Anyone seen a good movie lately?

[Zanshin]

Saw Cinderella Man. Chalk me up as another who doesn't like Crowe personally, but thought the movie was very good.

For better or worse, that describes quite a number of his movies.

[MURP]

yeah really.  I dont know of anyone who says I like Russell Crowe personally, but most of his movies are good.

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

yeah really.  I dont know of anyone who says I like Russell Crowe personally, but most of his movies are good.

[MadMarchHare]

You're a funny guy, Sali.  That's why I'm going to kill you last.

[Mad-Lad]

I don't particularly care for Russel Crowe, but he's not nearly as godawful as Colin Ferrell.  All movies including him automatically garner a strike against it.

[henchmanUK]

I don't particularly care for Russel Crowe, but he's not nearly as godawful as Colin Ferrell.  All movies including him automatically garner a strike against it.

You're not wrong there, Mad - he even out-sucked King of Suck Cruise in Minority Report.

[ice grillin you]

funny ass review by my boy stephen hunter...think ive mentioned this before but i implore everyone to read him in the washington post every friday...hes one of the few movie reveiwers to have ever won a pulitzer and is a master wordsmith

'Annapolis': Oh, You Know the Drill

By Stephen Hunter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 27, 2006; C05



"Annapolis" is a kind of boy weepie for the entry-level filmgoer. You'll laugh, you'll cry, in all the wrong parts, of course, as this good-ship lollipop runs hard aground.

Set at a barely recognizable U.S. Naval Academy envisioned not as an educational institution but as a kind of boxing camp for the underprivileged, it watches breathlessly as a boy from the wrong side of the tracks makes good once he learns the eternal lessons of teamwork, self-effacement, self-discipline and a really cute smile.

The film was shot in Philadelphia, so anyone familiar with the Annapolis area will be baffled by the scrambled geography. It postulates a shipyard across the river from the college, where memory insists there's but a woodsy suburb and a pretty decent crabhouse of the funky-deck variety. In this fictitious shipyard, welder Jake Huard (James Franco) toils for his gruff dad, pines for his dead mom and fixates on the golden dome across the water. No, no, the golden dome is at Notre Dame. Anyhow, one day an officer arrives, tells Jake there's been a cancellation, and even though he has been rejected, he can still get in if he shows up tomorrow at 0630.

Hmmm, does this seem accurate? You learn on Tuesday at 3 that you can get into Annapolis on Wednesday at 6:30 a.m.? Could it really work that way, without medical exams, forms to fill out, interviews? Or would it be somehow more complicated? (Well, I know a man who called Harvard Medical School and was told he was in if he could get there by Friday, which he just barely did, as he was in England at the time of the call. However, he had been admitted to Harvard Medical School the year before, which at least makes a little sense.)

Jake's initial discovery about the Naval Academy isn't its academic rigor or, ye gods, the horror that it demands very early risings or that its graduates actually have to go into the Navy, or even that his drill instructor, far from being Lou Gossett Jr., R. Lee Ermey or even Jack Webb, turns out to be Demi Moore (actually a young actress and demi-Demi named Jordana Brewster), but that it's a hotbed of boxing.

There is some truth to this assessment, admittedly. Boxing is highly valued at some service academies, as certain military minds believe it inculcates aggressiveness. (Others disagree, and if the young boxers don't use headgear, as this movie claims, it inculcates concussion.) Navy has a brilliant boxing tradition: It won the national championship three times in the past decade, beating both Army and Air Force last year.

Perhaps more important, the Naval Academy has a tournament called "The Brigades" -- the Brigade Boxing Championship -- in which people get to whale away on each other for eternal glory in academy lore. The most famous of these bouts was chronicled in Robert Timberg's "The Nightingale's Song," and featured two members of the Class of '68 -- future secretary of the Navy and best-selling novelist James Webb and future war hero, Reagan aide and man-about-Fox Oliver North.

But if songs are still sung about that one, it's doubtful they'll be sung about the slug-out between midshipman Jake and upperclassman Cole, played by Tyrese Gibson, who looks like the last king of Nubia. This guy is so elegant and sinuous he should never appear in public without two leopards on a leash, three swanky voodoo girlfriends and a white mink coat with a collar the size of Ming's. As a midshipman with some Marine experience (possibly modeled on talk-show guy Montel Williams, whose service as an enlisted Marine was so outstanding he was given an appointment to the academy?), Cole is the keeper of the gate who doesn't believe that Jake is officer material. He's also the reigning brigade heavyweight champ.

Do you suppose the two settle it in the ring in the finals?

Well, you can see by now that this movie is cobbled together from parts of "An Officer and a Gentleman" and "Top Gun" and a dozen other service-academy/sports-as-redemption fables over the years. The only impressive thing about it is the monotony and thoroughness with which it replicates cliches from older, better movies, and hammers them into pop alloy to the up-with-me beat beat beat of its musical score.

All the actors are numbingly adequate as they mouth the insipid dialogue. My favorite was Brewster, even if she's not only a Yalie in real life but the granddaughter of a former Yale president. She can drop me for 20 any time, not that I could do 20 (or even 10).

"Annapolis's" director is Taiwan-born Justin Lin, who had a kind of breakthrough success with "Better Luck Tomorrow," about hyper-achieving Asian American teens in Los Angeles who turn to crime out of boredom. Now that sounds good! That's a movie I'd like to see! Here he shows only a rap-vid director's rhythmic chops and a good feel for action, even of the most generic sort, but he's tone-deaf to what is so unique about American service academies. Annapolis, Schlmapolis. Before he got this gig, I'm betting he never heard of the place.

[SD_Eagle5]

James Franco was on Preston and Steve this morning hyping this film. Looks like a dud to me, of course, I'm biased because 99% of the officers I've met from Annapolis have been complete iceholes.

[Feva]

Kicked your ass, huh?

[Mad-Lad]

Watched 2046 last night.  I wasn't really in the mood for an artsy subtitled film, so i didn't enjoy it as much as i should have.  I'll NetFlix it again though.  I'm sure i'd dig it a hell of a lot more.

Also, watched the first 20 - 25 minutes of The Last Supper.  Turned it off cause it was BAD!  Bad acting, bad actors, bad everything. 

[rjs246]

Watched Permanent Midnight earlier this week. Was completely unimpressed by it. The story didn't have much plot and the whole movies seemed to be a vehicle to display Ben Stiller's acting... which wasn't very good. He couldn't seem to figure out which drugs had which effect on him, so he would be taking downers but acting jittery and tweeked out. Elizabeth Hurley and Owen Wilson play throwaway roles. Completely meh.

[phattymatty]

Watched Permanent Midnight earlier this week. Was completely unimpressed by it. The story didn't have much plot and the whole movies seemed to be a vehicle to display Ben Stiller's acting... which wasn't very good. He couldn't seem to figure out which drugs had which effect on him, so he would be taking downers but acting jittery and tweeked out. Elizabeth Hurley and Owen Wilson play throwaway roles. Completely meh.

That movie sucked.  You know that's the guy that created Alf?

I got Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star from Netflix today.  It'll probably be 5 stars.

[rjs246]

Oh yeah, and I saw Identity last night. Other than the fact that you know the 'twist' way too early and the fact that the twist more or less ruins the movie-watching experience and the fact that none of the characters are interesting enough to care about, it's pretty good. Wait, no it sucks.

[SunMo]

you saw the twist early on that one?  i was genuinely surprised at the end of that movie.

[rjs246]

Well they show you what the convicted murderer looks like and talk about multiple personality disorder in the first five minutes of the movie... I'm no rocket scientist but...