Blog Archives
Ocean’s 13 (2007)
Much more like 11 than 12, this latest Ocean’s caper is just as preposterous as all the others but remembers that the audience needs to have fun too. Danny (George Clooney) and his baker’s dozen are plotting revenge on Willie Bank (Al Pacino, looking like a leather couch), a ruthless casino mogul who pushed old friend Rueben (Elliot Gould) out of a business agreement. The boys must outwit casino workers, modern technology, and a super computer able to detect pupil dilation in order to fleece Bank’s Vegas eyesore. Thankfully, all of the players are back and given tasks to do, and some of the means of their scheme are ingenious. How do you pass a lie detector tests? Place a tack in your shoe so that all your truthful answers match the intensity of your false ones. How do you get your hands on rigging dice? You send a couple guys to work in the Mexican factory and, why not, start a worker’s revolt. Ocean’s Thirteen glides along almost too smoothly, barely stopping to enjoy the crazy amount of absurd machinations before they fly by. The dialogue is packed with coded terms and the film doesn’t even stop to explain them. The movie works on the contact high of cool it luxuriates in, but unlike Ocean’s Twelve, this time the gang is given an objective, allows the audience in on their plot, and then we sit back and watch the execution. Steven Soderbergh and the gang have created a slick and amusing sequel. It lacks the freshness of the first go-round in 2001, but Ocean’s Thirteen is the most satisfying three-quel so far in a summer already weighed down by them.
Nate’s Grade: B
Share this:
Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999)
Satire can be a tricky mistress. It’s like a flower, you have to water it just right. Too much and it dies, too little and it dies. So if you fail to do it just right it can become a catastrophe. Drop Dead Gorgeous flirts with disaster but comes out of nowhere to become one of the funniest and dead-on movies of the summer.
The mock documentary unspools its tale of a Midwestern beauty pageant and all the action behind the scenes of small town life. The story is rich in eccentric and hilarious characters that seem to be delved straight out of the Coen brothers’ twisted imagination. Much of the humor is subtle but still very funny. Some people have said it’s too mean spirited, but all they do is poke fun at mentally handicapped people, physically handicapped people, anorexic and bulimics, pedophiles, gun owners, religious fanatics, high school cheerleaders, dog lovers, lesbians, tomboys, stage mothers, trailer park families, farmers, the deaf, police officers, news reporters, beauty queens, Asian-American families with the American dream, the deceased, sexual harassment, swans, and a world of other lampooning I’ve failed to pen.
In the grand tradition of Fargo the Minnesota accent here is thicker than your grandmother’s jam. The movie does lose a little steam toward the end 10-15 minutes that could’ve been trimmed, but I still readily enjoyed the movie. A complete surprise for myself. If you like your comedies as black as your coffee then check this one out.
Nate’s Grade: B+
nathanzoebl 
You must be logged in to post a comment.