Thanks for recommending “Taking Chance” Debbie. I saw it shortly after it came out on DVD and was moved to tears. I later decided to buy it for my video library. Other than that it sounds like your motto of “watching bad movies so you don’t have to” was in full force this week!

Sean M on November 11, 2011 at 7:49 pm

LOL, I loved the funny Anne Heche reference! What a crazy biotch…and I always wonder why Hollywood never took her to task for being a “fake” lesbian. She’s one of Hollyweird’s worst (along with Maggie Gyllanhaal, Anne Hathaway and Kim Catrall.

I was interested in your review of “Martha Marcy-May Marlene”. Every review I read acted like it was the re-invention of the movies done perfectly. You cut through the BS. However, I am interested in Burke’s and Seek’s opinion on the film as well.

Ugh, that dopey “love and open borders” movie made me sick (reading the review, that is). I recommend and oldie but favourite of mine instead…”Green Card”.

Skunky on November 11, 2011 at 8:09 pm

Where is your review of Restrepo?? Today would have been a great day to publish it. I liked it, and I think you will also

mindy12 on November 11, 2011 at 10:47 pm

I have read several reviews of “Martha Marcy-May Marlene” and once again, only Debbie gives you information no other critic will. This is the first time I have read anywhere that the cult breaks into rich people’s houses to rob and steal. Why do other critics fail to mention things like that? I think that’s kinda important and it’s not a spoiler as far as I’m concerned.

I’m sorry to hear “Immortals” was not worth it. It should be so easy to make the old myths and legends into entertaining movies, especially with today’s technology. I still remember watching “Sindbad” and “Jason and the Argonauts” with stop motion monsters and being thrilled. I was so disappointed with the remake of “Clash of the Titans”. It was nowhere near as good as the original and seemed to be nothing but a collection of special effects for special effects sake. And can we PLEASE stop with the 3-D?

I understand J. Edgar is becoming the inadvertent comedy of the year with people laughing at the dialog. Looks like I’m not missing anything by staying home.

DavidJ on November 12, 2011 at 1:17 am

Debbie,
I just discovered you while reading E.D. Hills Bio. I always liked her on Fox and Friends, I thought she was smart, good looking and had a great point of view on most subjects. I am very sorry to hear about her Cancer and wish her the best.

You come off like so many haters ala Matt thrill up my leg, and Keith who just flipped out weekly because he was high paid and nobody watched him, now replaced by Larry who I couldn’t stand for years, he is so intelligent, just ask him.
The other crazy’s like Madcow, and Mr. Ed are just slanted and you only hear them all, like you beat the leaders to death.
I used to watch the above nuts but just to hear them beat people up (competitors) was a waste of time. One thing in busines smart people learn is don’t knock your competitors, show them why you or what your peddling is better.
I possible could have become a fan especially saying such nice things about E.D. but you couldn’t resist the opportunity to knock other people. Too bad for you but good luck anyway, and say something nice about a rival or enemy each day and it will change your life for the better.

Robert Casale on November 12, 2011 at 8:37 am

Debbie,

I was at the screening you attended for J. Edgar. I thought Leo played J Edgar well, the story was a bit in the lagging department. I kept looking at my watch thinking how much longer will this go on for?

Also, as a sidebar, I’d like to make a public service announcement. What is it with this group of people I like to call “The Movie Clique”?

We all paid the same price to get into the theatre. This group of people, whom I’m sure you’ve had more than one encounter with and know exactly whom I speak of, think it’s an entitlement to be at these screenings.

The most annoying of these bunch are the ones that will roll up to the movie theatre about 10 minutes or so before the doors open up and just CUT RIGHT IN FRONT OF EVERYONE!!!!

I used to let this fly, as it was mostly elderly woman that were doing this, but enough is enough already!

Sorry for using your movie review as a soapbox, but I figured your review forum was a good place to vent as you’re at many of these same screenings.

These are also the people that will bring in SUBWAY and stink up the movie theatre, TALK through the entire movie, answer cell phones…ERGGGGGHHH

It’s almost enough for me to give up going to these advance screenings and simply pay the 5 bucks for a matinee showing on the weekend.

Sorry again for venting on your review page. 🙂

Trewsdetroit on November 12, 2011 at 10:46 am

I have not heard one good review about J. Edgar Hoover. The only thing I will note is that those of us in Washington, DC knew that Tolson was his boyfriend. How?

Many of us knew where Hoover lived. It was no secret. We knew he took vacations with Tolson. We knew Tolson slept over. People saw him rubbing suntan lotion on Tolson, on his chest, at poolside. In his will, Hoover left everything to Tolson (or was it vice versa). There are no secrets in our once little town.

Additionally, Hoover was obsessed with blackmailing gay people with whom he disagreed, or outing them. A bit of self hatred there.

So, the movie stinks, but to say that there was no evidence that Hoover was gay is not correct. The man was as queer as a three dollar bill, and most of us who grew up in this town knew it.

Jonathan E. Grant on November 12, 2011 at 12:28 pm

Boring as J. Edgar is bound to be, I’m unconvinced that Eastwood/Black overplayed the gay angle to the story. While the most common citations for believing in a Tolson/Hoover relationship can be explained away in the context of a very close friendship, some things cannot. As Black put in a recent interview, “And the collection of photographs that Hoover had of Clyde Tolson sleeping tells me a little something.”

Straight dudes don’t do this. And in the lives of people we actually know to have been gay at that time, there was rarely if ever anything amounting to a smoking dick…er, gun. Just lots of suggestive closeness to a guy that parallels what you described above.

Messy and plotless, I have no doubt. Boring, like paint drying. Unfairly maudlin and ridiculous, sure sounds like it. But at least, from your review, a minimum of gay rumor-mongering.

Robert on November 12, 2011 at 12:50 pm

I would’be loved to go see “Immortals” because just like any decent dude, I love movies about ancient gods and men. I’ll still go, if only because it would be much better than the “Planet of the Na’vi”… oops, “Planet of the Apes” reboot/revision/abomination.

But maybe this weekend, I’ll just listen to classical music and opera: I’m too broke to head out to the movies, and my computer had gone malign because the video card has run up the curtain and joined the choir invisible.

So, no TORRENT for me. Damn.

PS: looking back, is it just me or is “Dirty Harry” more parody than cop drama?

The Reverend Jacques on November 12, 2011 at 1:01 pm

>>(I did not see Adam Sandler’s “Jack & Jill”)<<

FYI, it has a 3 (out of 10) on The Internet Movie Database and 3% (out of 100%) on Rotten Tomatoes.

Debbie, I know that you watch bad movies so that we don't have to, but please tell me that you did not waste two hours of your life watching JACK & JILL.

(JACK & JILL is the number two top grossing picture in the country this week, sad to say.)

Barry Popik on November 12, 2011 at 9:23 pm

Right back @ Barry Popik: I’be seen the trailer for”Jack & Jill” and I got nauseous. Someone has to be doing some serious pharmaceutical action to run off to see this insult to anyone’s intelligence.

Since I seriously doubt that Debbie would be into chemical self-gratification, maybe it was a good idea to leave the verdict to someone else. So kudoes to you Barry.

And my dismay that there are more people on drugs in Amerrica than I thought. I hope that is really not the case.

The Reverend Jacques on November 12, 2011 at 11:06 pm

I have seen the trailer for “Jack and Jill” and agree with with Barry Popik and The Reverand Jacques. I don’t think that it’s necessary for Debbie to review that movie. Debbie says that she didn’t see the movie and I hope that it stays that way. Like Barry said, Debbie watches bad movies so that we don’t have to, but watching that movie would be ridiculous even if being paid as a movie reviewer. From the trailer alone it looks like it’s at least two Marxes.

As The Reverand would say, “TORRENT!”

JeffE on November 13, 2011 at 1:15 am

TAKING CHANCE is a good, simple, moving story. I rented the DVD becaue I’m a big fan of Blanche Baker, who plays the dead soldier’s stepmother.

Miranda Rose Smith on November 13, 2011 at 4:34 am

Thanks for the reviews Debbie. As usual Hollywood has not changed and is still making lousy movies. I guess Clint Eastwood figures he better make movies that cater to the radical left or he will not be making movies at all. I seem to remember the Communist Party spreading rumors about Hoover having a realationship with Tolson which was completely false.

Imagine if Hoover was still alive and around to see what has happened to America? What would he say?

Fred on November 13, 2011 at 10:48 am

Well, I didn’t hate “Martha Macey May Marlene.” It was overly long and slow moving (maybe it’s only overly long BECAUSE it’s slow moving) and just because Elizabeth Olsen CAN act unlike her heroin-chic looking older twin sisters, doesn’t mean she’s Oscar caliber acting, which the critics are falling over themselves about. Mostly, her character acts numb. But it wasn’t the worst movie of the year – I reserve that for the horrible “Take Shelter” which is not only long, and slow, and horribly acted, but which flat out steals its whole premise from “The Last Wave.”

The cult is Manson-like, but unlike most movies which have the leader coming off as some bug-eyed mystic, this leader is slyly, and criminally manipulative to a fault. There are little things in the movie, like how he immediately changes the name of each female who shows up, even before they’ve been initiated, how he calls a song “Marci’s Song,” even though it has no connection at all to her, how he gets to women to both subjugate themselves while telling them that their leaders, is probably as realistic as a movie can get about actual cult manipulation.

The other thing is that the movie does not use itself as a platform to skewer bourgeois society: when Martha comfronts her sister’s husband about materialism, he shoots her argument down with the simple observation that she is living under his roof, at his expense. And the movie doesn’t fall into that predictable anti-male screed of trying to say that all men manipulate and abuse women: even though Martha appears nude in front of the husband, drinks with him and is left alone with him, he never tries to take advantage of her.

In fact the contrast between the two males is striking: the husband is working very, very hard to build something (an apartment complex? I forget) that will have a benefit in the stream of commerce. The cult leader is fumbling around on a farm in order to shut himself off from society, sustained not by honest labor, but by servitude, burglary and murder.

OK, OK, enough already. Sorry.

gmartinz on November 13, 2011 at 11:48 am

Debbie, the four main points you listed right at the beginning of your post of “J. Edgar” perfectly summarized the film’s flaws. It may be that Hoover was a closet gay, or it may not be, but making that speculation the center of a long, rambling biopic degrades important history into prurient tabloid. Generally Eastwood’s films frustrate me because of their simple-minded liberal-populist slant. This film was as bad as the worst of his others. The scene with Hoover trying on his mother’s dress which the filmmakers invented was complete, pandering trash–pandering to those who wanted to see Hoover as a cross-dresser because that was the myth that Susan Rosenstiel lied about and started. In other words, it was back-door garbage unethically sneaked in because the original circumstances that were invented by Rosenstiel have been utterly discredited. Recently I read a commenter who claimed that “Hollywood is not universally liberal; just look at Eastwood who made Dirty Harry and appears sometimes on Fox.” Now that is just plain clueless.

Singh who directed “Immortals” earlier made “The Cell” and “The Fall.” His auteur style is to make excruciatingly tedious and cliche-filled films with astonishingly beautiful sets. I’m seeing the show later today with my nephew, and I’m going to warn him not to pay any attention to the story or characters but to study the costumes, colors, fantastical topography of Greece and weirdly original special effects–that’s where the real action is in his films.

I can see your point of view in criticizing “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” Debbie. I don’t find cults per se very interesting myself, and a movie about them wouldn’t normally have much appeal. What I liked especially about the film, though, was the dynamics of the couple trying to raise their niece without understanding her background. I thought the couple was realistically portrayed with complicated and nuanced strengths and weaknesses. They seemed to me to symbolize the great numbers of those in the middle class in our country and world who get up each day to work, take on responsibilities (like helping out needy people in the extended family), and try to be decent human beings just plugging along despite all the compromises that are forced due to everyday demands. I sympathized with them, flaws and all, as unsung heroes in a darkening world. Martha, on the other hand, symbolized for me the hordes of teens and college students seduced by utopian promises of socialists and radicals. So the film for me dramatized the conflict between generations and ideologies, and it did so in a way which suggested society is closer to a potential powder keg than we might want to believe. Then also there’s the atmosphere of the film which is unbearably intense and unnerving even while the events of the film are ordinary and understated. Psycho and Repulsion wouldn’t sound that especially interesting if you simply described their plots and themes. This film, I felt, was as effective as either of those two.

Burke on November 13, 2011 at 12:17 pm

Debbie, Hollywood’s Beautiful People honor Vanessa Redgrave:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_BRITAIN_OSCARS_REDGRAVE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-11-13-07-43-19

Yup, you don’t have to do much to win an Oscar except to hate the Jews and Israel.

Its not like they couldn’t have found someone more worthy of their esteem than the ugliest woman alive.

Go figure.

NormanF on November 13, 2011 at 5:05 pm

Geeeez, a giant hammer? Really didn’t need that horrible visual. What’s up with decrapio getting the role of a guy 60 years old? Make up artists need work these days?

samurai on November 13, 2011 at 7:25 pm

Oh, and another thing. There was a small bit of dialogue in “Martha Macy Mae Marlene” that I missed the meaning of but my wife didn’t. In the cult farm, a new initiate comments on a baby boy, and Martha says that the leader “only has boys.” I thought it was an observation of a weird coincidence, but my wife said it’s because the cult practices female infanticide.

Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I think that the movie is a scathing commentary on the counter-culture who decry society and civilization while behaving in despicable and criminal ways.

gmartinz on November 13, 2011 at 7:52 pm

‘Martha Marcy May Marlene’ is an effective mood piece and psychological study. That’s enough to make it worth seeing. It certainly doesn’t glorify the cult or their criminal jaunts.

Tony on November 14, 2011 at 2:49 pm

I have seen “Taking Chance”. As a Vietnam veteran tears were not fought back at various points in the movie. Being honored by pilots, passengers and especially the family were scenes that tugged hard at the heart. Bacon played the role well. As a humble soldier, a regular guy with uncommon valor. Like studying the Iwo Jima Memorial and knowing that the thirteenth hand is the hand of God.

I look forward to your review of this movie.

Panhandle on November 18, 2011 at 11:04 am

I actually liked Immortals but maybe I’m bias since I’m friends with one of the writers. That one scene when he gets hit in the groin was too much but I liked the story and I like 300 war type movies. There is a lot of biblical references in the movie if you really pay attention. Certain characters represent, Jesus, God, Mary, Judas and a few others. I wrote to him the other day and he said yes there is as much scripture as mythology in the movie. I have notice people either really like the movie or really dislike it. I didn’t know that about Pinto and I really liked her until I read what you said about her. I know for a fact that my friend is anti Muslim/pro Israel from his facebook post/links he has put on his wall.

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