Tag: Dark Comedy

I decided to watch this movie ahead of schedule in honor of this. Unfortunately, it is all a lie and a tease for a car commercial. Join me in never buying whatever car it happens to be. WHY PLAY WITH OUR EMOTIONS, WHY?

Wait, what is the movie called again? I think I found her.

Finding Amanda, despite being the name of the movie, is actually not that hard of a task. He finds her pretty quickly. Who is he?

Matthew Broderick plays a “succesful comedy writer” for a “hit TV show”. But his stuff hasn’t been as good lately. He also used to be addicted to smoking and alcohol. But that is all behind him. Gambling is his thing now. He is seeing therapy for it, and cant carry around a checkbook or a credit/debit card, despite it being his money. His wife Maura Tierney would be upset, you see, if he wasted it all.

So after another argument (damn Horse races!) he decides he can prove that he is over gambling. He is going to Las Vegas to find their niece Amanda, Brittany Snow, who is hooking. He will find her, convince her to go into the rehab that they already paid for and he wont gamble at all. But thats a lie. He gambles a shit ton before even looking for her.

Besides, how bad could her life be? She has a nice home, living with her boyfriend Peter Facinelli, and makes bank. Sure, creepy people, might have been raped when she was younger, and rude people. That part might not be good. Broderick also has to worry about Steve Coogan, one of the head guys in the in the casino/hotel he is staying at, who helped loan him some money to get him on his feet. But he is getting very angry.

So can Broderick convince his niece to go into rehab? Can he change his lying ways to his own wife, or will he strike it big first. Also, will anyone believe that Amanda is his actual niece when they are hanging out in Vegas?

Nope

So I gave this a dark comedy, because it wasn’t really laugh out loud funny. What you get to see is the tailspin of Broderick’s character as he is going through a huge mid-life crisis. It reminds me of the role he played in Election, but this time his downfall is pretty much his own fault and not of some young girl. The beginning started off pretty slow, but it really started hitting its stride once he found Amanda. The ending was pretty great, and makes sense overall.

Kind of also sends a positive message. What you’d expect in a movie about hookin’ and gamblin’.

When I saw the cover of Serious Moonlight I thought it looked like a dumb Romantic Comedy. I mean, it really had nothing going for it. I clearly didn’t look too closely, or else I would have noticed something very amiss.

Regardless, the reason I originally picked this movie to watch is because I liked the secondary actors more than the main ones. Dont worry, if they werent in the movie, I would have probably still watched this movie, but more likely months from now instead of right now. I get to have some control over what I watch!

You readers are smart. You can probably figure out the amiss part. I totally missed it.

Timothy Hutton is the main guy and he in his house, with tons of flowers and leading a path of rose petals to the bedroom. His wife, Meg Ryan, will be there tomorrow from a business trip, and he wants to surprise her. With a note. Telling her that he is leaving her, to go to Paris, and to feed his fish. Damn. But in the middle of the note, she returns home early, and he is like…shit.

She quickly becomes sad at the news, and demands that he stay put so they can talk about this and work it out, but he refuses. He doesn’t care. So she gets mad and throws one of the vases at him knocking him out. Whoops. He then wakes up and he is duct tapped, very solidly, to a chair, with Meg Ryan vowing to win him back and will convince him to stay home.

Holy shit Meg Ryan is crazy in this movie. But you already figured that out. Turns out he was seeing someone else, a much younger woman, Kristen Bell. (Good choice, sir). Well. Eventually more shenanigans happen, and he is transferred to being duct taped to the toilet (this way he can pee. Problem solved). But when Justin Long eventually comes to the house to mow the lawn, seeing the vulnerable position they are in, he decides he is going to rob the place. Knocks out Meg Ryan, and ties her up too, while making the house his own.

Oh man!

Really, the toilet thing is just a smart idea.

So, the best people in the movie ended up being the main two stars. I knew Kristen Bell and Justin Long’s roles wouldn’t be as big, but man, Meg and Timothy really took the cake. They felt so believable as a couple that was on its last ropes, their conversations with each other felt so real.

The movie has problems though. I figured I knew how it would end about halfway through, taking away some suspense. And if they get back together, I can’t help but think it won’t last long. After all, the guy really hated their marriage, and it seemed like unfixable problems at that point, so I feel like they will just pop back up again later, making him miserable. Or at least more sneaky if he decides to leave again.

True story alert! Kind of.

Burke and Hare (which has been a movie before) is loosely based on the murders committed by William Burke and William Hare in Scotland in the 1800s.

The main difference is that the 70s version was a horror, so presumably scary. The modern version is a dark comedy, and thus well…strange.

I feel like they are staring into my soul.

Burke and Hare are played by Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis respectfully. The movie is narrated by Angus the Hangman, played by Bill Bailey, who begins the story with a hanging, of course. The corpse is normally sold to the highest bidder, between two doctors, Tom Wilkinson and Tim Curry. They both teach at medical schools and use the bodies for dissections, (While Curry is having to resort to live patients).

Burke and Hare are down in the dumps! They are out of cash, and all of their plans go awry. When Hare’s wife mentions an Inn-patron died, they give the body to Wilkinson, and receive a nice fund. They enter a deal that if they can give him two bodies a week, they will be handsomely rewarded! First they attempt to dig up bodies in a graveyard, but they aren’t fit for dissection. Bones and what not only.

So instead? Murder! Specifically those about to die (at first). Or bad people. Or whatever. Soon they also get mixed up with blackmailers. Aka someone they have to give money too for “protection”. Hare wants to save up money to start a funeral parlor business (Which may be the first of its kind). Burke spent a lot of his money on the production of an all woman theater group for MacBeth. Starring Isla Fisher of course.

But eventually people get suspicious. WILL THEY BE CAUGHT? (this is history, yes, kind of). WILL THEY HELP SCIENCE? (yes) IS THAT CHARLES DARWIN OVER THERE? (yes). Well that’s cool.

The movie was decently funny. Simon Pegg was not with his normal ensemble that you always see, but instead with Smeagol. That was a change.

But the thought of this guy being a murderer? Easy to grasp.

I am sure a lot of the history was embellished, but it is definitely and interesting story. Parts were decently amusing, but amusing is really as far as it went. I liked all the science tidbits in the movie, especially the scene at the end where they showed where William Burke is today. Who doesn’t love movies that give you those tidbits at the end?

Alright, I have a confession to make. I am definitely biased with this review. I know part of the crew who put this movie together.

If you go to the cast and crew page of Super, you can find one Justin Beckham. He was actually the head camp director person for a Boy Scout Summer Camp I worked at in high school. Now a lawyer, he decided to help make a movie. Some people know how to live better lives than others I guess!

Anyways, this was a low budget dark comedy that was also independently release. Coming out within a year of Kick-Ass didn’t help either. Studio movie based off a graphic novel vs something someone just decided to do. Despite the low budget and “already done” theme, it was amazing. While focusing less on amazing action scenes (yet somewhat upping the gore/violence) and more on the human emotion side you get a different picture. The hero is of course Rainn Wilson. Kevin Bacon and Nathan Fillion are both in it as well, as a villain and tv character respecftfully. Ellen Page‘s character was crazy awesome. Like a less deadly, more psychotic (and strangely hot) Hit-Girl. What else was unexpected? Anime tentacles, a rape scene (not related to tentacles, oddly enough), and realistic (ish) deaths.

“Did you say rape scene?”
Damn it, Flynn!

In other news, this movie is pretty cheap on Amazon. I saw it for preorder as $13 on Blu-Ray, but now it is still just $14. Pretty cheap for Blu-Ray.

I personally think the ending of this film is debatable, but no one else who saw it did. They actually ignored my theories, but if you watch it, I will argue it with you to!