Critical MeMe

Time spent watching films, even crappy ones, is time well-spent.

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Location: Oklahoma City, OK, United States
    Post dates are when I watched, parenthetical dates are the year of US release (aka Oscar eligibility).

5/29/2014

Zoolander (2001)

Lots of funny bits -- it's oh-so-quotable -- though it does get old before it's over.

Also, I think Billy Eichner stole his schtick from Mugatu.



Eichner really gets going at about the 1 minute mark....


B-

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5/26/2014

The Barefoot Contessa (1954)

Kicked off with a Bogart voice over, which put me in an immediate good mood...but it wasn't enough to sustain me through the entire film. The story involves a Spanish dancer being discovered by Hollywood, becoming an adored star, and falling in love with a secretive Count. Since we start with her funeral, the whole thing’s in flashback -- a device not nearly as effective here as in Sunset Boulevard.

Not a bad way to spend an afternoon, but the end product didn’t have the weight of its quality parts.

B

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5/25/2014

Love Me or Leave Me (1955)

Doris Day is a girl with a dream and Cagney is a mobster with a hard-on for her, so he strongarms her onto the stage. She doesn’t like the way he does things, but she’s not above using him to gain the spotlight. Once she’s tired of it, however, she can’t shake him off.

It’s a pretty good movie with a great performance from Cagney, but the 8 or so full-length songs really slow things down.

B

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5/11/2014

Neighbors (2014)

The whole thing's just a touch too mild. There were some funny bits, but it’s the type of movie that I expected to put me in a state of constant giggles and intermittent guffaws (think There’s Something About Mary and This Is the End).

I was definitely entertained, but it was only ever on the verge of being truly hilarious.

B

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Madame X (1929)

A young wife who left her husband and infant son for another man returns home when she hears the boy is sick. The husband, however, isn’t interested in reconciliation and tells her to leave, which sends her into a downward spiral of degradation over the next 20 years. She winds up on trial for murder of a con man, defended by her own son (though neither knows the other).

It’s all very tragic and terribly heavy handed.

C-

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Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938)

Brassy singer and a band led by a humorlessly proper violinist get hired together at a dive and argue their way to success and love. But there are plenty of obstacles: her success as a solo act on Broadway, his stint in the army, her marriage…

Things work out in the end (duh), but the predictability of it all makes it not worth the watch.

C+

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5/10/2014

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 (2012)

I don’t really get the whole CGI baby thing. I get they were trying to make her features similar to the older girls’ features...but the e-trade baby is more convincing than this creepy monstrosity.



And the CGI wolves are, as ever, so unnatural in looks and movement that it’s almost a throwback to when CGI was brand new.

That said, at least there was some story here, which is a nice step up from the last installment. The climatic battle (even though it’s a fakeout) is exciting -- as long as you an ignore the aforementioned bendy wolves -- and the closing credits almost made me not hate it.

D+

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The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 (2011)

Here’s the entirety of the story -- and I don’t even think it’s “in a nutshell,” there really is just this little:

  • Bella and Edward get married. 
  • He gets her all bruisey during honeymoon sexy time which makes him refuse to fornicate further, but his magic sperm got her pregnant in one shot
  • The baby’s killing Bella from the inside until Bella chugs blood and starts perking up a bit
  • Bella gives birth and dies 
  • ...Psych! She wakes up a vampire. 
Oh, and were-Jacob falls in love with the newborn. It’s absolutely delightfully terrible.

D-

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5/04/2014

Crush (2002)

I saw this about 10 years ago and absolutely adored it so, when it finally came up in the guide (and wasn’t that horrible-looking Alicia Silverstone “The Crush” movie that seems to be perpetually playing on some channel when I search for "Crush"), I jumped on it. Although I still really liked it, I’m not sure what kind of mindframe I was in the first time that made it capture me so completely. It’s a much more lightweight affair than it had become in my memory. Still, it definitely has its moments.

A trio of 40-something girlfriends with very little going on in the romance department gather weekly to compete for “saddest fuck of the week.” When Andie McDowell’s headmistress starts giddily hooking up with a much younger guy, her friends do their best to shut it down, for her own good. I really wish they’d cast anyone other than McDowell in the central role, though. It’s life-affirming and lovely, but she’s just awful.

B

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5/03/2014

Hello I Must Be Going (2012)

Amy is a recently jilted wife in her 30s lazing around her parents’ house in a funk. When her parents throw a dinner party, the guests’ 19-year-old son Jeremy comes along and they find themselves rashly kissing in a back room. Despite her contrary intentions, Amy can’t seem to help being drawn to Jeremy’s very real interest in her.

Although I wasn’t completely satisfied with all of the dynamics in the story, I did especially like the way that Amy suddenly wakes up to the fact that what she’s experiencing with Jeremy she'd never gotten from her marriage: a feeling of value.

B

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The Way Way Back (2013)

This movie felt so '80s that it should've been set in the '80s, a la Adventureland. A couple of sequences in particular felt like they had no place in this time period: the “Pop n Lock” scene and the the supposedly epic “passing on the water slide” bit. I got the feeling that the writers expected those very mild scenes to have an impact, which makes me sure that they're children of the '80s themselves since the only actual impact was to make me think "wow -- that's dated."

It’s an affable enough story, but I might’ve directed the lead to be a bit less of a sad sack and to STAND UP STRAIGHT, dammit.



B

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