dv-65

Where have all the good reviews come from ? I actually felt a little heart broken watching this film. De Nero's acting and film choices used to mean something, I used to get excited waiting from them to arrive..then blown away by film and his performance...remember that ? This is not that. How rich does he need to be ? This is like Steve Spielberg spending the remainder of his career using his iPhone to film his own sh*ts . I'm not saying I wouldn't watch but I would be almost as disappointed.

This feels like a thriller from the eighties..pre-Tarantino, pre-Jason Bourne , a time when you could suggest that something crazy and exciting was going to happen but it never really does. Rebecca de Costa, plucked from B-Movie obscurity , has the sort of charm and performance ability of a ,Roger Moore era, Bond girl . She's tall, pretty and busty [ we see her in her bra ,for various reasons ,several times. Obviously the director thought we might not notice otherwise.] but acting wise she can't really do it..especially against Cusack who you can see desperately searching her eyes for anything to play off of...

David Grovic , possibly the worst actor ever to appear in a movie with De Niro, has somehow managed to raise enough money to make a film with our two heroes but decided to entrust the writing and directing to himself ...which is his first ever go at writing anything, so that's bound to be really, really, good right ? Mr. Grovic's, terrible, terrible mumbling performance as the lawyer at the end, almost lands the coup do grace... but this is left instead to his directorial decision , to finish the film with a odd ,not thought through, shot of the back of John Cusack's head, just before he drives off in the mid-afternoon Mid-town traffic...

What's in the bag, Man ? It's Brad Pitt's girlfriends head from the film 'Seven' .

PS: Incidentally if you check any of the authors of the good reviews, you will see that they have only ever reviewed one film , this one....I think someone is trying to influence the IMDb star rating. Although I believe even they are trying to give out subliminal messages..look for the rave review by Eric Poop.

You may like it, but you'll be on your own. This is some lazy, aimless, but most of all, boring film making. Working from a treatment and not a script meant that it was largely improvised and like any improv... sometimes it's interesting and sometimes it's just actors self-consciously searching for things to say. In this case they always try and find something potentially offensive , then kick it around until it's long past examination. Initially I genuinely I thought they were some group bond by their autism or something. I'm sure it was great fun to make, they used real alcohol in boozing scenes and real black guys to offend in the bar scene .Check the trivia notes. It's likely you'll have to watch it on DVD or TiVo, unless you have a very open-minded movie theatre near you which doesn't mind losing money. Because of this there are parts you will fast forward. Once they set up in a scene, that's it, that's all you're gonna get. Spoiler.. Man looking a girl in bed... that's it, three minutes... watch it fast , or watch it slow.. I broke at the 30 minute mark...see how far you can get !

And what the hell is LCD Soundsystem doing there anyway ?

Written by David Tuck : Edited by Nicole I. Ashland

Okay, first of all I'd like to compare how much time we see Batman on screen, to how long we see Bruce Wayne recovering from not being very well, after some injury or other. It's about equal. Who doesn't love a film about someone recovering from a serious injury ? Secondlt, he gets his ass handed to him by Cat Woman , twice ! And it's HER who saves HIM at the end ..oh sorry ,should have said spoiler alert.

He meets McBain twice and LOSES both times...?!?! Sure, he kicked a few henchmen around but WTF ? So who does he manage to dispatch ? A rather petite woman , who's main weapon was a small penknife...so much for Morgan Freeman's bat armour and his spider senses...oh, yeah that's from one of the other guys.

Also McBains Darth Vader speeches, were hard to understand and ultimately unnecessary because he wasn't the villain after all... he gave about six different speeches about...we'll I'm not really sure because, as I said, it was hard to understand.. but that was six to many.

Hero's are simple characters, they are better than us, better than any of us ever can be. That is their purpose, to make us strive to be better human beings. When you reveal the hero is as human as the rest of us, you destroy more than the finales atom bomb can , because you remove not only the man but also the myth.

I'm starting to think Mr.Pitt doesn't know what to do with his hands when he's acting. But now he is rarely seen far from finger food. Initially I thought it was a character trait he'd invented for whoever he played in the Ocean's 11 series[ whenever we cut to him he usually was finishing some snack or other...hilarious!] But it seems that it's going to be a regular part of his performance cannon.

He indulges in so many snacks, he actually mistimes one and while on the phone sorting out one dull transfer or another, he puts peanuts in his mouth just before he has to speak and then he spits them out.[ Honestly watch it again, it's no planned move] I'm baffled by this long uninteresting story, and why someone as good as Mr.Sorkin got involved. In a nutshell big league failure Billy Beane [ "Dammit ! We've only got $39 million to spend !!...yeah, that must be tough"] uses Peter Brands system and fails to win the big prize...

Why is the film about Billy ? Surely it's Pete's story , he's the underdog who came from nowhere to majors and changed how some teams used players. Billy was losing until he came along.

Oh, and that 20 wins in a row ? This film is based around the use of statistics. And statistic's prove that if you do something long enough eventually all permutations will occur. That's why the record had stood so long…it was simply time, not talent.

Also Philip Seymour Hoffman, always brilliant, is left on the bench for most of the picture. And when he does appear he's only allowed to field rather than pitch [ Thats a baseball reference right ?]

Okay,I wasn't going to say anything but I was so baffled by the other reviews I feel compelled.

This film isn't, just in case you were wondering,' untouched genius'. It's simply , okay. It's like watching people who are quite nice going through a storyline which is slightly familiar. No alarms and no surprises.

I don't wish to add spoilers but one crucial scene which for me explains all the films weaknesses is this; Jennifer Westfeldt looks at herself in the mirror wearing a pair of heels, she decides she doesn't like them , so takes them off and puts on a pair of boots which zip up the side. She sits down on a bed and puts them on, one at a time, then once again she looks at herself in the mirror. This time she is happy with her choice. This is shot in real time, and if memory serves correctly without an edit. Takes about 45 secs. When you write , direct and star [ especially when you haven't been in a movie for a while] ,screen time must be very exciting but filming yourself looking at yourself , pretty explains the whole movie for me.

There's a good reason Kristen Wigg features on the poster, Bridesmaids made millions, she's funny and has got game.

But imagine being in the marketing meeting where you had to explain to Jennifer why her face wouldn't be appearing in any of the advertisements for the film she wrote, directed and starred in. Ouch, that must have been a tough day for her.

Okay, for a start it is really rare that blue collar/working class people get involved in the art world, let alone obsessed . So the idea that three museum co-workers, who for some reason have never met before, all have the same degree of obsession, but for different pieces, and all of whom are willing to risk prison just to own them, is a clumsy premise.

The caper is all very straightforward, William H Macy [ brilliant in a role that really doesn't give him much to work with] needs to be smuggled out of the museum in a box containing the stolen artwork. There is of course several other boxes in the same storage area and I don't think for a second that ANYBODY in the audience thought that Walken and Freeman had smuggled out the correct box. Leading to a very predictable recovery process.

As a heist movie it lacks any ingenuity, three museum security staff steal the items they are charged to look after, you know that doesn't seem all that hard.

It feels like the sort of seventies movie that Walter Matthau and Jack Lemon would have done, where slightly nutty characters would have been enough. But not so much anymore.

Why three successful actors thought this was a good idea I don't know. It's not terrible just a bit obvious. I'm not sure who it's aimed at. It's not weird enough for the art house crowd not exciting or funny enough for the Multiplex...

About three minutes into Larry David's opening monologue I started checking my watch...and I didn't stop.

Much has been made of the fact this was written in 1977, the year Jaws came out and cinema changed forever. But not Mr. Allen. The opening speech is four minutes long and kinda dull. Comedy doesn't look or sound like this anymore. Inchworm ? Really, as an insult in 2009 ? Not just a lyric from a Danny Kaye movie.

I remember loving Manhattan, but being puzzled about a forty year old guy dating a seventeen year old year [ was that illegal in the US at the time ? ] but assumed it was a writer examining an unusual relationship.

Then his private life became very public, and it just started to look like he genuinely believed it was okay.

Here is another toe curling example of a beautiful young girl [ 21] falling for an old man [ Larry David is 62 and looks it ]. Yes, what young girls really like is being taught how great the past was and how everything that's modern is rubbish. Music and movies that Woody loved when he was 21 , he reveries as untouchable icons . Everything else sucks.

Shameful and embarrassing . It was not a surprise to see that Woody has signed the petition to release Roman Polanski.

Worst of all, and this really is unforgivable, he steals a joke. In Parenthood [ 1989 ]written by Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel. Keanu Reeves character says something like 'You need a licence for a car, you need a licence to own a dog but anyone idiot can have kids...' Near enough the same line appears at 01.01.00 into the movie.

When Woody Allen steals from Babaloo, you know something is amiss.

There's something about Stage 6 Productions, responsible for this under powered non-thrilling thriller, that baffles me. It appears to be an formerly successful actors graveyard. Remember after Jerry MacGuire , Cuba's future looked great, then he made Snow Dogs !?! He's made more bad choices than John Travolta, and thus he arrives in a Stage 6 produced vehicle ,following the likes of Val Kilmer and Stephen Dorf, into a sad straight to DVD waste of time.

I can only guess that Stage 6 are great at getting DVD distribution deals. I can see it now, get a name; albeit one that's fallen on hard times, get the deal money up front; these films really can't cost more than $3/4 million[ FYI: none of that goes on the script].

And keep shooting footage until you get 90 minutes of a story that 'CSI' would reject. Not just CSI, but CSI Miami.

The story is so , ho hum, on screen I can't imagine what it looks like on paper.

The opening ,lightly baited, hook of the movie shows a group of Mexicans killed in a truck .This solved by a subsidiary character, off screen , who then hands the information over to Cuba while pinned under a crashed quad bike bleeding to death. Most people would ask for help first, honestly blood everywhere, he never mentions it.

The key to a good cheap move is a great idea and clever writing [ Reservoir Dogs, Juno, Sideway] not tired star and a script downloaded from the internet.

I can't recommend this film at all or disagree with the previous review more.

From it's clumsy set up when Taryn Manning , looking too old for this sort of cutesy role, wanders onto the roof of Freddie Prinzes Jr.'s office building. She's clutching a subway map and asking for directions. He seems bizarrely charmed by someone who appears, to the rest of us, to be a mental patient.

Then , in a sequence we don't see, she gives him her resume and headshots and explains she's in New York to act and model. That's right in a scene we DON'T see.

So, we cut from the roof meeting to Freddie recommending her for a topless modelling job. Hey, now and the what now ??? She accepts no questions asked. Then he supports her in a friendly ,kind way during the shoot. Even though she's just wearing bikini bottoms, she seems completely happy with it.

Isn't that what mother's warn daughters would happen if they trust strange men in the big city ? This film also has the worst first kiss moment, neither romantic or sexy , expected or wanted. Freddie and Taryn have less chemistry than an organic fruit farm. Although Mr.Prinze can be happy with his first real grown up role, he's a convincing fleshed out adult man now and this performance will see him get much better roles.

Contrary to the previous review, this film really embraces many Hollywood clichés, the terminally ill heroine , the 'set in his ways' businessman realising there's a freer way to live, the 'falling in love' montage, the colleague who keeps fixing up Freddie with unsuitable women ! The kooky girl who just wants the whole world to have fun !! On and on..

Taryn keeps saying ' I love New York' , but as this film was made in Toronto you barely see it. There's only enough cash for stock footage ?

This film takes the idea of 'Dharma and Greg' removes the jokes and stretches it to 90 minutes This film is neither 'romantic' or a 'comedy'.

And finally I checked all the people who have left comments, the negative/accurate ones come from people who've made other comments on other films both good and bad.

Whereas the positive ones are all submitted by people who have only every made one comment [ this one] and it's a RAVE ! They also go out of the way to praise the director. This isn't Kubrick or Spielberg,it's just an underpowered chick-flick. I can only presume it's family and friends.