Girl Most Likely (2013)

I don’t really remember why I chose to watch Girl Most Likely.  I think it was one of those mid week times when I just felt the week was going SO slow and work was ridiculously stupid and I needed a break and a good laugh.  I don’t think I read a lot of reviews on this one and if I did, I probably wasn’t outstandingly good or bad.  So either way, maybe it was my faith in Kristen Wiig or my wanting to check out Darren Criss in a non-Glee scenario.  Whatever the reason, I watched this comedy. Let’s check it out!

Director: Shari Spring Berman, Robert Pulcini

Cast: Kristen Wiig, Annette Bening, Matt Dillon, Darren Criss

Imogene (Kristen Wiig) is a failed New York playwright who decides that when her boyfriend leaves her that she was going to stage a suicide, except her suicide note was so convincing that the hospital psychiatrist sends her to her only family left, her gambling mother (Annette Bening) living in New Jersey, to be supervised and to make room for more urgent patients.  She gets back “home” since a long time and reunites with her younger brother Ralph (Christopher Fitzgerald) and also realizes that her mom now has a strange boyfriend called George “The Bousche” (Matt Dillon) who makes some wild claims about who he is, while she also realizes that her mother also rented out her old bedroom to Lee (Darren Criss), a guy who studied in arts and music.  Despite having to embrace the humiliating move back home, she starts to learn a little more about herself, where she wants to go and accept her family for who they are as well as where she comes from.

I really don’t know what to say about Girl Most Likely. Girl Most Likely is not a very entertaining movie at least for the most part I didn’t actually laugh a lot for watching a comedy but it wasn’t so stupid that I turned it off also. Comedy is a hard genre to grasp because its so hard to determine what makes people laugh. The best way I can describe how I feel about this one was that I didn’t really care.  There were parts that I like and then some that I know probably was supposed to make me laugh but didn’t. Kristen Wiig plays a great awkward adult role.  She’s just simply great at it.  I mean, just look at Bridesmaids, right? She was pretty great in that.  I think for Girl Most Likely, it had to do with the layout of the story that didn’t work for me and maybe character design more than the actors.  It felt like something was missing to life it above what it turned out to be.

For one, lets start with Kristen Wiig.  I think she did a great job in acting out Imogene.  The only deal was Imogene was at times, pretty annoying.  She was like that girl who had something, failed and didn’t know how to pick herself up again and just lost it after that.  Its the women that embody all the needy and crazy and just can’t be alone but thinks she has everything in control when she doesn’t.  Wait, that sounds a bit like me.  Maybe a fraction, either way, the way they did it was a bit irritating.  Still, between wanting to just slap Imogene and wake her up (maybe that was the intention), there were moments that I started rooting for her but thats because her character grew (kind of).  Why kind of? Her character was somewhat sporadic in the weird not totally making sense way. I still hold that Kristen Wiig did the best she could to pull this together.

My second reason for seeing this was Darren Criss. I’m over Glee like I haven’t seen the last 2 seasons or something. I’ve always felt that Darren Criss would be the most likely to have some form of success in acting or whatnot.  I like him the most in the show and I was pretty happy to see that he got a role outside of it.  Although they still give him some parts of singing and musical talents, its a different vibe to see him in the whole make out scenes and kind of girl magnets.  To me, it added some life to this flick and I really liked his character.

Annette Bening played as Kristen Wiig’s mom and she was really not such a pleasant person but at the same time, among all her faults, at times, she did bring some funny-ish moments.  Same goes for Matt Dillon, who did one of the most awkward characters ever but somehow, I don’t really know if I was able to laugh at his humor.

On a side note, I think the most lovable character goes to Christopher Fitzgerald who plays Ralph. He was pretty bit socially awkward or deficient if anything but he was the enlightening person in a pretty funny and cute way.  It packed in a few surprises here and there.

OVERALL, everyone brings there game in this one but this comedy lacks humor that works for me (maybe it might work for you).  I may have gotten a few chuckles and giggles but nothing like laughing out loud or anything.  It also seems to rush to wrap up this story and give everyone a sudden jump to all have something different and tries to pop in some surprises. Although, I didn’t laugh a lot and it really lacked something to make it anything worthwhile to revisit, the reason I did finish was that Kristen Wiig does try to work with this pretty irritating and self-absorbed character who kind of stole my heart for a split second in hopes that this movie will turn around.  I guess my problem with it is that its a comedy that doesn’t really make me laugh so that makes this not so good anymore.

Have you seen Girl Most Likely? Did this movie work for you? What do you think about Kristen Wiig? 

 

Beautiful Girls (1996)

Bouncing back to a more recent recommendations from MovieRob, he suggested I watch Beautiful Girls and another one that I’m still looking for.  Luckily Netflix had Beautiful Girls so here we are! I’ve been following Rob fairly recently and he does amazing reviews and he has a side project of currently reviewins Oscar Best Acting Winners and the respective movies. You should definitely go check it out!

Director: Ted Demme

Cast: Matt Dillon, Timothy Hutton, Noah Emmerich, Lauren Holly, Annabeth Gish, Rosie O’Donnell, Max Perlich, Natalie Portman, Uma Thurman, Michael Rapaport, Mira Sorvino

New York City piano player Willie (Timothy Hutton) heads back home for his high school reunion.  Being with his friends and in his old surroundings, while at the going away to think about the crossroads of his life, career and relationship, he sees that nothing has changed much for his friends who stayed at home. They still have the mentality of when they were in high school and each has their own personal struggles to work out as they all face growing up; making the responsible choices.

Beautiful Girls is a thoughtful movie, possibly more geared towards men as they struggle between the idea of growing up and growing old.  Its pretty refreshing because we rarely get the view of men in this phase and a lot of movies like this are more formed in chick flicks geared towards women.  There’s a lot to love about this movie, especially the cast and character development.

I’m not going to say I understand men very well.  I’m happy most days I somewhat understand the logic of what my boyfriend does.  Its a never-ending process.  This movie was special in that way because I’m not saying that men ALL go through the same thing because that would be unfair but this was a nice way to see things. Giving each of these guys, mostly 4 of them, a bigger, more focused story meshed with the women in their life in a rather balanced way was a good thing.  I understood a bit more of the characters: Willie (Timothy Hutton), Tommy (Matt Dillon) and Paul (Michael Rapaport) while Mo (Noah Emmerich) had a more solid life set so he was something of a guiding light along with some of the other sub characters.  It was a very subconscious thing but even though a lot of their mentality seemed off to me, along the way I grew to connect in a way where I wanted them to do the “right” thing.

Other than the guys having a good impact, they needed some ladies that could match up to them.  One of the most intriguing one was Uma Thurman’s appearance as Andera.  She was a beautiful girl that they all were attracted to.  The beautiful thing that was also so understanding and for many of them, she also was helpful in an enlightening way.  Another one that I liked was the young Natalie Portman who had sudden and oddly deep but simple conversations with Willie and in many ways, made him understand a few things and question his life.  Another character that was funny was Rosie O’Donnell’s supporting character, especially when she talked about the unrealistic portrayal of women.

Beautiful Girls was great not only for its characters but it had a really awesome soundtrack.  If you’ve seen this, one of my favorite feel good moments was when they all were together and starting singing Sweet Caroline. Its full of these fun moments but was also thoughtful and engaging.  Its a side we rarely see in men and just the thoughts that might go through their heads as in a way, they shift their vision of women as they get older.  The longing to not grow old but also to not grow up.  Thats one of my favorite conversations in this movie where Mo and Willie talk about this exact thing of his “attraction” to Natalie Portman’s Marty as a way of showing that he didn’t want to grow old and Mo says its his way of not wanting to grow up.  See, Mo = enlightening 😉

The essence of the movie really is in this ramble from Michael Rapaport when he goes on about “beautiful girls”:

Supermodels are beautiful girls, Will. A beautiful girl can make you dizzy, like you’ve been drinking Jack and Coke all morning. She can make you feel high full of the single greatest commodity known to man – promise. Promise of a better day. Promise of a greater hope. Promise of a new tomorrow. This particular aura can be found in the gait of a beautiful girl. In her smile, in her soul, the way she makes every rotten little thing about life seem like it’s going to be okay. The supermodels, Willy? That’s all they are. Bottled promise. Scenes from a brand new day. Hope dancing in stiletto heels.-taken from IMDB

With that said, I have no idea how I’ve never heard of Beautiful Girls.  Its a pretty awesome movie.  Great soundtrack, thoughtful characters and packed with a nice pace and a few feel good moments.  Its fun and fantastic! I totally recommend you to watch this!

Thanks again to Rob for introducing this to me! He is as awesome as this movie and you have to check out his site.  I linked it on top with his blog name! 🙂

Takers (2010)

The last movie of this little Paul Walker marathon features Takers.  I’ve never heard of it before searching it up on Netflix and finding it so I went in know absolutely nothing except that little description. I seriously would’ve continued on and done the whole Fast and Furious franchise marathon but no worries, I fully intend to do that before Fast 7 comes out.  Lets check this one out!

Director: John Luessenhop

Cast: Paul Walker, Idris Elba, Hayden Christensen, Matt Dillon, Michael Ealy, T.I., Zoe Saldana

A group of bank robbers lead by Gordon (Idris Elba) along with his team: John (Paul Walker), AJ (Hayden Christensen), brothers Jesse (Chris Brown) and Jake (Michael Ealy) just finished a big job and is ready to take their break.  However, their ex-teammate, Ghost (T.I.)  has early parole from jail and pulls some connections and asks them to join him for another multi-million job to steal from an armored truck.  At the same time, the previous bank job is under investigation and cops Jack Welles (Matt Dillon) and his partner are hot on their trail.

Yet another action thriller with Paul Walker! But you know, he does do great in the action genre 🙂 Takers is something of a mixed one for me.  The beginning, after we see their genius intricate plans with their first job, we get to know the team a little more.  Its a bit slow as we set up the story.  When the big heist starts, we’re only halfway through the movie.  I’m not saying its a bad movie because I rather enjoyed it and it had an awesome cast involved. I just felt like it was a bit long and could’ve done better with a tighter and shorter storyline but I’m not sure if it would’ve helped to not describe everyone? Did knowing their roles in the bank job prove to be that essential? I’m still debating those questions. It does help to make the audience connect to the team. Still, I guess using an hour to build up to the big job is pretty good already and the second half was pretty fast-paced and exciting to watch.

Did I ever tell you that I like male-heavy movies? I mean you can check out my enthusiasm for say, Fast Five HERE or The Expendables 2 HERE. Of course, this isn’t quite as mindless as those but it did have explosions, gun fights, nice looking cars and motorcycles and so many handsome men.  *ahem*I have a long time crush over Hayden Christensen and well, Paul Walker is pretty charming as always.  Then we have Idris Elba who is a total different kind of hot. Okay okay, back to the review.  I could talk about hot guys in another post.  I should do it, right?

Aside from their good looks, they all did a great job along with Matt Dillon who played the cop.  The team themselves, excluding Ghost really gave off the whole bond of a team and good friends.  I never had seen Chris Brown in anything and I was a bit not sure because of him but he did well 🙂

Looking sharp, Paul Walker! Yup, I’ve been doing it for the last 2 movies so I figured he deserved a section since its a marathon dedicated to him. Paul Walker in Takers was pretty cool. There were so many characters so his screen time wasn’t all that much but he played John.  Something like the right hand man of Idris Elba’s Gordon and also the guy with all the firepower, I believe.  Well, he did some pretty awesome gutsy moves in that role so I respect his character, he did what he had to.

Overall, Takers is a decent thriller.  Its a bit long but once everything is in place, it piles on the action: explosions, cars, motorcycles, gun fights, etc.  Its definitely a very enjoyable heist movie.  Maybe not as much as Fast Five but still quite good with a solid cast.

Have you heard of this one before?

I’ll definitely miss Paul Walker and this is the end of my little dedication to him.  If you missed the previous two reviews of She’s All That and Running Scared, you can find it HERE and HERE respectively! And if you want just a bit more on his movies, Fast Five is linked up there and Fast 6 is right HERE!

HAPPY FRIDAY EVERYONE!

We’ve gone through a tough week…but we made it!