Wednesday, January 20, 2010

1.19.2010




26. Excess Baggage
27. Home Movie

Excess Baggage tells the story of an heiress who is always looking for attention. When staging her own kidnapping, she gets more than she bargained for when the car she's stashed in gets stolen.

Excess Baggage is listed as a comedy at IMDB. Personally, I think the funniest aspect of it was that executives actually thought a film starring Benicio Del Toro and Alicia Silverstone would be anything less than a bomb. This is my third Silverstone flick of the month and definitely the worst of them. Don't get me wrong, it's not horrible. It's just...nothing. It tries to be an action movie. It tries to be a comedy. It winds up being less than successful at everything it tries. It's the type of movie that you won't remember just days after watching. The only pluses were Del Toro and Christopher Walken who are both always good, regardless of the movie around them. Silverstone is just annoying and unlikeable. You've got a decent supporting cast with Harry Connick Jr, Leland Orser and Sally Kirkland but they're given nothing to do. It's safe to say that you can skip this one.


Home Movie is a low budget flick that is shot on video. It stars Aidan Pasdar and Cady McClain as a married couple with twin children who live out in the woods of upstate New York. They also document everything with their camcorder.
That's how this one plays out...as their "found" camcorder footage.

This is a great movie. Honestly, I was shocked at how good it was. For a movie that very few people have probably even heard of, it was a very pleasant surprise. I don't want to spoil anything so I'll try to be a bit vague. The flick is not a fast paced "bang bang" kind of movie. Instead, it's slow build packed with tension and a deep feeling of dread as you begin to find out what's happening. This is one of those movies that I'm going to need to watch again to see all of the callbacks to things that happened earlier in the movie. I love stuff like that.

Bit of trivia regarding this one is that it's directed by Christopher Denham. He's actually an actor. He'll be seen in Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island and will be appearing in Camp Hope with Zomebieland's Jesse Eisenberg.

2 comments:

EileenWanita said...

Going to have to add "Home Movie" to my list of movies to see. I also heard that whatever the name was of the Asylum ripoff of "Paranormal Activity" was a good movie and I kind of want to see that as well (I've liked a few of the Asylum movies...don't tell anyone).

Ed The Ripper said...

Home Movie was solid. I think you'll like it quite a bit.

That would be Paranormal Entity. I've heard good things as well. I'll check it out sometime soon, I'd imagine.