by ·Comments Off on Ratatouille (2007, Brad Bird)

“You’re a bit thin for someone who likes food.”
“I don’t like food; I love it. If I don’t love it, I don’t swallow it.”

Another top-notch excellent film from Brad Bird and Pixar.

Some gripping action sequences, like when our hero first ventures into the restaurant and hops from cart to cart to floor to table. Perfect image, not as consciously stylized as The Incredibles of course. Great story + characters, satisfactory ending. What more could a rat desire?

I liked the miniature, fat imaginary chef that would appear to Remy and lead him places… but of course the power was within Remy all along, making the chef a sort of Yoda to Remy’s Luke.

“100% Genuine Animation! No motion capture or any other performance shortcuts were used in the production of this film.”

by ·Comments Off on Better Off Dead (1985, Savage Steve Holland)

The extremely cute Diane Franklin (Monique) later starred in Terrorvision (with Jon Gries – Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite) and played a princess in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

Paperboy who wants his two dollars isn’t in anything else, sadly.

Funny damned movie, a little slack but still good. The racecar brothers, one of whom speaks no English and the other speaks like Howard Cosell, are the best part. Jimmy and Katy liked it, I suppose.

by ·Comments Off on Knocked Up (2007, Judd Apatow)

How rare is this: a high-quality comedy in the multiplexes?

It-boy Judd Apatow casts Seth Rogen from Donnie Darko as a stoner/loser and Katherine Heigl from Grey’s Anatomy as the entertainment-news career girl who hooks up with him.

I’ve actually talked about this movie so much that I don’t want to write about it. If I forget parts of it later, I can always watch it again… would be worth doing anyhow.

by ·Comments Off on The Player (1992, Robert Altman)

Movies: now more than ever!

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Maybe I’ve seen The Player enough times that I don’t really need to write about it. One of the only movies that I like Tim Robbins in (besides Mystic River, Shawshank Redemption, and presumably Howard the Duck).

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Things I forgot:
Whoopi Goldberg as the smartass detective
The Swedish artist who Robbins picks up was the dead guy’s girlfriend
Dead guy was Vincent D’onofrio
The author and his brother as the excited pitch men at the end

The only other place I’ve seen Robbins’ cute coworker / ex-girlfriend is Happiness, although she’s been on TV recently.

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Katy liked the movie but not the character.

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by ·Comments Off on The Valet (2006, Francis Veber)

Still shocked that I liked this, after the awful cheesy trailer. It’s well-played light comedy, a story of little consequence, but kept on a high enough level that I even recommended it to people. The director is well known for quality (The Dinner Game), but I’d so grown to dislike that trailer that my enjoyment of the movie was as surprising as if I’d ended up liking The Italian or the last two Pirates of the Carribean films.

Anyway, valet is standing next to fabulously rich dude arguing with his supermodel girlfriend when a photo is shot by tabloid journalist. In order to keep his fortune from a wife who’d love to catch him cheating, the rich guy has to pretend the supermodel wasn’t with him at all, but with the other guy, the valet. So he and the wife hire competing teams of spies to follow the two around, one group trying to prove the valet and supermodel are not together and the other trying to make it look like they are. Fun premise, and it’s carried through well. Valet ends up with his childhood girlfriend after they get plenty jealous of each other’s new lovers, and model gets her revenge on rich guy, with the closing shot having the same photographer catch him in a trap standing next to a transsexual.

The Farrelly brothers are supposed to helm the U.S. remake in 2008.

by ·Comments Off on Play Time (1967, Jacques Tati)

Wow, this is one of my favorite movies now. I was right about watching it in the theater (on film)… really helped see everything properly. More important, possibly, was seeing it for a second time, already knowing the pace and the organization of story (such as there is a story), being able to sit back and enjoy.

First third (?) of the movie is an architectural dream, all buildings and structure and angles, beautiful and disorienting. Whole movie is concerned with structure and glass.

Funny, but not punchline-funny so much as enjoyable and light, building up towards the end of the crazy restaurant sequence when suddenly humor’s flying from all directions.

I feel like I “got it” this time, but also feel like I missed a lot. Not in a bad way, more in a “could see this again and again” way.

I’d thought Mr. Hulot wasn’t in this one but of course he is. What was I thinking of… Parade?

Katy, Jimmy, Misty, even Adam liked it.

by ·Comments Off on Deer Woman (2005, John Landis)

Yaaaay, a good funnyish movie starring the guy from Dream On (Brian Benben, who I haven’t seen in too long) as a burned-out detective. He accidentally killed his partner years before, got depressed, wife left him, now just handles cases involving animals. Gory deaths apparently caused by deer trampling in strange locations (inside a truck, a hotel room) lead Brian and his makeshift partner Anthony Griffith (Charlie’s Angels 2) stumped. Brian tries on many theories (funny bit where he imagines ridiculous scenarios then mutters “stupid”), meets a native in a casino who tells him about the Deer Woman, beautiful woman with hoofs who seduces then kills guys. Partner gets trampled, Brian finds he can’t kill her with his gun, so takes to the car and runs her down, with obvious in-the-headlights reference.

Landis was great in the 80’s, with Twilight Zone, Coming To America, Spies Like Us and American Werewolf In London (fat reference to that movie in this episode), didn’t realize how he has disappeared since then. Looking forward to his next MoH episode.

Co-written with Landis’s 21-year-old son, awesome.

Who you callin’ Martin Tupper?
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Your nudity:
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Your fantasy sequence:
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Your gag ending:
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by ·Comments Off on The Lady Eve (1941, Preston Sturges)

Ah, Preston Sturges movies… always worth watching over and over.

You’d think I’d really know who Henry Fonda is, but you’d be wrong. Anyway, now after this and Return of Frank James, I could probably pick him out of a lineup. Terrific, funny cast between him, Barbara Stanwyck, Charles Coburn as the card shark and William Demarest (the dad in Morgan’s Creek) as Muggsy. Writing is at least as good as the acting… was beaten for an oscar by a Robert Montgomery / Claude Rains comedy.

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Henry’s been up the amazon collecting snakes and meets Stanwyck on the ship back home. They fall in love while she’s conning him out of some money with partner Coburn, and when he finds out about the con he leaves her wanting payback. She reinvents herself as The Lady Eve and gets invited to his family estate via mutual monocled friend Eric Blore (played a valet in Sullivan’s Travels). They get married then she runs off and reappears as her card-playing self to have an “affair” with Henry… the end. Overcomplicated, but a proper comedy should be.

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Did Katy like it? Don’t know for sure but I’d think so.

Update Jan 2015: Katy definitely likes it.