Ok, this movie, Dirty Movie, or National Lampoon’s Dirty Movie is a movie about a guy who wants to make a movie that the whole premise of that is it will be telling a single sordid joke. So he goes on a quest to find the most outrageous joke possible. They try to convince the “board” (a bunch of old geezers) that the movie is a good idea. They find people to tell the jokes. Of course the females look better telling jokes topless or better, so why not. The director balks. The budget disappears. Etc. Generally sillyness. The doctor jokes are the best. I don’t know why there aren’t more lawyer jokes! Anyway. Totally mindless. If no one else is watching you’ll laugh at some of it. But remember there are far better ways to spend your evening!
Things learned from this movie:

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Rated R. 90 minutes (1 hours 31 minutes). Swearing. Nudity. Very profane. Makes fun of everyone!

Tonight’s movie – Wild Target – looked silly. And honestly it was. But it was fun.

Basically you have the stoic British hit man, played by Bill Nighy, who is “Victor Maynard”. Except no one is really sure because he is the top ranked hit man, and seriously old school. His clients don’t see him, no one really knows what he looks like or where he lives or what his name is even.

We see him skillfully execute his hit. At the same time, Emily Blunt’s character, “Rose”, a professional thief and con artist (though not that great) – a free spirit and cavalier towards life – is conning Rupert Everett out of 900,000£! It’s a stunning little piece of film with her flittering into the National Gallery and finding her friend who is copying a Rembrandt painting. She successfully pulls off the con and as soon as she’s out of sight they discover the fake painting she’s swapped. Of course they want her killed.

Naturally they hire the best hit man in the business! He finds her, follows her, mistakenly kills the wrong person and then resumes the chase. Eventually tracking her down to kill her he ends up killing the replacement killer and the pair bumble into Tony, played by Rupert Grint – ala Ron Weasley from the Harry Potter series. The three take off on the run as the next best professional killer, “Dixon”, is on their tail.

Like I say, it isn’t a masterpiece. It is funny in its spots. Ironic at times, and has some both passable and cute action sequences. (The Mini and the Mercedes chase, for one). But you know from the start when the professional killer finds out that the jeweler he’s just killed, and announced his name and profession to, has a parrot who, well, parrots, all this information back what’s he to do? Kill the bird, of course, only he hasn’t the heart. When you see this from the beginning you know the movie will be a little different. The over exaggerated look of shock and stupidity on the “bad” guys faces could have been left out! That for movies for 8-year-olds! Hey… wait a minute…

If you like fun and slightly screwball comedies, you probably will enjoy Wild Target!

Things learned from this movie:

1. Minis make great getaway cars. You can drive in cool places.
2. Not keeping your gun clean can get you killed.
3. Having a mother who understands and encourages your profession is a great thing!
4. “Roger” the parrot isn’t destined for a long life.
5. A white cat look psychedelic when dyed pink.
6. Lots of artists copy masterpieces.
7. It takes years to learn to hit a target in the bulls-eye.
8. Keeping a scrapbook of all your hits may not be the best idea. But keeping photos of your target with a big bold “X” drawn over them is really incriminating!
9. “Half now and half later” means you get all the money now, but just one half of the bills. You have to tape them back together.

Rated PG-13. 98 minutes (1 hour 38 minutes). Swearing. Gun violence. Some blood splatter from the killings. For humor one of the “bad” guys is shot and expected to carry on and then his ear is blown off and he’s carrying it around. Sex is implied some, but sadly you don’t get to see much more than Emily Blunt in her underwear. Oh, and for the teenage girls who are fans of Rupert Grint, he is in the bath twice. “Having a bath, are we?” to which he replies, “Looks like it”.

Every Day … life every day can get you down. So why do you want to see a film about other people’s every day? Life isn’t as much made up of the wonderful blow you away moments as it is what we do and enjoy day to day. And this film shows you some of that. Not enough, but just a peek.

Helen Hunt’s father moves in with them, burdening and stressing her out to keep care of him and take him to his doctors. The eldest son (a high schooler) has come out of the closet and declared that he is gay. Their youngest is getting ignored because other things seem more important. The husband and wife don’t really acknowledge each other, they just are there without ever really connecting and offering the support and back-up the other needs.

So… life goes for a few weeks. The trials of picking the kids up from school. The fear that the older one will go off and get hurt in some kinky gay thing or preyed upon. Liev’s job is demanding and a co-worker is tempting him.

How do you step out of what envelopes you in your life enough to see your loved one’s true needs and be supportive? And what’s going to happen to us when we get old if we haven’t been there or been caring for those we love?

Heavy stuff, huh? Well, don’t despair, this film is billed as a comdey! Uh huh, ok — I found it rather sad. Even Eddie Izzard, who you expect to be funny, and he was kinda out there, is kind of depressing. The whole thing, including some scenes in really overcast weather, are depressing…

Things learned from this movie:

1. “You’re not nearly as boring as you pretend to be.”
2. Old people can’t open childproof caps, but elementary school kids can.
3. If you hate where you are then living in a nursing home will not be any different or worse.
4. You can give criticism in ways that hurt or inspire.
5. A human’s cremation remains will fit into a plastic bag.
6. Helen Hunt is thin, but getting old looking.
7. If you are at a co-workers house and she wants to go swimming and brings you her “ex” boyfriends swimsuit – speedo – yeah right, she’s been sizing you up.
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Rated R. 93 minutes (1 hour 33 minutes). Rated R … um, there is some swearing but it stuck out so much I can’t exactly remember how much. Liev Schreiber is having a fling with a co-worker and they are naked in a pool but you’d never know. Sucked that teasing. Oh, and now that I’m down this avenue, the job Liev’s character has is writing for a tv show where the boss wants as much weird and crazy sex stuff as possible so that’s discussed rather frequently.

Tonight we get to see (Untitled) a movie about the modern art scene – in a way. It’s about Adrian, played by Adam Goldberg, a composer and musician and a pianist who vows that if things don’t get better in three years he’ll kill himself. He has a brother who is successful, selling paintings to hotel chains for $10,000 each – these cloudy colorful paintings complete with two or three dots. Adrian struggles to find an audience and acceptance for his music which is a audible collage of sounds complete with his signature kicking of a suspended bucket.

Along comes a meeting with Madeline Gray (played by Marley Shelton) who hears Adrian’s concert and realizes that his style would either appeal to her art gallery crowd or help sell the artwork. So she has him play at her new showing and soon enough Adrian and Madeline are having a little fling. Which might trouble Adrian because he knows his brother was attempting to spark an interest with Madeline. Madeline arranges to have one of her art buyers commission Adrian to compose a piece.

Of course we also have Vinnie Jones gracing this movie as an artist who makes eccentric pieces, who reinvents himself daily (if not ten minutes ago), and doesn’t actually do his own artwork but “oversees it”. His exit from the movie was worth a chuckle.

What is this movie about? I’m not so sure that it is about anything. It touches on a number of subjects. The hypocrisy of the art world. The struggle of artists. The triviality of art. The senselessness (at times) of collecting. What is art? Etc.

For me, it was interesting to see how people are who they are and whatever it is that you find in life to enjoy, whether it is the art of a taxidermied animal sticking half-way out the wall, or the lower half of a man with arrows sticking in him going into the wall, or a push-pin stuck in the wall and called art. Whatever it is, if you enjoy it then enjoy it without guilt. If you like a certain kind of music and others call it noise, then enjoy it and ignore their comments.

Why not periodically do some introspection and see if you are the person you want to be and if not work on reinventing yourself. Become better.

It is also about creating. And how the act of creation is fulfilling and how everyone longs to be remembered and leave a mark in history. I know I’m not doing a good job of this one myself!

Things learned from this movie:

1. Some artists are strange.
2. Enjoy yourself whatever you do and whatever you like. Your unique.
3. “Some things are so personal… that’s better to keep them to yourself.”
4. What is a critic and why should anyone listen to them?
5. Kicking a bucket takes a certain movement from the hip to get the carnal tone into the sound – otherwise its just noise.
6. Art shows are a good place to score a glass of wine.
7. What do you have in your back room?

Rated R. 96 minutes (1 hour 36 minutes). There’s some language. And one artist is painting a figure study and we see a slow pan by a nice woman’s ass – maybe 15 seconds or so.

Since it is getting close to the baseball playoffs I thought it would be good to see a film about baseball, and particularly about a player getting his start. I thought Calvin Marshall would be that film.

The “name” actor in this movie is Steve Zahn. And I guess he does an ok job as the burnt out former minor leaguer who is coaching a small college baseball team. Calvin Marshall, played by Alex Frost, is the hopeful and enthusiastic baseball player who is trying for the third year to make the team. He gets up at the crack of dawn and practices, exercises, and goes through drills, but he just isn’t good enough to make the team. He’s got the desire, and he’s got it bad, but he just doesn’t have the stuff!

So this comedy is about how one man goes on with life pursuing his dreams and works to get the girl all while what he really wants, a life in baseball, is quickly escaping him.

FYI – the Netflix synopsis has it wrong (if it is what the studio gave them or what they wrote?) but he isn’t facing a career-ending injury while playing baseball, he’s just feigning a wrist injury as an excuse for why he hasn’t made the team. And it also says that he gets the opportunity to discover his true talents, but he ends up dropping out of college and becoming a supervisor for a construction company, something that he appears to loathe.

So — will Calvin make it to his dreams, or will he end up like his coach, always wishing his career could have been better? Do you care or want to find out?

Things I learned from this movie:

1. Being a baseball professional looks really cool.
2. Playing college baseball even sounds like it would have been a great way to spend some college days.
3. Volleyball girls are worth pursuing.
4. If you muff a play, you can always blame someone else.

Rated R. 93 minutes (1 hour 33 minutes). Mercifully short but why is it rated R? The coach uses profanity, ok a lot, but there is no violence to speak of (one baseball fight) and no skin to help the movie along.

For a nice evening of friendly family fun you can delve into the Tooth Fairy, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. He’s playing a hockey star who is a “big thing” in the minor leagues, as he hits people so hard he knocks teeth out. But, he’s also a hurt man who has had his dreams crushed (through injury at the least) and feels its ok to stomp on the dreams of others — vividly shown in the beginning when he tells a little league hockey player to give up on dreams, they’ll only make him sad and dissapointed.

Because of this and other similar actions, he’s summoned to Fairy Land, ruled by Julie Andrews, where he is sentenced to be an actual tooth fairy for a couple of weeks. There’s plenty of lame jokes, and special effects as he goes about trying to live his life and do his new “job”.

The main message of this film isn’t about how he goes about doing his job and making sure newly toothless kids find a dollar bill under their pillow but instead how he learns to realize the importance of dreaming, how letting go of your dreams and visions and imagination isn’t a good thing to be realistic, but it kills a part of your spirit. Learning how to say “what if” is very important in life.

And it is truly important! You have to believe in yourself, realize that you are just as good as anyone else, that if you have a dream you should try for it. Go ahead, take the risk and believe and do. And above all, don’t give up hope on your own dreams and for goodness sake, don’t destroy other people’s dreams. It’s really sad here to look at some of these kids in this movie and see how hurt and damaged they are when they dreams and fantasies are destroyed. And you have to ask yourself, was there someone who did that for you, ruined your dreams? Or was there someone who believed in you and encouraged you to continue to have faith in yourself that you can do and accomplish?

Things learned from this movie:

1. If you buy black-market fairy products they don’t work right.
2. Becoming invisible is a cool way to play tricks on people.
3. Fairies can live through being flushed.
4. Tutus make mens butts look big.
5. Tooth Fairies now days do not give coins, they give dollars right under your pillow!

Rated PG. 101 minutes (1 hour 41 minutes). Some sports violence, but that’s about it. It is rated PG, by the way.

Tonight Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is here to entertain us. And entertain it does. It’s a visually stunning piece that is unfortunately Heath Ledger’s last film. It is also, sadly, a hard to understand and grasp film because it deals with the imagination. So at times you are wondering exactly what is going on. But, keep in mind that it is a dream world at times and you are meant to view it simply with awe and wonder for what it is.

As mentioned a moment ago, this is a film that revolves around The Great Parnasus, Christopher Plummer, but the show is stolen by Tony, Heath Ledger who died during filming without completing the film. Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrel stepped in and finished Heath’s part donating their fees to Ledger’s daughter, Matilda.

In a nutshell, you have Dr. Parnassus (or Parny as “Mr. Nick”, aka, the Devil calls him), who centuries ago made a deal with the devil for immortality. The condition of that deal, well, would give away a little of the enjoyment of the movie, so I’ll not reveal that snippet. Basically Dr. Parnassus’s theory is that people will always tell stories and have imagination but with modern society his road show is run down because of the lack of imagination and participation in stories (I disagree, but what weight does my opinion hold?). Dr. Parnassus and the Devil continue to engage in little side bets that Parnassus continues to win by just the skin of his teeth. In fact, when the Devil does win one, he says “Damn, I won.” So clearly the Devil is getting more out of the thrill of the bet than from the actual winnings/losing.

As they are moving along, they stumble upon Heath Ledger’s character, Tony, hung from under a bridge. He’s rescued by Parnassus’ daughter and stagehands. But, amazingly Tony is alive, saved from the noose by a sturdy metal whistle-thingy. He’s lost his memory but slowly its revealed who he really is. Tony was once a charity and funds manager but was accused of embezzling the money. He beings to help out with the road show and lures people into Parnassus’s mirror, which is active when he’s in a trance. The mirror, becomes a dreamworld into the imagination of the one who entered. What do they find? The world of their dreams which eventually leads them to a choice — what do they chose, and choosing right or wrong determines if they make it back to the land of the living or head off to the realm of the Devil.

The movie also has some hidden morals. You can see someone running from supposed danger who meets a long stair case, the 12 x 12 x 12 Step Program. The long hard climb back to a normal life. Or, a quick easy walk over to a pub where you “could use a drink”. Choosing wrong here, the pub exploded and the Devil has won. Or perhaps a crossroad, one arrow is the High Road, the other the Low Road. If only life’s choices were so easily laid out like they are here, or as easy as they may seem in our dreams. Why don’t things work so well? Is it our lack of faith? Why do we always chose the easy path when a path that while it may seem harder, it really isn’t much worse of a path and it yields far better results in life. Doing the right thing is important regardless what the options may indicate.

All in all, its a fun little movie. Visually captivating and entertaining to watch. Some people may not care for it, but if you enjoy things that are just a little strange, this one will fit you.

Things learned from this movie:

1. A metal flute can save your life if your being lynched.
2. The Devil doesn’t really understand Black Magic.
3. If your midget was to leave you, you would go and get another.
4. Can you put a price on dreams?
5. Stories must go on.
6. If you see someone weaker than you, you should bully them.
7. Are you a betting man?
8. The Devil always collects at midnight.

Rated PG-13. 123 minutes (1 hours 3 minutes). Very much a “tame” movie. Not too much violence or profanity (there’s some). Valentina sits supposedly nude as Eve in the garden, draped only by her long hair as you scrutinize to see if you can spot a nipple.

In The Loop is a film about the time right before the start of the Iraq War. A minor British Government official makes a statement that war in the Middle East was “unforeseeable” — that means, to him that he can’t foresee it. The opposite of a foreseeable war, is unforeseeable. LOL. Well, spin doctors try to hush it up, but he stands by his comments, digging himself deeper. He makes a political trip to Washington DC and does more ‘damage’ while getting in to a bigger scheme of political machinations that he is not aware of or understands.

This movie isn’t laugh out loud funny, but it is full of clever little quips and situations that are funny. You’ll enjoy the zippy references to pop culture. James Gandolfini, Peter Capaldi, Tomm Hollander, Gina McKee all star in this film.

Rated Not Rated. 106 minutes (1 hour 46 minutes). This film would probably be rated ‘R’ due to the strings of profanity. I’d love to quote a few of the lines from the movie, but most of them are profanity ridden.

Planet 51 is a Pixar-like animated movie. It is about a planet full of “aliens” living an idyllic 1950s-like life when a NASA astronaut sets down and plants Old Glory in one of their front lawns. The inhabitants are full of pop culture (like our 1950s space movies) of aliens coming to eat their brains, and naturally are scared of the astronaut who really wants to just get home.

A band of local kids, led by the jr assistant manager of the planetarium (when he’s not in school) help reunite him with his spacecraft so he can return to Earth.

It’s fun, and funny – though arguably not as funny as Finding Nemo, or Toy Story. This one stars Dwayne Johnson (The Rock), Justin Long, Jessica Biel, John Cleese, and Gary Oldman. Highly well done graphics, fun to watch, you’ll enjoy the evening just like you were one of the kids.

Watch for references to other pop-culture stuff, such as Back to the Future, 2001, E.T., etc. Look for the intresting things like floating food, well everything pretty much floats!

Good time to be had by anyone who lets themselves be taking away by this film.

Rated PG. 91 minutes (1 hour 31 minutes). Violence – cartoon violence with army weapons and threats of brains being eaten.

Tonight’s movie went into corporate crime, with The Informant! starring Matt Damon in Steven Soderbergh’s film. I must say that I enjoyed it.

Basically it’s a story about America’s top executive to turn whistleblower. He beings working with the FBI about the price fixing going on at ADM. He works with them for over 2 1/2 years getting video and recordings of meetings, but in the end it begins to also appear that he’s embezzling and he gets prosecuted as well.

What’s not to enjoy about this film — the happy-go-lucky bouncy music set against a backdrop of big corporate deals, white collar crimes, FBI agents, and possible jail time, and the while Mark Whitacre goes merrily along seemingly uncaring about the lies he’s telling or when or if they’ll catch up with him. It’s neat to see him just invent (I think) something new when he realizes he’s being discovered and how most of it then checks out, at least for a while. I say “I think” here because he’s so full of stories that you have a hard time really realizing which one of them, if any, are factual. He suffers from bipolar disorder, even as the forged letter from his would-be psychologist states in very specific terms. He must be a brilliant guy to keep all this straight for as long as he did, and that 2 million, no 5 million, or is it 7.5 million? I think it was 9 million, that he embezzled. Maybe it was 11…

Entertaining film! You don’t really learn anything and the drama isn’t really there, its just downright entertaining. So, have an enjoyable evening.

For me, the most sobering thing (aside from the white collar crime, don’t do that) is that in 1992 people with desk jobs were making $100K. When do I get a raise? I’m way underpaid!

Also interesting is ADM’s statement about the movie you can see by clicking here.

Rated R. 108 minutes (1 hour 48 minutes). Why it’s rated R, I don’t know! There is some profanity. No blood, no nudity, no violence aside from the alleged hit in the head by a briefcase.