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Reviews
Death at a Funeral (2010)
The whole theater was howling hysterically!
I went to this movie hoping to just be entertained. Wow! This is a great movie.
I've seen other comedies this year but this by far has to be the funniest! Hilarity abounds at this funeral. It's a great time to be had by all. Laughs galore!
Parents beware. There is a good reason for the R Rating. There are a few gags to that are not suitable for children: There are the gross out poop gags having to do with the character of Uncle Russell and some total-male-nudity gags that occur when one character gets high on dope.
But aside from that it's 90% good-natured humor that comes from incidents that are described in other reviews.
What happens to Danny Glover's character (Uncle Russell) at the end you've just got to see!
From Paris with Love (2010)
John Travolta in a Die Hard type action movie
I wondered who would be the next actor to do a Bruce Willis / "Die Hard" type rule. Never ever did I expect it to be John Travolta! However, thinking about it now, John Travolta did play an action rule in "The Taking of Pelham 123".
Fans of the Die Hard movies should see this one. It has the same action and humor. Jonathan Rhys Meyers character of James Reese is a great comic sidekick to John Travolta's Charlie Wax. The end of the movie is sequel friendly and I do hope there is a sequel.
My only minor problem is ... where did this title come from? "From Paris With Love" sounds like the title of a romance movie, not an action thriller.
As you can probably guess, I'm looking forward to the new Bruce Willis movie "Cop Out". I just LOVE that type of movie: action with humor!
Emergency! (1972)
I loved this show and the beginning instrumental theme!
I remember watching it back in the 70's. Never missed an episode. Along with the exciting rescues, there were also some amusing situations. There was the call they got for a guy who got his big toe stuck in the tub faucet. Another was for a guy who was building a ship model and accidentally super-glued his hands to the model. He wouldn't let them cut the model from his hands, so they bring him into the hospital with the ship still attached to his hands as nautical music played in the background. Another was the one where they responded to a toilet on fire. When they arrived, they went to use their fire hose, but the hose caught on fire. Meanwhile, outside, a man threw a cigarette on a lawn where a sprinkler was going. The lawn caught fire. They figured out that the gas and water lines got crossed at a work site.
But you could always count on a huge incident to climax each show. I seem to remember one episode where they were responding to a house fire, and while they were working that fire, a house across the street also caught fire. Another was a man who climbed out to the end of the crossarm of a 100 ft tall construction tower to commit suicide. He changed his mind, but then was afraid to move.
When I heard about the new NBC show "Trauma", I was so hoping it would be much the same, however Trauma concentrated too much on the everyday lives of the characters and not enough on exciting rescues. Also, instead of the camaraderie and humor that the station 51 crew on Emergency had, Trauma's crew seemed to be conflicted and at odds with each other. The first episode of Trauma was the most exciting, but after that, things seemed to go downhill. I hear that Trauma has been canceled. I wish it would have worked. TV needs another show with the excitement and humor of Emergency!
I just got the Season 1 DVD set! For the most part, it's great. There was one problem with disk 2, side 2, 2nd episode "Publicity Hound". When it got to the scene near the end when they are bringing the child up the ladder, it sticks then cuts out to the menu. There are only 4 scene selection options, the last starts before that rescue. The problem continued with the beginning of the 3rd episode, "Wierd Wednesday". After a bit of the beginning, it skipped to the opening credits. I missed the first rescue, something about a parachutist stuck in a tree.
Now that Comcast is in the process of buying NBC/Universal, I hope they add this show to their On Demand TV Shows section.
A Christmas Carol (2009)
Prescription glasses kept me and wife from 3D movies ... until now.
This is not so much a review of the movie itself, but a review of our first experience of a 3D movie.
Our misconception prior to seeing this movie was that wearing the 3D glasses over our oval-rimmed prescription glasses would be cumbersome, awkward and too much of a hassle to bother with. So, we were relegated to the 2D version of the movies.
With this movie, we finally decided to give in and just go for it.
As it turns out, the 3D glasses fit perfectly over our prescription glasses! Not awkward at all. Would I prefer the option of a clip-on version of 3D glasses? Of course, but we can definitely deal with these 3D glasses. And we will see many 3D movies in the future.
Not only was the movie 3D, but also the preceding trailers and the green trailer rating screens. It was interesting to see how things did actually appear to be in front of other things. An amazing bit of the 3D effect are the snowflakes!
SPOILER! I took a peek outside the glasses to see how the 3D magic is done. I noticed that things close up are sharp, but things in the distance are blurred or doubled. Very Interesting.
The 3D brings new life to a story that was previously 2D. Jim Carrey does a great acting job, as always.
Though it costs an extra $4, I would definitely recommend this movie to bespectacled movie goers!
Surrogates (2009)
Review from a Bruce Willis and Die Hard movie series fan
Being a fan of Bruce Willis and the Die Hard series, this review is from that perspective.
I've been waiting for another Bruce Willis movie with the action, sly humor and tag lines of the Die Hard movies.
Being a fan of Sci-fi movies, I wanted so much for this movie to be like that. For sci-fi entertainment, this movie is good, but it there is absolutely no humor.
The premise behind the movie is thought provoking: For years people had been living their dream lives through the use of surrogate robots. Then came the first murder in many years: A human host murdered via an electronic attack on the surrogate. An investigation into the murder by the Bruce Willis character insues.
However, this movie was more strait investigation and less action and completely void of the sly humor or tag lines.
An example from Die Hard 1 of the sly humor I like: After killing the first terrorist, McClane dresses the dead guy up like Santa Claus and sends him down an elevator with a message for the other terrorists: "Now I have a machine gun. Ho, Ho, Ho." and then there was the tag line "Yippi Ki Yay M*****F*****." I cannot remember one such tag line from this movie. In Surrogates, the Bruce Willis character didn't even get injured.
In short, if you're looking for the kind of Bruce Willis character as in the Die Hard series, don't look here. Just enjoy it for the sci-fi thriller that it is.
For entertainment value, it's worth seeing. I was just looking for something not provided here.