Miscellaneous Movie Musings

[Alex]

In honor of dead soldiers everywhere -- well, not everywhere, those dead Falkland Island soldiers got what was coming to them (no offense to anybody who lost loved ones in the Falkland Islands War-Type-Thingy but if we can't mock the military dead then Al Qaeda has won) -- today has been Masochist Movie Day.

I've been going through and watching the last halves of movies that were bad enough that I never finished watching them (via Netflix's Roku).

The Hudsucker Proxy - I know! This isn't a commonly accepted "bad movie" like the others will be but, frankly, you're all wrong if you're going to defend it. Paul Newman was the only good thing in the movie and he was only in the movie for 8 minutes. Tim Robbins was demonstrating every bad overacting tic he has and Jennifer Jason Leigh was killed by the writing; yes, I know what the writing was trying to do but it was still murder.

The Bonfire of the Vanities - Sometimes you swing for the fences and whiff completely. That's understandable. Sometimes the bat flies out into the 15th row and you corkscrew yourself onto your ass and everybody laughs at you. I could see how things looked brilliant on paper but everybody here ended up on their ass.

This Girl's Life - A look at an empowered porn star. James Woods, Rosario Dawson, and Michael Rapaport all show up for this poorly shot and edited waste of tiem.

Xanadu - I assume the acid was good back then. Not because it was psychodelic but because I draw a parallel to my experience with acid. I spend a fair portion of the evening writing and while I wasn't amazed by what I was writing I thought I was writing it in the most perfect penmanship ever. Later I found that it wasn't even legible, just scribbles. Something like that is the only reason I can't think anybody involved with making Xanadu thought there was anything remotely close to merit in their output.