Movie Reviews (2 for 1!): Ocean's Twelve & North by Northwest

Okay so I grouped these both together because they were equally awful. I honestly have no clue why North by Northwest is an "American classic". If it truly represents the epitome of American cinema, that's pretty sad. Cary Grant may be a good actor but this is truly a silly role.

The movie simply has no believability. Cary Grant wears the same impeccable suit the entire time he's chased by assassins, the police, and the CIA. His dialogue is stilted. The plot-line takes FOREVER to develop and tries too hard to be funny. The story is implausible and unbelievable. Let me give you a couple examples:




1) Grant is sent out to Indiana to meet a mysterious Mr. Kaplan. His enemies send out, get this, a crop duster plane to run him over. Not shoot him. Not poison him. But dive close to the ground and run him over. And then, we have to watch him dodge this airplane at least 6 times before it takes a wrong turn and dives right into a...petrol truck. Right. This one has to be in the running for "Most inefficient and dumb way to kill someone ever"
2) Grant rescues the female lead from possible death and they both run through the woods of South Dakota to the top of Mt. Rushmore. I kid you not. They then climb down into Washington's nose, etc. Get this: She's in HIGH HEELS THE ENTIRE TIME. He's in that perfectly tailored suit that's been mentioned before.

Overall, the plot was stuffy and slow. There was little humor. No believability. A waste of 2.5 hours of my life. :( 1 stars out of 4.

Okay, on to Ocean's Twelve. Let me sum this up for you: It was an excuse for thirteen stars to hobnob on set and make snide one-liners. Let's break it down.

So first, the evil casino owner rounds them all up and tells them he'll kill them all unless they return the money with interest they stole in Ocean's 11. So this band of master thieves who are all broke decide to go to...lesseee.....how about Amsterdam? That's literally how they choose it. So...with more than 65 million to return, they decide to go after a heavily guarded document worth...4 million. With an elaborate scheme involving....raising the entire house a couple inches, shooting a crossbow bolt through a conveniently open window in order to figure out the security passwords, etc.

Every scheme in this movie was extremely implausible. I'm not even going to mention the ridiculous laser acrobatics scene later in this movie. You won't believe how many shots of people's faces there were. It was like "Oh look, there's Bruce Willis making a cameo. Oh! There's Clooney again. Here's Matt Damon. There's Brad Pitt. Let's zoom in on his jaw and have him strike a couple poses. There's Catherine Zeta Jones! Isn't she gorgeous? Oh! There's _____" Similar to New Year's Day (or whatever that horrible recent movie was called), this movie is an excuse for a bunch of stars to have fun and get paid. The plot is horrible, the cinematography was shoddy (the movie looked like it had been made with iMovie), and the actors are severely underused. What a waste of time and money. This has to be one of the WORST big-budget movies EVER considering the amount of star power and money is in here.

0 of 4. No one needs to watch this and waste 2 hours of their life. In fact, let me give you the movie:

Clooney, Pitt, and Damon try to figure out schemes to get-rich-quick. Catherine Zeta-Jones tries to stop them. Another French dude is competing with them to steal the stuff first. He does by dodging lasers etc, while they attempt it with an impersonation of Julia Roberts (who plays herself) as well as a hologram that lasts for 5 minutes which looks exactly like the museum object they are stealing ....and costs 4 million. Considering how much money they spend in this movie, I'm not sure if they really paid back the casino owner. They look like they failed...but then reveal that they had stolen it all along and the French guy stole a replica. They all go home and Pitt is romantically involved with Zeta-Jones who gives up being an Interpol investigator to join their life of crime.

There, now you don't need to watch this.