Weekly Mini-reviews: “Labor Day,” “Ride Along,” “The Virgin Suicides,” & More

June 9 – 15, 2014

Labor Day | Jason Reitman | 2013 | ★½

For it’s first two acts, Labor Day is tolerable if you think of the film as one of those silly paperback romances. It’s like a film version of Britney Spears’s “Criminal.” Kate Winslet is giving it her all, Josh Brolin is at his most attractive, and it has a great summery, sweaty atmosphere. But then the last third happens, the cheesy plot is set in motion, secrets are revealed in the most heavy-handed manner, Jason Reitman fails at creating drama, and James Van Der Beek and Tobey Maguire pop up in super distracting cameo appearances (it was bad enough that the latter was narrating the thing). Had that last third been handled differently and didn’t take its self as seriously it would have lived on as something of a camp classic. As it is, it destroyed any good will I had built towards it. It’s not a complete disaster, but now it’s just a forgettable bad movie.

30 Day Challenge – Day 2: Least Favorite Movie

I had to think about this quite a bit. I watch my fair share of terrible movies, but most of the time I forget about them. But there are a few of them that I hate with every fiber of my being, and most of the time those are the ones that either are by talented people but for some reason fail terribly, or those that have potential and it doesn’t even try to reach its maximum. So, I thought that I would talk about my two most hated movies of all time.

For the first one, I must say that I’m not sure I should even talk about it as I saw it when I was about 7 and haven’t seen it since. But then again, I disliked it so much that I honestly don’t want to watch it. This film is Sphere, with Dustin Hoffman, Samuel L. Jackson, and Sharon Stone. Now, I probaly was too young to understand it, but I didn’t know what was going on and found it all terribly boring.

The second one is more recent: Miracle at St. Anna. Spike Lee is a talented guy, but this is a project made out of hate and it shows. Not only is the story hateful, but everything in the movie is pointless, the characters are despicable, it is downright ungly, and it has what may be the worst score of all time. Plus, it is like three hours long, and the editing makes it feel like it is twice as long.