1.2.2010

3. Birthday Girl

4. Spring Breakdown


Tonight was completely random movie night. I've got literally a ton of dvds in binders that have no rhyme or reason to them whatsoever. I always say that I'm going to alphabetize them and catalog them but then apathy catches on and the idea falls by the wayside. Occasionally, I'll sort through them and choose stuff to watch but typically, I have movies in mind before watching. Not tonight. Basically, I just popped a binder open and grabbed the first title that caught my eye. I suspect that random movie nights will happen fairly often during the course of this event. Those binders are kind of the main inspiration for this whole thing actually but I digress...

Birthday Girl is a 2001 film starring Ben Chaplin and Nicole Kidman. Chaplin is a lonely British bank teller who decides to order himself up a Russian mail order bride. Enter Kidman. Of course, not all is as it seems. If it were, the movie would have lasted about 10 minutes and we'd have been done with it. But, noooooo. Eventually, a couple of Kidman's male friends from Russia show up at their doorstep and that's when things take an interesting turn. This is kind of a tough flick to categorize. IMDB lists it as "crime/romance/thriller". It's actually kind of a bit on the dark comedy side, I'd say. There are a few scenes that made me chuckle that others might not have gotten amusement from. My biggest complaint about this one is the ending. It really just doesn't make a ton of sense in the grand scheme of things. Biggest highlight is Kidman. I'm not really a fan but she looks damn good here. Not sure what it is but playing a skeezy Russian chick suits her quite well. Chaplin is also pretty solid in his role as a banker who might have a little something going on under the surface. I remember that he was supposedly the "next big thing" back in the mid to late 90s. Not really sure what happened in the years following but he's a decent enough actor.

Spring Breakdown. This was a direct-to-video flick from Warner Premiere. It's about 3 older gals who head down to South Padre Island to spend spring break keeping a watchful eye on the daughter of a senator. This one had a really solid cast with lots of familiar faces. Parker Posey, Rachel Dratch, Amy Poehler, Sophie Monk, Amber Tamblyn, Jane Lynch and even Kristin Cavallari from MTV's The Hills all appear. Also, Poehler's real-life husband Will Arnett turns up for a cameo. All in all, you've got a good cast but with everything else landing on the poor side. The story is pretty silly and the laughs are practically non-existent. Honestly, I wasn't expecting much from this one and somehow, it managed to give me even less than I was expecting it to. Odd. Oh well...can't win them all.