2004 - IKE: COUNTDOWN TO D-DAY is an acceptable version of the D-Day story

TV star Tom Selleck is General Eisenhower in this version of the events leading up to the World War II invasion into Normandy.  Selleck has given interviews in which he has stated that this is the performance he is most proud of.  For the most part his portrayal is decent I guess.  Frankly the problem I have with Selleck is that every time he's on screen all I can think about is Magnum P.I. goes to war.  I kept looking for Higgins and the "Lads" to show up.  

This film gets it's facts reasonably straight. It refers to the training debacle in England called "Exercise Tiger" that cost the lives of over 700 soldiers conducted prior to the invasion.  It also focuses on General Henry Miller who got drunk in a restaurant and blurted out the time and location of the invasion.  The film also covers Eisenhower's message to the allies that had him taking blame if the invasion failed that fortunately was never needed.  It's all fairly well known history stuff.  

 

The film has the usual World War II celebrities.  Winston Churchill turns up, George S. Patton gets yelled at by Eisenhower and British General Bernard Montgomery is here in all his arrogant glory.

The production of this film was on the modest end.  It was apparently filmed in New Zealand in 10 days. The film is an okay if kind of boring version of a major World War II event. 

The film was written by Lionel Chetwynd who has done a lot of these docu-dramas.  The running time is 89 minutes. 

2004 - D.E.B.S., silly spy satire with a gimmick

D.E.B.S. stands for "Discipline, Energy, Beauty, Strength,"  it's a secret organization that recruits high school students through the SAT exam which has buried questions that ascertain if the student is possible secret agent material.  The students recruited by the  D.E.B.S., seem to be mostly beautiful high school girls who wear tight tops and very short skirts.  The story involves the D.E.B.S. attempting to stop an evil villain called Lucy Diamond also played by a gorgeous young girl.  The plot twist or gimmick in this film is that one of the D.E.B.S., Amy falls in love with Lucy Diamond and vice versa.  Will Amy stop Lucy Diamond or run away with her instead?

The humor is very dumb in this movie.  For the most part a few of the gags come off but it's just a lot of silly shenanigans going on throughout the film.  The actors playing the girl spies in training seem to struggle with finding their comic timing throughout the film.  None of the girls really stands out with the exception of  Jordana Brewster as the evil Lucy Diamond.  Brewster's claim to fame is as the 10th or 11th banana in all those Fast and Furious movies.  Only Holland Taylor as the head of the school knows how to make a line funny in a script that really isn't all that funny.

 

D.E.B.S. actually exists in two versions.  A short film that the writer/director Angela Robinson filmed which made the rounds at film festivals. It was seen by some studio executive who green lighted turning it into a feature film.  I haven't seen the short version of  D.E.B.S. but I have a feeling it probably played better than the feature film which took it's one joke premise and kind of beat it into the ground.  I know that girls running around in short skirts with guns is supposed to be funny but it did seem a little exploitive after a while. 

 

The running time is 92 minutes.

2004 - Z CHANNEL: A MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION, documentary about a movie nut

This documentary looks at the life of Jerry Harvey.  He was an  obsessed film buff who just happened to stumble into what for his was probably the job of a lifetime, programming a cable channel in Los Angeles with foreign and esoteric films that would have never been shown on HBO or Showtime.

The documentary is presented in the standard "talking heads" format as they say.  People associated with Jerry Harvey are interviewed an recall their interactions with him. 

Jerry Harvey was a troubled person to put it mildly.  It's   not a spoiler to say that he killed himself since this is presented at the beginning of the film. 

 

The film has quite a collection of interviewees.  Quentin Tarantino, Alexander Payne, Jacqueline Bisset, Theresa Russell, Jim Jarmish, Vilmos Zsigmond, F. X Sweeney, and Penelope Spheeris to name a few. It also includes many of Harvey's coworkers and friends.

 

My favorite moment is the filmmaker Alexander Payne complaining to Jerry Harvey that the letterboxing on a Kurosawa film was to wide and cut off a small part of the image, talk about movie nut obsession.

This is a fascinating documentary about film obsession which probably will have limited appeal to the not so obsessed film goer.  Still, highly recommended.

The running time is 122 minutes.

2004 - I HEART HUCKABEES, so called existential comedy missing the comedy part.

 Looking at the career of David O Russell for a few moments.  Russell was an independent filmmaker who achieved critical notice with his "incest comedy," Spanking the Monkey, he followed this up with another quirky comedy about adoption called Flirting with Disaster.  Both these films achieved decent reviews and more importantly made money since that's about the only thing they care about in the movie business.  Russell was able to get financing for his Iraq war film Three Kings. The film had big time Hollywood star George Clooney, Ice Cube and Mark Wahlberg.  Another critical and financial success.  But the signs that all was not well in movie land were beginning to show.  Russell was apparently under some pressure with a studio financed film and found himself in conflict with Clooney over his treatment of the film crew.  Still in Hollywood a money making film is a money making film which allowed him to obtain financing for this film.

Apparently Russell had a lot of big thoughts running around in his head so he decided to share them with the movie audience.  Russell wrote a screenplay about an environmentalist  in a life threatening crisis who hires a team of "existential detectives."  They follow him around and at the same time the environmentalist is also followed by a French woman who is a nihilist.  I actually had to look this stuff up on the internet to understand it.  The film spends a lot of time with endless philosophical discussions about these two points of view while working in quirky comedy bits.  This is just the kind of stuff a paying audience want to see when they go out to a movie.

 

The screenplay is a complete head scratcher for me but it attracted a very good cast, Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin are the existential detectives.  Isabelle Huppert is the nihilist, Jude Law, Jason Schwartzman and Naomi Watts show up. Mark Wahlberg is a philosophy spewing fireman who hits people in the face with a pan or something is in it.  But it should be mentioned that a pattern of fighting with the actors during production was beginning to reoccur.

 

The film to put it mildly is what happens when a pretentious artistic director is allowed to run amok.  I'm not sure what Russell or the producers expected from this film but it's safe to say Russell didn't work for six years after this.  Since this film Russell has been involved with more commercial projects, a fight movie, a love story etc.

The screenplay was by David O. Russell and Jeff Baena, the running time is 106 minues of a "fundamental search for truth."

2004 - THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK - the second in a science fiction series

The second in a science fiction series staring Vin Diesel who was probably hoping to set up another franchise similar to his The Fast and Furious series.  The first film Pitch Black was a decent little science fiction action film with Diesel as a tough guy names Richard Riddick who can see in the dark but needs cool sunglass/googles to keep from destroying his eyes with too much light during the day.

 

Pitch Black was a surprise hit and the go ahead was given to make another film with the Riddick character called The Chronicles of Riddick.  Everything about this film was big, the special effects, the action, the sets.  They just forgot one thing, a coherent script. The film's plot jumps between Riddick trapped on some sort of prison planet and some scary bad guys called Necromongers who take over the peace loving planet of New Mecca.  Somehow Vin Diesel playing Riddick jumps back and forth between these two story lines.

The very few compensations the film has to offer are the set design and strange costumes the Necromongers wear.  I guess sticking the actor Thandie Newton in really tight outfits has to compensate for any kind of love interest in this film.  Judi Dench is also in this film playing some kind of spirit who hovers around but doesn't seem to add anything to the plot,  I'm guessing the film was easy money for her.

 

If you take away the science fiction setting, the film is just Vin Diesel playing the same character he plays from film to film.  Nothing special here.

 

Written by David Twohy the running time is 135 minutes (directors cut).

2004 - A VERY COOL CHRISTMAS, #4 in the Christmas movie viewing marathon

Crappy production values, another look-a-like bunch of teenage actors and "where's my paycheck" performer George Hamilton probably shooting every scene in one take so he could get the hell off the set. 

This is a so called Christmas comedy involves for lack of a better phrase. A valley girl hanging around at the shopping mall comes to realize that the real Santa Claus is actually working the kid greeting kiosk posing for pictures.  For reasons that are just incredibly stupid, she gives Santa a makeover and he comes out looking like George Hamilton.  But not just any old George Hamilton he has his special Santa powers of flying in a sled or a hot sports car and popping down chimneys.  

The valley girl played by some actress named Brooke Niven was the future star of I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, is another bubble brained latte drinking teenager that accompanies Santa Hamilton on his Christmas Eve journey.  There seems to be a lot of these types of teenagers showing up in Christmas movies.

As stupid as this movie is it still can't touch A Mom For Christmas as the bottom of the barrel of recent Christmas movies.  Frankly, watching these films is getting tough.

90 minutes.

2004 - BAD EDUCATION, melodrama from Almodovar

 The Spanish director Almodovar wrote and directed a soap opera like melodrama about two friends from school who are reunited years later.  One of the friends is a successful film director the other is an actor.  This film is not unlike something Douglas Sirk would have made at Universal in the late 50's or early 60's.  The difference here is that almost every character in the cast is gay.

There's child abuse by priests, transvestism, transsexualism and just lot's of gay stuff going on in this film.  The characters are not exactly sympathetic but they are interesting. 

I have not seen a lot of Almodovar's films but I have seen enough to know that he is a very skilled director.  If you ignore the gay element of the story in a lot of ways it's pretty standard stuff.  However Almodovar is an extremely gifted filmmaker and his talent kept me watching mostly to see how this story would resolve itself. 

Worth a look however there is a whole lot of gay stuff going on.

105 minutes.

2004 - CELLULAR, entertaining but really preposterous cell phone thriller.

Cell phones have really changed since Cellular came out 7 years ago.  But one thing hasn't changed that's the writer Larry Cohen's ability to create an outrageous story line about anything whether it's killer babies or sequels to killer babies, flying serpents over New York or teenage werewolves.  In this film it's all about an unlucky cell phone user who gets dragged into a kidnapping plot.

Cohen didn't direct or write the final screenplay but his imprint is all over this zany action thriller.  The film has a fun cast with William Macy the most interesting character as a cop about to retire and open a day spa.  Movie tough guy Jason Statham is also a lot of fun as the scary bad guy. 

You have to give Cellular credit since it finds every possible way to milk it's cell phone gimmick throughout the running time of the film. 

The whole film is stupid but fast moving fun.

94 minutes.

2004 - THE BRIDESMAID, a thriller that would have made Hitchcock jealous

At the age of 76, Claude Chabrol directed this very good thriller about a middle class French family and in particular the son, who get involved with a very strange woman.  Philippe becomes infatuated with one of the bridesmaids at his sister's wedding.  After sleeping with Philippe the bridesmaid, Senta informs him that they have been joined by fate to be together forever.  That should have have been a big warning sign to the horny and smitten Philippe.

Claude Chabrol makes smooth thrillers, after 53 films his technique is so good it's a pleasure to watch the story unfold with his emphasis on character instead of set pieces.  Chabrol has always been labeled the French Hitchcock, but Hitchcock in his 70's was turning out mediocre junk like Topaz, and Family Plot certainly nothing like this.

The focus may be on this creepy relationship, but Chabrol also  looks at this equally screwed up French family.  In some of his previous films, the family unit has been shown as extremely less than ideal role models and in The Bridesmaid this family doesn't seem like a particularly emotionally healthy group.

 The Bridesmaid is another fine film from a master director about the darker side of middle class society and human nature. Whatever Chabrol's feelings about class, values and society, he is a skillful enough storyteller to keep this film very interesting.

 Hitchcock stopped making interesting films after Psycho and pretty much slipped into rehashing and reworking ideas and set pieces from his previous films during his Universal period.  It's unfortunate he wasn't able to grow and further develop as an artist the way Claude Chabrol has in 70's.

The Bridesmaid is a very fine and impressive character driven thriller from a master of the genre.

111 minutes.

2004 - BROADWAY - THE GOLDEN AGE, semi interesting documentary

Rick McKay an enterprising fellow, bought himself a camera and on his own and with literally no camera crew put together this documentary on Broadway's supposed "golden years" roughly the period between the 1940's through the 1960's. 

McKay amazingly got a lot of Broadway performers to speak with him.  People like, Bea Arthur, Elizabeth Ashley, Carol Burnett, Carol Channing, Ben Gazzara, Robert Goulet, Uta Hagen, Julie Harris, Martin Landau, Angela Lansbury, Shirley MacLaine, Patricia Neal, Jerry Orbach, Jane Powell, Hal Prince, John Raitt, Chita Rivera, Gena Rowlands, Eva Marie Saint, Stephen Sondheim, Maureen Stapleton, Elaine Stritch, Tommy Tune, Gwen Verdon, Eli Wallach and Fay Wray.  Pretty impressive.

McKay also dug up a number of TV and film clips of some of the shows along with archival footage of New York and the theater district.

So what did I learn from watching this?  Mainly that the good old days are gone.  The older Broadway stars understandably long for a time when they were the center of attraction and the world seemed focused on their little niche of the entertainment business.  The creative talent is also gone, people like Richard Rogers, Jerome Robbins, George Abbot etc.  The theater has also worked hard to price itself out of affordable existence with their audiences.  Some ticket prices are now in excess of $400.00

Broadway - The Golden Age, is not a comprehensive history of Broadway but an entertaining overview of American theater if you have an interest in such things.

2004 - TEAM AMERICA-WORLD POLICE a time capsule into another era

I laughed a lot at this movie. It's basically a version of The Thunderbirds TV show with puppets doing all of the ridiculous stuff action movie actors usually do. Throw in a lot of inappropriate songs and some puppet violence and sex and you have a satire of some kind.

Probably 30 minutes of this would have been enough. There is a nude puppet sex scene that goes on way to long and a vomit scene that hammers you over the head, but by this point in the movie you get what you pay for. A creepy element to all of this is a strange fascination and focus on gay oral sex towards the end of the movie. It's pretty icky.

The tiresome whining about liberal Hollywood stars is kind of lame as well. The movie looks like a period piece from the Bush era. This movie could be a snapshot of the political mood and paranoia of the country during those 8 years. However, that might be a little bit of a stretch. Oh well. The jokes about the liberal actors acting as bad as the terrorists would seem to indicate where the true feelings of the filmmakers lie. The killer kitty cat jokes at the end were just lame.

98 minutes.

2004 - HOUSE-season one

The first season of House on DVD,  watched 8 episodes in a row. The show has been on for a few seasons now, so this was a chance to catch the early episodes when it was fresh. Dr. Gregory House is a brilliant diagnostic doctor, with a team of hot young professionals. He's basically the Sherlock Holmes character, with his team being the Dr. Watson character. Each episode they confront a strange disease killing some guest star of the week. They have to figure out before the top of the hour how to stop this mysterious disease.


 The show goes something like this: 8:00 pm-Dr. House walks around the hospital pissing people off. Meanwhile some person falls over in a coma or something like that. They rush him/her to House's hospital. Dr. House makes a bunch of smart ass wise cracks we're off and running.

8:15 pm-The sickie has been admitted to the hospital. Dr. House takes a 15 second glance at his chart and pronounces the diagnosis. 6 minutes later after treatment, something goes wrong. Dr House has no bedside manner at all but he's so smart it's excusable, just like real life.

I'm ashamed I added this picture but this post is dull.

 8:30 pm-The team and Dr. House realize that the initial diagnosis is wrong and figure out an entirely different diagnosis, they start a new treatment. 6 minutes later that treatment starts to go terribly wrong. Now the patient is even worse, this is not very cool.

8:45 pm- Well it's getting close to the top of the hour, they gotta wrap it up for this episode. Dr. House has a moment of insight based on information he missed at the 8:00 pm mark. Finally the team has the right treatment and saves the patient's life.

One of the cast of doctors on House, gratuitous picture.

All is well, after almost killing the patient a couple of times in the last 40 minutes or so. Dr. House and his team kind of suck as doctors.

 But to be fair nobody is watching this for the brilliant plotting of the shows, you tune in to see how much of a dick Dr. House is.