I saw this cult fave in the cinema during the original release in 1999 but missed the ending, the last six or eight minutes, when the projector burned the last reel. Of course the manager offered to let us come back another day but I wasn’t going to sit through the whole thing again just for that.

Five years have passed, though, so when Office Space showed up on the program guide I decided it was time to finally watch the whole thing, especially since in the intervening time the movie’s become the kind of geek in-joke that gets quote every other day. Maybe it was the way Comedy Central bleeped all the slightly naughty words (even though they don’t bleep on South Park!), some editing to fit the time slot or being broken up for commercial interludes, but I just didn’t come away with the same appreciation for it.

Sure there are some funny bits but jokes have never been a problem for writer/director Mike Judge–after all, just creating Beavis and Butt-head was more than enough to make him a cultural hero–but bottom line is that he picked too easy a target and doesn’t put it enough together to make for a truly insightful comedy. My thought is to make an analogy to pushing on a string.

cannot decide

Rack one up for the Sweet One, this was not a movie I would have chosen on my own. Shrek 2 is moderately amusing but nowhere near the revelation the original was. The whole scheming Fairy Godmother bit put me off though it drove the plot and I generally find Jennifer Saunders quite inventive. Eddi Murphy thumbs up, Mike Myers mostly good, Cameron Diaz okay, John Cleese walked through it. High quality animation is no longer anything more than the ante required to sit at the table–Katzenberg and company had better come up with much more for the third and fourth installments. But my wife really enjoyed it and that’s good enough for my Sunday afternoon.

mildly amusing

Watched parts of both Chasing Papi and Thirteen Conversations About One Thing today but couldn’t get my head into either; surprisingly both were efforts from women directors. The first was mainly about showing off the feminine assets of Roselyn Sanchez, Sofia Vergara (my favorite) and Jaci Velasquez. The latter was some kind of babble featuring Matthew McConaughey, John Turturro, Amy Irving, Alan Arkin and a boatload of others in a film that was all about talking and never about doing, as far as I could tell; I turned it off to watch this week’s season premiere of Reno 911.

Watched parts of both Chasing Papi and Thirteen Conversations About One Thing today but couldn’t get my head into either; surprisingly both were efforts from women directors. The first was mainly about showing off the feminine assets of Roselyn Sanchez, Sofia Vergara (my favorite) and Jaci Velasquez. The latter was some kind of babble featuring Matthew McConaughey, John Turturro, Amy Irving, Alan Arkin and a boatload of others in a film that was all about talking and never about doing, as far as I could tell; I turned it off to watch this week’s season premiere of Reno 911.

Jim Carrey’s character in Bruce Almighty might, to quote a song from the soundtrack, “have the power,” but the movie sure doesn’t. There are some funny bits, I am hard pressed to imagine a Jim Carrey movie that wouldn’t unless he decided to do a remake of All Quiet on the Western Front, but director Tom Shadyac equivocates on the movie’s core. For a comedy, especially farce, the movie dips too far into melodrama and for anything more serious it goes way past acceptable into slapstick.

don’t bother unless you’re a Carrey fanatic

As most reviewers have written, this is a good movie. I’ll agree to that and add that one reason for me is that new to the series director Alfonso Cuaron and written every one scripter Steve Kloves have found a way to make this a movie, keyed to pacing and plot, and not just a transliteration of the novel to the screen. As good as the novel is, a film is simply not the same thing; Peter Jackson faced off against a similar challenge in LotR and won.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is the film of the third book in the coming of age story of a young English Wizard, in case you’ve been serving in Afghanistan the last five years. This time out Harry doesn’t have to face off against his main adversary, Lord He Who Must Not Be Named, but finds danger elsewhere. I do like most of the the visualizations of strange creatures from the book, the Dementers from Azkaban, the werewolf, the Hippograf.

recommended

Frankly I had read mostly bad reviews of Neil Jordan’s remake of Bob La Flambeur, now called The Good Thief, and took a pass during the theatrical run but when I saw the title on the program guide said what the heck and recorded it. In the end I wasn’t disappointed.

Nick Nolte is usually pretty good and he is as Bob, the half-American title character, a retired thief spending his waning years gambling and shooting up heroin in Nice. Not without friends, though, and one day they present him with an opportunity for a last, huge score. Gérard Darmon is very slick as the older one, Raoul, and Saïd Taghmaoui as the young lover Paolo are given somewhat stock characters but turn out fair performances.

Complicating the situaiton is Anne (the Georgian teen Nutsa Kukhianidze), perhaps all of 17 and caught up in the web of a pimp named Remi until Bob sneaks her away; though she of course has eyes only for her saviour, the old man has no interest(???) and wants her to pair off with Paolo.

The final important players are Roger the cop–Tchéky Karyo, better here than as Jet Li’s antagonist in Kiss of the Dragon or Mel Gibson’s pal in The Patriot–who follows duty in pursuing one final arrest of an old opponent even though the cop owes his life to an intervention by the thief and Said, a drug dealing informant trying to buy his way out of trouble (a charge of attempted murder on Roger) by informing on the thief.

Though writer/director Jordan has a checkered history of playing to Hollywood rules, his script does follow convention: People are weak, their weaknesses seem to betray them, their inner strength and/or hard-earned wisdom give them a way to salvation and the end is positive but ambiguous. Still, an enjoyable hour and three quarters. Jordan and crew put attractive visuals on the screen and the soundtrack is matched well enough to almost be an extra supporting character, telling part of the plot; Bono offers a surprising interpretation of the hoary Sinatra chestnut That’s Life and Leonard Cohen’s A Thousand Kisses Deep works very well in context.

recommended