Definitely an excursion into chick flick territory, Angelina Jolie takes a strange ride in Life or Something Like It and most men will enjoy the ride as well, even if she doesn’t show off her hot naked body. Edward Burns reminds me of someone here, another actor from years past, with the wisecracks and the big smiles, but I can’t quite put my finger on who. Tony Shalhoub is turning into one of the great character actors of our time (Men in Black, The Man Who Wasn’t There, TV’s Wings) and his streetcorner prophet sets Jolie off with his vision that she will die in less than a week. Since the first scene is Jolie on an operating table, the odds that she will seem reasonable. Then again, this is a Hollywood movie.

Director Stephen Herek does a much better job this time around than he did on last movie, Rock Star, getting strong performances and keeping the pace flowing. So does writer John Scott Shepherd, whose only previously produced script was last year’s Tim Allen clunker Joe Somebody, giving Burns a son as to foil his hard edge.

A big shout out to my homeboy Byron for making the movie and a terrific dinner at Don Giovanni my first birthday present of the year. For those of you still waiting, there are only four more shopping days until the Big Event.

recommended

I thought this was some kind of secretly filmed biography of me. At least that’s what my girlfriend said. Turned out to be one of the latest heavy duty British crime dramas featuring Ben Kingsley as a bad guy to whom no one, even other bad guys, want to say no. Sexy Beast is Gal (Ray Winstone), a retired Brit criminal living in the beautifully sunny south of Spain with a hottie former porn star wife, who gets recruited by Kingsley for a bank vault ripoff led by the even more psychotic Teddy (Ian McShane).

The film easily divides into two acts, Gal’s recruitment in Spain and the job back in London, which have little to do with each other and have Gal as the only character in common. This is the first filmed directed by Jonathon Glazer and the first (produced) screenplay by Louis Mellis and David Scinto and is remarkable more for the performances by the three actors mentioned here than anything else. Avoid it if you have a problem with heavy English accents or expect more in the way of plot.

recommended

Turns out that Matthew Broderick has one of the leads in You Can Count on Me because he was high school buddies with writer/director Kenneth Lonergan, how’s that for a juicy tidbit! Okay, this is Lonergan’s first major film and getting someone of Broderick’s history probably helped more with getting the financing. This is an odd little film that had a lot of critical acclaim and got nominated for a lot of awards so I figured to give it a shot. Can’t really recommend it to others unless you like really small scale character studies where the characters undergo almost no growth at all. None of the actors give all that exciting performances although Laura Linney comes closest in what I suppose is the lead role.

not recommended

Cameron Diaz, Christina Applegate, and Selma Blair prove that girls rule in The Sweetest Thing, which was a funny cross of Scary Movie and My Best Friend’s Wedding. Just like in Scary Movie Blair is the butt of an oral sex joke although this time a piercing causes the trouble. The film makes a big deal of how gorgeous Diaz is but if I had to choose I’d take Applegate in a heartbeat, no hesitation; one of the movie’s jokes is how Diaz breasts have slipped a little since she was 22, her character is 28, but in real life she’s 30 and I think her thin, angular face may not age all that well. The director was smart enough not to have Applegate do the same, he even denigrated her breasts as fake in another scene, or she would have stolen the movie.

Screenwriter Nancy Pimental is previously credited as a writer on South Park and I can see some of that influence here, such as the exchange between Applegate and a little boy in the church scene. Thomas Jane doesn’t have nearly enough to do as the object of Diaz’s affection but that’s probably due to the fact that the film’s too short at around 83 minutes. Georgina Engels (yes, the blonde from the Mary Tyler Moore Show) has a cute cameo as a campy clothing store owner and Parker Posey, obviously taking the money, is cute but has no decent lines as Jane’s fiancee.

Recommended

Am I too old to enjoy National Lampoon’s Van Wilder? Apparently not, since I laughed my ass off this afternoon as we were watching partymeister Ryan Reynolds and goddess/journalist Tara Reid get their groove on after defeating the evil frat boy Daniel Cosgrove. Seriously, the latest film from National Lampoon could have been titled Animal House: The Next Generation and while it doesn’t quite reach the heights of that classic, it’s better than any Lampoon film since the original Vacation. The original had Belushi and no one comes near his brilliance, but we do get Tim Matheson (Otter in the original) playing the father of our hero and Reid blows Karen Allen and Mary Louise Weller out of the water. And we get the dog and the jokes and pranks he’s in. Although some people might think better of eating beforehand.

recommended!