Posts tagged Comedy
“City Island” We’ve All Got a Secret
May 6th
We’ve All Got a Secret
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
CITY ISLAND is a terrifically enjoyable little film that has the audience chuckling all the way through it and sometimes causes outright laughter.
The title refers to a little island off the east side of The Bronx in New York that is only one square mile in size and that used to be an old fishing village. We are told that if you live there, you would never think about moving somewhere else.
Vince Rizzo and his family live on the island, they are one of the most interesting and unintentionally funny families you will ever meet, and they all have a secret that they are keeping from each other, some small and others very big indeed.
Vince is played by Andy Garcia, his wife, Joyce, is played by Julianna Margulies, and they have an older daughter named Vivian who isn’t currently living at home and a teenage son named Vince Jr. who is in high school. All of the actors are outstanding with their parts and characterizations.
The time is spring break, and Vivian is home from college, or so her family believes, but Vivian’s secret is much more than just she has dropped out of college and doesn’t really want to be home.
Vince is a correctional officer who makes a point of telling people that he is not a “prison guard,” and once a week he tells his family that he has a poker game with friends, but that isn’t where he goes, although he is not having an affair, which is what Joyce thinks he is really up to.
Joyce’s secret at first is just that she smokes in secret, and when she learns that smoking isn’t allowed in prison, she says, “Being in prison and not being allowed to smoke? That’s like being in jail!”
Junior’s secret is that he has a fetish for overweight girls and for one of their neighbors in particular.
Then when Vince brings a prisoner home to stay with them for a while, the prisoner becomes Vince’s biggest secret of all his secrets, and their first dinner together with everyone is priceless.
However, the final showdown when all their secrets are revealed is classic and priceless.
CITY ISLAND is a terrific film about a family who could have their own television show called “We’ve All Got a Secret.”
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
City Island – Movie Trailer
May 5th
A dysfunctional family living on a picturesque island in the Bronx spares no expense in avoiding the truth about their messed-up lives in writer/director Raymond de Felitta’s dark family comedy. The family patriarch, Vince (Andy Garcia) is a prison guard who is secretly plotting a new career as an actor. Meanwhile, as Vince takes acting lessons on the down low, his daughter moonlights as a stripper and his younger namesake harbors a secret fetish that involves the family’s 300-pound neighbor. Under normal circumstances Vincent’s wife, Joyce (Julianna Margulies), would be the family rock, but lately she’s been preoccupied with uncovering the identity of the hired help, a secret that only her husband knows.
“The Joneses” Whole New Meaning
Apr 28th
Whole New Meaning
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
THE JONESES is a modern “morality tale” that could have been much better if the filmmakers had gone for the satirical jugular instead of watering it down with cheap, easy melodrama.
Demi Moore and David Duchovny play Kate and Steve Jones, they have two teenage children named Jenn and Mick, and they are moving into a new town.
The first thing we notice to be odd about this typical American family is when they are all in the car driving toward their new home and Steve says, “We’re going to do some damage in this town.”
Then after all their fancy new furniture has been moved in and they have received a welcome visit from their new neighbors Larry and Summer Symonds, the second thing we notice to be odd about the Joneses is that Steve and Kate wear matching new pajamas to go to bed, but they sleep in separate bedrooms.
The next day, Steve meets Larry for a round of golf and Kate goes into town to get her hair done, and there is a reason that they both have fancy new “stuff” with them that they are more than happy to show off and talk about to anyone who will listen.
But the third thing we notice to be odd is that evening, Kate and the kids didn’t bother waiting for Steve to come home, and he has to eat his dinner alone.
However, the fourth odd thing is the kicker. That night a naked woman slips into Steve’s bedroom and slides into bed with him. But before anything can happen, Kate comes to the door, turns on the lights, and tells Jenn to get out of Steve’s bed.
You guessed it. The Joneses aren’t a typical American family after all. In fact, they aren’t even a family. They are a team of actors who didn’t even know each other until they were hired by a company to move into a new town and persuade the people they meet to buy the fancy new products that they have and use for themselves.
Even the toilet bowl in their bathroom is an advanced new product.
THE JONESES has a nice little twist at the end, and it gives a whole new meaning to “Keeping up with the Joneses” and blatant product placement in movies these days.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”