Posts tagged smart
“Casa de Mi Padre” Worth a Couple of Chuckles
Apr 1st
“A Couple of Chuckles”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Casa de Mi Padre is Will Ferrell’s latest comedy, and the first thing you notice is that the title is in Spanish.
The second thing you notice about the “House of My Father” is that the entire movie is in Spanish, but with English subtitles for the benefit of those of us who aren’t fluent in Spanish.
Well, not the entire movie, because there are a couple of American characters in the story, which takes place in modern-day Mexico, and they speak what the Mexican characters call “American.”
Ferrell plays Armando, the son of a rancher, and at the beginning of the movie, Armando and his two buddies, Esteban and Manuel, are moving some of the father’s cattle to a new pasture, and Armando says, “I hope nothing bad happens on the way home.”
Then they witness an execution that was caused by the nasty drug business that is going on in the country and which will have ramifications later on in the story.
When the three rancheros get home, Armando’s brother Raul shows up with his fiancee, Sonia Lopez. Raul is the son that his father always loved, and if we hadn’t already figured it out, we learn that Armando is not smart, and his father always tells him that.
Armando also has a secret that we learn when he and Sonia go out riding together and they arrive at the Pond of Seven Tears, where Armando’s mother died when Armando was a little boy.
Armando and Sonia take a liking to each other, and Sonia tells Armando that his brother Raul is in the drug business, but Raul doesn’t sell drugs to their fellow Mexicans, only to Americans.
Unfortunately, Raul is trying to do business in the territory of the most infamous drug dealer, Onza, who also has a close connection with Sonia.
Well, you can see a showdown coming up, can’t you? As well as a Mexican standoff and a final shoot-out that is all the funnier because the participants are drinking and smoking cigarettes at the same time as they are blasting away at each other.
The movie spoofs telenovelas and B-movies, production values, and anything else that Ferrell could think of while memorizing his lines phonetically.
Casa de Mi Padre has a good ending, of course, and is worth a couple of chuckles.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“The Guard” Funny, but Difficult
Sep 3rd
“Funny, but Difficult”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
The Guard is one of the funniest movies you will see all year, but it is also one of the most difficult to understand, too, because it takes place in Ireland, and although the characters speak English for the most part, their accents are unfamiliar to American ears.
I say “for the most part,” because one scene has characters speaking Gaelic, but it also contains subtitles for the audience’s benefit.
The story takes place in County Galway, in western Ireland, and Brendan Gleeson plays Sgt. Gerry Boyle, who prides himself as being “the last of the independents,” although the criminals in the story call him “unpredictable” and for good reason.
For example, when Sgt. Boyle and his new partner investigate a murder, Sgt. Boyle says that the victim looks like Brendan Foley. But then when the partner remarks that they know who the victim is, Sgt. Boyle says, “I said he looked like Brendan Foley. I didn’t say he was Brendan Foley.”
And then Special Agent Wendell Everett comes to town from the United States. He is played by Don Cheadle, and the authorities have been tracking a ship carrying half-a-billion dollars worth of cocaine on board, which they suspect will dock somewhere in western Ireland to unload the drugs.
The fact that Agent Everett is black gives Sgt. Boyle the opportunity to make some outrageous racist comments, but then Sgt. Boyle makes an excuse by saying that he is Irish and racism is part of his culture.
However, as Agent Everett points out, Sgt. Boyle could very easily be very dumb or very smart.
Eventually we learn that Sgt. Boyle is much smarter than he appears to be and also smarter than he acts.
We also follow the gang of drug traffickers who are waiting for the ship to arrive, and their interaction is just as funny as the interaction among Sgt. Boyle, Agent Everett, and the rest of the police force.
At one point you might think that there are too many side stories going on, but they all tie in together neatly at the end, which involves one of the funniest shoot-outs you will ever see.
The Guard is funny, it is difficult, but it is so good that you just might have to see it more than once to enjoy it all the more.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.
“Up In The Air” One Perfect Movie
Dec 23rd
One Perfect Movie
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
UP IN THE AIR is a delightful film about a very undelightful subject: firing people from their jobs.
Written and directed by Jason Reitman, who previously made the 2006 THANK YOU FOR SMOKING and the 2007 JUNO, this film has already won some awards and is sure to win many more.
George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a “termination engineer” based out of Omaha, Nebraska, who flies all over the country to fire people whose own bosses don’t want to do it themselves.
In a voice-over narration, Bingham says, “Last year I spent 322 days on the road, which means that I had to spend 43 miserable days at home.”
Yes, Bingham loves to travel, which he has developed into a science of efficiency, and he doesn’t spend a nickel if he can help it, unless it adds to his frequent-flyer miles. He wants to hit 10 million miles and become one of only seven people to have reached that prestigious mark.
However, Bingham encounters an obstacle to his plans the next time he goes home and sees his boss, played by Jason Bateman, at the company that employs him.
His boss has hired Natalie Keener, a young efficiency expert fresh out of college, and she has come up with a way that the company doesn’t have to have
23 people on the road at least 250 days a year.
Yes, fire people long-distance by using videoconferencing to give them the bad news.
Of course, Bingham is against this way of working, and their boss tells him to take Natalie out on the road with him to show her the ropes of flying and of firing people face-to-face.
In the meantime, Bingham has met another frequent flyer on the road working for another company, and they try to arrange their schedules so that they can meet in the same city occasionally and share a hotel room together, if you catch my drift.
As another subplot, Bingham’s sister is getting married, and he has been given the task of taking a large cutout photo of the couple with him on his travels and photographing the cutout in front of various landmarks.
UP IN THE AIR is smart, it is funny, it is thoughtful, Clooney is terrific, and it is one perfect movie up in the air or on the ground.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”