Tag: Kate Beckinsale

The Aviator

MPAA Rated – PG-13
It’s 2:50 Long
A Review by:
– The Dude on the Right

The Aviator
Movie Stats & Links
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale, Gwen Stefani, Alan Alda, Alec Baldwin, Willem Dafoe
MPAA Rated: PG-13
Released By: Miramax
Kiddie Movie: Leave them at home.
Date Movie: It’s good for couples.
Gratuitous Sex: You get some, but it’s PG-13 sex.
Gratuitous Violence: No violence.
Action: A great crash sequence.
Laughs: There’s a few.
Memorable Scene: When Howard’s plane crashes into Beverly Hills, and Leonardo feeling up Kate.
Memorable Quote: None stand out.
Directed By: Martin Scorsese

I really don’t remember Howard Hughes, just heard some weird stories about the man, so I don’t know how true to life “The Aviator” is, but as a movie, it’s fantastic, but sometimes a little slow/long.

Let’s get to it…

In another Academy Awardable role, we get Leonardo DiCaprio whom I call one of the luckiest men alive. Why? Because in his role as Howard Hughes, he gets to feel up Kate Beckinsale who plays Ava Gardner, and I consider Kate as one of the best looking women alive. But enough of my jealousy, Leonardo, and quite honestly everyone in this movie is fantastic.

Well, “The Aviator” gives us this take on the life of Howard Hughes. We begin with an opening shot of a young Hughes being scrubbed clean by his mother, who enhances his spelling skills making sure he knows to stay away from houses with words like cholera and quarantine on their doors. We can surmise from this that maybe his germ-phobia developed because of his mother, but what do I know. Now shift to Howard a little older, blowing his riches on his first movie “Hell’s Angels,” which at first became the laughing stock of Hollywood because of how much Howard spent on the film and his directing style, but when the finished product proved amazing, Howard became a film icon. But the movie also introduced us to Howard’s other love, his love for airplanes.

And so, we shift the story away from Howard Hughes the filmmaker, now we see Howard Hughes the businessman in the aircraft industry, and we really start to see Howard becoming the germ-phobic eccentric that sadly became as much of his legacy as his movie and business practices. On the aircraft side we see Howard as the visionary, testing his designers to design what he sees in his mind, and he’s not afraid to test the designs himself, we also see Howard recognizing the opportunity of the industry as he acquires TWA and seeks to dethrone the politically connected Pan Am.

We also get Howard Hughes the ladies man, and this is where director Martin Scorsese shows his talent in picking the right people for roles because as the glamorous Jean Harlow Scorsese tapped Gwen Stefani, relatively unknown on the Hollywood screen, but she pulled off Harlow nicely. For the woman who was able to bring Howard out of totally losing his mind for a little bit, Scorsese gives us Kate Beckinsale as Ava Gardner. You already know how I feel about Kate, and in this role she is just as stunning as ever. But nothing against these lovely ladies, the one who really steals the show is Cate Blanchett as the feisty Katherine Hepburn. I don’t really know if she got the accent right, but even if not, she was perfect in my mind.

Yes, “The Aviator” gives us filmmaking at it’s best, and we really wouldn’t expect any less from Scorsese, but the movie is a tad long, tapping the over 2 ½ hour mark. Sadly, this did come into play for me and that will knock it down a little in the rating. The thing is I don’t really know why it seemed to play long, it was just that at one point the movie dragged a little, I looked at my watch and it said we were only about 50 minutes into the movie, and from that point on it just seemed a little long.

So, wrapping up, “The Aviator” for me is a fantastic film that just didn’t hold me fixated on the movie for the 2 ½ hours. I’ll only dock it half a star and still give it 4 ½ stars out of 5 just for the airplane scenes and Leonardo being able to slide his hand down the front of Kate Beckinsale’s dress. Everything else in the film just adds to that.

That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!

Click

MPAA Rated – PG-13
It’s 1:37 Long
A Review by:
– The Dude on the Right

Click
Movie Stats & Links
Starring: Adam Sandler, Kate Beckinsale, Christopher Walken
MPAA Rated: PG-13
Released By: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: 2006
Kiddie Movie: It actually gets kind of sad.
Date Movie: This is a toss-up. It’s not really funny, but actually more of a drama. Good luck.
Gratuitous Sex: Michael skips through foreplay. Good for him, bad for her.
Gratuitous Violence: Nah.
Action: Nah.
Laughs: Ehh.
Memorable Scene: I saw the rest of the movie in my head from the time Michael’s head rested on the “Bed, Bath, & Beyond” bed.
Memorable Quote: None.
Directed By: Frank Coraci

If you do not want to read any spoilers about this movie, “Click,” stop reading now, because for this movie I have no problem giving away key plot points, and I will be quick to give some key plot points right away in this review. I will even give you my rating now so you don’t have to continue if you don’t want to, and for “Click” I give the movie 1 ½ stars out of 5. It does have some funnies, but not many, and Kate Beckinsale is smoking hot and pretty much the movie gets 1 ½ stars because of her and the fact that she likes to role-play, but that’s another story for another time.

“Click” gives us Adam Sandler as Michael, in a movie that had a lot of potential to just be a funny, goofy movie, but tried to get way too preachy, and it didn’t work. As it is, Michael is an architect in a firm where he is trying to get the next promotion. His boss is Mr. Ammer (David Hasselhoff). As such he has to work too much and sacrifice family time for getting the next project done. At home things are hectic, with his two kids, and his smokin’ hot wife, Donna (Beckinsale). Time after time Michael misses family things because of work things, and somehow every remote control for the family is in his family room. That’s right, you’ve got the remote for the ceiling fan, the remote for the garage door, the remote for a remote-controlled car, etc. The remote that seems to be missing is the remote for the TV, and when he really needs this remote he heads to the place in the middle of the night that you would think would have a Universal Remote, “Bed, Bath, and Beyond.” Alright, it is the only store that is open this late at night. Well, Michael gets there, meets a creepy dude, and lays down on a bed proclaiming he is tired. This is the instant that I lost it because I knew, from there, that the rest of the movie was pretty much a dream, although the movie folks tried to show, in the end, it wasn’t.

So Michael, now in his dream-state, finds a door labeled “Beyond,” and he finds Morty (Christopher Walken), who gives Michael the Universal Remote he has been looking for. This remote isn’t just for his TV, it’s for his life. It can control the volume of his dog’s barking, it can let him fast-forward through fights with his wife, it can fast-forward, well, pretty much this remote is all about the fast-forwarding, and it learns what Michael wants to fast-forward through, and then does so automatically. Suddenly Michael is fast-forwarding through his life, a lot of times at ten years at a time, and wondering how he got divorced from his wife, how his little girl grew up into a hottie with big boobs, how his dog died, how he got fat, and how he ends up at his son’s wedding. And so, yes, with the help of Morty, he learns his lesson, that he shouldn’t have made his life about work, that he should have made his life about his family, and in his last, dying breath (doesn’t this sound like a great comedy), he tries to convince his son that going on his honeymoon is more important than going to a business meeting.

Next thing you know, Michael wakes up.

Yup, there Michael is, in the bed in the “Bed, Bath and Beyond” he found himself “tired” in, realizing his life isn’t over, that he can make it better, if only he becomes a family man instead of letting Mr. Ammer rule his life. Ahh, lessoned learned, but to try to say “Michael wasn’t dreaming,” when Michael gets back home from “Bed, Bath and Beyond,” low-and-behold, there on the kitchen table, it the “Universal” remote, and a note from “Morty,” asking Michael if he knows how to use the remote know. Duh, Michael throws the remote in the trash (could a sequel be there if the movie makes enough money?).

There have been way-too-many movies proclaiming that you should make sure you spend time with your family as opposed to your work, and a lot of them did a decent job. This movie didn’t because it publicized itself as a movie about a dude getting a remote control that can control his life, and it is supposed to be funny. Instead it ends up a way-to-sort-of-serious movie, preaching the importance of family. And even with the funny, it wasn’t really funny. There was a way overdone subplot of the family dog humping a giant, stuffed duck; The funny moments were pretty much already in the trailer; and one of my gauges as to how good a movie will be still holds true – when they publicize the hell out of the movie, it will leave a lot to be desired.

What sort of makes me sad is that Adam Sandler can be very funny, but lately he has been involved with movies that just fail to remember how to make the funny and instead try to get a little serious. The little kids were great in the movie, and Kate Beckinsale, just being the gorgeous dudette she is, left me getting this movie above the 1 star mark, so like I said at the beginning, it’s 1 ½ stars out of 5 for “Click.” I’m almost afraid Adam Sandler has lost the funny. That would be too bad.

That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!