dibot Blog

SherryBaby is one of those painful to watch films that are really important for actors/actress to show off their chops, but, as a viewer, you feel like you have to see it more than you want to see it. So, I spent 90 some minutes watching Maggie Gyllenhaal ("Stranger Than Fiction") suffer. And she was fabulous. She plays a woman who just got out of jail and wants to get her daughter back. But her brother and sister-in-law have been taking care of the girl while she was locked up. And it's sad. And it's hard to watch. And Gyllenhaal takes off her clothes a lot.

Poseidon is a pretty average disaster movie. Everyone's on a big boat. A freak wave hits it. Boat capsizes. A brave few try to escape. The effects were good. Kurt Russell ("Grindhouse") rules. Josh Lucas ("Glory Road") sucks. That pretty much sums it up.

I really enjoyed Knocked Up, the second film from writer/director Judd Apatow ("40 Year Old Virgin"). The rapport between star Seth Rogan ("You, Me and Dupree") and his guy friends was excellent. The married life of Paul Rudd ("Night at the Museum") and Leslie Mann ("The 40 Year Old Virgin") were hysterical and sometimes sad. When the movie decided to get serious, it felt real. I thought almost all of it was good. One of my main problems, however, was that Rogan is this kind of loser guy who gets this hot girl (Katherine Heigl, TV's "Grey's Anatomy") pregnant during a one night stand. Then he has to spend the rest of the movie convincing her that he's good enough for her. But she never has to convince him. Yes, she's beautiful. And she has a job. But she doesn't even know what the DeLorean is. Come on. Still, a fun and, in the end, uplifting pro-life movie.

Gun Crazy (Deadly is the Female on imdb) is another film in the filmspotting film noir marathon. Made in 1949, it's said to be a direct influence on Bonnie and Clyde. The story follows gun obsessed Bart (John Dall, "Spartacus") as he meets sharpshooter Annie (Peggy Cummins, "In the Doghouse") at a traveling show. He joins the show to be close to her and then they set off on their own and embark on a crime spree. This film felt very different to me than the others in this marathon. There's no real twists to the plot. No detective. The shots are more close-ups and the editing is much faster paced. But the woman is still bad. I did not enjoy this film as much as the others, but it is still very interesting. And Dall and Cummins have great chemistry.

RoboCop is one of those "classic" 80s action movies I've always meant to see. Paul Verhoeven ("Black Book") directs this story of a futuristic America where corporations run everything, including the police. The corporation is trying to clean up Detroit buy turning a terminally wounded cop into a cyborg. Only he starts remembering who he was. And his desire to find his killers leads him to uncover corruption in the corporation. The effects don't hold up extremely well and though the violence may have been shocking when the film was released, it's just not so much now. The fake commercials were cool. Overall, an entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking film.

Out of the Past is a classic film noir staring Robert Mitchum ("Pakten") as a small town gas station owner whose past comes back to haunt him. Sounds a bit like The Killers, doesn't it? There are similarities. Mitchum is a basically good guy, who did a bad thing, tried to leave it behind him, and couldn't. The first part of his story is told in flashback. And all the trouble started over a dame. Mitchum rules with his hang-dog expression as he tries to outwit the other guys in this very twisty plot. A very young Kirk Douglas ("Illusion") plays the bad guy and Jane Greer ("Perfect Mate") is the femme fatale. At first, I didn't get why she would be worth throwing everything away for, but as the film progressed, I kind of got it. Very, very good.

Watching Superman Returns was hard at first because I kept thinking of Christopher Reeve. But I moved past it to accept Brandon Routh ("Denial") as The Man of Steel. And I fell into the story, even though I had to shake many, many plot questions out of my head to do so. Superman returns to Earth after a five year absence in which he visited his home planet of Krypton. But no one seems to have missed him, except his mom and Jimmy Olsen (Sam Huntington, "River's End"). Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth, "Bee Season") has moved on with her son and fiancee. The production and effects are good. I'm just not sure that this is the movie for which director Bryan Singer should have abandoned X-Men. Everything is good in the movie, but nothing is really great, except for maybe Parker Posey ("Broken English").
    I also had an interesting thought while watching James Marsden ("X-Men 3"). I'm not a big fan, but I sort of feel sorry for the guy when I realized that he's always the guy who gets shit on. He's the one who the girl is with, but they really love and/or have the hots for someone else...X-Men, The Notebook and now Superman. He needs to talk to his agent.

While watching Superman, my husband and I had a discussion about what a different kind of super hero he is compared to Batman. So we popped in Tim Burton's Batman for a little compare and contrast. Made in 1989, some of the effects don't really hold up. But I found it much more easy to fall into Batman's dark world than Superman's light one. But maybe that says more about me than about the films.
    Michael Keaton ("The Last Time") is Batman. And it's a shame he's not getting more work. Jack Nicholson ("The Departed") doesn't hold back in his Joker role. (And through the whole performance, I could see where Christian Slater ("Bobby") learned all his Nicholson impressions.) I'm not a big Kim Basinger ("The Sentinel") fan, but it is impressive that, as Vicki Vale, she can figure out that Bruce Wayne is Batman, but Lois Lane has no idea that Clark Kent is Superman. I guess the glasses and the curl are a better disguise than an almost full face mask.
    So, I think Batman is cooler than Superman.