Posts tagged Joseph Basile
St. Vincent “Big Rewards”
Oct 29th
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
ST. VINCENT is the latest film starring Bill Murray, and that is all you need to know to make you want to see it, and you will be pleased you did. Murray plays Vincent, who is the furthest thing you can imagine being a saint at the beginning of the movie.
Vincent lives in a run-down house in Brooklyn, he drinks, he gambles, and he has a so-called “friend,” who is a pregnant Russian stripper and hooker named Daka, who is played by Naomi Watts.
Well, one day some new neighbors move in next door, and things get off to a bad start when the moving truck breaks a branch off a tree in Vincent’s front yard, which falls onto Vincent’s car parked in his driveway and damages it.
The car, not the driveway.
The truck also runs over Vincent’s fence, and he wants the new neighbor to pay for that, too, although we have already seen Vincent run over the fence himself while driving his car into the driveway drunk and backwards.
The new neighbors are Maggie, a woman going through a divorce played by Melissa McCarthy in a surprisingly and thankfully toned-down performance, and her young son Oliver, who says when he is told about Vincent, “It’s gonna be a long life.”
Maggie has a new job at a hospital, and Oliver starts a new school, which happens to be Catholic, although he is not, nor are many of the kids in his class, as the teacher finds out when he introduces Oliver to the class.
The teacher, Brother Geraghty, is played by Chris O’Dowd.
On his first day at school, Oliver gets picked on by some bullies, and his clothes are stolen, and so when he gets home he is locked out of the house and goes next door to use Vincent’s phone in order to call Maggie.
When Oliver tries to explain why he wants to use Vinent’s telephone, Vincent says, “I don’t need to hear the whole story,” which Vincent will say more than once in this movie.
When Maggie gets home, she anticipates future needs to use Vincent, and so they agree that Vincent will babysit Oliver for a small wage whenever necessary.
Well, you can see where this arrangement is headed, can’t you?
ST. VINCENT pays off with big rewards.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
St. Vincent – Movie Trailer
Oct 24th
Maggie (McCarthy), a single mother, moves into a new home in Brooklyn with her 12-year old son, Oliver (Lieberher). Forced to work long hours, she has no choice but to leave Oliver in the care of their new neighbor, Vincent (Murray), a retired curmudgeon with a penchant for alcohol and gambling. An odd friendship soon blossoms between the improbable pair. Together with a pregnant stripper named Daka (Watts), Vincent brings Oliver along on all the stops that make up his daily routine – the race track, a strip club, and the local dive bar. Vincent helps Oliver grow to become a man, while Oliver begins to see in Vincent something that no one else is able to: a misunderstood man with a good heart.
“Delivery Man” a Sweet and Touching Comedy
Nov 30th
“Sweet and Touching Comedy”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Delivery Man stars Vince Vaughn in a remake of a French-Canadian movie about a man with enough problems to begin with who finds himself in a situation that allows him to create even more problems.
Vaughn plays David Wozniak who works for his father’s business in New York City driving a truck and delivering meat.
However, that is not all that makes him a delivery man.
You see, 20 years ago David earned a lot of money by donating sperm as a regular visitor at a fertility clinic.
And yet David is a terrible investor, and he now owes $80,000 which he borrowed from the Mob.
When David’s girlfriend, Emma, tells him that she is pregnant, David takes the news well and tells her, “This could be the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me.”
However, Emma has doubts about whether David will make a good father, and she says that she will declare him “the father on probation.”
Meanwhile, David learns that the fertility clinic where he would “wrestle the dragon alone,” as he puts it, made a mistake and gave all the women in its clientele David’s sperm.
David had used the name “Starbuck” for all his donations, which amounted to 692 times, 533 children resulted, and 142 of those children have filed a lawsuit in order to learn Starbuck’s true identity.
David’s best friend, Brett, who has four children of his own, also happens to be a lawyer, and when David goes to Brett for help, Brett says that the dream of every lawyer is to argue a case of this significance.
Brett obtains the profiles of all the children involved in the lawsuit, turns them over to David in an envelope, but tells David not to open the envelope.
Well, you can guess what happens, can’t you? David opens up one profile, just one, and then he tracks down this son of his and is so impressed with who he is and what he turned out to be that David decides to convince Emma that he deserves to be her child’s father.
And opening up one profile to learn about one of his biological children is just like eating one potato chip. It can’t be done and doesn’t end there.
Delivery Man is a comedy that is sweet and touching and funny.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
