Sunday, August 14, 2011

Weekly Round Up (8/7/11 - 8/13/11)

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down (Pedro Almodovar) ***1/2 - A young man newly released from a mental institution decides he wants a job and a family. What does he do? Kidnap the B-actress he fell in love with after a one night stand the year before! Only Almodovar can concoct such a bizarre love story with thriller, melodrama and black comedy elements. Victoria Abril and Antonio Banderas both do an excellent job of selling the outrageous and potentially dangerous premise. It manages to be actually sweet and romantic in its own sick, twisted way.

Fly Me to the Moon (Ben Stassen) ** - A trio of young flies decide to stowaway with Neil Armstrong and company to become the first flies on the moon. Somewhat unremarkable both story-wise and animation-wise but it's harmless entertainment for the wee ones.

God Said 'Ha!' (Julia Sweeney) *** - Actress-comedienne-former SNL cast member Julia Sweeney's filmed version of her one woman show about the time when her brother was diagnosed with cancer and her family moves in with her to what she planned to be her bachelorette pad post-divorce. She finds humor in what's supposed to be a dark, tragic and bleak time for her and her family. Although not always funny or moving as it should be, the film pretty much holds your attention for its duration.

Cowboys & Aliens (Jon Favreau) **1/2 - This film had the potential to be the great genre blockbuster of the summer: It's a straight up Western mashed up with straight up science fiction. Though this film has quite a number of great moments, the tone is all over the place and uneven and it doesn't quite mesh together as a whole. It's highly tricky concept to pull off and expectations for this were kind of high. So I can see why it's a disappointment for many. But the film is nevertheless entertaining and has many fun moments with the actors giving it their all.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting post!

Diego Sousa said...

Cowboys and aliens was such a piece of shit! it made me rage so hard, i left the movie before it ended

Electric Addict said...

i was hoping cowboys and aliens would have been better

Anonymous said...

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down is the only one I've seen.

Thomas Duder, Author of the Things said...

Gah, Cowboys and Aliens should've been one of the ones that ensured that Hollywood would be different.

Once again, apparently Hollywood has failed us. All I keep hearing about is how canned the dialogue is, amongst other things...

Diego's response is pretty much the norm I'm seein'. Once it's on Netflix I'll probably roast the hell out of it...

I dunno, we'll see.

Bersercules said...

Thanks for the heads up on cowboys and aliens, I wanna watch it and now I know what to expect!

StigmataHandjob said...

Gonna check out Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down, sounds right up my alley.

Bart said...

cwoboys and indians wasnt that bad.

Ting Kubby said...

i was gonna see cowboys and aliens today, think i might see something else instead now.