Posts tagged bar
“Identity Thief” Another Road-Trip Comedy
Mar 3rd
Posted by Dan Culberson in Hotshots Movie Reviews
“Another Road-Trip Comedy”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Identity Thief is a comedy about a serious subject that has even been in the news lately: stealing someone’s identity and using it to the thief’s advantage.
In this case, Melissa McCarthy plays the title character, her name is Diana when she isn’t using someone else’s, and we see right off how she goes about stealing someone’s identity and then making her own credit cards in the sucker’s name.
The sucker is Sandy Patterson, played by Jason Bateman; he lives in Denver; his wife Trish, played by Amanda Peet, is pregnant; they already have two children; and there is a running gag about his first name.
So, we see Diana in a bar buying drinks for everyone using a credit card in Sandy’s name, and the bartender says to her, “People like you don’t have friends.”
Meanwhile, Sandy is disgruntled with his boss, and he and some of his coworkers leave the company to start their own company, but when his credit cards start being declined when he wants to buy something, Sandy’s real troubles begin.
The police have a warrant for his arrest for missing a court date in Florida, and Sandy manages to talk his way into getting a week of grace so he can go to Florida, find the fake Sandy, and bring the thief back to Denver in order to save himself from going to jail.
No problem, right?
And let the laughs begin.
Sandy tracks Diana down, but if he thought he had troubles before, his troubles now are even worse, because Diana doesn’t want to go back to Denver with him.
And the rest of the movie consists of Sandy trying to get Diana from Florida to Denver in order to clear his name.
The laughs come suddenly and unexpectedly, and there are plenty of other characters trying to stop them, including two people with orders from their boss to kill Sandy and a very unusual skip tracer who is on the trail of the fake Sandy and who is trying to capture her and bring her back to justice.
So, Sandy and Diana try to avoid the others, have to change modes of transportation for various reasons, and struggle to make it to Denver all in two pieces.
Identity Thief is another in a long line of road-trip comedies at large.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” Just a Ridiculous Concept
Jul 9th
Posted by Channel 1 Networks in Hotshots Movie Reviews
“Ridiculous Concept”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is one of those movies with a title that gives away the whole story.
On the other hand, some people might be so intrigued by the title that they just have to go see the movie anyway.
Spoiler Alert! The story is about the 16th president of the United States, and the premise is that he hunted vampires as a secret passion.
Early in the movie we learn why, and later we learn how, when Lincoln meets a man named Henry Sturgess in a bar and Sturgess says to him, “A man only gets that drunk when he wants to kiss a girl or kill a man. So, which is it?”
You see, Sturgess is a professional vampire hunter, Lincoln wants to kill one particular vampire for personal reasons, and so Sturgess agrees to teach Lincoln how to kill vampires, but for a price.
Because Lincoln had been a rail-splitter when he was younger, and as he tells Sturgess that he hasn’t had much luck with shooting, Sturgess helps Lincoln cover the blade of his ax with silver, which has to do with the lore of killing vampires in this movie, and the ax will help Lincoln in his quest in more ways than one.
Sturgess also tells Lincoln that he can have no family or friends as long as he is a vampire hunter, but of course Lincoln acquires both.
We see Lincoln meet, woo, and wed Mary Todd, we see him debate Stephen Douglas when he rises in politics, and we also see him enter the White House when he becomes president, even though each and every night, he goes out hunting vampires.
Now, there are many scenes and shots that were designed specifically to be seen in 3-D, and some–if not all–of them are just plain ridiculous.
And then comes the Civil War, and we learn that the vampires in the country are siding with the Rebels, because they want a nation of their own, which puts a different perspective on the battle scenes, doesn’t it?
Well, we all know how that turned out anyway, but you might be interested in the end of the movie, which puts a whole new perspective on what might be going on today.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is still just a ridiculous concept.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Hysteria” about the Singular Most Popular Sex Toy
Jun 23rd
Posted by Dan Culberson in Hotshots Movie Reviews
“Singular Most Popular Sex Toy”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Hysteria is about the invention of a device that is widely used, but not commonly discussed, and when it is, usually there are snickers and Monty Python nudges of “Know what I mean? Know what I mean?”
And I am not talking about the candy bar.
The word “hysteria” comes from the Greek word meaning a woman’s womb, and in the 1800s when it was used to mean a psychoneurosis marked by emotional excitability and disturbances of the psychic, sensory, and visceral functions leading to behavior exhibiting overwhelming or unimaginable fear or emotional excess, doctors in England believed that behavior in women was caused by their uterus, and the way to treat them and to cure that behavior was to apply stimulation to the woman’s organ.
What I don’t understand is why any woman paid a doctor to treat her that way for the all-purpose catchword of hysteria would go back to him and pay him again for treatment when she could just treat herself at home for free.
All puns intended.
The story begins in 1880 in London, and Hugh Dancy plays Dr. Mortimer Granville.
Dr. Granville interviews for the job as assistant to Dr. Robert Dalrymple, who asks Dr Granville, “But tell me, Doctor, what do you know of hysteria?”
Dr. Dalrymple says that the work of treating women for hysteria is tedious and boring, but Dalrymple is London’s leading specialist in women’s medicine, and his waiting room is always full of women waiting to be treated by him.
Know what I mean? Know what I mean?
Dr. Dalrymple has two daughters, Emily and Charlotte, who is played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, and they, too, are doctors. Emily lives at home and is a phrenologist, or a scientist who feels the bumps on someone’s head, which determines the person’s mental faculties and character.
Charlotte, however, is at odds with her father, because she is always borrowing money to keep her Settlement House in the East End open, where she treats poor people and many women and children. When we first meet Charlotte, she is having an argument with her father and storms out of his office, slamming every door behind her.
Hysteria takes too long to get started, could use some good editing, but eventually gets around to the discovery of the singular most popular sex toy.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”