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Sober Movie Reviews
2002-11-14 - 4:26 p.m.


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[ Ed. Note:  due to certain lifestyle changes to the writing staff of Saintly Stories, there will be a corresponding format change.  The segments once known as Stoned Movie Reviews will now be known as Sober Movie Reviews until furthur notice.  God help us all.]

Sober Movie Reviews

Spider-Man:

Good effects, somewhat tired plot.  Sam Remi is a fave director of mine, and he did quite well with the material at hand.  The superhero genre' is in full swing in hollywood, and it capitalizes on Gen X'rs particularly.  Yes, the hero finding himself through tribulation and getting the girl is cliche', but to those fans of comics of yesteryear, and even those of today will like to see their comics come to life.  Toby McGuire was an excellent choice for the role, playing geeky without it being annoying, however, having said that, it wasn't a home run.  

Kirsten Dunst is a hottie, and can act rather well.  Notice the difference in her roles from child vampire daughter, to teenage minnesotan beauty queen (replete with cloying accent) to MJ Watson. 

I think I've masturbated a few times to MJ.  I remember being quite embarassed about it, although no one knew until just now.  The embarrassment stemmed from it being a comic book girl that was the object of my tawdry affections, and the fact that it was puberty, when every guy is wonder some of the same things, like, 'what the hell is going on?', and 'how long will this last?'  and 'how many times exactly CAN I come in an hour until I start shooting blanks.'

Hm.  Anyway.

I've really started to despise hollywood and how they screw writers, and liberally, as well as arbitrarely change books and their plots. 

Consequently, I've taken in an enormous amount of bad movies, simply because I adore women.  Women are and always will be life's most supreme work of art, sublime in its creation.  Put a girl that captivates me in said movie, and I will watch. Won't know a damn thing about the movie itself.  But I'll watch it.

Wedding Planner?  Saw it.  Coyote Ugly?  So many times you wouldn't believe me if I told you.   Do I really know what its about on a deeper level?  No.

As if there was a deeper level to Coyote Ugly.

But I'm getting side-tracked here.  And I will confess, I've always wondered how cool it would be to spideman my way through a metropolitan area.

Final evalutation:  worth watching.  Stay sober and go see it.

Queen of the Damned:

As I said earlier, Hollywood tears the life out of stories, and they bastardized this one.

There were definitely cuts that needed to be made to bring this story to life, particularly the backfill of Mekare and Maharet.

Making Marius the vampire that created Lestat, and elimanting Louis altogether was a poor choice.

Sumptuous sets, rich plotline.  A rather flat Lestat from Stuart Townsend.  He strove for a sensuosness and never acheived it that Aaliyah just possessed in massive quantitites.

Resp Ispa Laquotir.

In any good horror flick, there has to be something else, a drama, or especially a few moments of light laughter, that will allow it to somewhat transcend the run of the mill spook flic.

This one conciously avoided either, and sought to cash in on Anne Rice's fans.  Which they did.

Its a pity, they could have used some of her macabre humorous touches in this movie.

On a positive note, the score for this movie was outstanding.

Evaluation:  worth watching, stay sober and have someone to make out with while you watch it.

Orange County:

Orange county succeeds in where it doesn't try so hard, and fails when it pushes.

Jack Black's talent still remains untapped. 

The rest are second generation hollywood royalty.  And while they did commendable work, each will need to prove themselves on their own in order to be taken seriously on their own.

An enjoyable film you don't have to pay attention too hard to follow.  Worth Watching.  Stay sober and watch it.

Wedding Planner:

J-Lo captivates.  Beguiling.  But cannot act to save her luscious behind.

As for the rest of the movie and cast, dude, there is not enough sobriety in the world to make this pile of dogshit veiwable.

Not enough drugs, either.  But I shouldn't mention that, as that is the domain of the now defunct Stoned Movie Reviews.

What a bad fuckin' movie.  Holy Shit.  You'd think someone would stop in the middle of production and say, "Hey, we're making a huge pile of shit, maybe we, oh I don't know, shouldn't do it."

Demographics suck.  They knew they'd make money, so they made it.  To the detriment of us all.

Final Evaluation:  Not worth seeing, lose your sobriety and watch clouds in the park.

Lost and Delirious:

Pipre Paribou and some other girls attend an all girls private school, replete with short flannel skirts, high stockings and sexual identity confusion.

Truthfully, I only paid so much attention to this film, although I sat through quite a bit of it.  It had something to do with the lesbianism between Pipre Paribou and the...other...girl.

Its like I always dreamed, and girls have always teased me with since as long as I know.  They climb into bed together, giggle, get nekkid and lesbianism ensues when we're not around.  And I think its wonderful.  So wonderful, I will watch this movie again.

All in all, not really that bad of a movie.  Rather poor acting, for the most part.  Little pre-boob job Pipre is petulant at best, and struggles to capture the complexity of her character, and the others are two dimensional at best.

But I did get to see one of Pipre's breasts, incl. nipple, so I'll watch it again.

Its all hollywood has left me to enjoy. Don't blame me, blame society.

Worth Seeing.  Keep your sobriety and a box of tissues handy.

Star Wars II:  Attack of the Clones:

Again, through an captivating woman in front of my eyes, and I will watch dogshit.  G. Lucas cannot direct for spoiled ass.  It is no coincidence that the high point of acting came in Empire Strikes Back, because someone else directed it.

The others actors try, and there is difficulty to surmount, given all the CGI, as well as CGI characters that abound.  The movie is a technical masterpeice, and the score is memorable in true John Williams fashion.  Unlike LOTR, where the score starts out enjoyable and quickly becomes annoyingly repetitive, Williams still is the master of the heroic, dramatic peices.

The kid who plays anakin may actually be a good actor, however, we will never know, because he sucked it up so badly in this peice, his only work will be with lucas, most likely, and lucas' shitty directing. Too early to tell, but all signs say "find another job"  or "go with the male-model thing".

Sam Jackson's character was two dimensional, but that is no fault of his. 

And what's his face did as best as he could with Obi-Wan, who is a richly drawn character, but I get the sense that Lucas either overburdens his actors with minutae, or gives them very little direction at all, hoping to cast well and go from there to success.  Unfortunately, you cannot come up with Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher ever casting call, no matter how much juice you have in the industry.  That was just one of those flukes that happen every once in a while, and he does deserve credit for retaining them.  I simply point out to talents relative to their feild, and those two are easily said, great talents.

And we have Natalie Portman, uber-hottie.

I had a long internal monologue last night, and she sparked it. I will save it for another time, but Natalie is growing as an actress and is captivating in her naturalistic tendencies.  J-lo learned how to be hot, Natalie simply is, in her graceful way.  Shades of Audrey Hepburn.  And Audrey's grace and joi-de-vive resonate until this day.

The plot and the movie itself was forgettable.  Lucas seems to have found a formula for his sci-fi epic and it follows it, rather predictably.  Clash between to opposing forces, lots of battle scences, predictable corny jokes played poorly by some of the cast, most notably the throw away lines given to C3PO, struggle of young man within himself, winning the girl, blah, blah, blah.

And since they have clones, couldn't they clone anakin a hand and sew the fucker on?  Then again, maybe that's what he wants, and yes, there is a deeper point to be made, but I just don't want to hear it.  I spent my time wondering at first, all right, are they (padme and anakin) fucking now, and the rolling around in the field bullshit is afterplay, or what the fuck.

I mean, you got a chick that hot, and she already gave you tongue, dude.  She's slinking around in outfits that give you a stiffy every time you turn your head.  Now, I'm no Jedi, but the force was even telling me something.

Which is to say that the love story is a bit drawn out.

But really, dude.  What the fuck are you thinking?  You just might not get another opportunity...although you probably will.  But why wait? She's hot.  Do what you gotta' do.

Use the force.  Drop me a line, and I will let you in on my secrets.  Do something.  Blue ball can kill, you know.

Final Evaluation:  Worth Watching, but only for Natalie Portman.

Insomnia:

Finally a movie worth watching.

Like the rest of the modern world, I had cooled on Robin Williams.  And regardless of how others feel about him, I always thought he could play creepy well.  Underneath most comedians is a sense of darkness, and that always gets sublimated into their act.  He did well.

Pachino is pachino.  Al may not be able to do hamlet, but he can play Pachino like no one can, with naturalistic tendencies that are unparalleled in film today.  Yeah, that sounds like an insult, but really its not.  No one else can play Pachino, nor match his sense of pecadillo.

Hillary Swank is a good raw talent.  Much like finding a reciever in the NFL with a family on the brink of starvation to catch passes over the middle, she emerged from bleak poverty to do whatever a director needs without pretension, and her lack of pretense adds to her work, especially in this role.

Christopher Nolan is a fine director, and after this and Momento, I will definitely watch his next couple of films, as hollywood seeks to destroy him and any artistic creativity and merit that he brings to the table.  Given such a high powered cast, problems could have happened that would surface in the filiming and acting itself, but were not evident. 

The story, screenplay were great, good dialouge.  Well thought out and developed characters in the main roles.  Perhaps even some of the tributary actors made good choices and were three dimensional, should the plot have called upon them.

And as a testament to how good a movie this was, I was only going to watch half of it, then go to sleep, but I ended up seeing it all.

Insomnia caused me insomnia.  Fuck, shoot me now for my trite movie reveiwer's cliche. 

One of the best movies I've seen in awhile.

Worth seeing, will make you feel good that you stayed sober to watch it.

 


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