Scribblerchick's Movie Dish

Aloha Review

I have long admired Cameron Crowe, a Writer/Director who is a wordsmith, a keen observer of human nature, and an artist. He directed a movie that is one of my top 5 favorite movies of all time, Jerry Maguire, a movie I've probably watched 50 times. I can say all the lines.

Aloha is his latest effort, and I watched it last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. Unfortunately, the critics didn't like it.

I agree with Roosevelt on the subject of critics:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Cameron Crowe has created a terrific movie that strives mightily. It has flaws. Aloha is not a perfect movie. However, it is very watchable, and moving.

Michael watched it with me, and didn't look at his phone for most of the movie. Hey, a 19 year old who puts down his phone and pays attention, and is clearly and vocally delighted by many of the movie's scenes is a WIN in my book.

The main character in Aloha is Brian Gilchrist, played by the always watchable Bradley Cooper. His career is screwed up and he's been given a second chance. Yes, yes, I know the comparisons that will be made to Jerry Maguire. Cameron Crowe likes the theme of redemption. Seeing someone rebuild their life is endlessly fascinating. How can it not be? It's what we all wish for in the even of a catastrophe. Along the way, finding love with a feisty blonde is also a bonus.

Here's what I love about all the movies written by Cameron Crowe: he writes real people. His characters aren't just mouthing words that advance the plot. They don't just run from explosions. They seem like real people, people that you'd want to talk to at a party. Even the jerk characters are 3 dimensional. There's a character in Aloha who is constantly fiddling with things and waving his fingers -- and his nickname is "Fingers." I thought that was adorable. Critics probably hated it. Who cares.

Emma Stone plays a stereotypical gung-ho military type and at first I was rather amused and horrified with her character. Hollyweird tends to stereotype military folks and as the sister of a veteran, it pisses me off. However, Stone's character slowly becomes 3 dimensional as the movie goes on, and her performance is terrific. She deserves an Oscar nod. Ditto for Rachel McAdams, who is not one of the leads but has a very strong secondary role and really shines in it.

Finally, the movie was clearly shot in Hawaii. I feel like I got to go visit. No Travel Channel shots of the surf here. No romantic cliches. Aloha gives native Hawaiians their proper respect. There's cultural sensitivity. It's a side of Hawaii mainlanders rarely see, and I appreciated that.

My only real criticism of Aloha is that the script is a little bit hard to follow. It's complicated. There's a nice summary on Wikipedia, though, which explained it all.

Ignore the stupid critics. Rent Aloha from Netflix or RedBox or wherever. Just watch it and enjoy.

 

Ageism At the Movies

I've always heard that the demographic Hollywood studios aim for is the teenage boy, which explains why movies like Avengers make bazillions of dollars yet are so boring they put me to sleep.

Literally, I fell asleep in that movie. I didn't care who won or what happened.

Now my friend Judy, who lives in Los Angeles, posted on her blog what it's like to go to a preview of a new movie:

Getting daily invitations to free film previews in your inbox is probably an only in LA thing.  The rest of you will have to trust me when I say that this experience is 100% NOT worth it.  First of all, almost every film requires that you be not over 34 years old to get in.  Rarely, you can be under 45.  My age - never.  Last night's film - Suffragette - was playing nearby and was open to people who were old. Because I was: a) was desperate to get out of the house and b) the subject sounded interesting, I decided to go.

You must arrive at least an hour before showtime.  Then you line up and wait, fill out paperwork, wait some more.  On your feet for at least an hour - what's worth that?  After an hour of waiting the little I'm-in-charge-here pyoik walked down the line saying, "we're only permitted to seat people in the first three rows of the theater.  Everything else is for invited guests only."  I felt like a suffragette - a second class citizen without equal rights.  Now I'm an hour and a half into my commitment to see this movie so I decide to stay.  At the theater door, I get to hand over my cell phone while on both sides of me people, all at least thirty years younger than me, jostle past still talking on their cell phones and spilling their abundant refreshments, on their way to their upper level seats.  Before the lights dim, the little short guy gets up in front of the theater and says, "you (meaning the little people in the first three rows) signed statements swearing that you would not Facebook, Twitter, blog or otherwise communicate anything about this film and we take any violation very seriously."  He stops just short of wagging his finger at us.  I am shaking in my sandals.

Okay.  Here's the thing.  There is nothing that pre-disposes me to hating a film more than: a) waiting an hour and a half to see it b) sitting in the second row of the theater craning up at giant, blurry heads c) being told that I'd better not say anything about it - or else.  So, all things being equal, here's what I thought.

So nobody under 34 is welcome at the typical Hollywood movie preview?!?! That explains a lot.

What about recent films that do not pander to the youth demographic, though, like The Hundred Foot Journey? Or Red? Both star Helen Mirren, and thank God for an actress who can almost singlehandedly revive moviegoing fun for people over 40. Both movies were big hits. They made money. What else does it take to get Hollywood to quit being so dadgum ageist?!?

The popularity of movies about human beings, not about stuff that explodes, is not new. Remember The Bucket List? That came out in 2007. I loved that movie. Critics did not. Who cares?!?

Critics also didn't like classics like Ferris Bueller's Day Off or It's a Wonderful Life -- two films that had a huge impact on my life.

Two things give me hope for more movies like The Hundred Foot Journey, or The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. One, they made MONEY. Hollywood respects money. Two, baby boomers are already in the AARP years, tail-end boomers like me are rapidly getting there, and even youngsters born in the 1970's are well into their 30's or 40's. We may watch more movies at home than in the theater, but we have money and we are a force to be reckoned with.

Movie Locations

I read a blog called Single Dad Laughing, and sometimes it's boring and sometimes it ticks me off [much like any other personal blog] but sometimes it intrigues me. A lot.

Dan just posted a map that I've been playing with for five minutes, The Most Noteworthy Movie Ever Filmed in All 50 States. According to this map, Fried Green Tomatoes is the most noteworthy movie ever filmed in Georgia. Hmm. I liked the movie, a lot. I own it. Despite the bad accents and stereotypes, it's a gem of a movie.

But who decided that was the MOST noteworthy movie ever filmed here?

For my money, The Blind Side is the most noteworthy movie ever filmed here. It's a dramatization of a real story, about real people. It has focused a lot of attention on the problem of foster care, and it's drawn a lot of positive attention to the idea of adopting older children.

And it makes me cry, every time I see it.

Tennessee [where I lived for many years] was the filming locale for The Green Mile, another one of my all-time fave movies. I should have known that. I am chagrined that I didn't recognize the state where I lived for 20 years. A lot of scenes were filmed in North Carolina, too. The mountains of East Tennessee and North Carolina are some of the prettiest places I've ever been.

South Carolina, where I have a lot of family, was the location for the filming of The Big Chill, one of my all-time fave movies. It came out my senior year in college. I thought it was brilliant. I rented it not long ago to show my kids and wished I hadn't - all the characters in the movie use drugs, ALL THE TIME. I was appalled. Aside from an awesome soundtrack, it's a movie about drugs. [Yes, I am that square now, and proud of it.]

Much to my disgust, the iconic southern movie Gone With the Wind was filmed entirely in California. I used to be somewhat obsessed with the movie, and I collected dolls and various memorabilia. I still think it's a great story, but the book is far better than the movie. It's definitely not politically correct and I don't blame African Americans for being upset about the way they are portrayed. One thing I've come to understand about Margaret Mitchell is that while she may have appeared to be a small-minded racist, in fact, she gave a lot of money to Morehouse College, a traditionally black school here in Atlanta.

I digressed... as usual.

What I wanted to point out is that movies which have a firm sense of place are so much more prevalent today. I love that. I love that movies are more realistic.

I love the movie Get Low which was filmed in Georgia, although set in Tennessee.

My son and I have been watching back episodes of Breaking Bad, and I feel like I've been to New Mexico every time we finish an episode. Strong sense of place there.

Anyway, I urge you to check out the movie map and see what's been filmed in your state.

Walking Out of Movies

In a completely non-scientific poll, I asked my 535 Facebook friends to comment and tell me the names of movies they've seen that they totally HATE. Like, hate so much they left the theater, or grabbed the DVD out of the player.

I'm talking about movies that suck so big you get ANGRY.

One of my cousins, Norm, named The Cars That Eat People [so obscure I couldn't find it on IMDB]. That sounds like a definite clunker.

I got this idea because in 1999, my brother and I went to see a movie called End of Days. "At the end of the century, Satan visits New York in search of a bride. It's up to an ex-cop who now runs an elite security outfit to stop him." ACK. As we were walking to the car after the film I said "I hated that so much I wanted to get up and walk out, but I figured you were enjoying it." My brother glared at me. "I wanted to walk out but I thought YOU wanted to see it." Epic communications fail.

I also walked out on Batman Returns. That was one where Michael Keaton played Batman. Wrong bat actor, bad bat movie. Just dreadful.

There's no accounting for taste though. I bet some of you out there loved End of Days and Batman Returns. I loved Silver Linings Playbook, and my friend Judy hated it and walked out. Go figure.

Another person said she hated The Color Purple, which is one of my all-time fave movies.

Norm's wife hated Contact, another movie I love.

Sometimes the reasons we hate a movie are entirely subjective. My dad loved war movies, and dragged me to a lot of them when I was a kid, but he HATED Braveheart. He had forgotten his hearing aid the day we saw it, and he had cancer and felt crappy a lot of the time. He also complained about there being "too much blood and gore." [yep, bullets are a lot cleaner than broadswords]

See, I look at movie blood and wonder "how many gallons of syrup did it take to get that effect?!" - because I was a theater major at Georgia and I had a friend who did effects for low-budget horror films. He used to explain to me in detail how gory effects were done, which was awesome because "horror" movies ceased to bother me after that. Once you view them clinically, you realize horror movies are just the cinematic equivalent of Red Bull - all jolt, no food value.

A couple of people named Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. I started watching that on TV in a hotel room when we were in the mountains some years ago, and I was so disgusted we turned it off. Michael was really miffed too - that's his birth country. Making fun of an entire nation is just lowbrow, crass, tasteless crap, IMHO. However, having said that, the Kazakh guy who translated for me when I was in Petropavlovsk for Michael's adoption had seen Borat and thought it was hysterical.

The movie The Master got some Oscar nominations but my friend Lindsey wanted to walk out of it. Just the trailer looked weird and boring, to me.

When I was at UGA, I was a member of the University Union, the group responsible for showing movies on campus. I started the Bad Film Festival, in honor of classic terrible movies like Glen or Glenda, and Plan 9 From Outer Space - movies so bad they were inadvertent comedies.

Ah, the salad days of being a college film geek...

One man on Facebook said he hated the Terence Malick movie The Thin Red Line, a movie I've always thought might be interesting. Movies that critics love don't always interest me, though. I was explaining to Michael this morning that when  The Blues Brothers came out, critics hated it. I loved it and it made millions at the box office.

You want to see something fun? Watch the scene below from The Blues Brother, featuring the great Ray Charles. Besides some great music, you get to learn how to do the Watusi and The Jerk...

 

 

Movies Everyone Needs to See

There are certain movies that every mouth-breathing human on planet earth SHOULD SEE. Well, particularly if you are American. If not, I guess I shouldn't presume to tell you what to see. There are certain foreign films I'm quite fond of, like Amelie and Local Hero, but very few.

Am I biased in favor of American movies?

Yep. Guilty as charged.

What got me started on this gravy train of thought? Well, Dooce said she would tell a young lady in L.A. who clearly doesn't know much about movies to see The Good the Bad and the Ugly and Apocalypse Now. I totally disagree. Never seen TGTBATU, and was forced to see Apocalypse Now and just wanted to slap everyone in it [I prefer Miss Piggy's version, "Porklips now"].

See, right now I am hearing in my head the droning nasal Minnesota accent of my college film professor, Dr. Eidsvik, talking about great films like The Rules of the Game, and Bicycle Thieves. I used to wonder how he could take something as interesting as movies and make them seem boring. I had to drink coffee to be able to sit through most of the "classic" films he showed in class. They were just.that.boring. [Either that or I was just too young to appreciate them...food for thought, there.]

What I eventually had to just accept was the fact that I am not intellectual and sophisticated enough to understand "film." See, I like MOVIES. I like to be entertained and/or thrilled. I like to cry in movies. I like to be astonished. I like to hear clever dialogue, and interesting ideas. Occasionally, I like to see things blow up.

I do NOT like to have to sit there and figure out what on earth is going on. That's why I avoid The Lord of the Rings movies and Mission Impossible. Too many plot details. Can't keep up. Hate it when I am confused in a movie. Didn't care much for Inception for that reason, needless to say.

Dr. Eidsvik was, I think, astonished that I could even begin to comprehend what he was teaching but I always pulled out good grades in his classes. I could bluff my way through. He later wrote me a recommendation letter for grad school, much to my surprise.

So here's my list of the 25 movies EVERYONE should see before, say, age 30. They are comprehensible. They are touching. Some are considered "classics," some not. That's such a subjective word. I put a few comments about each movie.

Singing in the Rain -- it's just fun. there's no crime in that...

Good Will Hunting -- how do humans function after they've had brutal childhoods? searing stuff. robin williams and matt damon are brilliant.

Saving Private Ryan -- if you want to understand anything about World War II you need to see this. [even though my brother says some of the military stuff is inaccurate]

As Good As It Gets -- watching a non-functional human being try to get better just kills me every time. broken people brilliantly portrayed by Nicholson and Hunt.

The Color Purple -- makes me cry every time. it's about the importance of family.

Gone With the Wind -- sentimental, dated, not politically correct, yes yes I know, but it's close to my heart.

The Godfather [1 & 2 only] -- you just have to know this story of Americans and how to assimilate, or not. it's part of our culture.

Bringing up Baby -- just funny, funny, funny stuff.

Harold and Maude -- how do you deal with becoming an adult?! classic question we all face.

Highlander -- ok, laugh at the 80's MTV video style but it's still thought-provoking and freddie mercury's music is just amazing and heartbreaking.

The Princess Bride -- turns fairytales on their ears and it's just plain funny.

The Shawshank Redemption -- character study extraordinaire

The Great Escape -- Steve McQueen just fascinates me every time I see this.

The Right Stuff -- why America went into space, and the incredible people who took us there.

Raiders of the Lost Ark -- heart-stopping adventure and unforgettable characters. what's not to love?

My Fair Lady -- it's all about class baby, but I love the music.

The Sound of Music -- laugh if you like. it's still wonderful. i always want to live in that house...

Love and Death -- just flat-out funny stuff. woody's best, IMHO.

Ordinary People -- how do you handle grief and guilt?? we all need to learn.

About a Boy -- really honest look at how it feels to be a kid. all kids can relate.

Casablanca -- it has to be seen. nothing else compares to it.

Local Hero -- lovely little film about Scotland, and all of us choosing between greed and human connections. very subtle humor.

ET -- seen it many times. still makes me cry every.single.time.

The DaVinci Code -- IDEAS are so important. even if you disagree.

 

What would be YOUR choices for 25 movies we all need to see?!

I found this trailer for Local Hero on YouTube and if you've never seen the film, you should see this...

 

Hangover II

There's a school of thought in Hollyweird that says if you make one huge blockbuster movie, you need to rush a sequel into the theaters as quickly as possible. The first weekend, all the people who LOVED the first film will flock to the sequel, before they read the reviews. I read the very lukewarm reviews and went to see Hangover II anyway.

Here's my excuse: Thor 3-D was not playing at the time we wanted to go to the movies.

We couldn't talk Michael into seeing Super 8.

My daughter also wanted to see Hangover II. I could tell this by the way she squealed when we were talking about movie choices.

My son had already seen it and wanted to see it again. I thought what the heck, it's playing at the cheap theater.

Next time that same sequence of events happen, instead of seeing a movie I am pretty sure is going to be bad, I will simply grab a board and hit myself in the head repeatedly. Why? Because that will be more fun than sitting through such a godawful BAD movie.

Hangover I was bad, but it was fun. Hangover II is just bad. I think I laughed twice during the whole film.

Here are the main differences between this and the first movie. Ready?

Instead of Doug getting married, Stu is getting married.

Instead of las Vegas, they are in Bangkok.

Instead of carrying around a baby, they carry around a capuchin monkey.

Instead of losing a tooth, Stu gets a face tattoo.

Instead of having a horrible, witchy fiance, Stu has a horrible, mean future father-in-law.

It's like the screenwriters took the first film and did a mark-thru of the first script's nouns and replaced them with new nouns. I'm sure someone then said well, this isn't great. Let's up the ante. Let's get really shocking. Let's cut off someone's finger. Let's have lot of male frontal nudity.

Oh yeah, and let's get Mike Tyson back for another cameo! And let's let him sing again!

I will hear Tyson's singing in my nightmares for the rest of my life. It was so off-key it was painful.

And the crazy little Asian guy, Mr. Chow - let's have him pop out of an ice machine instead of a car trunk!

And just let me say a word about Zach Galifianakis. I have now seen him in several movies. He is a horrible actor. He plays himself in all his movies, basically. Don't believe me? Rent Due Date, or Dinner for Schmucks. Terrible films, both of them. Zach plays pretty much the same character in everything.

I want to slap him, very hard. Then I want other people to slap him. Finally, I want to send him to prison so he can never be in another movie, ever again. Ever. I despise him that much.

It was interesting seeing Bangkok, I will admit that. Looking at Bradley Cooper is fairly pleasant, except he looked like he had BO through the whole movie.

If you still think maybe you might want to see this huge waste of time, check out this site, where you can see clips from the movie.

Watch the clips. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Laughing? Then go see it, by all means. Looking puzzled and disgusted? Then skip it.

Or go hit yourself in the head repeatedly with a heavy board. That will be more fun.

The Way Back

I became a fan of director Peter Weir years ago after seeing The Year of Living Dangerously - a terrific film made in the glorious days before Mel Gibson had lost his mind. Weir has an amazing ability to make you feel like you are inside a movie. I also loved his films Green Card and Witness.

Weir takes you into a world and compels you to stay there.

The Way Back is a different sort of movie, and yet it's not. There's no romance. It starts out in Poland in 1940, surely a harrowing time. A young man is sent to a Soviet prison in Siberia, for political prisoners. There he meets Ed Harris and Colin Farrell and various other assorted folks. Weir draws you into that world brilliantly, with a look, a tiny gesture, a tidbit of dialogue. (As I was watching those prison scenes, I kept thinking wow, it's cold in here. Ironic, since I live with my mom and we keep the air downstairs on 78-80 all summer.)

I must confess right now, Ed Harris is one of my all-time fave actors. He is amazing. I would sit in a theater and watch him read the newspaper for two hours, even if he only read 2 articles aloud! He would NOT be boring!

If Ed were not already married I would have to track him down one day and ask him to go out to dinner. Even with a goofy bow tie on he's adorable.

Anyway, I digressed.

Ed, Colin, and particularly Jim Sturges, are compelling to watch. The men escape and walk across Siberia, eventually getting to Mongolia, and China, and finally into India. I was able to discuss Russian geography, Chinese politics, and several other interesting factoids with my son, who was captivated by the movie.

Since I have been to Siberia and Kazakhstan, the movie was particularly riveting to me. Now, as in the early 1940's, that part of the world has vast stretches that are completely uninhabited. No roads. No phones, No villages for hundreds of miles. I spent a day in 2004 flying over it in a rickety old plane, looking down, and you go for HOURS without seeing so much as a telephone pole. It's truly the back end of nowhere. I cannot imagine trying to walk through there.

You should see The Way Back. The story is told without sentimentality, and yet by the end of the movie you care about the characters as much as they care about each other. It's another incredible journey into a different world, courtesy of Peter Weir. Brilliant movie.

 

I Hate Quentin Tarantino

The kids and I were watching Inglorious Basterds last night and I was reminded why I don't like Quentin Tarantino's movies. They are all talk and flash and no substance.

I only ordered Basterds from Netflix last week because I thought it might amuse my older brother to watch it while he was here. I had taken the kids to the movie one Saturday last year when I had nothing better to do and there were no decent movies out. I figured Bro hadn't seen it but I was wrong. 

So when my brother got here I simply said "Have you seen Inglorious Basterds?" and I was unprepared for the resulting tirade. "Yes. Well, I went to the theater, and I walked out after half an hour, it was so bad. It had NOTHING to do with reality. What a bunch of crap. That is the WORST movie ever." [He actually said a lot more than that but my eyes glazed over after a minute]

I thought OK, well, I'm not going to suggest we watch it then...

I remember seeing Pulp Fiction years ago and hating it. I walked out of the theater thinking "I hope NOBODY else ever goes to that film. It's horrible. I think Tarantino had to have been using drugs when he wrote it because it's so inane and stupid."

I was in the family room one day a few years ago while Alesia watched Kill Bill on TV. There was such a complete lack of humanity in that, I remember thinking a good comic book would be more insightful. I can sum it up like this: a beautiful woman who looks sexy and is very violent. That's it.

Tarantino's movies are filled with meandering, meaningless dialogue.

His films are also filled with graphic violence. You almost wish for the violence after a while because it's at least something happening, as opposed to the idiotic dialogue which sounds like it was written by a stoned 12 year old.

His films are all about posing. In Basterds, there is a lot of dialogue about what one character thinks of another character. Reputation is everything.

The only good thing I can think of to say about Tarantino is that Pulp Fiction revived the career of John Travolta, and I like Travolta, despite the idiotic Scientology obsession.

Oh wait - there's one more good thing - he has no children. Let's hope that never happens because we don't need any little Tarantinos in the world.

I think the reason Basterds did so well at the box office is partly because there's a wonderful sense of psychic justice in seeing Jewish hit squads brutally killing Nazis. What a great marketing gimmick. What the movie fails to address is that by doing that, the Basterds are putting themselves on the same level as the Nazis, or maybe even lower - killing just for the sake of killing, not because of any particular philosophy or belief system, however warped.

I Googled Tarantino and spent some time reading about him. Apparently I am not the only one who cannot stand him. He is accused of ripping off other movies, and being racist. He publicly told Spike Lee to kiss his ass. Nice. What a role model.

If you look at the biographical information about Tarantino on imdb.com, which is a great movie resource site, you find a billion words describing him - it's the longest one I've ever read on there. It's like his press agent wrote it. What an egomaniac. What a poseur.

I am going to make a point to NEVER go see his movies again, and I will urge my kids not to watch them either.

The Sublime and the Ridiculous

I took my 14 year old son and his best friend to seethe new Harry Potter film about a week ago, and I was stupified by one of the trailers. I seriously thought it was a spoof, some crazy Will Ferrell nuttiness, or perhaps even a little film about turning off your cell phones in the theater.

The trailer featured Daniel Craig in the old west wearing a high tech wrist thingy.

[Harrison Ford played a mean old guy. After seeing Morning Glory I have come to the realization that he went from Hunk to Cantankerous Old Man very quickly. I missed the in-between movie.]

So the trailer for this space cowboy was for a new movie called Cowboys and Aliens. I can hear the pitch meeting now: "It's The Quick and the Dead meets Independence Day!"

When the trailer was over everyone in the theater laughed.

What really amazes me is that Steven Spielberg executive produced this thing, and it stars Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig. It also features some great character actors like Clancy Brown, Keith Carradine and Sam Rockwell. Did everyone involved with this drink the Kool-aid?!?

If you're an old fogey like me you remember Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty in Ishtar. That one had people walking out of the theaters in droves.

It looks that ridiculous. Craig and Ford are going to be cursing the day their agents talked them into that disaster, trust me on that.

THE SUBLIME

OTOH, I am afraid not enough folks will go see Morning Glory, a truly funny film. I loved it. It was comedy built around characters, and it was filled with whip-smart funny dialogue.

I do NOT like Rachel McAdams. I've never liked her. Despite that, I like Morning Glory.The situations were not formulaic. The story seemed plausible even though it was farcical. [I know that sounds contradictory but just go see the movie and judge for yourself.]

And yes, even though I griped about Harrison Ford, the character he played in Morning Glory was a Cantankerous Old Man with some depth of character. He seemed plausible. The bad guy in Cowboys and Aliens looks like a cartoon. [I hope they paid him a lot of money for that nonsense!]

Another film I saw recently was Red. Loved it. It's very smart and funny, and Bruce Willis takes his standard action guy hero and makes him seem fresh and interesting.

John Malkovitch plays crazy in a fresh new way.

Helen Mirren plays a sexy older woman who loves "wet work" - a/k/a killing folks for money.

Morgan Freeman plays a new character, Not God, clearly - a retired CIA guy.

Red doesn't try to tell us any great truths, but it's a fun ride. Even my brother [retired Army major] thought most of the weapons stuff was reasonably plausible, and he's usually highly critical.

So go see Red and Morning Glory, and if the Cowboys and Aliens trailer comes up, enjoy a good laugh and shake your head at the idiocy that is Hollyweird.

 

Movies I LOVE

I don't have much time to make this pretty, but just for fun, here is a list of movies I love. It's not comprehensive or in order, but these popped into my head first:

Bowfinger - Steve Martin plays a wily, conniving movie director - a great satire on Hollyweird

Leap of Faith - Steve Martin plays a wily, conniving traveling evangelist. Awesome gospel songs too!

The Green Mile - Sad and powerful story, allegorical and moving.

Shawshank Redemption - It's about hope. Beautiful story.

Braveheart -Mel with big hair and a skirt. Celts with blue faces. What's not to love?!

Being John Malkovich - Twisted little story, with Cameron Diaz as a frumpy lesbian. Never boring.

Harold and Maude - Classic story: young boy falls in love with senior citizen. Totally cool wardrobe, 1971 chic. Awesome Cat Stevens soundtrack.

Dragon, The Bruce Lee Story - Great true love story. Also powerful treatment of racism, faith, and skewer of Hollyweird.

Reds - Oldie but a goodie. Warren Beatty rocks as John Reed, the man who publicized the Russian Revolution.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - I still know every word to every song. When I die, my version of heaven will be to live in Truly Scrumptious' mansion. But I don't want her corsets. Yikes.

School of Rock - Jack Black teaches kids how to rock. It's his legacy for the ages, the definitive Jack Black.

The Color Purple - When I need a good cry, I have to watch it. Awesome music and cinematography, too. Only Spielberg could make rural life looks gorgeous.

Whale Rider - A little girl gives an amazing performance and we learn about the Maori tribe in New Zealand. Beautiful, magic film.

Field of Dreams - Another movie that makes me cry, every time. Watching Kevin Costner in his prime makes this one of my favorites, too.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off - I love Ferris. He rocks. A timeless classic.

The Quiet Man - John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in one of the first films made on location - Ireland. A terrific story.

My Fair Lady - A sentimental Favorite of mine from childhood. I also love Hello Dolly and South Pacific - don't tell - it makes me sound really OLD. [OK, I am old. I just don't like to admit it. Then again, 45 is the new 25, without the tattoos...]

Murphy's Romance - Sally Field plays a plucky little horse keeper before anybody thought to whisper to them. Funny and endearing. A classic.

So analyze it and see if you want to keep reading. I can see the Enquirer headline now: Movies You Like Reveal Your Personality!