A. and I, in search of Friday evening romantic-comedy brain candy, rented Along Came Polly with Jennifer Aniston and Ben Stiller. Now I think Ben Stiller is funny as all shit but Jennifer Aniston I can take or leave. A. wanted to watch the movie because it featured a blind ferret and she’s a sucker for that stuff. So, it was there, exactly as it should have been, solid, mediocre in its timing, with a few laugh-out-loud moments (not nearly as many as Zoolander) and one o the worst “I’m gonna impress my girl by learning to dance and then have a big latin dance number in a crowded club” montages I have ever seen. How many times can that schtick be done? Answer: too many. Waaayyy too many. Philip Seymour Hoffman saved more than one scene by just inhabiting his body in a way that stole the screen from anyone else around. Other than that, eh. You know.
Saturday, bug and S. called and we went and saw The Bourne Supremacy. I hadn’t seen The Bourne Identity simply because I had not yet forgiven Matt Damon for The Talented Mr. Ripley, which was the most painful piece of homophobic shit movie I have ever seen. I still haven’t forgiven Mr. Damon for that wasted 3.5 hours of my life but TBS helped ease my pain a little. Much like Keanu Reeves, Matt Damon is better when he shuts up and kicks some ass. It doesn’t hurt that he has two of my current favorite hotties supporting him: Franka Potente of Run Lola Run fame and Karl Urban, quite recently Eomer of Lord of the Rings. Hello, yum. So, solid action movie, a few surprises (not tons), enough onsite filming in exotic locales to give it a heady James Bond lavishness and a warning to sit further back than the fourth row: seasick camera work in the fight scenes, of which there are many.
db | 14-Aug-04 at 2:18 am | Permalink
I’ve found that the most effective way to get over the unbearable sting of The Excretable Mr. Ripley is whenever I see a movie with Matt Damon (or Gwyneth Paltrow (who I don’t like anyway), or Jude Law (who I do like, but I’m officially done with his weewee) but not Mr. Hoffman, whom I’ve forgiven and chalk up his participation in said cinematic enema as some sort of doppelganger juju), I scream “I HATE YOU, MATT DAMON!” as loud as I can and that usually cleans out the system for long enough to get through the film. Note that this strategy works better at home; ushers frown on screaming at Mr. Damon, for some reason.
Kia | 15-Aug-04 at 10:11 pm | Permalink
The only things I remember about the talented mister ripley are, in no particular order:
1. I saw it with you, because
2. Jude Law’s ass was featured
3. For not nearly long enough, and
4. Gwyneth Paltrow actually showed cellulite
5. Which made me feel less awful about sitting through the entirety of that awful, awful film.
You should go see Garden State. Bug’s in it.
narrator | 18-Aug-04 at 5:00 pm | Permalink
First off, I’ve tried to drink away the memory of that movie and it hasn’t worked, I’ve only further lost my ability to do math. Second, I had completely blocked out PSH’s role in that movie and now that you say it, I take back all the nice things I’ve ever said about him. Third, yes, I remember the cellulite-of-Paltrow (and finding comfort in it), and I remember I mistakenly called it “cellulose”, and Kia corrected me and I felt the fool, but not for long. Yes, if it had been 3.5 hours of Jude Law’s ass coming out of that bathtub, it may have been salvageable. Alas.