Wednesday, March 05, 2003

Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back

I had enjoyed earlier Kevin Smith films like Chasing Amy, but this is the film that made me a fan of the director. It is easily one of the funniest movies that I’ve seen in a long time. Losers Jay and Silent Bob find out that a comic book based on them is being turned into a Hollywood movie, and they aren’t happy about it, mostly because they want a piece of the action. So they take a very eventful road trip to Hollywood to try to get their piece of the pie. And speaking of Pie, among the many quirky characters that they end up encountering on their cross country trek, is American Pie’s Shannon Elizabeth. She and her equally lovely friends convince Jay and Silent Bob to join them in their animal rights crusade which doesn’t go exactly as planned. Additionally, the film is filled with cameo appearances by a number of Hollywood stars, and we get return appearances from other regulars in Kevin Smith’s films, including Ben Affleck. Quite honestly, the fact that characters, and actors, from his past films kept popping up throughout this movie was one of the things that really made it for me.

Fear Dot Com

Ah, where to begin? I suppose it should be pointed out first that this will easily be the worst horror movie that I’ve seen during the past year. It is also in the running for the worst overall movie. The dopey premise is pretty simple. Go to a website, watch a horrific killing on that website, die a horrific death yourself. As dumb as dumb gets. Instead of real scares, this movie relies on gore to shock the audience. It never succeeds.

Spy Kids 2: The Island Of Lost Dreams

The original film was entertaining; the same cannot be said for the sequel. The idea that kids could rescue their super spy parents was novel in the first film, and that’s why it worked. This one takes it to a whole new level with the kids playing spies with so much power and influence that they can even boss the President of the United States around. If that wasn’t enough to lose me, the special effects and gadgets are so over the top that they are just annoying. There isn’t any reason for me to go into the plot of this movie, because there really is none. It’s just an excuse for the kids to play with all of their spy gadgets and show how incompetent all of the adults in the film are. The only redeeming part of this movie is that it gets Ricardo Montalban back on the screen again. Too bad his part was so tiny. It might have been a better movie had he been given a larger role. It certainly couldn’t have hurt.

Tuesday, March 04, 2003

To Catch A Thief

It’s another Hitchcock classic. Cary Grant plays a reformed cat burglar now living on the French Riviera. His quiet life gets upset when a string of high profile jewel thefts has the local police looking his way, convinced that he is the only man with the criminal talents who would be able to pull of the heists. So he has to come out of retirement to prove that he isn’t the man that the cops are looking for. And the only way for him to do that is to find the real burglar.

Serving Sara

While Serving Sara isn’t likely to be the funniest movie that you will see this year, it is surprisingly entertaining. Mathew Perry is actually pretty darn good in this movie, which is a welcome change from the movies that the cast of Friends usually churn out.

Missing In Action

It stars Chuck Norris, so right away you know that there aren’t going to be any Oscar winning acting performances. Norris plays a Vietnam vet who travels back to that country to free POWs that he believes are still being held there years after the war has ended. Not surprisingly, his little trip ends up involving gun battles and explosions. Missing In Action is a formula action flick. There is absolutely nothing special or original here.

Random Hearts

Harrison Ford plays a cop; Kristin Scott Thomas plays a congress woman. Their respective spouses are having an affair with each other. Neither Ford nor Scott Thomas knows about the infidelity. That changes when their cheating significant others go down in a plane crash while on their way for a romantic tryst. Ford meets up with Scott Thomas while he is investigating his dead wife’s secret life. What a shock, there is attraction between Scott Thomas and Ford and, well, I’m sure you can figure out the rest from here. I’m not a fan of Scott Thomas (I’m not sure why, but something about her just rubs me the wrong way) so her presence in the movie didn’t help it in my books. And Ford was completely wasted in this movie, which just seemed to drag on forever. This ranks with The Mosquito Coast as the worst of Harrison Ford’s movies.

The Master Of Disguise

When even the commercials are embarrassing to watch, you just know the movie is going to stink out loud. The few tiny laughs here don’t make up for the rest of the mess that populates this movie. Let us all hope that Dana Carvey fades into Hollywood obscurity after this disaster, never to return again.

Blue Crush

Hot babes in bikinis, that’s the movie. Oh yeah, they also surf. So that makes them wet, hot babes in bikinis. It’s every male’s dream. I’m not even going to bother with the plot. This is another movie in the vein of Coyote Ugly. The looks of the female leads and how they fill out their bikinis is far more important than something minor like a story.

Undisputed

Ving Rhames plays the boxing heavyweight champion of the world who gets sentenced to prison for rape. Gee, where have we heard that before? Anyway, in prison, Wesley Snipes plays the reigning boxing champ. You can see where this one is going from the moment the opening credits role. The whole movie is just a lead up to the inevitable bout between the two men. And it isn’t a particularly entertaining lead up either. What Rhames and Snipes were thinking when they signed up for this one is beyond me.