DVDizzy Forum

Small Soldiers

This might be one of the most confusing movies ever made. Not confusing in that the plot is hard to follow, confusing in that it sells itself like a family movie, but has the basics of a horror movie.

It kind of reminds me of Gremlins in that it hooks you with the nostalgic appeal of the Holidays and the cuteness of Gizmo. But it gets you with the comedic horror and mayhem caused by the horrific creatures. Small Soldiers is like that, but whereas Gremlins didn't fully take itself seriously, Small Soldiers takes itself TOO seriously, to the point where any charm is lost. None of the characters are likable, the concept is silly even if you suspend your disbelief and it fails at establishing a balance.

Various movie viewings from the last 12 days.
Ratings based on a 5 star method.
[Blue = 1st time rating and/or viewing]

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)✰✰✰✰
WALL-E (2008) ✰✰✰✰1/2
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) ✰1/2
^Horrible, brain-melding drivel.
Monsters Inc. (2001) ✰✰✰✰1/2

All extended editions:
LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) ✰✰✰✰1/2
LOTR: The Two Towers (2002) ✰✰✰✰
LOTR: The Return of the King (2003) ✰✰✰✰
^Read the books. Watched the (extended) movies.
Now I'll have to occupy myself with hours of behind-the-scenes til December.

Veggie Tales: Lord of the Beans (2005) ✰✰✰
^Had to watch after finishing my LOTR almost-marathon.

movies highlighted in blue means first time watching

Spellbound(1945) - Not the best Alfred Hitchcock movie out of his resume (or from what I have viewed), but still pretty enjoyable. Gregory Peck was pretty good as a man with amnesia who falls for a psychoanalyst. He is believed to have killed a man then took his name in the process.There are moments of corny dialogue here and there (mainly in the romantic scenes), but nothing to get worked up about.
There is also a pretty interesting dream sequence done by Salvador Dali

7.5/10

Carnage

A blissful, ingenious comedy. Unlike most modern comedies, this is sparkling with wit and intelligence, and enjoyably takes place in only one setting - a New York apartment. Within this apartment, four talented actors deliver pitch perfect performances. Christoph Waltz, John C Reilly, Kate Winslet and Jodie Foster portray two sets of warring parents; the child of Waltz and Winslet got into a fight with the child of Reilly and Foster, and armed with a stick...no, not armed. 'Carrying', like Waltz sternly corrects.

Roman Polanski's direction is chaotic and the dialogue/delivery is hysterical; Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds' Hans Landa) steals the show as an initially stoic attorney who spends most of his time advising a company on his new, ill-fated Blackberry. But all the actors are stellar, raging against each other mercilessly with realistic and laugh-out-loud lines.

Although the final moments are anticlimactic, it is definitely worth watching for demonstrating that all a film requires are good actors and good dialogue. Good characterisation should flow naturally from both, and plot details aren't as crucial as the techniques used to present them.

8/10.

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!!

Action scenes are incredibly well staged and choreographed; photography is amazing; script is cleverly written; and Robert Downey Jr. is absolutely brilliant in this refreshing interpretation of a classic character. I really want to see the sequel now!

Goliath wrote:Sherlock Holmes (2009)

COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!!

Action scenes are incredibly well staged and choreographed; photography is amazing; script is cleverly written; and Robert Downey Jr. is absolutely brilliant in this refreshing interpretation of a classic character. I really want to see the sequel now!

I've seen the sequel last december and it was great fun!

Movie watched: Le Huitème Jour (1996)

This is my second viewing of the movie- the story is about an encounter between the uptight businessman Harry and George, a man with Down's syndrome who walked away from the institute where he is living. Harry is in a bad emotional state due to a conflict between him and his ex-wife, while George has no emotional restrains - for instance he proposes to every pretty young women he sees and of course all turn him down immediately (except his girlfriend from the institute, who also has down's syndrome). The picture is full of dreamy sequences. George longs for his mother (who died 4 years earlier) and for the love of a woman, while Harry desperately wants to see his daughters. Nice movie with a few memorable scenes even though the story is a bit forced.

Got back from The Artist a little while ago, finally. I loved it... easily my second favorite film of 2011, and I definitely think it should win Best Picture, and Jean Dujardin for Best Actor. I also loved Bernice Bejo... she was adorable. The film was so unique for the 2010's, when sex, violence, and language is basically a prerequisite for most movies now. This was a breath of fresh air onto Hollywood... and I need more Uggie in my life.

blue= first time watching

Lifeboat(1944)- Yet Another one of Hitchcock's film probably many people do not know about. For what it was, however, it was alright., There were times when it just dragged on (what do you expect from a movie that mostly takes place on a boat?!). The ending was also really predictable, but that, I will not spoil.

The Great Mouse Detective (1986)

Now of course it's not as visually dazzling as many DACs before and after its release, but it is one of the greatest Disney films because it has greatness where it really counts: characters and story. Second only to Aladdin as a great male lead, Basil is a wonderful hero, and uniquely has traits that you normally wouldn't associate with heroes - especially the normally bland Disney heroes. Basil is rude, arrogant and anti-social, yet thanks to Barrie Ingham's crisp British accent and the character's sharp wit, he is one of the most likable animated characters of all time. Ratigan is a perfect nemesis for Basil, and their conflict is a spectacular battle of wits. Vincent Price oozes sophisticated menace, portraying a character whose stature is larger than life, yet whose memorable mannerisms are rather restrained (e.g. snapping his watch shut when Basil insults him).

Dawson is a very amiable lead and like Penny from The Rescuers, Olivia Flaversham is fortunately less irritatingly 'cutesy' than she could have been. The movie's few songs are undoubtedly not on the level of Menken or the Sherman Brothers, but are all very good nonetheless. In this vastly underrated gem, there's humour that can be appreciated by adults as well as children, suspense and some smashing character depth. I would even say that it's a better movie than 101 Dalmatians and Cinderella.

PeterPanfan wrote:Got back from The Artist a little while ago, finally. I loved it... easily my second favorite film of 2011,

Just out of curiosity: what is your favorite film of 2011?

Goliath wrote:

PeterPanfan wrote:Got back from The Artist a little while ago, finally. I loved it... easily my second favorite film of 2011,

Just out of curiosity: what is your favorite film of 2011?

Drive. It was so unique in terms of cinematography and pacing... I just thought it was the closest thing to flawless this year in filmmaking.

And no problem, I love talking movies! What was your favorite of the year?

I still need to see Drive myself. It looks like a lot of fun. The Artist is actually my second favorite of the year too, behind Hugo. I'd be fine with either taking home the Oscar, though.

Anyway, I just saw Jules and Jim, after finding it's Criterion set for cheap the other day. It's a very interesting film based off of a very interesting debut novel by a 73-year-old Frenchman based off of a true love-triangle story. It's refreshing to see a story like this done without one of the leading men being a jerk, since normally the competing characters of the same sex in stories like this contain a jerk and a sweet guy we're supposed to sympathize with. Jules and Jim are both likable characters with their own reasons to love Catherine, who, despite not being one of the title characters, is the true centerpiece of the story.

Catherine is irritable, full of life, crazy, fun, with a heart that's ready to love but unsure if it's willing to settle. She's both a great side-factor and a great contrast to the straight-faced Jules and the unbending Jim, which is how their relationships are built and broken. If you haven't seen the movie, I don't want to spoil it, but the ending makes perfect sense for Catherine's character and her views of life.

I like how the story respects the character, but views them and their events with a bittersweet sense of humor, like a storyteller reflecting on once traumatic events with a chuckle. This is how Henri-Pierre Roche wrote the novel, and how Francois Truffaut tried to recreate it. Despite what the age gap between Roche and Truffaut would suggest, this turned out quite successful and makes for a great experience.

Strangely enough, this isn't a favorite after my first watch, but I have a feeling that repeat viewings will give me a better impression towards it. And I'm just going through the massive amount of bonuses on this set. Criterion really went all out here.

(This 'review' was written for my website, and it's more of a analysis in some ways).

Alice in Wonderland (1951)

The most striking thing about Disney’s animated adaptation of Alice in Wonderland is shown beautifully in the first few moments – the design and layout. The vivid, eye-popping colours go hand-in-hand with the impressively fluid movements of the characters against gorgeous backdrops of lush landscapes; quite simply, Alice has some of the best visuals an animated film has ever displayed.

One of the young Walt Disney’s favourite stories, as well as Snow White and Peter Pan, was Lewis Carroll’s nonsensical yet beloved tale of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. When Disney started trying to make feature-length cartoons in the 1930’s, one of his earliest choices for a story to adapt was Alice; he made multiple attempts to create a perfect version of this, and in the early days he considered producing it as a hybrid of live-action and animation (like Mary Poppins or Who Framed Roger Rabbit?). He wisely favoured Snow White for his first animated feature, and due to financial difficulties, story issues and WWII his studio never released their version of Lewis Carroll’s story until 1951.

Alice (Kathryn Beaumont) is bored by her tedious life and yearns for a wilder, wonderful world with a lack of logic and sense. Her wish seems to be granted when she follows a frantic anthropomorphic rabbit (Bill Thompson) down a hole into the titular wonderland, whereupon she encounters a cast of colourful characters, including an enigmatic vanishing ‘Cheshire Cat’ (Sterling Holloway) and a tea-obsessed Mad Hatter (Ed Wynn) with a penchant for ‘Un-Birthday’ parties.

The obvious flaw that has undoubtedly been noticed by all critics is that Alice doesn’t have a linear, coherent narrative. The protagonist merely wanders from wacky scenario to wackier scenario, and her only perceivable goal is to pursue the rabbit – an incredibly wishy-washy ambition that is not only abandoned near the end, but one that doesn’t make complete sense. Yes, seeing a rabbit wearing a waistcoat and carrying a watch is a shocking sight, but if the weirdness of the rabbit is what intrigues Alice, then why doesn’t she start following one of the even more sensational characters she meets later on? The fact that the film then ends in a disappointing anticlimax doesn’t help.

It would be very easy to write the film off as heartless, meandering silliness, but if you look a little deeper, then you’ll notice that it does have a meaning – of sorts. Not that Lewis Carroll was on drugs. But that Alice is starting to grow up, is uncertain about what she wants and is uncertain about whom she is. That would quite neatly explain the scene with the silky-voiced Caterpillar (Richard Haydn), who angrily asks Alice repeatedly: “Who are you?” Alice is unable to answer. Later on, in the superbly-designed setting of Tulgey Wood (full of flamingo-headed umbrellas, owls with squeezebox necks, and birds with reflective, mirror-like faces), Alice bemoans that she gives herself good advice, but “...very seldom follow[s] it.” She realises that what she dreamed of – a world without reason and logic – is not as enchanting as she had hoped. Perhaps there is a method in the animated madness?

During the film’s relatively brief running time, Alice frequently talks to and asks herself questions. I was reminded of 2009’s dark stop-motion horror for children, Coraline; the literary source material of that film featured the heroine talking to herself just as much as Alice does in Alice in Wonderland. However, during the production of Coraline, a character was made up to act as somebody for the heroine to talk to. Something similar could have been done with Alice; nonetheless, unlike in Coraline, the heroine is not on a quest and has no urgency in her traversing. Maybe the audience is meant to be Alice’s companion – she never breaks the fourth wall, but only the viewer can relate to her and hear her.

Animators who worked on the film like Ward Kimball (who designed and virtually created the character of Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio) later said that it had ‘too many cooks’: the multiple sequence directors all wanted to make their scene the brightest, the boldest and the best, and in the end, with every animator trying to top the other, the film was spoiled. I see where Kimball is coming from, especially considering that the film begins to drag roughly only halfway in; the sensationalism of all the characters is diluted because all the other characters are just as over-the-top. Nonetheless, the film suddenly becomes much more entertaining when the Mad Hatter and March Hare are introduced, which is followed by a genuinely hilarious scene when the Hatter and Hare try to ‘fix’ the White Rabbit’s watch.

The final scenes of the film are probably the best, thanks to the great character of the Queen of Hearts (Verna Felton). This larger-than-life antagonist is a short-tempered psychopath, who is at one point motherly towards Alice during a croquet game played with hedgehogs and flamingos; moments later, she starts roaring and raging madly, insisting upon the decapitation for victims who have committed even the slightest of offensives, and childishly claiming that “...all ways are my ways!”
Alice in Wonderland’s commendable art direction can be attributed to the marvellous Mary Blair, a designer who when deciding on the look for Wonderland, indulged in lurid, bold colours and unforgettable surrealism.

There’s a sequence that builds up to the Queen’s entrance, in which seemingly thousands of playing cards march rhythmically, cards of every shade of every colour in perfect, captivating symmetry. For the human characters, the animators used live-action reference for inspiration; the voice actors of Alice and the Hatter, Kathryn Beaumont and Ed Wynn, were also the live-action references for their characters. During these reference sessions, Wynn would improvise hilariously; when he went to have his voice recorded however, he had nowhere near as much of the energy and vigour that he did when dressed as the character to help the animators draw him. He therefore did the live-action reference sessions again, but this time his voice was recorded.

Regardless of whether Alice in Wonderland has any coherent meaning or not, it is a remarkably fun ride and works superbly as a light-hearted comedy. Like most classic Disney features, the characters leap off the screen thanks to their talented voice actors and audacious animators, the dialogue is wonderfully witty, and the common criticism that the film is lacking in heart may not be entirely astute.

8/10.

Tropa de Elite ('Elite Squad', 2007)

Fantasic film from the writer of the equally compelling Cidade de Deus ('City of God'). Like that succesful movie, this one is also about the ultra-violent drug-related crimes in the slums of Rio de Janeiro, only this time not seen through the eyes of those who live there, but through the cops of the elite team BOPE, many of whom are corrupt to the bone (as logical consequence of being paid far too less to make a decent living, by the way). The movie gives us a look into the training of these elite soldiers, following a guilt-ridden captain and two soldiers-in-training, one of them using the system of corruption to his own benefit and one who's naieve and believes in the goodness of his superiors and colleagues --but he gradually learns how mistaken he is. It's not a movie for the easily disturbed: it's extremely violent and the methods of BOPE are often shocking and disturbing --no doubt exactly what the director wanted to shake up his home country Brazil.

PeterPanfan wrote:And no problem, I love talking movies! What was your favorite of the year?

Hard to say, there's some I still have to see and they're likely to make my list. Hugo has just come out this week in The Netherlands, and for some reason I never got around to seeing The Artist and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy --but the latter is still playing in my neighbourhood, so I may go to see it after all. Come to think about it, I also missed the sequel to Sherlock Holmes (but I only saw the first one last week) and Midnight in Paris/

Usually I just wait until the movies come onto pay-TV. I don't like going to the cinema anymore, due to the cellphone terror, the loudmouths who are always sitting next to me (of course), the annoying kids etc.

Hugo 3D

This is not only a feel-good family movie, it's an ode to the cinema and it's trailblazers. I had extra fun with this movies because I participated in a course on film history last year and I recognized several bits of film-history.
All actors were great, including the kids. you have to watch it for the 'automatic' alone.

Fun also how a modern 3D-movie celebrates the -to us primitive- 'special effects' which at the time (first decade of the 20th century) were very inventive.

Monte Carlo (2011)

Not un-amusing, but predictable, clichéd and contrived chick flick filled with flat characters and corny dialogue. But that was all fully expected when I asked somebody to download it for me. I had my own reasons for wanting to see it.

Nobody watches movies anymore around here?

Inception and Black Swan (both 2010)

Both second viewings. Best films of that year.

Inception has the perfect story and 'universe' for me. I love movies like that, with such detailed and complex storylines and lots of information that you have to keep track of. It balances straight-ahead action with very clever writing perfectly. You have to constantly pay attention and you're often being misled and surprised, which I like in a film. I thought the cast was so good, too. Leonardo Di Caprio is really one of the best actors of our time. Ellen Page is just too cute, besides being a very promising young talent. Marion Cottilard is simply gorgeous and gives this film the 'emotional touch' it needed. And let's not forget it's one of the last films of Pete Postelthwaite, though his part is very small.

Black Swan couldn't have been better. Natalie Portman carries the entire film by herself, which is a hard thing to do, but she does it so convincing that it makes the film still shocking and disturbing the second time around. I hope she has gained weight since, though, because for this part she had to be eerily thin. Much deserved Oscar winner.

Psycho Beach Party (2000 / directed by: Robert Lee King)



This movie used to be a lot of fun but... not anymore. You could say it's just the mood I was in at the time (about 2 weeks ago) but I think as you mature as a viewer, certain things aren't as solid as they seemed before. The problem here is that this is a movie and it's stocked with television actors (Thomas Gibson, Nicholas Brendon, Andrew Levitas, David Chokachi, Channon Roe) giving television performances. Only one I would consider tossing a reprieve: Beth Broderick (Sabrina, the Teenage Witch). Another problem is that, while it's an amusing satire, it lacks edge. It's trying to be funny and it's not, though it's reaching everywhere for comedic influences- from John Waters to Farrelly Brothers type antics. It never bothered me before that it wasn't funny because - and I still think this is true - there are some very fun characters. Especially Bettina Barnes and the "ambiguously gay" would-be lovers YoYo and Provolone. Oh, yeah, and Amy Adams is here in one of those sure to be infamous "before they were famous" moments playing the movie's bitch. Since the movie has a bodycount, it's important to note that she lives but she also ends up naked from the waist down (with her hands covering her crotch) during a maybe funny monologue; I didn't get it since I don't know anything about what a "presbyterian" is other than some kind of religion. Anyway, the "not funny" thing becomes a problem mainly when Dharma and Greg's Thomas Gibson and cross-dressing screenwriter Charles Busch have to do really awkward lovemaking scenes. Funnily enough- they both fail at their parts. As does the movie's star, Lauren Ambrose, when she plays her 1st alternate personality- deep- throated dominatrix Ann Bowman. However, she does have a 2nd "black chick" personality, Tylene Carmichael Carmel, that comes out every now and then and she's much more successful at that. The movie does well with its' women characters, SOME of the repressed straight guys are okay, the camp works when it doesn't involve gender-switching characters, and... well, credit is due to the director for not shying away from overtly homoerotic imagery. The ending is actually pretty happy for most of the characters and again, the ideas are clever enough. But overall, it needs to feel more authentic and several people just fail. Not to mention Charles Busch gets some truly repulsive closeups. I think he said he was going for Joan Crawford in his look and I think if she'd ever seen herself onscreen looking like this- she'd scream harder at once than her character did all throughout William Castle's Strait-Jacket.




But I'm a Cheerleader (1999 / directed by: Jamie Babbit)



Yes, I actually watched it again. And it was the same as it was last year: depressing, painfully unfunny, and badly wishing it were as sharp as John Waters' brand of satire. The cast is great and the actors try their hardest but every scene is riddled with awful stereotype-driven jokes yet it has nothing to say about stereotypes. Sinead who "likes pain," for example, is still a one-note bitch who is there to dress like a goth, be jealous, and connive. Andre is the prissy guy. And he has nothing to say or do but talk trash, swish on the dancefloor, and swing axes behind him instead of in front of him. Natasha Lyonne's Christian cheerleader character is meant to be the only exception: she's a ditz but she has a big heart and cheerleading just makes her happy. The ending tries to fix the poorly assembled and pointless movie by saying that you shouldn't change who you are. But of course being who you are is a joke here since everyone in the movie is a stereotype except when you're in love. Being in love makes you normal. Unless you have a domestic partnership- then you turn right back into ridiculous, shallow, whiny stereotypes. So, to review: the combination of being young and in love and not judging others makes you worth being treated seriously. Yeah, methinks the movie's confused.




The Big Tease (1999 / directed by: Kevin Allen)



That rating is an uncomfortable compromise. It's a really weird movie. I can see no honest flaws in it. It's a matter of interpretation and what kind of person you are. I like different movies. This fits that bill. But I think it rather lacks a real identity and it doesn't seem tailored for any specific audience. So you kind of wonder how it got made in the first place. There are several Drew Carey Show cast members helping out Craig Ferguson in this vehicle for him. Between this and the fact that the director is an alum of French & Saunders should at least produce something that makes sense. This move's just one big "why am I watching this?" all the way through. Basically, it's trying to mock underdog characters and sports competition movies by making everyone in L.A. go nuts over a big hair styling contest (which I don't think exists and am too lazy to go Google). The movie builds to this "will he" get into the line-up of competitors even though he was only invited to sit in the audience. I won't lie- I was pretty into the movie until he actually gets to the competition. Which is one of the most stunning displays of nohing ever captured on film. Taking an absurd idea and carrying on with it for what seems like eternity as though it were The Karate Kid and there were an actual dramatic resolution riding on how big a deal they could make of it. Here's what makes it so insane: we see Ferguson's underdog character Crawford at work, actually making a new and devoted friend over re-styling her hair. He talks out her love life, points out where she was actually making herself prematurely bald, and gives her a new haircut that gives her this amazing new confidence. Then... at the competition... NO ONE is designing hair!! We see the results of their big projects and... all they're doing is putting the models in dresses and sticking TOYS in their hair!! I'm not kidding. The judges award them high scores for having toy HOUSES and BOATS and SOCCER PLAYERS ON REVOLVING TURNTABLES in their HAIR!! Anyway, in the realm of the star-studded weird comedy, it may not be Drop Dead Gorgeous (amazingly underrated mockumentary satire about teen high school beauty pageants) but it's leaps and bounds better than Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde. The cast is great, the music is good, the jokes aren't funny but the characters are likable and highly amusing (though, for obvious reasons, Grounded for Life's Donal Logue doesn't fit into a gay hairstylist's entourage). And for a movie released by a major Hollywood studio, the fact that it isn't insulting to its' gay character is refreshing. Though I leave it to anyone else who's seen the movie whether the Club Spartacus scene seems like a bad cliche. I think it's a good idea, especially to see the Martin character's reaction.




Hansel & Gretel (1987 / directed by: Len Talan)



I say it's still a lot of fun after all these years. Not technically very good: it's cheap as hell and Griselda's house of candy looks toxic at its' most appealing (which works for me, as you can imagine). The acting is iffy at best. And... whose idea was it to make this a musical? The songs are beyond horrendous. They're ghastly. The special effects are infrequent and not that bad; I continue to be especially impressed by the sequence where the house melts into a giant rainbow Slushee. The cast is okay. Cloris Leachman pic'd above is fantastic, as to be expected. The mother/stepmother character is noteworthy for being a dramatic, sympathetic portrayal. Whereas she's usually comical or a complete bitch, this woman (Emily Richard) takes this completely seriously. Very seriously- her performance seemed pretty credible to me. The dialogue is the problem. Her whole beating down the husband for matters of pride and the way she yells at him because he's making her starve is a little hard to sit through. Why? Because she keeps adding the children onto her speech after it's almost over. She just wants him to know that she can't make it. The kids have WAY too much energy considering they're supposed to be as starved as the mother and you sure don't see her dancing and cavorting around at puppet shows. The last thing I want to mention is just the chemistry Hansel and Gretel have. Of course, for me that means pointing out the scene where she sings about a sprite in the woods and he watches her like he's Christopher Atkins, she's Brooke Shields, and this is The Blue Lagoon. How romantic. Wait... they're supposed to be brother and sister!




The Ref (1994 / directed by: Ted Demme)



I'm telling you: I scoured that thing looking for a worthy pic (I'm not kidding, I scanned this movie for an hour looking for a frame that interested me) and this is the best I could come up with. It's that overcovered. (I mean- everyone gets their own shot at all times and what I needed was a shot of 2 characters in a moment of realization without flapping their gums and one that excluded the nitwit son.) Getting hungry? Those onion rings sure look good (probably ice cold, though, knowing movie shoots). Anyway, the movie might have been really good. But taking a hard look at it- it suffers from 2 things. 1: 90's-itis. No, I don't mean that it's stocked with alternative songs. I mean that everybody whines too much. Literally. The criminal actually has a discussion where he tells the guy he's holding hostage: "I work for a living." Poorly disguised class warfare, which also comes into play in the scenes of the lieutenant versus the snooty town committee people and the kids (niece and nephew of Kevin Spacey and Judy Davis) versus their parents. Then the son comes in and his entire problem as far as he tells it is that his parents fight. Although the problem seems to be that his father is an asshole to him. The son handles him like a pro though. It's the whole emotional "you're tearing me apart" crap that feels like a joke. The son has no emotions. He's a miniature conman. With the acting range of a used car salesman- you'll only buy it if you don't know what to look for. And the whole plot involving Spacey and Davis in therapy and her being a "wild child" type who seeks existential fulfillment. Bad fads litter the movie.

The 2nd problem is just that the movie's endless scenes of people arguing are pretty jumbled. So many things are lost or not kept track of that the scene of the family members arguing back is a mess. The mother/grandmother and sister-in-law/aunt are the best examples. Both of them start out as overbearing and pretend to be offended when someone else gets angry, then they switch to controntational and then back to offended. I mean, just as Christine Baranski's character stands up to Mary Poppins's Glynis Johns and tries to make her sympathetic, the movie turns around and has her being gagged with tape and put on the same level as Johns' who is easily the main villain in the movie. Johns plays the entire Family Members Arguing scene as nasty but "I'm an old lady so how dare you use profanity like that, oh my!" and criticizes psychology. The next scene she's analyzing the criminal and saying all men are afraid of people finding out they have small dicks. She's the villain and somehow the homophobic cop lieutenant is this movie's rebel Clint Eastwood hero who doesn't get anywhere near finding Denis Leary's on-the-lam criminal but does get to insult the rich town committee folk and his entire squad of dumbling deputies / officers. As a movie, it needs too much work to fix. It's okay if you don't pay attention. And every now and then, it's pretty smart. And, I don't know what it is about Kevin Spacey in this movie but nofo found my G-spot. Am I insane for wanting to give him a dose of the behind breaker? (That's actually a not-so-subtle reference to a Disney film. Anyone remember which?)

The one scene I have seen from Psycho Beach Party is the scene where Amy Adams loses her bikini bottoms and covers her ass and vag up with hot dog holders and runs out in shame.

She should be bottomless in more movies.

Miral (2010)

Not a particularly good film, though the subject is very interesting. The execution is just very weak and the characters are cardboard cut-outs. Add to that the wooden performances by most actors and you see how it was kind of a chore to finish the film. Which is a pity, because the story could be much more engaging. It's about three Palestinian women from different generations and their lives in the occupied territories. It's a blatantly pro-Palestinian film (which I don't object to at all), so I would recommend the American public to see it regardless, because you don't get to see this side of the story much in your news media.

My reason to keep watching was Freida Pinto. Oh. My. God!