Entries for January 2009

This is one of those movies that I really didn't care about seeing.  Fortunately for me - others in our group out-voted me.  It is simply one of the best movies I have ever seen.  It contains humor, adventure, drama, a love interest, exotic locations, human interest, and suspense - all packed into a couple hours. 

Walt Kowalski sure is a gruff, old sonuvagun. The Korean War veteran and former Ford assembly line worker is a chain-smoking, Pabst-drinking, old guy that grunts whenever witnessing things that ain't like they used to be. Which, for a racist, old-school coot like Walt, is pretty much everything: grandkids wearing football jerseys to funerals (his beloved wife just passed away), navel rings, Asian immigrants populating his old, formerly blue-collar, white-as-snow Detroit neighborhood.

Ah, Valentine's Day. Nothing like a day demanding couples buy each other flowers, chocolates in heart-shaped boxes and cute, cuddly teddy bears to let everyone know how much they're loved.

Or, as is the case in the new lovesick horror film "My Bloody Valentine 3-D," how badly we want to stick a pickaxe into their skull.

It was billed as an entertainment nirvana of sorts, somewhere on par with Page and Plant getting Led Zeppelin back together for a full-on tour, or Mr. Rogers returning to the neighborhood, beloved sweater vest in tow. In all their years of starring in a slew of legendary films, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino have appeared onscreen together exactly one time — in an all-too-fleeting diner scene in 1995's "Heat."

In that crime drama, the Hollywood Hall of Famers were on opposite sides of the law. In "Righteous Kill" (released this week on DVD), the senior citizen versions of De Niro and Pacino are wearing the same NYPD badges.