Posts tagged rich
“Savages” Bloody and Ironic
Jul 15th
“Bloody and Ironic”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Savages is the latest film directed by Oliver Stone, and it was also written by him along with Don Winslow, whose 2010 novel was the basis for the film.
The best-known members of the cast, but not necessarily the stars, are Blake Lively, Benicio Del Toro, John Travolta, and Salma Hayek, and the story is about a Mexican drug cartel trying to move in on the successful marijuana business run by two best buddies in Southern California.
Lively plays Ophelia, a spoiled young rich girl who goes just by “O” and who is the girlfriend of both Chon and Ben, the successful marijuana growers and distributors who have been best friends since high school and whose pot is considered the best in all of California, if not the world.
O also narrates the story, and more than once she says, “Just because I’m telling you this story doesn’t mean I’m alive at the end.”
If she is alive at the end, that would be ironic, wouldn’t it?
On the other hand, if she is not alive at the end, that would also be ironic.
One day Chon and Ben receive an e-mail video from the Baja Cartel in Mexico that shows a bunch of bodies with decapitated heads and blood all over everything.
Then they receive an e-mail from the cartel wanting to meet the next day. Ben is afraid of the Mexicans, but Chon says he is not afraid of them. Of course, Chon is a former Navy SEAL who smuggled the marijuana seeds back to the U.S. from Afghanistan that got them started in the business.
Chon and Ben check in with Dennis, a DEA agent who is less than pristine in his duties, and Dennis advises them to take whatever deal they are offered rather than decapitation.
However, when Chon and Ben meet with the representatives of the Baja Cartel, they don’t like the deal they are offered and tell the representatives that they will think about it and meet again in 24 hours.
Ben wants to get out of the business altogether, but before they can do anything, the cartel kidnaps O and holds her prisoner, which forces their hand, because they will do anything to get O back safely.
And the rest of the movie is just about anything.
Savages is bloody and ironic.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” All Right in the End
May 19th
“Everything All Right in the End”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is about a hotel in India of that name, but ending in even more words of “For the Elderly & Beautiful,” it is a beautiful, lovely, and funny movie, and it just might be the best movie you will see all year.
Based on the 2004 novel These Foolish Things by Deborah Moggach, the movie follows seven British pensioners who accept the offer from the hotel’s new owner and manager to travel there and kick-start its business.
In fact, the brochure that persuaded the seven strangers to go to India for a new adventure was Photoshopped to look like what the young manager hopes it will look like, and after they arrive, he adds “Now with Guests” to the hotel sign.
The manager’s name is Sonny Kapoor, he is played by Dev Patel of the 2008 Slumdog Millionaire, and when the new arrivals complain about the hotel’s condition, Sonny assures them with his optimistic philosophy, “Everything will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, then it is not yet the end.”
The most well-known actors playing the pensioners, who are all there for different reasons, are Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy, and Maggie Smith, and although it is difficult at first to keep them and their stories straight, just sit back, relax, and let them all be as wonderful and enjoyable as the sights, sounds, and colors of India itself.
One of the pensioners has been forced to sell her London flat, another one lived happily in India 40 years ago and is returning to settle a matter that has been bothering him all that time, another one doesn’t like foreigners, but requires a cheap hip replacement, one unhappily married couple lost money in a bad investment, one woman is looking for a rich husband, and the final pensioner is a man who is lonely and just looking for some female companionship.
In the meantime, Sonny has his own romantic problems, because his mother doesn’t approve of his girlfriend and has her own plans for his future bride.
And don’t think that the pensioners will find what they are looking for within their own group.
Remember Sonny’s optimistic philosophy?
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, when it comes to the end, will leave you thinking that everything is all right.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“The Three Stooges” Is Soitainly an Embarrassment
Apr 21st
“Soitainly an Embarrassment”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
The Three Stoges: The Movie is how the publicist wants references to be made about this movie, which is so bad, it is lucky to have any references made to it at all.
However, speaking of references, what first comes to mind is a parody from the Bible: “When I was a child, I enjoyed the antics of The Three Stooges, but when I became a man I put away childish things and don’t find them funny anymore.”
The second reference that comes to mind is that the story is straight out of the 1980 The Blues Brothers: raising money to save the orphanage in which the title characters grew up.
This story starts off with three babies being tossed out onto the steps of the orphanage, and they look just like the identifiable mugs that we have come to recognize by their haircuts, Moe with his bowl-cut style, Curly with his shaved pate, and Larry, who is half bald and half wild and curly haired.
Incidentally, Moe is still the self-appointed leader of the group, but the grownup Larry is played by Sean Hayes, who is more well known than the actors playing Moe and Curly, and so Hayes is billed as the star of the movie.
Then we see the Stooges 10 years later, and they are doing the same shtick that we enjoyed watching them do when we were children. A young couple choose Moe for adoption, but it doesn’t end well, and they return Moe and choose another young boy instead.
Then it is 25 years later, the boys are all grown up now, and everybody learns that due to lack of money, the orphanage will be shut down at the end of the month.
The orphanage needs $830,000 to be saved, and Moe says, “We’ll do whatever it takes.”
All they know how to do is handyman work, however, and of course they aren’t even very good at that. But the Stooges are pure of heart and dim of wit.
And what follows is a falling out among the Stooges, Sofia Vergara as a rich woman who hires them for some dirty work, and a wasted and tasteless introduction of the reality stars from “The Jersey Shore.”
The Three Stooges: The Movie is not much of a movie and soitainly an embarrassment.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”