Category: Movies

Hanukkah Movie Marathon: The Muppet Movie

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IMDB, The Muppet Movie“The Muppet Movie” on IMDB

Family, 118 Minutes, 1979

[My daughter recently discovered that all her Jewish friends go the movies on Christmas day.  My wife and I – both having worked for various movie theaters in our misspent youths – know that Christmas is actually the biggest single movie day of the year and had no desire to deal with the crowds.  My daughter, as a “compromise”, suggested that, instead, we go see a movie for each day of Hanukkah.  Unable to afford that, we compromised on the compromise and settled on crowding onto the couch, eating Oreos and watching eight nights of classic movies.  Because great old movies are kind of like… an oily miracle?  Or something?  Anyway – this is number one.]

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Movie Review: Beasts of the Southern Wilds

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imdb, Beasts of the Southern Wilds“Beasts of the Southern Wilds” on IMDB

Fantasy Drama, 93 Minutes, 2012

This is an odd little movie.  A wonderful, thought-provoking, completely odd little movie.  In broad strokes, it’s an environmental film but this aspect is almost an afterthought.  The setting – the origin of which is only really mentioned in passing – is a place called “The Bathtub”.  It’s the only remnant of Louisiana left dry and outside an enormous levy built to protect the Southern U.S. from rising sea-levels.  The small population of the Bathtub live in squalor struggling to maintain their sense of community fearful that they will be forcibly taken from their homes to government shelters.

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Movie Review: What to Expect When You’re Expecting

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IMDB, What to Expect when you're Expecting“What to Expect When You’re Expecting” on IMDB

Comedy, 110 Minutes, 2012

In the vein of “Parenthood” [IMDB] or “Love Actually” [IMDB] this movie follows a large cast of loosely connected people going through similar experiences; in this case, pregnancy.  While this doesn’t reach the quality of those films, it’s a respectable effort.

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Movie Review: The Three Stooges

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“The Three Stooges” on IMDB

Comedy, 109 Minutes, 2012

Like most men of class and distinction I was raised on The Stooges.  They tend to be an acquired taste – most often, in my experience, something handed down from father to son.  I have fond memories spent in front of the TV on Sunday mornings watching them on a giant, wooden console TV with a small screen on the local UHF station.  They’d play five or six of the classics in a row and we’d sitting on the (bright) orange shag carpet and eat cereal off the coffee table.

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Movie Review: Mirror Mirror

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IMDB, Mirror Mirror“Mirror Mirror” on IMDB

Fantasy,  106 Minutes, 2012

Do you know the story of Snow White?  No?  Don’t worry – neither do the people who made this movie.  There’s a mish-mash of references to the original story and the Disney version but mostly it’s stuff that they just plain made up.  Like most family films today there are a lot of modern references and a healthy dose of feminism.

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Movie Review: I Am Number Four

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“I Am Number Four” on IMDB

Sci-fi,  109 Minutes, 2011

A race of evil teethy, gill-faced aliens with big guns invade a planet and destroy it.  The only survivors are nine magic kids and their guardians who move to Earth and go into hiding.  The aliens send a team of bounty hunters to kill the kids because, for some reason, the kids could stop the aliens from destroying Earth even though they couldn’t do anything to save their own planet.

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Movie Review: We Bought a Zoo

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“We Bought a Zoo” on IMDB

Family Drama,  124 Minutes, 2011

Benjamin has recently lost his wife, the love of his life, to illness.  Dylan, his teenage son, is a moody, artistic teenager who’s pulling away from him and having trouble at school.  Rosie, his seven-year old  daughter, is insanely cute, totally precocious and straight from the Hollywood breeding tanks.  When Dylan is expelled the family decides to try for a new start and, almost accidentally, falls into buying a run-down zoo on the verge of losing its license.

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Movie Review: Ted

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“Ted” on IMDB

Fantasy,  106 Minutes, 2012

This is a funny movie.  Funny in that old “a teddy bear just said ‘fuck’ and mimed fellatio!” way.  There’s also some of that “a teddy bear just said ‘fuck’ and smoked some weed!” and a little “hey, a teddy bear just said ‘fuck’ and gave somebody the finger!” stuff.  So if you like any of those then you’ll probably like this.

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Movie Review: Brave

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“Brave” on IMDB

Fantasy,  93 Minutes, 2012:

Pixar makes good movies.  Period.  At some point, I’m sure, some relatively minor decision will snowball out of control and they’ll release a steaming pile of crap.  Something that will taint their good name and become the butt of jokes for an entire generation of movie fans.  The Internet will rip it to shreds with perverse glee.  It will be mentioned in the same breath as “Howard the Duck” [IMDB] and “Leonard Part 6” [IMDB].

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Movie Review: She’s Out of My League

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“She’s Out of My League” on IMDB

Comedy,  104 Minutes, 2010

I criticize romantic comedies a lot.  Sometimes I fear that I’m too harsh.  Then I remember how utterly shitty most of them are and I worry that I’ve been too forgiving.  The thing that most of them forget about is that falling in love is supposed to be a good thing.  It also has to be the main thing.  Opposites attracting are nice; fishes all up and out of water can be interesting and the fine line between love and hate can lead to some entertaining situations.  Most rom-coms pluck one of these tropes off the shelf, spend all their time on it and sleep-walk through the rest.

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