Movies you saw for the first time June

Arbitrage (2012) mystery/crime drama with Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon and Tim Roth. started out like it was going to be "Richard Gere plays Bernie Madoff" and it's pretty "plodding" first 15 minutes BUT turns into a VERY good mystery/crime story after Gere's character has the accident that kills his mistress played by VERY tasty French actress/model Laetitia Casta. has some interesting "plot twists" esp near the end. usually I complain that a movie is too long. this one seemed to be kind of "chopped off" at the end. runs on EPIX2 again Tuesday June 4th @ 6:45 pm, Wednesday June 5th @ 7:30 am & 3:00 pm pacific time  

Down to Earth (2001) Chris Rock comedy with the basic plot of the 1978 Warren Beatty movie Heaven Can Wait. started out like it was going to be really funny with Chazz Palminteri as "Mr King", the "manager" of Heaven, and Wanda Sykes as the smart mouthed maid Wanda BUT deteriorated into a bunch of Chris Rock "stand up" jokes. worth watching for the Chazz Palminteri and Wanda Sykes scenes BUT no where close to the old Warren Beatty film

guess NO one is watching any movies in June ex for "Papa Ratte"

Shadow of the Vampire (2000) "historical horror" film about the making of Nosferatu, the first ever movie based on Bram Stoker's novel Dracula BUT with the "twist" that the actor that played "Count Orlok" (Dracula), played by Willem Dafoe, really IS a Vampire.

the other main players are John Malkovich as director F. W. Murnau, Eddie Izzard as the actor who played Thomas Hutter in the film and Catherine McCormack as the actress who played Ellen Hutter, his wife, who Orlok has the hots for BOTH in the movie plot AND for real. 

VERY well acted by all involved and esp Dafoe who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. no "filler" in this one as it only runs 92 minutes   

I watched the sequels to The Girl with Dragon Tattoo.

The Girl that.... (did something with fire?)

The Girl that Kicked the Hornets Nest

The actors are different and there are subtitles but they were still pretty entertaining. Worth a watch. They are on Sundance Channel this Friday at 7pm.

Extreme Measures 1996

This is a  good flick. I don't think of this movie being that old but it is almost 20 years old. Hugh Grant, but not a chick flick at all. Actually there is no female love interest which is nice.

will check out The Girl with Dragon Tattoo sequels on Sundance BUT didn't think the original was that great. Rooney Mara = skinny skank

Trouble with the Curve (2012) so called "sports drama" with crabby old baseball scout Clint Eastwood, his long suffering Lawyer daughter Amy Adams and washed up pitcher Justin Timberlake trying to become a scout. pretty much dragged throughout BUT did have an interesting ending when the arrogant "future superstar" high school player gets exposed. I would say

The Mask of Dimitrios (1944) I am a sucker for ANY movie with BOTH Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre who were two of the great "menacing villains" of the 1940's. this is a decent "spy-crime" drama with a "flash back" formated plot BUT NOT The Maltese Falcon(1941), Casablanca (1942) or even Greenstreet's Across the Pacific (1942). still I think worth watching to see Greenstreet and Lorre interact without the support of a Humphrey Bogart. was on Turner Classic Movies channel  

The Looking Glass War (1970) spy-acton drama From the John le Carre novel about a British spy who sends a Polish defector to East Germany to verify missile sites. early work by Anthony Hopkins as British spy John Avery and excellent acting (as usual) by Sir Ralph Richardson as the spymaster LeClerc. Christopher Jones good as the recruited Polish spy Leiser and Swedish actress Pia Degermark is VERY tasty as "The Girl". plot has the usual le Carre "twists and turns". you like le Carre spy stories, you will like this one. on Sony Movie Channel again Monday June 10th @ 1:40 pm pacific 

The Pool Boys (originally known as American Summer (2011) VERY funny (and VERY under-rated) comedy with a cast of unknowns, ex for Tom Arnold, that has the basic "young guys running a brothel" plot of Tom Cruise's first movie Risky Business only MUCH funnier and with MUCH more "T&A". non-stop sight gags and outrageous situations. one of the funniest movies I have seen in years. I think the only reason this movie wasn't a box office hit is that Seven Arts Pictures really put NO money into promoting it. they didn't even bother filling in a WikiPage for it

it's on Cinemax's "ActionMax" channel again Sunday June 9th @ 10:45 pm and Thursday June 13th @ 7:15 am pacific time. definately worth watching/recording IF you want 105 minutes of laughs (and GREAT looking babes)   

Owning Mahowny (2003) drama about gambling addiction based on the real life story of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce clerk Brian Molony who embezzled over $10 million in 1982 to feed his gambling habit. VERY well acted by Philip Seymour Hoffman as Dan Mahowny, John Hurt as Atlantic City casino manager Victor Foss and Maury Chaykin as Mahowny's Toronto bookie Frank Perlin. the man was a "degenerate's degenerate". like many movies on the subject, it's both funny and sad at the same time. played recently on the Sony Movie Channel   

AND speaking of Philip Seymour Hoffman movies, he won the Best Actor Oscar for his 2005 portrayal of Truman Capote in the movie "Capote" BUT I think that the 2006 movie Infamous about Capote writing "In Cold Blood" and staring Toby Jones as Capote is WAY better. I thought Jones captured Capote's looks and character better than Hoffman did and IF the film release dates had been reversed, it would have been Jones getting the Oscar.

outstanding acting by all involved. the movie also stars pre-James Bond Daniel Craig as the murderer Perry Smith and Sandra Bullock as Capote assistant Harper Lee.  as NY film critic Rex Reed opined "They gave the Oscar to the wrong Truman Capote" and "In Infamous a diminutive actor with a titanic talent named Toby Jones literally becomes the man himself". I agree 100%. Infamous plays on Cinemax Tueday June 11th @ 11:15 am pacific time and is well worth watching/recording   

Owning Mahowny was pretty good.

I just saw Olympus Has Fallen.

It had some pretty good action. Kim Jong Il would've loved this movie. It is cheesy but the action makes up for it. Morgan Freeman is president so that is always good.

Oddly enough I just saw Pulp Fiction for the first time. I'm not the biggest fan of Tarrentino movies, but this is one of his best ones for sure. It sure gets weird at the end.

recorded the three Swedish "The Girl" movies and watched their The Girl with Dragon Tatto last night. ex for the subtitles being somewhat of a pain (BUT at least they were readable), I thought it was MUCH better acted, esp by Michael Nyqvist as Blomkvist and Noomi Rapace as "The Girl" Lisbeth, than the 2011 American remake with Daniel Craig and skanky Rooney Mara BUT the plot IS overly long @ 150 minutes and really doesn't get into the real investigation until the 2nd half. as far as I'm concerned, they could have done away with all the "Lizbeth being abused and raped by her "legal guardian" bunk and NOT changed the basic plot at all. to me, that was just "filler"

looking forward to viewing the other two and once again, thanks for the heads up, silksticks99

Dredd (2012) = absolute waste of time. "oodles of ordnance" BUT even that gets boring it's so constant. tried for a "Blade Runner" style and completely failed. found myself "paging thru" more than half. it's been running on EPIX channels recently IF you want to turn your brain off for 95 minutes

watched the last two of the "Millennium Trilogy", The
Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest last night and both were excellent BUT, like Dragon Tattoo, a bit long. seem like in all three movies it's 2 hours of "set up" and 30 minutes of rushed "putting it all together" at the end. even with that I think all three are excellent mysteries and worth watching. fun to see how Lizbeth and here lawyer make monkeys out of the prosecution AND set up both the blond "feel no pain" villian and the biker gang at the end of Hornet's Nest   

MGM and Columbia would have been better off to just buy the 2009 The Girl with Dragon Tatto Swedish production and "dub" it into English rather than spending $90 million on that half baked 2011 Daniel Craig and skanky Rooney Mara remake. both Michael Nyqvist as Blomkvist and Noomi Rapace as "The Girl" Lisbeth were MUCH better in the Swedish version.

too bad Stieg Larsson is no longer around to write some more mysteries like these three   

I wouldn't say I liked Judge Dredd, but I thought it was at least watchable (not saying much). Apparently, the comic was pretty violent, so the film lived up to that. That was refreshing with all the PG-13 comic book movies around. The SloMo drug was kind of a cool idea. The plot was pretty bland and redundant. 

I'm thinking about renting the Abraham Lincoln Vampire movie from the RedBox. Probably need to get a bit loose beforehand.

I'm thinking about renting the Abraham Lincoln Vampire movie from the RedBox. Probably need to get a bit loose beforehand

I was VERY sceptical about even recording the movie BUT it turned of to be a pretty good action flick and, like I said before, I thought that Benjamin Walker was excellent as Abraham Lincoln   

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002) pretty good biographical film depicting the life of popular game show host and producer Chuck Barris, who claimed to have had a double life as a CIA assassin . stars Sam Rockwell as Chuck Barris and Drew Barrymore as Penny his long time (and long suffering) girlfriend. bit parts by George Clooney the CIA agent who supposedly recruited Burris, Julia Roberts as his alleged CIA "handler" and Rutger Hauer as West German spy who does a "job" with him.

for geezers like me that remember shows like The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game and The Gong Show it's kind of a "trip down memory lane" as there were cuts from them throughout. I was kind of left with WAS the guy actually living a double life OR was it all just in his head? in any case I thought it was entertaining  

don't bother. you will be disappointed. not nearly as well acted as the Swedish Dragon Tattoo. Daniel Craig is OK as Blomkvist BUT skanky Rooney Mara is no where close to Noomi Rapace as "The Girl" Lisbeth in the Swedish version 

Crank: High Voltage (2009) VERY entertaining "action comedy" with Jason Statham as "bad guy hero" Chev Chelios. really fast paced and absolutely hilarious as the violence is SO outlandish it's almost like watching a Road Runner cartoon. sight gags of Chelios trying to "recharge" are pee your pants funny. the original 2006 Crank was good. this one even better. I can never NOT watch this when it's on TV.  runs just over 90 minutes. has Jason Statham ever made a BORING action movie? it's on the Independent Film Channel (IFC) again Saturday June 15th @ 5:00 pm and 9:30 pm pacific time   

I've heard people say they hate the Crank movies...I thought they were a crazy fun ride.

(I thought Corey Haims small role in the second one was pretty excellent...Then he died like 2 days after I saw it. That dude had real chops and was due for a comeback.)

Total Recall (2012) plot is loosely based on the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie BUT with the conflict between rival factions of "the United Federation of Britain" (UFB) and "the Colony" (Australia) rather than on colonized Mars. stars Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel. like the original, this one has a LOT of "plot twists". even though it runs a little long @ almost 2 hours, it's pretty much non-stop action with "oodles of ordnance" and outstanding CGI. was on STARZ channels recently and plays again on Starz-Black again Saturday June 15th @ 4:00 am amd 7:00 pm pacific. unfortunately Starz-Black is usually 3x4 "skinnyscope"  

also watched Copying Beethoven (2006) which is a fictionalized version of the last three years of the great Ludwig van's life where a woman "copyist" helps him complete his 9th Symphony. Beethoven is played by Ed Harris and the copyist is played by classic German beauty Diane Kruger. VERY well acted by all involved esp Harris and Kruger. after seeing this version of Beethoven, even though it is "stylized", I think Harris is an even better Beethoven then Gary Oldman was in the 1994 Immortal Beloved and he was outstanding

GREAT acting and GREAT music IF you are a fan of Ludwig van. one of the best acted movies I have seen in quite awhile and worth watching even IF you are NOT a fan of classical music. it plays on EPIX3 again Friday June 14th @ 1:00 pm pacific   

Marvel's The Avengers (2012) well they put all the characters from the Captain America, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and Thor movies together, threw in the standard "Earth being invaded" plot and made a "action" movie with oodles of ornance. critics loved it and it made a load of $$$ BUT it got kind of repetetive. DID have a couple of good scenes like with old Harry Dean Stanton doing a cameo as a security guard when the Hulk crashes into an abandoned factory that was pretty funny AND the Hulk "rag dolling" the villian Loki near the ending. 

you like the other Marvel Comics movies, you will probably enjoy this one. personally I didn't like it as well as the recently viewed "action" movies like Total Recall, which at least had some interesting "plot twists", OR some of the other Marvel movies like Thor (2011) which could have been taken from the plot of Wagner's "Ring Cycle"