Movie Update 40

Man, 40 of these stupid things. No witty comment, just: man.

Anatomy of a Murder


One of a pair of long courtroom dramas I saw this last week, and one of a pair of movies starring James Stewart. He plays an aging lawyer who despite being out of practice, agrees to defend a soldier who murdered a man after he supposedly raped his wife. Strictly, the rape wouldn't be enough to qualify the killing as self defense, but Stewart uses it as leverage to help push a plea of temporary insanity. The film examines how precarious the legal system is, requiring the jury to ignore information they have been given and having cases rely on the always unreliable human ability to lie or accurately remember what happened. There's some terrific acting, and it's interesting how the truth is not what's important, but rather the trial itself.

Harvey


Another really good James Stewart performance, one that props up a movie that is watchable but I wasn't particularly drawn to. He plays a man with a friend named Harvey who happens to be an invisible six foot tall rabbit. Everyone thinks he's crazy, even his sister, who may or may not also be able to see Harvey. Various people act like assholes towards Stewart, but in the end things turn out okay because blah blah whatever.

Judgment at Nuremberg


A movie about one of the infamous trials at Nuremberg, where four judges are put on trial for rulings they made during the Nazi rule of Germany. It's undeniable that they made decisions that contributed toward the horrible things that happened under the Nazis, but the defense makes a great case that they are no more culpable than other people who didn't actively work against the regime and even other governments that didn't stop them earlier. Maximilian Schell actually won an Oscar for his depiction of the defense attorney, and he was quite good, though personally I preferred the more subtle work of Spencer Tracy as the chief judge on the tribunal. It's important to be reminded sometimes of just how awful the Holocaust was.

Stripes


A pre-Ghostbusters Ivan Reitman/Bill Murray/Harold Ramis joint that substitutes cursing, nudity, and general silliness for true wit or an intriguing premise. There's something still likable about Bill Murray's dickishness, but I thought overall Stripes was pretty uninspired as a comedy, although that doesn't prevent it from being pretty watchable anyway. It has a fine cast, including John Candy and Judge Reinhold as two of the more recognizable supporting members. Really, there's nothing terrible about it, I was just hoping for more from its talented core.

Movie Update 19

I feel like I should be building these posts around common themes, so I can give them more interesting titles than just a number, but right now the movies I watch are dictated by what's on my carefully curated list and what's about to expire from streaming. So... whatever.

Dead Alive


This was part of an impromptu horror marathon I had last Saturday when a bunch of crap was about to disappear. It's one of Peter Jackson's earliest movies, before he had started working in Hollywood, and it's also possibly the most disgusting movie I've ever seen. There's an obvious campiness and sense of humor to the extremely gory violence, so it isn't very difficult to watch, but it's still pretty darn gross. Leaking fluids, strange creatures, and dozens of people getting chopped and torn to bits. It's basically a really kooky zombie movie, except the plague is caused by a weird rat/monkey thing, and they're almost impossible to kill short of chopping them into tiny pieces. There's no real logic to it, they can pretty much do whatever the insane script calls for. Very fun, very gross movie.

Ed Wood


A sort of biopic about the career of one of Hollywood's most infamous directors, from around when he meets the great Bela Lugosi to the completion of Plan 9 from Outer Space, his most infamous film and maybe the worst ever made. Being a Tim Burton movie, it's not just a standard biopic, with a weird sense of humor reflective of the kind of mind that might produce crap like Plan 9. It's a very sympathetic story, showing Wood as a bright, friendly, enthusiastic man who just happens to make garbage. Johnny Depp is very good  as Wood, though Martin Landau sort of steals the show, winning an Oscar for playing the morphine-abusing, vulgar, theatrical Lugosi. The rest of the cast is solid too, and the black and white cinematography is generally excellent. And I loved how the film's moment of triumph is centered around the filming of one of the worst things to ever appear on a screen.

Kicking and Screaming


A funny but also thoughtful comedy by Noah Baumbach, who's known by many as a frequent collaborator with Wes Anderson, and watching it you can envision how that partnership might have started. I found it incredibly easy to relate to the movie's main characters, but I expect that's true of most people who ever graduated from college and weren't sure what to do next. The four friends all stay together in town, unable to move on from their experiences for whatever reason. We get a really good idea of why they're friends in the first place, but also what might cause that friendship to end. Really, they're all just scared to get started on that whole real life thing, which I'm not sure anyone was fully prepared for. Solid acting, really good story, and it's just a funny movie, too.

Moonstruck


This is the kind of movie people talk about when they use words like "delightful". Moonstruck is kind of an oddball romantic comedy, starring Cher in a remarkably natural performance for someone I don't really think of as an actor as a widow who decides to settle for remarriage with someone she doesn't really love. Things change when she meets her future husband's brother, a one handed baker played by a charmingly unhinged Nicolas Cage. The two have nice chemistry, and things happen about the way you might expect. Also, Cher's dad is having an affair, and her mom suspects it but is too nice to make it into a tragedy. Olympia Dukakis does a really nice job with the part, and both women won Oscars for their work. The movie's sense of humor is definitely off-beat in an unexpected and likable way, and while nothing in the film is groundbreaking, it's pleasant to watch all the same.

Poltergeist

A horror film for the whole family, directed by Tobe Hooper and written and possibly actually directed by Steven Spielberg. Ignoring the debate over who really had creative control of this movie (I'm guessing the true answer involves the word "both"), it's a pretty decent little paranormal movie. A family gets terrorized by ghosts that can move furniture and suck people into another dimension filled with goo. There's a bit of humor, but it's mostly the kind of horror movie intended to elicit a few jumps without being truly terrible or horrifying. Not that most kids probably wouldn't be freaked out by it. The eventual explanation for what's going on is pretty unsatisfactory, but the climax itself is exciting enough. There are a few ideas here worth checking out, especially if you like a little jolt but don't want to see anything truly traumatic.

Movie Update 13

Here is a brief summary about my movie watching and the fact that these movies are all movies and that I like watching movies.

The African Queen


Some weird combination of an adventure, a buddy road picture, and a romantic comedy, The African Queen rests almost entirely on the shoulders of its two leads, played excellently as always by Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. He's an eccentric, hard-drinking boatman and she's an uptight religious woman, so the conflict between them is obvious at first, but the way their relationship develops as they face the various perils of their journey through the waters of Africa is constantly intriguing. I haven't fallen in love with any of John Huston's work yet, but he's nothing if not an extremely competent director in a variety of styles and moods. Good ending, too.

Gone with the Wind

For the 1930s, this is a pretty darn remarkable technical achievement. Vivien Leigh and especially Clark Gable do really good jobs in their roles. And those are about the only truly positive things I have to say about this film. It's an overly long story with not a whole lot of real enjoyable substance. Scarlett doesn't have much character beyond being an opportunistic homewrecker, and there's no really great alternatives to latch on to. I don't require characters in a story to be likable, but there's gotta be something, and this just seemed like a long series of unfortunate romantic events set (pretty effectively) against a dramatic historical backdrop.

The Sugarland Express


Steven Spielberg's first real theatrical film isn't bad, though it isn't great either. Goldie Hawn stars as a troubled young woman who breaks her husband out of what's basically a halfway house I guess to help rescue their young child from his adoptive parents. They end up getting chased by the police, holding one hostage, and leading them all on a grand chase across the country to Sugarland, where their kid lives. There's some humor and some brief action and some family drama. The most interesting part is the relationship that grows between the couple and their captive over the couple days the story takes place in. Other than that, it tends to drag here and there. There should be more urgency to a chase movie than this. It's mostly based on a true story, which is probably more remarkable than the film itself. You can definitely see the promise his career would later capitalize on.

Tootsie


I've seen parts of this before, but this is my first time watching the thing start to finish. I'm not usually a patron of films heavily featuring cross-dressing main characters, but the difference between most of them and Tootsie as I see it is they don't bother to make their female counterparts compelling in any way, while Michael Dorsey's Dorothy Michaels alter-ego becomes a full character in her own right. Dustin Hoffman is great, Bill Murray is possibly more great in a smaller role as his roommate, and the film is a nice combination of a truly funny comedy and a solid romantic drama about people who want what they can't have. It was a little too early 80s for my taste in places, but for the most part Tootsie is just a likable, fun movie from start to finish.

Movie Update 4: Halloween Netflix Marathon

Since it's Halloween, and Sunday, and I have nothing to do all day, I decided to spend it watching some horror comedies on Netflix Instant and write about it live. I don't think any of the first three films are supposed to be very scary, but hopefully they'll have some fun with horror themes. The last one isn't really a comedy, but something of a cult classic that should hopefully provide some campy laughs. Finally I'll wrap things up with the premiere episode of AMC's adaptation of The Walking Dead. I'll start some time soon.

First film:

Beetlejuice, directed by Tim Burton

I'm not the biggest Burton fan, but maybe I'm just not seeing the right movies. I remember being frightened by what little I saw of this as a kid. We'll see how true that remains.

Start time: 12:15 -  I did watch a bit of the cartoon as a kid. Hated it. Let's hope this works out better. I like this music along with the overhead shot of town. It became more obviously a model as it went on, until the gag at the end with the spider. Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis as the happy couple. I'm sure this will last forever.

12:20 - What kind of person pitches a house to people when the owners don't want to move? Wow, that vacation went bad pretty quick. Always watch for dogs in the road, folks. And now we're in poorly-composited nightmare land. How long does it take them to realize they're dead? Not too long, apparently. They don't seem too bothered though.

12:28 - The kid's mom from Home Alone and the pedophile principal from Ferris Bueller's Day Off as the couple moving in to the newly empty house. Daughter played by Winona Ryder. Weird, this slick guy whose role I don't really understand is played by Jerry's landlord from Seinfeld. First real gross moment as Davis tries to haunt the new owners, but they can't see her. Some pretty funny sight gags. They can't be seen, but they can still manipulate the environment and be sensed.

12:35 - I'm eating right now so commentary might be sparse. So if they can't leave the house, what happens if the living make the house bigger? They're probably wondering the same thing. Hey, Winona can see them. This could be interesting. I enjoy the way Beetlejuice is trying to contact them.

12:46 - I've always enjoyed the idea that the afterlife has the same bureaucratic procedure and red tape as the DMV or something. Some really enjoyable set design in this otherworld-place.

12:54 - Robert Goulet. God rest his soul.

1:00 - Man, they're taking their time really getting Beetlejuice into the mix. And right on queue, they summon him halfway into the movie. Wow, this is a fun performance. I didn't know Michael Keaton had it in him. Well, I kinda did. Those are some big shrimp. This is a great possession scene. Aaaaand the shrimp pay off. But uh oh, it didn't have the proper effect. The family is excited by having ghosts in the house, not terrified. What a weird universe this movie takes place in.

1:15 - But now it's Beetlejuice's turn. A freaky looking, violent snake is a bit more effective. Zombie football team is kinda funny. And now Lydia is suicidal for some reason.

1:25 - Isn't it kinda cheating at charades to summon the actual objects you're referring to? Ah well.

1:29 - I don't get it. There can't be proof among the living of an afterlife, but these characters have all already seen it. What is the limit on exposure before it's actually a problem?

1:40 - Is it just me, or is it rude to try to stop Beetlejuice after agreeing to a deal that he holds up his end of? Eh. Pretty fun movie, even if the plot was kind of all over the place.

Second film:

Bubba Ho-tep, directed by Don Coscarelli

I love me some Bruce Campbell, and the concept of an old Elvis Presley and a black guy claiming to be JFK taking on a mummy sounds like it could be a hell of a lot of fun.

Start time: 1:55 - We start with an enjoyable defining of terms and old news story about mummies being discovered. It then cuts to the rest home Elvis is staying in in Texas.  Heh. If Campbell's opening narration is any indication, this is going to be a vulgar movie. Far from thinking of mummies, his biggest concerns are his sickly roommate and the growth on his penis.

2:04 -  We spend a few minutes with a woman before she's bitten by a scarab beetle. She kills it, but then a mummy appears before her. Elvis sees her disappear from the hallway, but doesn't much care.

2:12 - This film actually seems like it has something interesting to say about aging and death. His now dead roommate's daughter didn't care to come visit him, and no one cares to listen to his claims of being the real Elvis. Funny flashback scene showing him switching places with an impersonator. Even his entourage couldn't tell. Another flashback shows how he broke his hip and had to stop impersonating himself.

2:22 - Another scarab attacks Elvis. He kills it in a pretty over-the-top way and then wanders into the room of his friend JFK, who's passed out on the ground. It seems like the mummy attacked him, but John thinks it was Lyndon Johnson coming to finish him off.

2:35 - Elvis and John agree to track down whatever is causing trouble in the home. They find some hieroglyphic bathroom graffiti, and they're on to something. Meanwhile they're some crap going on that the staff seems pretty oblivious to.

2:42 - Our heroes are piecing together the mystery over coffee and candy bars. The mummy continues to wreak havoc. Finally it comes face to face with the King. Elvis gets a vision of the monster's past and then it walks right by him. Another resident dies, but at least the mummy didn't eat his soul and crap out the residue.

2:53 - Elvis tracks the mummy with his walker to a river, and finds a bus license plate, remembering such a vehicle going over the nearby bridge in his vision.

3:00 - The good guys learn more about the mummy's origin, and then make a plan to go after it. Elvis continues to wonder about what future he has left. He resolves to take care of the situation We're then treated to one of the best determined-team-walking-down-a-hall shots I've ever seen.

3:08 - And the showdown begins. Elvis loses sight of the monster and it sneaks up behind him. He notices in time and the scuffle really starts. Elvis puts down the walker and busts out some moves. The mummy wanders off and disappears again. It ambushes Jack, but Elvis comes to the rescue on a wheelchair and lights him up. It's too late for Jack, though. Elvis' incantation doesn't work, so it's time for plan B. It involves more fire. He's wounded but victorious.

3:22 - Weird movie. I enjoyed Campbell's performance, but the whole thing was kind of oddly understated and muted for a horror/comedy mash-up about an old Elvis Presley fighting an Egyptian mummy. It definitely felt like the small, independent production it was. Not bad, though.

Third film:

Little Shop of Horrors, directed by Frank Oz

I don't really know much about this one. It was directed by Yoda, it's a musical, and Rick Moranis and Steve Martin are in it. Here's hoping it's fun.

Start time: 3:40 -  The movie opens with some campy narration and a trio of women in matching outfits singing about not much in particular, introducing Rick Moranis as Seymour, an assistant in a plant shop. A radio broadcast sets it in the early 60s. One of Chuck's aunts from Pushing Daisies plays Audrey who also works at the shop.

3:50 - The second song, about living in a rough part of town, ends. After a day with no business, the owner of the shop wants to shut it down, but Rick shows him a new hybrid plant he's been working on. He goes into another song about how he got the plant during a recent unexpected eclipse, and it starts bringing in a ton of customers. I love this movie's tone. It's delightful.

3:57 - Another song as Seymour is left at the shop to try to fix the plant, which has gotten weak. He somehow decides it would be a good idea to give it some of his blood. Overnight it grows dramatically. He goes on a radio show to talk about it. Not only does it drink blood, it likes lady's bottoms. Hey, John Candy as the radio host.

4:05 - Wow, this movie's kinda dark. Audrey's singing a song about how she wishes she deserved Seymour and how her boyfriend abuses her. Wait a second, this is the second song than I've seen Family Guy reference before. I guess they like it.

4:10 - Transitional song and the plant is huge now. God, this couple is too adorable for words. I laughed out loud at the cut to Steve Martin on a motorcycle. Apparently he's a badass dentist. I'll accept it. Holy crap that inside-the-mouth shot was fantastic. He huffs nitrous oxide too. This film is delightful.

4:19 - The plant starts talking. And singing. And demanding fresh blood. This is about the point where I'd run away. Nice puppetry, though. Seymour agrees to kill Audrey's dentist boyfriend so the plant can have his blood. Win-win, right? What the hell, Bill Murray as a masochist who visits the dentist for fun? Awesome.

4:29 - Well that was pretty fantastic. But now Martin wants to take his frustrations out on Seymour's mouth. If this movie wasn't so funny it might be terrifying. Seymour doesn't have to shoot him, because he dies of an overdose on gas.

4:35 - Seymour chops him up and feeds him to the plant. I'd say the movie had taken a dark turn if it wasn't jumping between goofy and horrific every five minutes.

4:43 - Seymour makes his move on Audrey, but things aren't happy for long, as his boss confronts him about seeing him chop up the body. He helps feed him to the plant, and now he's really getting in deep. And now we have a spoken word song. Pretty cool stuff. I don't believe growing an unusual plant would get a man this famous though.

4:49 - Seymour's not really thinking too clearly here. If he really only cares about Audrey, he could just cut bait, let the plant starve, and put it behind him. But I guess he needs money to take her out of Skid Row. And the plant needs feedin', which means more murder. He offers to just get it some meat from the butcher's shop. I don't think that will be acceptable, though.

4:55 - The planet lures Audrey over and has her in its clutches. Seymour saves her, but Jim Belushi interrupts their singing. He has a business proposition, but Seymour refuses and goes to confront the monstrous plant. The plant sings about how great he is, and pulls the building down around him, burying Seymour.

5:05 - He's not dead though, and he electrocutes the creature from outer space (did I mention it's from outer space?) until it explodes. Things end happily for the protagonists, but not without a hint of trouble ahead. Ah, Christopher Guest played the first guy to notice the plant in the window. I should see some of his movies. That was a lot of fun - easily my favorite movie of the day. Just the right mix of goofy and mildly disturbing.

Fourth film:

Them!, directed by Gordon Douglas

It's a movie about people getting attacked by giant ants from 1954. This is going to be fun, right? It's probably going to be fun.

Start time: 5:20 - Interesting choice with a color title for a black and white movie. Let's see what a genuine attempt to be scary looks like 56 years later. Some police find a kid wandering around the desert by herself. She seems a little bothered by something. She manages to fall asleep before they come across an abandoned car and trailer. There was some sort of disturbance inside the trailer earlier. I wonder if it was somehow related to giant ants. They figure the girl came from this place, but still don't know who she is.

5:32 - They find an empty store that's also been ransacked. Just what the heck is going on here? I bet they're wondering. They find the body of the store's owner. "Dragged and thrown". Amazing how they can tell that. There was sugar at both scenes. I wonder what kind of culprit they must be looking for at this point. I mean, no way giant ants looking for sugar has crossed their minds, right? They hear a strange whistling noise for the second time. Left alone, the second cop only gets off a couple shots before he's killed off screen.

5:37 - The first cop speculates that an escaped lunatic could have done it, but the chief ain't buying it. No money taken, just sugar. The crack shot store owner's gun broken after he managed four shots. Just what in tarnation is going on here? An FBI agent is brought in to help.

5:42 - They fly in an expert to look at a footprint they found, and he brought his babe of a daughter for some reason. I bet she can scream pretty loud. The old guy uses formic acid (which the shop owner was loaded with) to restore the little girl's voice, and all she can do is scream about "them".

5:48 - The whistling starts again as they look for prints during a sand storm. A gigantic ant looms over the daughter. Yep, she can shriek pretty good. Pretty good practical effects for the 50s. They shoot of its antennae to hinder it and then fill it full of lead. The old doctor reveals his hypothesis, that area ants were mutated by the fallout from a nuclear weapons test in the area nine years earlier. I don't think that's how radiation works but whatever. They go looking for a nest.

5:54 - Hey there's some classic radio communication humor. The Daughter Pat spots the nest and takes some pictures. An ant poses for the camera around some human remains. The doctor reveals his plan to assault the nest with heat to keep the ants inside and then kill them with cyanide. They use bazookas to hit it with phosphorous for the heat. They then bravely and probably idiotically enter to make sure the ants are dead. Pat goes in too to do some science-type stuff.

6:04 - As they go through the tunnels, they realize not all the ants are dead as some burst through a wall. They hit them with bullets and fire, a deadly combination. This movie's actually pretty cool so far. A bit silly but not terribly dated considering. They find an egg chamber, and oddly, it seems the ants don't go through a larval phase before adulthood. Pat commands the men to burn everything, and burn everything they do. Unfortunately, the doctor doesn't think that was the only nest, and has some pretty doom and gloom ideas about what this new ant mutation could mean.

6:10 - The doctor shows a home movie illustrating his theories to some Very Important Men. He finishes by laying out his doomsday timeline of one year if the queens aren't found and destroyed.

6:16 - The good guys find an institutionalized man who claims to have seen some giant ants in Texas. *18 minute food break* Psh. Right after I call them good guys, they keep a sane man locked up to keep his story quiet. Eh, greater good I guess.

6:39 - Man, these ants are everywhere. As is the Wilhelm Scream. They manage to attack a boat at sea, for no real reason that I can surmise. I don't really understand why the original cop is still on the case. Special detail, I guess. Not exactly his jurisdiction.

6:47 - I don't really understand what's going on. They're investigating the disappearance of a couple kids after their father was killed by ants in LA. Kind of small potatoes right now, fellas. The trail manages to lead them to a possible location for some of the monsters. In fact, they may have stumbled upon the mother lode. Subplot justified!

6:56 - After keeping quiet to avoid a panic, the military breaks the silence to inform the citizens what's happening and cause a panic. The mission is to destroy the ants once and for all and save those two kids I guess. They're probably dead. The search begins anyway. They're a lot better equipped this time. Unfortunately, it's a potential hostage situation. Because there's really good reasons why an entire colony of giant ants wouldn't have eaten a couple little kids yet.

7:02 - The cop hears something, and is courageously/stupidly going through a connecting shaft in the tunnel system on his own. He finds the kids, but the whistling is back. There are ants, and he can't fry them without risking the children. The cavalry storms in to back him up as he saves them. He's crushed to death before help arrives, but they manage to fend off an attack. Man, they're really hitting that Wilhelm button hard. A cave-in traps the FBI agent in alone with the ants. He fends them off long enough for the troops to break through, and they find the queens. Picard would not have approved of this barbecue. And there's your abrupt old-movie ending. Really not bad. Decent old fashioned science fiction horror. I could squeeze in another movie before Boardwalk Empire if I really wanted to, but I think that's enough for now. I'll be back to talk about the first episode of that new zombie show.

Final feature:

The Walking Dead - "Days Gone By", directed by Frank Darabont

If there's one network I'd trust to faithfully and succcessfully adapt such a good and unflinching comic book besides HBO, it's AMC. Really looking forward to seeing what they did.

10:32 - That was a really effective opening segment. Tease a bit of zombie action, introduce the Rick/Shane relationship, show his accident, introduce him to the world of the dead, and then have him meet the first survivors. Just a pitch-perfect half hour.

10:44 - A bit more zombie apocalypse drama before a light moment right before the break. I'm impressed not only by the amount of gravitas they're giving to a story about dead people rising to eat flesh, but by the fact that it's working. AMC teased yet another show that looks potentially interesting - The Killing. Apparently it's based on a Danish miniseries.

11:00 - This is seriously good looking for a cable TV show. No way this was filmed on the same budget as Ruibcon. Must be some studio backing it. Or maybe not, what do I know. Darabont's gotta have some pull being at the helm. Some of the stuff he added for this episode is as effective as just about any moment from the comic itself.

11:12 - It looks like we've caught up with the events of the cold open. Finally the first scene with the full cast, minus Rick. I'm not sure how I feel about Sarah from Prison Break playing Lori. There's nothing wrong with her, just a lot of memories of a show that wasn't very good. There's a reason they used the shot of Rick riding a horse with Atlanta in ths distance in all the teasers - it's pretty outstanding.

11:25 - While trying to check the World Series score, FOX advertised The Chicago Code, a new cop show. Eh. Created by Shawn Ryan. Yeah, I'll probably watch it. They picked a great way to end the first episode, conveying the hopelessness of the situation while still hinting that maybe all isn't lost. Off to a great start. Checking out the trade paperback again, they only covered about the first two issues of the comic in that hour and a half. I'm sure they'll pick up the pace a bit going forward, but they're clearly aiming to keep this on air for a long time. At this rate, it will be seventeen more episodes before they're even caught up with where I am, less than halfway through the current existing run. Well, I hope you had as fun a Halloween as I did. Good night!

Ghostbusters II

I've actually seen like the first forty minutes of this before, but this is the first time seeing it through. Slowly but surely, I'm checking off all those wacky science fiction comedies from the 80s that I'd missed. I was surprised to find out that it had a lesser reputation than the original, when in my mind it was pretty much just as good. Obviously it's missing that spark of originality, as it doesn't bring much new to the table and is really just a rehash of the same basic plot. Nobody believes in ghosts despite the unmissable paranormal event from five years prior, but then something happens and activity spikes, business is booming until the ghostbusters are sidelined by political douches before an ancient evil, which has manipulated some weird guy who likes Sigourney Weaver into being its lackey, strikes and they are allowed to save the day. It's not Shakespeare, but it's fun while it's happening. This is where I would normally break for a second paragraph but I'm not sure I have enough left to say to justify it. What I like most about the movie is the chemistry of the main cast, as you get the sense that they like making movies together and are just having fun with the story. It doesn't really pay off the villain as well as the first film, but it's enjoyable throughout, funny pretty often and having the kind of special effects that don't look amazing but hold up pretty well for aging twenty years. It looks like things are shaping up for a third movie to come out next year. I'm not sure how much I like that idea, but I'm willing to give it a shot.

Ghostbusters

Don't flip out, I've seen most of this movie before in bits and pieces, this is just the first time I've sat down and watched the whole thing through. It's pretty good!

Um... I'm not really sure what to say. It's about a few professors who are fired from their school and decide to start a new business using their recent research on paranormal activity to battle and contain ghostly disturbances. Little do they know that this massive increase in spiritual phenomena is the result of the imminent, apocalyptic return of an ancient Sumerian god involving a client one of them has the hots for and her twerp of an across-the-hall neighbor.

I think that was a pretty good summary. Ghostbusters is a combination of pretty funny comedy and pretty entertaining 80's special effects-laden action. The script by Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd is loaded with tons of great lines, including ones that have leaked into popular culture and I didn't even know they deserved credit for, and along with Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson they all make for a fun, likable crew. Rick Moranis is funny as always, and Sigourney Weaver is just the girl the movie needed. All in all it's just a well constructed, well executed idea.