It's almost a shame to smoke it. It's like killing a unicorn... with, like, a bomb.

Pineapple Express

(2008)

Apparently Seth Rogen likes to smoke weed. I take no issue with this, but repeatedly citing it as his character’s defining trait gets old very quickly.

Having seen him on screen a few times now, I do take issue with him appearing to be a bit of a twat, and I wonder how long he's going to remain in the limelight (as long as Judd Apatow's still flavour of the month, I guess). As it is, James Franco comes across a whole lot better than Rogen; most likely because Franco can act.

Express is fairly funny for the first hour, the combination of stoned behaviour and life-threatening situations being nicely observed. By the halfway point Rogen (as co-writer) was clearly at a loss for inspiration, smoked a dooby and decided to turn it into a gun-fetish wish-fulfillment fantasy. At which point it lost me. Except for the ultra-violence inflicted on Rosie Perez, which I quite enjoyed.

**1/2

Comments

How would Horatio Alger have handled this situation?

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No matter how innocent you are, or how hard you try, they’ll find you guilty.

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You were a few blocks away? What’d you see it with, a telescope?

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But everything is wonderful. We are in Paris.

Cold War (2018) (SPOILERS) Pawel Pawlikowski’s elliptical tale – you can’t discuss Cold War without saying “elliptical” at least once – of frustrated love charts a course that almost seems to be a caricature of a certain brand of self-congratulatorily tragic European cinema. It was, it seems “ loosely inspired ” by his parents (I suspect I see where the looseness comes in), but there’s a sense of calculation to the progression of this love story against an inescapable political backdrop that rather diminishes it.

To survive a war, you gotta become war.

Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) (SPOILERS?) I’d like to say it’s mystifying that a film so bereft of merit as Rambo: First Blood Part II could have finished up the second biggest hit of 1985. It wouldn’t be as bad if it was, at minimum, a solid action movie, rather than an interminable bore. But the movie struck a chord somewhere, somehow. As much as the most successful picture of that year, Back to the Future , could be seen to suggest moviegoers do actually have really good taste, Rambo rather sends a message about how extensively regressive themes were embedding themselves in Reaganite, conservative ‘80s cinema (to be fair, this is something one can also read into Back to the Future ), be those ones of ill-conceived nostalgia or simple-minded jingoism, notional superiority and might. The difference between Stallone and Arnie movies starts right here; self-awareness. Audiences may have watched R ambo in the same way they would a Schwarzenegger picture, but I’m

What do they do, sing madrigals?

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One final thing I have to do, and then I’ll be free of the past.

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Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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