Right so I've been pretty ill for the past few days and as such I've barely moved out of the room with the cable box. Mostly watching sporting events, but the boredom has given way to seeing some pretty uninspired films, so I'll blast through them before hopefully going to the cinema to see something tomorrow (maybe Up, possibly Triangle as Melissa George is in it and after In Treatment I now like her, even though I'm sure that because she's not brunette in it she will suck :P).
Right, what have I seen, oh yes, because I have the newly-created ESPN channels at no extra cost to the current package I'm on I've RAPED their coverage of College Football in America, and on one of the shows I saw Sean Payton (Head Coach of the New Orleans Saints) mention Varsity Blues. A couple of days later it was on so I checked it out and while not a cinematic masterpiece I suppose it was entertaining enough. Nice to see Amy Smart before her career died post-Scrubs, interesting seeing Ali Larter's debut and James Van Der Beek back when he was on the creek (why is it the girls both did so well out of that and the guys used the launchpad so ineptly? :S). Was frankly shocked at how low-brow this was, not what I was expecting at all. As American Football comedies go it's no Wildcats, but it eventually pushes the right buttons.
Wow I wrote much more than I expected to there, I'll push on. Eagle Eye has started on Sky Premiere so I eventually caught it as I do enjoy Michelle Monaghan in certain things. Shia LaBoeuf is so poor in this he almost derails the film, bland, lifeless, charmless turn that sucks the life right out of the heart of it. Billy Bob Thornton just turns up for the pay-cheque and Rosario Dawson I've never seen so severe. Monaghan was the only one even remotely trying, but it wasn't enough to save this hackjob of a film. Sub-par special effects (for the kind of film it is) and one of those worst kind of action films that drags while waiting for them to stop running and get back to the plot (regardless of how ridiculous it is). Didn't like it.
After that I saw Star 80, which is another example of the total randomnnes of TCM's new roster of films - it's not necessarily bad because they have obscure stuff that is interesting to a degree but it's not what you'd expect them to have. This was Bob Fosse's last film and lacks a lot of his visual flair instead shoving in repeated montages of pictures of Mariel Hemingway in various stages of undress. Eric Roberts gives a very game turn as the mentally unhinged husband of Hemingway's Playboy model and she gives a performance which makes her "nice" but doesn't really get into much character work. In the end it's almost necessarily exploitative and does enough to retain an interest, but they could have done much more with a different kind of approach.
Lastly, Date Movie, which I watched out of sheer morbid curiosity and at the height of my illness ("sickness" is probably more apt considering I chose to watch this :D). Alyson Hannigan wasn't too bad in all fairness, but the material is extremely poor and doesn't even approach the "so bad it's good" area. I don't think the spoof films are ever really that successful, but in this they're doing parodies of films that were comedies in the first place and it's actually impressive that they take scenes which were originally very amusing (like say, the dinner scene from Meet the Parents) and suck all the humour out of it. Judah Friedlander was the only real "disappointment" I had as he's very funny on 30 Rock, but then that's a show with heart and intelligence so not necessarily a surprise he doesn't thrive in the opposite environment. The one saving grace here is that I now can safely ignore any possible thoughts I might have had in the future about watching one of Aaron Seltzer's films as this was one of the rare times with me where one film is enough to make me write a director off.