SUNDAY AT THE MOVIES

Can you believe five movies?  I'm off on my ultimate global journey in two days and won't see another film for a couple of months.  The ratings:

                                           ROTTEN TOMATOES    MY GRADE                  

                                            Reviewers    Audience

InaPPropriate Comedy                 ?              63%                  C

Olympus has Fallen                   51%           79%                  A-

Admission                                  44%          58%                 B          

Croods                                       65%           87%                B

Spring Breakers                         70%           67%                B-

InaPPropriate Comedy was offensive, but funny, sort of like Film 43, but not as blatantly pornographic nor humiliating, as such.  Scurrilous and unseemly vignettes starring people like Rob Schneider, Michelle Rodrigues, Adrien Brody and Lindsay Lohan insult  your intelligence and morals, but nevertheless trouble you by being somewhat entertaining.  Lindsay, yes, but how did those others get trapped into this garbage...which was almost worth it.

Mind you, The New York Post gave it a four star rating and called the film " brutally funny."  But Lou Lumenick was being sarcastic...I think.  The director, Vince Offer was responsible for that "Sham Wow" TV commercial, which works, because I got some, and they're terrific.  If nothing else, I can warn you that Lohan appears next month in Scary Movie 5, (which, wow, got a RT audience rating of 86%) including a scene with Charlie Sheen.

I liked Olympus has Fallen.  Gerard Butler carried the show, but Rick Yune, as one of those nasty villains, stood out.  Before becoming an actor, he was a hedge fund trader on Wall Street.  You've previously seen him, for he has been around since 1999 in Snow Falling on Cedars.

The movie itself should do well for it has all the ingredients:  shooting, dying, explosions...  North Korea has become moviedom's favorite invader these days.  Remember Red Dawn?  Morgan Freeman again plays the equivalent of POTUS.  Sorry, but it has a happy ending.

I kind of identified with Admission.  Tina Fey plays an admissions officer for Princeton University, and the process brings me back to those days when I was applying for college.  I still wonder how I got into Stanford.  The film indicates that Princeton dropped to #2 in admissions with something a bit above 20,000, but #1 is UCLA with 61,564, and Princeton is not even in the top 25.  It can't be yield (percent accepted who enroll), because BYU is #1, Harvard #2 and Stanford #3...and Princeton #18.  It could be national ranking, where Princeton follows Harvard.  In any case, the premise holds hope, but the portrayal is flawed.  Tina gets fired and disappointed, but the ending is sort of okay.

Croods is for children.  I went because I heard it was to be the box office winner this weekend (beating out Olympus by a bunch), and I paid $4 more for the 3D version.  You need to have a child's maturity to gloss over the technical impossibilities.  Nicholas Cage spoke as the caveman father, with daughter Eep (Emma Stone) the love interest of Guy (Ryan Reynolds), a wandering Homo sapien (I think the others were Neanderthal).  The star of the show was Belt (Chris Sanders, because he serves as wise advisor and belt, to hold up the pants), a pet sloth of Guy.  I'm not a fan of animation, nor vampires.  Not sure how the ending went, for I had to leave early to catch the beginning of...

... Spring Breakers.  Last night on TV, Where the Boys Are was shown, a film from 1960.  See Connie Francis sing this song in 2010.  Spring Breakers also occurs in Florida, but in St. Petersburg instead of Fort Lauderdale, during, of course, a college spring break.  However, the 50+ years shift in time has changed everything, reflecting the spirit of today, but with a dark twist into nightmare.  For example, instead of Connie's ballad, we have James Franco, playing a gangsta and rapping.  Yes, the same James Franco who is the Wizard of Oz.

It's an R movie, but could just as well have been an X.  The Boston Globe thought this offering was mesmerizing.  Selena Gomez is the only good person in the film.  The ending was left up in the air, but looming terrible.

In between I had a spaghetti with chicken, Caesar Salad, Prosecco and house red:

Amazingly enough, I only barely slept a couple of times and drove home without a headache.

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