burkemancometh Reviews

Saturday Night Live: Tom Green/David Gray (2000) Season 26, Episode 6

Worst episode of SNL ever!!!

[24 March 2006]

This is probably one of the episodes where the host himself made the show worse. What's usually the case is that the cast and the writing, not the host, make the show bad. They can have a really good guest and just mess up every other way. In this episode, you can see that the cast is somewhat irritated with Tom Green's stupid and pointless antics.

I noticed that any of the sketches which were meant to be intelligent left Tom Green out altogether, such as ones involving Bush & Gore (keep in mind this was after the election, and when the country still wasn't sure who our next president would be due to the fiasco in Florida). It seems they had to tolerate Tom Green being on the show, and told him, "You know what, just stand to the side right there while we rehearse." They shouldn't have even invited him.

Lastly, this was the famous episode where Tom Green invited both his parents and Drew Barrymore (who he was engaged to at the time) up on stage to perform a wedding ceremony. It was a really good concept, except there was some dumb gimmick where Drew Barrymore wouldn't leave her dressing room, so the show went without the wedding. I tell you, the 2000-2001 season of SNL was a good season compared to how it is now, but this episode was obviously the low point of the season.

Fatal Instinct (1993)

Tries Way Too Hard

[1/10 · 17 April 2005]

I absolutely hated this movie. I remember seeing it back in 1994 when I was 11, and hating it even then. Of course, back then I hadn't seen the movies it was spoofing, such as Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, and Sleeping With The Enemy. Over ten years later, I have seen all these movies, so I thought, "Hey, I'll give this movie another try".

I recently saw it again, and still thought it was terrible. I read a review Roger Ebert gave of it, and he gave the movie one and a half stars. Roger, in my opinion, was being too nice.

Carl Reiner has directed some great movies (i.e. The Jerk), but this is easily his worst. The jokes in the movie ranged from mediocre to just flat out awful and predictable. One of the worst is in the courtroom scene, when the bailiff calls for a ten minute recess. Sure enough, the gag was that everyone went outside and played. Get it? Recess? Ha ha- not! Comedy is indeed hard, but this movie shows that editing your scripts is always a good idea. The kind of humor when the cast acts seriously while the gags speak for themselves worked well for movies like Airplane, Naked Gun, and Hot Shots, but not for this movie. I can't say if it was the acting, the jokes, or the sheer dislike for the characters, but something just wasn't clicking. I'm just curious as to how the cast members felt about this movie as they were doing it. Armand Assante in some scenes looked as if he was ready for Carl to yell "CUT!" any minute. He did not look comfortable doing this comedy. Sean Young looked like she was trying to have fun with it, and is pretty convincing in some scenes. Above all, though, something went terribly wrong with this movie. If you want to rent this movie, I would suggest not paying any more than one dollar for it on video.

Bamboozled (2000)

Surprisingly Good Movie, & Great Performance by Wayans

[19 April 2003]

I don't remember hearing very much about this movie when it came out. In fact, I had only heard about it when it came to video. However, when I actually saw the movie from beginning to end, I was very surprised why the movie didn't get more press, because it certainly deserved it.

Bamboozled is a surprisingly good movie with surprisingly good performances by Damon Wayans, Tommy Davidson, Jada Pinkett Smith, Michael Rappaport, and Savion Glover (in his first actual acting role). Damon Wayans, after being type-cast too many times as a racist arrogant athlete ("Celtic Pride", "The Great White Hype") really shows his acting skills in this movie. My first thought when I heard his "white man" voice was, "Man, he has got to be kidding." His voice in the movie was similar to Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy when they immitated white people in their stand-up acts. However, Damon Wayans' voice is significant to the plot, as is Michael Rappaport's voice.

Rappaport has had a slew of supporting roles in the past ("Higher Learning", "Copland"), but he especially shines in his role as a white executive wanting desperately to be black, as opposed to Damon Wayans who is black wanting to be white. Some of the things Rappaport says in the movie may make audiences both black and white cringe, but that's the beauty of his role. It's also sort of cool when he makes fun of Spike Lee and refers to Lee's other previous movies (in fact, the title of this movie was taken from a line from "Malcolm X", ironically).

Savion Glover, best known for his tapdancing skills, tried acting for the first time in this movie, and did pretty well. Spike Lee has the tendency to put people who have talents other than acting into his films and make these people act for the first time ever (he did this with NBA star Ray Allen in "He Got Game"). Sometimes there are mixed results, but Glover played his part well as a former street dancer who gets caught up in the spotlight only to fall victim to his own demise.

As for the plot itself, it does make you wonder whether an actual show like Mantan would exist. It comes to show you that hype is a strange thing in show business, and you never know quite what people will and will not buy. It is a thought provoking movie, and probably one of Spike Lee's best. It may not beat "Do The Right Thing" or "Malcolm X", but it sure as hell beats "Girl #6" and even "Summer of Sam". It definitely should have gotten more press though.

My rating= 7 out of 10.

To Catch a Killer (1992)

Boring as Hell, but great performance by Dennehy

[30 March 2003]

Let me say this: Brian Dennehy did a great job portraying who is probably one of the most notorious serial killers in American history. John Wayne Gacy was a savage sociopathic killer whose outer image had to be cracked through in order to solve the mystery of 33 missing teenage boys. Dennehy does a great job portraying Gacy, and I think few people could have done it better.

However, if you're expecting a movie directly about John Wayne Gacy, I'm writing this to crush your expectations. This movie is more about how the detectives caught Gacy than anything. Therein lies the majority of the movie, and also the weakest part of the movie. The scenes without Dennehy are God-awfully boring. Watching a movie with grass growing would be more stimulating. The guy who plays the head detective is not very convincing, and neither is the psychic he goes to in the middle of the movie (played by Margot Kidder). The part with Kidder probably didn't happen, and was probably added to the movie to give it more excitement. Well, it didn't work.

To give it more excitement, it could have shown more of Dennehy playing Gacy. It also would have helped if they would have at least tried to make to movie look like it was the 70's, which was the decade in which Gacy was actually tried and convicted. I mean, the movie shouldn't have been overdone with 70's stereotypes like in "Boogie Nights", but at least give it some flavor.

I bought this on video after seeing the excellent TV movie, "The Deliberate Stranger". That TV movie was based on the search for Ted Bundy, and provided a good balance between Bundy's actual life and the detectives who tried to find him. In "To Catch A Killer", there is too much of an imbalance. Besides Dennehy, the actors in this movie sucked, and many things needed to be added to this movie to make it more interesting. Having it be a TV movie is no excuse.

Bedazzled (2000)

Better Than Expected

[22 March 2003]

Okay, so I haven't seen the original 1967 movie with Dudley Moore, but with nothing else to compare this movie too, it really wasn't too bad. I guess there's no use reitterating the plotline, so I'll get to the point.

First and foremost, Brendan Fraser did an excellent job playing his multiple roles. In the first few scenes of the movie, he did a great job playing a complete dork, which must be really difficult for a 6'3, relatively bulky guy like Fraser. He also got into his multiple roles very well when he made those wishes. Obviously most of those wishes (like the most emotionally sensitive man in the world, or the dumb basketball phenomenon) were supposed to make him look foolish. But when he played that really intellectual guy, he really got into it, and played that role to a T. Fraser is a really underrated actor, and this movie, beyond a reasonable doubt, shows his acting range.

Francis O'Connor, his love interest in the film, also does a really good job. Her role in the film is supposed to be minimal, but she plays her role really well, especially when she plays two different people (I hope that wasn't a spoiler). She's also one of the only British actresses that can hide her British accent really well, even better than Emma Thompson could in Primary Colors. That says something.

Liz Hurley was there for laughs, and she pulled her part off really well also. There were times where she was a little annoying, but she had her moments.

Overall, the movie kept you in your seat. I have seen worse movies, and this movie definitely has those moments where you can't help but laugh out loud. I give this movie a 7 out of 10.

Fritz the Cat (1972)

Very Strange, but it had its good parts

[25 February 2003]

Fritz the Cat is indeed a very strange movie. It was rated X when it came out, but today the X-rating doesn't really exist anymore, so the movie is currently "unrated" by the MPAA. If it should be rated anything, it should be rated R or NC-17, because there is still drug use, nudity (including a surprising number of shots of the penis, more so than in R-rated movies), and, in one case, violence.

<p>The movie did have its funny parts, and it had some things that were timeless. For instance, I could surprisingly relate to Fritz talking about his dislike for the whole college life about the hypocrisy of intellectuals. There were other parts that many people could relate to in 2003 also. However, there were also some brutal parts.

<p> The part where that Neo-Nazi bunny beat up on his cow girlfriend was the part where I just stared at my TV screen with a horrified look on my face. Not only was that one of the most brutal scenes I have seen in an animated movie, but it was one of the most brutal scenes I have seen in a movie period. That was where I stopped laughing and began to hate the movie.

<p> Also, the parts where black people in Harlem were depicted as crows made me a little unsure about the movie as well. I mean, I guess it was a spoof of how Walt Disney put black crows in "Dumbo" that were immitating black Southerners, but I just didn't buy it.

<p> This movie had its good parts, but the end of the movie got your head scratching. I guess it was a good movie for its time, but for this time it's a little out of date. Also, if you're getting this movie for its pornographic material, just remember that these are ANIMALS having sex, not humans, and the effect is not all too arrousing. So overall, I give this movie 3 out of 5 stars. It was okay, but was pretty overhyped. Not a movie I'd see more than twice.

Ted Bundy (2002)

Interesting, But Had An Ambiguous Message

[3 January 2003]

I saw this movie with the expectation that it would be similar to a TV movie about Ted Bundy I saw a few years ago. I don't remember what the movie was called, but it portrayed Ted Bundy as an outgoing, handsome young man who no one believed at first would do these horrible things to women. The TV movie focused more on Ted Bundy himself, and how the police were baffled as to how this apparently decent guy could do these things. This movie, although it had more R-Rated freedom and a slightly bigger budget, was of less quality than the TV movie. The scariest thing about Ted Bundy was that the women who he killed would think of Ted Bundy as the last person in the world who would brutally kill them. The protrayal of Bundy by Michael Reilly Burke did touch upon that, but showed him as more psychotic. The first scene where Burke was standing in front of the mirror making strange faces confused theheck out of me. I was like, "Hey, I do that sometimes. That doesn't mean I'm going to go out and kill people." Plus, his steady girlfriend in the movie, acting wise, was stupid. Ted Bundy does lewd sexual acts to her, such as tying her up and having her pretend she's dead, and the woman wonders in the end, "Gee, I never knew Ted was a serial killer. I lived with him for years. Who is he?" It's like, "C'mon, lady, the pretending you're dead didn't drop you any hints." Another inaccurate part was when the police cheif was reading off the names of women Bundy had killed to Bundy, in an attempt to make the killer a little nervous. I mean, c'mon. He wouldn't act nervous. He killed over 30 women without even asking for their name. Those names would mean nothing to him. I think every police cheif would know that. I guess this movie was more accurate than the TV movie,but I couldn't tell you that. I didn't know Bundy personally. Hell, he was executed when I was in kindergarden. However, the scene where he is executed is really good. Especially when they combined real footage of people holding signs up in favor of Bundy's death. That was really powerful. The final part that made this movie ambiguous was the part at the very end with those kids who were saying "I am Ted Bundy" similar to the way Spike Lee had kids all over the world say "I am Malcolm X" in the famous Denzel Washington movie. I didn't get that part. When I was a kid, I didn't even know who Ted Bundy was, or Jeffrey Dahmer, or David Berkowitz, or whoever. What was the director trying to portray? That Ted Bundy wasn't really a bad guy? I don't know. That part should have been put in the deleted scenes section of the DVD, because it was pointless, and could've been a section for a better epilogue than was provided. I give this movie a 5/10, because it could have been done better.

A mi madre le gustan las mujeres (2002)

"Soul Food" meets "Kissing Jessica Stein" . . . In Spanish

[2 January 2003]

This movie was really not that bad. I saw this movie as part of my class for Spanish writing, and I was pleasantly surprised. Unless you're studying Spanish, you'd probably prefer this movie in subtitles, but that's okay. Even though a few things that were said in this movie that were funny flew over my head at times, whether it be that Spanish humor is different than American humor or that I just didn't keep track of all that was said, it was still rather funny.

The basic plot of the movie centers around a woman who is the middle child in a family consisting of a mother, a father, and three daughters, of which she is the middle daughter. The mother and father are divorced, and, as the literal translation of the title implies, the mother became a lesbian and began to live with a woman who is around the age of the woman that the plot centers around. The movie is basically about how this main woman, the middle child, copes with this change in her life, both on a family level and on her relationships with men.

In the aspect about this working-class woman questioning her sexuality, this movie is quite a bit like the recent "Kissing Jessica Stein". The family aspect of the movie is a lot like "Soul Food", although the mother in "Soul Food" wasn't a lesbian. Either way, this movie wasn't a rip-off of either of these movies. The movie was altogether very original, and it had a theme which was very universal. I think that any American that sees this movie will relate to it in some way. It does take place in modern-day Spain, but could easily take place in America or Great Britain, or anywhere else within reason.

There is one other thing. The funniest part of this movie is when the youngest daughter, who is in a rock band, sings a song about her mother being a lesbian. The reaction of her family in the audience is classic. I give this movie a 9/10.

American Beauty (1999)

Good Movie . . . But Awfully Depressing

[21 November 2002]

Okay, this movie did win for best picture. Also, Kevin Spacey won the Oscar for Best Actor (his second Oscar and his first for a Leading Role), and that was well-deserved. However, given that it came out the same year that ¨The Green Mile¨, ¨The Sixth Sense¨, and ¨The Cider House Rules¨ came out and were nominated, I thought this movie didn´t compare to those I just mentioned.

Yes, it was an original movie, and it was well put together. The cast made you believe that you were watching a reality show more than you were watching people act, and that´s good. However, I don´t recommend watching this movie when you´re in a good mood, or a bad mood for that matter. It´s hard to explain, but you´re bound to be depressed by the end.

Let me explain. This movie is about an upper middle class family, with a father who is in the midst of a midlife crisis, and the rest of the people in his world are not doing well helping him cope. I guess you can read the other´s people´s comments to get a better description of the movie, but that´s the best I can do for now.

I can tell you that at first, the overall point of this movie, or so it seemed, is that no matter what you do in life, no matter how successful you become or how happy you may seem when you´re younger, your life is eventually going to suck, and suck hard. I´m not really a fan of that message. However, this movie is more about selfishness. Every character who had a screw loose in this movie (and that´s nearly everybody) got that way because of selfishness. Their wanting more lead to their downfall. Looking at the movie that way made it a better movie for me.

If I were to give this a rating, I would give it 7/10. Again, don´t see this movie if you´re in a really good mood, because your mood will be killed quickly.