The tagline for this movie says that it is a comedy that takes place in 24 hours on the Sunset Strip in 1972. I think those facts are correct. Except I don’t recall laughing. So you might not want to consider it a comedy. The trailer mentions that the lives of six friends intersect, except some of them don’t seem to know each other, so I don’t know if that’s exactly true either.

What does appear to be true is that a handful of people (unless you only have five fingers per hand, in which case it might be two handfuls) are living in or about 1972 in the Sunset Strip area of Hollywood, and this movie tells you about what they do during a roughly 24 hour period. What it doesn’t do is say why you should care, and in the end, there didn’t seem to be much reason why you should.

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Adrien Brody stars as Jack Starks in this cross between Jacob’s Ladder and The Butterfly Effect.

While it starts off by making you think that you’re about to watch a war movie, it’s definitely not a war movie. That just gets things started. Once Starks dies on the battlefield, he is found walking down a road, where he helps a little girl and her mother get their car started. Later on the same road, he ends up getting arrested as an officer is shot and killed. We never find out if he did it or imagined the other person who did the killing to mask part of his mind.

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I recall watching this on TNT (I think it was TNT) when released and thinking that it was pretty good. I don’t think I had seen it since. I’m glad that we watched it again, because it really is quite an excellent telling of the tale. Even Kenneth Branagh, who I don’t really like, fit perfectly. Normally I find him just a little too self-absorbed. In this case, that’s exactly what was needed. He directed as well, and did a fine job.

Meanwhile, the always excellent Robert de Niro ably filled the body of the creature and actually gave the role some life. Uh, so to speak.

For those who aren’t familiar with the tale, Victor Frankenstein has gone to university to study medicine, only to become obsessed with bestowing life on dead tissue, because his own mother died in childbirth. Unfortunately his own brilliance becomes his downfall, as he spirals into the world of his own making, and when he does create this life, it is to see his own life fall apart around him.

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Though perhaps not the best movie ever, this Denzel Washington vehicle is certainly a good movie to watch on a lazy weekend afternoon when you’re surfing the channels looking for something to pass the afternoon.

The story centers around a small school that’s suddenly been given a surprise for the new school year – they will be joining together with a black school, and in even more of a surprise, the head coach of the black school will become the head coach of the football team. Needless to say, this doesn’t go over well.

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This classic starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford is one of the greats. At this writing, it sits at #82 on the IMDB Top 250 List (an accomplishment in itself), but moreover it’s one of those movies that stands the test of time.

Perhaps part of the reason is that the movie is set in 1930 – so the fact that it was released in 1973 isn’t as much of an issue as some other more recent movies. It’s still going to seem dated. Perhaps more importantly, the storyline isn’t so dependent on money (though some of the sums certainly seem less and less significant each time I see the film) as it is just a good caper.

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This movie is an odd bird. For those of you who like to see Pierce Brosnan in his fancy suits, you may not like him here. He’s more like Leisure Suit Larry than James Bond. But I think that this role actually fits him better.

Julian Noble is a Fatality Facilitator (his words). In other words, he is a hit man who takes care of situations for people who needs things done. Nothing so fancy as a spy or a mafia Wiseguy. His clients are from the corporate world, or so he says, and they come to him as they have for 22 years. The only problem is that it’s his birthday and he’s left without a soul in the world to talk to, so he heads to the bar, and there he finds Danny Wright (Greg Kinnear), in Mexico City trying to make the sale of a lifetime.

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Bad. Really really bad.

I’ll fess up to liking the original House because it was fun. It wasn’t a horror movie. It wasn’t a comedy. It was something in-between that didn’t quite take itself too seriously. The fact that it was released in my junior year of high school probably had something to do with it too.

But by the time House IV rolled around? Phew. The stench is just awful. According to the trivia at IMDB, a movie called The Horror Show was released as House III overseas, so they had to call this one House IV, even though it was really the third in the series. Strange.

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Keanu Reeves sure has come a long way since the days of Bill and Ted. This time around, he plays John Constantine, star of the comic Hellblazer, cursed with the “gift” of seeing those spirits that are unseen by the rest of the world.

So he spends most of the movie running about the place (which could be a single city, a larger state, country or even an entire world), battling these demons, which only he can see, wth some supposed purpose that us mere mortals cannot hope to fathom. And that essentially wraps it up, so far as I coudl tell.

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If you’ve ever been to a store that sells audio and video gear, you’ve likely seen at least the introduction to this movie, mostly because the planes moving around the carrier deck make for one heck of an audio experience if you have the right equipment for it. If you don’t, then just settle back for a couple hours of bubblegum fluff. And Tom Cruise in his undies.

Cruise plays Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, a navy fighter pilot who flies by the seat of his pants, and while he is always one step from getting thrown out of the navy, has just managed to land a shot at Top Gun, the school where the best 1% of all fighter pilots go to compete in aerial combat training.

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Harrison Ford stars in this movie as title character Henry, a high-powered lawyer, slowed unwittingly during a holdup when he goes in to get some cigarettes. Guess that will teach him not to smoke. In a bit of trivia, anyone know who plays the shooter? In one of the shorter roles in recent memory, it was the always entertaining John Leguizamo. But I digress.

After the shooting, Henry loses his memory, and finds that he is unable to speak, walk, or even recognize his wife or daughter. Only a high-spirited physical therapist (and an unknown love for Ritz crackers) helps Henry back to a semblance of a real life), but he finds quickly that he’s no longer suited for the fast-paced corporate lifestyle.

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