As a public service, I will be reviewing movies that haven’t come out yet. I haven’t seen them, but that’s not important. I have seen them in my mind’s eye, and that’s enough.
Reign Over Me is a shameless tearjerker about Friendship, starring the always awful Adam Sandler and the overworked Don Cheadle. It manages to use Sept. 11 as a device to generate pathos, without having anything worthwhile to say about it. It makes me sick to even think about this movie, which is the work of Mike Binder, a hack who wrote one of the worst TV series ever, The Mind of a Married Man.
Grindhouse is an over-the-top shocker designed to get people all worked up about cinematic violence. Full of disturbing imagery, it features an amputee super-woman on a killing spree. A big mash-up of B-movie references so that hipsters can feel clever when they watch it. Blood everywhere, surf guitar, basically the work of a bankrupt imagination, masquerading as social comment. No no no, take it away!
The Hills Have Eyes 2 is a predictable sequel. Everyone screams a lot and blood squirts all over everything. Bad things happen to youngish good-looking people. A movie for people who like video game violence but don’t want to go to Iraq. A waste of time and money unless you’re a 15 year old boy with poor social skills.
The Nanny Diaries is a mildly amusing story without much of a plot, but Scarlett Johansson has a nice bustline. Alicia Keys can’t really act but has an endearing presense. Laura Lynney does her best to play a wealthy mean bitch, with the hugely irritating Paul Giamatti as her husband. Lots of shots of upper class New York give it a pseudo-Woody Allen quality. This movie would make an okay rental when nothing better is available.
There you have it! Let me know if you have any requests.
I read the Nanny Diaries. Don’t ask why. Summer, I guess. Anyway, it rang so completely and utterly false. It was terrible. Scarlett might be worth watching, however. The book consisted mostly of stories of the mom overstepping the beleagured nanny’s boundaries and the nanny refusing to do anything about it. I mean, come ON, people. Get a spine. It’s not like there aren’t a billion rich people looking for an English-speaking nanny.
Mike Binder.
is that some kind of threat, Mark?
Scarlett Johansson does have a nice bustline. Does Alicia Keys play any piano in it?? That might be worth seeing, she does that rather well.
There was a funnyish (unword?) review of Reign Over Me in the New York Times the other day. Mike Binder. Mike Binder, Mike Binder, Mike Binder….MIKE BINDER!!!!!
Ima gunna be in LA this week.