Fontana's Movie Mini-Reviews

King Arthur

2008-03-22T20:55:00.003-05:00

Things I learned from the movie King Arthur starring Clive Owen and Kiera Knightly:

1) Guinevere was a half-crazy naked wolf lady.

2) She and King Arthur got married at Stonehenge.

So there you go. Facts.

Disappointment

2007-09-04T23:24:00.000-05:00

Okay, peep this: You've just gotten home from a long day of work. You chillax on the couch and turn on the TV, ready to watch some kind of CSI garbage or whatever. Then something awesome happens:

You see that your roommate has TiVoed an episode of Becker! Becker! Becker, as in "your-grandparents-favorite-TV-show-tied-with-MASH" Becker. Becker like "the-TV-show-that-for-some-reason-your-old-boss-used-as-the-standard-
of-comedy-to-which-to-all-other-comedy-should-be-held" Becker.

You should have sensed that something was off since your roommate mostly TiVos documentaries about Ancient Rome and French news programs and Charlie Rose, but you didn't want to question this felicitous turn of events. Then you select it, only to realize that it is actually the movie Becket starring Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole. Ugh.

Dear Becket: You, sir, are no Becker.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

2006-06-02T23:14:00.000-05:00

At the beginning of this movie someone says something like "This isn't a story about numbers, it's a story about people."

Spoiler alert: It's a story about numbers.

Transporter 2

2006-03-20T19:43:00.000-05:00

Here are some things that happened in Transporter 2:

The transporter jumps his car from one parking structure across the distance of a city block into the middle level of another parking structure.

The transporter removes a bomb from the bottom of his car by making his car jump to the height of a temporarily out of use crane, hooking the bomb onto the crane latch, and letting gravity to do the rest.

The transporter uses innuendo to compare a recently ordered pizza to the advances of a beautiful woman.

Here is a list of problems I had with Transporter 2:

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Incidentally, these are the same problems I had with Transporter 1.

Walking and Talking

2006-03-19T14:25:00.000-05:00

Catharine Keener and Anne Heche play two best friends dealing with life, love, and therapy in upperclass New York City. In the end they discover the most important relationship is their friendship.

(You may be surprised to learn this movie was written and directed by a woman.)

Bleu

2006-01-24T11:27:00.000-05:00

I decided to watch this French movie because the back cover contained the phrases “drawn into an ever-widening web of lies,” “dark, secret life,” and “startling discovery and heartstopping surprise.” I was made a fool of because the story was totally linear with no surprises or webs of lies. The maddening part is that there were plenty of places for surprises; like when the hooker calls Juliette Binoche out of her apartment in the middle of the night because she “needs someone to talk to,” you think “she is totally helping someone else break in and plant a wiretap.” Nope! Everything’s above board!

Also, two movie-making notes for the French:

1. Americans already invented a way of indicating the passing of time in a movie (i.e. hands on a clock moving really fast). No need to reinvent the wheel with your close up on a coffee cup with shadows passing over it.

2. If your scenes don’t have a direct relation to the plot, and that plot isn’t even about a hidden map on the back of the Declaration of Independence, what are you even doing?

Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights

2005-12-03T16:54:00.000-05:00

Patrick Swayze, who plays a dance instructor character that is neither a reprisal of his original role nor is related to the main plot, says that if you can't move through your fear and connect with yourself, you can never connect with your partner. I've done a lot of research on the internet, but I have not yet been able to verify whether or not this is true.

The Stepford Wives

2005-12-01T20:07:00.000-05:00

The problem with this movie is that it doesn’t have the cultural impact of the original. Nowadays everyone just assumes that most women are hot robots.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

2005-11-29T11:51:00.000-05:00

When people started trying to figure out who might side with the dark lord Sauron, was there really no one who suspected the superpowerful wizard consulting a dark crystal of evil magic named Saruman? Really? There were no warning signs? Okay.

The Firm

2005-11-28T10:19:00.000-05:00

From now on when I talk about The Firm I’m going to call it “that movie starring Gary Busey and Wilford Brimley.”

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

2005-11-27T16:13:00.000-05:00

Voldemort’s relationship with Harry Potter reminds me a lot of the part in the Bible when King Herod heard the prophecy that a new king would be born, so he sought out Jesus to kill him. When he found him, Herod put the Avada Kedavra spell on him, but Jesus’ parents loved him so much they reversed the spell. Then later Jesus went on to win the Triwizard tournament!