Posts Tagged ‘movie reviews’

Oct

Video List for a Lazy Day

Posted by: LJF Wolffe in Movies

This past weekend, the three of us were pretty much in the same state — physically sapped and brain dead. You know how it goes — no one really wanted to spend any time in deep thought, and we all wanted to laugh rather than cry. So I pulled out some of my favorite “great waste of time” movies. Wanna know what they were? Of course you do . . .

For breakfast we threw in Caveman. In the Stone Age (October 9th), the Head of Tribe is Tonda — all muscle, no brain. Well, brain enough to keep Lana, prettiest girl in the tribe, by his side. The tribe Omega is Atouk — the very first nerd. All brain, no social skills (as the rest of the tribe thinks of them). Of course, he gets kicked out; he winds up forming a tribe of his own, and discovering poached eggs, among other things. The film is in CaveSpeak (well, one guy speaks English), the monsters are silly (keep an eye out for the oldest and nicest T Rex you’ve ever seen!), and the music around the campfire is great. And everybody gets what they deserve!

After that I wanted to show my housemates why I liked Lar better than he seemed to deserve, so we threw in Innerspace. Dennis Quaid is Tuck Pendleton, over-boozed former fighter pilot, who’s been talked into a science experiment; re-creating Fanatstic Voyage inside a rabbit. But before he can get injected, the bad guys arrive to steal the tech, and the head scientist runs and then injects him into the tukkus of a random stranger — Jack Putter (Martin Short), Safeway Assistant Manager and all-around hypochondriac. Hilarity ensues, involving the ex-girlfriend, the bad guys, and a tech runner named the Cowboy (Robert Picardo as you’ll never see him again!). It’s a lot of fun with a happy ending.

When it comes to great wastes of time filled with people that are fun to watch, there are few things better than Real Genius. The setting is “Pacific Tech,” a loosely veiled reference to the California Institute of Technology, and the kids in the dorm are a wonderful cross-section of my memories of college. After the usual hijinks (including snow in the halls) and revenge on the local brown-noser (”You know you’re not supposed to park that on campus!”), the kids naturally get a tad upset when they find out the laser they’ve built for their teacher is to be used as a weapon. This is the movie which spawned my bumpersticker, “Revenge — it’s a Moral Imperative.”

It turns out that one of my housemates likes looking at Val Kilmer as much as I do, so the last movie on the list was Top Secret!. This Abrahams/Zucker/Zucker piece (fair warning: these guys did Airplane!) is based on the idea of the first rock singer to be let into East Germany. Between the Resistance, the Bad Guys, the Secret Plans, and the Captured Scientist (Alfred from the Batman movies), Our Hero manages to sing his concert, help out the Good Guys, and reunite his newfound love with the boyfriend from her past she’d last seen on a desert island. . . . You have to see it to believe it, just like any other Abrahams/Zucker movie. Good giggles to end the day!

Technorati Tags: Caveman, InnerSpace, movie reviews, Movies, Real Genius, Top Secret

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Sep

Movies — My Backstory

Posted by: LJF Wolffe in Movies

We have a few movies at our place. When your spouse is mobility disabled and can’t stand 2 hours in a theater seat . . . when the best movie value for your dollar is “previously viewed” . . . when you can sit at home and eat your own food during the movie, or <gasp> smoke during the movie, or <GASP> go to the bathroom during the movie without missing anything (we love the pause button) . . . you tend to amass a rather large collection. We have over 600 movies — surely a beginner’s collection by some standards, but enough to make our friends gape. They think we’re nuts. Well, yeah, but in a good way.

I’ve got the complete list of movies currently on our Movie Wall up on the web site; in a way, it’s a good place to get some insight on my household. What are we into? What genres do we hang out in? What don’t we own? (I often head straight to the bookshelves when I enter a house or room for the very first time; what’s there, and what isn’t, gives a good set of clues about the people who live there and how to “speak their language.”) See if our tastes match with yours. We like to think we have something for everybody — go check out the list and let me know if we’re right!

So why should you read my movie reviews? Good question. Maybe because I’m not going to review your standard just-out extravaganzas; I don’t see them till they hit DVD anyway, so that’ll be behind the times. Maybe because I’m not looking at them from the standard reviewer’s angle. I’m just a shlob like you — no film school education, no journalistic connections, no reason to use Hollywood-speak. Just someone who has watched a lot — and I mean a lot — of movies, who’d like to remind you of some of the older ones that are still cool. Think of them as recommendations for a weekend rental, or something to add to your gifting wish list. Or as an impulse buy. It’s amazing how many of these films are still available, upgraded to DVD; a few I had thought I’d never find again actually turned out to be cheap! I’ll try to point out bargains when I find them.

So I’ll be posting movie reviews on a regular basis, not for any particular Popular Delusion, but because good stories and pretty pictures on film is a Delusion of mine that I like to share. The answer to “Gee, I haven’t seen that” in this house is usually “We can fix that.” We love introducing people to new places in the Multiverse. Let me see if I can introduce you to a few . . .