Archive for June, 2005
Robots (2005)
Voice talent including Halle Berry, Drew Carey, Mel Brooks, Terry Bradshaw, Greg Kinnear, Robin Williams, Ewan MacGregor, and Jennifer Coolidge, this is a highly under rated animated flick by Dreamworks. I laughed quite a bit in this movie, and I thought that, even though robots are done quite a bit in movies today, this was still a endearing and inventive movie.
Rodney the robot sees a robot on TV named Bigweld, who invites all inventors to come to robot city and have their ideas come to life. Rodney grows up with that dream, to help out his family, and heads to the city, only to find out that it isn’t as he thought.
About helping people, and never to loose your dream, two cliche ideas, this movie is still engaging and fun.
See this one, it will make you forget Shark Tale.
The Rocketeer (1991)
A Disney movie when they were still making good ones in the early 90’s, The Rocketeer stars Jennifer Connelly, Timothy Dalton and Paul Sorvino and is set in the 40’s at the star of WWII. Cliff (Bill Campbell), a no name loser pilot comes into the possession of a jet pack that empowers him to do good and stop evil. Nevlin SinClair (Dalton former Bond) is a Nazi in hollywood, with hopes of mass producing this successful version of the pack in Germany for a whole fleet of airborne troops in a really cool retro type video.
I liked this movie then, and has held up well with ILM doing the special effects, what do you expect. Good family movie, a fun character created by Dave Stevens, who is pretty well known in the comic book world. Plus this is Connelly’s breakout role, and she is just a classic beauty you don’t find anymore.
Road Trip (2000)
A college movie that has such a nostalgic feel for me, we watched the unrated version on the ride home from Charlotte, which is just a touch more raunchy than the version I own. Starring Tom Green, Sean William Scott, and Amy Smart this movie is all about the plight of one stupid horny college kid. Josh (Breckin Meyer) has one adulterous night with a sexy girl (Amy Smart) and videotapes it. One of his roommates inadvertently mails it to his current girlfriend in Texas. 1800 miles away, they take a road trip to get the tape back, and have all sorts of crazy fun, with Sean William right in the middle, from jumping a river in a car, to hanging at an all black fraternity, to stealing a bus from a group of blind people.
A little embarrassed that I like this, but it was such a great movie for where I was at, and I would give it five of five, but I am not quite that bold. I just wouldn’t recommend this to anyone, especially my family.
I liked this movie then, and has held up well with ILM doing the special effects, what do you expect. Good family movie, a fun character created by Dave Stevens, who is pretty well known in the comic book world. Plus this is Connelly’s breakout role, and she is just a classic beauty you don’t find anymore.
Eurotrip (2004)
One of the last recent stupid “college” type movies, I saw the unrated version of Eurotrip again on my trip to Charlotte. The first time I saw it by myself, and didn’t really enjoy it that much. It helps to see it with other people with a good sense of humor.
The movie is about a kid who gets dumped in a terrible way, and then finds out his penpal in Germany is a girl, not a boy. So he heads out with a friend to Europe to try to find this girl and get with her. The movie has small roles for Matt Damon and Kristen Kreuk as the evil girlfriend, and Michelle Tractenburg, and that is it. The movie has a silly guy, but he isn’t really that funny, and that is really what is missing in this movie, a crazy funny college guy that does anything. Most of the humor relies on painful and awkward scenes relating back to sex, like a drunk brother and sister making out, and a crazy sado scene in Amsterdam.
If you liked Road Trip, this is a lesser shell, with less depth, but has it’s own good qualities if you like these type of movies.
Johnny Dangerously (1984)
Danny Devito, Michael Keaton, and Peter Boyle in a silly slapstick movie about 50’s gangsters. Michael Keaton is Johnny Dangerously and has a knack for being the shiniest guy in organized crime, with a big smile and an “everybody likes him” personality. He is able to buy almost anyone, except for his little brother, who he guides to become a lawyer, and the D.A. who ends up tracking down Johnny. But a little mix up happens and little brother tries to prove Johnny’s innocence.
Most notable for the un Americanized gangster that kept slurring his curses, he would say, “Ima gonna teer off yer arms and steek dem in yer isore you corksoocker.” That and all of the Keaton isms, like waxing turtles at his under cover pet shop to his dim witted good luck.
This movie goes good with a couple beers. It is early 80’s silly, and I think my parents would like it, but unless you really like Keaton’s style, you may not want to see this one with a whole cast of nobody’s.
Shall We Dance (2004)
I spent a good part of this movie chuckling, it just left a lot of actions and scenes completely unexplained.
Starring Stanley Tucci, Richard Gene, Susan Sarandon, and Jennifer Lopez this movie has two intermingled small ideas that are actually of note. First, Richard Gene starts to take dance lessons and doesn’t tell his wife, because he is ashamed that he wants to be even more happy when he already has so much. Second, that people get married as a witness and promise to one another’s lives, that they will take note and care even about the most mundane of intricacies. From there on out, the intelligence of the movie falls flat.
Real quick, Gene takes up dance lessons, his wife hires inspector to figure out if he’s cheating, he hits on Lopez without success and still comes back to class only to have a steamy dance with her later on, and then he gets mad when the wifey finds out what he’s been doing on Wednesday nights. Everyone loves him for some reason, and we just assume that it’s because he is decent looking, and begs him to come back for one last time, to see Lopez as she goes away to dance in England.
I can objectively watch, and enjoy at times, a good chick flick. This was just a weird movie. Jennifer Lopez was weird, Susan Sarandon was overly mad about something kind of strange without any build-up, and Richard Gene did a couple of those trademark smile-blinks, and show head shakes that repeated every performance he’s made since Pretty Woman.
I would recommend this movie to people who want to see a movie with some good dancing, especially different ballroom dances. Jennifer Lopez looks really good when she dances. But although this movie has more meat than just dancing, it really is quite weird, and doesn’t much qualify as a chick flick. So, watch for dancing and not about much else.
Sahara (2005)
A fun movie. You may be concerned about this being a knock off of other treasure hunting movies, but this is more about the action then it is about the spoils.
Starring Matthew McConaughey, Penelope Cruz, Steve Zahn, and William Macy, this is a story about a couple of ex-navy men who start out looking for an iron clad ship from the Civil War and end up stopping a global threat in Africa. The dictator is generating solar power and buckets of toxic waste that are being piled up and are leaking into the drinking water, and into the Nile. This polluted water is spreading disease, and if it filters to the ocean, it can pollute all of the water in the ocean in a matter of months.
Steve Zahn was really the stand out here for me. Not having been a sidekick in a major action film, he does a nice job of balancing dry, sarcastic quips, with some serious acting and pulls it off fairly well, with the guns, and the machismo and all that. The story itself starts out with a long dialogue that basically is just so perfect and unrealistic, just to give some back story on what is going on. But it picks up soon after with some interesting cinematics with a fight scene, and an unusual string of adventures that see these guys sled down sand dunes in a truck bed, fly a beat up old plane tipped on one set of wheels, and shooting a 150 year old canon ball right through a helicopter.
A fun movie, with not too bad of acting or dialogue, I would recommend this movie to most anyone. Not really graphic, not too much language, the only real downside is if you don’t like the stiffness of Penelope Cruz at times, or can’t really appreciate sarcastic humor. I gave it this rating just because I probably wouldn’t watch this movie a million times.
