Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Latest Views

Walk Hard



The latest from Judd Apatow parodying a Johnny Cash-style singer's life. It's silly and dirty and pretty funny. Not quite 4 stars, but I would probably give it 3.75 if I could. In comparison, Superbad was worth 4 stars, Knocked Up closer to 3.25, and the 40-Year-Old Virgin closer to 3.75. The movies that this core of actors generates are on average better than the one's the "fratpack" usually spurts out. The groups are pretty easy to delineate. The core of the "fratpack" features Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, and Luke Wilson. Old School was amazing, Zoolander and Anchorman pretty good, but then the catalogue starts to slip a bit with Dodgeball, Meet the Parents, Wedding Crashers, and Blades of Glory. The Apatow group is centered around Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Paul Rudd, and to an extent Steve Carell. Obviously there are a lot of overlapping casts and what not. I could probably designate three side groups: one is Jack Black, who gets to be in a field all by himself (Tenacious D, Nacho Libre, School of Rock, Orange County, and High Fidelity). Another is Wes Anderson, who uses Jason Schwartzman a lot, and generally does more self-explorative, sophisticated comedies (Rushmore, Royal Tenanbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and The Darjeeling Limited). These are probably the highest quality movies out of the bunch. Then there is Bill Murray, who is Bill Murray.

Legend



No, not I Am Legend, but the 1986 fantasy classic by Ridley Scott, featuring Tom Cruise as a pants-less forest-dweller, and Tim Curry as one of cinema's most memorable Devil's. It's amazing what a Director's Cut, as well as good DVD quality can do for these solid 80's movies. Watching this made me want to watch Dark Crystal, another movie I remember from my childhood.

Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior



Tony Jaa is pretty good, but this movie proved to be a fairly standard martial arts movie.

No comments: