse taxidermy and before he actually goes to the dinner, ends up methodically destroying Tim's life, primarily by ruining his relationship with his girlfriend (Stephanie Szostak) by bringing a crazed stalker named Darla (Lucy Punch) into his life and messing up an important business dinner with clients from Switzerland.

Despite my opening remark about this movie, it was the title of the film that initially attracted me to this film but I learned you definitely can't judge a film by its cover. Let's start with a rambling screenplay that's all over the place and tries to cover so much ground that interest cannot be sustained for the film's unbelievably ridiculous running time. The section of the film where Barry ruins Tim's life just goes on way too long and has nothing to do with the original premise of the film. The story going straight from Barry and Tim's meeting straight to the dinner of the title might have been a good idea, but this part of the movie is just as ridiculous as the rest of it, adding a layer of mean-spiritedness to the boredom and stupidity that set in 45 minutes ago.

Jay Roach's direction is as all over the place as the screenplay and the performances aren't much better. Rudd and Carell are fighting the script all the way and Punch is over the top as Darla as is Jemaine Clement as an eccentric artist who has the hots for Tim's girlfriend. As much as I love Paul Rudd and Steve Carell, this movie is a mess. Jay Roach had much better luck a decade earlier with Meet the Parents.

This looks like a great review thread and DAMN there's a lot of reviews here. How come this review thread and Gideon58 seems so .... ignored around here?

Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, who had a smash hit with Wedding Crashers, reunited for a 2013 misfire called The Internship, an overly long and seriously unfunny comedy that presents a ridiculous premise based on a real internet empire that provides very few laughs the screenplay that steals from several more successful films of the past.

Wilson and Vaughn play Nick and Billy, respectively, a pair of salesmen who find their jobs have become obsolete due to the computer age, who decide to leap into the new millenium by entering an internship with Google, competing with a large group of techno geeks half their age for a handful of jobs.

This film has a myriad of problems that cannot be justified. I think screenwriters Vince Vaughn and Jared Stern showed major cajones basing a fictional story around the center of the internet empire. I don't believe for a minute that Google has an internship program where applicants wear beanies with propellers, divide into teams and compete in silly competitions like Revenge of the Nerds. I don't believe that Google has a huge restaurant in the lobby of their headquarters and don't charge anything for the food. This screenplay borrows way too elements from other films like Revenge of the Nerds, Mean Girls, and there are actually onscreen references to 1983's Flashdance, which really have nothing to do with what's going on during the film. I found it hard to believe that this is how Google is really run and how Vaughn and company avoided huge lawsuits after the release of this film is a mystery to me.

Wilson and Vaughn are still a strong team, but they just don't have a story worthy of their talent this time. Wilson is also given a lot of dialogue that just sounds like it's way above his head. Most of the supporting characters are unlikable and just not very interesting and Wilson's underdeveloped romance with a Google executive (Rose Byrne) just doesn't work because her character is just too much of a bitch.

This is an overlong and unfunny comedy not worth the time and throughout I kept wondering why Google hasn't filed any lawsuits yet.
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