"Punch That S***!!!!"
This is a TV tropes discussion of that film which does contain some spoilers

We got "The Whole Shebang" from Netflix. It starred Giancarlo Gianninni (sp?) and Talia Shire as the head of the Bazzini family of Neptune, NJ, which owns a fireworks factory. Stanley Tucci is their nephew from Napoli who comes to help them out after their son accidentally blows up part of the factory (and all of himself) while screwing around behind his wife's back.

The movie was very cute and had a few genuine laughs. I love just about anything that Stanley Tucci does. I believe he is one of the most versatile actors around.

Did you ever watch "The Imposters" or "Big Night" ? He is a lead in both of those.

I haven't seen those, but I love him in "Devil Wears Prada" and "Shall We Dance". I understand he was perfectly creepy in "The Lovely Bones", but I haven't seen it yet.

"The Imposters" was a silly little film with Oliver Platt and Tucci as two down on their luck actors/conmen who hitch a ride on a ship in the 1930's(?) and as the title indicates end up pretending to be people they aren't. In the meantime they try to avoid their pompous actor rival Bertram (Alfred Molina) who is also on the ship and discover plots to blow up the ship and assassinate an African Prince. It's screwball comedy and is shot in black and white. It also has Hope Davis, Steve Buscemi, Tony Shalhoub, Isabella Rossellini and Woody Allen in a cameo.

"Big Night" is also humorous but more serious. It's about two Italian immigrant brothers , Primo (Shalhoub) and Secondo(Tucci) who have opened an authentic Italian restaurant in 1950's New Jersey. Unfortunately, Primo, who is the chef, is THOROUGHLY opposed to dumbing down the cuisine, even going so far as to chase away a customer who dares ask for a side of pasta with some rice. Primo thinks that if you stick to doing things the right way, sooner or later people will come around.

Secondo is the maitre'd and brains for the business side. He is more pragmatic than his brother. He knows that they can't keep the restaurant going, especially not when their cross-street competitor Pascal (Ian Holm) is stealing ALL their business with a more generic Americanized Italian style. Evidently out of the kindness of his heart Pascal offers to arrange for Louis Prima to show up at the brothers' restaurant. This will save their business. So the brothers, and their wives/girlfriends/employee put everything they have into one Big Night to either save their business or go out in a flame of glory. The arguments and silent squabbles between the brothers are familiar to anyone with a sibling.
Isabella Rossellini and Minnie Driver also star. Tucci directed this one.

Lilo, "Big Night" is just about my favorite independent film of all-time. How about an unknown, baby-faced Mark Anthony as the busboy?

That's right! I forgot that was him...

Unthinkable:
directed by Gregor Jordan and starring Samuel L. Jackson, Carrie-Anne Moss and Michael Sheen.

This is literally a "ticking bomb" of a movie. A terrorist sympathizer (Michael Sheen) who just also happens to be a nuclear physicist of near genius level intelligence has smuggled enough stolen nuclear material into the US to make 3 large scale nuclear devices. He has placed these in 3 cities across the US and has threatened that all three bombs will be detonated if his demands aren't met.

He is chased after by a hastily assembled FBI task force led by Carrie Anne Moss but the FBI discovers that the military has already captured the bomb maker and intends to interrogate him at a "black" site. This interrogation will be led by the enigmatic "H", an independent contractor played by Samuel L. Jackson, who reports to men in suits with no names and whose methods of extracting information start at evil, ramp up to depraved and zoom to unthinkable-thus the title of the film.

In many of his movies Jackson plays the sarcastic, verbally bombastic infuriated Alpha male but in this one it really works. This is literally life and death. The film questions if the only way to defeat evil is to employ evil and also wonders how far any of us would go if millions of lives were at stake.

The parallels to "24" are obvious but unlike Jack Bauer, "H" is not even remotely shown as heroic. Carrie-Anne Moss as the lead FBI agent is the film's conscience and her doubts mirror the audiences (and the US population's own). There is definite moral decay shown by all three leads in this film-some are just further along than others.

Good stuff. If you see it I would see the unrated version with the alternate ending. In any event it is as much a horror film as it is a suspense thriller and political indictment .

Don McKay

This was an independent neo-noir film starring Thomas Haden Church, Elisabeth Shue, Keith David, James Rebhorn, M. Emmet Walsh and Melissa Leo. The writing and first time direction probably didn't live up to such a good cast but the performances are strong.

Church is Don McKay, a mid forties custodian who left his hometown 25 years ago after a unmentioned disaster in high school. He gets a letter from his unrequited high school love, Sunny (Shue) who is dying and wants to see him again. When he gets back to his hometown he finds that things aren't quite as they seem. Sunny seems to have strange gaps in her memory and her nurse (Leo) is hostile to Don for no apparent reason.

This has Coen Brothers influence dripping all over it, particularly in the ending. But it was still a mostly worthwhile effort. Shue has aged pretty well. I don't know why she's not in more films.

The Crazies

This is a paint by the numbers modern "zombie" movie. I think George Romero was one of the executive producers. It stars Timothy Olyphant and Radha Mitchell as a couple in a small midwestern town who must try to find out what's going on and then escape when more and more of their neighbors start going berserk and comitting shocking acts of violence. Unlike "Funny Games" or even "The Strangers" there's not a REAL feeling of suspense in this movie. But it's still well made and worth watching if you have nothing better to do with ninety minutes.

Where the Wild Things Are (2009)

Watched this last night. Hadn't read "the book" since I was a kid, but remembered it was pretty bizarre. So's this. Plus hearing Tony Soprano's voice coming from the main monster character added to the bizarreness. I'll have to dig up my copy of the children's book (packed away in the garage somewhere) before I rate it, to see how true it is. But so far I wasn't too thrilled.

My daughter LOVED that movie. She's driving me nuts because she wants to see "Despicable Me" on Friday, but we were hoping to see it as a family. If one of my girls says, "It's so FLUFFY!" one more time, I think my head will explode.

Okay,I'm embarrassed to admit it but my wife and I ordered the first 2 "Twilight" movies on demand and actually liked them. We are fortysomething and wanted to see what all the fuss is about. Gotta admit it - they were pretty good. Maybe I can take her to the movies and see the new third sequel and neck in the back row? Although, I think she liked the shirtless young werewolf boy a little too much...

Then maybe you guys can catch a Justin Bieber concert.

The Twilight films and novels are probably what you'd expect from a fundamentalist Mormon author.

This is what I wrote about the first film:

The hype surrounding this franchise - taken from bestselling novels written by a fundamentalist Mormon - might suggest a divisive, love-or-hate slice of pop culture. But what is essentially a head-over-heels swoon-fest for both Robert Pattinson the actor and Ed Cullen the character (the former is awkward and the latter impossibly perfect) is also, barring the fact the object of desire is a vampire (who sparkles in sunlight!), decidedly ordinary.

And the second:

Nostalgic and juvenile in the same way that Star Wars was nostalgic and juvenile, this sequel is less unassuming than the first film and more incoherent. Attempting to complicate or add dimension to the one-note romance of the first film by expanding on the character of Jacob, this is let down by seemingly rushed CGI work and a very dull action finale set in Rome. Isabella's essential emotional flimsiness is never explored; the generic coming-of-age hysteria instead boils down to her eternal faith in a vampire, which would all be fine and permissible if the film didn't take such relish in its higher pretensions of seriousness. Dawson's Creek was better.

Atsa gooda one, Pizzaboy!

Mark, I'm with Capo on this. I watched the first film on cable and was afraid that my eyes were going to fall right out of my head from all the eye-rolling. I did see Robert Pattinson on Jay Leno the other night, and found him quite charming, though. I don't understand the appeal of Lautner, though. Talk about a horse face! YUK.

Sometimes, when I forget to drink in the morning, I get off a pretty good one .

He was 16 or 17 when New Moon was filmed...!

Give the boy all the six packs in the world, he still has a horse-face. Not appealing in the least. Blame it on his youth perhaps, but the few times I've seen him appear on talk shows, he seems quite stupid as well. At least Pattinson seemed to have a brain in his head.

Stephen King wrote that Stephanie Meyer was a horrible writer and that her books were primarily aimed at pre-teen/young teen girls , though I don't think he wrote that one had anything to do with the other. I haven't seen him be so blunt about writers-usually he's pretty supportive. I had no interest in the book or film. Capo's excerpt above makes it sound like what I thought it was-a romance novel with vampires. Just not my thing...

I remember that, Lilo. He's gotten more critical in his old age, I have to admit. What's odd is that he can't say enough good things about JK Rowling, another female author (of limited writing skills), who became a gazillionaire under much the same circumstances as Meyer.

That said, I have ZERO interest in Meyer's books, or the films.

Lilo, I know that you posted a You Tube video recently about the Twilight saga that summed up my feelings pretty well.

I've always been a fan of vampire movies and usually will see them. I only saw the first Twilight and probably will rent or see the other two eventually.

To be honest, I even prefer the new Vampire Diaries tv show and even moreso prefer the cancelled (and revived for the summer to show right after Vampire Diaries on Thursdays), Moonlight with Alex O'Loughlin,(who btw, will play Steve McGarret's son on the revived Hawaii 5-0) which is more for the "older" crowd as opposed to the teens.

Can't think of my favorite Vampire movie, but I must admit, I do like the very different "Lost Boys."

TIS

I think things go in cycles and right now the concept of vampire as romantic heartthrob, bisexual androgyne or Byronic anti-hero seems to be what sells. I don't really care for any of that. I much prefer the idea of soulless monster, undead parasite or bloodsucking ghoul. The myth is flexible enough to have something for everyone and eventually the Twilight stuff will die down and other interpretations will get their chance to be seen.

You're right. I don't mind vampirism as a genre or romance as a genre, nor do I mind them both together - I love the idea of physical manifestations of emotions, with all that other allegorical baggage such as infecting your lover with incurably contaminated blood, the physicality of flesh, etc.

It's just Twilight and its sequels is badly written garbage with no attempt at seriousness. The whole abstinence thing is cringe-worthy.

Capo, apparently book #4 should be adapted by David Cronenberg (old school, not the recently mainstream respected) because somehow it was able to sell off pedophilic-sex slavery to middle America.

Meyer should be commended for such fucking nonsense.

Brooklyn's Finest
Directed by Anotoine Fuqua ("Training Day") and starring Don Cheadle, Ethan Hawke, Richard Gere, Will Patton, Ellen Barkin, Wesley Snipes, Vincent D'onofrio, Bryan O'Byrne and "The Wire" veterans Hassan Johnson , Isiah Whitlock, and Michael K. Williams, this movie was ok. Not special. It didn't go over any new ground. It was shot almost entirely in and around a Brownsville Brooklyn Housing project which was evidently quite dangerous.

It tells the interlinked stories of three Brooklyn cops-Hawke, Gere and Cheadle. Hawke is a desperado who is tired of his low pay and living in a mold infested house which is killing his wife and kids. Since he works in narcotics he has an opportunity to do something about it.

Cheadle is an undercover narcotics cop who is fed up with the racism and nepotism within the department but who needs to make a bust of recently released dealer Casanova (Snipes) in order to get his long overdue promotion. Problem is he's finding that Snipes' character is in many ways more honorable than Cheadle's supervisors.

And Gere is a cynical cop who's long stopped caring about anything or anyone. He's only seven days away from retirement. He's obviously low ambition or has the ability to p*** people off since he's still walking a beat at his age. Intermittently suicidal, Gere's only solace is the stereotypical hooker with the heart of gold.

You can pretty much tell each character's fate from the description above. There weren't a lot of surprises here. Hawke does frustration and irritation just as well as Cheadle does sarcasm and intensity. The film was well shot, well directed and looks good but the story is just so-so.

Hot Tub Time Machine
This movie starred John Cusack, Craig Robinson, Chevy Chase and two other actors whose names I can't be bothered to look up right now. The premise of the movie is just what the title says. Three middle aged friends who aren't doing very well in life wind up on vacation in a hot tub that takes them and Cusack's nephew back in time to 1986.

There, they can either try to figure out how to get back to the present day and not change ANYTHING or be more selfish or daring and take the opportunity to change everything about their life-though who knows what will happen then.

This is close to a lower rent "The Hangover" but not quite as well written. Again, there are no surprises about what some of the characters will do. Anyone who grew up in the eighties will certain appreciate some of the jokes and sets, though. Also anyone who wonders about the romantic interest that got away will enjoy some of the scenes here. Overall though, a bit crude. Rather, extremely crude.

I was so impressed by the cast members of "Brooklyn's Finest", but was disappointed by the reviews.

Has anyone seen "City Island"? I heard such good things about it, but it was gone from the local theaters before I had a chance to see it. I don't think it's out on DVD yet.