More Movie Reviews

Once again we have reached that time where I have watched enough movies on the various cable channels to offer up a new round of movie reviews. What is nice about my movie reviews is that these movies have been out for a while, so if you have a subscription to a couple of the cable movie channels you can probably watch them on-demand for free or rent them in your local Red Box for $1. What is bad about my movie reviews is that they rarely have anything to do with the quality of the movie and instead focus on some aspect of the film which has nothing to do with anything. Also, I never tell you whether or not you should watch the movie for yourself because I know not everyone shares my tastes. Not exactly helpful when making a decision. But, never mind that - let's begin.

-Red Tails. When this movie came out George Lucas said this was as close as we were going to get to episode VII of "Star Wars." Not only is that now false, it shows why no one should be freaking out that his is no longer at the helm of the franchise. What I found interesting when I started watching this movie was that the two biggest names (Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding, Jr.) were playing the commanding officers and not actual pilots. Considering this is a movie about a squadron of fighter pilots you would have expected the biggest stars to play one of those roles. About halfway through I figured out why that would have been a waste of time - between the helmets and oxygen masks you only see about 15% of the pilots' faces at any given time. If you are going to pay an actor the most money it makes sense to want them to show off those famous faces as often as possible, which works when there are one or two guys but not when you are trying to keep track of seven different characters. Leave the roles where it takes you a second to figure out which character is talking to the less-famous guys.

-The Iron Lady. Given that Meryl Streep won an Oscar for this role I figured I should finally get around to seeing what all the fuss was about. Now, I have obviously never met Margaret Thatcher so I can't comment on how well she portrayed her, but since the people whose job is it to know about things like this keep saying she was awesome I will have to take their word at it. And while Streep was very captivating, I still had a hard time sitting through this movie and here's why: I didn't care. I was very young during most of the events which took place in the movie and thus have no frame of reference as to their importance. On top of that, I don't have a ton of interest in American politics and thus the inner workings of British politics hold absolutely no appeal to me. If I don't care about the subject matter it is very hard for me to get through a movie regardless of how wonderful the acting is. I understand this makes me very appear very close minded and provincial, but I'm fine with that because it's mostly true. Before a British person gets mad at me I would just like to know how well "W" did in their country.

-Your Sister's Sister. This was one of those smaller movies that seem to slip through everyone's fingers, so I don't blame you if you never heard of it. But the film stars Emily Blunt, who we all love. The thing is, Emily Blunt always makes me feel like an idiot because she does such a good American accent that I forget she is British until I hear her doing interviews, at which point I marvel at how well she does accents. Of course, this is an idiotic thing to marvel at, not only because the two languages are so similar, but because it is pretty much the only skill most actors have. Being impressed that a British actor can do a convincing American accent is like being impressed when a golfer has a good baseball swing. It's a lot of the same motion, just tweaked, so an actor being able to do a convincing accent is very low bar compared to how impressed I actually get. I honestly believe the only separating a great actor from the people who do straight-to-DVD ones are the great actors can do more convincing accents. Please, someone remind me of this next time I hear James McAvoy trade in his natural Scottish accent for an English one and come away thoroughly impressed.

-War Horse. This was a fine movie, but it felt kind of lazy. I mean, how hard is it to get a response out of people when you make a movie about an animal? Even if you are indifferent regarding horses (which I am), only a monster is going to openly root for an innocent animal to die. It's why I immediately downgrade any movie which needless kill off a dog just to make the audience emotional. Will Smith having to kill his dog in "I Am Legend"? Emotional, but not necessarily a clip you send to the Oscar committee. Tom Hanks making you care that his volleyball is floating away in "Cast Away"? Even more emotional and damn hard. That's the difference. Also, I am always amused in movies like this about how we are supposed to care about this one animal when it is surrounded by a battle in which actual humans are getting cut down by the dozens. "Yes, 100 sons are never going home to their parents, but let's get invested in the one horse which has a cut on its leg!" This is not a movie you should see if you have any type of perspective regarding the value of a human life versus an animal's.

-Friends With Kids. However, if we are talking about lazy movies, this one has to take the cake. Allow me to give you the set-up. A woman is getting up there in age and still hasn't met the right man, so she convinces her serial-dating friend to get her pregnant and they will raise the child together but with no strings attached. Would you like to guess how it turns out? Go ahead, I'll wait... Yep, it ends exactly as you knew it would because you've already seen this movie a dozen times since it comes out every couple of years. The only difference with this attempt is that it features most of the cast of "Bridesmaids." In fact, I'm pretty sure the pitch was, "It's the same movie we make every year, but this one features most of the woman from the highest-grossing movie of last year." Boom. Green-lit. They even marketed it that way, focusing on Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph, who are in the movie for about 20 minutes. Hopefully this will serve as a reminder to everyone making movies that just because a group of people were in one successful movie it doesn't mean they can show up on set and automatically do it again. Movies take a good script, no matter how much money the cast made the last time they were on screen together.