Short Reviews - March 2016

Welp, I gotta hand it to Jimmy Kimmel, even though I sorta don't want to, but it looked like he put down some serious coin for those spoofs of Creed and The Producers (2005)!

Austin Powers 4 - Wonder if Demi Moore's still attached to this one.  Well, I tell ya... Mike Myers is a little older now, a little wiser.  Will he take this opportunity to poke fun at the fact that Roger Moore was 58 when he did his last Bond picture?

The Birth of Innocence - What can me say?  On the one hand, I'm torn, because sure, this Mac Parker was a crook.  On the other hand, he was just doing what every other Hollywood producer does.  But back to the other hand... I've never heard of a film that offers 15% return on your investment.  I believe they call that "points," right?  Also, this film was in production for years and years and years.  Um... is this Boyhood all over again or what?  On the other hand... Ramtha strikes again, bringing the proverbial seven years of famine all over again from beyond the grave.  I guess the lesson is: if you're going to bilk farmers out of their life savings, be sure to leave town and change your name before the Feds catch up to you.  As for me, what little of the film I saw looked like they just took stock footage from the web and turned it into a teaser trailer.  Wouldn't that be the ultimate irony?

The Competition - Back on cable at last!!!!!  Where have you been?

Elvira: Mistress of the Dark - For some reason, anytime this was on TV, I always managed to turn it on and see the part where she says "Does a chicken have a pecker?  Of COURSE I'm interested!"  And second, I am completely shocked that I haven't blogged about this yet... that's not one of the memorable quotes?  Oh, The IMDb... don't make me disagree with you so much.

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard - I saw this week that Piven is on the cover of "Cigar Aficionado" magazine, and it said "Nice guys smoke cigars!"  And I wondered who the nice guy is that they're talking about.............

Hardcore Henry - AKA GoPro - The Motion Picture

A Haunted House - Hey, forget all this Darey Wilmore stuff... I want to see Robin Thede do an impression of Jennifer Lawrence!  That's... kind of a dare, isn't it?

Nina - ...damn.  It's not about illustrator Al Hirschfeld's secret obsession.  Well, one of the big stories rocking the world of less-than-perfect casting is Zoe Saldana as Nina Simone.  Same thing happened to Tom Cruise and Interview with the Vampire.  There was a bit of a backlash, albeit mostly from author Anne Rice.  But after she "went clear".....

Open Season: Scared Silly - Oh, it's just not the same without Martin Lawrence... I'm assuming he's not in it

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - with Kirk Douglas as Popeye

Under Siege - One of the benefits of Closed Captioning, if it you can call it that, is you get all the in-jokes that would otherwise be lost to time.  At one point, Tommy Lee Jones says "Dump our MacGregor Aircraft stock."  This, of course, is a thinly veiled reference to producer Peter MacGregor-Scott.  Perhaps his most notorious reference is in the disastrous Batman & Robin, where Mr. Freeze's wife suffers from something called "MacGregor Syndrome."  Indeed, the whole movie suffers from that syndrome, when you get right down to it.

Wayne's World 2 - Was it really released December 1993?  I don't remember that a-tall!  If only I could find my old ticket stub... I tell you darlings, they worked quick to get the Jurassic Park reference in there!