The Family Stone (April 27, 2010)

This is one of those movies that I wrote off as a cute little romantic comedy, so I wasn't in any rush to see it (I like those kinds of movies, but there's no need to see them right away). Then suddenly people all around me were telling me what a good movie this was, people who don't usually go for simple romantic comedies, so I bought this movie fully intending to watch it, then I let it sit on my shelf for like, five months. I just watched it today, and let me tell you, it's far more than a simple romantic comedy.

Dermot Mulroney plays a very serious guy who plans to take his future fiance home to meet his family for the first time. Sarah Jessica Parker plays his girlfriend, and she's wound MUCH too tightly, which his family sees right through and exploits for everything they can. See, they're one of THOSE families...they're close and loving, but they're very sarcastic with each other, which is fine for people who are in on the joke, but hell for someone from the outside who is intimidated and uptight. Basically, the holiday is a disaster and things go unexpectedly apeshit, but the movie manages to tie everything together and be an enjoyable experience just the same. I don't want to give anything away, so I'll leave it at that. I guess one of the plot twists within the first five minutes of the movie but the rest came as a pleasant surprise, and this is definitely going to go down as one of my favorite Christmas movies ever.

Latter Days (April 27, 2010)

People have been bugging me to see this movie for awhile now. I try to ignore it when people do that, because people bugged me to see "Borat" and "Napoleon Dynamite" and I'd like to puke on the people who got me to see those movies. But I finally caved today and watched "Latter Days," and damned if people weren't right this time (there's a first time for everything, right?) This movie focuses on Christian, a happy-go-lucky guy who flits through life seemingly without a care, and Aaron, who is on his 2 year long mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (the Mormons). For those who need a crash course, Latter Day Saints (LDS) send their kids away on a mission once they turn 18, and said kids spend two years going door to door and teaching other people about their church. So Aaron is sheltered and kind of geeky, but he takes his faith seriously (more seriously than his 4 roommates who are on the mission just like he is) and when Aaron and Christian meet, sparks fly and Aaron has to make a choice (his church is...um...less than thrilled with gay people, to put it mildly).

I know why people were badgering me to see this movie. I kind of wished I'd listened to them earlier, but at the same time, this movie came at a good time in my life. I've been on this ridiculous roller coaster with my faith for years now, and I just started going to a new church on Sunday. It's not that I don't realize that I can pray at home by myself, I just miss being around other people who share my faith (of course, being around them always seems to get me in trouble, so we'll see how that turns out). I related to every single scene in this movie in a different way, and it didn't seem forced or manipulative. Others may disagree with me, but believe me when I say I know what manipulation looks like, and I think this movie rises above that. It's unflinchingly honest, and while watching it felt a little like running sandpaper across my skin (it rubs my issues raw, you see) it was still something I think I needed to see. You should check it out sometime, too.

Diary of a Mad Black Woman (April 27, 2010)

Again with the Tyler Perry movies, Lillian? Really? Yes, really. I happen to love Tyler Perry's movies and I know I'm not in the minority because they always make a lot of money. I just appear to be among the minority of REVIEWS who like his movies. No matter, I enjoy them anyway. This one stars Kimberly Elise (who I love) as a faithful, longsuffering wife whose complete jackass of a husband dumps her after 18 years to take up with his mistress. She suffers but makes it through, even finding new love with an almost too perfect man played by Shemar Moore, when tragedy strikes and she's forced to confront her ex husband and see if she can forgive him and let got of the past. I'm a sucker for movies like this, and I enjoyed this one. I know that redemption is a hard road, so I like watching movies where characters find redemption because they give me hope that it's still possible, plus I like all the actors here. All the characters, too (even Medea is starting to grow on me). I enjoyed this movie a lot. Bring on more Tyler Perry!

Role Models (April 27, 2010)

This movie is hilarious. I bought it awhile back and then kept shuffling it off and letting it sit in my pile of unwatched DVDs until I finally got around it it today. I ended up loving it just as much as I'd predicted I would. Paul Rudd and Sean William Scott play two immature men in their 30s who commit a crime and wind up with a sentence of community service. They serve out their sentence by mentoring two young boys, and hilarity ensues. First of all, these are the LAST two guys who should ever serve as role models. Scott plays a guy who really only cares about partying and hooking up, and Rudd plays a guy who feels stuck in a rut and hates himself and his life. Luckily they wind up with two kids who can help smack some sense into them. Scott winds up with a mouthy, street wise kid who doesn't take shit from anyone, and Rudd winds up with a weird kid who likes role playing games. throughout the course of the movie, the men learn to act like men and the kids learn to act more like kids, and everyone is better for it. I like smarmy sweet movies as much as the next person, but my heart really belongs to movies like this; movies that are jaded and cynical and they EARN their emotional scenes because they don't seem to be out to manipulate me to jerk those tears out in the first place. This one is highly recommended.

The Princess and the Frog (April 27, 2010)

This movie caused quite a stir. It's Disney's first classic animation movie in years (for awhile here, computer animated movies have ruled the day) and while there's nothing wrong with computer animation, I have to say, this movie is absolutely beautiful. Seriously. Some of the scenes are sop lovely that I had to catch my breath. The story is groundbreaking in another way, too. Tiana in this movie is Disney's first black Princess. It's about damn time, too. And like all the other Disney princesses, she's got spunk and attitude to spare. She doesn't wait around for her Prince to rescue her, in fact, she's not much interested in looking for love at all. Tiana works two jobs trying to save money in order to open a restaurant (a dream she inherited from her Daddy before he died). The prince in this movie isn't a gallant warrior, either, he's a carefree layabout. He doesn't like to settle down, he likes to throw away his money, and his family are sick of his shenanigans. When he reaches New Orleans, he gets mixed up in some voodoo (from the coolest Disney bad guy in years) and before he knows it,. Prince Naveen is a frog. He sees Tiana in costume for a masquerade ball and he mistakes her for a princess, but when he kisses her in hopes that she'll turn him human again, things don't go as planned.

This movie is a ton of fun. The songs were catchy (I love Randy Newman) and there are some scenes that made me laugh out loud. I also loved the love story of these two opposites who meet and bicker for most of the movie until they realize their feelings for each other (I'm a sucker for stuff like that).

Cats Don't Dance (April 26, 2010)

I remember seeing ads for this movie back in the 90s when it came out. My mom used to make me watch old musicals when I was a kid, so I recognized the plot (starry eyed kid from a small town comes to Hollywood trying to make it big in the movies). Of course, this is an animated movie where a cat is the "starry eyed kid" and when he arrives in Hollywood, he learns that filmmakers don't think animals have talent for anything besides being, well, animals, so it's hard for him to get anyone to take his singing and dancing seriously. He tries to get himself and his friends noticed by movie producers, but it's tough. The animation is in the "Warner Brothers" style that was popular at the time (think "Tiny Toons" and "Animaniacs") but the story is old Hollywood through and through. I had a lot of fun with it. I'm well-rounded that way.

The Swarm (1977)

If you'll look at the bottom of the movie poster, you'll see that practically everyone in Hollywood was in this movie. Apparently in the 70s there was a big run on disaster movies and Hollywood was churning them out and packing them with as many stars as possible in order to get people to see the movies. It's too bad that this particular movie sucks as badly as it does. I read the novel when I was a kid and I don't remember it being too bad, but I also notice that it doesn't really resemble this movie very much. The filmmakers must have just cribbed the basic idea from the book (swarms of killer bees massacring people) and slapped it together with some scientific mumbo-jumbo in order to make the script. Let's put it bluntly: this movie is garbage. It's hokey and stupid and full of plot holes, the dialogue is atrocious and the acting is terrible and everyone in the damn movie knows how to act (hell, half of them won Oscars at one point or another) so there are no excuses for the movie to be as bad as it is. Irwin Allen, the guy who made the movie, must not have cared or he must not have thought that anyone would notice that the movie sucks and every "plot twist" was stolen from another movie (I'm not fucking kidding, even the ending of the movie was taken from a low-budget sci-fi movie called "Beginning of the End"). Skip this movie and watch something else. Anything else. Watch paint dry if you have to.