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home > literaria > movie reviews > ex post factoids EX POST FACTOIDS:Dr. T and the Women, with Richard Gere. Rating: -$5 When a movie goes bad, it's frustrating to sit in the audience and not really know why it sucked. You can hear it emitting sucking sounds, but you can't identify them. It's enough to make you want to go to film school, just to understand the difference between the good, the bad and the ugly, and how they got that way. This movie's flaws are a little more obvious. Here's a few: You meet zillions of women, most of whom do a credible job of characterization, but then so many of the threads of plot development suggested by the abundance of babe-age is totally neglected. What happens to the daughter who says, "don't worry about me, Dad?" Why doesn't he ever start to worry about her. I'm worried and I'm not even related. What about Auntie "drinks-like-a-fish? Nothing ever comes of all that drinking. And what about that traumatized central love story. Does the golf pro just like getting laid or what? Or is she suggesting that they can have a more equal and healthy relationship than the one the Doc had with his "love-crazed" wife? The Doc had a chance to grow there, but the movie just dropped him. And how did a regressed to la-la land wife manage to file for a divorce? Not to mention the oddity that fifteen Mexican women can't find a midwife to catch the baby and have to get the Doctor ex machina to catch the item (and by the way, who thinks that was a real baby breeching out of the real thing, and how many think it was a Disney animatronic with a long cord?) Please vote here:
Whatever the results of the quizlet, the show itself was a long tale, told by an apparent vidiot, full of sound, and furry, signifying nothing. I did, however, like the dodo guys in camo shooting at and missing everything. I'd hide from all those women myself. Well, not all. The Art of War, with Wesley Snipes Rating: -$2 It seems that you can still make movies that are derived from some kind of plot-free zone. "Where do they find these things," says my lovely bride. The question is, they say it's almost impossible to get your screenplay published and then these "star" vehicles show up and die in your driveway. Poor Wesley. A good actor in a plotless going nowhere collection of actions by apparently unconnected people. It was hard to see the United Nations as a hotbed of intrigue and counterplots. I don't really buy it, but they won't give me my money back. On the other hand, I've never been so happy as when they got rid of the bad lady/plot contrivance. I just wish they had shot her earlier. Or maybe just dressed her in a velcro straitjacket and thrown her against the wall before filming started. Snatch Rating: $8 This was a lot of fun, with most of the dead people dying off camera. Benicio del Toro died early, but at least he had a bag over his head. The great thing about the movie for me was the three black guys. Just for once the black guys were not the coolest, the toughest, and the smartest guys in the movie. They were kind, normal guys. For low-life hoods, that is. Plus they had some great dialogue. I thought that showed a maturity of some kind. Verbally inscrutable Brad Pitt shined in his second fight movie. Sorry, no Helena Bonham-Carter this time. Can't have everything. And what about the lemmings-like ensemble work of those "caravanners?" Great! The arch villain, a great characterization, and happily killed off, I'd say, by just the right people. Brother, Oh My Brother Rating: $7 I found the Cyclops, the sirens, wily Odysseus, Trojan Horse (sort of), Penelope, the final "sneaking-in-to-get-Penelope-back-in-disguise" gig, all from the Odyssey, plus references to Moby Dick and Julius Caesar. Looks like those Cohen boys went to college. Anybody see any more? (Do tell) Me, Myself and Irene Rating: -$7 The question is, do the actors know it when they are a sinking, stinking, crashing zeppelin of a movie? Can the smell the burning trash of the suckage around the edges? You can just hear the high quality people getting sucked in during the casting: "Oh, yes, it's a JIM Carrey/Wesley Snipes/(Fill in the Blank) Movie." Do they GO to the openings? Wow. Renee Zellweger did a creditable job of telling Carrey when he was a dog. But it reduced her the bitch role, when really, he needed to be sent to the pound and euthanized. It was hard to like either Me or Myself in the movie. Plus the great waste of the black brothers. Don't know why genius brothers would continue to speak advanced street talk. Obviously it's genetic or something? That was crazed, and though it was potentially funny, I believe it was bungled due to a lack of expert application of "Ebonics" to the complex topics. I think that they could have done better to have the brothers switch back and forth from polite white to gang slang, and had better gang slang versions of the nuclear physics stuff. Anyone who can do rap has a WAY with words. Trust me. But this is nitpick city. Again, I really can't tell you why this movie dogged out. So many movies have tried this divided personality thing, Some have made it, many have failed, this falls in the latter category. Any ideas why this both sucked and blew it? Let me know, and please put IRENE in the subject line of your e-mail. If you have a movie for which you want to send an Ex-Post Factoid, do it. If you have a movie you'd like me to comment on, let me know! More to come. For Reference: STOKSTAD.COM MOVIE PAY SCALE. |