Quick Reviews: Four Most Recent

Yeah, I keep procrastinating instead of writing about a movie right after I've seen it. It's a good thing I don't get paid for this. Of course, if someone would like to pay me, I'd be sure to stick to deadline. Anyway, I'll be pretty brief with these. Mostly not bad, but not really worth a ton of analysis.

The real selling point of 2 Guns is the Denzel Washington-Mark Wahlberg pairing, as law enforcement officials (undercover, but each thinks the other is an actual criminal) trying to bring down a drug lord. It gets much more complicated, with double-crosses galore. I just let go of trying to keep up and rode the wave of the two stars' having fun. My grade: B.

Speaking of drug lords, there's one in We're the Millers, and he forces a low-level drug dealer (Jason Sudeikis) to make a pickup of pot in Mexico. To do this successfully, he decides to take family with him in order to avoid suspicion at the border. As he has no family, he recruits a stripper (Jennifer Aniston) and a couple of teenagers, one a latchkey kid and one a runaway, to act as his family. At times raunchy but generally pretty funny. I can't entirely buy Aniston as a stripper, though. She's just too...nice. My grade: B-plus.

Elysium is a sci-fi film and a lesson. In 2154 the world is a real mess, and the wealthiest people have gone to Elysium, a space station/satellite/mini-world where life is perfect and disease is cured instantly with a short lie-down in a machine that looks like a tanning booth. Elysium is visible in the Earth's sky, like the moon, taunting those left behind with no hope of getting up there. So this is all a commentary on current events and the need for universal health care. Poisoned by an industrial accident and with five days to live, Max (Matt Damon) hooks up with a group who smuggles people onto Elysium to get their own diseases cured. Damon's fine, but Jodie Foster as a government official defending Elysium from the illegal immigrants is kind of a misfire. Still, it's watchable and food for thought, although the Tea Party nutjobs might disagree. My grade: B-plus.

And then there's Paranoia, which is pretty much a mess. It's about a guy (Liam Hemsworth, pretty but vapid; I think he has a total of one facial expression) who gets himself entangled in corporate espionage between two tech companies, run by a pair of former friends (Harrison Ford, with head shaved(!) and Gary Oldman). Ridiculous script and plot, and not particularly well-acted. What really got me was how some of it was filmed in Philadelphia but it's set in New York. But there are times when it's so obvious it's Philadelphia. Street signs, local establishments, the concourse under Broad Street that obviously isn't a New York City subway concourse -- and not only did they film inside the Comcast Center, but at one point you actually see the building's name. Really sloppy work. Fortunately, not many people will see it. When I saw it on Friday, it's first day of release, only one other person was in the theater with me. My grade: D-plus.

Quick Reviews: Six Recent Films

I'm giving myself an assignment: put up a post about as many of the eight films I've seen this month as possible before I go to bed, which will be soon as I'm off to Washington, DC in the morning, Three nights away from home are beckoning, so...

Cloud Atlas: I nearly walked out on multiple occasions. There are six different storylines set at various times, from the days of slavery to a post-apocalyptic future, and the film cuts back and forth between them constantly. They're tied together by the fact that many of the actors (including Tom Hanks and Halle Berry) appear as multiple characters, and by some other plot points. There's some grand theme about humanity and how we treat others and so on, but it was such a confusing mess it's a miracle I didn't leave. I guess it was a novel attempt at something different, which keeps it from being a complete failure. My grade: D-plus.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower: Really impressive and well-acted. Emma Watson completely makes you forget she was in the Harry Potter movies. Definitely deserved a better box-office fate. My grade: A.

Wreck-It Ralph: Like the "Toy Story" of video games in its nostalgia. Funny moments, interesting premise, ultimately not quite as brilliant as the "Toy Story" films. Still definitely worthwhile. My grade: B-plus.

Flight: Quite good but a little overrated in telling

To All The Parks I've Loved Before...

Apologies to Willie and Julio for the title...

I thought I'd dig up something from the archives of the Outsports discussion board. A thread was started in 2002 about favorite major league ballparks. At the time, I had only been to six. I ranked them thusly: Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Dodger Stadium, Yankee Stadium, Veterans Stadium (I made a note that the Vet ranked ahead of the others because of good memories as much as anything else), Qualcomm Stadium and Candlestick Park.

From 2003 through 2008 (during those happy years when I still had spending money) I managed to get to a lot more parks, and updated the list each time. So I thought I'd share my current rankings here on the blog. Ballparks listed in italics have been vacated by the teams that once called them home. Some have been torn down and replaced, others still stand.

Quick Review: The Book Of Eli

It's amazing how many times life as we know it has come to an end in movies, especially if you count films like "Zombieland." The latest post-apocalyptic flick is "The Book Of Eli," in which the world has been pretty much destroyed (nuclear holocaust, presumably) and, for whatever reason, every copy of the Bible has been destroyed. Eli (Denzel Washington) is on a mission to take the last copy of the King James Bible in existence out to the West Coast for some reason. He has mad fighting skills, which come in handy in a violent, post-apocalyptic world. In addition, despite everything having been in ruins for some time, he has a working iPod. On his cross-country walk and needing his portable battery recharged, he arrives in a wreck of a town which is controlled by Carnegie (Gary Oldman), who at first treats Eli well until he learns Eli has a copy of the Bible. Carnegie wants the Bible to use its words to keep the people of his town under control and to expand his "empire." I kind of had some low expectations -- I'm not big on religious overtones and some of this is probably derivative of the "Mad Max" films (I say "probably" because I've never seen them) -- but I was pleasantly surprised. My grade: B.