Posts tagged Official Website
“J. Edgar” Guilty of Overdirecting and Overacting
Nov 19th
Official Website
Movie Trailer
“Overdirecting and Overacting”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
J. Edgar tells the story of J. Edgar Hoover, longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, it is the latest film directed by Clint Eastwood, and it is a big disappointment.
First of all, the movie stars Leonardo “Pretty Boy” DiCaprio as the diminutive Hoover, DiCaprio is six feet tall, Hoover was five feet, 7-1/2 inches tall, and although there is one scene that refers to Hoover’s short height, except for when DiCaprio is paired with Armie Hammer, who is six-foot five, Hoover doesn’t look short at all.
Second of all, the movie takes forever to get started, jumping back and forth and in-between in time for no apparent purpose than to try to impress the audience with Eastwood’s cleverness. Eventually we learn that this is the design of the entire movie, but until we realize that, the audience can be asking, “What is this? A history lesson?”
At any rate, I got bored right at the beginning and saw it as too much style and not enough substance, especially when clever cuts between scenes were designed to impress and the continuity became confusing. Titles showing what year we were in would be a considerable help, but I guess Eastwood thought that DiCaprio’s makeup showing him as an old man, young man, and middle-aged man would take care of that problem.
And third of all, the movie confirms only one of the three so-called “scandalous” facts that we now know about Hoover, that he was a mama’s boy, but still leaves open for speculation that he had a homosexual relationship with his longtime Number 2 man, Clyde Tolson, played by Hammer, and that he enjoyed wearing women’s clothing.
Hoover’s mother is played by Judi Dench, and I even yawned during the scene in which after she dies, DiCaprio puts on one of her dresses.
Naomi Watts is unrecognizable as Helen Gandy, Hoover’s longtime private secretary and keeper of the secret files that Hoover maintained on various celebrities and politicians.
And the film keeps going over the famous kidnaping of the son of Charles Lindbergh in endless flashbacks, flashforwards, and flash-in-betweens even after it reveals what the ending of that case was.
Finally, DiCaprio even manages to overact in the scene of him lying dead on his bedroom floor.
J. Edgar is guilty of overdirecting and overacting.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Johnny English Reborn” Inspector Clouseau As a Bumbling Bond
Oct 27th
Official Website
“Inspector Clouseau As a Bumbling Bond”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Johnny English Reborn is a sequel we could have done without to a movie I had never even heard of, the 2003 Johnny English.
Again starring Rowan Atkinson as the title character in what was intended to be a spoof of the James Bond movies, this movie is so bad that it needs to be put at the top of the list of a whole new category: “Movies I Never Want to Hear About Again, Much Less See in the First Place.”
This so-called comedy is so bad that it caused only one chuckle from the entire audience, and that was from the only other person in the auditorium with me at the first showing on the opening day of its release.
This movie is so bad that it gives a whole new meaning to “piece of crap.”
This movie is so bad that the rest of this review could consist entirely of sentences beginning with that phrase.
On the other hand, according to a story in the Los Angeles Times, this same movie “is a hit overseas,” which just goes to show you that there is no accounting for taste.
Atkinson plays British spy Johnny English, who five years earlier was the top agent for MI7, but then he was in charge of security for an incident in Mozambique, things went badly, and now just the mention of “Mozambique” causes his right eye to twitch uncontrollably.
Johnny claims that he was only partly at fault, but when the movie opens, he is in Tibet, where he went to forget his shame and study martial arts with Tibetan monks.
However, MI7 wants him back for a special mission, although he is told that guns, fast cars, and chauvinism are on their way out in the modern world of international spying.
In Tibet, Johnny was told, “You are not young, but with age comes wisdom,” and he gets a chance to prove that in his new assignment.
He gets a chance to prove it, but of course he doesn’t in a movie that is just one sight gag and bad joke after another.
The late, great Peter Sellers could have made this movie much better with his Inspector Clouseau character, but Atkinson is no Sellers.
Johnny English Reborn is a poor man’s Inspector Clouseau as a bumbling James Bond.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Johnny English Reborn – Movie Trailer
Oct 26th
In the years since MI7’s top spy vanished off the grid, Johnny English (Rowan Atkinson) has been honing his unique skills in a remote region of Asia. But when his agency superiors learn of an attempt against the Chinese premier’s life, they must hunt down the highly unorthodox agent. Now that the world needs him once again, Johnny English is back in action. With one shot at redemption, he must employ the latest in hi-tech gadgets to unravel a web of conspiracy that runs throughout the KGB, CIA and even MI-7. With mere days until a heads of state conference, one man must use every trick in his playbook to protect us all. For Johnny English, disaster may be an option, but failure never is.
