Brittany Murphy in "Little Black Book"
courtesy of Columbia Home Video
"Dark Humor Abounds"

"Little Black Book" is a movie about a woman who finds out her boyfriend is cheating on her - possibly. So she goes to extreme measures to determine if this is true. She does this by invading his privacy and hurting people in her quest for the truth.

Brittany Murphy stars as the woman on the hunt, and Ron Livingston is the man who may not be true blue. Holly Hunter and Kathy Bates play co-workers of Murphy's who figure into the final outrage she provokes.

This movie looks like a light-hearted comedy but it is much more than that at its core. It gets pretty vicious at the end. So be prepared.

I am a Brittany Murphy fan and would watch her in anything. This isn't her best movie but not for any fault on her part. She throws herself into it but the dark turn the script takes cuts down on the enjoyment by the audience.

Chris Cooper is another of my favorite actors and I was more than happy when he won an Academy Award a few years back for his role in "Adaptation." But his latest John Sayles' film "Silver City" is just a little too quirky and obtuse for me. Maybe I am just politicked out so this story of a dumb but sweet candidate who hooks a corpse while filming a TV ad just didn't reel me in.

Sayles gets a lot of political shots in while the story of intrigue and political corruption unfolds. And maybe that was tiring for me too. Anyway "Silver City" wasn't as much fun as I hoped - but no fault of Chris Cooper's.

In "Without A Paddle" Seth Green, Matthew Lillard and Dax Shepherd play three guys who take a trip in honor of their deceased friend. They go into the wilderness and find adventures they never counted on. And they deal with their moments of trouble with cowardice and later conviction. But that is what makes the movie funny, or at least somewhat funny.

Burt Reynolds, who knows a thing or two about trouble in the wilds - think "Deliverance," shows up at the end of the movie as a wooly booly type of critter. He is scary and that's a good thing

If you like your comedy sophomoric and simple then this is the movie you should take home tonight. Plus on the DVD you get additional scenes and commentary. Come on, you really want to know what was going on in people's minds when they were making this movie!

Also scary is "Paparazzi," a tale about how celebrities are stalked by the press. Mel Gibson produced this film and has a cameo in it. He obviously feels strongly about the way paparazzi operate. His movie takes the celebrity side in the argument as Bo Laramie (Cole Hauser) takes matters into his own hands to get them to back off.

Tom Sizemore plays the lead villain in the film and seeing him get his is worth the price of a rental. This movie does play to your more basic instincts and makes you root for the good guy no matter how extreme his measures are. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Only you can answer that. In the meantime I bet Mel Gibson feels better for having gotten some of this out of his system.

Did you ever see the films "Soul Food" or "Kingdom Come"? They were comedies dealing with family unity and values. "Gas" is another movie on that same order. In this one, two brothers (Flex Alexander and Khalil Kain) are bitter rivals. They don't give each other an inch when it comes to support. But then their father dies and leaves them the family business.

This business is a gas station and the two brothers have to operate it together or lose it. How's that for having a hand in things - from the grave. But where there's a will there's a way and the two men have to overcome their differences in order to have a common purpose.

You may like "feel good" movies or you may not but you can't argue that "feel good" movies like "Gas" do make you feel good.

Living out of the closet is the theme of the film "A Touch of Pink." In this movie a gay man (Jimi Mistry) has a good life going in London. He even has a mentor of sorts in the spirit of Cary Grant (Kyle MacLachlan) who guides him on matters involving the suave and debonair lifestyle. But then his mother comes to visit and she is as conservative as conservative can be. All of his openness disappears and he is once again trying to keep his preferences secret.

Mistry and MacLachlan are great in this movie and the humor pops up with regularity. Its all done in fairly good taste so rent it if you want.

"Riding Giants" is a documentary about the men who dominated the sport of riding the wild surf. This movie focuses on three men: Greg Noll, Laird Hamilton and Jeff Clark. Each of these men took a different approach to surfing and conquered the wild waves they faced.

Through brilliant photography and insightful interviews "Riding Giants" becomes the best information documentary about the sport of surfing the big waves.

A few years back a movie called "Superbabies" made a bit of a splash. It presented toddlers who communicated with each other in a language only they could hear. Now comes "Baby Geniuses: Superbabies 2" in which the babies are back and ready for more fun and adventure.

In this latest film the babies are up against a man (Jon Voight) who wants to control everyone's mind. Only the babies see his nefarious ways clearly and they have to do something about him. Go babies!

Do you want to see this movie? Well did I tell you Scott Baio is in it too? Oh, now you're interested.

 

 

 

 

 

©2005 Jackie K. Cooper

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