Movies you saw in May

Jacob's Ladder (1990). really bizarre psycho drama with Tim Robbins, Elizabeth Pena and Danny Aiello. question throughout the movie is are the events depicted just Jacob Singer's (Robbins) paranoid "Vietnam flashback" hallucinations OR actually happeneing? movie had an unexpected completely "off the wall" ending. thought it was interesting and Tim Robbins was excellent BUT was also very "fragmented" and somewhat hard to follow. on Cinemax again Friday May 16th and Monday May 19th. I rate it

The Rum Diary (2011). movie based on the Hunter S Thompson novel with Johnny Depp, Michael Rispoli, Aaron Eckhart and the VERY tasty Amber Heard. Giovanni Ribisi as Moburg the craziest character in the movie although Rispoli's Bob Sala (Depp's characters "running buddy") is a close second. overall has some VERY funny scenes and the story is typical crazy Hunter S Thompson. worth watching if you liked Depp as Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as they are very similar movies. plays on the Sony movie channel again Sunday May 18th @ 8:05 pm pacific time. I rate it

Payback (1999) excellent crime action-thriller with the same basic plot as the Lee Marvin classic Point Blank (1967) BUT with different characters. stars Mel Gibson as "Porter" who gets double crossed shot and left for dead by his partner Val Resnick (Gregg Henry) and cheating wife Lynn (Deborah Kara Unger) after they rip off the Chinese mob. Maria Bello plays Porter's love interest Rosie. William Devane, James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson play the three mob bosses Porter is trying to recover his stolen loot from and in turn are trying to kill him. David Paymer is somewhat comic relief as the small time crook Stegman. check out a young "pre-Kill Bill" Lucy Liu as the S&M dominatrix Pearl. overall VERY fast paced with plenty of action, oodles of ordnance and "stuff that goes boom". thought it was much better than the original Point Blank. plays on HBOZ again Wednesday may 14th @ 4;15 pm and Tuesday May 20th @ 10:55 am pacific times. I rate it a definate for crime-action fans

Wall Street from 1987  Greed Is Good

The Colony (2013) probably THE worst post-apocalyptic SciFi-horror film I have seen in decades. I would rate it even WORSE than EITHER After Earth OR Battlefield Earth and THAT is saying something. don't know HOW Laurence Fishburne or Bill Paxton got roped into playing in this garbage. played on Starz channel IF you want to waste your time. definate

The Invasion (2007) decent Invasion of the Body Snatchers ripoff with Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig and Jeffrey Wright (plays Valentin Narcisse in Boardwalk Empire). had pretty good suspense throughout and some excellent action sequences near the end. thought the movie was pretty fast paced and Kidman is never hard to look at. not too long at 100 minutes. played on IFC recently. rate it

Jacob's Ladder - saw that along time ago and it was one weird movie. 

Payback - one of my favorites.  Gibson excels at roles like these and the supporting cast was great. 

The Colony - this one of the movies I categorize as wtf.  I watched this and kept rooting for it to be good.  But it seemed like it was better in the beginning and went downhill after that.

Never saw the Invasion.  Might have to check that out.

Erin Brockovich (2000) outstanding legal drama about the woman who's investigation resulted in the biggest corporate lawsuit at that time against California utility company PG&E who had poisoned the ground water in the town of Hinkley. "tour de force" by Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich who won the Best Actress Oscar for here performance. co-stars Albert Finney as attorney Ed Masry, Peter Coyote as attorney Kurt Potter and Veanne Cox as Potter associate Theresa Dallavale (who has NO "people skills"and really aggrevates Erin). check out veteren character actor Tracey Walter as PG&E employee Charles Embry who delivered the proof that PG&E Corporate KNEW their plant was poisoning Hinkley's water

one of my favorite legal dramas along with The Rainmaker (1997) and The Verdict (1982). plays again on HBO channels Monday May 19th, Wednesday May 21st and Friday May 23rd. definate

speaking of the legal drama The Rainmaker, it plays again on EPIX1 movie channel again Thursday May 22nd and Friday May 23rd

Mrs and I finally watched Captain Phillips (2013) on Starz last night night. excellent acting by Tom Hanks as Phillips and Barkhad Abdi as the Somali pirate leader Abduwali Muse. even though we all know the story of the Maersk Alabama hijacking thought it was STILL a very suspensful movie BUT will agree with detractors that say WAY too long. a lot of the first 30 to 40 minutes was "filler".

btw, I am personally sick and tired of this "Somali's are pirates because all the fish are gone" crap. like the movie Blackhawk Down, this one just reinforces my belief that the United States military should just do a "Lidice" on the whole damn country of Somalia. the US Navy should have just hanged Abdi from the Bainbridge yardarm instead of bring that little b!tch back to the US for trial. plays on Starz movie channel again Monday May 19th and runs almost nightly the next week. rate it  

Bullet to the Head (2012) standard Sylvester Stallone action movie with plenty of ordnace and "stuff that goes boom". pretty fast paced and runs only 90 minutes. I gotta hand it to "Sly". he can still "bring it" in an action movie at 67 years old. worth watching IF you enjoy the genre. thought it was better than most of the "mindless action" dramas I have seen lately. plays again on HBOZ Monday May 19th and almost nightly next week on either HBOZ or HBO2. rate it

re-watched the mystery action-thriller Jack Reacher (2012) last night. probably THE best Tom Cruise movie in a long time. stars Cruise as a the title character with the luschious Rosamund Pike as defense attorney Helen Rodin. has really hateful Russian mob villians in Werner Herzog as "The Zek" with Jai Courtney and Vladimir Sizov as his murderous henchmen Charlie and Vlad. also features Robert Duvall as the gun range owning retired Marine sniper "Gunney" Cash.

mostly non-stop action with a very "twisting" plot. shame they absolutely destroyed an early 1970's classic Chevy Super Sport in the chase scene. definately worth watching for mysterey, action or Tom Cruise fans and Rosemunda Pike is sure not hard to look at. it is reported there is a sequel in production and I will be looking forward to seeing it. plays again on EPIX1 movie channel again Sunday May 25th and Monday May 26th. rate it

happened to watch the Robert Redford directed golf themed drama The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000) staring Will Smith, Matt Damon and Charlize Theron. thought it was very well acted and was a good break from my usual diet of action-adventure movies. worth watching iF you just like a good story with interesting dialog and excellent acting. early work by Smith, Damon and Therion. plays again on HD Net Movies Thursday May 22nd @ 6:20 pm & 10:30 pm pacific time. rate it

godzilla sucked

suspicions confirmed. trailers looked like Pacific Rim without the "Transformers" style battle machines and IT SUCKED.

A Civil Action (1998) seems the last couple months have been a bunch of very well acted legal dramas on and this one is no exception. very similar TRUE story to Erin Brockovich about an water pollution lawsuit brought by a small legal firm against Beatrice Foods and W. R. Grace when one of their subsidiaries poisoned the water in Woburn, Mass. stars John Travolta, and Robert Duvall with William H. Macy, John Lithgow, Dan Hedaya and early work by the late James "Tony Soprano" Gandolfini. has kind of an "off the wall" ending. played on FX Movies and hopefully will re-run soon. IF on FX you definately want to record to "page thru" their annoying commercials. rate it

btw, failed to mention that The Legend of Bagger Vance is somewhat famous for being the great Jack Lemmon's last film appearance. he plays the boy Hardy Greaves (J. Michael Moncrief) as an old man at the beginning and end of the movie. the film was released November of 2000 and Jack passed on in June of 2001.

RIP to one of THE GREAT comedic AND dramatic actors of the 20th Century

The Amazing Spiderman 2 - it was just okay..idk i thought it would be better..maybe my expectations were too high

watched the original last night The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and thought it was so-so. good "spidey stunts" and "the Lizard" is a decent villian BUT found myself doing a LOT of "page thru" to the action scenes as there was a LOT of "filler". definately will NOT be going to a theater or spending on a PPV to see the sequel. probably would have been better as a 90 minute movie rather than 2 hours 15 minutes. plays again on Encore channels again Sunday May 25th and Monday May 26th. I thought it was pretty much

rewatched the sports tout drama Two for the Money (2005) staring Al Pacino, Matthew McConaughey and Rene Russo. I think most people involved with sports betting realise there is a LOT of BS in this although it DOES depict just how sleazey sports tout "services" really are. still I think it is a fairly entertaining movie and kind of the Wall Street or Boiler Room of sports betting movies. for me was worth watching mostly because both Pacino and McConaughey are two of my favorite actors. plays on Cinemax channels again Sunday May 25th and Tuesday May 27th. rate it

Erin brockovich and The Rainmaker are really good.   The Verdict is one my top ten movies of all time.  Paul Newman is the best. 

Two for the money had some big names in it but that was about it.  I like the part where Armand Assante gets some payback on Matthew Mcconaughey for giving him some bad picks.

The Legend of Bagger Vance is a solid movie.

more "legal drama". watched Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight (2013). HBO produced movie about the 1971 Supreme Court case Ali vs the United States where the court decided that he was within his rights to not serve in the US Army on religious grounds. all star cast of Frank Langella as Chief Justice Warren Burger, Christopher Plummer as Justice John Marshall Harlan, Danny Glover as Justice Thurgood Marshall, Fritz Weaver as Justice Hugo Black, Barry Levinson as Justice Potter Stewart and Ed Begley Jr as Justice Harry Blackmun. Benjamin Walker (Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) is excellent as Justice Harlan law clerk Kevin Connolly who's law briefs helped turn the opinion of the court's conservatives in Ali's favor. well acted by all involved and an interesting story from American law history. rate it

Sunshine (2007) SciFi horror drama about a mission to go "reboot" our dying sun. pretty standard "flying thru space" complete with required emergencies. the "hook" in the story is that this mission is the 2nd one after another mission failed 7 years earlier. in route they get a distress beacon call from the earlier mission believed to be destroyed. naturally they go investigate just like the "Nestromo" in Alien does and end up with a similar result. kind of worth watching for the "2001" style CGI BUT the plot is a re-hash of just about every space movie ever made. pretty much

I saw the new Godzilla film.  I saw an earlier post that said it sucked.  I wouldn't go that far.  In fact I kind of liked it.  Not saying it was great but it kept me interested and entertained.  It was definitely alot better than that Godzilla back in the late 90s. 

Watched The Insider again with Al Pacino and Russel Crowe.  That's about as solid as a movie gets.