The Exploding Girl (2009)

DIrector: Bradley Rust Gray

Writer: Bradley Rust Gray

Composer: ???


Starring: Zoe Kazan, Mark Rendall, Maryann Urbano, Hunter Canning, Margot Ruth Tenenbaum, Gevevieve T. Eisner, Caseyarnoux Charlot

More info: IMDb


Plot: On a summer break from college, a young epileptic woman struggles to balance her feelings for her fledgling boyfriend while her friend Al crashes with her for the season.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? No.

Not much happens in this slow, leisurely paced, quiet film and that works in its favor.  I suppose if I could identify with Ivy (Kazan, granddaughter of Elia Kazan) I would have liked this more. I did feel for the girl.  She's a very quiet, soft spoken woman who is not one who makes things happen but rather lets them happen.  It felt like a miserable situation.  Anyone who can empathize with Ivy will find this a much better film.  It will play better with that emotional connection.  Technically everything seemed to work just fine but I was simply missing that little spark needed for this to work.  Now, if only she HAD exploded...well, that's my kind of movie!  The Oscilloscope DVD comes with 4 trailers for their films (including this one), a 13 minute interview with Gray and Kazan, a music video fro "Thursday" by Asobi Seksu, and FLUTTER (1997) (a short film by Gray from college).

Deep Impact (1998)

Director: Mimi Leder

Writers: Bruce Joel Rubin, Michael Tolkin

Composer: James Horner

Starring: Robert Duvall, Tea Leoni, Elijah Wood, Vanessa Redgrave, Morgan Freeman, Maximilian Schell, James Cromwell, Ron Eldard, Jon favreau, Laura Innes, Mary McCormack, Richard Schiff, Leelee Sobieski, Blair Underwood, Dougray Scott, Gary Werntz, Bruce Weitz, betsy Brantley, Kurtwood Smith, Charles Martin Smith

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Heaven and Earth are about to collide.

Plot: Unless a comet can be destroyed before colliding with Earth, only those allowed into shelters will survive. Which people will survive?

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again? No.

I know some of you are thinking, 7 out of 10?  Really?  I liked it.  It was a lot better than I expected and it's a hell of a lot better than ARMAGEDDON (1998) which came out the same year.  I've seen that one twice and I hated it both times (the second time was with a group of friends plus I had to know if it was me or Michael Bay...it wasn't me).  DEEP IMPACT has the cliches found in disaster films but the filmmakers at least try to do something a little different.  I liked how Jenny (Leoni in a somewhat bland performance...and I dig this chick a lot normally) discovers the secret the government's known about and how the whole first half hour unfolds.  We find out that the President (Freeman, who should be the real life President of the World!!!...I'd vote for him) and co. have known about this and have been feverishly preparing to prevent it and a strategy if we fail.  Then the second act is motion with getting to the comet.  And finally there's the third act when the drama is ratcheted up and the shit hits the fan.  That was neat.  I could have used some more disaster porn but what they showed was great.  Do you really think that a single skyscraper on the coast would still be standing?  I don't fucking think so.  For the most part the acting was pretty good and I actually dug on some of the characters...enough that I choked up a little at the end but that was mostly because it hit too close to home.  See, back in the late 70s I was an uppity astronaut in training and I ended up going on what was supposed to be a suicide mission into space to divert....shit, I've said too much.  I'm a modest man.  I didn't care for the thing with the kids (Wood and Sobieski) but I appreciated the filmmakers doing something different with their storyline.  The cast is all over the place with names and faces you'll recognize and they cram an awful lot into a two hour movie which is nicely paced by the way.  It's definitely a better than average modern disaster flick and I do appreciate what they did to try and keep it from being one big cliche like ARMAGEDDON.  The Paramount Special Collector's Edition has a nice anamorphic widescreen print with extras like a commentary, 4 featurettes (about 30 minutes in total) a teaser trailer and theatrical trailer (both non-anamorphic widescreen).

Slayground (1983)

Director: Terry Bedford

Writers: Trevor Preston, Donald E. Westlake

Composer: Colin Towns

Starring: Peter Coyote, Mel Smith, Billie Whitelaw, Philip Sayer, Bill Luhrs, Marie Masters, Clarence Felder, Ned Eisenberg, David Hayward, Michael Ryan, Barrett Mulligan, Kelli Maroney

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Welcome To Your Funeral!

Plot:  Thieves run over a child while escaping after a robbery. A deadly hitman who likes to taunt his targets is hired to track them down. Stone moves to England, but the assassin follows.

My rating: 4/10

Will I watch it again?  Nope.

The film gets off to a good start but it quickly gets weird when the mysterious-hidden-in-the-shadows-to-the-point-of-being-ridiculous hitman shows up and quickly dispenses of his targets except for one.  How he found them so quickly is never explained.  He spends most of the picture trying to get to Stone (Coyote) even after Stone goes to England halfway into the film.  The change of scenery is nice but it's still slow. I just wanted something to happen.  It's a snail's pace and whenever the hitman shows up he's dressed like a cold war villain from GET SMART, dressed in a black overcoat, black fedora, black gloves, shadows over the face; you get the picture.  It's rather laughable.  When the big showdown finally arrived at the end I kept expecting something really out there like the hitman was Stone himself.  Nope.  Much of the film was a dreary affair.  I wish it weren't so but there it is. 

Intolerable Cruelty (2003)

Directors: Joel & Ethan Coen

Writers: Joel & Ethan Coen, Robert Ramsey, Matthew Stone, John Romano

Composer: Carter Burwell

Starring: George Clooney, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Geoffrey Rush, Cedric the Entertainer, Edward Herrmann, Paul Adelstein, Richard Jenkins, Billy Bob Thornton, Julia Duffy, Jonathan Hadary, Tom Aldredge, Bruce Campbell, Irwin Keyes

More info: IMDb

Tagline: A romantic comedy with bite.

Plot: A revenge-seeking gold digger marries a womanizing Beverly Hills lawyer with the intention of making a killing in the divorce.

My rating: 7.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Yes.

I saw this in the theater in 2003 and I didn't like it.  See, I went into it expecting a Coen Bros. picture and it felt like anything but.  I was hurt.  The Coen Bros. let me down.  I've spent the past decade plus in mourning.  Now that I'm over it, I checked it out again and I really dig it. This time, though, I was really drawn to the performances and the writing.  Billy Bob Thornton had me in stitches.  The whole thing with Wheezy Joe (Keyes) is pretty weak as far as attempting screwball comedy goes, especially the end of the scene but the rest of the picture is pretty funny and Clooney makes a real strong go at it and delivers some truly funny moments.  The Universal DVD has a nice anamorphic widescreen print with a few extras in a making of doc (12 minutes), a 5 minute piece on the wardrobe (really?) and 7 minutes of "Filmmaker Approved and Assembled Outtakes".  That's it.

42 (2013)

Director: Brian Helgeland

Writer: Brian Helgeland

Composer: Mark Isham

Starring: Chadwick Boseman, Harrison Ford, Nicole Beharie, Christopher Meloni, Ryan Merriman, Lucas Black, Andre Holland, Alan Tudyk, Hamish Linklater, T.R. Knight, John C. McGinley, Toby Huss, Max Gail

More info: IMDb

Tagline: In a game divided by color, he made us see greatness.

Plot:  The story of Jackie Robinson from his signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers organization in 1945 to his historic 1947 rookie season when he broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball.

My rating: 7.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Nah.

Good flick.  Being a sports movie and a bio pic it's already got two strikes against it since both types of films are nearly always loaded with cliches that are hard to shake.  Surprisingly, director/writer Helgeland treads them lightly and crafted a fine film that doesn't use those cliches as a crutch.  I'm not into sports so I knew nothing about Jackie Robinson except that he was the first black Major League Baseball player.  The performances are good and earnest and the pacing is nice and leisurely.  Some may find it slow and I can see how someone would find this a typical throwaway sports biography but it's got a lot of emotion in the right places and a little bit of humor that doesn't draw attention to itself.  It's a nice little picture that's pleasantly gives you a glimpse into what all went into this historic figure and moment in time.

Cyclone (1978)

Director: Rene Cardona Jr.

Writers: Rene Cardona Jr., Carlos Valdemar

Composer: Riz Ortolani

Starring: Arthur Kennedy, Carroll Baker, Lionel Stander, Andres Garcia, Hugo Stiglitz, Mario Almada, Olga Karlatos, Stefania D'Amario, Milton Rodriguez, Rene Cardona III, Rene Cardona

More info: IMDb

Tagline: The Violent Storm Was Only the Beginning ... The Sharks Would Be the Merciless End!

Plot: An airplane goes down in the ocean during a storm and a few survivors find refuge on a small tour boat. Swept out to sea, these people slowly starve to death in the hot sun with barely any food or clean water. With no place to turn, the boat survivors resort to cannibalism to stay alive...that is ..until the rescue planes come to pick them up and the man eating sharks decide its time to eat as well.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

I've heard this picture described many ways and only one was right.  It's a survival film.  There's little to no action, the storm happens within minutes and the rest of the two hour film is almost entirely spent with two separate groups of survivors, one group is in a small boat and the other are in the water with nothing but life jackets.  What you've got then is these people trying to stay alive despite little to no food and water and sharks.  I get why people don't like this film. There's not an awful lot going on.  The music is limited and you're in two similar locations watching people figure out how to stay alive.  All of this contributes to the dullness of the picture but it's not without merit.  Even though the pacing is slow, Cardona gives us a lot of situations for these people to deal with and they're nearly all things that you'd expect in a situation like this - water shortage, fighting, sharks, food, cannibalism, and so on.  And they react the way you'd expect as well.  The ending is pretty bleak which kicks the score up a notch.  It's not a bad film.  It almost would be if you saw a shitty fullscreen VHS copy but I watched a nice anamorphic widescreen print from Synapse.  Their DVD has a few extras like an alternate opening credits sequence, a trailer for this film, DANGER GIRLS, THE DEADLY SPAWN, THRILLER: THEY CALL HER ONE EYE, BIZARRE (AKA SECRETS OF SEX), OLGA'S GIRLS and GOD HAS A RAP SHEET. 

The Meaning of Life (1983)

Directors: Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam

Writers: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Michael Palin

Composer: John Du Prez

Starring: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Carol Cleveland, Simon Jones, Patricia Quinn

More info: IMDb

Tagline: It took God six days to create the earth, and Monty Python just 90 minutes to screw it up.

Plot: The Monty Python group examines the meaning and purpose of life in a series of sketches from conception to death and beyond. 

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again?  Yeah.

I love MP and I think I've seen everything they've done many times.  I'll even go out of my way to see what each member did outside of the group stuff.  This is a mixed bag with lots of highs and lows with little in between. The opening segment, The Crimson Permanent Assurance bit, feels like it goes on for too long but I get tickled watching it every time and I like that it comes back later in the picture from a different perspective.  It is a long bit but its brilliantly produced.  Great theme song and animation. The hospital sketch is cute but not all that funny after so many viewings.  Every Sperm Is sacred is still just as hilarious as it was when I saw it nearly thirty years ago.  The kids are adorable.  The followup bit with the couple discussing sex is great, too.  Sex Ed at school is great and the nudity is much welcome.  If only it were like this for us in school instead of those stuffy ole books.  The two war bits are OK.  Funnier in concept than in execution.  Now we're well into more than halfway into the picture where the laughs are fewer until Mr. Creosote shows up for some disgustingly hilarious fun.  After that there's the always welcome slow motion topless women chasing a man to his death.  The second half is weaker than the first half which feels deadly sometimes.  It's a beautifully shot and executed film but it's just sporadically funny.  I'm sure I laughed a lot harder in my teens in the 80s.  I still find a lot of this enjoyable but it also tends to bore me throughout.