Tuesday Movie Reviews

Killers
Starring: Ashton Kutcher, Katherine Heigl, Tom Selleck, Catherine O'Hara, Martin Mull
Directed by Robert Luketic

What starts off as a promising concept, with a promising role for Ashton Kutcher, quickly deteriorates into crap upon crap! We start with Heigl on a plane with her ultra-conservative father (Selleck) and clearly alcoholic mother (O'Hara) preparing for a trip to Nice, France. Cut to super spy Kutcher on a mission in Nice trying to kill someone...for something...it's unclear. They meet, fall in love and Kutcher wants out of the "biz" of hired assassin. Three years later, they're married, have a seemingly wonderful life until a hit is put out on Kutcher. This is the exact moment that the writers and director totally lost their collective minds. Nothing that follows makes sense and is hardly humorous. Turns out that everybody in the neighbourhood that the two lovebirds chose to live in are assassins themselves. WHAT?!?!?!? Think about how insane this is! These people CHOSE to live there, CHOSE the jobs they were in and they ALL TURN OUT TO BE ASSASSINS!!!! Stupid....
The trouble is, I was actually enjoying the movie up to this point. Kutcher was doing a fine job in his role and Heigl, well, she's easy to like. O'Hara was a gas at times, but they played it too hard. Selleck was useless until the end, which had me shaking my head all over again. It's a shame when movies are so obviously rushed out to bank on the stars involved and plot is forgotten along the way.

GRADE: D

MacGruber
Starring: Will Forte, Kristen Wiig, Ryan Phillipe, Val Kilmer, Powers Booth, Maya Rudolph, and about five superstars of wrestling
Directed by Jorma Taccone

It's rare that a Saturday Night Live sketch can be fleshed out enough to become a hit feature. It's been done extremely well (The Blues Brothers), not too badly (Wayne's World) and downright awfully (Superstar). MacGruber falls between the first two categories. Will Forte is a lot of fun to watch as the MacGyver-type lead character who can seemingly get himself out of any situation by using the scraps around him, at least that's what he believes. He is brought back into the fold to seek revenge on Val Kilmer who killed MacGruber's bride to be. With the help of his friends, Wiig and Phillipe, they get themselves into crazy situations, ultimately prevailing over evil. What makes this character so much fun to watch is his total lack of awareness. He thinks he is the best there is, but he's clearly beaten down time and time again as a result of his awful planning. Phillipe is put there as the sane one, but, I gotta tell ya, I hate this guy. He has never changed expression in anything he's been in. Wiig, though, is my comedy hero...or heroine...whatever. I love her! She has great timing and likability. There are a few great laughs but there are also a few moments that should have remained as a ten second scene on SNL. You gotta be in the mood for silly if you're even gonna attempt to watch it.

GRADE: B-

A Solitary Man
Starring: Michael Douglas, Susan Sarandon, Danny DeVito, Jesse Eisenberg, Mary-Louise Parker, Imogen Poots, Jenna Fischer
Directed by Brian Koppelman and David Levien

Douglas plays the man in the title. He's creeping up on 60, has realized he's not gonna live forever, is divorced, has a shattered reputation, and is quickly losing money. What's a man to do? How about try to screw every twenty-something he sees. He tries to revert back to his youth in order to feel more like a man. Along the way he meets a shy college kid (Eisenberg) and tries to show him the man he can be. The character is kind of living out the old "If I only knew then what I know now" attitude, but it just gets him into more and more trouble with his most promising relationships, the ones with his immediate family. Douglas plays the character to a tee, he is perfect. It's quite amusing watching a old man pretend to be something he is sooo clearly not. All the supporting actors are very good, too, especially Imogen Poots (who needs to change her name) as one of the young girls he seduces...or is the other way around??? Either way, the writing is very good and the film is fun to watch. Great ending shot, too.

GRADE: B+