Genre: Comedy, Sci-Fi

Year: 1993

Country: USA

Rating:

Starring: Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, Michelle Burke, Chris Farley, David Spade

Director: Steve Barron

My Review: Written by a crew of four. Directed by Steve Barron (Best known for music videos. Movies: Electric Dreams (The Music was amazing), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dreamkeeper (made for TV)). Starring Dan Akroyd, Jane Curtin, Robert Knott and others. Here is an outstanding overlooked comedy. While Coneheads may have started out as a short little skit on 'Saturday Night Live', the feature length comedy makes for some seriously funny gut-busting comedy. An 'Alien' couple from the planet Remulak are stranded on earth as a result of a malfunction aboard their spaceship; which they were scouting in anticipation of an invasion. Beldar (played by Dan Akroyd) aka Donald R. DeCicco and Prymatt (played by Jane Curtin) aka Mary Margaret DeCicco do their best to 'Blend In' to America's melting pot. These immigrants from 'France' seem somewhat different, and eventually the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) grow suspicious of the couple. Something is definitely wrong with these Aliens. The movie is chock full of gut busting scenes that remind us just how ridiculous some of our cultural idioms must seem to outsiders. The cast is full of some talented comedians; even if they just show up in cameos, their presence is appreciated. Aside from "Wayne's World!" and the "Brothers" this is one of the only Saturday Night Live skits to really make a good movie (in my opinion, most of the others were crap: It's Pat, Superstar, Stuart Saves his Family). The best part of the Coneheads is the fact that the actors remain in character throughout and there's an applied logic to their language and customs. The plot is actually coherent and provides for plenty of excellent laughs as the couple await the day when they will be rescued. It could have been restricted to some physical humor and cheap laughs, but it even contained some solid elements of family values. I give it a 5 out of 5. It always makes me laugh.

Summary: One look and you know they're from a very strange place. They're from New Jersey, by way of "France," by way of far-off, far-out Remulak. They're Coneheads. And their comedy antics are heads above the crowd! Lampooning our Bluntheaded civilization as only

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Year: 2011

Country: USA

Rating:

Starring: George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Amara Miller, Nick Krause, Patricia Hastie

Director: Alexander Payne

My Review: Written by three people, based on a novel (same name) by Kaui Hart Hammings. A great family drama, directed by Alexander Payne (Election, About Schmidt, Sideways, Paris je t'aime). Starring George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Amara Miller and others. The best part of this movie is the direction. The story is a typical drama, set in Hawaii (which makes for great location shots) with some excellent acting (for the young cast (not counting Clooney as he's the cornerstone for these emerging young actors)). Clooney plays 'Matt King', something of a corporate land deal broker / lawyer who's got ancestral roots going way back in the islands. When his wife ends up in a coma, the family problems come out into the open. Matt doesn't know how to relate to his young daughters, they don't know how to relate to him, and then there's the really big issue - His wife was cheating on him, or so he's just learned from his seventeen year old daughter. It's a complicated family drama, punctuated by angst and other feelings. Very well done. Thankfully the direction was handled masterfully, and Clooney does a good job portraying the solid, stoic, anchor of a family in turmoil. I give it a 5 out of 5, and I've just added it to my 'Wish List' for purchases.

Summary: Matt King's family has lived in Hawaii for generations. His extended family - namely he and his many cousins - own 25,000 acres of undeveloped land on Kauai held in trust, which ends in seven years. The easiest thing for the family to do is sell the land before the seven years is up, which is all the talk in the state, as, to whom they sell the property could very well change the face of Kauai. Despite the vast wealth that comes with the land, Matt has decided to live solely on what he earns as a Honolulu lawyer. However, Matt has not had a perfect life living in Hawaiian paradise as many believe. He and his wife Elizabeth were having problems in their marriage. She recently got into a boating accident which has placed her in a coma. Their seventeen year old daughter Alex is in boarding school on the big island since they couldn't handle her rebellion, which was made all the worse by an argument of an unknown nature between mother and daughter during Alex's last visit home. And their ...

Genre: Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller

Year: 2001

Country: USA, Germany

Rating:

Starring: Robert De Niro, Edward Burns, Kelsey Grammer, Avery Brooks, Melina Kanakaredes

Director: John Herzfeld

My Review: Written and directed by John Herzfeld (Better known for TV movies and TV shows/episodes). Starring Robert De Niro, Edward Burns, Kelsey Grammer and many others. The movies title is based on the premise that everyone gets their '15 Minutes' of fame/camera time. Here is a rather thin plot involving a homicide detective (Robert De Niro playing Eddie Flemming), a Fire Marshall (Edward Burns plays Jordy Warsaw), two 'terrorists' (Karel Roden plays Emil Slovak and Oleg Taktarov plays Oleg Razgul), and the slimy reporter (Kelsey Grammer playing Robert Hawkins) who profits from the mayhem that the criminals create. The Russian/Georgian/Eastern European? Criminals commit crimes and video tape them. Then they mail the tapes to Robert Hawkins who immediately airs them on prime time news. The criminals think that they will 'Get Rich' by committing spectacular crimes and then selling their story; you know because our criminal justice system will simply slap them on the hands for what they're about to do, or their lawyer will get them reduced sentences… That's it, you now know pretty much everything you need to know about the movie. The movie is a dark reflection of the circus that our media has become. In that regard its social commentary, as a movie I didn't really care for it. The movie is entirely predictable, the characters are cardboard cutouts. The only redeeming part of the movie was some of the acting. Some of the acting was good - dependent on which characters were being played; some had better development and afforded actors a richer background to draw from. Unfortunately the better bits of acting were wasted on this remarkably forgettable movie. Thankfully the bloodiest and most violent 'crimes' are out of focus and poorly framed, sparing the viewer of the unnecessary gore of an implied bloody scene. Some parts of the plot make no sense, like why is the Fire Marshall dragged along on this quest to stop the criminals? A Fire Marshall isn't a cop. Two cops would have been o.k. One was all you needed. If the Fire Marshall is there just to avoid the cliché of two cops investigating / trying to catch the criminals, then that's just stupid, and the logic doesn't work. The camera work and editing was too choppy. I get that the characters are rushing around, but this wasn't framed as a 'Found Footage' film, and the shaky cam editing and framing doesn't really help to bring across a sense of urgency. The music, direction, acting, editing and pacing were all they needed to convey that sense of urgency and tension. It was obvious that the plot of this movie was very simple, then made complicated by adding a bunch of relationship stuff to fill the movie out to two hours. The relationship stuff really didn't have a bearing on the movie, it seemed to be nothing more than distraction. I'm not entirely sure why I bought this movie. With this viewing, the rating actually drops a point. I now rate it 1 out of 5.

Summary: When Eastern European criminals Oleg and Emil come to New York City to pick up their share of a heist score, Oleg steals a video camera and starts filming their activities, both legal and illegal. When they learn how the American media circus can make a remorseless killer look like the victim and make them rich, they target media-savvy NYPD Homicide Detective Eddie Flemming and media-naive FDNY Fire Marshal Jordy Warsaw, the cops investigating their murder and torching of their former criminal partner, filming everything to sell to the local tabloid TV show "Top Story."