Reviews

I took my bike to the video store. after a while i decided between "deconstructing harry" and "caddyshack" (kirstie alley vs. chevy chase). i chose chevy chase because (i think) he's one of my favorite comedians and because kirstie alley is the opposite (although i didn't know how much influence she would have on deconstructing harry).

after i had started watching "caddyshack" i soon thougt that maybe it would've been better if i had chosen the allen-film. maybe it wouldn't have been so bad with a bit of kirstie alley and tobey maguire. because caddyshack is a not so good film.

sure, i laughed a couple of times. the funniest things involved a squirrel and a chocolate bar mistaken for a turd, which says awfully much about the film. but i can't help laughing at chevy chase. there's just something about him.

the rest of the acting crew were a bunch loud-screaming, pretty annoying people, except for bill murray (who wasn't that funny either) and one of those women who seem to always have to show their breasts in chevy chase movies, it's funny how often it happens.

it wasn't even that much about golf, not that it mattered. there were a bunch of weird scenes, that you couldn't laugh at, but still found pretty, yeah, weird or whatever. and you get a lot of 80's music. it's always a special feeling nowadays.

but if you wanna see a chevy chase film, i'd go for "fletch" and also "fletch lives". or "vacation". after that maybe you can see "caddyshack". or that way you'll get a bit disappointed. so after all it's maybe better to start with this one and feel the quality rise while watching "fletch" and the other ones.

I first went to see Punch-Drunk Love on the premier-night here in Sweden. But after one hour or so the theatre was evacuated because of the smell of smoke. They were afraid there was a fire. So I got a ticket back with 6 month-expiration-date. Tonight I went to see it again with the very same ticket.

The first time, I liked what I saw, with the exception of Emily Watson. Her character weren't suitable for the film. Or maybe she wasn't suitable for the part. I don't know, but I felt the same way about it this time.

Steven Soderbergh's and P.T. Anderson's favorite(?) Luis Guzman (The Limey, Carlito's Way) is as always satisfying. He can make a face expression and falling off a chair funny. But in the same way as in Anderson's masterpiece Boogie Nights you don't really know wheter to laugh or not. Dirk Diggler's funny/not funny decay is here represented by Adam Sandler's character and his troubles.

I chose not to laugh that often. The film works good as a drama. I got this weird feeling in my stomach a couple of times. You really feel with Sandler's Barry Egan who gets ripped of by some Phone Sex-operators, buys pudding, plays harmonium and gets bullied by his seven(!) sisters.

Anderson has got many good ideas. I like the way he uses the light in Punch-Drunk Love, he has as before also made up pretty unique stories and characters. It's a mix of fun and tragic with great music often present. It's also more of a rom-com than his previous films Magnolia and Boogie Nights, two films I liked very much. I also liked Punch-Drunk Love very much, the originality, Adam Sandler's effort, but not Emily Watson's or the casting person's when he/she chose Watson.

Punch-Drunk Love is almost up there with The Wedding Singer, perhaps the best romantic comedy I've ever seen, also starring Adam Sandler. If you call The Wedding Singer a Adam Sandler-film. Punch-Drunk Love is a P.T. Anderson-film, and a little less a Adam Sandler-film.

I found myself in front of the T.V. in my girlfriend's brothers' room. On a Swedish cable-channel called ZTV it was this film, Threesome. It wasn't anything else on so we started watching. Pretty soon you got to know that you knew the persons who played the main-characters called Eddy, Alex and Stuart. Eddy I recognized from Dead Poet's Society. Alex was played by Lara Flynn Boyle (Wayne's World, Twin Peaks, Happiness) and she over did in this film so much. I didn't even like her character in Happiness. But this was even worse. And then there was Stuart played by Stephen Baldwin who hasn't got much but B-Movies like Half Baked and Bio-Dome on his conscious, with the exception of The Usual Suspects. Anyways, they play three friends who live together. And a lot of problems come with that. I don't really know if Threesome is suppose to be a comedy. It was the first impression, even though I didn't laugh more than a couple of times. They try to mix it with dramatic and somewhat controversial issues such as bisexuality and sexual threesome. A lot of the film wasn't more than a stupid excuse to show this threesome. It's a typical, early-/mid 90's film if you look at the colors and the clothes they wear and the music. The theme of the film isn't that unusual. Threesome is about "finding out who you are" and all that. And finding out who your friends are, and what they are. They've spiced it up a little with Eddy's voice-over. A classic way of making it all a bit more sentimental. But it has all been done before, and those guys or girls have done it better. This time a threesome supposed to be the special thing about this film. And I guess they were trying to make the scene beautiful. But it failed. Later on the director made Dick with Kirsten Dunst.

Flirt being the fifth Hal Hartley-film I've seen it's also the one I appreciated the least.

You get to follow the same story in different places of the world (NY, Berlin, Tokyo) with different people.

Although the run time wasn't even one and a half hour it felt longer. It must depend on that Berlin and Tokyo didn't really pass my quality control. And that might depend on that the previous Hartley-films I've seen have really been great and that Flirt's NY-episode also was great. It would have worked better as a short film. All by itself. But then seeing almost exactly the same "short story" again only with a twist didn't appeal to me much I discovered later on.

If you like Hartley maybe you should see Flirt all because his trustful actors (Martin Donovan, Elina Löwensohn, Bill Sage, Michael Imperioli), his pretty unique way of making film and of course because of Ned Rifle's music.

I was pretty much against it but we let a friend go to the video store on his own with two numbers from the top list. That way it would be kind of exciting which film he'd bring back. He brought back Artificial Intelligence.

Another friend of mine recommended it to me, and I'd read that Kubrick (one of my favorite-directors) was involved in the production in some way. So I started watching without any second thoughts.

That changed quite fast. When I start watching a film I wanna see it to the end, except for when it is so bad it isn't even "funny-bad". This wasn't funny at all, but it was bad, and still I continued watching. Haley Joel Osment, I can't stand him. It works in Forrest Gump when he's got a very small part. And the Sixth Sense that was the first big role I saw him in you hadn't got time to get mad about him. Good actors are important to make a good film, and I know you can't complain as much if the actor's a kid, but I can't resist complaining on Osment. But the other adult actors are just as bad. The plot, the setting too, I wanted to turn it off. But I didn't. I wonder how it had been if Kubrick was alive when the film was finished, if it would've been the way it is I'm not sure it would've got shown in theatres - maybe straight to video. But I don't think he would've been proud.