William Drew

Summer Movies

Alrighty, the summer movies are about to start showing up at the movie theaters.  I'm gonna be one movie-goin' fool.  In no particular order, here's a list of the ones I'm looking forward to the most:

  Mission Impossible III

The 1st two were good, this one looks like it could be outstanding.

The Da Vinci Code

I've been trying to read the book since January.  Throw in a crap load of 75-hour work weeks, taking over new restaurants twice and dealing with the loss of a good friend, and the book has been neglected. 

The Break Up

Jennifer Aniston: Hottie

Vince Vaugh: Funny.  Put these two together and I won't even care if it sucks.

Peaceful Warrior

I've heard nothing but excllent things about this movie.  It's only a limited release, so it might not even make it here, but if that is the case, I'll just netflix it.

Click

Sandler had a couple of good flicks last year.  Hopefully this doesn't slip back to his "little nicky" crap that he is know to do.

Superman Returns

The original Superman is one of my all-time favorite movies.  This one looks like it won't stray from what made the original work so well.  Oh yeah, and Kevin Spacey as Lex Luther?  That's gonna kick ass. 

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Captain Jack Sparrow might be my all-time favorite movie character, and the original is one of my top two or three movies evah. 

Clerks II

I'll be laughing my ass off at this one.  At least I better be.

My Top Movies of 2005

Well, it's almost the end of the year.  So I thought I'd start being a dork and posting a list of some of my favorite things from 2005.  Wait, did I say 'start being a dork'?  OK, um... yeah I'm already there.  Anyway, the following are my favorite movies from the year.  These are not necessarily movies that came out in 2005, but movies that I saw for the 1st time in 2005. 

Before we get to my favorites, how about a quick review of some incredibly awful movies.  Movies that bored the crap out of me, and made me feel like I wasted my time.  From my 10th worst, to my absolutely most horrendous movie: Constantine, Kicking & Screaming, Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, A Dirty Shame, Napoleon Dynamite, SpongeBob Square Pants:The Movie, Madagascar, Fantastic 4, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissau, and finally The Brown Bunny. 

Alrighty, on to the list of the good stuff:

 

20. Apollo 13

 

19. Mind Hunters - This one messed with you big time.  It was hard to figure out who did it.

 

18. Spanglish - Adam Sandler finally had another good movie.

17. Frank Millers Sin City - This was a strange one, but a very good movie.

16. The Longest Yard - This one surprised me.  I wasn't expecting much and I ended up seeing a very good movie.  And hey!  Sandler got 2 of my top 20!

15. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

14. Meet The Fockers - Meet the side splitting pain from laughing so damn hard.

13. Collateral - Tom Cruise is a bad ass bad guy. 

12. Friday Night Lights - Awesome football movie. 

11. Coach Carter - Awesome basketball movie.  I wish more coaches, heck, more people held their kids/students responsible for their actions like Carter did in this true story.

10. Finding Neverland - I've always enjoyed Peter Pan stories.  Throw in Johnny Depp and I'm a very happy man.  And no, not that kind of 'happy'.      

9. Ray - Jamie Foxx deserved each and every word of praise he received for this movie. 

8. It might just have been because I got to watch Salma Hayek all movie long, but I enjoyed this movie all 3 times I saw it.

7. The Last Samurai - A very beautiful and enjoyable movie.

6. Mr. & Mrs. Smith - How did this movie bomb in the box office?  This was an excellent and very entertaining movie.  Brad & Angelina are their usually brilliant selves.

5. Million Dollar Baby - This movie won a ton of awards, and it deserved all of them.  A great flick.

4. House of D - David Duchovny made a very brilliant film.  It starts out making you laugh, and then grips you in during the rest of the film.

3. The Incredibles - I love this movie!  I could watch this over and over and over and over....

2. Garden State - This is another movie I could watch over and over.  I'm not a big fan of the TV Show 'Scrubs', but I watched this movie because Zach Braff made it, and I'm glad I did.  It's an amazing movie.

1. The Notebook - Rachel McAdams stole my heart in this movie.  Actually, I love everything about this movie.  It's an incredible story, the actors were amazing, and I'm gonna go watch now that I'm writing about it.

A Night at the Drive-In movies

Last night (Saturday, July 23rd) I went to the Drive-In movies with a few friends.  I've always enjoyed going to the drive-in and this was no exception.  You get to see two or three movies for one low price.  They could charge a few more bucks and it wouldn't stop me from going.  Of course I'm not going to tell them that.  There are only two Drive-In movies left in the Twin Cites, and I'm not sure how much longer they will be around as there is a lot of developement going in around them now and the value of their land will be getting to high to keep a drive-in where they are.  I hope they are able to stay for a long time, or at least open up again maybe a little further out of town where the land would be cheaper for them. 

Anyway, I was driving seperatly and meeting my friends there.  They were coming from a differt part of town to it was easier to just meet out there.  The plan was to meet around 8 PM so we could get good spots.   Well I showed up at about 10 minutes past eight, and the place was PACKED!  I found a couple of spots in the 3rd to last row.  My friends ended up not showing until 8:45 PM.  The bastids.  So here I am sitting at a drive-in movie by myself for 35 minutes.  Of course right as they called saying there were in the parking lot and asking where I was, someone pulled into the spot next to me.  But they heard me talking on the phone telling them where I was and they were nice enough to move a row back.  Then as soon as my friends showed up, we broke out the foot ball and started tossing it around.  That's the best part of the drive-ins; the extra curricular stuff you can do before and in-between movies.  People bring grills, and just about any kind of outdoor activity can be found going on somewhere.  People throwing baseballs, frisbees, kicking soccer balls, playing home-made 'camping/backyard' games.  Everyone is there to have a good time. 

The 1st movie we saw was the Bad News Bears.  I think this was the 1st movie I had ever seen where there was no good guy to cheer for.  If I remember correctly, the original Bad New Bears made the team out to be a bunch of lovable losers.  This new version made the team out to be a bunch of jerks.  They also did a horrible job of editing the baseball games.  The pitcher would throw a strike, get the ball back, throw another pitch without the scene cutting to anything else, and it would be called strike three.  What happened to strike two?  I know that they are not going to show the whole game, but at least make some 'speeding-up-the-game' edits that make sense.  It was still an enjoyable movie, but this could have been SO much better.

The 2nd movie was Wedding Crashers.  There was a LOT of laughs in this movie, which was expected from Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson.  Neither one strayed too far from their normal characters.  The movie was unfortunatly made with too many cliche's, but they didn't ruin the movie.  And I can say that I am becoming a fan of Rachel McAdams.  She electrifies, or brightens up the screen when she is in the scene.  I loved her in The Notebook, and she had her electric personality in this movie too.  It doesn't hurt that she is friggen HOT.  I haven't seen any of her other movies, but after seeing her in these two, I'll be looking forward to her movies in the future.

The final movie was War of the Worlds.  This one started up around 2 AM.  That's right; started at 2 AM .  I'll have to hold off my review of this one until I see it again.  One, I was friggen tired.  Two, this film benefited from some bonus special effects.  The wind really picked up when this movie started, and it kept changing directions and blowing things around the entire movie.  I kept looking to the sky to see if there were clouds coming in for a storm.  The wind was blowing so hard at one point that it sent someones red-hot coals from their grill flying across the parking lot.  By this time most of the cars had left, so you could really see these things flying around the place.  There were large plastic grocery bags flying around the parking lot 10-15 feet in the air.  And pop/beer cans rolling across the parking lot making a bunch of noise that always seemed to enhance what was going on up on the screen.  It all made watching the movie more enjoyable, and while all of this was going on, we all said the wind made us half-expect to see one of the movies 'tripods' to come up over the top of the screen.  I had fun watching the movie, but how much of it was the added special effects, and how much was from the movie itself, I don't know. 

So the movie ends around 4 AM.  Then came the long drive home.  It's about a 35 minute drive from the theator to my house, and at 4 AM that is a looooooong drive.