A surfeit of movies

The unusually handsome and talented editors of AMR bring you yet another cornucopia of cinematic delights.

Starting off this batch is Jim Carrey's Yes Man where Jim has ample opportunity to be the spazz his fans have come to know and love. This movie kinda fits in between Liar Liar and Me, Myself, and Irene in the sense that it has some uncomfortable humor beyond the former but doesn't go completely over the top like the latter (see: amorous old lady sans dentures...there, you're welcome for that image).

Jim's character is rather reclusive and depressed until, in an uncharacteristic move, he attends a self-help seminar at the behest of an old friend. At the seminar he is quite literally scared into living his life saying yes to absolutely any and every opportunity to come his way, lest he suffer the consequences of being a no-man. The results are (as you likely suspect) quite amusing.

The caveat here is ya really probably need to be a Jim Carrey fan. If you're not, this film won't likely change your mind, but if you are, it's pretty consistently funny throughout. I'd recommend it.

I followed that up with a couple of films for the kids. (ok, I'm not fooling anyone. I like cartoons.)
Flushed Away is another installment from those crazy Plasticine stop-motion geniuses at Aardman, though done with computers this time as, if rumor is in fact true, water effects are rather difficult to do with clay, even for guys who can give a dog brilliant facial expressions. If they think it's too hard, I'm inclined to believe them.

The overall affect is entertaining, though personally I enjoyed Chicken Run and Curse of the Were-Rabbit more. The story is roughly this. A pet rat (Hugh Jackman) with a lavish lifestyle (as pets go) is surreptitiously flushed down the toilet where he's then subjected to the lifestyle of rat commoners. Along the way he's embroiled in a heist scenario involving a bunch of frogs (with expert voice work from Ian McKellan and Jean Reno), and he learns about the true value of family (via Kate Winslet), realizing what he's been missing out on in his life "up top." It's a cute movie and worth a view, especially if you have children.

Bolt sets up an interesting story. Bolt (John Travolta) is a dog. He's also an actor and a big star. And he has no idea. He was raised up from puppyhood along with Penny (Miley Cyrus) to believe that he was altered to possess super powers, that he was specifically assigned to protect Penny, and that Penny was under constant threat from the evil Dr. Calico and his minions. As such, he has no experience with anything constituting the life of a normal dog and he lives on the set.

All is well until the day Bolt accidentally finds himself off the set, out of his element, seriously lost, and strangely sapped of his super powers. Thus begins an odyssey to get home and back to the ever-important job of protecting his beloved Penny.

It's a cute story, the voice acting's pretty good and the dialog is done pretty well to boot. This is another one to watch, again, especially if you have children.

Back to more serious fare, I watched Blade Runner, The Final Cut. I have it on good authority (my Irish neighbor) that this is THE version to watch. Not the pesky so-called original, nor the ill-named "director's cut."

For the amusements of my reader(s), yes, only a mere 27 YEARS after it hit the big screen, I have finally watched it. Truth be told, I was secretly holding out for the 2007 digitally remastered version before I decided this film had earned the honor of my discerning eye. Yeah. That's it.

I was pleasantly surprised. There is no end of sci-fi films that have really suffered the advances of actual technology and modern cgi effects and that really show their age. This one holds up surprisingly well. I found the story quite good (and well acted), the "future" I thought was portrayed with a still-more-than-acceptable view, and the effects were more than suitable such that they didn't jar a person out of the watching experience. If you, like myself, haven't yet seen this one, I'd highly recommend it.