Posts tagged help
“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.”
“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.”
“What’s Your Number?” One-Sidetrack Movie
Oct 6th
Official Website
“One-Sidetrack Movie”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
What’s Your Number? follows the recent Hollywood trend of movies about women who are assertive, raunchy, bawdy, and, yes, even foul mouthed.
In other words, the target audience is young men, who Hollywood believes don’t want to see movies about women unless the women are assertive, raunchy, bawdy, and, yes, even foul mouthed.
Get the women to strip and show off their bodies, and, heck, Hollywood has expanded the audience to include teenage boys, too.
Anna Faris, she of the Scary Movie spoofs of the, well, scary movies and the surprisingly good 2008 The House Bunny, stars as Ally Darling, a young woman in Boston who creates a dilemma for herself.
Ally’s sister is getting married, and Ally starts feeling sorry for herself. Then she learns that the average number of lovers a woman has in her lifetime is 10.5.
Ally counts up all her past lovers and determines that she has had 19, but then when she also learns that if a woman hasn’t gotten married after having had 20 lovers, the odds are she will never get married, Ally decides that she will never sleep with a man again unless he is the one she is going to marry.
Well, when that plan doesn’t work, Ally decides to track down all her past lovers to make sure that she hadn’t overlooked one and that he just might have been the one for her.
Of course, that is going to be difficult, and so Ally enlists the help of Colin, the guy who lives across the hallway from her in her apartment building.
Colin is played by Chris Evans, and he agrees to help Ally in exchange for being allowed to hide out in Ally’s apartment every morning so that he can avoid the latest woman whom he brought home the night before.
So, you can see where this is going, can’t you, and if you have seen the trailer for the movie, you have already seen most of the movie.
Now, there is one sidetrack that you won’t anticipate, and for a while you might believe that you were fooled.
We also see Ally’s parents, played by Blythe Danner and Ed Begley Jr., who are divorced because they have two entirely different personalities.
What’s Your Number? is a one-sidetrack movie that you can surely avoid.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”