Anything Else (2003) / The Front (1976) / Vicky Christina Barcelona (2008)

In response to Ian's heartfelt search for a different comedy, I propose Woody Allen films. I've seen three lately, The Front, Vicky Christina Barcelona and Anything Else. To be honest, The Front wasn't an Allen film, because he starred in but didn't direct.

Christina Ricci, co-star in Anything Else, gets me going in that good way. To quote Jason Biggs, Ricci's boyfriend in the film, or maybe it was Biggs' then-girlfriend who said it, she's got an offbeat sexual energy. But her whole aura is offset in this movie pretty quickly by her outright craziness, like a nightmare in Brooklyn kind of torture-your-boyfriend nutiness. She tries to set Biggs's character up with different women, depriving him of sex while encouraging him to sleep around, and lets her mom move into the living room of their apartment. The film's set in Queens or thereabouts, with a bunch of brown stone houses, I think.

Not to be outdone, the crazy girlfriend in Vicky Xtina (Penelope Cruz) wields a gun and rummages through other peoples' luggage. She got the Best Supporting Actress award but doesn't appear in the film until about halfway through. We were misled, hoping for another Volver (my gf is a huge P. and Suri Cruz fan. We own Vanilla Sky). Javier Bardem rules in this film, making out with pretty much everyone worth kissing in the thing, yet still retaining some integrity as an artist.

So what's with Allen and crazy women? Who knows.

No watch checks in either of those films, although I did watch Anything Else on two consecutive nights, about half each time. The dialogue is good, with Biggs doing his best Woody Allen. Allen himself co-stars as a paranoid best buddy/mentor. It made me miss having a crazy mentor like I did at my last job.

So these are different comedies, not gross-out, wittier, perhaps snootier, than the Apatowian stuff. Anything Else gets a little slow or tries a little too hard, with split screens at one point showing the zany action in three different situations at once. It's definitely old style.

The Front, meanwhile, tried way too hard. It was based on the Hollywood blacklist, but set in New York, where some TV was filmed/aired live back in the 50s, evidently. The actors were real blacklisted types, except Allen I guess. I feel like everyone took it a little too seriously to be funny. There is a great Allen moment at the end though, where he sticks it to his WASP-y persecutors. He avoids answering their questions, without taking the 5th, and mumbles his way into an indictment of the communist witchhunt. Take that G-men!

Iron Man (2008)

I'll begin by saying that I never followed any comic character affiliated with The Avengers unless they interacted with the X-Men. So I really don't know too much about those characters, but that still is more than anyone in the general public would know regardless. So I guess that didn't make me have any expectations about this movie. And usually that's a good thing so I don't get hyped up and end up hating it.

This movie tells the origin of Iron Man in the current time in history. To me, that makes the tech involved a little more believable. But let's start at the characters, because I felt that's the strongest part of the movie. Robert Downey Jr. does an excellent job of making the audience like a character that is a genius, alcoholic lothario. I have not appreciated his acting this much since Weird Science. He delivers his one-liners with ease and really does look like Tony Stark from the comics. As for as his supporting cast goes, this is the first time I actually liked Paltrow's work, Jeff Bridges did excellent being bald, and Leslie Bibb was hot. Terrence Howard played Rhodey well, thus making me get over the fact that the role wasn't cast for a black actor with a more husky voice.

Now the suit itself is sexy. I'll even say the version 1.0 is; but it makes you wonder how his captors don't put a guard inside the room to monitor him as he assembles it. Anyway, the use of his robot buddies to make the Iron Man suit most are familiar with is actually able to hold my attention for reasons even outside the "wow, that's cool" factor. Staying true to the comic, the repulsors are the main form of attack. However unless i missed something, i dunno how an alloy used on satellites can withstand military projectiles. I mean, don't satellites get damaged a ton just with a little space garbage? Whatever.

Anyway, the final battle is not against a major supervillian (at least I dont think), but then again, I dunno who the archnemesis of Iron Man is. And even the battle itself isn't that spectacular. This movie is more about getting us to like the character of Tony Stark than showcase the battle abilities of the Iron Man suit. And I think Favreau did a good job of getting the audience to like Stark, thus ensuring people will go to a sequel. And there's bound to be a whole lotta of bad muthafuckers going to the sequel. I bet I'll be one of them.

Overall: 0 watch checks and recommend it for both non-comic book people and nerds.

Balls of Fury (2007)

This is a comedy from the writers of Reno: 911. The story goes that a once proud ping pong player, whose life went on a downhill skid, now must use natural his talents to help the government capture a chinese criminal mastermind. This movie is basically a big spoof of Enter the Dragon but using ping pong as the focus instead of martial arts.

The hero of this film, Randy Daytona, played by a guy whose name I don't know, kinda reminds me of the fat kid in Superbad. I guess that seems to be the mold of the new funnyman thanks to Seth Rogen. Anyway, agent George Lopez recruits him to complete the mission, and of course enter the gratuitous training to get better. Along with that, enter the gratuitous babe as played by Maggie Q, more on her later. So Randy trains and goes off to the tournament. He plays some other ping pong greats from other countries that are totally stereotypical in relation to their country of origin. That's not a bad thing in my opinion as stereotypes amuse me. Terry Crew and Thomas Lennon play the best characters in representing their respective countries, the USA and Germany, umm... respectively. As for the outcome of the tournament, you can guess as i won't spoil it for you. But remember, it's like Enter the Dragon, hint hint.

I only liked this movie. It made me laugh at stupid things and I was looking to laugh. Mostly because I snuck into this movie after Bourne Ultimatum an just needed to turn the brain off for a bit. So the fact that I didn't pay for the movie made me like it more than I probably should have. So in this case, I do not recomend this movie for all people.

Only watch it if A) you love the comedy stylings of The State and Reno: 911 and B) if you like ping pong. Notice how I didn't say watch it if you love ping pong. That's because even though it's the unifying theme, the competitions themselves don't carry the movie nor are they technically sound. I myself expected more Prince of Tennis type hits (google that using boolean search criteria "AND anime") but that only happened a couple times.

Ok, back to Maggie Q. She's basically eye candy for this movie. She's got a tight body but is lacking in boobs. This is clearly evident in one scene where she wears a red dress that is way too loose fitting over her chest. But in other scenes when she wears sports bras and tight shorts, she's alright in my book.

One watch look for this movie.

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

Ah yes, I'm here to kick it to you mainstream style. Nothing like some good ol' fashion popcorn eating movies. I dunno if anyone has reviewed this yet on the site, but I've fallen off the face of the earth for a while and I'm playing catch up. And besides, if someone already reviewed it, this can open up a terse discourse about it. Sorta like the McLaughlin group, but for movies.

Anyway, this third installment of the series based on the novels by Robert Ludlum (you like that? Sure sounded professional as hell, am I right?) picks up right from the end of the second film. If you didn't see the second one, stop reading and watch it. Jason Bourne globetrotting, trying to figure out his past, is once again being hunted by the US government. This time the search is headed by Whistler from Sneakers. He's one trigger-happy SOB that wants Bourne on a platter.

Needless to say, Bourne does what he does best and kicks some ass without taking names, even though he really wants people's names. Whatever. In any case, I was really pleased to see Bourne be challenged by some of his pursuers. There's one great fight scene that's pretty awesome, one in which lesser men would have been concussed on numerous occasions, but not Bourne. Needless to say, there are other good fight scenes that seem realistically sound with respect to technique.

Julia Stiles in this movie continues to perplex me. It's like she's hot in a weird way, but not really hot cuz there's something just not right about her and I just can't place it. Anyway, she looked agreeable in this movie, so the story could have done more with her but it didn't.

But back to the movie as a whole. It was good and I recommend it. The only thing that was kind of annoying was the shakey camera. I know it's supposed to add to the tension and such, but my god, can you use a tripod a little bit more please? Zero watch checks and I was going on 3 hours of sleep watching this.