The Couch Potato Report – October 20th, 2007
This week The Couch Potato Report peels another Hollywood film made here in Western Canada and three other new releases.
I have four films to tell you about this week, so lets get to them, starting with a mafia comedy that was shot in Winnipeg.
YOU KILL ME is the name of this week’s first film, and it stars Academy Award winner Sir Ben Kingsley, from GHANDI and SEXY BEAST.
He plays Frank, a hit man for a mob family in Buffalo.
When he fails to complete an assignment, due to his drinking problem, he is sent to San Francisco to clean up his act.
Once he arrives, Frank stops drinking, he starts working in a mortuary, and he goes to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, where he confesses what he does for a living.
He also starts to date a woman that he meets at the Funeral home, a woman played by the great Tea Leoni from BAD BOYS and THE FAMILY MAN.
YOU KILL ME is a mob movie, with lots of violence, it has romance, with the great Tea Leoni, and it is a comedy.
I was engaged by it, and I enjoyed it, but it really isn’t all that fresh or entertaining, because it features too many scenes and storylines that we have already seen in other mob comedies like ANALYZE THIS.
If YOU KILL ME hadn’t been made in Winnipeg, a city I know, a city I love, and if my cousin Mark hadn’t been the second assistant cameraman on the film, I’m not sure I would have enjoyed it at all….but, y’know what…I did actually enjoy it.
I don’t completely recommend it…but I will say this: it is what they call a “good rental.”
Our next film this week is also a good rental, but I can’t fully recommend it either.
That film is THE HOAX.
RICHARD GERE stars in this film – based on the actual events of Clifford Irving, an American novelist who became well known in the early 1970s when his “authorized autobiography” of Howard Hughes was suspected of being a hoax.
Gere is very good in this movie, and director Lasse HallstrĖm has created a film that is very interesting to look at, using period footage and dating the footage he shot.
Even if you know the true story in the film, which I did, THE HOAX still manages to be dramatic, and is often very funny.
THE HOAX is mature, well written, and acted. It is also an enagaging and entertaining film, but I just didn’t love it. I thought I would, but I didn’t.
However, I do recommend it, primarily due to it’s maturity. We don’t get many movies like this anymore, ones that are made for adults.
It is also a “good rental.”
Up next this week is part two of the GRINDHOUSE double feature of films that came out in theatres back in April.
It was made by directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez as a tribute to the B-Movies that used to play at drive-ins and as late, late shows at some theatres in the 1970s.
The two movies are being released seperately on DVD and a few weeks ago, I told you about Tarrantino’s DEATH PROOF, and now Rodriguez’s PLANET TERROR is also available on DVD.
PLANET TERROR focusses on a group of people attempting to survive an onslaught of zombie-like creatures as they feud with a military unit.
PLANET TERROR is loud, cheezy and full of cartoon violence.
And I loved it!!!
It was the better half of the GRINDHOUSE film in theatres, and it is a fun film to watch…if you enjoy movies that are loud, cheezy and full of cartoon violence, that is.
BUT, be warned!!
Yes, the two GRINDHOUSE films are now available seperately…but they will eventually come out as one big package, according to the comments made by director Robert Rodriguez in the PLANET TERROR special features.
Finally this week, Steve Carell from THE OFFICE and THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN stars in the most expensive “comedy” ever made, an unfunny, complete-waste-of-your-time release called EVAN ALMIGHTY.
EVAN ALMIGHTY is the unfunny sequel to the very funny 2003 film BRUCE ALMIGHTY.
Jim Carrey and Jennifer Anniston were the stars of that film, and Steve Carell had a small part in that film as the reporter who got the job that Carrey’s character wanted.
And now, they have built a whole film around this secondary character…and they shouldn’t have.
Newly elected to Congress, the former reporter and his family move to Washington where he is asked – by God, played once again by Morgan Freeman – to build an ark.
After that, more strange things start to occur…all different kinds of animals start following him around, he grows a beard that won’t go away no matter how many times he shaves, and none of it is funny, interesting, heartwarming or worthy of your time.
Even though I like the message of faith the film presents, and I like Carell, Freeman, the great Lauren Graham and most of the other actors in the movie, EVEN ALMIGHTY is not a good rental, it is not a good anything.
Skip it, ignore it, pass it by!
The non-comedy EVAN ALMIGHTY, the loud, cheezy and full of cartoon violence GRINDHOUSE film PLANET TERROR, the good rental mature film THE HOAX, and the made-in-Winnipeg film YOU KILL ME, which is also a good rental, are all available now on DVD.
Coming up on the next Couch Potato Report
Just in time for Halloween, I’ll tell you about the religion-themed horror film THE REAPING based on the Ten Plagues of Egypt; the Academy Award nominated horror film POLTERGEIST; and the supernatural horror film set CHUCKY – THE KILLER DVD COLLECTION about a less than perfect doll.
Also next week, the Canadian documentary ANTLERS is about the big game hunters of the forests of Northern Quebec; Kevin Costner plays a bad guy in MR. BROOKS; and THE SOPRANOS – SEASON 6, PART 2 DVD set gives you the chance to make sense out of the series’ ending as often as you’d like, in the privacy of your own home.
I’m Dan Reynish. I’ll have more on those, and some other releases, in seven days.
For now, that’s this week’s COUCH POTATO REPORT.
Enjoy the movies and I’ll see you back here next time on The Couch!
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