Posts tagged talk
“About Time” Repetitive and Tedious to a Fault
Nov 10th
Posted by Dan Culberson in Hotshots Movie Reviews
“Repetitive and Tedious to a Fault”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
About Time is the latest schmaltzy romantic comedy written by Richard Curtis, who also wrote Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and Love, Actually.
This one, however, adds the notion of time travel to the already tedious concept of “meet cute” in romantic comedies.
That is correct. If the hero has the ability to go back in time, then he can fix whatever he did wrong when he first met the perfect girl for him.
Tim is our hero, and on his 21st birthday, his father, played by Bill Nighy, takes Tim aside and tells him, “The men in this family have always had the ability to travel in time.”
However, they can only go back in time, not forward, and how to do it is the easy bit.
They just go into a dark place, clinch their fists, think of when they want to go to, and when they step out of the dark place, they are there.
I mean “then.”
So, Tim tries it, and, sure enough, it works, although he isn’t able to achieve the result he wanted with the first girl he believed was the perfect girl for him.
Then Tim is off to London to begin his career as a lawyer and to keep searching for the perfect girl.
Tim also has trouble fixing the opening night of a play written by the relative he is staying with, and we have to watch everything leading up to both attempts.
Then Tim meets Mary, an American girl working in London, who is played by Rachel McAdams.
Unfortunately, when they meet, Tim is with his best friend, and they meet Mary and her friend in a club that is completely dark, which has nothing to do with Tim’s ability to travel in time, but the audience has to sit and watch a black screen while the actors talk.
Well, needless to say, things don’t go the way Tim wanted them to this time, either, and the audience has to watch each time Tim tries to correct the situation.
Tim’s time travel in this movie isn’t limited to Tim’s attempt to find the perfect girl, either. Oh, no. Not by a long shot.
About Time takes too long to get started and too long to end, and it is repetitive and tedious to a fault.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Enough Said” Title Says It Best
Oct 25th
Posted by Dan Culberson in Hotshots Movie Reviews
“Title Says It Best”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Enough Said is a romantic comedy that is the very definition of quirky, which is a synonym of idiosyncratic, which means eccentric or peculiar of constitution or temperament and also an individualizing characteristic or quality.
In other words, it is hard to define.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus stars as Eva, a divorced masseuse who carries her massage table in the trunk of her car to her clients’ homes, and we see three of those clients throughout the movie as a running gag, or should that be a driving gag, or should that be a massaging gag.
Eva has been divorced 10 years, and she has a teenage daughter, Ellen, who is going away to college in the fall.
Eva’s best friend is Sarah, played by Toni Collette, and at the beginning of the movie Eva goes to a party with Sarah and her husband, at which Eva says to Sarah, “There’s not one man at this party that I’m attracted to.”
However, Eva does meet a man at the party, Albert, played by James Gandolfini, who has been divorced for four years and who also has a teenage daughter who is going off to college in the fall.
Eva also meets a woman at the party, Marianne, who is a poet and who becomes a new client for Eva.
Well, Albert likes Eva enough that he calls her and asks her out to dinner, and Eva likes Albert enough that she accepts.
Now, maybe this is how first dates are conducted in California, but at the end of the date when Albert drives Eva home, he doesn’t even get out of the car and walk her up to her front door, shaking hands with her in the front seat.
At any rate, Eva tells Sarah that she thought it was a very good date, and now she finds Albert kind of sexy, enough so that they continue dating and doing more than shaking hands.
Much more.
Meanwhile, Eva’s new client, Marianne, enjoys being with Eva so much that she wants to become friends with Eva, saying that she doesn’t have many close friends whom she can talk to, which mostly consists of bad-mouthing her ex-husband.
Well, you can see where this going, can’t you, especially when you learn that Marianne also has a daughter going away to college.
Enough Said.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Fruitvale Station” All Story and No Movie
Aug 3rd
Posted by Dan Culberson in Hotshots Movie Reviews
“All Story, No Movie”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Fruitvale Station is based on a true story about a tragedy that occurred in 2009 in the San Francisco Bay area.
The title is the name of the station on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, or BART, where the event took place.
In fact, the movie opens with actual footage from the event, and then it goes into a couple of flashbacks in an attempt to fill out the story and show why it was such a tragedy.
The first flashback goes to the morning of New Year’s Eve, and we meet Oscar Julius Grant III, a young man 22 years old who is in bed with his girlfriend Sophina.
Oscar tells Sophina, “All I want is you and T, forever.”
“T” is their daughter, Tatiana, who is four years old.
December 31 is also the birthday of Oscar’s mother, Wanda, played by Octavia Spencer. So, Oscar calls Wanda and makes arrangements for Wanda’s birthday party that evening, which will be attended by family and friends, and we watch Oscar throughout the day taking care of the arrangements.
He goes to the supermarket where his brother works to get the food and where Oscar also helps out a customer arrange a fish fry she is hosting by having her talk to Oscar’s grandmother, who gives the customer advice.
Oscar also talks to his sister, Chantay, and promises to let her have $300 so Chantay can pay her rent that month, even though from what we have seem so far, we wonder if Oscar even has that amount of money to give to Chantay.
Then we go into another flashback to a year earlier when Oscar is in prison on drug-related charges, and his mother comes to visit him. Oscar gets into an argument with another prisoner, and it upsets his mother so much that she says that she won’t visit him anymore.
This flashback gives more background on Oscar and introduces a character who will play a part in the event that is the story that makes up the movie.
Then we are back to the events of the day on New Year’s Eve, and we see more of Oscar’s day leading up to the tragedy, which is preceded by going into San Francisco to celebrate New Year’s Eve.
Fruitvale Station is all story and no movie.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”