This Week In Cinema: June 24-30, 2012

Watch out peeps, Alan Rickman is on the way to rock your world!

A nice variety of movies this week,

Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules (2011, David Bowers, United States Of America) ***

I was a big fan of the first film in this budding series. The second installment is charming and quite good, but it feels padded out in a way that the first film didn’t. There’s also the issue of Greg Heffley himself, and how he is a very unlikable kid in this movie. The end of Diary Of A Wimpy Kid promised change in Greg, that he had learned from his mistakes and would be nice to his friend Rowley. In Diary Of A Wimp Kid: Rodrick Rules he reverts, and while I understand kids do that the film plays up his dickish behavior way too much. Steve Zahn and Rachael Harris are excellently comic, and endearing, as the parents and the film has humor and charm to spare, but Greg needs to be more of a nice kid and less of a bullying dick as the series progresses.

Sense And Sensibility (1995, Ang Lee, United Kingdom/United States Of America) ***1/2

What happens when you take a classic story, mix in a bevy of well trained actors and a director known for his ability to show quiet restraint? You get a freaking awesome movie, that’s what you get. Sense And Sensibility really bowled me over, I did not expect to like the film nearly as much I did. It starts with Emma Thompson’s smart script and Ang Lee’s relaxed direction. Where the film picks up steam and moves into the realm of a nearly all-time great is in the performances. Alan Rickman, Kate Winslet, Miss Thompson, Imelda Staunton, Hugh Laurie, Hugh Grant, there is not a weak link in the entire cast. This isn’t a case of actors acting, it is a display of great actors completely inhabiting their parts. All of these elements make Sense And Sensibility an enthralling, engrossing, and an alluring film to watch.

Kataude Mashin Gâru (The Machine Girl, 2008, Noboru Iguchi, Japan/United States Of America) ***

Inanely over the top, insanely gross, insanely stupid, and insanely fun. Noboru Iguchi’s film makes almost no attempts at staying within the place some people call reality. The terrible special effects should have clued me off to how unconcerned this film was with things like quality. Instead, it took a specific and very insane moment to clue me into what type of movie I was watching. A mother is skewered through the back of the neck and proceeds to vomit blood, bile, and intestines into a melting pot that also houses the disembodied head of her son. Yeah, that shit happened, I’m not making it up, and you know what, it was pretty freaking awesome. In summation, Kataude Mashin Gâru is crazy, stupid, and probably offensive, but it’s a boatload and a half of fun.

Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2 (2011, Alex Zamm, United States Of America) **

Not much to say about this one, it’s much the same as the first, only a little less charming and more forced. The jokes fly off the screen very quickly, some are funny, most are not. The dogs are cute, I’ll give the movie props for that. The story is what you’d expect for a movie like this one, and so is the direction, the acting, and everything else. Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2 is exactly what I expected, but my daughter really liked it and that’s good enough for me.

Wrap-Up:

Some fun movies this week, and the one I had the most fun with is also the stuffiest. Ang Lee’s period piece of an England long gone is a wonderfully jolly good time and it takes home movie of the week honors. Until next week, watch more movies!

Cheers,
Bill