FILM: Spiderman goes emo

I had no idea that Spiderman being posessed by the evil, black, webby symbiote would mean Tobey Maguire would get a bad fashion sense, an emo haircut, and urges to thrust his body and snap his fingers. I found that whole part of the movie to be corny, laughable, and slightly disturbing.

Fortunately, the movie was long and so jam-packed with a million other things going on that Maguire's brush with the embarassing "dark side" was brief in context.

And when I say there were a million other things going on, I mean it. I'm talking flashbacks to Ben Parker's death, Flint Marko's fight to run from the cops, run from Spiderman, and help his daughter, Harry Osborn's loss and regain of his memory, Harry's attempt and resignation at avenging his father's death, Peter Parker's planning to propose to MJ, MJ's fleeting Broadway career and new life as a singing waitress...all topped with a giant wind of sand that is the Sandman and scattered appearances of Topher Grace as Edward Brock Jr./Venom and Bryce Dallas Howard as Gwen Stacy.

The movie was just as crazy and choppy as that sounded, but surprisingly, it worked. The movie was completely and constantly entertaining and while there were more things going on than in previous Spiderman movies, I thought it all came together nicely in the end. As usual, we are left with some kind of valuable lesson that Peter Parker learns. In this case, it was about good and bad, and being faced with a choice to be good or bad. Spiderman who usually does good did bad things, Flint Marko did something bad in the process of wanting to help his daughter, and Brock chose to be bad.

I have to give Bruce Campbell a special mention as the host at the restaurant where Peter was going to propose. This was by far the funniest and my favorite part of the movie. You have to see it to know what I'm talking about.

Ultimately, Spiderman 3 was a hectic and action-packed adventure that is just fun to watch, and really, that's all I ask for in a superhero movie. The movie was also visually pleasing, as Monica mentioned a couple weeks ago, special effects were very well done.

MUSIC: Slow songs are in

There are a few songs on the radio that I'm loving right now, and they all happen to be slow. Anyway, I thought I'd pay them some tribute before they get played out and every predictable emotional internet whore puts them on his/her myspace page. (It's probably too late for that).

Justin Timberlake - Until the End of Time
When I first heard this song (not on the radio), I thought it was one of those really good non-single-album-only hits. But then I heard it on WBLS, and on Power 105 soon after. I have to say hearing it on the radio took a little something away from the song, but I'm still sure it'll be yet another successful single (Summer Love is also riding the radio waves right now) from JT's Future Sex/Love Sounds album.


Bone Thugs-N-Harmony featuring Akon - I Tried
This song is off of the new album, Strength & Loyalty. The song goes into the reality of the problems on the streets these days and that's the fact that it's hard to get out of what you're given.

man I try so hard
will always be a victim of these streets
it ain't my fault cause I...
tried to get away but trouble follows me



Fergie - Big Girls Don't Cry
I think this is a good song for teenage girls navigating their way through life with boys, and for grown women for that matter, because love never gets easier. Plus, Fergie is actually singing and not just shouting or spelling words.

MUSIC: The upside of having your boyfriend cheat on you

It took a couple years, but Carrie Underwood has finally impressed me. Breaking away from awkward moves on the American Idol stage and songs that invoke Jesus, it turns out that this country girl is like any other girl and one who, like many of us, keys up her boyfriend's car when he cheats. Her new single, "Before He Cheats", takes girl power to a whole new level. God forbid my boyfriend cheats on me, but if he does, at least I'll have reason to blast this song and not feel so bad about taking a Louisville slugger to his headlights and slashing his tires. Okay, maybe not. But even if your boyfriend isn't cheating on you, singing along to this song while cruising with your windows down feels damn good.

FILM: All hail the last king of Scotland, or at least the man who plays him

It's the 1970s and Nicholas Garrigan, a young Scottish doctor, is lying on his bed contemplating his future. He goes through a sort of crisis that I suppose many recent graduates face. His lasts about 30 seconds and is resolved by a globe. "Where ever it lands, I go," he said (or something like that). It lands on Canada. Naturally, he spins again. It lands on Uganda.

This is how The Last King of Scotland begins. Before we know it, Nicholas, played by James McAvoy, ends up in Ugandan countryside. It's new, it's different, he sleeps with Ugandan women, he makes out with the wife of a fellow doctor--he's loving it. Nicholas then meets Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker), the nation's new president at the time, who takes Nicholas under his wing, so to speak. Nicholas ends up taking a position as Amin's personal physician and advisor.

Nicholas realizes a little too late that Amin is committing criminal and atrocious acts in the country, killing thousands of innocent people. As expected, there are a few graphic scenes in this movie, but really not as much as there could be. What is portrayed more is Amin's character, particularly his completely strange, hilarious, eccentric, bipolar-like, tendencies. Whitaker, who deservingly won a Best Actor Oscar for this role, is amazing and completely entertaining.

By the end of the movie, viewers are left with an impression of Idi Amin and a pretty amazing story about a Scotsman who got wrapped up in a completely horrifying situation just because he was bored and his globe landed on Uganda. Unfortunately the latter is fictional and the former is questionable. Apparently, there was no Nicholas Garrigan in real life and one of Idi Amin's 50 children (exact number unknown but something like that) claims his father was nothing like the movie's portrayal of him. I guess we'll never know, but I think it's safe to say that Whitaker's performance has made it hard for viewers to imagine Amin any other way.

Whether you know anything about Uganda in the 1970s or you don't, whether you give damn or you don't, watch this movie. It'll open your eyes to sectarian violence and good acting.

MUSIC: Beyonce's effort to look hispanic

So I came across Beyonce and Shakira's Beautiful Liar video, and it totally freaked me out. Before I go on, check it out:



I love Shakira and I'm not crazy about Beyonce, so when I heard this song on the radio I was quick to say I didn't like it. The two artists are polar opposites in my opinion, which is why it so great that they were made to look alike in the video. I'm still not digging the song, but trying to figure out who's who in the video is enough to keep me watching it.

FILM: The pursuit and the happyness

I thought the writers were just being cute when they spelled "happyness" the way that they did, but as it turns out, this is actually explained in the movie. Will Smith's son attends a day care center in a San Franciscan Chinatown and on the outside is the word "happyness" on it. The day care center also happens to be owned by Asian people, as if to suggest Asian people can't spell English words? I have to say I was a little insulted by this.

The good news is I have very few other criticisms of the movie. Set in 1981, Will Smith plays Chris Gardner, a man who aspires to be rich and whose only income comes from selling bone density scanners (more commonly recognized as weird boxes with handles that Smith is carrying for 95 percent of the movie). The struggle to sell these scanners leaves Smith struggling to make rent. Smith's wife (Thandie Newton) eventually leaves him. Smith is left wifeless, moneyless, and soon homeless. What he does have is an adorable son played by, none other than, Smith's son, Jaden Smith.

As expected, the movie is ridiculously depressing at times. Smith is an intern for Dean Witter (the now Morgan Stanley Group). Holding an unpaid position, Smith hopes to be one of 20 chosen to be hired at the end of the program. For the duration of the program, the audience follows Smith and his son to nights in subway cars, bathrooms, and shelters. Redundant at times, this is the "pursuit". After all, this movie is not called "Happiness" (or "Happyness").

What keeps this movie from being overly sappy, predictable, and unconvincing, is the reality that it is based on a true story. It actually makes for an inspirational feel while bringing to light issues of poverty and the value of hard work. I'd say everyone should take a break from 300 and Grindhouse, and rent this one. Expect a lot of running and scenes of San Francisco's subway system.

FILM: Sofia Coppola's portrait of Marie Antoinette

It seems as though Sofia Coppola had a great idea for a movie and then got sidetracked with thoughts like, Cute shoes! Pretty dresses! Yummy cakes! New Wave music, yeah!

Who knows, maybe that was her intention, but this movie is definitely not her best work. It's worth seeing for the costume work and the set (apparently she is the first director ever allowed to film in the actual Palace of Versailles). But other than that, it was boring, acting was unimpressive, and the portrayal of Marie Antoinette isn't very believable--maybe even inaccurate.

FILM: Children of Men, the real deal

I liked Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, but to say that Children of Men doesn't live up to it is insane. This movie is amazing and everyone needs to see it. And Monica, you need to see it again.

It is 2027 and women are infertile; it all seems so far from us, yet this movie is simply an illustration of our world, right now and where we are headed.

Children of Men is not about children. It's about the world birthed from humans and their actions. The movie opens up with Clive Owen in a coffee shop. He walks out, careful to not spill his coffee, when a building blows up behind him. The scene is completely startling, but the viewer's realization that this really happens in some parts of the world is more startling. We are so removed that we are unmoved; Cuaron shoves it in our faces.

Chaos is without a purpose. Enemy lines are blurred. Distrust between groups of people is abounding, and with good reason. This is the world of 2027, and the only thing that stops it, even for a second, is the cry of a baby. I think the fact that women are infertile in this movie represents the continuation of our world at war. The birth of the miracle baby represents a new world, one where war is secondary, chaos is silenced, and life is cherished again.

Apart from all these things, I found the acting to be great, especially Clive Owen. The direction was amazing, particularly the war scenes that were shockingly real. As for characters being underdeveloped, as noted by Monica, I feel as though the viewer isn't meant to connect with any characters. The movie is a mirroring of society.

Children of Men shows us that we need a baby in a world where women are infertile. We need a change in a world that is so deeply sunken in mistakes. This movie doesn't leave you feeling hopeful, it leaves you with your eyes opened.

FILM: Babel speaks to its audiences

Movies leave you with a message. Really good movies leave you with three or more.

Alejandro González Iñárritu truly redeems himself with his direction of the Oscar-winning Babel. Perhaps I shouldn't say that considering I've only seen one of his other movies, Amores Perros ("Love Dogs" or "Love's a Bitch" in English), but the countless scenes of bloody dogs in that movie was enough for me to hate the guy.

Other than the brief beheading of a chicken, Babel has no tortured animals, just a poor Cate Blanchett who gets shot in an extremely unlucky, wrong-place-wrong-time type of situation while vacationing in Morocco with husband Brad Pitt. The unhappily married couple's two perfect blond-haired, blue-eyed children are back home with Aemilia (Adriana Barraza), the kids' nanny and an illegal immigrant from Mexico. When no one else can watch the kids, Aemilia is forced to take the kids back to Mexico with her for her son's wedding.

Meanwhile the culprits of the Blanchett shooting, two young Moroccan brothers who were innocently and foolishly testing out a new high power rifle purchased by their father, hear that an American tourist has been shot on a bus. They panic as they realize what they have done. The rifle serves as a link to the fourth story of the movie which takes place in Japan. A deaf-mute teenage girl, tortured by social pressures and stifled by her inability to speak, is determined and desperate to lose her virginity.

These four loosely related sets of situations are cleverly and successfully interweaved, unlike Amores Perros where the stories were rather sloppily wrapped together. Iñárritu has an odd way of establishing time in his movies. In Babel, the stories keep jumping back and forth, leaving you with the impression that they are all going on at the same time. In actuality, however, the different events precede and follow one another and it is up to the viewer to piece the puzzle together. It is a stylistic move more than anything less. Nevertheless, it works.

The stories unfold and while the link between the situations is clear, the underlining relationship and point of it all are not. Monica clued me in that the movie is essentially about the overbearing lack of communication among humans, which makes sense considering its title (See Babel). I left the movie believing it was about the opressiveness of governmental and social systems, while my boyfriend came away with a statement about motherhood (the motherless Japanese girl and Aemilia as a vicarious mother to the kids).

In any case, this never boring, curiously developed, neatly crafted film is worth seeing. Iñárritu spells out a message for you, and the beauty of it all is you can read it any which way you want.

FILM: Will Ferrell at his sexiest

Note to Monica: You said you found Will Ferrell to be handsome in Stranger than Fiction. Funny, I always thought you'd like a Ferrell with long brown locks, a sexy stare, and a killer sense of style, say something a little more Blades of Glory? I for one love a man who can work a pair of blades on the ice. Please keep us posted on this next Ferrell venture, I sure as hell will not be spending my good 10 dollars to see it anytime soon.