Movies
These are video movie reviews, movie trailers, and websites of the latest movies. The C1N Movie section includes Dan Culberson’s Hotshots Movie Reviews with a new review every week. We also show our C1N trailer pick of the week by Aaron Smith which is about 40 years younger than Dans taste. Show times and ticket avails are up. Look for film festivals, movie news, events, and news about the pictures here too.
“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.”
J. Edgar – Movie Trailer
Nov 17th
J. Edgar explores the public and private life of one of the most powerful, controversial and enigmatic figures of the 20th century. As the face of law enforcement in America for almost fifty years, J. Edgar Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) was feared and admired, reviled and revered. But behind closed doors, he held secrets that would have destroyed his image, his career and his life.
“Tower Heist” High-Rise Hijack High Jinks
Nov 10th
“High-Rise Hijack High Jinks”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
TOWER HEIST has a story so topical that it could have been ripped from yesterday’s headlines–if a gang of bumbling thieves had schemed to rob Ponzi-meister Bernie Madoff’s penthouse of his stashed millions before he was sent to prison.
Ben Stiller plays Josh Kovacs, the building manager of a residential skyscraper in New York City known as “The Tower,” which is the most expensive real estate in North America.
Living in the penthouse of The Tower is Arthur Shaw, played against type by Alan Alda, who is best known for playing lovable rapscallion Capt. Hawkeye Pierce in the long-running “M*A*S*H” TV series.
Shaw manages money funds for financial investors, but his personality is such that he demands that Josh personally deliver all of Shaw’s meals, because, as he says, “I don’t want the help spitting in my coffee.”
Well, one day to the surprise of everybody except the members in the audience, Shaw gets arrested by the F.B.I. for securities fraud of epic proportions, which is of great importance to Josh, because he had convinced all the employees of The Tower to invest their pension funds with Shaw, and now that money is all gone.
So, when Josh learns from Special Agent Clair Denham, played by Tea Leoni, that $20 million is still missing from Shaw’s accounts, which they suspect was Shaw’s escape fund, Josh concludes that the money must be hidden in a secret safe in Shaw’s penthouse, he enlists the aid of some fellow employees, and they decide to break into the penthouse, find the safe, and steal the money, even though Shaw is under house arrest in the apartment, which is guarded by security cameras and F.B.I. agents outside the door.
Now, Josh IS smart enough to realize that they probably can’t do all this on their own, and so he also enlists the aid of a professional thief that he passes every day on his walk to work who is named Slide, whom he also knew as a kid, and who is played by Eddie Murphy.
Of course, nothing goes quite as planned, and they even have to change their plans when they do manage to get into the apartment, do find the safe, and do get it open.
TOWER HEIST is nothing more nor less than highly entertaining high-rise hijack high jinks.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
