Posts tagged Los Angeles
“Due Date” See It
Nov 10th
“See It”
DUE DATE could be dismissed as just another “odd couple, “buddy,” “road-trip” movie, but it is much more than that.
It is a very funny, often laugh-out-loud movie about two men forced to travel across the southern United States in order to meet separate deadlines, but I have a feeling that men will enjoy it much more than women will.
However, everyone can enjoy the talent of the two actors who play those two men: Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakas, who portray Peter and Ethan, respectively.
Peter is an architect, Ethan is an actor wannabe, and the story begins in Atlanta, where they have an unfortunate, but funny encounter at the airport departure curb.
Then they have another funny, but unfortunate encounter before takeoff on the same airplane to Los Angeles, and it just keeps getting better as it goes on.
Peter and Ethan end up in a rental car and in a hurry to get to California, because Peter’s wife is about to have their first child and Ethan has a scheduled meeting with an agent.
Peter doesn’t want to share the road trip with Ethan, but is forced to, because as Ethan tells him, “I have all the money, the car, and the winning personality.”
Peter and the audience will agree on two of those reasons.
However, Ethan also has a dog traveling with him; glaucoma, which causes a side trip to buy some medical marijuana; and the ashes from his recently deceased father, which he carries in a coffee can.
Unfortunately, Ethan spends almost all his money on the weed, and now they are left with only $60 between them, and they have reached only Birmingham, Alabama.
There is a very funny scene in which they try to get some money wired to them from Peter’s wife; an even funnier scene in Dallas where they stop for help from Darryl, an old friend of Peter’s played by Jamie Foxx; and a scene that tops them all when they accidentally try to cross the border into Mexico, which ends fantastically hilarious.
When they reach the Grand Canyon, where they stop to satisfy Ethan’s wishes, they swap confessions in a touching scene until Ethan reveals the biggest confession of them all, and then we have one final mad dash to meet their . . .
DUE DATE. See it.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“A Single Man” An Unhappy Man
Jan 20th
An Unhappy Man
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
A SINGLE MAN looks terrific and strives to be momentous, but to steal a line from the legendary animator Chuck Jones, deep down it is pretty shallow.
The time is 1962, and Colin Firth plays George Falconer, a college professor of literature in Los Angeles who is gay.
Firth has already won a Best Actor award for this role and has received other Best Actor nominations, as well.
The story begins one morning when George wakes up, and we hear him say in a voice-over, “For the past six months, waking up has actually hurt.”
You see, six months earlier George’s lover, Jim, was killed in an automobile accident, and George’s heart was broken. George can’t see his future, but today, he has decided, will be different.
George gets dressed, and he puts a novel by Aldous Huxley and an empty revolver in his briefcase, which appear to be ominous, but all will be explained later.
Throughout the film, we see unsettling images that don’t appear to have anything to do with the story, and we also get flashbacks that represent George’s memories of his life with Jim and the 16 years that they were together.
When George arrives at his office, a secretary tells him that she had given his home address that morning to a student who had asked for it. That student turns out to be Kenny, a young man in George’s literature class, and Kenny will keep turning up in the story.
Julianne Moore plays Charlotte, who also plays an important role in the story, and who is a close friend of George’s and the first one he turned to for comfort the night he was informed of Jim’s death.
There are also interactions with a neighbor family that don’t seem to have anything to do with the story except to establish that George isn’t very sociable on this day, which he admits is kind of a serious day for him.
George claims that he is exactly what he appears to be, if you look closely enough, but he does have some surprises for the audience in his behavior on this day in his life.
A SINGLE MAN is simply a day in the life of an unhappy man, but the story is past its prime in terms of shock value in every aspect.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”