don't quit your day job, mandy... oops.

a case study on how not to have [on-screen] chemistry with john krasinski (which up until this point, i believed to be impossible) well done mandy moore.

license to wed :: c+ (+ for john, who was the only saving grace)

awake? asleep? somewhere in between.

WARNING SPOILERS THROUGHOUT THIS REVIEW

have you ever (for all intents and purposes) died, had your mother kill herself, tell you in limbo to go back and get the fuckers that killed you, and then come back from the dead and did just that? no? well i have. you should try it sometime. its kind of trippy. but not really.

first off... the main focus of the poster (to your right) is the overexposed jessica alba, who is... not the main character! she is nicer to look at than hayden christensen but shes not the main character! yesh. studios will do anything to get people to see a movie these days. (just like in 'once upon a time in mexico'... salma hayek was on the poster and like 2nd billed but was only in the movie for 5 minutes. i'm not kidding.) next you'll see "starring brad pitts foot!" and then in minuscule writing "for 5 seconds!" people will line up for that shit. star power is all the power you need to manipulate the masses.

ok on to the actual movie. awake. the only reason i saw this movie was because we talked about it in my philosophy class last semester. well we talked about anesthetic awareness to be exact. blah blah blah are you really unconscious while under anesthesia blah blah blah how do anaesthetised people know what was said in the room after they wake up? blah blah blah. philosophical mindfucks like that.

ok! jeez. i am not on the ball tonight. awake! semi-predictable and mostly unbelievable. i definitely think that anesthetic awareness is a real phenomenon. but having your mother kill herself so that you can have her healthy heart, meeting her in limbo to discuss future business plans, and then pulling through only to find out your fiancee is a greedy double crossing bitch? no ones life is that fucked up.

the movie was entertaining. you got me there. the acting was descent. jessica and terrence are very good in their respective roles and even haydens' tortured screams are convincing. the plot was just a little far-fetched. there were some philosophical and psychological undertones but not enough to overshadow the "yeah right" factor(s). lena olin is an amazing actress and she does matriarchal bitch/loving mother very well. i'm not really going to talk about hayden. he's not a good actor. he's not attractive. he got lucky with the star wars role. and probably got this role because no other actor wanted it. he does play a rich priss convincingly at times. but he is inconsistent. and that bothers me.

got an hour and a half to kill? want something that will make you think a little? (i stress the "little") awake might be for you.

awake :: b-

john krasinski can tackle me anytime

i could make a lot of inappropriate comments about the picture to your right but i'm going to keep it clean.

i thought george was satisfactory and did an overall good job at directing and acting. (i always think thats a little presumptuous though. you can be an actor and director but not at the same time. you are really just monopolizing the movie and its creativity at that point. whatever. make as much money as you can i guess.) i always like seeing mr. clooney on the big screen. he's so handsome and talented. he has that old hollywood randy gentleman thing going on. dodges' cockiness and charm were traits that would have been wholly unbelievable had someone else been in the role. there were times when i thought george was just a touch too old for the role and a little bit too old to be going for a girl lexies age.

did not like renee in this role! i thought it was a huge miscast and would have liked to see someone with a little more natural sex appeal instead. lexie was a well written character but i did not enjoy renees interpretation of her. i think that renees delivery was wooden and the only way she fit lexie was in physical looks.

now on to john. oh jkras! imdb should never have told me you grew up where my brother now goes to college. i will stalk you like a corn field, lover! ahem. love love love carter! loved his character, his looks, and his personality. you go through the whole movie thinking he's a great guy. perfect and charming and all golden boyish only to discover that he has faults. just like everyone else. which makes him even more endearing.

at first i thought all three of the main characters were over exaggerated, sometimes comically. but i grew into it quickly and enjoyed their (oft unrealistically) quick banter and innuendos. i think the characters were supposed to appear that way to show the fanatical nature of the time period. alcohol makes some people misbehave... lets ban everyone from drinking! credit cards allow me to pay later... let charge everything! see what i mean? man i love the 20's.

its rare that i like a sports movie, but this one was more about the people and circumstances surrounding the game. a good date movie. football and manliness for the boys and eye candy and romance for the ladies. comedic joy for both!

leatherheads - B

always be prepared!

i like my men lean... but emile, honey, you're a fucking cadaver. literally. seeing poor emaciated emile made me appreciate the [extra] meat i have on my bones.

i liked the message of the movie. sometimes you have to die to really live. depressing, i know, but really i felt like his whole journey, his whole life was leading up to his death. the movie kind of worked backwards for me. after graduation he seemed dead and lifeless, and little by little he became more alive and almost more naive with each new experience. thinking that he could really honestly live off the land with no formal training in survival techniques, seemed a little foolish to me. but that's what he had to go through in order to discover himself and be "born". i really got the feeling that "this life" was a test for him and that his death was more of a birth into another life. very buddhist and om but the whole dying scene really got to me and had that air of fulfillment and completion.

on the other hand however... i got the feeling that chris (emile) was looking to die all along. he was never really truly happy until his last breath. sure he cried when he found out he was dying but he never, throughout the whole film, had a look of contentment on his face like he did on his deathbed. another reason i feel he was a closet suicide waiting to happen was because he didn't even really try to help himself once he found out he ate the poisonous plant. camping trip or not, i would have booked the hell out of there for medical assistance. immediately. it didn't feel like he was giving up, though. it was like death was a goal he was working towards unconsciously. he knew he would never be happy in this life and saw death as a reward for putting up with life.

into the wild had a few slow parts for me. i found myself wondering what this or that part had to do with anything. while these points seemed... pointless... at the end i remembered that not everything in life has a point. since this was a life story (and not an episode of lost) it was acceptable that there were a few boring parts. everyone's life has boring parts. everyone's life has some unfinished bits.

it was a nice life story. inspiring even. but reminded me of my hatred of camping which resulted in a few points being docked off.

into the wild :: B

the title says it all

the movie started off promising. the idea that the smart people are waiting to have babies until they can "afford" them combined with the red-neckers complete disregard for population control is a scary but completely plausible reality. the rest of the film was a highly unlikely exaggeration which was almost insulting at times. for instance, when luke's character talks like a normal human does today... it's called "fag talk" while everyone else just "speaks" in grunts. but maybe that's a way of saying that homosexuals are smarter than heteros. who knows. and really... would we ever elect a WWF, or whatever it's called now, wrestling dude... president? not us. but these people would. i guess when i say insulting i mean that i am offended (read: scared) that anyone would think my gene pool is capable of being such a bunch of morons.

idiocracy had its [few] funny moments. but it was mostly made up of "har-har" sex jokes. the acting was abysmal, even from luke wilson, who's usually great on screen. mya rudolph was just absolutely horrible. but dax shepard played a "retard" pretty well... but i'm not sure that's really something to be proud of.

it was a worthy attempt at depicting the degradation of our society. but the low brow humor was a little much and negated any progress the film made in terms of being taken as a serious comedy.

idiocracy: c+