The Dilemma

The 2003 movie Old School is the perfect example of something being good news, bad news for someone's career. Up until that point, Vince Vaughn was known for being a dramatic actor. In fact, outside of Swingers- which had comedy tones- most of his early films had him in dramatic roles. Old School broke him into the comedic ranks and he continued down that path with roles in Anchorman, Dodgeball, Wedding Crashers etc. The only time he has really drifted back into drama was for a supporting role in Into the Wild. It's a shame too because many people forget that Vaughn is a pretty effective dramatic actor.

The Dilemna is held together by his performance, especially when the script calls for him to emote in a dramatic sense. Vaughn plays Ronny Valentine who has been best friends with Nick Brennen (Kevin James) since college. They work together as inventors who are developing a motor for hybrid vehicles that make them sound like muscle cars of days gone by. They land a development deal with Dodge and go out to celebrate with their respective others (Jennifer Connelly and Winona Ryder). Nick and Geneva (Ryder) are married and are doing everything they can to convince Ronny to take the plunge with Beth (Connelly). And Nick is seriously moving closer to the idea of marriage. A day later he sees Geneva making out with another man. He follows them back to the guys house where they have sex and Ronny's world is now in upheaval. Does he tell his friend what he saw? Complicating the decision is that Nick is the brains of their idea and is completely stressed out over the project which could make them billions. Ronny decides to confront Geneva for now and let Nick work his magic.

The situation takes a turn in the scene where Ronny confronts Geneva. Back in college, the two had a one night stand that has never come up in the group. Geneva says that Nick has been cheating on her and if Ronny says anything she will tell Nick that Ronny has been pushing her to rekindle that one night for years now. So the simple question of :If you knew your friend's wife was cheating on him would you tell him, has a little bit more to it. The scene where this comes out is excellent as Ryder has the perfect sad eye quality that sells the scene. That truly has always been one of Ryder's strongest traits. She is a beautiful woman that straddles the line just past "girl next door" looks. When she is asked to cry in a film she gets the doe-eyed look that draws you into her character.

The problem that Ronny has gets deeper with his quest to find evidence to out Geneva. He begins lying about where he has been, and considering he is a recovering gambler, Beth suspects the worst. For Ronny though this is a mission that needs to happen. Nick and Geneva has always been the picture of marital bliss to him. As he has been preparing to get married he has held them up as the standard. If they are falling apart then what does that say about his model?

While that sounds compelling, and really does make for an interesting film at times, it never quite fully clicks together. Few reasons why. First off, the script never is quite sure exactly what it wants to be. It wants to be a laugh-out loud riot at times, and an earnest drama at others. It makes for awkward scene transitions between and within scenes. After the scene where Vaughn confronts Geneva, he walks around town before settling on a park bench by himself. He begins talking out loud to God and asks for guidance. He expresses some concerns about wrecking his buddy's life and laments the power of the knowledge he has. He then closes by saying, "And if you could help us with the Dodge thing that'd be great." He says this is a complete tonal shift that is played for comedy and it ruins the previous 10 minutes of film. Secondly, the Queen Latifah character- she plays an insider at Dodge- is completely superfluous to the plot and she grinds the proceedings to a halt every time she comes on screen.

Everything comes to a head in a scene where Geneva's boyfriend (Channing Tatum) is accidentally invited and all the secrets come out throwing everyone's lives into the blender. It works out in the end but it does so in another violent shift into dramatic land. Again there is a disconnect between reels of film. In fact, it feels like the movie was written by two different people who were given different instructions for what the film was about.

In the end though, I sort of like this film in spots but in others it falls flat. Had they tightened up the reins in one way or another I would've liked this a lot more. The film didn't do the business I think they expected it to do but some of that fault lies with the marketing. It was positioned as a laugh a minute movie which it isn't. At its core, it's a dramatic movie with comedy touches. It raises some interesting questions, but it makes me wish that Vaughn would branch back into drama again. If only, so people can truly see how good an actor he is.

The Day of Love

I could easily be wrong on this but it really feels like Valentine's Day doesn't have a lot of movies that are centered on that day specifically. It reminds me in many ways of the holiday of Halloween. There are so many movies built around that day- or the concept of that day- but not a lot actually is confined to that day. In some ways that seems odd to me. In the grand scheme of things there are a ton of movies about love, but doesn't the concept of the day lend itself to movie plot structure?

My Valentine's Day is usually spent by myself at home with some alcohol and something to eat. This year was no exception. However, my quest this year was to watch some movies that centered on the holiday itself. HBO on Demand had Valentine's Day up on its channels so that seemed like a natural place to start. A quick glimpse (completely on a whim) at what Fearnet was offering showed the original movie, My Bloody Valentine. My Facebook followers would know this already but, I've never seen the first movie, but I've seen the second movie a couple times. It has been a while though for the slasher film. Let's begin with the one I watched first.

I will readily admit that I fully expected to hate this film. In 2009 the film He's Just Not That Into You hit theaters and other than the winning performance of Ginnifer Goodwin the film was a hot mess. That film featured characters who were either uninteresting, outright annoying, or somehow concurrently both. This film is different, but I can't quite put a finger on why exactly. There was never a point in this film where I ever wanted to stab any of the characters with anything and I enjoyed the intertwining stories which featured a little bit more depth than the average romantic comedy.

From the top I'll say that somewhere along the line Ashton Kutcher became a pretty engaging actor. Perhaps I carried the memory of him being a total douchebag on MTV's Punk'd, but for a long time I just found him annoying as a character. he played every part as some variation on his character Kelso from That 70's Show. Just Married, Guess Who, Killers, and My Boss's Daughter all featured him as a guy who wasn't endearing as a character. You couldn't get behind him in a movie unless it was to push him off a cliff. Here though he reigns himself in quite a bit and it really props the movie up which is good because a lot of what happens hinges on him. He's definitely one of the fence posts from the cast.

The story is basically a bunch of vignettes that run together throughout 18 hours in Los Angeles on Valentine's Day. Reed Bennett (Ashton Kutcher) wakes up on Valentine's Day and proposes to his girlfriend (Jessica Alba). She accepts and this sends Reed out into the day with a huge smile on his face, full of the joy that day should bring. His best friend is Julia Fitzpatrick (Jennifer Garner) who is given a gift by her boyfriend before he leaves for a big heart surgery in another town. Julia goes to the flower shop that Reed owns and they share their big news before heading their separate ways. Later that day Julia's boyfriend (Patrick Dempsey) comes into the flower shop and orders two bouquets of roses- one for Julia and the other for his wife. That puts Reed in the position of having information that he wishes he didn't have. Further complicating manners is that his fiancee has second thoughts and backs out of the marriage leaving him with a broken heart that he wants to spare Julia from.

Meanwhile, there are other stories involving an aging couple caring for their grandson and dealing with their own complications. There are two young couples that are best friends. One couple is preparing to have sex for the first time while the other couple is celebrating their love for each other and promising to wait. In another corner of town, superstar quarterback Sean Jackson (Eric Dane) is contemplating what to do with his career, and hiding a secret desperately from the public.

That story overlaps with his publicist (Jessica Biel) who is completely angry with the holiday, to the point where she sets up a party every year to celebrate being single. She is starting to fall for reporter Kelvin Moore (Jamie Foxx) though but tries to resist those feelings. That story drifts over to Jackson's agent (Queen Latifah) who has a secretary (Anne Hathaway) moonlighting as a phone sex operator and dating the mail clerk (Topher Grace). If that all sounds confusing- add in Bradley Cooper and Julia Roberts characters on a plane whose purpose is not really known until the last 10 minutes of the film and you have a plot that is quite a bit more complex than this type of film normally is.

On some level, I think that's why I appreciated this film quite a bit. It has the typical goofy trappings these films normally have- I mean really, NO GUY IN LA wants to date Jessica Biel?- but at other times it is asking the viewer to follow along a little bit. Additionally, there are characters to root for here. The older couple is great and they carry a ton of catharsis in their roles as sages for one of the young teenage girls. The script bogs down a few times and not everyone is really necessary for the film. In fact, Taylor Lautner and Taylor Swift's characters seem like they are here for the same purpose of getting young actors into the film. They don't add much which is a shame because I think Lautner is a little underrated as an actor and Swift has the perfect sunny disposition for this type of film.

It's not a flawless film, but it's good enough and sometimes that is all you need in a film.

The 1981 Canadian slasher film, My Bloody Valentine, is a beloved film in the horror movie genre. It is a low-budget film that developed quite a bit of a cult following in the years since it was released. A 3D remake in 2009 opened it up to an entirely new audience which was good for the genre. I know people abhor remakes, but sometimes it is a good thing. This film didn't really need to be remade but it did need to introduced to a new generation fans. Consider the 3D version a nice primer for the original. The film from 1981 gained notoriety as it had to be massively cut down to achieve an R rating from the MPAA. But even without the cut 9 minutes- it is still awesome.

The town of Valentine Bluffs is a mining town in a similar vein to any region in West Virginia or Western Pennsylvania. One day in 1961 a methane gas explosion collapses the mine killing a number of workers inside. The two supervisors had left early for the day to attend the town Valentine's Day dance and failed to make sure everything was safe. When they dig everyone out from the rubble only Harry Warden is alive and he has eaten the other miners to stay that way. He's lost his mind so they commit him to a mental institution. The following year the town is getting ready for the annual dance but Warden shows up, dressed as a miner, and he attacks both foremen, cutting out their hearts and swearing to do it as long as the town holds their dance. The town heeds the warning and cancels the event for the next 20 years.

In 1981, they decide to start the event back up again. However, the organizer of the event is quickly dispatched by Harry Warden and the sheriff tries to shut down the festivities again. A group of young miners and their girlfriends decide this is foolish and hold the celebration anyway attributing Warden to being nothing but a town boogeyman. The body count starts piling up though as Warden shows up dispatching the youngsters in young- and even creative ways.

Warden is in many ways an underrated movie monster. He wears a mining mask and carries his trusty pickaxe. What sets him apart though is that the pickaxe is not always his weapon of choice. One kid gets his head held in boiling water before being chopped to pieces and stuffed into a freezer in a fairly interesting sight gag. More importantly though, Warden doesn't mess around with his victims. He doesn't give chase and it isn't a game. He sees someone and it's pickaxe to the chest. I applaud the urgency with which he kills people.

In the end, a group is trapped in the mine and we find out that it's not really Warden who is the killer but rather a character who has been there all along. It's an interesting ending and one that manages to surprise without being completely out of left field. The film itself indulges in it goriness and presents a villain who is truly terrifying as he attacks with a surgical precision.

Valentine's Day

My Bloody Valentine