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Bridesmaids -vs- The Hangover

Bridesmaids (2011) -vs- The Hangover (2009)

May 14, 2011 The FilmGuru 5

The world is probably a better place knowing that women can be just as depraved, insecure, crass, pathetic, disgusting and insanely funny as men. After all, fair is fair.

Our Battle of the Sexes Grand-Slam Comedy Smack pits women against men in a dual of the demos. The Bridesmaids versus The Wolf Pack.

After spending over $32-million to make Bridesmaids, Universal Pictures followed up with an expensive nationwide spin-job selling their new movie as a bachelorette party version of The Hangover.

What made that original 2009 film a surprise R-rated hit was bringing the Wolf Pack to life in a story that shattered the formula of a raunchy guy’s film and took it to a new level where roofies were just another plot device. The question that Bridesmaids raises is pretty basic: can the same dynamic — bad decisions, outrageous behavior and same-sex bonding — work in a film about some girls who just wanna have fun, too? And, even if it can work, can that film actually be a better one that The Hangover? […]

The Beaver -vs- Lars and the Real Girl

The Beaver (2011) -vs- Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

May 10, 2011 Bob Nowotny 8

Step aside Wilson and Harvey — here come Bianca and the Beaver in a couple of remarkable movies that feature inanimate creatures as key co-stars. Bianca and the Beaver — there’s probably a good joke or two there somewhere, but, surprisingly, these films are not comedies.

Both The Beaver and Lars and the Real Girl are each based on a highly regarded, original screenplay — the first was Oscar nominated, the most recent one once famously topped Hollywood’s “Black List” for best unproduced script. And neither movie relies on CGI — now that is remarkable.

Both films explore the complexity of extreme personal demons brought on by feelings of loneliness, isolation and depression. Each one has also been accused of being over-the-top: their lead characters certainly have the potential to come across not so much compelling as uncomfortable. And there is the Mel Gibson-factor.

So it’s a testament to the screenwriters, the directors and the actors that both motion pictures are also solid dramas with heart and soul. They are character-studies of two men seeking to re-discover themselves, their families and the outside world. […]

Something Borrowed -vs- He's Just Not That Into You

Something Borrowed (2011) -vs- He’s Just Not That Into You (2009)

May 8, 2011 Mark Sanchez 2

Given that most single guys would be thrilled to have Ginnifer Goodwin as their girlfriend, you have to wonder why Hollywood keeps casting her as the woman who has a hard time finding a decent relationship. She got famous as the immature “sister-wife” Margene in the creepy HBO polygamy series, Big Love. Then she played the girl who can’t find love no matter how desperately she dates around in 2009’s He’s Just Not That Into You. And now she’s back in Something Borrowed as the third corner in a romantic triangle. I have no idea what her personal life is like but we can only hope it’s better than the parts she plays.

Both our films are ensemble rom-coms, chock-full of familiar character traits: earnest, self-absorbed, scoundrel, ironic, clueless, and so on. Some of these are main characters and some are the obligatory wacky friends. There are enough people running around in both films coupling and uncoupling that there seems to be a lot going on even when there isn’t. The idea is to cut from one storyline to another, keep the pace up, get some laughs, find some sympathetic moments, get a few more laughs, and tie up things more or less neatly before they run the credits. Everybody seems to have jobs that don’t really interfere with their pursuit of love and sex. Ah, paradise… […]

Fast Five -vs- The Fast and the Furious

Fast Five (2011) -vs- The Fast and the Furious (2001)

April 30, 2011 Mark Sanchez 4

More than a few film franchises seem like a trip to the drive-up burger joints: the payoff is predictable, not always very nourishing, but the experience can be fun, and you won’t leave hungry.

That recipe worked perfectly for The Fast and the Furious in 2001. The film didn’t promise steak, just a lot of sizzle, which clearly satisfied a broad segment of moviegoers. This motorized morality play (of a sort) mixes brooding, inarticulate characters tied to a supremely implausible story sprinkled with lots of attractive women and fast cars.

This menu spawned a series of films that grossed nearly a billion dollars worldwide. So, of course, Fast Five just opened. It expects to do large business because it does not stray far from the basic formula. […]

African Cats -vs- Oceans

African Cats (2011) -vs- Oceans (2010)

April 24, 2011 The FilmGuru 0

If Disney has learned anything over the years, it’s that lions are kings at the box office. So the House of Mouse has gone back to Africa this year to bring us a new documentary about the king of the beasts. But from a different point of view. Don’t expect to see any singing warthogs or meerkats. This is a true story of life on the Savannah.

A few years ago, The Walt Disney Company established a new film label called Disneynature — with a mission to distribute nature documentaries like the old “True-Life Adventures” back in the 1950s. In a stroke of marketing genius, they tied the film releases to coincide with Earth Day. The first, appropriately titled Earth, came out in 2009. The next year, they released Oceans. These films looked at our planet in a new way, and they examined our influence on our environment.

It has become a tradition with my family to celebrate Earth Day each year with an outing to the theater to see the latest Disneynature release. This year, we continued with African Cats, a film that examines the lives of the lions and cheetahs of the Kenyan wilderness. […]

The Conspirator -vs- JFK

The Conspirator (2011) -vs- JFK (1991)

April 23, 2011 Bryce Zabel 1

Two presidents get assassinated, a hundred years apart. Both assassins (alleged, anyway) get killed before they can face trial, and they go down in history firmly attached to their middle names, John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald.

In these two films, the main characters are lawyers, drawn into the fray by a sense of justice, who end up arguing unpopular positions (at least to the powers-that-be) in court — the earlier film on offense, this latest film on defense. Both men pursue their out-of-step sense of justice to the extreme, so much so that the women in their lives think they’ve gone quite insane.

At the end of the day, both viewing experiences cause you to consider that maybe it’s not the courts that really decide the winners anyway, maybe it’s just the movies we make about them. […]

Source Code -vs- Deja Vu

Source Code (2011) -vs- Deja Vu (2006)

April 10, 2011 The FilmGuru 3

They say love overcomes all obstacles, but time seems to be one of the most difficult. Time and time travel seem made for romance. Maybe that’s because there is a more of a fantasy quality to it than strict science fiction. Finding two lovers who meet across time has been done before, but Hollywood loves to revisit this idea again and again.

This week, our challenger, Source Code, and our champion, Deja Vu, tackle the problem of finding love in the time continuum. In both cases, what starts out as a case of time-travel observation becomes something more of an obsession for the observer. […]

True Grit

True Grit (2010) -vs- True Grit (1969)

December 27, 2010 Mark Sanchez 9

Apparently, if you need to track down a bad guy in the wild west, your absolute best shot at doing it is to hire a misogynistic one-eyed alcoholic. Whether you watch the old or the new True Grit, that much seems clear.

I’ll admit that something uneasy crept into my life upon learning Rooster Cogburn would live again in a remake of this 1969 crowd pleaser. Drawing from core material about murder and revenge, the film version gave us a smart, spunky girl who recruits John Wayne to the rescue. It won the Duke the Best Actor Oscar (as much for career recognition as his performance). It remains a pleasure to watch. Doesn’t need re-making, right?

Two words. Coen Brothers. Two more words. Jeff Bridges.

The vivid characters and language in the novel written by Charles Portis seem tailor-made for the Coen’s quirky sensibilities. The truth is that this film would never have been re-made except for their passion to do it. And now that they have, honestly, this one is a shoot-out for the ages. […]

No Picture

Valentine’s Day: It’s As Bad As They Say It Is

February 14, 2010 Bryce Zabel 4

What a waste of film stock.

That thought kept running through my brain over-and-over while watching all 117 excruciating minutes of this god-awful film that will end up earning $66-million over the four-day holiday. I don’t care. It could make $66-billion and it would still be one of the biggest disappointments that’s hit the theaters in the last 25 years. If you haven’t seen it, please don’t. It will only encourage them to do this to us again.

It’s just tone-deaf. Even though Katherine Fugate gets the screenwriting credit and must share the blame, watching the film’s directing choices leads to the strong conclusion that director Garry Marshall is mostly responsible. I’m betting he came up with or forced Fugate to put in some of the film’s most hideous moments. It’s his out-of-touch sensibility that infuses every frame with such a stunning lack of authenticity. Some people say the structure and even some of the details try to rip off “Love Actually” but this film should be so lucky as to have stolen something from Richard Curtis’s masterpiece. […]

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