CleverDonkey.com …Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel

Local Hero is my all-time favorite film. On the surface it’s a quaint  romantic comedy about an American fish-out-of-water in Scotland. But the film  has layers that at first may not be apparent. The first time I watched this  movie I knew absolutely nothing about it, and only watched it because I couldn’t  find the remote, didn’t feel like getting up, and this movie came on. I had been  planning to drift off for a lazy Saturday afternoon nap, and the slow, quiet  pacing of this movie seemed like the perfect background noise to lull me off to  la-la land. But a funny thing happened…I found myself getting caught up in the  story and the characters, in the music and the cinematography, and in the  near-magical mood of the film. The basic story is that an oilman from Houston, Mac MacIntyre (Peter Riegert),  is sent to Scotland to buy up

• Leave a comment... (0)

******************** Caution: May contain spoilers ********************

Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle is a good, solid, entertaining, escapist summer film. In addition to the stunts, explosions, prurience, humor, and action you would expect from this movie, there is also a dash of drama and a pinch of…well…tragedy. Nothing heavy-handed, mind you, but integrated well into the story and a bit unexpected.

Sadly, my first thought after leaving the theater was that seeing this film has caused me to like the Matrix films even less than I already do. The Angels director, McG, and company have of course included the requisite big-budget, CGI driven stunts that the movie studios expect that summer audiences expect from this type of film. I’m okay with that, in theory. However, my understanding is that the Angels, while being quite good at what they do (solving cases, kicking asses, titillating), are not superheroes, and they do not have any superhuman

• Leave a comment... (0)

This movie came up randomly on cable last night, and it’s ridiculous and almost so silly you want to turn it off. But we just couldn’t! First of all, it’s hard to resist such a cast:

Sir Alec Guinness
David Niven
Maggie Smith
Peter Falk
Peter Sellers
Truman Capote
… and VERY young James Cromwell

The premise of the movie (which is a Neil Simon, by the way) is spoofy in the extreme: a psychotic and eccentric millionaire has invited the world’s greatest sleuths to his rambling, creaky English country house for a planned murder that they must all solve. The sleuths include:

Inspector Sidney Wang, a very toothy and hilariously un-PC Chinaman Peter Sellers
Dick and Dora Charleston, an upper-crust British crimefighting couple (Niven and Smith)
Sam Diamond, a hard-boiled San Francisco private eye (Falk, doing his best Bogart)
Jane Marbles, a tweedy old English sleuthing bird
Monsieur Perrier, an uptight and constantly ravenous crime-solving Belgian

The targets to be spoofed can hardly

• Leave a comment... (0)

******************** THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS ********************

I am not particularly geeked out by art-house flicks, nor do I have any particular fondness for foreign-language films. Nowhere in Africa is both, and I still loved it. The film is not a stereotypical art-house flick, in that it is not avant-garde, film noir, experimental, hyper-sexual, nor stupid. What it is, is a very real story about real people trying to live their lives during extraordinary circumstances.

The film is set around the time of the rise of the Nazi party in Germany. The story follows a married couple and their daughter, who are Jewish, as they try to adapt and survive in a changing world. When the story begins the mother, Jettel, and daughter, Regina, are living the last few precious days of their privileged lives in Germany. The husband, Walter, is off in Kenya (where there is a nascent Jewish community) attempting

• Leave a comment... (0)

Way back in the dark ages, I bought my first Palm device – the PalmPilot Pro. It immediately became as indispensable to me as my cell phone, as it enabled me to view, edit, change, and delete calendar appointments, contacts, and tasks while I was out and about, and then synchronize them when I got back to my computer. I used the heck out of it until I lost it, and immediately bought a replacement (used, same make/model) for about 25% of what I originally paid. I used the replacement for several years, then lost it, too. Palm had just announced the forthcoming Palm V, so I waited a couple of months for it to be released before purchasing it.

The Palm V was sleek and small, with a stylish metallic case, sharper graphics, and more memory. I once again used the heck out of it for a couple of years,

• Leave a comment... (0)

Ming’s Cafe
2703 Montrose Blvd, Houston, TX 77006
Phone: (713) 529-7888

We stopped by this kitschy little joint for dinner on the way home from work today. The atmosphere was Montrose-quirky, the menu was surprisingly deep for such a small place, and the fried dumpling appetizers were quite delish. However, our main dishes were extraordinarily ordinary. We may give them another try, as it wasn’t horrible, but with the huge selection of very good Chinese food in Houston, why?

• Leave a comment... (0)

******************** This Review May Contain Spoilers ********************
This is an intelligent, hardcore thrill ride of a movie. It’s part social  commentary and part philosophical exploration of the innate nature of humanity,  wrapped up and presented to the audience in the guise of an extraordinarily  well-done horror film. Actually, “horror” may be a mis-characterization of the  movie, depending on your definition. Suffice it to say that while nothing  supernatural happens, many horrible things do, so see it and decide the  semantics for yourself. I was pleasantly surprised to find a refreshing lack of preachiness or  over-explanation of the apocalyptic-ish events in this film. In fact, the events  are presented with almost no explanation, and the viewer is left to interpret  things based on what they (and the characters) experience. Also, the movie does  not resort to any sort of trickery, misdirection, or intentional ambiguity  designed to deceive the viewer, and instead tells

• Leave a comment... (0)

We saw The Italian Job last night, and it was a very enjoyable movie-going experience. I went in with lowwwww expectations, as the previews seemed to depict a movie that was The Fast and the Furious meets The Truth About Charlie, with a dash of Cooper Mini autos added for that “Do the Dew” cred. In other words, really not my cup of tea.

However, the movie was much better than I expected. Yes, the story is fairly predictable, but the action sequences are well-done, and there are some genuinely funny parts. There is also a wonderfully refreshing lack of forehead-slapping stupidity and triteness. That may sound like damning with faint praise, but the truth is that so many of the movies being made today are just slipshod repitition of ideas from other currently popular films. This one is different because it isn’t slipshod, and it has just enough originality to

• Leave a comment... (0)