Posts tagged live
“Wanderlust” Has Happiest Ending Ever
Mar 11th
“Happiest Ending Ever”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Wanderlust stars Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston in what is not so much a romantic comedy as it is just a happy comedy, if there is such a classification.
In fact, the plot is as simple as “Boy has girl, boy almost loses girl, boy and girl stay together.”
However, what makes the movie interesting is where most of the story takes place, which is in a hippie commune that was started in 1971.
George and Linda are a young married couple in New York City whose professional lives take a sudden turn for the worse, and so they decide to pull up stakes and move to Atlanta, where George’s brother and his family live.
After a long drive, Linda insists that she has to get out of the car, and so they drive into a place with a sign that identifies it as “Elysium,” where they are greeted by a slightly overweight, naked man.
Startled, George tries to drive away, but he wrecks the car, and they are forced to stay there in what the residents call an “intentional community.”
When they introduce themselves to the group, George is asked, “If you’re George, where is John, Paul, and Ringo?”
The group claims that they have no leaders, that Mother Earth is the only leader they need, and there are no rules, just the way they all think about stuff.
In addition, there are no doors, even on the bathrooms, all the members share everything, and they believe in open sexual boundaries, which means that anything goes and with anyone.
At first, George likes living there more than Linda does, saying that he feels like he can breathe there for the first time, but then Linda starts to enjoy it more than George does, even though the most attractive woman in the group tells George that she believes that they should have sex together.
The scene in which George tries to prepare himself by boosting his confidence in front of a mirror is one of the funniest in the movie.
However, the plot turns weak when one of the oldest cliches in the world of movie plots occurs, that of developers wanting to take over the land and develop it into something else.
Wanderlust, though, has the happiest ending ever, and make sure you stay for the outtakes.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Albert Knobbs – Movie Trailer
Jan 29th
Five-time Academy Award nominee Glenn Close stars in this emotional and thought-provoking tale of a woman forced to live as a man in 19th Century Ireland. After thirty years of keeping up the charade, a new love threatens to destroy everything she’s worked so hard to build.
“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” Swedish Version Better
Jan 1st
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
“Swedish Version Better”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the Hollywood version, is out only 1-1/2 years after the Swedish version was released in the U.S., and if you didn’t see that version, you might think that this newer one is pretty good.
Daniel Craig plays investigative journalist Mikael Blomqvist, and Rooney Mara has replaced Noomi Repace as Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo on her back, and the similarity of the actresses’ names can be confusing, just as the story can be for new audiences.
Spoiler Alert! If you have read the book on which both movies are based or if you saw the Swedish movie and managed to read the subtitles and watch the action at the same time, then you already know how this one ends, unless you have forgotten some of the convoluted details.
The movie cuts back and forth between Lisbeth and Mikael for the longest time before they ever get together to solve the crime that is the basis of the mystery, and once they do, Lisbeth says, “I like working with you,” to which Mikael replies, “I like working with you, too.”
This exchange is amusing, considering what happens just before they say that, but for the most part the movie is serious, grim, and graphic in its sex, violence, and nudity.
Mikael has been hired by a wealthy industrialist to figure out what happened to his niece, Harriet, who was 16 back in 1966 when she disappeared from the remote island on which the industrialist’s dysfunctional family all live.
Harriet’s disappearance was especially mysterious, because her body was never found, and an accident on the bridge to the island prevented anyone from getting on or off the island.
Meanwhile, Lisbeth has problems of her own in her personal life, she has a history of committing violence, and although she claims that she has taken care of herself since she was 10, she has a guardian from whom she gets her money to live on.
Lisbeth is an experienced researcher, an accomplished computer hacker, and her appearance is, shall we say, “extreme,” although I liked her appearance better in the Swedish version. Her dragon tattoo is better in the Swedish version, too.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the Hollywood version, is just not as good as the Swedish version.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
