Reviews

you should see this movie.

you should see this movie.

you should see this movie.

you should see this movie.

you should see this movie.

you should see this movie.

you should see this movie.

you should see this movie.

you should see this movie.

you should see this movie.

It seems that a lot of people dislike this movie because they think it is unrealistic, or because they don't care about the characters. I think this just goes to show how self-involved and classist a lot of Americans are at the moment.

Anyone who thinks that the "wild and crazy" events that go on in this movie couldn't happen outside of that fast-livin' city of L.A. obviously hasn't been thirteen in the suburbs lately. Granted, I was thirteen only a mere 10 years ago, but stuff like that in the movie goes down all the time in the eighth-grade world. I think that the film portrayed much of what goes on in the lives of middle-school girls very well: the smoking, the awkward sexual encounters, the lack of self-esteem, the experimentation with drugs. The relationship between Evie and Tracy is uncanny -- it is almost a rite of adolescence for a good kid to ditch their "good" friends to go hang out with the "bad influence". Yeah, it might be a teenage stereotype, but it's one that is also incredibly true.

I also think Holly Hunter's role of the lenient single mom is well portrayed. She reminded me of my teenage friends' single moms, the ones who were never home and waitressed and smoked inside the house. I feel like families like Tracy's are probably more common than your typical nuclear family, and that the realism used to show their problems in this movie should make the audience care about the characters.

You'll probably enjoy this movie if you can relate to any of the situations in the film. If you approach this film with that mindset and without judgment about single-parent households or pot-smoking teens, this film will make you both laugh and wince because it does, at times, hit really close to home for many of us.

one of the earlier reviewers posed the question "Why would you ever rent this movie and expect to see some revolutionary or truly interesting comedy?" well, maybe because everyone I know made a huge deal out of it and couldn't stop talking about how funny it was. maybe because Will Ferrell really is one of the funniest people around these days. however, I was let down by this movie. even though it does have its laughs and is totally palatable at only 95 minutes, I was expecting the comedy to be a little more fresh and off-kilter. instead, it's mostly a bunch of Hollywood cliches, made slightly better by the skill of the actors. this movie could have been so much more.

first off: yay CBS for actually making a good show!! I mean, what, are we in our 10th season of JAG?

this show reminds me of My So-Called Life. and that's nothing to sneeze at. it's certainly not _as_ good, but it has the same feel with its realistic characters (and not just the main characters, but the supporting ones, too). it seems like kids who are teenagers now would relate to this show like kids of my generation related to MSCL in the 90s. I think the writers need to make the parents a little more accessible, but the way they show the many facets of the younger characters, especially Joan and her brothers, is really impressive.

the x-factor: Joan hangs out with God. I'm not a religious person, and if there are supposed to be religious overtones in this show, I'm not feeling them. It's almost like God is the trusty alien sidekick or something like that. It's cool, because even though I personally don't believe in God, I certainly have friends who do, and who knows? They might talk to God, too. It's nice that a TV show can address religion, which is such a part of so many people's lives, in a non-preachy way.

the show, however, isn't about religion. it's about a middle-class white suburban family and their personal struggles. I feel like the show could go up or down from here. there have been some really unique and interesting story lines (Joan's tame relationship with the "stoner"/artist Adam, the questioning of Grace's sexuality, the art-teacher mother's rediscovering of the art she created after being raped) and even the story lines that seem more boring and uninspired seem to be coming around (the condescending-macho chief of police dad being demoted, the wheelchair-bound former-star-athlete older brother regaining his confidence and returning to "player" status, despite his disabilities)

I think the show's sometimes-slow pace is a testament to how long it might last. I hope it stays around for a while, at least, even if I do have to keep staying in for a while on Friday nights :)

In the 80s and early 90s, there must have been something in the water coolers at Nickelodeon. Something that made all their writers, directors and actors devoted to a singular cause. That cause: creating a world that recognized and celebrated the reality of being a kid, especially a preteen kid.

All the shows on Nick back then seemed to adhere to the same overwhelming philosophies. Being a kid is hard, but awesome. Being a preteen has a lot to do living in a surreal existence combining the fantasy world of little-kid pretend and the real world of adolescence. Best friends are important, as are endless summers. Slime is always, always funny.

Nickelodeon really doesn't have many shows like this anymore. I think Pete and Pete was a crown jewel of the old Nick lineup, and it's not just me being sentimental for my childhood. As a kid about the same age as the guys in the show when this first aired, I didn't feel like my intelligence was insulted. This show was not junk TV. It was smart. It was funny. It made you think about theories of the universe and why it's okay to be weird.

The suburban town of Wellsville, where the show takes place, is almost like a throwback to a 50s white-picket-fence town, but with an overweight dad, a clinically depressed bus driver and a neighbor who is almost militant about being a Girl Scout. But nothing demented or grotesque. Just quirky stuff. It's like what suburbia would be like if everyone accepted each other's differences and didn't feel obliged to live by social norms.

But enough sentimental philosophizing. I f***** love this show. It's really stupid that Noggin kicked it off the air for repeat airings of its new shows. I mean, their new shows are good and for a new generation, but I can easily say that P&P is timeless. And better.

I love to watch this movie because of its simplicity. So many films today try so hard to be clever or profound, and build up little details to a disappointing climax. Some of the most important things that happen in this movie aren't even shown on-screen, and we also aren't given a lot of backstory about our characters. (I see some reviewers on here are annoyed about these two things -- it's too bad today's formulaic Hollywood has trained you people to need everything tied up in a neat little bikini-waxed package! and what's with people calling Deborah Kerr ugly?!)

However, this doesn't matter, since all we need to know about the characters is revealed through the leads' amazing acting. This story about a whirlwind affair between two strangers is not just a cookie-cutter love story, (as many would have you believe) but also explores the complications and differences between an *affair* and a *romance*. It's not all hearts and flowers, but there are enough hearts and flowers for you weepy romance-lovers, and enough incredible acting and intelligent filmmaking for the rest of you.

so the film's a little dated, we all know the jokes by now and "annie hall" is better. but "when harry met sally..." is still and will always be an enjoyable classic, and it doles out a lot of the wisdom that has been absorbed into american consciousness in the 15 years since it came out.

i was so excited for this movie, and so disappointed when i actually got around to seeing it. i'm not going to give anything away, but i can tell you that there is a really interesting, almost ingenious plot twist in this script. the problem? it doesn't come into play until about an hour into the film! the film doesn't get interesting until an hour in. the first hour drags, and is full of contrived and trite cliches. we don't sympathize with any of the characters, and we feel bad about that, since someone close to them has died. it amazes me that the first hour of this film is so dry and cookie-cutter; this story is based on events in the writer/director's actual life! guess it goes to show what an untalented writer/director he is. good intentions, bad realization. and even after the movie does get interesting after the first hour, i still wouldn't recommend a film that flops so disastrously in its first half. use those two hours of your life on the better movies starring one of the three lead actors.

i think a lot of people would agree that TV has hit rock bottom in the past few years. we have copycat shows thrown at us one after another. it seems the TV execs in LA are following one of the cardinal rules of high school: if your popularity is failing, do what the cool kids are doing and you'll come out okay.

daria, however, was and is a show that showed us how many gaps there still are in TV entertainment, and that the need is for new and creative ideas, not for copycat shows. someone in another review called daria the "ultimite american teen!". despite their lack of spelling skills, i think their mentality was right on. those people who call kids like hilary duff or her contemporaries the 'all-american teen' are deluded as hell. most of us, rather than being beautiful and popular in high school, found ourselves in more of a 'daria' situation, feeling both awkward and confident in our outsiderness at the same time.

i'm so p*ssed that MTV doesn't show this anymore -- daria serves as a much better role model; smart, opinionated, and skeptical; than the current spoiled and uneducated MTV princesses like jessica simpson and the kiddies on the real world. it's sad that a cartoon gave us a much more realistic, humorous and intelligent take on our current world than 'reality tv' does. hey, it's the same thing with the simpsons and family guy. what gives?

with the recent release of the special edition dvd of this film, i'd suggest you go watch it. yeah, this movie is a light, fluffy gen-x teen movie with its music video moments. however, what was eight years ago just a normal teen movie has gained some semblance of social relevance -- compared to today's teen movies, this film can be seen as some sort of masterpiece.

for one thing, you never see films anymore where teens are actually fighting for something except for a date to the prom. the characters in empire records, yes, are submerged in their overdramatic romantic escapades, but their main prerogative in the film is to prevent a large corporation from buying out their independent record store. are there films that spark that kind of activist spirit in middle- and high- schoolers today? no. we're going backwards.

also, the humor in this film offers up some absurdist wit, which you never find in teen movies now. a kid glues some quarters to the floor so he can laugh at the poor saps who later try desperately to pick them up. a shoplifting teenager gives the fake name of 'warren beatty'. do kids today even know who warren beatty is? i doubt it.

this film was made in 1995, right before many of the laws allowing corporations to buy and control multiple media outlets were passed. the years since '96 have shown us a homogenization of music and movies, especially in the teen sphere, and it is turning today's teens into a bunch of celebrity-obsessed idiots.

compared to your sons and daughters, the kids in empire records can be now seen as role models.

even though i got the urge to walk out several times in the first half-hour of this film, i held back, since i learned my lesson about sitting films out from 'moonlight mile' last week. and admittedly, when the film turned away from its shallow dialogue-based scenes and became more focused on the fighting and the car chases, i started to have a good time.

yeah, the effects rock. yeah, keanu and carrie-anne sexin it up is hott. yeah, the fighting is exciting. it's all good as long as you're not taking it too seriously. i mean, you can seriously picture the dialogue in these scenes coming straight out of a video game.

however, the thing that saddens me the most is reading the reviews on here and repeatedly seeing comments on how this film is so 'deep' and 'philosophical'. i liked the first matrix installment. it did bring up some philosophical questions of man vs. machine. however, these questions are not further explored in this film save a three-minute slew of jargon recited by 'the architect' at the end, which really only bring up a rehashing of what happened in the first film. it's sad that this is what people these days think is a 'deep' movie -- something that is basically a one-theory shtick.

and let's quickly address how this movie essentially promotes the continuation of the man's world. yeah yeah, there's trinity. and there's niobe. but we're still in a world where the fighting breaks out as suddenly as it does in a steven segal movie, and no one really gets hurt. it's not like we are in space or in middle earth where we can disconnect ourselves a little bit, as this is something that could, according to the theory of the matrix films, happen to our world, and we'll be forced to worship 'the one' who straightens it all out by, essentially, kicking ass. sounds a little familiar when you compare it to recent world events.

oh, and did the scene in zion really have to look like an r. kelly video?

it has its corny moments, granted, and it's too bad that it's based on a book, as it would have been a rockin' screenplay if it had been written originally for the screen. however, nick hornby's books usually make better films than those with original screenplays, so i'll deal.

i haven't read the book, so i don't know how much of the dialogue is taken directly from it, but these are some damn good lines in this movie, and hugh grant's delivery of them restored my faith in him as an actor (let's pretend 'two weeks notice' never happened, shall we?) and will stop me from associating him with crappy movies like 'nine months'.

seriously, this movie is funny. if you want to be on the floor, worse-than-being-tickled laughing, watch this. it's not through the whole film, but as soon as you see the scenes that evoke this reaction, you'll know exactly what i'm talking about. i won't give them away here, though. watch it.

oh, and the casting -- effing brilliant. really.

the more movies i watch, the stupider the setups get. that's why i still watch crappy big-budget hollywood films -- to check out what tard-o setup is there to get around to the ridiculous plot. example: 'what women want'. mel gibson gets electrocuted by a hair dryer in the bathtub and doesn't die, but instead wakes up with the ability to hear women's thoughts. kind of like 'groundhog day' but way worse. can you please insult my intelligence a little more? pleeease?

point being, 'about a boy' doesn't do this. it's feasible, yet quirky, yet not annoyingly quirky, which makes it human, which makes it relatable, which makes us like it.

but for the love of god, did they have to end it with a freeze frame?

i watched this movie the same day i finished the novel, which was probably a stupid idea, as a movie would have to be really good to live up to my satisfaction with the novel. and, of course, the movie sucked for the most part.

i had high hopes because i've always respected roger avary. he seems to be tarantino's partner in crime, or who tarantino turns to as a writing partner, and that is definitely respectable. and even though the movie kind of blows, it is obvious from watching that r.a. is a good director. he has a sick yet dead-on sense of humor, which is something that bret easton ellis probably appreciates. his choices of music matched with certain scenes is perfect. by themselves, some of the scenes and situations are hilarious.

however, he fails to pull together the themes of the book and give us a sum total of what all the nihilistic debauchery at this college actually means. a lot of the inner monologues and the disparities between characters' thoughts which are the meat of ellis's novel are completely disregarded in the film. instead, we get a handful of characters that we don't really care about, and when these supposedly monumental events happen to them, we just don't care.

this is the best movie i've seen in a long time. i can't wait to watch the commentary. i was reading an article in one of the trades about how all these mainstream female actors turned down this film because of its controversial nature and nudity... however, it just goes to show how much smarter maggie gyllenhaal is with her career choices than they are, as the nudity and sexuality portrayed in this film are some of the least exploitative examples seen in any films that make it to the theater.

i read some of the comments before posting this, and it's nice to see that this film has done for the most part what it meant to do, which is open people's eyes to the meaning behind bdsm, humanizing it and making it less of something weird and kinky and something more normal and acceptable.

james spader rocks just as hard as he did in 'sex, lies and videotape', and maggie gyllenhaal is clearly one of the best actors out there right now, as she is completely unafraid and also completely immersed in her character. and shainberg as a director, well, rock 'n' roll. he makes his film quirky without heavily accentuating the kitsch value of a small town or showing how 'wacky' a director he can be by adding 'quirky' peripheral characters.

the bottom line: this movie helps everything move forward by helping to break down the preconceived notions of sex and how it should be. and that's important. watch it.

i usually hate dissing the other reviewers on these things because everyone is entitled to their opinions, but, even though they usually frustrate me, i always read the reviews to gauge how a movie affects the mainstream public, as i think that's usually the most important thing to be considered.

i just finished commenting on 'the rules of attraction', and it surprised me to see how there were more positive comments about that film than this one. it also surprised me to see that most of the negative reviews of this film talked about how they were 'bored' by this movie, or how nia vardalos is 'ugly', or how this film is only for 'women' or 'old people'.

granted, this movie has very little sex, violence, or MTV editing, but it does what most movies try to do and fail at doing; creates an engaging story with interesting characters. however, it's sad to see that this quality apparently doesn't carry much currency anymore, and that people can't deal with humor that's not shoved in their face or isn't right there on the surface.

the ironic thing about this is that MBFGW isn't even that innovative or unique. it takes the normal three act romantic comedy structure and, well, dehollywoodizes it a little bit. yeah, the main characters aren't typical hollywood hot. (well, john corbett is...) but you probably aren't either. and all these people commenting on how it's 'racist' or 'stereotyped'... nia vardalos, the writer, IS GREEK! this film is adapted from her one woman show! it's interesting that 'ethnic' films have to take on, what, a documentary form or something to seem authentic? if anything is racist, that is.

it's super that 11,000 people have voted on this film and that it grossed so much $$. even though, when it comes down to it, this is just a "better" romantic comedy which stays in the box for much of the time, it IS, indeed, better than most movie fare out there and its popularity gives me hope that the "boring" movies with "ugly" people may have a chance with the jaded tards of middle america.

sometimes it's nice to see a film that lets you think and doesn't tell you what to feel. even though a bunch of the mooks at the theater fell asleep during this film and griped all the way out, it can't be denied that once the movie started, that beautiful 1st shot came onscreen, and the music kicked in, everyone in the theater fell quiet, probably captivated by a sense of awe and quiet beauty.

during the long shots, i had time to think about the way certain things in the film made me feel, and their relation to my life. it was almost like meditation, pure unadulterated thinking time, quiet time, something most of us in nyc never get. i had time to relate the fact that you couldn't tell the clouds and the mountains apart to the identical feeling i had when i was actually hiking out west. the film itself is like looking at clouds and talking about what they look like. i'm sure everyone who was into it had their own personal associations that they were making. it's a film that makes you feel a little more in touch with yourself, instead of most films, which alienate you from the real world or make you feel bad about your own

existence, just because they are all so far removed from reality.

the dialogue that was present was completely natural, not to mention funny. and some directors try so hard to make likeable characters :)

this is the kind of movie people should show their kids, but they won't, because the f-word shows up a few times. my stars.

When I went to relieve my aching bladder about 20 minutes ago, i was in the bathroom of a movie theater and Donnie Darko had just ended. This girl in the stall next to me was yabbering to her friend, "Oh, that movie was So Good!! It was like a.... um... (thinking 'really hard' here for something profound).. dark, twisted American Beauty!"

My, my. How profound. Always good to impress your friends by repeating what all the critics are saying.

I enjoyed Donnie Darko, but I'm not sure it just wasn't because I got to stare at Jake G____ for two hours. (yum) A lot of the effects used were kinda schlocky, and the ending made you think the director wanted it to be one of those movies where something big and crazy happens and the audience leaves with their lifes changed and ready to save the world. (American Beauty?) But it wasn't like that.. the plot was really contrived at times, and you're not sure what the director's trying to say with all of it.

It just seems like a real shame that Richard Kelly had to mix all the supergood character-interaction scenes that he is obviously good at with a gargantuan plot attempt that was just way out of the movie's reach. Cheers to the director on the dementia stuff, though. See this movie, watch it for the dialogue, watch it for the 80s references, close your eyes at the Drew Barrymore parts (ick) and watch Jake Gwhatever rock the house with his believable acting and unbelievable hotness. I'm off to buy Bubble Boy.