Is it gross?

Recently, Netflix added a bunch of content from Starz Play to its selection of instantly available movies, and now my Netflix queue is filled with a lot of great movies. Included is Enchanted.

Now, don’t get me wrong — I absolutely loved Enchanted. I gave it 5 stars — and not only because it was filmed two blocks away from where I lived in my senior year of college. It was thoroughly enjoyable and reminded the world that fiction can make the world seem like it sucks less.

However, I found an issue with the premise of the film. What made the evil Queen Narissa think that Edward’s marriage with Giselle would result in her losing her thrown? Since when did the marriage between a prince and princess elevate them to King/Queen status? Or was she afraid that Giselle’s forces, combined with Edward’s, would create an unstoppable alliance?

Additionally, when it was obvious that Robert was Giselle’s one true love, why was she still insistent upon killing them? The threat (as dubious as it was) that Giselle posed no longer existed.

So that’s all I’ve got. Stay tuned for my comparison of Princess Diaries and What a Girl Wants. And potentially for my analysis of parallelisms between Enchanted and Pan’s Labyrinth.

Sorry about not writing for a while. I’ve been busy and relatively uninspired… that is, until I saw One Last Thing.

Featuring an all-star cast of the greatest actors in Hollywood left over after Stephen Soderbergh chose his cast for Ocean’s Thirteen, One Last Thing (2006) is a film that combines The Girl Next Door and the ironically macabre to make terminal illness look both terrible and amazing.

In this film, Dylan Jameison, played by Michael Angarano who also played young William in Almost Famous, is a terminally ill high school foundation that requests a date with an alcoholic fashion model as his last wish. The hour and a half length of this film is largely focused on Dylan being not on a date with her but wishing he were. That is, until the very end, in which the model spontaneously drives down to Philadelphia, picks Dylan up from his death bed, drives him to the beach, fishes with him, falls in love with him, and then falls asleep with him on the beach.

In the morning, the model wakes up to find a corpse laying next to her.

Also in this film are Cynthia Nixon, Wyclef Jean, Gina Gershon, and Matt Bush, the guy on that AT&T commercial that doesn’t appreciate roll-over minutes.

The end.

What were my first thoughts after watching Shanghai Kiss? I believe it was, “finally, a Chinese Garden State!”

Shanghai Kiss is about a guy who doesn’t really get along with his dad and is living in Los Angeles, trying to start a career as an actor, when he finds out that a member of his family dies.

He also meets a quirky girl that he pushes away and eventually realizes that he loves.

Oh, and about two-thirds of the way through the film, you realize the tragic story of how his mom died.

Sound pretty good? It was. I enjoyed both Shanghai Kiss and Garden State Handshake. It’s just unfortunate that it went straight to DVD because, you know, lead actor Ken Leung is neither Zach Braff nor not-Asian.

My only real issue was listening to Kelly Hu’s broken English. Why? Because in reality, her English is fine. I’d know. I watched her in Martial Law. To me, listening to Hu’s accent was like listening to a white guy playing a Japanese guy named Kobayashi, speaking with a fake Japanese accent (The Usual Suspects, anyone?)

So that’s it for today’s Cut to the Chase. For those of you that enjoy my cuts to the chases, you’re all in for a treat. I was a saucier ordered the Netflix player for my TV, meaning that I’ll probably be watching even more straight-to-DVD movies.

What can I say? I’m a sucker for relatively new-looking movies available for streaming via NetFlix that I haven’t heard of but also have an all star cast. When I saw that Meet Bill (2008), starring Elizabeth Banks, Jessica Alba, and Aaron Eckhart was available for streaming, I knew I was in for a treat. It was after finishing the movie that I realized that the formula I was using for picking movies to watch intersects the formula for movies that go straight to video.

Meet Bill is about a man that, after marrying into a wealthy family, finds himself in a job that he doesn’t like with a wife that’s cheating on him. He then decides to leave his job and his wife for a new life. And then what happens? I don’t know. The movie ends there.

Yes, one would think that the starting of a new life, albeit probably a trite theme for writers, would be where the movie begins. Nope, not in Meet Bill. The 90 minute film focuses instead on Aaron Eckhart’s character not liking his boring job, which he states in the first minute of the movie, and not liking that his wife was cheating on him, which we find out shortly thereafter.

I will give this movie a three-star rating though only because Aaron Eckhart’s character cuts his hair at the end of the movie, which was a relief for me, because Eckhart with long hair really bothers me. And on a straight note, Elizabeth Banks is stunning as usual.

To celebrate the Olympics, I’ve chosen the movie Stick It, a movie about the greatest sport of all time: Women’s Aerobic Gymnastics.

Stick It is about an teenaged ex-gymnast Haley Graham (played by Missy Peregrym, you may recognize her from the WB hit TV show Black Sash starring Russell Wong). Haley Graham’s got a tough-girl attitude, refusing ever to practice gymnastics again… That is, until her antics land her in court where the judge gives her the option between practicing gymnastics and going to juvenile hall.

Graham chooses gymnastics over incarceration, and after practicing for a few months under Burt Vickerman (played by Jeff Bridges), an ex-trampolinist and women’s gymnastics coach, frowned upon by the rest of the gymnastics community for being in the illustrious competitive women’s gymnastics coach just for the money, Haley and a group of other gymnasts are invited to compete at nationals.

At nationals, we find out that the reason that Haley had refused to ever practice gymnastics again was because she found out that her mother had left her father for her previous gymnastics coach DURING HER LAST NATIONALS COMPETITION. As in, she was about to win, but just before her last event, her coach was like, “oh by the way Haley, I’m getting with your mom.”

After a few events where her teammates are robbed of good scores at the nationals, the film takes a turn as Haley goes on a crusade to screw the national gymnastics association for inconsistent scoring practices. By colluding with other competitors, Haley is able to choose the winner of each event by convincing other competitors to scratch (or in other words, not compete).

In the sequel Stick It 2: In it to tie it, we find that the finalists elected by Haley’s techniques fail to qualify for the Olympics, and the US goes unrepresented in women’s aerobic gymnastics for the first time since the inception of the modern Olympics.

Thanks to Netflix, I was able to watch Teeth today. What’s teeth about? Well, basically, picture Jess Weixler on a 90 minute journey, thinking:

Oh no, I have teeth in my vagina. I’m cursed!

…or am I…

My only real complaint about the movie was that they’d show cooling towers from a nuclear power plant spewing smoke. Nuclear power plants don’t work like that. This had nothing to do with the plot.

And that’s it for this edition of Cut to the Chase. Who here’s excited about Death Race, opening August 22nd?

What do we think about the movie that pairs Russell Wong and Jet Li for the first time since Romeo Must Die 2: 2 Romeo 2 Must Die? Well, it all came down to this:

Pilot: I’d tell you to buckle up, but I was too cheap to buy seat belts!

Rick: ha ha ha why am I laughing?

Al leans over to Kyle

Al: What kind of person comes to watch these movies?

John Hannah’s character is shown with vomit on his face. The woman in the row in front of me starts laughing hysterically and clapping.

Al: Oh.

But at least now, we can look forward to Mummy 4: Walt Disney’s Cryogenically Frozen Body.

“Hey kid, I’m a computer. Stop all the downloading!!!”

Let’s cut to the chase. In this movie, the Rock is a former soldier that returns to his home town find that these guys that run a casino are selling drugs. So he beats them up with a plank of plywood. When he is arrested and tried for assault, he tells the jury that if they return a verdict of “not guilty,” he’ll run for sheriff and clean up the town. Once he’s sheriff, he fires the corrupt police. When the corrupt police attack him with fully automatic weapons, he kills them. And then he kills the casino people.

Overall: great action film! My only gripe: the Rock really didn’t have to run for sheriff. It seemed superfluous considering the number of laws he broke as sheriff. I mean, if you’re going to break the law as sheriff, you might as well forget about the sheriff office and break the same laws as a civilian. He could’ve just said to the jury, “hey, let me go, and I’ll go kill these guys, and then you can let me go again…” ehh… just a thought.