"If this was a movie you'd be on the cutting room floor."
- THE SINGING DETECTIVE (2003)
Just released this weekend was Michael Moore's highly anticipated FAHRENHEIT 911. Every show at my local theater has been sold out so I haven't had a chance to see it and post a review. According to the IMDB this is the case around the country evidenced by it's rating as #1 at the box office. I just hope the same numbers turn out to vote. Anyway we've got some new DVD reviews - unfortunately disses (with one notable exception) as the recent crop of releases didn't really float our respective boats. Well here's at them anyway.
DVDS IN RECENT CIRCULATION :
SECRET WINDOW (2004) Dir. David Koepp.
Johnny Depp plays a tortured suspense novelist named Mort Rainey (credit there for having a protagonist named 'Mort') accused of plagarism in this adaptation of a Stephen King short story. That's a simplistic and misleading description I'm afraid - you see a strange hillbilly character (John Turturro) shows up at his door claiming that Mort stole his story and threatens Mort's and his love one's lives if he doesn't change the ending and give him proper credit. Mort (sorry I just love typing that name) is tortured because his wife of 10 years (Maria Bello)left him for a straight laced never smiling Timothy Hutton who himself played a tortured writer in King's THE DARK HALF but I digress. So Mort's dog is found dead and he goes to the local police who of course are ineffective and he wanders around his cabin in the woods overreacting and over-acting to every startling sound.
I'm not going to give anything away but the resolution of this is so contrived and ridiculous that it brought back memories of IDENTITY or as we here at film babble like to call A NIGHT AT THE RED HERRING MOTEL. It's getting harder and harder to accept movie premises in which any given character may be a figment of someone's imagination and that certain incidents may never have occured at all. "The ending is the most important part" Mort says at one point and he's he right - it surely was important to me when this piece of derivative doggerel was going to end.
- Daniel Cook Johnson
BAD SANTA (2003) Dir. Terry Zwigoff. This is the notable exception. Director Zwigoff and star Billy Bob Thorton are slumming it here but oh what a glorious slum it is. Thorton plays a boozing foul mouthed department store Santa who with his midget partner in crime (Tony Cox)have a consistent seasonal scam by breaking into the safe of the stores that employ them. Good crude stuff that brings to mind other enjoyable lowbrow fare like SHAKES THE CLOWN and RUTHLESS PEOPLE.
- Anderson Moran
50 FIRST DATES Dir. Peter Segel. Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore try to work their WEDDING SINGER magic in this tropical romantic comedy about a guy having to re-win the heart of his love every day as her memory is erased every night while she sleeps. It's a convoluted premise with very little imagination and the usual cheap humor (wet dreams, whale genitalia references, and strained physical antics)found in a Sandler flick. It does have some genuine heart to it so there are people who may like it but to most film babble blogsters it will be erased from memory while they sleep.
- Bertie Shafer
More later...
is the Green Art Nail
