Author: Tony

Release date:                                      12/3/2010

Roadside Attractions

Based on Mark Millar’s “I Love You Phillip Morris: A True Story of Life, Love, and Prison Breaks

Directed & Screenplay by              Glenn Ficarra, John Requa

Produced by                                        Andrew Lazar, Far Shariat

Cast

Jim Carrey                                           Steven Russell

Ewan McGregor                                 Phillip Morris

Leslie Mann                                         Debbie

 

Initial comments by the hosts:

Sam really liked this movie.  He thought it was funny and an interesting character study and dubbed it “the two gay guys-funnier Shawshank Redemption.”  Jill did not like the movie at all and had to go back to it three times to finally get through it.  She did not connect with the characters at all and found them to be superficial stereotypes and didn’t see how the relationships made sense.  Darrell thought he wasn’t going to like it and was surprised to find that he really enjoyed it; he thought the story was compelling.  Tony said that the movie surprised him at every turn.  It was not the movie he was expecting it to be, and he was very happy with it.  He’s very hit-or-miss with Jim Carrey, and he really liked him in this performance.

Sam thought the narration worked very well in this movie and Jill thought it was necessary in order to explain some of the more absurd parts of the movie.  Tony liked that the narrator (Steven Russell) flat-out lied, because the character can’t tell the truth.  During Jimmy’s death scene, from AIDS, Steven appeared to be mourning Jimmy’s death but years later Steven faked his own death from AIDS.  So, was Steven really sad when Jimmy died or was he simply filing that bit of information away to possibly be used later?

Jill took issue with how Steven’s life took such drastic changes when #1, he found his mother and #2, he came out of the closet as a gay man and took on that stereotypical, over the top, extravagant lifestyle.  She appreciated, at least, that they also portrayed him as a liar and a jerk.  Sam thought it wasn’t that much of an unrealistic portrayal since the movie would have taken place in the late 1970s and into the late 1990s, as that wasn’t really a set stereotype at that time.  Darrell countered that Steven, who moved to Miami, would have lived during the time of that exact type of life, that stereotype.  Tony thought that this showed one of the flaws of the character.  Steven was attracted to men but he only knew how live as a gay man by fulfilling this stereotype, that this was the only thing he knew.

Throughout most of the film, Jim Carrey played the character in a reserved manner, as he clearly should have, but Jill found a few moments in the film when Carrey let his larger-than-life comedic side come forward, and all the hosts agreed that this was unnecessary.  Darrell brought up the scene where Steven is walking up to his office and finds a slew of FBI agents waiting for him.  In his escape, he took a slightly more physically comedic route, and that would have played much more realistically if it has been played in a more reserved manner.  Sam thought that the movie, in its narration, was framed through the lens of a comedy more than a drama.  He thought that the comedy was Steven trying to poke fun at himself in hindsight.  Tony disagreed with the major life-changing event of the car accident, which then brought Steven to announce that he was gay and this subsequently changed every single aspect of his life.  He found it to be too much of a leap to be believable.

Jill wondered if, without knowing that the movie was based on a true story, the viewers would buy the story?  Tony agreed that he wouldn’t have and Sam stated that he simply enjoyed the movie, true story or not.  Tony thought that if the movie could have earned some of its storytelling points, instead of just leaping at them, it could have gone on to be a good story.

One of the questionable story lines for the hosts is how could someone who spent almost his entire life mired in lies and cons be believable as being in love with Phillip Morris?  Could Steven Russell love anyone other than himself?  Tony said that it was real and believable for him during the early stages of their relationship when Steven and Phillip could only communicate through notes.  You begin to see something deeper develop between them.  On the other hand, the movie never got too deeply into any of Steven’s other relationships (Debbie or Jimmy) so there wasn’t a lot to compare it to.  These were some of the movie’s shortcuts that made the storyline a challenge to find plausible.

They liked Ewan McGregor’s character as the soft-spoken Phillip Morris; they found his naïve character pretty believable.  Even when Phillip knew that Steven was a con-man, his naiveté played well in that he never questioned some of the blatant contradictions in Steven’s character.

It would be interesting to compare the movie to the book to see if the movie took a more comedic turn.  All in all, with the exception of Jill, the hosts found it a fun movie to watch.

Your Producers for this episode were:

• Tony
• Darrell
• Jill
• Sam

This episode was recorded: 3/21/2012

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Release date:                           4/16/2010
Lionsgate

Directed by

Matthew Vaughn

Screenplay by

Matthew Vaughn

Jane Goldman

Based on “Kick-Ass” by

Mark Millar

John Romita, Jr.

Produced by

Matthew Vaughn

Brad Pitt

 Kris Thykier

 Adam Bohling

 Tarquin Pack

David Reid

 

Cast

Aaron Johnson                        Dave Lizewski/Kick-Ass

Nicolas Cage                           Damon Macready/Big Daddy

Chloë Grace Moretz                Mindy Macready/Hit-Girl

Christopher Mintz-Plasse        Chris D’Amico/Red Mist

 

Happy Birthday, Sam!!

Initial comments by the hosts:

Melina thought it was a great overall movie with awesome acting, writing and music.  Jill enjoyed it and thought there were some neat parallels to other movies and she loved the characters.  Sam thought this movie was surprisingly violent, appropriately voiced-over and he enjoyed the hell out of it!  Darrell thought… simply put… it kicked ass!  David really liked it.  Tony thought it was hyper-violent and hyper-awesome.  One thing the hosts brought up is that they pretty much all thought that the movie was going to be a light comedy with superhero elements… not so much.

As much as Aaron Johnson gave a good, solid performance as Kick-Ass, Chloe Grace Moretz stole the show as Hit-Girl.  Nicolas Cage was fantastic in this movie!  They thought his voice and mannerisms were very Adam West-Batman/Captain Kirk.  The hosts didn’t think that any other actor could have pulled off the father/daughter relationship any better than Cage.

David liked that the arc of this story didn’t follow the typical arc of a comic-book story.  Typically there is one single large-scale event that motivates the character to become a superhero, or an event that physically changes the character. In Kick-Ass, Dave Lizewski (Johnson) is bullied and sees too many people turning the other way when they witness bullying.  This is his motivation.

Favorite “kills” from the movie:

Tony – when Hit-Girl is wearing the school girl outfit and she shoots the other guys in the building lobby through the man’s mouth… and after everyone else is dead, she casually turns back and shoots the first man one more time to kill him.

Melina – her favorite sequence is Hit-Girl’s first scene (where the funky version of the Banana Splits theme was playing) and in between killing people, she looks up at Kick-Ass and gives him a big, creepy smile.

David – his favorite sequence is Kick-Ass’s jet pack scene, completely with a portion of “An American Trilogy” by Elvis Presley.

Darrell – he liked the scene where Hit-Girl had all pretty much lined up and then she’s waiting with guns in both hands and she explodes out and kills them out.  His favorite scene in that part was where she reloaded her guns, by tossing the magazines in the air, while still marching down the hallway.

Sam – as much as he loved the microwave scene, his favorite was when she was in the library and, after she shoots one of the men, he falls and his sawed-off shotgun then shoots him through his chin.

Tony liked how the crime wall and the back story for Damon Macready/Big Daddy were all hand drawn in comic book style.

Nicolas Cage modeled his speech mannerisms as Big Daddy on original Batman – Adam West. According to Matthew Vaughn, Cage started acting out his lines this way at the first costume fitting. The director was happy for Cage to continue with this performance in the film, citing his irritation with the gravelly voice Christian Bale used in “The Dark Knight.”

According to Mark Millar, the “C-word” moment in issue three of the comic ultimately convinced Vaughn that it was a worthy project.

Cage came up with his character’s “disguise”: that Damon Macready would have a mustache, while “Big Daddy” would have an even larger mustache via adhesive extensions.

The comic montage of Damon Macready/Big Daddy’s past life was illustrated by artist/co-creator John Romita, Jr.

In response to criticism towards Hit-Girl’s character, Chloë Grace Moretz stated in an interview, “If I ever uttered one word that I said in Kick-Ass, I would be grounded for years! I’d be stuck in my room until I was 20! I would never in a million years say that. I’m an average, everyday girl.” Moretz has said that while filming, she could not bring herself to say the film’s title out loud in interviews, instead calling it “the film” in public and “Kick-Butt” at home.

There was a cameo of Stan Lee as a man watching news footage.

Your Producers for this episode were:

• Tony
• Darrell
• Jill
• Melina
• David
• Sam

This episode was recorded: 3/14/2012

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