Category: Actresses (Page 145 of 258)

Bullz-Eye’s Best and Worst Movies of 2008: Senior Editor David Medsker’s picks

December 30, 2008 /

With mere weeks to go, I had no idea what my list for favorite movies of 2008 was going to look like. More accurately, my list contained several movies that my inner critic told me had no business whatsoever in a year-end top ten list. There were a lot of movies that I liked (as you’ll soon discover), but not a whole lot that I loved. Starting about December 1, though, that changed dramatically. Whew.

Oh, and if you just read fellow BE critic Jason Zingale’s list before checking out mine, your eyes do not deceive you. Unlike, say, EW’s Owen Glieberman and Lisa Schwartzman, who seem to go out of their way to run lists as dissimilar as possible, JZ and I are pretty much on the exact same page this year. A meeting of the minds, or a lack of options? A little of both, I suppose.

Best movies of 2008

1. The Dark Knight
I’m not sure how Christopher Nolan is going to top this. This is so much bigger, smarter, darker and bleaker than any other superhero movie ever made that it’s insulting to lump it into the superhero category.

2. WALL·E
Repeated viewings of this since its release on DVD have elevated it towards not just the top of my list of 2008, but on the list of Pixar’s finest work. The dancing-in-space sequence is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

3. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
As a longtime David Fincher fan (his video for Madonna’s “Oh Father” still gives me chills), I’ll be the first to admit that his reputation has loomed larger than the quality of his work. He puts his money where his mouth is here. The last ten minutes are devastating.

4. Frost/Nixon
The only man who can give Samuel L. Jackson a run for his money at saying the word “motherfucker”: Richard Milhous Nixon.

5. Iron Man
Let that be a lesson to you: always take the Humdrum-vee over the Fun-vee.

6. RocknRolla
My pet theory: the name of Gerard Butler’s character One Two is a reference to the Specials’ song “Little Bitch.” Can anyone confirm this?

7. Slumdog Millionaire
Do you think that guy that won all those “Jeopardy” episodes was tortured like this movie’s hero was?

8. Let the Right One In
If you see one vampire movie this year…it ain’t “Twilight.” This Swedish import combines the lure of the undead with the hell that is junior high school. The ending to this movie is sadder than any I’ve seen all year, even the one with the dead dog.

9. Revolutionary Road
Only Leo and Kate could make a movie about two miserable suburbanites so watchable.

10. Tropic Thunder
“Now let’s make a movie!” *Clank* “Oh.” *BOOM* Nothing all year made me laugh harder.

Honorable mentions:
The Wrestler
Choke
The Wackness
Burn after Reading

I Was a Middle-Aged Teenager, Part Deux

I’m 40 years old, but some of my favorite movies – or scenes – came from movies that were aimed squarely at my inner 20-year-old.

Step Brothers
If we were to update our Movie Tunes piece, the “Sweet Child o’ Mine” scene would easily be in our Top 20.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall
It had what most Apatow-related movies sorely lack: balance. And hot damn, how awesome is Mila Kunis?

Sex Drive
Rumspringa! WOOOOOO!

Zack and Miri Make a Porno
If anyone is thinking about seeing if this will work in real life, we beg you, STOP. The world has enough bad amateur porn as it is, and your friend isn’t a tenth as hot as Elizabeth Banks.

Wanted
I’d debate whether Morgan Freeman’s character was telling the truth in the movie’s final bloodbath, but does it really matter? This was big, dumb, silly, and an absolute blast.

Pineapple Express
Between this and “Choke,” I’ll never think of anal beads the same way again.

Role Models
Finally, a Seann William Scott movie that didn’t make me want to drown kittens.

Docs that rock

Man on Wire
Bigger, Stronger, Faster*

The Kids Movies Are Alright

Kung Fu Panda
The Spiderwick Chronicles
Horton Hears a Who

Appealing to a man, but made for a woman

What Happens in Vegas…
Definitely, Maybe
Baby Mama
27 Dresses

Worst movies of 2008 (that I saw)

1. The Love Guru
Not even Justin Timberlake could save this from being the unfunniest movie of the year, if not all time. It’s like a bunch of teenagers came up with dick joke punch lines, then worked their way backwards for setups. Painfully bad.

2. Meet Dave
It’s over, Eddie. The next time you have a thought about a family movie comeback vehicle, let it go.

3. Over Her Dead Body
The only Eva worth watching this year is the one in “WALL·E.”

4. Untraceable
Screen Gems makes “Saw Lite,” tries to equate gawker’s block on the highway with willingly contributing to the death of another human being. Uh, sure.

5. Mad Money
Note to self: get job at Federal Reserve. If Diane Keaton can steal from them, so can I.

6. Deception
Hearing Michelle Williams say “fuck and suck” might be the funniest thing I heard in a movie all year.

7. Nim’s Island
Someone once asked Elijah Wood why he did the movie “Flipper.” His answer: to swim with dolphins for six months. Now we know why Abigail Breslin did “Nim’s Island”: to play with sea lions. We forgive you, sweetie. Jodie Foster and Gerard Butler, on the other hand, have some ‘splaining to do.

8. Made of Honor
Made all the more sickening by the fact that this will stand as Sydney Pollack’s final performance. He steals the movie, but the movie he’s stealing isn’t worthy of his presence.

9. Married Life
A black romantic dramedy that’s neither dark, nor funny, nor romantic.

10. The Spirit
“NO EGG ON MY FACE!” Um, I don’t know how to tell you this, Sam, but this movie is one giant piece o’ egg on your face.

Well made, but repulsive in every other regard

Funny Games
Few movies will make you angrier than this self-serving cheat of a film. It’s basically two hours of director Michael Haneke saying, “Fuck you America, you violent, brutish thugs.” America responded by (rightly) ignoring his film. I guess we’re not as brutish as you thought, Michael, and what does it say about you that you tried to profit from our supposed misery? Douchebag.

My co-workers saw them so I didn’t have to

Meet the Spartans
Strange Wilderness
Disaster Movie
88 Minutes
Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins

Bonus points to that last movie when cast member Mike Epps gave us quite possibly the worst interview ever.

“Snakes on a Plane” award for Movie Title of the Year

“The Midnight Meat Train.” And surprise, it actually wasn’t that bad.

Action Movies, Actors, Actresses, Documentaries, Horror Movies, Interviews, Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas, Movies, Reviews, Year in Review

Aqua Teen Hunger Force 6

December 24, 2008 /

I don’t know what it is about “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” that causes me to be forever surprised at how funny it is, but I think perhaps it’s because the concept is so downright surreal. Nonetheless, “Aqua Teen Hunger Force 6” (which actually contains the whole of Season 5 of the series) contains just as many laughs as the previous collections. The first few episodes, however, feature little or no appearances from Frylock, Master Shake, and Meatwad, due to their being cocooned in the desert by their vampire-esque landlord Marcula; ever the caring neighbor, Carl immediately tries to rent out their place to a bunch of robots, but his greatest spotlight comes in the third episode, “Sirens,” when he meets another set of new neighbors, voiced by Kelly Hogan, Neko Case, and John Kruk. (Kruk plays himself; the other two do not.) Other guest voices during the season include David Cross, T-Pain, Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age), Scott Adsit (“30 Rock”), Jon Benjamin (a.k.a. Coach McGuirk on “Home Movies”), and Kristen Schaal (“Flight of the Conchords”).

There are four previously-unaired episodes, the best of which is “Shake Like Me,” where Master Shake is bitten by a radioactive black man and becomes black himself. Scientifically implausible, you say? Surely no more so than an anthropomorphic Happy Meal. Of the special features, sports fans will particularly enjoy the “Carl’s Pissed” shorts, where the hairy undershirt-wearing gentleman moans and groans about various events in the world of sports, but there are also other oddities that fans of the show’s bizarre comedic sensibilities will enjoy. Those who do not belong to the Adult Swim cult, however, will almost certainly not…and that goes not just for the bonus material but also for “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” as a whole.

Click to buy “Aqua Teen Hunger Force 6”

Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External TV, Reviews, test, TV, TV Comedies, TV DVD Quicktakes, TV DVDs

Kids Today: “Drake & Josh: Best of Seasons 1 – 2”

December 22, 2008 /

I admit it: I’m a Drake Bell fan. It doesn’t have anything to do with his Nickelodeon sitcom, though; it’s all because of his music career. Have you heard his stuff? The guy’s so much of a Jellyfish fan that he covers “Joining a Fan Club” in concert…and does it pretty damned well, too. That’s why I requested this set to review back in August…and, yet, when it arrived, I was unable to bring myself to put it in the DVD player. When it came right down to it, I found myself asking a question that, to be fair, I probably should’ve asked before making the DVD request: is appreciating a guy’s musical output really enough of a reason to endure watching a sitcom aimed at an audience that’s about 20 years younger than I am? The answer: not really. After seeing Bell’s co-star, Josh Peck, appear in the Michael Rapaport flick, “Special,” however, I decided that the time had come to get off my old arse and get it over with.

As it happened, watching “Drake & Josh: Best of Seasons 1 – 2” wasn’t nearly as excruciating an experience as I’d feared it would be, which was certainly a nice surprise, but the most surprising thing about the experience was the fact that Peck’s photo on the cover of the DVD bears absolutely no resemblance to the actor as he appeared in the first few seasons of the series. He spent the third and fourth seasons of the show divesting himself of a fair amount of weight, as it turns out, but I guess the folks responsible for packaging this best-of set decided that offering an accurate presentation of Peck’s weight during Seasons 1 and 2 wouldn’t do as well to inspire the show’s predominant audience – teen-aged girls – to buy the set. (To be fair, they did manage to find room for a cast photo from the era on the back cover.)

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Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External TV, Reviews, TV, TV Comedies, TV DVDs

Aki Kaurismäki’s Proletariat Trilogy

December 18, 2008 /

Radio humorist Garrison Keillor gets a great deal of mileage poking fun at the taciturn ways of Swedish and Norwegian-Americans in the bleak Midwest. By comparison, Aki Kaurismäki’s similarly Nordic Finnish Fins make the citizens of Lake Wobegone seem like a bunch of raging drama queens. Kaurismäki is known for blending clever ultra-deadpan comedy and classical neorealist filmmaking, and since I love the former and just barely tolerate the latter, his works tend to be a hit and miss affair for me. Nevertheless, the definite class of this no-frills three-disc set from Criterion’s Eclipse line — comprised of three short feature-length movies about the lives of working folks who get themselves into bad, bad trouble — is also, however, the least overtly funny. 1990’s “The Match Factory Girl” is an ultra-dry twist on the pathos-heavy Hans Christian Anderson tale starring Kati Outinen — the female lead of Kaurismäki’s terrific 2002 art-house hit “The Man Without a Past” — as a trodden-upon lass who finally has enough of her vile parents and her even more vile boy-enemy (you can’t call him a friend). Ned Flanders-mustached Matti Pellonpää, who appears un-credited as the cruel seducer, also plays major roles in the less melodramatic, less reliably entertaining, but also very deftly made, films that round out the set: 1986’s “Shadows in Paradise,” a romantic comedy of sorts, and 1988’s “Ariel,” an out of sorts heist picture.

“Match Factory Girl” aside, this is the kind of material that will test the patience of viewers who don’t love such neorealist tropes as watching characters make tea for 15 seconds of real time. On the other hand, if kitchen sink realism and downbeat, ultra-subtle humor is your thing, they all may be your cup of tea. An ecological note: Given that all three features combined run just over 3.5 hours (the longest is an epic 76 minutes) and there are zero extras, someone should ask Criterion why was it necessary to package this brief trilogy on three separate discs.

Click to buy “Aki Kaurismäki’s Proletariat Trilogy”

Actors, Actresses, External Movie DVDs, External Movies, Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas, Movie DVD Quicktakes, Movie DVDs, Movies, Reviews, TV Comedies

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles 2.13 – In this world, we’ve got to find the time for the (death) of Riley

December 16, 2008 /

So this is how the second season of “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” was supposed to end.

It’s the 13th episode, which is all they were originally supposed to make when the season began. And this is how they were going to end it…with three episodes that practically stood still. The episode fades to black with Sarah passing out from a gunshot wound, but then they follow it with scenes from the show’s second half (it relaunches in February), and we see that Sarah is very much alive. Exactly how she’s alive, I’m not sure, since she went into that warehouse by herself and didn’t tell anyone where she was. It reminds me of something someone said to my wife when she was trying to carry a bunch of luggage through the London tube station by herself: “You are either very brave, or very foolish.” Sarah’s tough, but this was just dumb.

We finally get Riley’s back story, and man, what a disappointment that was. She goes from feral street rat in the future, to undercover mark assigned to seduce John Connor, in what seems like a matter of weeks. I can see why Jesse would choose someone that doesn’t fight for the resistance (thus making it less likely any fellow Resistance members would recognize her), but surely there was someone more appropriate for the job, right? And would Riley really go from having doubts about the assignment to committing suicide in John’s bathroom? Really? We all knew that Riley was going to die sooner or later, but suicide? That’s just lazy. I would rather have seen Riley try to confess everything to John, only to have Jesse kill her before Riley could rat her out. It’s cliche, but that would have been much more tragic. As it is, John’s only take-away from this is, “Man, that Riley was a crazy bitch.” Methinks the Future John is now even more into Cameron than he was when Jesse and Riley traveled back in time in the first place.

“Hi, I’m a slightly unstable, combat-ready paranoid who sees these three dots everywhere. Oh, and I’m going to get you killed before all is said and done.”

Sarah, meanwhile, is hanging out with a cross-dressing Man Who Knows Too Much, in a blind pursuit of the three dots. She finishes her quest, of course, but not before getting both the cross-dresser and the hypno-therapist she recruits to open his mind killed in the process. Wouldn’t you have thought, after the first attempt on their lives at his/her storage facility, that Sarah would have realized that taking Abraham into the city was not a good idea? Nope. Instead, she brings him back for an “emergency” session with the clearly busy therapist. Who does that? “Excuse me, I need you to fix my car.” “Well, we’re very busy, so you’ll have to make an appointment.” “Nope. It’s an emergency.” “You heard the man, get these cars out of here and get to work on his problem.” Uh, sure.

Ellison and Cromartie/John Henry finally return, and while it has the makings of an interesting dynamic, I’ll stop short of saying that thie will actually lead to something interesting. This show has been nothing but missed opportunities, so there is no guarantee they will follow through on this one. Still, they did hint in the previews that John Henry eventually figures out that Catherine is a machine, which means that Ellison’s concern that John Henry will grow far too powerful to be controlled may will indeed come to fruition. Speaking of Catherine, she had the episode’s best line: “Cows are more powerful than humans, but I’d still rather be the farmer with the rifle.” Curious choice of phrasing, since you could argue that in her mind, we’re the cows, and she’s the farmer with the rifle. However, if the show doesn’t get its ass in gear in February, “Terminator” will be the cow, and Fox will be the farmer with the rifle.

Reports indicate that when Fox brings back “Terminator” in February, it will be moved to the Kevorkian death slot of Friday night. If that is indeed the case, this will likely serve as my last blog on the show. Thanks to everyone who read my rants (quickest way to hate a show: start blogging about it), and here’s hoping that the producers of the show finally get it right in the new year.

Actors, Actresses, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, TV, TV Action

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