Last Five Movies

Date Movie (2006)
"Spoof" movies have gotten really terrible in recent years. If you look at the earlier work from the Abrams/Zucker team (like Airplane! and The Naked Gun), sure, those movies made references to other movies (Airplane! takes most of its plot and dialogue directly out of Zero Hour!), but they were just for easy laughs. The rest of the gags were original ideas, and funny. Now, you have a movie like Date Movie, which is basically a clip show of other movies, but with different characters, and that don't make for a good or funny movie. The fact that they're spoofing romantic comedies doesn't help either, since what they're spoofing was supposed to be funny to start with. How 'bout some original jokes? No? Well, so be it. We'll see if Scary Movie 4 finally kills off this genre. Best thing to happen to it, really.

London (2006)
The honest-to-God only reason I watched this was because some website claimed that Jessica Biel had some nude scenes in it. But she doesn't. So, there goes that hour and a half of my life.

Into the Blue (2005)
If watching Jessica Alba trot around in a bikini for two hours offends you, then this isn't for you. All others need apply. Oh, and if Peter Benchley hadn't been dying of lung disease when this movie was made, I'm sure he would have sued the shit out of the producers for ripping off his screenplay for The Deep. Or am I the only one who noticed that? Whoops.

Shaft (2000)
I thought this was a good movie when I saw it in the theatre five years ago, and it still holds up today. But I still have the same problem with it that I had back then: the Peoples Hernandez character. Jeffrey Wright is a great actor, and he should be in more movies, but what the fuck his character is doing in this one is beyond me. Let's clutter up that screenplay with more unnecessary characters, please!

An incredibly obscure choice, yes, but it's the best I've seen lately:

The Dancer Upstairs (2002)
John Malkovich must be a big fan of Costa-Gavras, because he's made a movie that would fit right into Gavras' filmography. It chronicles a South American revolution being led by an unseen terrorist, and the search of a troubled detective to find him. A good movie, and the fact that it stars the always-great Javier Bardem only makes it better.