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Friday the 13th (2009)

Basic plot: A serial killer violently murders a bunch of teenagers.

Somewhat to my own shame, the only original Friday the 13th movies I’ve seen are the first one, the sixth one, and Freddy vs. Jason, plus highlight clips from most of the rest. It’s a series I’ve been meaning to watch in its entirety for a looooong time (particularly since I knocked out the entire Elm Street series last November), but I just haven’t had the opportunity. Regardless, I like what I have seen. Including this new one.

From my personal experience with the series, it seems like a slasher film in its simplest form. It’s not trying to be super clever like Freddy might be or disturbing, torture gore like Saw or Hostel. It’s just quick brutal violence on teens that should know better than to visit abandoned camp grounds. Granted, keeping in theme with most new horror movies, the gore IS way above and beyond what I remember seeing in any of the other kills I’ve watched from the series, but it still keeps the fast pace with it. The kills range from weak to pretty damn awesome. One scene involving a machete through the floorboards kept me on my toes ANY time the movie went to a close up of feet, and a handful of other kills made the movie as a whole well worth watching as a horror fan.

The story is bare bones, but it has no need to be anything more than that. The first twenty minutes revolve around some college kids on a camping trip and the rest of the movie revolves around a group of college kids on vacation at a lake house. There’s also some guy looking for his “missing” sister, but all of the above seems pretty trivial when the only reason anybody is going to watch this movie to begin with is to see which characters might still be alive at the end of the movie, or more importantly, how the rest are going to bite it. One story aspect of it that was pretty cool was the evolution of Jason, from his mother’s story to the bag-mask to the hockey mask.

When all was said and done, I felt like the movie absolutely met my expectations. It’s got all the slasher movie cliches and brought them out in high volume: sex, drugs, alcohol, and violence are all accounted for multiple time over. The cast is 95% made up of people you don’t mind watching die, just as it should be. You might recognize a couple of the faces, but it really doesn’t matter. You’re only there to watch them die, performance quality be damned.

I heartily enjoyed it and will definitely be grabbing it for my collection someday. I just want to buy all the originals first.

He’s Just Not That Into You (2009)

Basic plot: People explore love in Baltimore.

He’s Just Not That Into You is essentially of a far more cynical version of 2003’s Love Actually - which is probably my second favorite romantic comedy of all time (just behind When Harry Met Sally). You’ve got roughly twenty thousand characters (or, you know, 16 or so) whose paths intersect in various ways, making the plot a fun little puzzle to try to put together as you gradually learn who knows who and how. All of these people are attractive enough and the stories are interesting enough to warrant individual movies on at least half of them, but the select collage of the most important scenes makes the movie seem far more rewarding that seven separate movies ever would have been.

Where Love Actually was borderline fairytale, lovey-dovey with some of its stories, Not That Into You seems considerably more down on love for the majority of the time. Ignoring 90% of romantic comedy cliches, most of Not That Into You feels like a girly version of Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau’s Swingers as women try to break down the “rules” about dating only to find that there aren’t really any. Fortunately, the female cast looks great and the guys are mostly the one’s that normally play sarcastic assholes, which makes this considerably more bearable than say…Sex in the City or Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood (neither of which I’ve seen or particularly plan to) as far as “get in the woman’s head” movies go.

Ginnifer Goodwin is absolutely adorable, and it’s impossible not to pity her character’s inability to not do practically everything wrong. I really hope she gets more movies in the future. Drew Barrymore doesn’t seem to have aged too well recently, but her character’s story was entertaining, so I liked it. Jennifer Aniston is surprisingly likeable here considering her circumstance seems like it would make her more whiny when she plays it fairly mellow, and Jennifer Connelly is a victim of her own bitchiness. Scarlett Johanssen is a whore.

Justin Long is slowly becoming one of my favorite B-list actors, just because he seems like someone I’d easily hang out with and so do most of the guys he plays. I don’t watch Entourage so I’m not overly familiar with Kevin Connolly, but he seems likeable enough. Ben Affleck is awesome in my book regardless of what anyone says - Chasing Amy and Good Will Hunting have earned him a permanent spot on my list of hated actors I will always defend. Bradley Cooper is a douchebag - which is funny in movies like The Hangover or Wedding Crashers, but in this one, there wasn’t really anything to like about him.

For a chick flick with a 2 hour 10 minute runtime, I’ve gotta be honest: I was never bored with it. Between the solid casting, the amusing anecdotes, and the interesting stories, it’s one I’ll be adding to my collection someday. I have no idea when since it didn’t blow me away like Love Actually, but if I was going to have to watch a romcom, this is up there on the list. It’s good enough that I didn’t even feel a little bit weird for watching it alone and on my own time without anyone making me. I’d recommend it.

Rachel Getting Married (2008)

Basic plot: Rachel is getting married. Kim just got out of rehab.

It took me way longer than I had originally planned to get around to the latest trade-off with Lauren due to still adjusting to a dog and whathaveyou, but slowly I’m getting back into a schedule that should allow for increasingly more regular reviews. Lauren got to watch Lars and the Real Girl this time.

Rachel Getting Married showed up on countless Top Ten lists for 2008, but having seen it now, I honestly cannot figure out for the life of me why that would be. Granted, a few aspects are truly brilliant, but it wasn’t nearly enough to make it worth two hours. First, the good: The acting is excellent - as in, some of the best I’ve ever seen. Between the perfect acting and the non-stop handheld it literally feels like you’re just watching a documentary. Sadly, I think this is also the root of the movie’s biggest weakness for me.

Have you ever been around a bunch of family members for the holidays and been sitting in the room when a huge argument starts? It’s awkward. It’s not fun. It’s not somewhere that I want to be. 50% of Rachel Getting Married captures that exact feeling flawlessly. The character’s have issues with each other and it was all just too real for me. I watch movies to be entertained - maybe with a scene of drama here and there - and the arguments that these characters had made me want to leave the room - because that’s what I would do in real life. It’s not my argument, I don’t have a place watching it. It’s also not a huge help that neither Rachel or Kim are particularly likeable.

The other 50% of the movie requires that you absolutely, positively LOVE weddings. As in, you need to love weddings to the extent that you will happily watch every single aspect of one without even knowing the couple getting married. I do not fit that bill. I get bored with weddings for people I know, so most of this movie never stood a chance with me. As I stated earlier, the movie has a very defining documentary feel to it, but that doesn’t mean I want to watch five people I don’t know give toasts to other people I don’t know or watch people listen to music for ten minutes straight.

If I liked weddings and extreme family drama, this probably would’ve done better, but I don’t. The incredible acting wasn’t enough to keep from shifting between being bored out of my mind with the wedding aspects and extremely uncomfortable with the family drama.

Not a fan, but I’m clearly not the target demographic.

Away We Go (2009)

Basic plot: A couple finds out they’re expecting a baby and travel the country trying to find a place to move.

I don’t even remember when I first saw the trailer for Away We Go, but it immediately jumped onto my list of must-see movies. This morning I realized that three weeks after its limited release on June 5th, it  had finally come to Wilmington - albeit at the shittiest theater in town (of two). But a crappy theater was better than no theater, so I made plans to see it as soon as possible with a friend from work that seemed just as eager to check it out as I was.

Earlier this year, Sam Mendes crushed my soul with Revolutionary Road - which is essentially a movie about how love doesn’t exist and how life stays awful once it turns awful. Yes, on a technical level it’s incredible, but when I say it crushed my soul, I’m not exaggerating. I’ve never felt that depressed after a movie. Mendes owed me one, and Away We Go was his chance to make it up to me; to earn back the faith that had first been earned by 1999’s American Beauty.

Mission f*cking accomplished.

Away We Go officially just took its place as my favorite movie of the year. Star Trek may have been a crazy-entertaining Summer blockbuster and Up may have been a roaring success on technical, financial, and emotional levels, but Away We Go was simplicity perfected. I haven’t enjoyed a movie in theaters like this since I first saw Slumdog Millionaire.

The movie isn’t terribly high concept, nor does it fall into any real stereotypes. It’s a love story, though not in the sense that you watch the love grow so much as they remove the set-up and just get straight into the couple themselves. This isn’t a romance movie; it’s a movie about love. Where Revolutionary Road obliterated every ideal I ever had on the subject, Away We Go reinforced them - that love isn’t just about candlelit dinners, snappy one-liners, or even necessarily a wedding ring so much as it is communication and trust.

The cast here is fantastic. John Krasinski steals the show, but he’s heartily backed by Maya Rudolph as our leading lady. Krasinski sports a full beard, glasses, and shaggy hair - barely making him recognizable as “that guy from The Office” - which was good. It wasn’t distracting as I wasn’t constantly thinking “Hey, that’s Jim.” Likewise, I never really watched SNL whenever Maya Rudolph was on it, so it was easy for her to fall perfectly into her character.

The rest of the cast consists of just-above-cameo sized roles, with quite a few recognizable faces. Jeff Daniels, Catherine O’Hara, Allison Janney (the mom from Juno), Jim Gaffigan, and Maggie Gyllenhaal all do great with what little camera time they have, largely thanks to an excellent script. The cinematography isn’t jolting, but with characters this colorful it has no need to be. Another interesting thing to point out is that the cast is 0% reliable on Hollywood good looks. That’s not to say the cast is ugly, but no one seemed remotely dolled up to draw in the teenage audience because that isn’t what this movie is about.

My only disappointment when I walked out of the theater was that I would have to wait a couple months until I would be able to pick up the DVD and rewatch it whenever I wanted. I’ll buy this on release. I absolutely loved it.

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Please know that the movie is rated R for a reason. There’s quite a bit of language and some of the conversations are decidedly mature, but I’d say it’s pretty far from obscene. It’s just how real people talk. If you’re hyper-sensitive to swearing, prepare yourself accordingly. I didn’t think it was excessive about it, but it’s not shy either.

Marley & Me (2008)

Basic plot: A biopic about a dog and his owners.

Last Tuesday, I adopted a dog - a beautiful cocker spaniel/black lab mutt that I’ve named Daisy Ellen. Around that same time, Marley & Me “mysteriously” jumped to the top of my Netflix Queue (okay, I put it there), but since Daisy is JUST now starting to mellow out, I haven’t had time to watch it until last night. A friend from work came over with her beagle Roxy, which ended up making this two hour movie about two and a half hours just because it wasn’t quite clear exactly HOW vigorous Roxy and Daisy would allow their play fight to become.

The movie is based on an autobiographical book by John Grogan. Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston star as John and his wife Jenny, who decide to get a dog because they aren’t quite ready for children. As time passes, the movie follows both the couple and dog’s evolution through life. Owen Wilson is a fun actor to watch and I’ve been a fan of Jennifer Aniston ever since Friends, so the cast worked for me. Granted, John was apparently a whiny bitch about his job from time to time (seriously, how hard is it to write two 600 word columns per week), and Jenny has some weird mood swings as well, but at the end of the day, they seem like a pretty relateable suburban couple.

Marley & Me is a movie made for dog lovers. Unlike the puppy adventure movies of the 90s (Homeward Bound, Beethoven, Airbud, etc.), Marley & Me isn’t an unrealistically epic journey. There’s no villain nor does the dog talk. He’s just a dog. Although both the movie and it’s source material seem determined to call Marley the worst dog in the world, the reality of it seems to be that he just has terrible owners.

It’s actually sort of refreshing to have a solid comedy/drama about raising a dog rather than another children’s movie that relies on goofy cartoony humor to keep the kiddies giggling. However, as I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Marley & Me is a story about the dog’s whole life, and anyone that can put two and two together should know where that’s going to leave things come the closing credits. I was forewarned to get the tissues ready, and while it was really sad, it didn’t sting as much as I had prepared myself for. Maybe I would’ve felt it a little harder if Daisy hadn’t been having SUCH a good time with her playmate that I had to pause the movie every twenty minutes to make sure they weren’t playing too rough. A little of the movie’s natural momentum might’ve suffered as a result, but certainly not enough to keep me from knowing I really enjoyed it.

Marley & Me will definitely make its way into my collection eventually, possibly for as much as $10. If you like dogs, I heartily recommend it.

Eagle vs Shark (2007)

Basic plot: Less attractive, awkward people can fall in love too.

Despite the title, this is not a prequel to Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. Where Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus was a monster movie, not to mention one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen in my life, Eagle vs Shark is more like Napoleon Dynamite: R Rated Edition and it was actually really entertaining.

The film comes from New Zealand and proves that, despite Black Sheep’s best efforts, Peter Jackson is not necessarily the only good thing to ever come out of that country. Just like Napoleon Dynamite, Eagle vs Shark is not a movie you’re going to watch for the eye candy. It’s a movie solely about weird people that don’t realize how weird they are, which sets up some incredibly amusing moments, many of which had me laughing out loud as I watched by myself.

Directed by Academy Award nominee Taika Waititi (nominated for his short film Two Cars, One Night), Eagle vs Shark has a little bit of style to it - although not enough to save it from seeming like another quirky indie movie. Waititi seems to channel Michel Gondry on at least a few occasions, which makes for an interesting mix to the Napoleon Dynamite feel.

The cast stars Jemaine Clement, from Flight of the Concords, as the main “joke” deliverer (i.e. awkward moment creator), but the central character is Loren Horsley - who according to her Wiki is best know for… Eagle vs Shark. I’ve certainly never seen her in anything else, but she works perfectly here as the story’s  driving Ugly Duckling (yes, this actually has something resembling a story). The rest of the cast, as previously mentioned, is equally awkward - although completely oblivious to that fact.

On the one hand, I have mixed feelings about these kind of movies because a part of me always pities the characters for being so socially unstable, but when you consider the world they’re living in, they actually seem to be the norm. There were still a couple moments where all I could think was, “Aw, poor whatsherface” but considering when all was said and done she was more content and optistimic than I have a tendency to be, who am I to judge and have pity?

If you enjoyed Napoleon Dynamite and don’t mind a little R-rated content here and there, definitely give it a watch. I had a really, really good time with it and I’ll definitely be picking it up if I can find it for $5 or less. If you were one of the people that hated Napoleon Dynamite, then do not give this a second thought. This style of humor certainly isn’t for everyone, but I’m a big fan of a variety of comedy types and this happens to be one of them.

Four Rooms (1995)

Basic plot: Four directors tell four different stories, all in the same hotel with the same bellhop (Tim Roth).

Quentin Tarantino is one of my favorite writer/directors of all time. Gradually, I’m planning to play catch-up on his less popular stuff, and Four Rooms was apparently at the top of my Netflix Queue unbeknownst to me. Four Rooms has quite the auteur complex, as four writer/directors put four (relatively) short films together to create one movie. Regrettably, only two of the auteurs are particularly good at what they do.

The first of the four films is by director Alison Anders, whom I’m sure you’ve never heard of for good reason. This first short revolves around a coven of witches trying to cast some sort of spell, but one of the girls forgot to get the semen, so they turn to the bellboy for help. The whole thing was absolutely awful. Madonna sucks and while I generally like Valeria Golino (Hot Shots, Rain Man), none of the characters are interesting or matter. Not even Tim Roth could save this one.

The second short is by director Alexandre Rockwell, whom, again, you’re not going to recognize, nor should you. The story revolves around the bellhop mistakenly going into the wrong room where he is accused of having an affair with one of the guests wife. This one was a couple notches better than the short before it, mainly in the cinematography department, but considering there are only three actors the entire time, two of them are really weak. Tim Roth steals the show, but it’s not much of a show to be stealing. Halfway through this I was really regretting renting the movie at all.

The third short is by Robert Rodrguez who is both insane and awesome. Planet Terror was the better half of Grindhouse, Sin City is one of the most badass movies ever, and the Mariachi Trilogy are just fun. Rodriguez knows what he’s doing and he shows here once again. This time the plot finds the bellhop baby sitting two evil little kids for a Hispanic mob boss played by Antonio Banderas. This whole bit was awesome.

The finale is the reason I ever put the movie on my queue in the first place - Quentin Tarantino writes, directs and acts. The plot includes a drunken movie star staying in the penthouse with a couple friends and glows with classic QT dialogue. Once again, this is brilliant. Tarantino is out of his mind, but the man is a genius. Between this and Rodriguez’ short, I went from hating the movie to it being a title I’ll definitely end up owning someday.

Beware the first two if you decide to check it out, but for me, the second two completely made up for the weak start with a wholly excellent finish. Also, Tim Roth rules.

Frost/Nixon (2008)

Basic plot: British talk show host David Frost gives President Nixon his first television interview since his resignation.

Going into this, I was expecting one of the most boring movies of the year. Afterall, it’s a movie about a television interview. Doesn’t that seem slightly redundant to anyone else? Like writing a book about short story, it just didn’t seem like a necessary concept. At best, it seemed like it should’ve just been a documentary about the actual players involved recalling the historical interview, but instead we essentially get a reenactment of a documentary randomly sandwiched in between a full-blown reenactment of the interviews interspersed with a reenactment of what may have happened before, after, and between the interviews. So sort of like a political version of Adaptation except slow and dull.

Regrettably, my expectation for one of the most boring movies of the year wasn’t far off. Just to set things up fair and square I’ll admit right out that I barely have an interest in modern politics let alone politics from before I was born. I’m very opinionated and I’ll vote for whoever seems to most closely agree with me on things, but generally speaking I do not keep up with these sort of things currently when they actually effect me, so I certainly don’t know anything about how they worked 15 years before I would ever say my first words.

All “Watergate” means to me is “Bad president”. If you asked me to explain to you what happened during the whole Watergate scandal, I’d probably end up giving you the run down of what happened in that one scene in Forrest Gump and then try to pretend that The Watchmen was a documentary and slowly diverge off into talking about how badass Rorschach is. I wouldn’t know where to begin with explaining why it was such a huge disappointment to America. “Watergate” = “Bad President” is all I ever really cared to know. Just enough to pick up on the less detailed references to it.

In one sense, I suppose that’s the entire point of this movie since THAT is the exact legacy that Nixon ended up leaving behind, but just the same it also means I didn’t really care about the first 75% of the movie at all. The movie ended up having a little more depth to it than I was expecting - since I initially thought it would just be a 2 hour interview. In reality, it’s more about David Frost’s struggle to corner Nixon into what he wanted him to say. Also in reality, this wasn’t a dynamic I was particularly interested in.

I get what it was trying to do and the performances really are spectacular. I would’ve been perfectly happy if Frank Langella had taken Best Actor for his portayal of Richard Nixon, or even if Sam Rockwell or Kevin Bacon had snuck their way into Best Supporting Actor nominations. All of the acting here is stellar. All of it. There wasn’t a single character I felt was miscast (again, admitedly knowing nothing about the actual events).

However, that’s where the impressiveness stops. The fact that this got a Best Picture nomination blows my mind. The direction, cinematography, and even the writing - considering that even the original stageplay writer still had half is work done for him by the real, recorded interviews - don’t seem particularly worthy of praise. People gave The Reader crap for being the “odd choice”, but I’d rewatch that any given day over this snoozefest that happens to have great acting.

If you’re a huge fan of last millenium’s politics, maybe this will hold more water(gate?) for you than it did for me, but as it stands I can’t think of one single person I would openly recommend this to that isn’t a film graduate - and even then the only reason I’d recommend it to the film grads is because it is technically a Best Picture nominee. If you want a prime suspect for why so many Americans couldn’t care less about the Academy Awards, this is a glowing example of pretentious, slow burning drama that 90% of the country would simply not enjoy and thus choose to ignore other no-name nominees assuming similar outcomes.

As a film snob, I’ll still admit that it’s technically a good movie, but I’m not in any hurry to watch it again. Possibly ever. Not that I’m remotely bitter about watching it to begin with; it’s just a “one time is enough” movie that’s good to watch to appreciate the performances and easy to leave behind after that.

Check it out if you already had an interest prior to reading this. If you didn’t have a prior interest, you won’t be missing much if you continue to maintain that stance.

Mudhoney (1965)

Basic plot: HAHAHA (see the 1:03 mark of the trailer) - during the Great Depression!

About a week and a half ago one of my co-workers loaned this to me, saying that as a film-lover I needed to see it. Russ Meyer is one of the original sexploitation directors, if not the original sexploitation director. Paving the way for 70s grindhouse movies, Mudhoney features bizarre characters, a barely there plot, and boobies - all shot in black and white on a shoestring budget.

When I first got this last week, I started it up and decided about ten minutes into it that it would be better either drunk, with friends, or drunk with friends, so I turned it off and put it on hold. Fortunately, last night I was invited to a bar that’s about three blocks from my house, which meant I was able to have a few beers with a little company (since I refuse to drink alone) with plenty of time to walk home with a nice buzz going.

Enter Mudhoney.

I’m not even sure where to start with this movie. I could start with story, I suppose, but I’m not even sure how to adequately describe it. It’s not simple enough to break down to a single, sensible sentence nor is it complex enough to break down around a sensible paragraph. From what I could gather, some wandering farm hand falls in love with his employer’s wife, who still seems to have some sort of misplaced care for her husband based solely on the logic that “he’s still my husband” (nevermind that the motherf*cker awkwardly rapes her 10 minutes into the movie - which is the first of about three attempted rapes by this dude). So, in the midst of the least believable love story since the Twilight movie, we have an array of characters whose main purpose seems to be trying their damndest to stretch this into 90 minutes.

We’ve got such colorful characters as Toothless Old Woman, Super Horny Blonde with Boobs #1, Super Horny Blonde with Boobs #2, Senseless Wife that Also Happens to Be a Blonde with Boobs, Brunette with Boobs (just in case you thought this a one-note movie), Guy With Beard, Insane Preacher, Rapist Husband, Boring Old Man, and Captain Boringhero. All of these characters’ interactions very rarely progress towards anything of importance, and half them seem as gratuitous as the oddly placed nip-slips.

Speaking of which, you may have noticed a theme: Cleavage is a big casting decision for all females roles that aren’t Toothless Old Woman. Is it sexist and/or terrible? Not to Russ Meyer. The cover of the DVD case (not pictured) makes this look and sound like a full-blown porn, but surprisingly it wasn’t. Boobs randomly come and go for no other reason than to have something to cover up in the marketing campaign to make it seem racy as all hell, but in reality I’d say it’s more racy as all purgatory than anything. No sex, just boobs. And maybe an implied or attempted rape here and there (rape in this instance mostly means forced kissing - or maybe a drowning).

In the end, I’m glad I saw it just because as odd and technically terrible as it may be from every aspect - it’s a part of film history. Not exactly a proud part of film history, but neither is Twilight and I still watched that (god I f*cking hate that movie). Mudhoney is from an era and cultural minority with minimal expectations (much like Twilight). I laughed a lot, and between the beer buzz and the boobs, I wasn’t horrifically bored. Don’t watch it sober, but if you want to say you’ve seen a movie where they juxtapose an mob-style execution with a girl playing with a kitten while her tits are hanging out (symbolism!?), then this is your best shot.

I will probably never watch it again, but I’m glad I saw it once.

Chicago (2002)

Basic plot: A woman goes to jail for murder. Singing follows.

The latest trade-off with Lauren found me watching this 2002 Best Picture winner. Lauren gets to watch American Beauty, 1999’s Best Picture winner, in return.

Honestly, the only reason I was interested in seeing Chicago at all was because it was a Best Picture winner. Nevermind the fact that I do generally enjoy musicals, this one just didn’t seem appealing to me. Now that I’ve seen it, I’m not sure why my interest was so low.

It had a lot going for it that I certainly had no reason to complain about. Catherine Zeta-Jones is one of the most beautiful women in the entire world, I’ve loved Renee Zellweger since Jerry Maguire, and Richard Gere seems like he’d be a pretty cool guy. The best excuse I can come up with is that the 1920’s and 30’s seem sort of boring to me - largely due to the first hour of Peter Jackson’s King Kong. But that’s another discussion for another post.

Chicago was fantastic. Very, very much to my surprise, there wasn’t a single element of it that I didn’t like. Even Queen Latifa, who I have a record of hating, was great. The music is both catchy and brilliantly layered to fit the Jazz Age setting, but what sells the whole thing is the smart storytelling.

Unlike most musicals where the characters randomly start singing and everyone around them inexplicably knows all of the choreography and lyrics, Chicago has all the musical bits essentially exist only in the characters’ minds as imaginary Vaudeville numbers to coincide with the traditionally filmed story.

The contrast between these two makes for a stunning transition between the fiction and “reality”. Compared to the murky lighting that follows the “real” scenes in the jail or courtroom, the colors from the alternative pop in ways that could even put Moulin Rouge to shame. The cinematography on both ends of things is equally gorgeous, whether it’s using every vibrant shade of red it can or whether the focus seems to be on showing how unhappy a holding cell can be.

Furthermore, I loved the cast. Renee Zellweger, who always seemed to win more based on her personality than anything, actually looks really, really pretty here, and she fits the time period better than anyone else in the cast. As I already mentioned, Catherine Zeta-Jones is as gorgeous as ever, and Richard Gere completely rocks it as the smug lawyer that doesn’t seem to care much about anything at all outside of winning. John C. Reilly and Queen Latifa also make for an excellent supporting cast.

The closest I could come to a complaint on this is that it has slightly twisted morals since you’re essentially rooting for the success of a murderer who cheated on her husband, but given the time period, I didn’t really care. Horrible as it may technically be, I can’t help but feel like that’s just how the 20s worked. Everyone wanted money; everyone wanted fame. All of the other elements work so outstandingly perfect together, that it’s easy to overlook the moral discrepancies in the name of entertainment. It is just a movie - and a great one at that.

I liked this movie a whole lot. It may find its way into my DVD collection as soon as this month.