Trouble With the Curve

Clint Eastwood and Amy Adams star in a picture about an aging father who’s having difficulties with his job, and has never connected well with his daughter. Together they try to work out their issues, scout a highly touted baseball prospect, and navigate her issues with work and romance.

It’s a lot of ground to cover, and the movie isn’t able to avoid the temptation to utilize simple solutions and pat resolutions. But the considerable charms of the cast make “Trouble With the Curve” a mildly enjoyable, if ultimately forgettable experience.

The 2012 Fall Movie Preview – Part I

With this weekend’s release of “The Expendables 2” and “ParaNorman”, the summer movie season is pretty much over. One weekend remains in August, and those movies wont have much room to run before school is back in session.

Nope, the season of the big blockbuster is behind us. It’s time to look ahead to the fall.

Not to despair, though, the fall brings sharp movies for the thinking movie fan. Movies which may have more selective box office appeal, but which may be some of the best movies all year.

So click through to take a look at the first part of this year’s fall preview. Today we’ll look at the last week of August, plus September, and then we’ll come back tomorrow with October and the first week of November. Together they’ll take us right up to the start of the Holiday movie season, and the November 9th release of Skyfall!

The 2011 FMR MAJOR Award Winner for Worst Director

Ok everybody, here we go!

The Worst Director of 2011! These guys weren’t hamstrung… They had decent budgets, they had big name stars, they had a chance to get it right, and they fumbled it. Each of them turned in work worthy of being labeled “hack”.

Your nominees are: Michael Bay, “Transformers: Dark of the Moon”, Clint Eastwood, “J Edgar”, Jim Sheridan, “Dream House”, Tarsem Singh, “Immortals”, and Zack Snyder, “Sucker Punch”.

Click through to find out which of these five “Won”!

The 2011 FMR MAJOR Awards: Nominees for most Disappointing Movie

To order our nominee announcement and awards presentation threads over the next couple of weeks here, I decided let’s let the “Worsts” go first, and Ladies before Gentlemen.

Thus I present to you the nominees in our first category for the inaugural FMR MAJOR Awards. The most disappointing movies of the year, all vying to be called “The Biggest Disappointment.”

In order to qualify for this category, the movie first has to have raised some degree of promise or expectation, and then have not lived up to it. “Don’t believe the hype!”

Here are the candidates for “Biggest Disappointment” of 2011.

J. Edgar

Ok, ok, ok, ok…. are you ready? Listenlistenlisten…

Snkkt. Snkkkt. Pbbbt… This is good. This is good.

I have the greatest gag in the world. I’m not even kidding. Real Ken Kesey level, Andy Kaufman, Project Mayhem type shit here. Are you ready? Listen.

Skkkhhht. LOL 😀 No seriously…

Go to Walmart or Target. Ok? Or a bike shop or a toy store or someplace ok? And buy… LOL… wait. No, wait. 😀 Buy A TRICYCLE HORN. Ok? With me? You know. A tricycle horn. Little ball at the end, you squeak it, you know the thing I mean.

And then smuggle that thing in with you to this movie, ok? Sneak that %$@#er right in. I’m not even kidding, this is BRILLIANT, ok? You OWE me if you do this. I may do this myself for real. Really, If I could stomach sitting through this &#%$ing movie again I would do this, it would kill. SO FUNNY.

Take the trike horn in with you and wait. Don’t worry, there will be PLENTY of chances. WAIT FOR IT. Ok? Give it like three quarters of the movie so that the audience is sitting with their head tilted sideways, depressed, thinking to themselves “Oh God, just @&%#ing shoot me now” (and they will) and then wait until there’s a super dramatic, over written, didactic, unscored, melodramatic, pompous, staid, heavy-handed “Moment” line with a really hyper-dramatic overbearing PAUSE right afterwards. Ok?

Right then.

**Sq-kerr!**

There is no way in this physical universe whatsoever that you do not absolutely destroy an entire crowd of people with gut wrenching laughter. You may have victims. People may die. But you would just SLAY. Ok? SLAY.People would laugh for twenty minutes straight, I am not kidding. Tears in their eyes, side-splitting, trouble stopping, full-bore belly laughing. MASS HYSTERIA. You would be the funniest person ever.

I am honestly considering doing this, I think it would be the funniest thing ever in the history of the face of the planet. For real.

Movies That Everyone Should See: “Unforgiven”

She was a comely young woman,
and not without prospects.
Therefore it was heartbreaking
to her mother that she would
enter into marriage with
William Munny, a known thief
and murderer, a man of
notoriously vicious and
intemperate disposition.

When she died, it was not at
his hands as her mother might
have expected, but of smallpox.
That was 1878.

Now showing on cable: “Hereafter”

Premiering this weekend on HBO was Clint Eastwood’s 2010 film, “Hereafter”, starring Matt Damon, Cécile de France and George McLaren.

“Hereafter” tells the story of three people who are touched by death and the afterlife in unique ways. Damon plays a psychic who can connect with the dead if he makes physical contact with a loved one. de France plays a woman who briefly “crosses over”, and McLaren plays a young boy who suddenly loses his twin brother, and has trouble coming to grips.

As one might expect of an Eastwood movie, this film is competently directed. However, it’s also overlong, slow, and frequently dull.