A Series of Unfortunate Events

Jim Carrey (The Mask) plays the disturbing and mysterious Count Olaf in acclaimed children’s author Lemony Snickets’ A Series of unfortunate Events. Jude Law (I Heart Huckabees) plays the reluctant Snickets, narrating from behind a shadowy typewriter. The advantage of medium is fully and wonderfully exploited, making reference to the fact that it is a movie, and the mediu really carries the story. There are 4 distinct stories and so it still has very book series like progression

Count Olaf adopts the newly orphaned Budeau Orphans, who are extremely gifted and wonderful children, and He immediately dominates them, beats them, and all around proves that he is a jerk. They try to speak to authorities, but no one listens to kids (A Somewhat Matilda like lesson)

They fly from relative to relative, being haunted by Olaf at every step. Stars Billy Connelly and Merril Streep add some flavor to the mix, and the MacGyver like predicaments the children work their way out of  are quite ingenious, and extremely well filed. The dark, gloomy cinematography is brilliant, and gives the stories an eerie feel which drives the audience with a sense of hope unfulfilled. 2. But not the Jim Carrey you expect.

1000 Clowns

Jason Robards does a masterful job as the irrepressible Murray M. Burns. An unemployed children’s television writer, he absolutely cannot stand to do work, of any sort. He is a non-conformist. He cannot stand being caged in, or feeling that anyone is impinging on his natural American freedom.

He pities all those he sees going to work in the morning, and would rather go goof off. He’s really just a big kid, who never really realized what the nature of adulthood is. He is also living with his nephew, Nick, who is going to school and loving life with his uncle. Until the Child Welfare police come to his door.

It’s lots of laughs as Murray has to scramble to find a way to appease the Board but not sacrifice is must-have freedom. He also starts romancing one of the welfare workers, which has it’s own strange consequences.

All in all, it’s a terrific flick, based on an original play, and has sort of a nice moral lesson at the end, althought the ending is a bit on the sad side. I give this movie a 2 because I too am a non-conformist.

Fletch: In Spades

Fletch
           Irwin M. Fletcher (Chevy Chase, Fletch Lives) is on the scene, and things will never be the same. Old I.M. takes to the beaches of Los Angeles in hopes of exposing the drug trafficking that plagues the beach. The only problem is, the drugs seem to just appear like magic.

            While posing as a homeless junkie, he is befriended by a rich man who offers him money in order to kill him, so his family can cash in the life insurance, and he doesn’t have to suffer through bone cancer. Fletch has 72 hours to unravel the drug trade and figure out what the rich man is actually planning.

            The twists and turns of the mystery are matched beat for beat by Chase’s absurd offbeat comments and fast thinking character portrait of Fletch. His humor is right on target, and there  is much of Chase himself that is poured into the subtext.

            This is a great example of an imperfect yet perfect character. Chases impressions also come in handy as Fletch is a master of disguise, and a notorious fast talker. It’s the quintessential comedy mystery with an epic flourish. Just when it seems like things have gone wrong, and Fletch guessed wrong, he pulls a rabbit out of his hat, and makes this comedy classic a gem of a 2.

Fletch Lives

           A classic Character, Chevy Chase is at his finest as Fletch, the fast talking, ultra-sarcastic, sharp witted  womanizer. Sleuthing about on his usual beat, he is in another hassle with his editor, Frank, and getting flack from his ex-wife’s attorney. Just in the nick of time, he gets a call about a Louisiana plantation he has just inherited from his Grandmother.

            Immediately he hops a plane, but that night, after he ahs slept with the attorney in charge of the inheritance, he awakes to find her dead, killed in her sleep and made to look like a heart attack. The mystery is on and amidst the backwards southern culture, and Fletch is at his finest, giving false information, assuming fake identities, and generally being false.

            This might be an 80’s movie, but I really enjoy some of those, and this is one of the finest. Yeah it’s a cheesy reason for a sequel, but Fletch was hilarious, and a very interesting plot, and this one is great too, though not as good as it’s predecessor.

            What really makes these movies is Chevy Chase in what I’m sure is one of his favorite roles, where he is basically the smartest guy in the room, and knows, but is too lazy to really do anything about it, and somehow, it all works out for Erwin M. Fletcher.

But I like to call him Fletch. A 2.

The Salton Sea

            Danny Parker (Val Kilmer, Spartan) is your run-of-the-mill gack-head meth fiend who’s trying to score, make it by, and stay high for the endless night party. But Somewhere along the way he had to get out of a bind, and so he turned into a pigeon. Now he takes note of every detail of a dealers drag, and makes plans to turn them over to the gack-squad.

            Things begin to change when his buddy’s, hairbrained schemers that they are, try to score the motherload by helping a strange cowboy (BD Wong, Father of the Bride) to sell a ton of gack to a deformed dealer named pooh-bear (Vincent Donofrio, Full Metal Jacket).

            Danny is in even more of a bind when his police friends find out that he’s becoming a dealer behind their back. The entire time, Danny is searching for something. The LA drug culture is just the place he’s gone to hide since the death of his wife out near the Salton Sea.

            The final showdown takes place at the Salton Sea as well. The Salton Sea becomes this symbol throughout the film. It’s the place you go to lose everything, and to find out who you really are. It’s a very dynamic Noire piece, and rally presented strongly. I enjoyed this film so much, it made the top 25 of all time.

The Lakehouse

            Can I just say that I really enjoyed this film a lot. Way more than I thought possible. Although I tend to like some chick flicks because I can appreciate the ones which are well made, and this one is really one of the best. Right up there with Just Like Heaven. The Lakehouse is a romantic comedy that is staged in a very powerful style which I love, and that is Magical Realism.

            The two main characters who need to fall in love live in different times, and live in the same house only 2 years apart. They soon discover that they can write letters to one another through the shared mailbox. Rather than questioning this supernatural event, it becomes a part of their landscape, and they begin to know eachother through their letters and shared though separate activities.

            Things get complicated when a series of events reveals to the girl (Sandra Bullock, Speed) that the guy (Keanu Reeves, Point Break) is actually a no show, and later she finds out that he is in fact, dead. Can she save him? Can they be together? Can they truly wait? The story in this is so beautiful and just really delightful, as it paints a deeper and deeper picture of the two, we watch them grow together over an uncrossable distance. 2.

The Quick and the Dead

          This is not Louis Lamore’s tail of a family surviving in the frontier with the help of a friendly stranger. This is the story of a horrible bully (Gene Hackman, Narrow Margin) who runs a small town, enslaving it’s Mexican residents. He also hosts an annual shoot out competition. The ultimate western cliché comes to dramatic real life in this fantastically shaped ultrareal western.

            The ones we really care about besides the boss are the Lady (Sharon Stone, Catwoman), The Kid (Leonardo DiCaprio, The Departed) and the preacher (Russell Crowe, Gladiator). They fight against 12 other larger than life characters in a traditional style shoot out tournament.

            The characters are the highlight of this film, as the story telling style highlights some incredibly well written and archetypical characters. It’s a lot of fun, and very well made. The movie fully acknowledges that it is not doing anything original, yet brings some tremendous energy into a well composed script.

            2. This is a great 90’s western, up there with Unforgiven and Dances with Wolves.

Freddy vs. Jason

           This is a funny little experiment. Freddy Kruger, the master of dreams, and former child-slayer, has been forgotten. Anyone with any knowledge of him has been shut up in an asylum, and doomed to be on anti-halucegenic drugs forever. Bur freddy can’t be forgotten, and so he haunts Jason Voorhies, long buried in the grave next to his mother, and awakens him, to punish the children of Elm Street, just as he punished the children of Crystal Lake.

            Then Jason gets out of control, and Freddy gets brought from the dream world into the real world. It’s a hilarious and intense romp through two defining icons of the horror genre, and is really quite laughable. It’s definitely not worth watching if you don’t think horror movies are crazy, though.

            It’s up to the same zany kids to fight off not one but two serial killers. Hilarious. 1.