City Island was a great indie film that should have gotten more exposure

City Island was a very entertaining film with a great cast. Great performance by Andy Garcia.  This is probably my favorite of his films.  His character loved his amll community but it seems wants to secretly want to break free from it.  He works as a prison guard but wanted to try to be an actor and has secretly been taking an acting class.  Alan Arkin had an interesting role as Garcia's acting coach.  Alan Arkin played more of a realistic acting coach than you usually see in TV and films.  Usually acting coaches and acting classes are portrayed with ridiculous over acting.  Ezra Miller is once again great. Everything I see with Miller in it he plays pretty much the same character, but he does it so well. I liked how his character was really into fat chicks but the girl he likes thinks he's some ass-whole who makes fat jokes. You really don't see many teen characters who are really into fat chicks, especially when it is done in a since way. Julianna Margulies was good, but I've definitely seen her do better a better performance.  Her accent seemed forced at times.  Emily Mortimer really reminded me of Emily Watson.  I liked The big climax and it was very rewarding and very funny. This was a very well written film that should have gotten more exposure.  I don't think I even heard of this film until it was released on DVD.  The DVD cover is what initially struck me.

You'll notice I know have switched the font of my blog posts from Comic Sans to Tahoma.  Everyone always shits on Comic Sans and I like other fonts so I finally gave in and charged the font.

Jared Leto was creepy good as Mark David Chapman in Chapter 27

Chapter 27 is about Mark David Chapman and what he did in the last three days before he shot John Lennon 4 times in December 1980. Jared Leto was great and almost unrecognizable putting on so much weight to play Mark David Chapman. He looks eerily like Chapman in the film. The movie had it's flaws but it was still fairly good. I liked the idea of Chapman telling his story from the mental institution. I liked all the references to the Catcher in the Rye. I bet in those final three days before Chapman shot Lennon he really did make similar references to the book as he walked around Manhattan. I liked how the film was named Chapter 27 as if it was a continuation of Catcher in the Rye, which has 26 chapters. Lindsay Lohan was surprising ok, not great but OK. That's probably only because she didn't play a big character in the film, if she did she probably would have brutally killed the film.  It was really weird that the guy who portrayed Lennon was named Mark Lindsay Chapman.  I was disappointed with the ending though. He shots Lennon and then it ends. Right after the real Mark David Chapman shot Lennon he sat down on the sidewalk and started reading the Catcher in the Rye again. I wish the film would have continued just a little longer to show what Chapman did after he shot Lennon.  The scenes with the coffee shop guy were funny.

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant try their hand at a more serious film with Cemetery Junction

I only rented Cemetery Junction because it said written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. Though I didn't enjoy it anywhere near as much of other work of theirs I've seen. They made names for themselves as brilliant comedy writer/actors but with this film they have successfully proved they can write a more serious film. I wasn't sure if I liked the film until the end when it finally came together.  Some of the deleted scenes were very funny.  I'm guessing they took them out to maintain the more serious tone most of the film had.  The scenes with the coffee shop guy were funny.  I give it 3 out of 5 stars, speaking of which I want to think of some new thing instead of stars to rate movies with, any suggestions?

The Chumscrubber tried to be a good indie film but fucked it up

The Chumscrubber was a lighter kind of Donnie Darko film. Some of the acting wasn't the greatest and some of the casting could have been better. Kind like a sick twist on Desperate Housewives. Where the film fails is in how it tries to mix Donnie Darko with Desperate Housewives. It tried to hard maintain both elements and ending failing at both. It is kind of like two films stuck together. If it was a film about the adults in town and how fucked up they are and how they don't really care about the kids it probably would have been good. If it was a film about the kidnapping plot and how fucked up the kids are it may have been a good film. However when they mixed them together they kind of half-assed it and it failed. The strange animation segments were just dump and really took away from the film as well. However at times I did enjoy it so I give it 2.5

Hot Tub Time Machine Was actually really funny

I just watched Hot Tub Time Machine and have decided to start posting film reviews again.  When I first heard of the film I really wanted to hate it. But I got to say it was really funny. The concept is utterly ridiculous but it's still really funny. Craig Robinson and Rob Corddry usually play supporting characters in their films and it's nice to see them playing leads. Clark Duke was funny, he usually is. In the end of the film all the guys had better lives because of what they changed in the past. But wouldn't there also be bad, possibly horrific, changes too when they returned to present?  

I just felt like ranting a little....

This started out as a Facebook status message I was typing but appearing status messages can't be more than 420 characters now, (when did they make that rule) so now I'm putting it here and expanding it some:

     I had a discussion with my grandmother yesterday about the proposed mosque to be built near ground zero (I read somewhere that the proposed spot where they want to built the mosque is actually a few blocks away from Ground Zero and not as close as the Teabaggers make it sound).  My grandmother said she agrees which the people protesting it. She said a mosque shouldn't be built near grand zero because the terrorists were Muslims. To which I replied, "Yes the terrorists were Muslim, however we can't then say all Muslims are bad. There have been many many Christians who killed people and did horrible things. Does that mean we shouldn't built any Christian churches anywhere near where a Christian did something horrible?" She said, "But this is different" and then changed the subject. But is it really different? I am not trying to attack Christians, I am just trying to make a point.  Thousands of murders were/are Christian but Americans never have said all Christians must be evil and bad.  No because Christians doesn't think they should all be blamed for what some Christians have done, then why should we blame all Muslims for what a few of them did.  Again I am not trying to attack Christians (or any religion) just making a point.