Went to see some movies last night at Southland. It was going to be a movie marathon ‘David Style’ but only saw 2 movies. The first was Guess Who starring Ashton Kutcher and Bernie Mac and the second was Sahara starring Matthew McConnoghey and Penelope Cruz. Both were great movies.
Guess who is a comedy about a white boy meeting his black girlfriend’s parents. A reversal of 1967′s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Guess Who is a pretty funny flick with plenty of cringe-worthy moments. Kind of similar in style to Meet The Parents, but different enough to not go over old ground. At first I thought Ashton was going to be a bumbling white guy who does everything wrong, but luckily it wasn’t too overdone. Bernie Mac, playing the overprotective father role, is one of those actors who seems to be in every single movie. He started out as comic relief, and I always used to get him confused with Cedric the Entertainer, but now he has progressed to leading roles and he did a pretty good job in this one. The chemistry was good between the actors and the romance between the leads was very natural. As far as the race issue goes, the coverage was pretty good but of course this is just a comedy so it’s not going to solve the world’s problems is it? This is light entertainment, and it works well as that. My rating: 3 stars
I walked into Sahara not knowing what it was. Part of the method of the movie marathon is actually in not knowing what you might be seeing next. I thought I was going to start watching The Ring 2 but it opened with a 19th century gunship battle. Not knowing what the hell was the relevance of that to a curse that works through videotape, I thought maybe it had something to do with a curse. But actually it was the story of a ship that was lost at sea. What I was seeing was the flashback sequence to give the historical picture. Sahara was a great movie in my opinion. No Lawrence of Arabia of course, but it doesn’t for a second even try to be. Good guys, bad guys, evil businessmen, sidekicks with funny lines, hunky heroes, love interests. It had all the ingredients. And it worked. It was fun and funny in the right places. You expect the corny end even from the start of the movie, you know what’s going to happen, but it’s fun to watch it play out. Matthew McConoughey has obviously been buffing up for the role and spending hours in the tanning salon, but his character is attractive and a real man. Since I watched Ashton earlier being a bumbling white guy, seeing Matt as a gung-ho explorer was a good equalizer. The movie was a little long, according to my brother who was sleeping next to me, but personally I don’t care how long a movie is, as long as it’s good. My criticism comes from the fact that it started better than it ended. It started out as the hunt for some treasure and the investigation of a new plague by a World Health Org doctor. However, Hollywood didn’t think that people would be excited by treasure and deadly viruses, so warlords with lots of ammo and corrupt businessmen with secret lairs were introduced to give the movie a more traditional mission. I liked it, but it could have been better. My rating: 3.5 stars.
Saturday night seems to be a time of extreme weirdness and most people on the road can’t drive. But surely the weirdest thing that I have seen for a long time happened last night on my way back from the movies. We were driving through some traffic lights, with the right lane open for me to go through and a row of cars banked up on the left. Suddenly a van pulls out in front of me and I have to brake hard to avoid hitting it. I give him the horn and keep driving. He speeds off. I’m following behind, but then the van slows down and suddenly swerves to the side of the road. It’s still moving, when the back door of the van opens up and a body falls onto the road. The van drives ahead and my brother and I were both thinking, “oh shit, it’s a Mafia drop off hit.” The guy picks himself up off the road, while the van parks a little further up. The guy stumbles past my car and I see him fall over again. Then another guy gets out of the van and chases after the guy. All the while, we are wondering what the hell is going on. I guess it was just another Saturday night for someone. Later, I think I figured it out. The guys were severely drunk, and one guy had passed out. They put him in the back of their van and try to take him home, but then they swerve in front of me. I horn them, which wakes the drunk guy up. Not knowing where he is, he tries to open the van door. The driver swerves when he realizes, but it’s too late. The rest is history. He probably won’t remember how close he came to being hit by the car behind him, just about how crazy drunk he was and how funny it was.
It’s a beautiful day here, heading toward 30 degrees. I’m going to enjoy it, instead of working on my computer. I have to enjoy them cos winter is coming soon and I need a tan before it does.
Popularity: 3% [?]