I’m going to try my hand at reviewing movies without revealing too much about them. Perhaps that is a self defeating task. I think anything in the first five minutes is not too much.
I liked Be Kind Rewind. It was a lot different than I expected it to be. The previews make it look like the whole movie is basically mini-parodies/reduxs, but that ends up being such a small part of the whole thing. It is not often anymore that I see a comedy that is more about the people in it than it is about sex.
Like most nerds, I had not heard of Mos Def until he was in Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as Ford Prefect. I’m still not sure exactly what he was famous for before film – music maybe? – but I always enjoy seeing him in films. Granted, what I have seen him in is pretty limited. Besides HGttG and Be Kind Rewind I have only seen him in 16 Blocks with Bruce Willis. Somehow his characters always seem so real, whether he is an alien from a planet in the vicinity of Bettleguese or he is a video shop clerk in New Jersey. He does somewhat straight man to Jack Black’s outlandish paranoid friend, but it works.
Jack Black… is always Jack Black. He is just one of those people who is himself so well that he always has a lot of himself in his characters I think. Does it make him a bad actor? I’m not sure, but I find him entertaining in everything I see him in.
Danny Glover and Mia Farrow do a good job as well. I don’t think I have seen Danny Glover in anything worthwhile in some time. And I think I have only ever seen Mia Farrow in The Great Gatsby (ugh… any movie based on a book you were forced to read in high school never seems as good as it is supposed to be) and The Last Unicorn (granted, I didn’t SEE her in that, but, you get the point.)
I usually scope out the DVD special features and watched a behind the scenes about the town they filmed in. I like the idea of using locals as extras, which this movie did a lot. It seems like a lot of times you hear about film industry coming in and ruining something good when they swoop in and make a picture. (The movie State & Main is all about this.) Its nice to see that that is not always the case.
I think this movie is a good blend of feeling good, light-hearted with a little slapstick comedy, story, and nostolgia. Overall, this movie made me a little less cynical about the film industry. If you like movies in general, I’d give this one a go when you are in the mood for a movie, but you aren’t sure exactly what you want to see.
Hi Craig! Nice blog. I find it a complete waste of time, which I think is the point of a blog (or at least the good ones anyway). But it is nice to know what’s going on in Craigland.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that as much as I appreciate your thoughts on this movie, you may want to give perhaps the slightest plot description (such as, oh, the sub-genre and goal of the main characters). I hate reviews that over-describe (I had a reviewer once who not only liked EVERYTHING he saw but also spelled out so many plot twists in detail that I ended up cutting half of what he wrote so people would have a reason to see the movies) but you gotta give us something.
Sorry if that comes off as too “editor-ish,” but I guess that just comes with the territory of being an editor.