by Dean | Jan 18, 2011 | General
In Ed Zwick’s Love and Other Drugs (2010), a roguish pharmaceuticals rep (Jake Gyllenhaal) starts sleeping with, and falls for, a young woman with Parkinson’s disease (Anne Hathaway).
As a romantic comedy the film is mostly unfunny. As a sex comedy it’s let’s-do-it-like-rabbits stuff, and it’s generally vulgar. (At one point, the Pfizer rep’s slimy brother makes an obscene joke at the dinner table. The chap’s mother reprimands him, then giggles. Wouldn’t want the audience to think Mom is a prude, would we?) As a lover-with-a-disease drama, it’s maudlin. Hathaway is often nude, but with nudity usually unsensual. Her acting, I must say, is very good–it has bite and sophistication–whereas Gyllenhaal merely hams it up. Trust me.
Hathaway was allowed to plug this no-account flick on Saturday Night Live. No wonder my respect for that program is currently non-existent.
by Dean | Jan 12, 2011 | General
Like to read Westerns? Elmer Kelton’s The Way of the Coyote (2000) is a dandy one.
A post-Civil War chronicle with former Unionists and Confederates, it also eminently concerns white youngsters kidnapped and raised by Comanche Indians. This is what happened to Andy, no longer a youngster, who is rescued by Rusty Shannon after the former kills a vicious Comanche with an animus toward him. Later in the book, Andy goes off to retrieve another lad whom the Comanches have kidnapped. Meanwhile, good Rusty has problems with the scurvy Oldham brothers, who steal his farm. Enemies come from all sides in Coyote.
Kelton’s novel is flawed in that, like numerous other Westerns, it has too many two-dimensional characters and in that Andy should be a little more callow and naive than he is after living so long with the Indians. The plot, however, is expert, and the novel never gets boring. The Comanches are not sanitized and carpetbaggers are unsympathetic. What’s more, the author accords great respect to a Christian minister–Preacher Webb. The Way of the Coyote is a fun, wholesome read.
by Dean | Jan 7, 2011 | Movies
In Jason Reitman‘s smart, racy and delightful film, penned by Diablo Cody, Juno (Ellen Page) is a scrappy but sensitive teen girl who initiates sex with her male chum Paulie (Michael Cera) and afterwards gets big with child. She can’t bring herself to have an abortion but is too young to parent, so adoption is the only alternative. (more…)
by Dean | Nov 6, 2010 | General
The Tracey Fragments is a movie reviewed for ya by my bro Dean D. Check it out and see if you agree. I plan on it. Especially since I never even heard of it.
Ellen Page stars as Tracey Berkowitz, an anguished, bullied, self-hating Canadian teenager in a film improbable and extravagant. Page’s acting is incisive, but her character is burdened with parents who are arrant fools, both of them, and she herself goes off to search for her much younger brother, Sonny, who has been missing for two days. It must be said it seems a hopeless quest: how does she know he wasn’t abducted? And get this: he disappeared after Tracey hypnotized the boy into thinking he was a dog! Tracey is mercilessly bullied by girls and boys alike. What, really, is behind this? Even her temporary boyfriend ends up being mean to her. Maureen Medved’s screenplay leaves the impression that no one likes the fact that Tracey has no breasts.
The next subject is the work of director Bruce McDonald. His multi-frame procedure, with freeze frames, distortions, repeated snatches of speech, etc. hauled in, is actually multi-frame artiness. Rarely was I pleased with it.
by Dean | Oct 30, 2010 | General
Image via Wikipedia
Caleb is a firefighter, and town hero, who finds it impossible to save his dying marriage to Katherine, a public relations officer at a Georgia hospital. The forty-day marital counseling project Caleb takes on doesn’t work, but it becomes a kind of tool the Almighty uses to bring renewal to the damaged couple. Long before the marriage is mended, Caleb gives himself to Christ. It makes a difference.
The comic moments in Alex and Stephen Kendrick‘s film are lame and so is much, though not all, of the acting (Kirk Cameron is solid as Caleb, Erin Bethea respectable as Katherine) . (more…)
