Movies I Have No Intention Of Seeing, #12


Broken Flowers

starring Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright, Sharon Stone, Jessica Lange, Julie Delpy, others (mostly chicks)

directed by Jim Jarmusch (Coffee and Cigarettes, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai)


I'll be honest with you right up front: the main reason I'm doing this movie this week and not The Dukes of Hazzard is because I've already made a committment to see that movie specifically to spite bitter old "Ben" Cooter "Jones". Plus, that movie has Jessica Simpson in it and my post would have been 1,000 words making fun of her lack of ability at... well, everything she's ever tried. Everyone else is already doing that, so it kind of felt like piling on.

[Note: lascivious single-entendre jokes about how much you'd like to "pile on" Jessica Simpson will not be tolerated. Thanks.]

Plus even more, that movie confuses me. All the trailers and commercials include Simpson as Daisy Duke saying the line "I think something bounced up into my undercarriage" all slinky and eyebrow-waggly like it's supposed to really mean something dirty. Only I have no idea what the fuck that could mean other than something literally bounced up into the undercarriage of her motor vehicle. If she's somehow suggesting something to do with her body, the only thing I can imagine "bounced into my undercarriage" means is that she was driving along and then something spontaneously got lodged in her ass. Not sexy, Jess. Not sexy at all.

Hang on, I just remembered: I'm not talking about that movie this week.

Broken Flowers is (from what I can tell) Bill Murray doing what Bill Murray does these days: sad-sack, tired-of-life, hang-dog I-give-up-edness at the last minute redeemed by supporting characters. But he's really, really good at it, so I'm still not completely turned off. Also he gets a lifetime pass for starring in Meatballs, which made early-days HBO worth it all by itself.

From the reviews I've read (all of which were predictably glowing thus far), this movie is about our man Bill meeting up with old girlfriends in a search for his long-lost son. That means lots of hot, hot chicks who all happen to be pushing 60. And Julie Delpy. And my newspaper cautions me that this movie is rated R in part for "graphic nudity".

To help you, I've used a free online program to create an easy-to-follow diagram:

Please feel free to refer to this chart in the future should you have any questions.

Although this film appears not to have any explosions, that yawning chasm of lack is filled by the presence of Jeffrey Wright. I don't know what his role is in this film or how long he's in it for, but I don't give a shit. If he's in it, I'm seeing it. I even sat through that giant, bloated gay-a-palooza HBO miniseries Angels in America just to watch the man work.

I dig Jeffrey Wright because the first time I was cognizant of who he was or what he did, it was in the HBO (their third mention in this post! Way to go!) movie Boycott where he played Martin Luther King. Then somebody told me he also played semi-bad guy Peoples Hernandez in Sam Jackson's version of Shaft the year before. And I said "Get the fuck out of here. There's no way that's the same dude." And holy shit, it was. Jeffrey Wright is the anti-Tom Cruise: he plays a different character in every movie he's in, not just the same guy over and over with a different name and different lengths of hair. Dude is an actual actor and I like to watch him work.

So let's review, shall we? Bill Murray. Jeffrey Wright. "Graphic nudity". Sold! Surprise of surprises, the little serious-ish art film scores itself a rare
Three (out of 3) on the Hot Babysitter Scale.

In case you're curious, the Duke boys might have scored slightly lower had I talked about them instead.


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 2:58 PM