Trailer Tuesday - Annie Hall (1977)

Perhaps the greatest romantic comedy of modern cinema, and the I'm pretty sure the only Best Picture Oscar winner I have in my DVD collection...

My Week In Movies - March Comes In Like A Lizard

Rango (2011) An odd animated tale with Johnny Depp as a lizard who gets wrapped up in the troubles of a small western town. Rango ends up becoming the sheriff of Dirt, and helps the town folk restore their lost water supply. It's kind of a neat idea to do an animated western, and this movie does look neat but it's too odd and strange in the beginning to really get into. By the second half, things start to get rolling but 107 minutes the whole affair is a little too long to hold kids attentions. There are lots of jokes aimed at adults and as my son noted, most of the verbal humor went over the kids heads. If you enjoy animated features it's worth checking out as some point. Rated PG for violence and mild profanity.

The Other Guys (2010) What starts out as a pretty smart parody of the action genre, eventually just becomes the standard run of the mill police picture. Will Ferrell and Marky Mark are mismatched partners who stumble upon the biggest case of their careers. Michael Keaton shows up as the department's chief, and he's really good. It makes you wish Keaton was still headlining vehicles of his own. There's a bunch of other familiar faces that pop up along the way and it's nice to see Ferrell play a somewhat normal guy instead of an over-the-top SNL character which he's done effectively in the past but just a bit too often. Theatrically the film was rated PG-13, the DVD features both the theatrical cut and an unrated version. I watched the unrated version and didn't see anything that went beyond a PG-13. It's all the usual swearing, violence and sexual innuendo.

Grown Ups (2010) This Adam Sandler comedy from last summer has absolutely no plot. I don't just mean a flimsy excuse for a plot, I'm talking about no attempt at a story what-so-ever. But you know what, every movie doesn't need a story. This is just some good simple fun as five buddies get back together after 30 years to pay their last respects to their high school basketball coach. All the business with the coach is wrapped up in the first 15 minutes of the movie and the rest of the picture is just the great cast of Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider and David Spade just cracking on each other and having a good time. It's exactly the kind of time you'd love to spend with a handful of old buddies of yours. Rated PG-13 for dirty words and dirty jokes.

imps* (The Immoral Minority Picture Show) (1983/2009) Now, this is saying alot coming from me...but this has to be one of the worst movies I have ever seen. I was excited to dig up another sketch movie from the past but this one was a real stinker. The sense of humor in this thing is so lame, what passes for a joke wouldn't even make a 7 year old laugh. The title suggests that this movie is a take-off on the Moral Majority, with content supposedly so offensive it will offend everyone. It never really gets raunchy it also never really gets funny. There's a parade of familiar faces in it but none of them are given anything to do. The skits build and build to a punchline that never pays off...if there even is a punchline at the end of the skit. This flick is so terrible it was apparently completed in 1983 but NEVER saw the light of day until a DVD release in 2009. The world wasn't missing anything all those years. Rated R for language, attempted crude humor, sexual situations and nudity.

The Pom Pom Girls (1976) We spent last weekend at the beach and there happened to be a Cheerleader competition in town. The whole resort town was crawling with cheerleaders aged 4 to 18. In honor of our time with the cheerleaders I thought I'd catch up on a couple of my favorite cheerleader movies. I hadn't seen The Pom Pom Girls in a long time and it was fun to revisit it. This is one of those low budget, drive-in classics that the old USA Network used to run on weekend nights on USA Up All Night. This one was in heavy rotation and I saw it many times in my high school years. According to my internet research, this R rated high school flick was a big box office performer and was later reissued in a slightly trimmed PG version. My copy appears to be the PG version as it's not as steamy as the poster suggests. It also doesn't really have anything to do with cheerleading or the Pom Pom girls. It's about two dudes and three gals that just hang out during their last year of high school. They make-out in vans, they drink, they have food fights and they steal a fire engine in broad daylight...you know, typical high school stuff! It's actually a fairly innocent look at a time gone by when life was much more simpler. The PG rated version has some swearing and fairly heavy sexual situations but there is no nudity. From what I can tell, the R rated cut had a couple of locker room scenes with topless cheerleaders. Still fun in the watered down PG rated version.

You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger (2010) Woody Allen's latest film takes all the familiar characters, situations and film making techniques of all his other movies and gently mixes them up for a light but pleasant look at finding true love and dealing with relationships that have run their course. Woody's newest cliche' that he seems to be employing alot recently is a narrator who keeps the film popping along at a nice pace. Woody's not on screen in this one, but Anthony Hopkins does a nice job playing the "Woody" role. I'm not good enough a writer to try and sum up the events in this film. Rated R for language.

My Week In Movies - Star Trek

Star Trek (2009) This has got to be the first time where a movie that is based on an old TV show totally got it right! I'm not a huge fan of the old show but I've seen enough to know that this new take on Star Trek is right on the money. They found the perfect blend of keeping things the same as the old series and paying homage to the Star Trek legacy while at the same time kicking things up a notch and making the whole picture rockin' and sexy and everything that today's movies "need" to be. For those of you that aren't up to speed with what this shiny new Trek is all about...after five television series and 10 movies, this Star Trek goes all the way back to the beginning and shows what happened before the events of the original 1960's television series. Here we see Kirk and Spock (as well as the rest of the crew) meet for the first time. The kid that plays Capt. James T. Kirk does a fantastic job of channeling William Shatner, the new Spock is dead on and the guy playing Bones is almost doing an impression of DeForest Kelley but it works given the smaller role. They even went so far as to keep the same sound effects, the Enterprise looks like the old one yet it's shinny and new, and the score to the film is epic and melodramatic at the same time. Perfect! As with any Star Trek material, once it gets into the time traveling stuff I'd recommend not trying to follow the logic of it all as it just hurts your brain but besides that this new Star Trek is definitely taking the right course.


Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) I loves me some Woody Allen (in fact according to IMDB I've seen 32 of the 40 films he's written and directed) but I had to drag myself to watch this latest film. To me there's three kinds of Woody Allen films: the funny ones he's in, the funny ones he's not in, and the serious ones. Guess what? The serious ones are my least favorite, and I thought this fell into that category but I was pleasantly surprised. I don't know if I'd call this a comedy, but it's a lighthearted romance - not heavy at all. Woody Allen has made some pretty weird films over the years, but when he wants to he can make a really charming little picture. Vicky Christina Barcelona tells the tale of two girls on vacation in Barcelona and their love affair with the same artist. The movie is filled with beautiful photography of Spain, lighthearted music and a really effective narrator who alone makes the film special. This was a really well done film that I think non-Allen fans should find accessible and enjoyable.