DVD Round-Up

A quick round-up of movies available on dvd that I've watched in the past few weeks. I won't do full reviews for these (unless I really, really like them, at which point it'll be in a separate post) -- just trying to convey whether they're worth a rental or not. Here they are, in order from best to worst.

Ghost Town (2008)

A charming comedy. It felt very old-school to me, like it could've been made in the 40s or 50s. Ricky Gervais is a man who dies for six minutes during a colonoscopy and when he awakes, he can see dead people. Greg Kinnear co-stars as one of the ghosts and Téa Leoni is a possible love interest. The flick also features a hilarious "cameo" from Kristin Wiig, one of Saturday Night Live's only bright spots nowadays. What I liked about this one was that it didn't utilize all the same-old, typical romantic comedy clichés. Even the ending was pleasantly different than what one expects from the genre.

The RyMickey Rating: B

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Traitor (2008)

A nice little thriller starring Don Cheadle as a man who is either working for the FBI undercover or working for a Muslim terrorist organization. Action sequences in this one were subdued, but still very tense. My problem with this one is only that it seemed very preachy about trying to get across the point that "not all Muslims are terrorists." I feel like they even said those exact words once. While entirely true, I don't need that pounded into my brain multiple times during a movie's 110 minute running time. Still, worth a rental for sure.

The RyMickey Rating: B

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Eagle Eye (2008)

What started out as a great little thriller royally blew it in the final act. Shia LaBeouf stars as a man on the run from some unknown entity that has seemingly framed him for some crime he didn't commit (very North by Northwest, for you Hitchcock fans). The lovely (but rather empty and vacant) Michelle Monaghan is Shia's co-star who is in the same boat as him. Like I said, the final act was a bust...incredibly disappointing and preposterous, ruining any type of recommendation for a rental here.

The RyMickey Rating: C-

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Mamma Mia (2008)

Seriously, the worst movie of 2008 that I saw. Awful, awful stuff. It's not easy to direct a musical, but even I know that you can't be jumping up and down and dancing in slow-motion while singing at a normal pace. The ABBA songs were just thrown in willy-nilly and the singing, for the most part, was adequate at best. The sets looked awful and the story was really just disgusting. "Hey, my mom was a slut when she was younger and I don't know who my dad is! Yippee! Let me get married and invite the three possible dads to the wedding, thus allowing my mom to reminisce with her two equally slutty girlfriends about their slutty escapades in their slutty youth!" Really, just vomit-inducing. The only saving grace was relative newcomer Amanda Seyfried (as the daughter) who tried her very best to rise above all the dreck. But even she can't save this one from the rating I'm about to give it.

The RyMickey Rating: F