Category: Home Video

The Big Lebowski was written and directed by the Coen brothers, and it was released in 1998.  Like most of the Coen’s movies it was not an instant success, but has become a cult classic.  It is a ridiculous movie, but still quite good.

The movie at is heart is about Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) trying to replace his rug after an Asian man urinated on it after confusing him with another Jeffery Lebowski (David Huddleston) who happens to be a millionaire.  The Dude teams up with bowling pals Theodore Donald “Donny” Kerabatsos (Steve Buscemi) and  Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) to try and work everything out, but they are in hopelessly over their heads.

The story is amazingly complex, but in the end matters very little.  The story is really about getting know the characters in this movie, and how they react to the ever changing quest that they are on.  It is hilarious to watch it all unfold.  The Coen’s know how to write a movie.

It would not have worked without the great performances of Jeff Bridges and John Goodman.  The Dude is a role that will define Jeff Bridges probably for the rest of his career, and Goodman’s Walter is the perfect foil for him to bounce off of.  The rest of the actors do their jobs well, but they mostly just set the stage for Bridges and Goodman.

The movie contains quite a bit of strong language, so that may be off-putting for some, but I think this movie is great.  It is also a good movie for repeat viewing since the Coen’s jam packed the movie with so many little quips and nods that you will probably miss them the first time through.  The Coen’s have continued to make great films, and The Big Lebowski is no different.  I think it is well worth watching just to see Jeff Bridges be The Dude, and to know that The Dude abides.

Monty Python’s Life of Brian came out in 1979, and was directed by Terry Jones.  It may not be quite as well known as Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but it is on several best comedy of all time lists, and it is very funny.

The story is about a young man Brain (Graham Chapman) that is trying to help overthrow the bonds of Roman oppression in Israel, but along the way is mistaken as a possible messiah.

The story is pretty much just a way for Monty Python to have a good time, and make fun of just about everything, and considering the sheer number of jokes they throw at you it is amazing how many of them land, but the humor is very British, so if you don’t like British humor than this probably isn’t for you.

The acting is all top notch with the Monte Python cast all playing several roles.  The Monty Python crew included: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin.  It is great to see them all take on very different characters, and even be two people in the same scene.

I love watching this movie.  It is still funny every time I watch it, and it seems like I find one more joke that I didn’t see before because I was laughing to hard.  The Holy Grail is probably still my favorite Monty Python movie, but the life of Brian is a very close second.

The Watch is a movie that came out in the late summer of 2012, and it was directed by Akiva Schaffer.  This movie is all kinds of awful.  It is so bad that people in it should feel bad.  They are funny people, but this in an incredibly unfunny movie.

The film starts with a security guard getting killed at a local Costco, so Evan Trautwig (Ben Stiller) decides to start a neighborhood watch.  Bob McAllister (Vince Vaughn), Franklin (Jonah Hill), and Jamarcus (Richard Ayoade) all sign up, and they soon find out what killed the guard: aliens.  At some point during this movie I think it was supposed to get funny.

The story setup was fine, but as always the devil is in the details.  They just didn’t write very much if any funny dialog, and you can tell that anything that is funny in this movie is just the cast giving up and improvising to try and make it better, but it didn’t happen enough.  I would have literally rather watched the actors just go to the bank and cash their checks, which is what they are doing on screen anyway in this movie.  It probably would have been funnier too since I am sure Stiller could get some funny lines in with the bank teller.

You can also tell that this movie started out as PG-13, but then someone told them that ‘R’ rated comedies are doing well now, so they just tried to swear more, and again improvise some dirty jokes in an effort to try and ‘R’ it up a bit, and it didn’t work.

Like I said in the intro, all these actors can be very funny, but this movie isn’t, and they should feel bad for letting the studio release it.  Whatever you do, learn from my mistake, and do not see this movie.

Beautiful Creatures is a movie that was released on Valentine’s Day based off a novel of the same name to cash in on the Twilight craze, but even though this is a bit of a middling movie it still manages to be a better movie than any of the Twilight movies hoped to be.  This movie is not in my normal wheel house of films, but it is fun to change things up every now and then.

The story centers around a teenage boy named Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich) who is trying to deal with the loss of his mother and his grieving father, but his life is changed when a beautiful and mysterious girl Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert) moves to town to live with her uncle the equally mysterious Macon Ravenwood (Jeremy Irons).  It turns out that she is a magic user called a Caster, and that on her sixteenth birthday she will either be clamed for the light or the dark, and yes of course she has the most power of any Caster, so she will decide the fate of the world.

The story is fairly predictable, and really it is just Twilight with a guy as the lead and magic users instead of vampires, but it is competently told.  The actors all do their jobs well, but it looks like the older cast were pretty much just cashing their checks, so it leaves all the heavy lifting to the younger cast.  Alden Ehrenreich and Alice Englert were up to the task, and kept their young forbidden love interesting.

For a movie like this special effects are always important, but they were hit and miss, so it seems like the director Richard LaGravenese tried get around that by having a movie about magic without that much real magic in it.  There was enough to get the point across, but it was far less than I would think.

All and all this was an okay movie.  The young actors did their jobs, and there was just enough super natural happenings to keep it interesting, and if this is your type of movie than I am sure you will love it.  As for me it was passable entertainment, and it was interesting to see a movie out-Twilight, Twilight.

My buddy Daniel recently watched Willow, and it made me want to watch a fantasy movie from my childhood, and thankfully Amazon helped me out by having The Last Unicorn on its Prime streaming.  The Last Unicorn was made by Rankin and Bass, and released by ITC in 1982.  It was animated by Topcraft who went on to be the founding members of Studio Ghibli.

The story follows a unicorn (Mia Farrow) who is told that she is the last of her kind by a knowledgeable woodsman, so she is off on a quest to find out what has become of them.  She is joined on her quest by Schmendrick the Magician (Alan Arkin), a cook Molly Grue (Tammy Grimes), and later the dashing Prince Lir (Jeff Bridges).

The story of this movie is simple and only ever follows one track, but it is sweet and enduring.  It is also a little more edgy then I remembered it, with a three breasted harpy, and a tree that tries to kill Schmendrick with her bosoms, but those moments pass quickly and return the movie to the charming children’s tale that it is.

The cast they got for this movie was unheard of for an animated movie in the 80s.    Besides the cast I mentioned in the plot description it also featured Angela Lansbury as the witch Mommy Fortuna, and Christopher Lee as King Haggard.  They all bring life to their characters which is good because the animation doesn’t hold up.

The stills in this movie are good, and they created some awesome imagery, as well as cool character designs, but when it is moving it is not that great.  I think the low budget really hurt this movie on the animation front.

The music in this movie is pretty annoying also.  They got America to sing the theme and Jimmy Webb to write the songs, but they all seem to fall flat and distract from the movie instead of add to it.

Despite its shortcomings the good story and amazing actors make this movie great, and it brings back good childhood memories.  It is worth a watch if you are looking for some nostalgia, I am glad I did.