Body Count

Painful at times, awkward, cliched, and yet, I still enjoyed it.

There are two overall classes of films:
1. those that are worth watching even if you have limited time available and need to maximize each experience, and
2. those that you're content watching because you have a ton of time on your hands, a ton of movies available that you can watch whenever you feel like it, you're not expecting too much at the moment and are simply looking for a temporary escape.

This film falls firmly in the latter category, and I would never recommend it to someone looking for "something that will be worth the investment". But if you've got plenty of time on your hands and want some distraction, you could do much worse.

Grade: 5/10

We are rounding up from 4.5 in this case. Or perhaps 4.75. It didn't try to be too much, and it wasn't, but it had Alyssa Milano and it wasn't totally horrible, and that's something.

For the record we will refer to film type 1 above as "protein" and the latter as "empty carbs". If we feel like it.

The Upside Of Anger

Really liked it. Dislike that anyone could dislike it to the point of anger.

I lol'd at least a handful of times, and when I wasn't laughing, I remained completely interested. The film was solid in every way. Acting, casting, directing, production, screenplay all were above average to exceptional. There were few if any weak links.

I don't know the appropriate way to present this film to another to set their expectations in a reasonable way. It's a very unique film with a uniquely likeable set of characters (Kevin Costner has rarely, if ever, been more agreeable, but the girls were even moreso), sprinkled with some relateably dislikable traits. I would call it somewhat melancholic-comedic slice of life, and while that's not quite accurate, in the spirit of the film, it's probably good enough.

I hadn't heard of it, expected nothing, and was beyond pleasantly surprised.

Grade: 8/10

This being the first grade, it's a good time to bring up the difficulty inherent in such a concept. This film was a 10/10 in doing what it was trying to do, but a perfect 10 has to be reserved for a film like Magnolia, which is a reasonable comparison for this film, but was more expansive and ambitious, and so is deserving of a higher grade.

Ruinous Praise

I hate the fact that you can ruin a movie for another person by praising it and lifting their expectations. Expectations are central to our opinions of art and specifically film, and it seems like there are very few films that can live up to elevated expectations. Those films should be credited for their ability to stand up to that pressure, but other films that suffer from raised expectations shouldn't necessarily be judged harshly as a result. The question as a reviewer is whether or not such a dynamic should affect the review. My sense is no, and that the review should be as honest as possible, unintended consequences be damned, but I wouldn't blame another for taking a more intentionally reserved approach.

That said,

here we go....

Couldn't hold off any more.

Too many flicks.