I’m a fan of Vince Vaughn and of Jon Favreau. Ever since they did the indie buddy movie “Swingers”, these two have had a really good time together on sets, and that is apparent because usually their comic timing is pretty great together.

Heck, Favreau has even turned himself into quite the director, and I think he has some producer credits to his name also.  They’ve both come a long ways since Swingers, and many of their movies provide laugh after laugh at inappropriate behavior and bawdy bathroom humor, but it’s also got intelligence to it, which is why so many younger people, but not too young, enjoy it.

Along comes Couples Retreat though, which I can say I actually enjoyed for about the first half hour to forty minutes. And then – well, and then I don’ t really know what happens to this movie, but somewhere it veers off from funny and slightly edgy to totally losing it’s edge and going into the land of sapdome, all for the sake of making itself the latest crap romantic comedy dujour.

Not that I don’t understand.  I mean hey, at some point, you have to lose the audience that hates this stuff and appeal to a broader, more chick flickish type of crowd and be more, I don’t know – safe might be the word?

Malin Akerman, who made her big film debut in the movie Watchers, and was great in that, plays Vince Vaughn’s wife. The two of them are a totally committed couple that get talked into going on a couple’s retreat with their friends who are played by Kristin Bell and Jason Bateman, a couple about to split up under the pressure of trying and failing to conceive a child.  They are also joined by Jon Favreau and his wife, played by Kristin Davis, who have been married out of wedlock since high school and now can’t stand the sight of eachother.

I think they are the high point of the movie. Then we have Faizon Love and his new twenty year old girlfriend (he just got out of a long marriage and this is his rebound romance).  There are some funny scenes at the beginning of the movie, and some really funny situations, however I should have seen the writing on the wall when the kids who played Vaughn and Akerman’s little ones sappily told their parents that they wanted them to go away so that they “wouldn’t get a divorce”. Oy vey, really?

Let me just sum up the movie by saying this. There are about fifteen minutes of solid, funny content. The last 40 minutes is sappy drivel that’s just agonizing to watch. I felt like I went straight from a comedy to a movie of the week on Lifetime, the comedy was just sucked right out of it.  I felt like I wasted 40 minutes of my life and would have liked the movie a lot more had I switched it off when it was still funny.

The Bruce Willis movie Surrogates started off very promising. In fact, the sci fi premise was totally up my alley, as that is one of my favorite genres in film.  The beginning of the movie definitely seemed promising, with the news stories and jumps forward in time showing a progression toward the human race using what they call “surrogates” to go out and essentially live their lives for them.

With a surrogate, which most humans had instead of going out and living their lives themselves by the time in which the movie took place, you could basically enjoy your every fantasy, dangerous lifestyles if you wanted, and look any way you wanted, and never leave your home. Since surrogates were just a body, even murder was almost nonexistent,since if a surrogate was murdered, the person’s body would still be safe and sound in their own homes.

The problem with this of course was that the human race was not enjoying things with their own eyes. They had essentially become robot operators, which is the premise for the movie’s twist.  Bruce Willis plays a cop who uses a surrogate, like just about everyone else, when a series of murders takes place amongst the surrogate population. The only problem with this is that the weapon that is used essentially fries the brain of the surrogate and it’s host, so people who were operating the murdered surrogate were killed as well.

Tom, Bruce’s character, makes it his mission to find out what’s going on behind the murders, and also to deal with his own personal life, where he can’t even see his real wife any more, because she has become addicted to using her surrogate and is afraid to go out in the real world due to her grief over losing their child in a car accident, and we also see, her scarred face from the same car accident.

Ultimately, there is about a half hour lull in this movie where you just zone out. Things are happening, but some how, this movie just never gets the adrenaline going or makes you concerned for the characters of the outcome of the plot.  The twist is kind of hokey if you ask me, and the acting in this movie really needs to be amped up a bit.

Bruce Willis is ok, but he just seems like he’s going through the  motions, even when he’s not in his emotionless, robot surrogate body.  I don’t know, there is just something missing from this movie that needs to be added, perhaps the studio butchered it, because it is pretty short.

I don’t care how many bad reviews the Diablo Cody-written movie Jennifers Body got, I absolutely was 100% entertained when I was watching it last night.  My husband and I rented the movie on the outside chance that it might be somewhat campy and fun, which is a genre that we really like, and this was definitely both of those, heavily in the tradition of movies like Gingersnaps, an indie film about two sisters, one dowdy and doting on her sister, the other, the one that’s bitten by a werewolf, more shallow and of course more “hot”.

Jennifer’s Body stars Amanda Seyfried, a relative newcomer, but a very talented actress from what I can tell by her portrayal of the frumpy, somewhat nerdy “Needy” in Jennifers Body, and also stars Megan Fox as her hot cheerleader friend. Of course, the two are total opposites, and Jennifer, played by Megan Fox isn’t always sweet to Needy, but nonetheless, Needy is loyal to her “friend since the sandbox” and dotes on her, even has a small girl crush on her it seems.

The two go to see a band called Low Shoulder at the only bangin’ (dive) bar in Devil’s Kettle, so Jennifer can hit on the lead singer who she thinks is “extra salty” which I guess is some hip term for hot.  This movie is chock full of kitchy catch phrases.  I particularly love when Needy’s boyfriend says that the band is lame, with their brooding and their “manscara” poser look.  Sometimes it also reminds me of the campy dark comedy classic “Heathers” with Wynona Ryder that way.

Long story short, the bar ends up burning down and Jennifer ends up taking a ride in a creepy serial killer-like van with the band, while Needy tries to talk her out of it and gets left behind.  The band ends up being devil worshippers who are willing to sacrifice Jennifer, who they think is a virgin, so that they may become rich and famous.

Jennifer comes back from the ill fates van trip with an insatiable hunger for boy’s flesh.  She rips through the small town, eating boys and then barfing up blood.  Needy recognizes that something terrible has happened to Jennifer, and only gets murderous when her friend sets her sights on her boyfriend Chip, who is played by another great kid actor, Johnny Simmons.

All the actors do a great job in this, and for those that razzed Megan Fox’s acting capabilities in this, I’d challenge them to say that she didn’t act the narcissistic bimbo like she was supposed to, she was perfect in the role, so I don’t see why she got skewered for this role in some reviews that I read. Everyone played the role they were supposed to, and the lines were great, the scenery and the kid’s dialogue was pretty spot on for the angst feel they were going for, and goshdarnit, I was HIGHLY entertained!

We watched the latest Cohen brothers movie “Burn After Reading” a couple of days ago, and I must say, it was surprisingly good. I laughed a lot, and thought that George Clooney and Brad Pitt – and let’s not forget John Malkovich and Frances McDormand, who is actually married to one of the Cohen brothers, were all brilliant in their offbeat, dingbat roles.  Everyone in this movie is in desperate need of some common sense and a little more intelligence, but that’s what makes the movie so darn entertaining. The only one with half a brain if John Malkovich, and he’s one mean SOB.

Brad Pitt may be the most “likable” character in the movie. He plays a hairbrained gym employee/trainer with an Elvis hairdo with a big skunk stripe through it. He is hilarious, and I dare say it’s some of his best work recently. I haven’t been a huge Brad Pitt fan for a long time, because it just seems like he phones in a lot of his roles and relies on his starpower to fill in the gaps. This one, he actually made you believe he was a dimwitted, if not well meaning dope who was trying to do a good deed and make a little money in the process. Of course, the whole “plan” goes haywire, and hilarity ensues, in the tradition of another Cohen movie, Fargo.

Here’s the plot line for Burn After Reading.  Malkovich plays a fired, disillusioned CIA employee who has more time than he can handle after losing his job. He writes memoirs of his time at the CIA, with names of some people that are high up, but nonetheless, it’s not really “classified information”.  When the disk falls into the hands of the dimwitted, naive Brad Pitt after being found on the Gym locker room floor where he and Frances McDormand are coworkers, they team up to return it to him, thinking he will be so happy to get this “classified” information back that he will pay them a handsome reward.

What ends up happening is a complex tale of misunderstandings leading to more misunderstandings, a fatal shooting and lots of other sequences that are both funny and dark, but all entertaining. Frances McDormand’s obsession with getting plastic surgery is especially funny.  It’s basically another story about common dolts trying to make money off of a situation and it leading to more chaos and complex chain reactions in the story line.  I’d have to say my favorite performance was by Clooney, who plays a horny married guy who’s retired from security duty.  He has a comic flair that I never realized before, and I think I like him more as a comedic actor than a serious one.

I was really looking forward to seeing a cool vampire movie with my sister when she was in town. My sister partook of my somewhat odd vampire obsession when I was about fourteen years old, a disillusioned, loner teen who was painfully shy and constantly had dreams of escaping my dreary, awkward life.  The first vampire movie that really did it for me was one called Fright Night, a somewhat campy vampire movie that had a totally sexy guy – actually Susan Sarandon’s ex husband Chris Sarandon.  I think I was more obsessed with how sexual he was and how he was sort of my first crush on screen, but I was also completely enthralled with the whole vampire legend.

The second vampire movie I saw that I soon became obsessed with was “Lost Boys”, a hip, sexy film that had heart throbs Jason Patrick, the two Coreys (Haim and Feldman for those of you who didn’t grow up somewhere between the eighties and nineties) which I must have seen about 50 times.  These movies really had something that made me think. They made me feel excited. And that’s exactly what’s happening with the obsession with vampire mythology today.

There are so many vampire series, films and books popping up that it’s become a national obsession, and I wonder if it coincides conveniently with the nation’s conditions, as a form of the ultimate escapism one can experience. After all, wouldn’t we all love to be immortal, and not have to worry about food, have superhuman strength, never have to sleep and somehow have access to oodles of money without ever working thanks to our long lives and ability to save money (yes, this is a common theme too, vampires almost never need money).

The newer movie Daybreakers is a different vampire movie, but nonetheless one that is trying to cash in on the vampire craze while it’s still at it’s peak.  It’s based on a concept that in the near future, vampires basically take over the world, turning all of their prey into vampires, until there are no more humans left except a hand full that have to run for their lives and hide in fear since they are the only natural food source left on the earth for all former humans/vampires.

This movie had some very interesting special effects, one of which held the audience fasincated. It was s starving vampire, one that looked like a giant half bat and half human which was pretty great to watch.  The concept was fairly original, but it was a bit of a ripoff of vampires in the real world as in the True Blood series.  However, the script really veers off path and this movie takes off into totally ludicrous, implausibility in about the last hour (I know, that’s a long time).

Hawke is good as the brooding scientists vampire who never drinks human blood even when starving, and Willem Defoe and Sam Neill give decent performances in their surprisingly small parts, but overall this movie lacked a good script, good editing and good production. We were actually laughing during some of the scenes, which I’m sure was not the intended outcome.  Again, special effects were great, the entertainment factor was ok, but all in all I was disappointed and thought they could have done a better job with such a talented cast and excellent effects supporting this ridiculous story.

Oh, and Ethan Hawke is still looking hot for the ladies that might be interested in a little eye candy.

Well, we finally saw District 9 on Blu Ray. We just got the disk right before New Years day, and we watched it on New Year’s Day.  Let me start by saying that I do think this movie is a great, original premise, and while it is symbolic of apartheid, it did feel a bit like the message wasn’t too subtle.  I think that and one other issue were the only problems with this movie that I found, but other than that I found it to be a worthwhile entertaining watch, and didn’t feel like I just wasted an hour and a half of my life when it was over, which is common for me to feel these days with the crap that is mass produced into the movie theaters and passed off as entertainment.

This small budget movie was based off of a Youtube short movie from what I understand, and was picked up by producer Peter Jackson who was intrigued by the concept and thought it would make an interesting full length cinematic release movie.  And he’s right, it does translate well into a full length feature film.  It was shot as part movie, part documentary style, and we see that these aliens have landed on earth, seemingly crashed and out of contact with others of their species, and their giant vessel hovers over top of Johannesburg Africa.

The species, dubbed “prawns” because of their insectile and slightly crustacean appearance, are quickly cordoned off into their own living quarters, later dubbed District 9, after run ins and misunderstandings with humans have caused a lot of fear and mistrust among the two species. Basically, humanity ends up abusing the prawns, leaving them in the slum like living conditions of District 9 where concentration camp like atrocities are performed on a daily basis.  Hence, the message of apartheid and persecution come in, which is kind of shoved down our throats with numerous story lines and innuendos, but because it is well done and entertaining, we don’t mind as much as we might usually.

I will say, without giving the plot away, and that plot took a much different turn than I thought it would, and it has left itself open for a sequel for sure. I thought the movie really held its own in originality and great acting, as well as a great plotline, until it sort of lost itself in action sequences and your typical blast fest in the end, losing some of it’s originality and edge.  I’d recommend this movie for anyone who has an open mind. It’s different, and thought provoking, when you see humanity in general as the agressor and the bad guy, and not the aliens.

First of all, Sam Worthington, yum, I am a big fan. Not only is this man ruggedly good looking but not too good looking with overly whitened teeth and a coiffed look that most male stars can’t get past after they’ve been stars for too long, but he is a really good, really believable actor.  Christian Bale, on the other hand, I was not as big a fan of in this movie. I’m not sure what happened to him, but some of his conviction has gone out of his acting.  I wonder if I’ll ever see him at his former “American Psycho” caliber again after seeing him in 2 Batman movies where he was just ok, and now this too, which is another major motion picture series.  Maybe I’ve gotten tired of him, but I think he was better when he was small time.

Overall, this movie, which is a sort of prequel to the others that are out there, but not really since it’s technically in the future, got pretty bad reviews from a lot of people. I’m not sure why, as it is no horrendous, and definitely is what you’d expect from an action flick set in the future. What I didn’t like was some of the plot points. For instance, the end presents a totally ridiculous scenario, and also I must say I wasn’t pleased to learn that Sam Worthington, which was the highlight and the real star of this movie, most likely would not be returning for the other movies.

In Terminator Salvation, we see a postapocalyptic world after Skynet has reigned judgment day down on the  human race, in an effort to eradicate the humans and inhabit and rule the earth themselves after they have become self aware. It’s of course along the same lines as other movies where we are overcome by computers, the very machines we built to make our lives easier, but this movie was a bit before it’s time before the paranoia theories started to take root in cinematic history.

Like other movies in this similar vein, take for example the Matrix series, this movie has just about burnt itself out. I think they should have left well enough alone to be honest, but instead they keep prolonging the mythology and adding more plot points in what seems like a tired idea, hoping the recapture the excitement and originality of the first ones. I liked this movie, but I wasn’t overly impressed with it’s originality. The special effects were pretty good, but there was just something lacking. Besides the hybrid character Marcus, there really wasn’t much heart, and you didn’t feel for the characters like you should have. Let’s hope the next one will be a little better, as I’d like to see this series done justice.

So, I finally saw the last Harry Potter film, which just recently came out on DVD. We watched it on Blu Ray, and it looked even more fantastic than it usually does, and the sound was incredible since Blu Rays allow for the best sound quality possible in a DVD.  We’ve seen all of the Harry Potter movies. And by the way, we don’t have any children and we are in our thirties, so these movies definitely speak not only to a young audience, but also to an older as we’ve seen Harry Potter and his rag tag group of young magicians come of age in a really cool, visually stunning fantasy universe.

This movie is of course based on the Harry Potter Half Blood Prince book, and they usually follow the books to a T.  I haven’t read the books, but that’s what I’ve heard.  This one finds Harry Potter getting a potion book that once belonged to someone called “the half blood prince” as inscribed on the inner cover of the book. In the book, the half blood prince has scrawled dozens of secret formulations and secrets to his success, and Harry becomes a master at making potions and casting spells. We of course find out who the Half Blood Prince is toward the end of the movie, and it happens to be someone we’re all very familiar with by now.

This movie also finds Harry and various older magicians assaulted by the followers of Lord Valdemort, whom we have seen neither hide nor hair of since a few movies ago, however we find out that his soul lives on in various objects since he cast a special dark magic spell that allowed his soul to be split into several pieces in order to be stowed in various objects so he could live forever, and essentially became indestructable.

We also get a lot more background on who Valdemort is. We see flashbacks of him as a child magician, and how he evolves into the ultimate evil, dark magician that he did.  We also see how Harry is putting together the pieces on how to finally defeat him and avenge his parent’s death and also prevent further death and destruction by the dark lord.  Wow, I just realized what a nerd I sound like describing this. Without ruining it if you haven’t seen it, we also see the death of a very beloved, key character, which actually kind of shocked me as I have not read the books and didn’t see it coming.

All in all, I liked this one a lot better than the last one. This one, although the lengthy three hours and some odd minutes, flowed seamlessly and I was entertained the whole time. The imagery is dazzling as usual without looking phony, and the kid actors are as awesome as ever, supported by a talented cast of adults. They have really done a bang up job on these movies in my opinion.

So, I have FINALLY SEEN La Vie en Rose, a movie that I’ve been wanting to see ever since Marion Cotillard won the Oscar for best actress a while back. Well, I finally got off my caboose (well, ok I sat on my caboose to watch it), and popped it in our Blu Ray player the other night.  I had this one all to myself. My husband said it really wasn’t up his alley, and I know his taste and I knew it wouldn’t be either, plus I’d rather be spared the disparaging comments about how lame it was had I watched it with him – after all, it is somewhat of a chick flick I suppose.

First of all, Marion Cotillard, who is a beautiful woman in real life and really dolled herself down for this role, is awesome in the role, if not a tad bit overzealous in a few scenes. I don’t know anything about Edith Piaf, the French singer who this film was about or her mannerisms, but I did look up pictures of her, and the makeup artist for this movie deserves an award as well (did they win one maybe, I don’t know), because she is completely transformed into a different persona for this movie.

Her mannerisms are great, you really get a sense of what this woman was like. They paint a picture of a hardened woman very well.  She had a really hard childhood, and her temperament shows that, as well as her hardened attitude toward those that are closest to her.  From her growing up in a whorehouse if France, to her being sent away from the whorehouse where she made close friends with a hooker named Titine to live with her father at the circus where he worked as a contortionist, we see that she has been tossed around by people who don’t truly care for her -except Titine, who treated her as her own daughter.

She begins singing at the age of nine. She has amazing pipes from the beginning, that much is clear.  However, her presentation lacks as she comes of age, with a hunched over appearance and not very ladylike presentation otherwise, it’s amazing to hear such a voice come from her.  This movie also shows her struggles with alcoholism and a lost love. She begins an affair with at married man named Marcel, a boxer, and we see for the first time she is genuinely happy.  When he dies in a plane crash coming to see her, we see that she is vulnerable and human for the first time, but she’s still got such a hard edge that honestly she’s hard to like throughout this movie.

I think the movie does a good job of painting a tortured life for such a huge talent.  The actress who plays her definitely deserves the Oscar. However, even though this film is Oscarworthy I’ll tell you that it’s one hell of a depressing watch!

Well, after having the movie “Orphan” sitting around our house for two weeks waiting to be watched, we finally got around to watching it.  This movie started off ok. It actually had a little bit of promise as something that might be better than what I was expecting, which honestly wasn’t much. Just the cover of the movie alone made me think it might be over the top and hokie.  Well, it started off well. Had some great actors and actresses, and the acting was really good by the children in the movie, which is hard to come by.

Usually, I hate to say it, kid actors are over the top with cuteness.  These kids, especially the adorable little girl who plays the deaf daughter, were great, and very believable.  Th e script for the movie also wasn’t bad. There were some lines that were really conversational, that made you laugh, like one particular scene in which the husband and wife who have adopted the seemingly cute little orphan named Ester, were discussing her dropping the “f” bomb which was funny.

The little girl who plays the psychopath Ester is great too. She is believable as a child who is just a little misunderstood at first, but then as the film progresses, we see this girl has serious psychopathic tendencies.  Let me tell you where I think this movie could have done better. First of all, there is a twist that totally reverses everything that made this movie scary. The whole time, you believe that this is a malicious little evil child, and let’s just say the twist takes the scariness out of someone so young being so demented.  Without giving away the twist, that element of revulsion at a child being this psychotic is taken away, and therefore some of the movie’s credibility, and also it’s believability.

Peter Saarsgard is good as the unsuspecting father, and the part of the movie that pits husband against wife is really great, it adds more tension and shows the manipulative powers of this little girl Ester as well, making her all the more formidable of an enemy.  Now, in the end is where this movie goes way off the deep end, literally and figuratively, since part of the scene of course has to do with an overshadowing of the whole movie, the pond in the back yard.

Overall, the acting is good, but the story falters near the end when all believability is tossed out the window and this takes a turn into cliche land.  I’d give it a three out of five stars, simply because the actors were talented, and the story dared to be a little edgy and different in some areas.