Playing catch-up, per usual

As is my style, I have called in sick to blogging for awhile, so now I have a pile of movies to get through.

Tropic Thunder
A lot less funny than I was expecting, but still entertaining. Robert Downey Jr. in blackface didn't go as far as I'd like to have seen. But I'm happy that Jack Black was essentially pushed to the background, and wasn't a major presence. Tom Cruise gets a lot of (well deserved) credit for his small role, but where is the love for Matthew McConaughey? I laughed harder at McConaughey than I did at Ben Stiller.

Pineapple Express
Also a lot less funny than expected, though still suitably amusing. I'm growing tired of Seth Rogan. He's certainly funny, but he's a one-trick pony. Luckily Pineapple Express surrounds him with great supporting actors (Danny McBride and Craig Robinson, in particular), and pairs him with a gleefully unrestrained stoner performance by James Franco. And as good as most of the minor performances are, I really wish that Rosie Perez had been given something, anything, to do in this movie.

Burn After Reading
I stopped watching this movie about 2/3 through. It had some laugh-out-loud moments and everyone appeared to be putting forth effort, but the script doesn't make the audience care about anyone. There's no one to relate to, so the film just felt like it was wasting my time. But I do want to give it some credit: it has the greatest pure expository scene I have ever witnessed. Around the 2/3 mark (and shortly before I stopped watching), David Rasche's CIA agent walks into his boss' (JK Simmons) office and explains all of the plot's developments up to that point in the movie, with both Rasche and Simmons completely confused by what's happening. Finally, something I could identify with in this damn movie.

Sold Out: A Threevening with Kevin Smith
Smith's third Q&A DVD does nothing new, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Some of his stories can get a little long (I didn't need to hear that much about his dogs), while I wanted others to be even longer (his experiences working on Die Hard 4). Including the DVD bonus material (which is just more footage), Threevening runs 5 hours, so there's plenty of content to be interested in. Smith is entertaining regardless of the topic, though I am more interested in his candid stories about the entertainment industry (his Battlestar Galactica experience, the proposed live-action Clerks TV series) than I am with his personal life (seriously, like a friggin' hour about his damn dogs). For the $13 I paid Amazon, I certainly got my money's worth just with Smith's stories about Bruce Willis.

Postal
I enjoyed an Uwe Boll movie. As in, actually enjoyed the movie. Not in a campy way.

I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.

The movie is hit-and-miss, and (it could probably go without saying) horribly directed. But the jokes that work have more punch than those of Tropic Thunder or Pineapple Express, and they succeed with about the same frequency. Thus, of the comedies I've watched recently, Postal has been the best (it should be noted that I just felt a part of me die when I implied that an Uwe Boll comedy was funnier than a Coen Brothers comedy). From the opening scene where a couple of airplane hijackers get into an argument about how many virgins they are entitled to in the afterlife (and whether they ever get refreshed, because even 100 virgins would get old and boring when stretched into eternity) to Osama Bin Laden skipping out on Al Queda's terrorist activities to attend a management seminar, the jokes are so absurd that even the failures make the viewer think "OK, that was dumb, but what the fuck...?" David Foley turns in what I consider to be his best comedic performance since his Kids in the Hall days. Is Postal a classic? No. But comedies haven't been doing so well this year (Forgetting Sarah Marshall being the exception), so Postal stands out as being just slightly edgier and funnier than the rest.