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lsirocco
Reviews
Dirty Love (2005)
Not that bad in fact enjoyable
This is the type of movie (like SHOWGIRLS) that brings out all the snobs and wannabe critics. Despite a few over the top elements, such as Carmen Electra, such as the excessive blood, it is very funny for a non A-list and for a star-written movie it is excellent. While an A-list rewrite might have made it funnier, it stands up well on its own.
While a lot of it resembles an SNL skit, it has the best features of a homemade straight to vid. The direction and writing can hardly be faulted for critics who diss it with a huge DUH moment: Roger Ebert is the glaring example: He gave it 0 stars and complained about Carmen Electra's character. DUH!! That is the whole joke and is consummated when someone tells her "you know, you're ****." Kam Heskin is perfect and show-stealing, and Victor Webster is hilarious, and Carmen while nearly unrecognizable is almost worth watching the movie for. The plot even makes sense.
For people who are sick of A-list comedies movies that are lame and pretentious, this movie is an antidote. While not in the league of 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN or NOT ANOTHER TEEN MOVIE, this is a good date movie or rainy night movie and shows Jenny's good comedic chops. If you've lived in LA and hung out in Hollywood, you might be a little more likely to "get it", which Ebert did not. And the music is good too. Five stars
Shopgirl (2005)
Afterglow with no real fire
As many of the commentators say, this was a movie you want a lot to like, and I found it succeeded. But liking isn't enough when you get that post-credits sinking feeling that something is missing, despite the best efforts.
I admit I have not read the book...I found the bookend style narration to be very annoying, less for its content than its gaps. In LOST IN TRANSLATION, the protagonist was very well fleshed out, and didn't have that yeah-right Hollywood cliché where the December dude has an extremely comfortable but unexplained source of income that allows him to be totally cool. Perhaps the book is less stripped in this aspect.
The script has Martin's character as a "logician", in fact a "symbolic logician". That being a branch of philosophy, has a lamer explanation of modern wealth ever been presented? There are no wealthy logicians who were not wealthy from the umbilical or from an inheritance. Does Martin think that programmers and logicians are the same? Or was Ray simply...LYING?
Another annoyance was that the movie NEVER reveals WHY Ray takes interest in her. The "WHY ME?" is noted by the narrator as a question Mirabelle never asked... why didn't it get answered? And worse, we don't even get to see HOW! Even a December dude (I am almost one) would be introduced as sniffing out Miss May (March or April is more like it)...
Even the great Ebert in his review skips this over, finding Ray's approach elegant. But little old proletarian me, says what? Not even a little chat... the come-on was a little too fast...even for Hollywood!
Ray could have been interesting as a cad, but how can he be a cad AND a nebbish? I wanted Martin's Ray, after the logician nonsense and screen spray of cool production design and locations, to break out of his straitjacket Armani and be a hit man or drug dealer, or Republican insider supporter of Dubya even!
I really missed Joan Cusack as Mirabelle's phantom girl friend to slap her and try to wake her up, but without a saint Joan or equivalent, Mirabelle has few moments of passion and thus never takes the wheel in the direction of taking control of her destiny.
While this picture is worth seeing for every scene with Clare Danes, as a kind of dilute adult fairy tale, SHOPGIRL has its moments. But overall it's far from Oscar material and more likely to be seen as a vanity production of one of Steve Martin's lesser oeuvres. While charming in its own afterglow, SHOPGIRL falls short in the substance that makes the fire, and seems more like kindling.
Banzaï (1983)
Underwriting Love and Insurance don't mix
Coluche, before his death in a motorcycle accident in 1986, was France's most famous clown and perhaps the most unique comic actor of his generation.
While some skits in this 1983 70's style French nonexport farce are heavy-handed, they also have a twist and avoid cheap yuks and one-liners. In the opening shots, a romantic jeep ride in the North African dunes prompts two emergency calls (one for the jeep, one for the camel) to the Paris office of Planete Assistance, a premier traveler's insurance bureau.
Michel (Coluche) works there manically solving people's problems over the phone. He is about to tie the knot with his girl friend Isabelle (Valerie Mairesse), an airline hostess. She flies all over the world, he hates to leave the office. A series of madcap mishaps involving theft or injury (as you would expect in his line of work) ensues after Michel promises Isabelle nothing will delay their marriage and she promises in turn that she's done flying.
Once this unlikely promise is made, it becomes premise and both are forced into escalating white lies to maintain the appearance of keeping their word. Their predicament mounts as Isabelle is forced to do a few more flights, while Michel is compelled to travel to New York, Tunisia, and finally Hong Kong, where they are finally reunited in the throes of a contrived and hilarious drug deal involving a 747, water taxi chases, and martial arts.
While not as intense comedically as some of his earlier efforts with director Claude Zidi (L'AILE OU LA CUISSE or INSPECTEUR LA BAVURE), this is nevertheless a must for Coluche fans and the supporting cast is superb.
The title comes from Michel's expression of feelin' on top (TEASER), or the stoned 747 pilot's exclamation (SPOILER). Available for the US market on VHS from Canada in the late '80s and again since 1997, it has not to date (2002) been released with English subtitles (I was able to order it from Francevision).
Showgirls (1995)
Sex Film Noir hits the G-Spot!!!
Even some reviewers who were favorable at first turned downright nasty...WHAT THEN, is the G-SPOT this movie hits?
The other G-spot is that of GUILT. Remember, NOTHING brings out HYPOCRISY as much as sexual honesty (go back and read Lenny Bruce). That, and actually having a coherent story and actors who are perfectly suited to their roles, is the big fat sin that Verhoeven and Esterhas have committed here, and why so many moralists and faux-snobs hate the film. Horrors -- that anyone deal forthrightly with the panorama of sex culture, that "exploitive" ambiance of Vegas!
Well, it IS that kind of culture, it is capitalism, it is the desert, it is the primitives, it is dog-eat-dog, and how money rules over sex...if you don't like that, don't blame the filmmakers for a fascinating sexual film noir.
The moaning how exploitative the film was, is due to the ongoing biblical saga of sexual hypocrisy in the USA and the herd instinct that we prevails among movie reviewers. The reactionaries have nearly brought back the Blacklist! As if a little nudity is GOOD but A LOT OF NUDITY is BBAAAAAADD!
At least these filmmakers and actors had the guts to create a risky film, and so, SEE THE FILM, and ignore the bluestockings whose overall contribution is nil because they simply don't create anything, they just "stone the first cast" instead. If you want a fluff movie, this isn't for you.
Indeed Verhoeven's storytelling here is very consistent with his Dutch films, even with the classic morality in his SOLDIER OF ORANGE.
Not only is there nothing exploitative about SHOWGIRLS, but it is balanced, lean, and impeccably written and acted and will eventually find a less clueless audience.
So let it suck you in or fill you up, but Gina Gershon and Elizabeth Berkeley rock the rocks off in this movie! What decade did you say you are living in? And check your MPAA Church Lady at the door.
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)
Only Half a Trip
"The Spy Who Shagged Me" will please Austin Powers fans despite the script's freefall in both wit and charm compared to the original. Instead of mining the 60s and the 90's for new jokes, those of the first movie are machine gunned back at us (the XKE 'Shaguar' is about the only funny one). If Austin drank a beaker of pipi in the first one, it's caca this time.
There is less digging of the 60s than before. Terrific opportunities are missed, for instance Tim Robbin's generic US President is another dud -- has Myers ever heard of Nixon or Johnson? The journey is obligatory and farce-fed, endurable only by the shock antics of Myers as Dr. Evil and Fat Bastard.
While the devices are painfully lame -- the "English countryside" quip would've been better served with a witty roadsign -- the other actors veer wildly off the mark and float by in cameos like miscast fish ("Ivana Humpalot" isn't even primary-school funny). Heather Graham is delicious, but has only 2 expressions, sexy smirk or unconscious; Rob Lowe's younger N. 2 is simply wooden as a plank, leaving his best scenes deleted in the first movie.
What saves it is the focus on Dr. Evil, his white dwarf MiniMe, the Fat Bastard character and blast of StarWars space-junk to fill the enormous plot holes. This merciless pickpocketing of of pop culture proves that Mike Myers missed the sixties, and is only at home in the 70's-80's.
Should Austin return hopefully he will return to his roots and the writers will get more sleep, bring back some wit, setup, delivery, charm, forgo the gimmicks and toilet jokes, perhaps follow "Casino Royale" instead of trying to spoof every movie ever made in 90 minutes. Can't they behave?
Limbo (1999)
Mystery ending....throw us a bone!
John Sayles' writing and character development in LIMBO are so strong and nuanced they perhaps are more suited to a novel. Sayles is an unconventional filmmaker, but audiences will remember this film by how it ends, or doesn't end. To almost give it away, if this film were "TITANIC", we'd see Leo and Kate on the raft, then cut & credits.
At the screening I attended in San Diego, an audible gasp arose from the audience at being slam dunked, and I heard several joke endings. Here's mine: cinematographer Haskell Wexler was swallowed by a bear from behind and Sayles said 'wrap!'
Indeed Sayles is quoted saying that the film could not have ended any other way. Sure, this film avoids a cliche'd ending; at the same time, it was Sayles who took the movie in that direction. Yes, stranded in a wilderness by drug dealers is a movie cliche -- but it's forgiven if the characters can wriggle out with an ounce of originality.
The drawn-out wilderness and diary/madness themes, as the movie plunges past two hours, ominously signal catastrophe. LIMBO, despite the high caliber acting, looks more like the writer stranded himself and then hit the ejection button. Another comment heard at the theatre: "Limbo, get it?"
Since there is no sequel likely, one can only hope that Sayles has the hindsight to add an ending or two -- yours, mine, the ushers', anything -- by the time this pictures hits DVD.
Come and Get It (1936)
You might fall in love...with this film.
This picture made Hollywood rebel Frances Farmer a star. A clever sex comedy, set in Wisconsin at the turn of the century and 20 years later, has Farmer in the plum dual role of Lotta Morgan and Lotta Bostrum. Co-stars Edward Arnold and Joel Mcrea do not miss a beat as father and son in the love triangle. Walter Brennan won the first Oscar ever given for Best Supporting Actor. While Frances Farmer has been portrayed [i.e., FRANCES, 1983] as an intense and brooding black sheep of 30s-40s Hollywood, this picture proudly shows her solid comedy and dramatic skills.