Shaun Berk's 10 Movie Recommendations- 106th Edition

Welcome to the 106th Edition of my blog. I want to wish everyone a late Happy Thanksgiving. This week, I focused a lot on comedy and some may get some mixed opinions which is bound to happen. Next week, I will start making some Christmas selections, many I have already done which some may get a second feature and some may not, I will make those decisions when they come. Christmas is the time of year where I just take guilty pleasure to many things so forgive me if it clouds my judgement in selections. Now for what you came to see.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006): This is one selection I might take some heat for. This is the second in the big-budget trilogy and while I didn't like it as much as the first one, I still had a lot of fun here with Johnny Depp, reprising his role as Captain Jack Sparrow. After his battle with Barbossa in part one, he now must pay a debt to Davy Jones, a captain of a ghost ship. Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly reprise their roles as Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann who are about to get married but things get complicated and they get dragged into the issue of Jack Sparrow into an all-out adventure. Maybe this sequal was a bit unnecessary and I do believe that they are all too long, though I haven't seen the last one yet. One thing of interest that I realized is that almost all of Orlando Bloom's movies take place way back in the past. What was of most worth to me was Johnny Depp's performance as one of his many great characters he has brought to life.

Rush Hour (1998): Last weekend, I went to my dad's house to celebrate Thanksgiving so I decided to look for something to watch on the television before all the family arrived so I saw this and realized I had not seen it for a while so I decided to watch it again. Here we got honorable Hong Kong detective Lee, played by Jackie Chan. In L.A., we have the more reckless, rebellious Carter, played by Chris Tucker. They must put aside their differences to save a little girl that Lee knows and slowly start to respect each other more. I liked the small performance from the late Chris Penn plus the comedy teaming of these guys. I believe this is the first Chris Tucker movie I have ever featured on my blog and is probably my favorite movie of his. We get to see some great martial arts fights with Chan bringing his slapstick humor that he is known for in his martial arts films. Wow, my first two selections were parts of trilogies.

Big Daddy (1999): I was looking through HBO On-Demand and I decided to view this movie again for certain reasons. Let me start by saying that Adam Sandler is a mixed bag for me. I liked him on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE but it took me a while to really accept him in movies but I got into this one quite a bit. Sandler starts out playing his usual role but then he gets a little more serious. He plays Sonny Koufax, an absolute slacker who finds a child at his door and keeps him with hopes of winning his girlfriend back. His motives turn less ulterior and takes a liking to this kid. Joey Lauren Adams plays his love interest who is an attorney. Many of Sandler's usual co-stars are in this including SNL alum Rob Schneider and Steve Buscemi. I always enjoy seeing Buscemi no matter what he is doing. Also, DAILY SHOW host makes a rare movie appearance as a long-time friend of Koufax. Take this for what it is, I feel it is one of Sandler's better films when he was making his transition to less-comedic roles. I don't want to really give anything away.

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968): Notice, this is the original with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway. McQueen plays the title role who is a rich man who has pulled off the perfect crime. Faye Dunaway plays Vickie Anderson, an insurance investigator who is sent to investigate the crime and slowly realizes that Thomas Crown is who she is looking for but comes to admire him. This movie does a lot to look at the perpetrator and does not focus a lot on the crime which makes this very intriguing to watch with great performances from the leads. This contains the great song THE WINDMILLS OF YOUR MIND.

The Gorilla (1939): I have meant to watch this for a while now. I bought this for a dollar at some store. 1939 was a big year in the world of cinema. We had such greats as GONE WITH THE WIND, THE WIZARD OF OZ, MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, and many others. I don't believe this will really rank with such classics and that it was probably pretty far from the radar that year but this is worth watching even if just to see Bela Legosi playing a butler in this murder mystery comedy where a gorilla is believed to have committed some murders. The Ritz Brothers are the ones called to investigate. They were a comedy team of brothers from that era probably over-shadowed a lot by the Marx Brothers but the Ritz still have some pretty good comic timing. I have heard from some that this is their worst film but it's the only one I have seen. Basically, it's worth the purchase price and you might get some laughs, some intentional but some kind of unintentional as well.

The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947): I wanted to look into a movie with an older Shirley Temple so I found this one. She stars as Susan who is the younger sister of Judge Margaret, played by Myrna Loy. Now we enter Cary Grant who is an artist named Dick and comes to speak at a high school and Susan just happens to be in the audience and she becomes absolutely obsessed over him which leads into a series of hilarious misunderstandings which leads into an arrest. Margaret, realizing her sister's obsession, gives Dick an usual sentence where he must date Susan until she gets over her feelings for him. I think you get the drift here. I really liked seeing Shirley Temple as a teen and the other two leads were good as well. Maybe we can get to see some comeback role for Shirley like Gloria Stuart in TITANIC, wouldn't that be great?

American Psycho (2000): This is what Travis showed at his Co-Op film series, not his usual formula, he just wanted to show a movie for people who did not leave Muncie. This was a very strange movie which stars Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman who most people believe to be a suave Wall Street executive but there is always more to meets the eye. I think that the title says enough. This movie also stars Jared Leto, Reese Witherspoon, Willem Defoe and even BIG LOVE star Chloe Sevigny. This is not exactly my favorite movie but Bale's performance keeps me going. I especially love his analysis of 80s (which is the decade this movie took place in) music groups and albums including Huey Lewis and the News, Phil Collins, and even Whitney Houston. If you don't have a good stomach, you might want to absolutely avoid this film.
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973): I had to include this one. This one seems to be a more overlooked Charlie Brown special. Maybe because of the lack of commercialism that there is to this holiday compared to Halloween and Christmas. However, it is still a classic view that I always look forward to in November, just like the ones in October and December. This one centers a lot around Peppermint Patty who just expects to have a royal feast at Charlie Brown's house, not really thinking that he does not have the things she wants but she invite everyone anyways. Charlie Brown then stresses himself out trying to come up with at least something to give people. Linus and Snoopy help him come up with a Thanksgiving dinner with his limited resources. In the end, it's Charlie Brown, need I say more?

Octopussy (1983): In looking for a Bond film, I decided to go into the Roger Moore era. This was one of his better Bond films in my opinion and I always just felt he was given bad scripts to work with in some of his movies but this one was one of his best. 007 must go to Europe to investigate the murder of 009 who was found with a Faberge Egg worth a lot of money. He then encounters some strange people including Kamal Khan, played by Louis Jordan, two twin assassins, and even Octopussy. My favorite was Octopussy's assistant Magda. I always liked that character. Walter Gotell is in this movie as Russian General Gogol who must investigate a fellow Russian General. Maud Adams plays the title role, she was also very amusing as this mysterious character. She was also in THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN as another character. For some great action, dark humor, and just a movie to sit back and relax, this might be one for you.

At War with the Army (1950): In my search for a 50s movie, I settled on this WW2 comedy with Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. Jerry Lewis in his normal comedic timing plays Alvin Korwin, who just can't seem to do anything right. Dean Martin is Seargeant Vic Puccinelli whose higher rank over Alvin kind of complicates their long-time friendship. Lewis has a hilarious musical number in the beginning about Beans and Dean Martin has some good singing moments as well. They had some very good comic timing, though the movie was a little more convoluted that it needed to be. But still some funny moments make this worth a view.

Well, that is it for this week. I focused quite a bit on comedy more than I usually do but fate sometimes does that to me. I'm not really sure how next week will be though I will be making a rather daring recommendation so stay tuned for next week.