What was the last movie you saw at the theaters?

My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006 - Ivan Reitman)

This is one of those high-concept pictures where the idea actually has some potential. Unfortunately it never becomes anything more than average. It wants to be The Incredibles meets Fatal Attraction by way of Manhattan, but it's more like Sky High meets The Crush (1993) through Sweet Home Alabama. Uma is fine as the jealous and insecure woman who is a superhero by night, but after a decent set-up it just goes nowhere except through the motions. There's no zip, no excitement, no roll out of your seat hysterics and nothing terribly clever. It just kind of plugs along. There are a couple gags that work here and there, a couple moments from Thurman or Luke Wilson that illicit a chuckle, but nothing consistently and nothing memorably. Even so, this is director Ivan Reitman's best movie in a while. After a dozen years where he's produced dreck like Junior, Father's Day (1997), Six Days Seven Nights and Evolution, that's not really much of an accomplishment. Actually, "not really much of an accomplishment" pretty well sums up the whole movie. They should put that on the DVD box.

GRADE: C-

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Miami Vice

Was it good?

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They probably will, only it'll look like this: "...an accomplishment."

I looked quickly and saw your forum handle and thought that The Taxi Driver was the last movie you saw in the theaters.

JA Cambece
JA Cambece Law Office

What an incredible powerful Aussie movie

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Nebbs...I can't see your image. There's just a white box with a red x through it.

Sorry Annie I can't see it now, it is an Australian movie called : Jindabyne I will try again.

Release Date: 20th July 2006
Details: 120 mins, M, Drama
Starring: Laura Linney, John Howard, Deborra-Lee Furness, Leah Purcell, Gabriel Byrne
[full cast]
Directed by: Ray Lawrence
Local Distributors: Roadshow Entertainment
Stewart Kane, an Irishman living in the Australian town of Jindabyne, is on a fishing trip in isolated hill country with three other men when they discover the body of a murdered girl in the river. Rather than return to the town immediately, they continue fishing and report their gruesome find days later. Stewart's wife Claire is the last to find out. Deeply disturbed by her husband's actions, her faith in her relationship with Stewart is shaken to the core. Determined to help the victim's family, Claire sets herself not only against her own family and friends but also those of the dead girl.

Little Miss Sunshine (2006 - Jonathan Dayton)

Little indie dramedy about a dysfunctional family on a road trip, and while there's nothing especially new or revolutionary in the material or approach, Little Miss Sunshine is a breezy, enjoyable and even sincerely sweet movie. The family consists of the Dad (Greg Kinnear), Mom (Toni Collette), Grandpa (Alan Arkin), teenage son (Paul Dano), pre-teen daughter (Abigail Breslin) and the Collette character's brother (Steve Carell). Carell is staying with the family after a suicide attempt, Arkin has been kicked out of his retirement home for a new heroin habit, Kinnear is anxious as his nine-step personal improvement success program is just about to get off the ground and be marketed, Collette has put all of her ambitions on hold for her husband's, Dano has taken a vow of silence until he realizes his dream of gaining admission at military flight school and little Abigail is still an optomistic child who doesn't have any idea how cruel the world can be. As if sharing a house wasn't tension filled enough, they pile into an old VW van and head off to California after they get a message that the little girl has qualified for a beauty contest at the last minute.

Pretty typical road movie situations arise, but gimmick-free direction and a very good cast add a charm and subtlty to it all. Carell, who has become something of a comedy superstar the past year between The 40-Year-Old Virgin and "The Office", and he's actually very good in a more dramatic role. He plays an academic who considers himself the preiminent Proust scholar in the United States but tried suicide after he lost his university position, was upstaged professionally by a collegue and was rebuked by a male grad student he had fallen madly in love with. He plays the depression perfectly, and the comedy arises in his bemusement at the other dysfunctional pieces around him. Arkin does his Arkin thing, which I frippin' love, as the old man who sees no reasons left to fit into society, so if he's going out he's going out witha smile on his face. Paul Dano has been doing some fine work in independent films this decade, starting with the controversial L.I.E. (2001) and continuing with The Ballad of Jack & Rose (2004) and the recent release of The King (2006), and he's well cast as the silently fuming teen who hates everyone. Kinnear, who made the transition from smarmy and sarcastic cable personality to Academy Award nominated actor with As Good As It Gets (1997) has done little of worth in the decade since, and while this character doesn't add anything new to his repertoire he's well suited for the movie and it may be a reminder to casting directors that he can do more than play the one-note heavy in the unnecessary Bad News Bears re-make. Collette has been an indie queen since she burst onto the international scene with Muriel's Wedding (1994), and while her character probably is the most underwritten of the bunch, as always she inhabits her perfectly. But the real heart and soul that holds the ensemble together is Abigal Breslin as Olive. Her biggest role before this was as the daughter in M. Night's Signs (2004) and she was one of the tykes in the forgettable paint-by-numbers Garry Marshall crapfest Raising Helen (2004). Her enthusiasm and innocence in Little Miss Sunshine are infectious, and makes the finale the film builds to all the more satisfying.

It's just a good little movie, the way even most little indies rarely are anymore.

GRADE: B

The last film I saw was Pirates 2. I liked it, but not as much as the first one. They had some funny parts and alot of references to the first movie like the rum. It really set up well for the third movie which I hope will be better then this this one.

A few days late, but my earlier point about agendas was far broader and more generic than everyone took it. Sorry for that. I just have a knee-jerk reaction to either end of the spectrum, and anything that seems to have The Answer to *any* problem in this world gives me hives. (I'm not talking religion, I'm talking just about everything else that's not ultimate causes.)

It's a personal thing, I realize, but it's just how it is. Even films that can really open my eyes and change my mind about something (Supersize Me, for instance) still get that same gut reaction from me. Habit, I suppose.

Last film I saw in the theater will be Lady in the Water tomorrow afternoon, with Gracie. (No spoilers, please. I've managed to avoid nearly ALL prerelease hype on this one.)

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Clerks II (twice)

and

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (Five time)

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James Sparrow's Rented Reviews!

The Reaping 7/10
Transformers 8.5/10
Flight of the Living Dead 6/10
The Invisible 6/10
Return to House on Haunted Hill 1/10
Planet Terror 8/10
A Mighty Heart 7/10

What are you saying! This was so good. It was touching in parts, It had the sexual humour much like all his other films. It gave all the characters a new look. I can't believe you didn't like this. This is one of the better Kevin Smith movies too.. Way better than Jersey Girl, and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. This one is way up there with the original Clerks and Dogma.

Same thing goes with your Pirates 2 review. That was an amazing movie. I hate how people complain about it being too long, when it was only 10 minutes longer than the original. It added so much more to the characters. I can't believe people dont like this movie.

On Tuesday I saw Hui Bui - Das Schlossgespenst It's a German movie...
Yo can find informations about it here:
http://www.german-cinema.de/app/film...p?film_id=1338

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Scoop (2006 - Woody Allen)

After the triumphant return to form last year that made Woody at seventy-years-old a "hot" writer/director again, his follow up is much less spectacular...though still enjoyable. While Match Point was purposefully a departure from Woody's signature voice and just about completely devoid of comedy, Scoop is very clearly identifiable as a Woody Allen movie and definitely a comedy. Ian McShane ("Deadwood", Sexy Beast) plays a famous newspaper reporter who has recently died. In the afterlife he meets a woman who believes she was murdered by her employer, a handsome son of a Lord with political ambitions (Hugh Jackman). She believes he killed her because she suspected he was the Tarot Card Serial Killer who has been terrorizing London streets murdering prostitutes. The prospect of breaking a story this big is too much for even a dead reporter to turn down, so he cheats death and rematerializes as a ghost hoping to tell what he knows to a living reporter. Who he stumbles on is a flighty American girl (Scarlett Johannson) who writes for her small college newspaper and a cheesy old American magician (Woody Allen). As a team they con their way into the upper crust society circles and start their investigation to see if this attractive, respected son of a Lord is actually a dangerous killer.

Scoop is really a mishmash of some previous Allen movies: Manhattan Murder Mystery, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion and Match Point. It's enjoyable enough, even though none of the twists in the mystery plot will suprise many people, and the jokes come fast enough that it doesn't matter too much how many of them fall flat (though many of them do). Woody at seventy is still doing his Woody thing as an on-screen participant, though I must say I was thankful that he has finally decided he can no longer be the romantic lead going after gals fifty years younger than him. But his nebbish, nervous, socially awkward persona is still amusing and can still deliver a terrific one-liner. Scarlett Johannson plays a much ditzier and more fun character here than her cold beauty in Match Point, and while I wouldn't say light screwball comedy is her strong suit she's fine in the role and does have a few good moments throughout, even if the rapid-fire dialogue she's handed is a bit much for her at times. Jackman is well cast as the suave charmer who may or may not be hiding something, and Ian McShane is good as the reporter with a supernatural nose for a story.

But while Scoop is clearly better than some of the other supposed comedies I've suffered through in recent weeks (My Super Ex-Girlfriend, Clerks II) and I'm sure better than those I didn't suffer through (Little Man, You Me & Dupree), I can't say it all comes together brilliantly, either. It's a diverting little bit of fluff with a few genuine laughs and smiles, but never switches into high gear to become a great movie. You can do worse, for sure, or you can stay home and rent Manhattan Murder Mystery and Match Point and Crimes & Misdemeanors and Annie Hall and do better. In the end this will fall somewhere on that second tier of Allen's work...though that's not such a bad place to find oneself.

GRADE: B-

Lady In The Water - really good and sad at one time. Kind of funny though.

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Miami Vice (2006 - Michael Mann)

When Michael Mann executive produced "Miami Vice" back in the 1980s, it was a hip, stylish and different take on the television cop show. While those specific elements are all dated now - especially the style, I suppose there was a slim chance the basic concept could be newly updated for a post-9/11 world and given a big screen boost. Whatever the odds were going in, the resulting movie crapped out on the first roll of the dice.

Moviestars Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx are now Miami detectives Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs, but there's absolutely nothing to distinguish them as characters. They are stock types, and nothing more. If the leads are just types you can guess how uncreative and unambitious the rest of the film is. At two and a half hours long, you'd think they'd be able to do something with the romantic relationships other than just tack them on as shallow subplots and go through the motions, but that's exactly what happens. Foxx and Naomie Harris are supposedly a couple, but apart from their obligitory sex scene, when he risks everything to save her near the end of the picture we just have to take his word that it means something to him, because it certainly isn't up on the screen. Even worse is Farrell and Chinese star Li Gong (To Live, Shanghai Triad, 2046), who supposedly fall madly in love with each other while he's deep undercover. I know the events in the plot that prove this, but there is zero chemistry between them and absolutely no sense of emotional involvement.

There's also no sense of visual style or place in this flick, which is puzzling. Mann can do both very well, as evidenced in his previous flick Collateral (2004). For all its contrivances, that movie had style to spare and painted an interesting picture of Los Angeles after dark. There is nothing of the kind in Miami Vice. And if you're going into this thing to enjoy a big, dumb action movie, know this: until the last twenty minutes, there's almost no gunplay of any kind. There is a big, climactic shootout, but frankly there aren't six frames of it that can touch what Mann did during the bank heist gone wrong that is at the center of his Heat (1995). In that movie and especially that sequence you got the feel for what being in firefight with large calibur automatic weapons in the middle of a city must be like. For the finale of Miami Vice we actually take a few giant steps backward and have more of a standard "A-Team" level shoot-em-up with little sense of the physical geography of where this is going down and a cartoonish sense of what a bullet does to flesh and steel. Though I should be careful in using the word cartoonish: that makes it seem as if this might be fun. It isn't.

What's left before the shooting is a drawn out dull procedural with no surprises and no wit, populated with cardboard characters, absent any real style or sense of place, no fun, no action, with nothing new to add to the genre while simply going through the motions (slowly going through the motions). It may be a step and a half up from Bad Boys II (2003), but it's about twenty-three steps below Heat (1995).


GRADE: D

Ok

Yesterday I saw Pirates of the Caribbean 2

Superman Returns

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