Friday, February 22, 2008
Multiplex Madness: So who’s watching the Oscars?
Posted by Jeff in be kind rewind, charlie bartlett, multiplex madness, persepolis, roger ebert, vantage point, witless protection
Please, why waste precious moments of your life honoring a bunch of pretentious pricks like the Coen Brothers when you could have your ass planted in your local multiplex, drinking butter and enjoying Forest Whitaker’s most engaging performance since those dumb turn off your phone ads. Onward!
Opening this week:
Vantage Point
(RT score: 33%) Vantage Point aims to answer the age-old question: if you take a dumb, boring movie and show it five times from different angles, is it still dumb and boring? I don’t want to spoil anything, but the answer is: Yes.
Be Kind Rewind
(RT score: 68%) As much as many will try to turn Be Kind into a love letter to now defunct videotape formats of yesteryear, it’s really a love letter to the creative process. Unfortunately, it’s ten kinds of corny, and while Mos Def is stuck being a center of cool in a storm of unfocused Jack Black.
Charlie Bartlett
(RT score: 56%) It’s like Ferris Bueller, except instead of cute and charming, he’s “creepy-weird“, and instead of a principal who’s a pedophile in real life, he’s got a principal who’s an alcoholic in real life.
Witless Protection
(RT score: 0%) I like to imagine Larry the Cable Guy coming home after a long hard day on the set of Witless Protection (or Delta Farce, or Health Inspector) to his enormous Florida estate, pouring some finely aged cognac, spending some time reading leather-bound volumes of Belinsky, and sipping and nodding well into the night. I also like to imagine Jenny McCarthy naked.
What you should probably go see instead:
Fantastic animation (really – I would put any single frame from the film on my wall) combined with fascinating glimpses into daily Iranian life makes Persepolis a winner. Sure, it’s a bit too long, and the story arcs feel a little undefined, but it’s subversive humor and general good nature holds it together. Bring a date! There’s subtitles! She’ll think you’re smart!
Roger Ebert’s bizarre rambling of the week:
One of the perhaps inevitable consequences of re-enacting movies is that the exercise brings out all the latent manic excess within Jack Black, who when he is trying that hard reminds me of a dog I know named McQ Junior, who gets so excited when you come over, you have to go to the dry cleaners after every visit.
Yeah. We don’t know either.