HousekeepingMovies

The unrewarding current cinema

By December 16, 2010No Comments

04-1

You did­n’t like How Do You Know? That’s weird,” said a friend I ran into at a party, earli­er this evening.

How so?”

Well, Karina liked it. Ella Taylor liked it.” 

What a cut-up, this fella. My review for MSN Movies is here

I also saw Tron: Legacy, which dis­ap­poin­ted in a dif­fer­ent way than the first one did, back in the day. Sigh. Review here

No Comments

  • Owain Wilson says:

    I saw the ori­gin­al Tron in the cinema when I was 6 years old and had­n’t seen it since, so me and my chums watched it again a few months back. We were taken aback at how ter­rible it was. It must be one of the clum­si­est and incom­pet­ent big stu­dio movies I’ve ever seen. To look at it’s stun­ning, but to actu­ally watch it’s an endur­ance test. No drama, no excite­ment, no ten­sion, no momentum, no nothing!
    I have a feel­ing, which I think your review con­firms, that Tron Legacy will turn out the same way.

  • Lex says:

    LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOK AT HER!!!!
    MMMMMMMMMMM WITHERSPOON POWER, WANT HER.
    YEP YEP.

  • JeffMcM says:

    Lex is still alive?

  • Glenn Kenny says:

    Alive and well it would seem. That being the case, I should say I some­what con­cur. La Reese really is cute as the pro­ver­bi­al but­ton through­out the Brooks film. Not enough to provide a sav­ing grace, but enough that it makes watch­ing seem less like torture.

  • Oliver_C says:

    Looker’ (1981), ‘Tron’ (1982) and ‘The Last Starfighter’ (1984) – all land­mark movies in the evol­u­tion of mod­ern CGI, but all also flawed and underwhelming.
    PS: LexG? I don’t wish you a lump of coal in your stock­ing for Christmas; I wish you a sack of shit.

  • BLH says:

    She looks pretty darn delect­able in that pic­ture. A nice way to start my work day.
    I’m nev­er going to watch this movie, though.

  • brian p says:

    no mat­ter how bad this actu­ally is it will nev­er be as bad as ‘Spanglish’

  • Pete Segall says:

    There’s some­thing about Rudd’s pos­ture, Witherspoon’s expres­sion and the dol­lar sign over her shoulder that makes the entire image… unwholesome.

  • Asher says:

    Did you say she plays… a base­ball play­er? How would that work, being a female base­ball play­er? I thought women only played softball.

  • Phil Freeman says:

    >bri­an p: “Spanglish” had Paz Vega. So “Spanglish” wins.

  • jbryant says:

    I’ll stick up a little for SPANGLISH, and not just because of Paz Vega (double entendre not inten­ded, but I don’t feel like reph­ras­ing). I thought it was kinda cute, sort of like a sit­com by Renoir. Sandler seems uncom­fort­able in a couple of spots, like he’s dying to break out into full Billy Madison shtick, but he mostly pulls it off. Tea Leoni, saddled with the least likable char­ac­ter in recent American film his­tory, is fear­less. The rest of the cast is superb. Some have found the film pat­ron­iz­ing in a limousine-liberal way, but I think Brooks is really try­ing to get at some­thing about cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences. His efforts are some­times clumsy, but his earn­est­ness is thank­fully min­im­ized by his flair for com­edy. I also find his ram­bling struc­ture rather refresh­ing amid the sea of for­mula that Hollywood usu­ally navigates.
    Of course, this makes me won­der if I might actu­ally enjoy HOW DO YOU KNOW, but I’m not sure I’ll part with the bucks to find out. Might wait for Netflix.
    By the way, is Brooks like the worst ever at titles? TERMS OF ENDEARMENT ain’t bad, but it’s McMurtry. I don’t know if AS GOOD AS IT GETS was Andrus’ ori­gin­al title or not, but BROADCAST NEWS, I’LL DO ANYTHING and HOW DO YOU KNOW are bland and/or unin­spired. Maybe SPANGLISH gets a par­tial pass for at least being off­beat and poten­tially off-putting.

  • bill says:

    Plus that sand­wich in SPANGLISH looked awesome.

  • rdmtimp says:

    @jbryant: If I remem­ber rightly, Andrus’ ori­gin­al title was OLD FRIENDS, so maybe Brooks improved it just a bit.…