My movie choices of late have been pretty pathetic.  My most recent viewings resulted in ratings of 1 or 2 stars.  Not stellar movie events, in fact, they pretty much sucked.  One of the movies got 95% on the tomatometer!!  How could that be?!  Even Roger Ebert, who I usually agree with, rated it well.  What am I missing?

I know my thumb is not on the pulse of America when it comes to movies, but I don’t think I’m that far out of whack.

So, which movies did I see and hate so much?

With a Friend Like Harry tells the story of a chance meeting between two people who went to the same high school.  I wouldn’t call them friends, since one has absolutely no recollection of the other.  Harry however knows WAY too much about Michel, who is busy trying to manage his wife and three daughters on their yearly vacation.  Harry convinces Michel to let him stop by for dinner and after which Harry decides not to leave.  Harry has some sort of strange obsession with Michel that was just disturbing and he progresses to try to resolve any “issues” Michel has in his life to the point of murder.

The movie reminded me of one of those bad 1960′s TV crime drama’s.  The production quality was about that level as well as the story.  The events plodded along with no real increase in suspense or intensity.  In fact, Harry was more creepy than anything else.  Why Michel continued to let him hang around is beyond me and Harry’s reason for his obsession is never revealed.  The ending is less than satisfying and quite anti-climactic.  A slow plodding film that doesn’t really deserve to be seen.

I’ve always had a problem with Linklater movies.  I’ve continuously heard the rave reviews from others, but when I sit down and watch one, I’m never that impressed.  Tape is a movie that was shot on a very small budget.  It takes place completely in a cheap hotel room with only 3 characters.  The story revolves around an event that occurred over 10 years ago during their senior year in high school and it’s taken this long for one of them to plan and exact his revenge.  The dialog is ridiculous, the camera angles are irritating and the story is somewhat uninteresting.  I will say the Uma Thurman was the only redeeming part of this film and had the best and most believable dialog.  Her acting is what saved it from a 1 star rating.  Beyond that, it’s a pointless endeavor to watch this film.

On a final note…Roger Ebert finally put out his review of the movie Expelled, and I must say, it’s fantastic.  Not the movie, but the review, which skins the film and Ben Stein alive.  Deservedly so I must add.  You can read it here, although the link is a bit slow given the amount of press he’s been getting on this, many blogs have been linking to it.  It’s a rather lengthy review but worth the read.  If you don’t know what Expelled is about, just click the link above and you’ll quickly understand.  There are a couple of sections that are worth reading if you don’t want to spend the time to read the entire review.

This film is cheerfully ignorant, manipulative, slanted, cherry-picks quotations, draws unwarranted conclusions, makes outrageous juxtapositions (Soviet marching troops representing opponents of ID), pussy-foots around religion (not a single identified believer among the ID people), segues between quotes that are not about the same thing, tells bald-faced lies, and makes a completely baseless association between freedom of speech and freedom to teach religion in a university class that is not about religion.

And this section at the very end.

Ben Stein is only getting warmed up. He takes a field trip to visit one “result” of Darwinism: Nazi concentration camps. “As a Jew,” he says, “I wanted to see for myself.” We see footage of gaunt, skeletal prisoners. Pathetic children. A mound of naked Jewish corpses. “It’s difficult to describe how it felt to walk through such a haunting place,” he says. Oh, go ahead, Ben Stein. Describe. It filled you with hatred for Charles Darwin and his followers, who represent the overwhelming majority of educated people in every nation on earth. It is not difficult for me to describe how you made me feel by exploiting the deaths of millions of Jews in support of your argument for a peripheral Christian belief. It fills me with contempt.

Now that review brought a smile to my face.  Thanks Roger.

Hopefully I can turn this bad movie trend around with some upcoming selections from Netflix.  After all, I would much rather watch a good movie and write about it than waste my time on dregs like these.  But to end on a positive note, movies like this do help one to appreciate a well made film even more.