Thursday, September 18, 2008

Last Five Movies (Extended Edition)


Righteous Kill (2008)
You can put DeNiro and Pacino together in any movie, and THIS is the movie you make? I'd be absolutely fascinated to see a pre-editing version of this movie, because I'm sure that it would be infinitely better than the jumbled, scattershot mess that actually got released.

Burn After Reading (2008)
I'm sure that this seemed extremely clever on paper...to the Coens, at least. What it seems like to ME is a mish-mosh of ideas with no plot that's only occasionally funny. In fact, when Brad Pitt isn't on the screen, the movie suffers greatly.

Find Me Guilty (2006)
Despite what people think, Vin Diesel actually CAN act, as evidenced by this movie, Sidney Lumet's second-to-latest. People might have a better opinion of Diesel if he made more movies like this, and fewer movies like...

Babylon A.D. (2008)
If I hadn't already seen Children of Men, maybe this would have been more entertaining, but I have, so it wasn't.

Vantage Point (2007)
This movies tries to disguise the fact that it's basically just a stupid Chase Movie by coming up with the silly gimmick of the multiple "vantage points." Turns out, it's STILL a stupid Chase Movie.

The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)
A year after Sam Peckinpaw reinvented the Western, he turned the genre on its head again with this, the most upbeat and lighthearted revenge story ever put to film. This also begins the most prosperous decade of Jason Robards' career, during which he won two Oscars.

Usually, this spot is reserved for the best movie I've recently seen, but, this time, it's for the worst. And, of course, that movie is...

The Boondock Saints (1999)
Am I really seeing this? Yet ANOTHER fucking movie about Irish gangsters in Boston? Really? Again? Ya know, I live in Milwaukee, which is not only bigger than Boston, but was home to an actual Cosa Nostra family. Ya know how many movies have been made about that? None. Yet this is approximately the six millionth movie made about Irish Boston street thugs. And the fact that it's probably one of the worst movies ever made doesn't help its case. After seeing it, it's no wonder that the career of writer/director Troy Duffy, who was once touted as the "next big thing," crashed to the ground so hard that it actually went all the way through the center of the Earth and came out the other side and out into space, never to be heard from again. I'm embarrassed for everyone involved.

That being said, I do have a recommendation. Gene Siskel once said that some movies are so bad that a documentary of the making of that film would be more entertaining. And, in the case of The Boondocks Saints, this is entirely true. And while Overnight (2003) isn't entirely about The Boondocks Saints, it's enough about it to show why it's so incredibly bad. And it also paints Troy Duffy out to be one of the most arrogant and egotistical douchebags in the history of the planet.

He gets exactly what he deserves in the end. Check it out.

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