Monthly Archives: July 2013
Happy Birthday to Shelley Duvall
Happy Birthday to Shelley Duvall! The actress turns 64 years old today.
Happy Birthday Mrs. Torrance!
Remember that kooky, creepy lady who played Jack Nicholson’s wife in The Shining (1980)? Yeah, that’s her.
That is about the only movie that I liked her in. But, you have to admit, she helped make The Shining as horrific as it is.
Happy Birthday to Sylvester Stallone
Happy Birthday to Sylvester Stallone! The Italian Stallion turns 67 years old today.
When I think of Sylvester Stallone, I think of his characters Rocky Balboa and John Rambo. Balboa is from his 5 Rocky films, beginning with Rocky (1976) and Rambo is from his 4 Rambo movies, beginning with First Blood (1982).
In more recent years, Stallone has gathered together his fellow aging action heroes. They have all banded together to form The Expendables trilogy. The Expendables (2010) started it all. The Expendables 3 is planned to release in the summer of 2014.
Click here for Stallones Big Question for Chuck Norris.
It appears as if old age is not going to slow down Sylvester. He is 67 and he continues to make action films. This October he will be trying to break out of prison with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie Escape Plan (2013). This Christmas Stallone will be boxing Robert De Niro in the film Grudge Match (2013). The Italian Stallion vs. The Raging Bull. That promises to be a Christmas present worth waiting for. My money is on Rocky.
Click on the links below to read my Sylvester Stallone Movie Reviews:
Identity Thief (2013)
Identity Thief (2013)
I cannot begin to comprehend how frustrating it would be if somebody stole my identity, my money, ruined my credit, and straight up destroyed my good name. I cannot fathom how angry and upset I would be. Besides wanting to physically hurt that person, I would probably want to do anything and everything in my power to get my identity back and my life back to normal.
Identity Thief is about an upstanding citizen and hardworking father named Sandy Patterson (Jason Bateman) who gets his identity stolen by a woman (Melissa McCarthy). She systematically destroys his life while running around town having fun on his dime. In order to try to fix the harm that she has caused, Sandy decides to travel across the country to track her down and bring her to justice; a task that proves much more difficult than he anticipated.
The movie was directed by Seth Gordon and written by Craig Mazin and Jerry Eeten.
The rest of the noteworthy cast includes Jon Favreau, Amanda Peet, Robert Patrick, John Cho, Jonathan Banks, Genesis Rodriguez, and T.I.
I thought that this film was going to be funnier. Don’t get me wrong, it had its moments of hilarity, but it just wasn’t as funny as it looked. However, it is still above average and funnier than a lot of comedies out there these days.
A number of events in the movie were a little too convenient and predictable. Given that it is in fact a movie, some of that is to be expected. However, when convenient things happen too often in movies, it tends to take away from the suspension of disbelief. When things are less believable, they are also less enjoyable. Identity Thief seemed to try a little bit too hard at times and as a result, the film was not as humorous as it otherwise could have been.
Bateman and McCarthy played their characters perfectly. He was a decent, easy going, stand up guy. She pulled off being not nearly as innocent as she looked. The two contrasted very well and the end result was a good amount of uncontrollable laughter.
Peet seemed to simply show up for the money. Her role was not major, but it seemed like she just read her lines without much effort at all.
At times the humor fell short, but I fault the writers for this. A couple of raunchy scenes were way over-the-top and seemed unnecessary. It felt like they were part of the movie simply for the shock value. Instead of those scenes being shocking or funny, they just came off as being cheap and stupid.
Overall Identity Thief is worth seeing and good for a number of laughs.
I rate this movie a 7 on a scale of 1-10.
Buy, rent, or run? Rent.
If you enjoyed Identity Thief, then you will probably like Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987) and Due Date (2010) even better.
Happy Birthday to Eva Green
Happy Birthday to Eva Green!
Green was a Bond girl at the age of 26 opposite Daniel Craig in Casino Royale (2006). As it turned out, it was that film that helped her make a name for herself.
6 years later she became a witch who condemned Johnny Depp to be a vampire in her 10th film, the dark comedy Dark Shadows (2012).
Eva has proven her ability as an actress. She will appear in 2 major sequels on the horizon, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) and 300: Rise of an Empire (2014).
Today Eva Green turns 33 years old.
It seems as if she has a very promising career ahead of her. I’m looking forward to seeing what she does next.
Happy 4th of July!
Happy Independence Day from brockingmovies.com! I hope you make it a blockbuster.
Happy Birthday to Eva Marie Saint
Happy Birthday to Eva Marie Saint! The famous actress turns 89 years old today.
She is most known for playing the leading lady opposite Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, North By Northwest (1959). In real life, Grant is 20 years her senior.
I find this picture fitting considering it’s the 4th of July.
Eva Marie Saint has been making movies and television shows for the last 66 years.
Cheers to you Eva!
Happy Birthday to Tom Cruise
Happy Birthday to Tom Cruise! The outstanding actor turns 51 years old today.
Cruise is one of the greatest actors of our time. Some don’t like him because of his views. I try not to judge. His films speak for themselves. The guy can act.
13 Best Tom Cruise Movies (in no particular order):
The Last Samurai (2003)
Collateral (2004)
Valkyrie (2008)
Vanilla Sky (2001)
Days of Thunder (1990)
The Color of Money (1986)
Top Gun (1986)
Minority Report (2002)
Rain Man (1988)
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Mission: Impossible (1996), Mission: Impossible III (2006), and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)
There are plenty of other Cruise films that could have been on this list, but these are just my favorites.
6 Souls (2009)
6 Souls (2009)
When I first watched the preview for 6 Souls (2009), I wondered why the film had not been released yet in the U.S. It was completed in 2009 and released in the UK in 2010. Finally, 3 years later, as far as I know it went straight to DVD in the U.S. I was curious as to why they would wait so long to release a movie that didn’t look half bad. It looked creepy. It got my attention. I was intrigued. Why was it withheld from release for so long?
My hypothesis at the time and I quote, “There has got to be something wrong with this movie otherwise you would think that it would have been released 3 years ago.”
6 Souls is about a psychiatrist (Julianne Moore) who assists her father (Jeffrey DeMunn) who is also a psychiatrist, with one of his patients (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). The patient has a sort of multiple personality disorder. She figures out that each of this man’s personalities is a murder victim. After further investigation, things get more complicated and more dangerous.
The movie is written by Michael Cooney and directed by Mans Marlind and Bjorn Stein.
The rest of the notable cast includes Frances Conroy, Nathan Corddry, Brooklynn Proulx, and Brian Anthony Wilson.
Well my friends, I am here to tell you why the film was withheld from release for so long. It was half bad. And it was the second half to be exact. The first half of the film was actually pretty decent. I was hopeful that I might actually enjoy this horror movie because for me that is a very rare thing. But alas, the story took a turn for the worse midway through and I was left suffering through the second half of the film. I stuck with it though so that I could pass the word along. 6 Souls is not worth wasting your time watching.
Julianne Moore played her character convincingly and helped make the first half of the film enjoyable.
Jonathan Rhys Meyers also was entertaining, at least for a little while.
After the story fell apart and
went tumbling down, there was no amount of acting that could save it. The movie achieved setting itself up to be eerie, but never quite made it there.
I rate this movie a 3 on a scale of 1-10.
Buy, rent, or run? Run.
Happy Gilmore (1996)
Happy Gilmore (1996)
A lot of people say that it was Billy Madison (1995) that put Adam Sandler on the map. Well, that may be so, but it was Happy Gilmore that was responsible for cementing him as an A-list star.
Happy Gilmore is about a wannabe hockey player (Sandler) who can’t hack it on the ice rink. When his grandmother faces financial troubles, he turns to golf to make some money and hopefully save her house.
The film is written by Tim Herlihy and Adam Sandler. It is directed by Dennis Dugan. Dugan also has a minor supporting role in the film. The rest of the notable cast includes Christopher McDonald, Julie Bowen, Frances Bay, Carl Weathers, Allen Covert, Joe Flaherty, Kevin Nealon, Bob Barker and Ben Stiller.
Sandler brought a level of craziness to his character that not many actors could come close to pulling off. His character is angry, sarcastic, violent, funny, and charming. He has a potty-mouth and a temper, but you root for him anyway. He says what is on his mind and acts impulsively. He is excellent as Happy Gilmore.
McDonald has been in tons of movies and TV shows, but I like his performance in this film the best. When you hate a bad guy in a movie so much, you know that he did an awesome job.
Bob Barker’s cameo appearance in this movie is priceless.
Ben Stiller is almost unrecognizable in his very small, but humorous part in the film.
I think it’s funny how much the Subway Restaurant got its products and logo all over this film. They must have spent a fortune.
“Tuesday’s Gone” performed by Lynyrd Skynyrd will forever remind me of Happy Gilmore every time I hear the song playing. Adam Sandler made sure of that. I’m sure that he had a lot of influence over the soundtrack of the film. I have noticed that most of his movies have similar genres of music.
I saw Happy Gilmore for the first time shortly after it came out on VHS. I have since watched it maybe 30 times. I admit that I have a lot of the movie memorized. The dialogue in the film is great. I find myself quoting the movie randomly in my everyday life. Does that make me crazy? Probably, but I don’t care.
Happy Gilmore is without a doubt, my favorite Adam Sandler movie. It is also one of my favorite sports movies. The film is a comedy classic. I highly recommend this movie to anyone who has not seen it, and to the people that have, well you know what I’m talking about.
I rate this movie a 10 on a scale of 1-10.
Buy, rent, or run? BUY!
Happy Birthday to Larry David
Happy Birthday to Larry David!
The comedy genius behind Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm turns 66 years old today.
Larry has a new television show coming out later this summer called Clear History.
He is known mainly for his television shows, but has acted in a few movies; most notably The Three Stooges (2012) and Whatever Works (2009).
Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm are 2 of my favorite TV comedies of all time. They are both shows that I can watch over and over again. Pure comedy!
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