Friday, April 12, 2013

Liar Liar (1997)



Number Rolled: 53
Movie Name/Year: Liar Liar (1997)
Genre: Comedy
Length: 86 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Director: Tom Shadyac
Writer: Paul Guay, Stephen Mazur
Actors: Jim Carrey, Maura Tierney, Justin Cooper, Cary Elwes, Anne Haney, Jennifer Tilly, Amanda Donohoe, Jason Bernard, Swoosie Kurtz, Mitch Ryan, Christopher Mayer, Eric Pierpoint

Fletcher Reede is a great lawyer, but he’s one missed meeting away from being a deadbeat dad. That missed meeting comes on his son, Max’s, fifth birthday. The boy is depressed when the candles of his birthday cake are lit, but his mother eventually gets him to blow them out. That’s when he makes a wish. At 8:15pm Fletcher Reede becomes unable to tell another lie for 24 hours.

Concept-wise, this movie was brilliant. It wasn’t exactly something I’d seen before, came from completely out of the box. There’s one simple problem. I didn’t like it.

It’s true that Jim Carrey comedies are almost a genre all their own. Either you love his style or you hate it. I have yet to meet anyone who is on the fence about the great Jim Carrey. Purposely overacting in order to create the great caricature of whatever character he’s playing. It’s something that can’t be judged fairly by someone who doesn’t like that style. However, I happen to enjoy it. I remember watching Ace Ventura about a hundred times when I was a little girl, and I’m definitely looking forward to what Jim Carrey is going to do in Kick-Ass 2.

That being said, I just couldn’t get into this. The ending was as cute as a basket of puppies cuddling with about twenty baby rabbits, a tiny red panda and a newborn kitten. The rest of the movie was a babbling mess. It had its funny moments, but they were trapped between severely exhausting overdone shtick. It could have been funny, but at least 75% of move was unintelligible semi-yodeling.

In all honesty, this movie got killer ratings from a great deal of people – both audience members and critics. I don’t understand that, but I urge you to judge for yourself.

Overall Opinion – 2/5

P.S. Stay for the beginning of the credits. You have to love a blooper reel.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Tremors (1990)



Number Rolled: 89
Movie Name/Year: Tremors (1990)
Genre: Horror
Length: 96 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Director: Ron Underwood
Writer: S. S. Wilson, Brent Maddock, Ron Underwood
Actors: Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Finn Carter, Michael Gross, Reba McEntire, Robert Jayne (as Bobby Jacoby), Charlotte Stewart, Tony Genaro, Ariana Richards, Richard Marcus, Victor Wong, Sunshine Parker, Michael Dan Wagner, Conrad Bachmann, Bibi Besch, John Goodwin, John Pappas

Val and Earl are two do-it-all handymen from Perfection Valley. After a rather disgusting incident, the two men decide to pack it all in and leave town for a more populated area where they might be able to get more work. Murphy’s law has other plans for them. They stumble upon a cute college student researching seismology and some very frightening deaths. Eventually, the way out of town is cut off and they are forced to stay with the other residents, attempting to survive the onslaught of weird creatures coming up from the dirt.

This is one of those movie I would say I’d never seen, and the person I was talking to would gasp as if I’d just said a “yo mama” joke. (That reference works since this is a 90’s movie. I swear.) It’s a creature feature, so I never really thought anything of it. I figured, if anything, it was probably one of those movies so bad that it made you laugh milk out of your nose. I get it now. This movie was awesome. As a creature feature it’s right up there with the “Jurassic Park” series.

Sometimes I’m a fan of Kevin Bacon and sometimes he annoys the hell out of me. In this, it was the former. Kevin Bacon makes one hell of a hick. Fred Ward was just as believable – so was the story. One of my favorite things was when the college student finally asked why they kept asking her for the answers. Movies tend to offer the assumption that every student far along in the studies of their major can translate their knowledge to everything else. This movie didn’t do too much of that.

I understand why this is a cult horror movie, it simply blew my mind. It was a B-movie that grasped my attention just as much, or more, than most movies I see in the theater’s now-a-days. I’m not taking any points off for graphics, mainly because this was a 90’s movie with a low budget and they managed to get things looking amazing anyway. If anything, I give them MORE credit.

In the end, I feel like this movie stood the test of time, which isn’t always easy.

Overall Opinion – 5/5

P.S. As I was half-way through this movie, just as one of the creatures burrowed out of the ground, an enormous centipede crawled just above my TV and scared the hell out of me. The producers should have paid that bug. I haven’t screamed like that while watching a movie since I was thirteen.

Monday, April 8, 2013

Home Run Showdown (2012)



Number Rolled: 29
Movie Name/Year: Home Run Showdown (2012)
Genre: Children & Family Movie
Length: 94 minutes
Rating: NR
Director: Oz Scott
Writer: John Bella, Tim Cavanaugh
Actors: Kyle Kirk, Matthew Lillard, Wayne Duvall, Stephanie Koenig, Emma-Lee Hess, Annabeth Gish, Brandon Balog, Anthony Talley, Dean Cain, Carlos Faison, Joshua Saba, Jordan March, Jesse Harper, Mike Evans, Barry Bostwick

Lori is a young boy faced with the difficulty of living with his aunt after his father goes to jail. He comes up with a plan to get into the six-team little league so that he can go to the Home Run Derby at the end of the season. This would allow him to get on TV so that his father can see him. Unfortunately, a coach can’t be found for the sixth team and he doesn’t make it. After some brainstorming – and a little force – Joey, the has-been bartender is convinced to take on the sixth team opposite his brother Rico. Sibling rivalry takes its toll and the season becomes more about that then the game.

There are ten actors/actresses that I love enough to go out of my way to see everything they’re in; whether or not the subject of the project interests me. These ten are (in no specific order): Devon Sawa, Josh Hutcherson, Zachary Quinto, John Barrowman, Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Evans, David Tennant, Rosario Dawson, Ryan Gosling and the great Matthew Lillard. I know it’s a really strange group of people to name together. If you really think about it, though, each of those actors/actresses have something about them that makes them completely unique. Could you see anyone being able to replace one of them in any of their past parts? I certainly couldn’t. They’re not interchangeable with anyone. Matthew Lillard is at the top of the unique-ness list, for me. He is the King of Exceptional Weirdness.

Now, you’ve got this beautifully different actor playing in a movie that is completely interchangeable. I speak a lot about recipe films, but this went straight past that into déjà vu. The script and the various parts that made up the whole were almost completely from “Little Giants” (1994). There were lines in this movie that were really close to exactly what was said in “Little Giants.” I try not to judge a movie on its recipe, but I feel like this wasn’t a new take on one, it was one that was stolen.

This puts me in a conundrum. I adore Matthew Lillard to no extent and I’m a huge sucker for these sports-related underdog family films. It brings back memories of being that only girl on the boys’ baseball team. Memories of being told I couldn’t stand up to the boys and should go make fuzzy magnets in the Girl scouts or go play soft-ball before I got hurt. Memories like that are usually followed up with my playing harder just to prove they were all jackasses or sneaking into the Boy scouts to learn how to tie knots (I kind of became their mascot after a while).

What it really comes down to is whether you like football (“Little Giants”) or baseball (“Home Run Showdown”) better. Personally, I have always preferred baseball. No amount of the sport, however, will turn me away from the movie I first remember seeing Devon Sawa in.

Overall Opinion – 2.5/5