Quick Reviews: Two Out Of Three...

You can probably guess how these grades are going to go down, based on the post title...

The first one's simple: "Argo" is the best movie I've seen this year. When you can make a movie that's not only humorous but truly suspenseful, and make it suspenseful even though it's based on a pretty well-known true story -- the smuggling out of Iran of six Americans who escaped the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979 when it was swarmed by followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini -- you've done your job. Kudos, Ben Affleck. And I really enjoyed the little touches such as actual news broadcasts from the time (remember when ABC's Ted Koppel did those nightly hostage crisis updates, which evolved into "Nightline" as the crisis dragged on and on?). My grade: A-plus.

Not on the same level, but enjoyable on its own, is "Pitch Perfect." When you make a movie about acapella singing groups competing for a national title and manage to avoid it seeming too much like "Glee Goes to College," again, you've done your job. Kudos, uh, I don't know who directed this, but kudos to him or her anyway. (Okay, I looked it up. Jason Moore. Wikipedia says it's his feature film debut.) A lot of laughs and the singing's not bad, either. Rebel Wilson is a flat-out riot. My grade: A-minus.

And now for the bad news. I was hoping for good things from "Seven Psychopaths," because it was directed by Martin McDonagh, who did "In Bruges" with Colin Farrell, who also co-stars in this film. I really enjoyed "In Bruges." I really hated this movie. I wanted to walk out a number of times. Its only redeeming values are the performance by Christopher Walken and the fact that Farrell is so damned pretty. My grade: D-plus.

Quick Reviews: The Totally Brave Campaign Edition

So I got to three more movies in the last week and a half. One of them was even before noon, allowing me to pay the $5.00 discounted price. See? Some days I do get out of bed at a decent hour.

Brave: Another winner from Pixar. (They pretty much all are, I know. I even liked "Cars" when I finally saw it  -- on TV, not in a theater. "Cars 2" I haven't seen, and haven't heard many good things about, so...) A first for Pixar: a female protagonist, Merida, teenage daughter of a Scottish king who wants to find her own destiny instead of settling for being betrothed to a son of another Scottish clan leaders, causing a great bit of consternation between Merida and her mother. Merida encounters a witch who offers her a spell that will help in the matter. When I read that, I expected one plot twist and, instead, got another one entirely, and one that, in hindsight, was more predictable. But that's my fault. My grade: A-minus.

Total Recall: Colin Farrell is lust-worthy, as always. The rest is pretty mindless, and almost completely different from the original, which I totally recall (heh) as being fun, though I haven't seen it in ages. This could have used a lot more of that fun. My grade: C-minus.

The Campaign: Will Ferrell is a congressman, and not a very good one, who expects to once again run unopposed in his North Carolina district, until he suddenly gets an opponent (Zach Galifianakas). The biggest thing the movie has going for it is it made me laugh a lot. It has some things to say about our current political state of affairs, but the events are so broad as to be totally unrealistic. Then again, considering some of what's going on in this country right now, it seems like a documentary by comparison. My grade: B.

Movie Magic

While a movie starring Colin Farrell was shooting a couple of weeks ago, they changed some street signs on Walnut Street. The film, "Dead Man Down," is set in New York...

I know they do this all the time. Films are shot all over the place that are set in New York. Sometimes it's really obvious that it's not really New York, though. It seems to me they shouldn't do this unless New York City is really central to the plot (i.e. a terrorist or alien attack on a specific location). Anyway, love the disclaimer...

Quick Review: Horrible Bosses

For the first movie I've seen in a couple of weeks, I ended up at "Horrible Bosses." I worked for a couple of truly bad bosses in the past, although when you work for the Social Security Administration that's almost a given. But none of my bosses were quite as bad as those that the three friends in this movie suffer with. Nick (Jason Bateman) works for a guy (Kevin Spacey) who treats him like crap and then doesn't give him an expected promotion. Dale (Charlie Day) is being sexually harassed by his dentist boss (Jennifer Aniston). And Kurt (Jason Sudeikis), well, his boss (Donald Sutherland) is awesome, until he suddenly dies and his son (Colin Farrell, wearing a comb-over and given a pot belly), a cokeheaded, womanizing, obnoxious creep, takes over. The three friends joke about killing their bosses, and then decide to actually do it. And that's where the movie, which had me in stitches to this point, went south for a while. There was a decent gag at the end, but for some reason the humor began to fall flat once they tried to hire an ex-con (Jamie Foxx) to commit the murders. Aniston is great playing against her usual good-girl type, though. I will say that although I laughed much less as the film went on, the rest of the audience enjoyed the second half of the film much more. My grade: B.