Friday, May 14, 2010
Film Your Weekend at the Movies, Giving to the Rich
Posted by Jesse Hassenger on Fri, May 14, 2010 at 9:13 AM
- Bugs Bunny was the best Robin Hood.
Actually, this sounds right up Ridley Scott's alley, and by the way, I think it's about time everyone admits that maybe the fact that Ridley Scott directed both Alien and Blade Runner is more coincidence than product of extraordinary vision. Also, Ridley Scott/Russell Crowe is pretty much the least interesting actor/director relationship of the past decade. Forget Clooney/Soderbergh, DiCaprio/Scorsese, Depp/Burton; Scott/Crowe barely measures up to Smith/Affleck. Given all that, I will still see Robin Hood, mainly because I share an apartment with someone who says there's basically no such thing as a bad Robin Hood movie, and secondarily because Cate Blanchett is awesome.
Letters to Juliet: Amanda Seyfried has mastered the art of playing high school, but most of her twentysomething roles thus far feel like the choices of a moony teenager: Mamma Mia, Dear John, and now this wan romance with nary a moment that would seem inappropriate for the Hannah Montana crowd (is the Hannah Montana crowd still called that? I am so old). You can read my full review if you're truly curious about what this entails. I guess it's a more harmless bit of spoonfeeding than Nicholas Sparks could whip up (and includes, all told, a far less ridiculous treatment of epistolary romance!), but I wish Seyfried could find the adult equivalent of her work in Veronica Mars, Mean Girls, Jennifer's Body, etc. So far, her 2010 champion movie is Chloe, less by virtue of her nudity (though there's that) than the fact that she doesn't come off like a seventeen-year-old's fantasy of grown-up life (well, maybe a seventeen-year-old dude with some healthy pretensions).
Just Wright: No-nonsense Queen Latifah (is there any other kind? Although, I should say, for a no-nonsense persona, Latifah sure appears in a lot of, you know, utter nonsense) falls for her physical therapy patient, a basketball star played by marginally successful rapper Common. The reviews haven't been good, but the trailers make it look marginally tolerable, or maybe I just saw Letters to Juliet and am hungry for any romance not based in letter-writing and falling in love after a single kiss.
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