Blog Entry #5 The Boondock Saints: All Saints Day

MacManus brothers Connor (Sean Patrick Flanery) and Murphy (Norman Reedus) are hiding out in Ireland until they learn of a death that is meant to call them out. A priest has been murdered and the killer has written their names all over it by placing pennies in the eyes of the priest. The brothers must travel back to South Boston, clear their names, and find the men who took a life behind the doors of the church.

If you were a huge fan of The Boondock Saints, enough to watch it 10+ times, memorize the prayer, and quote lines from the movie with your friends on a weekly basis, be sure to greatly lower your expectations before you see All Saints Day. Where the first movie was witty and clever, the second was full of junior-high grade humor. In the Boondock Saints, the acting was phenomenal, the editing enhanced the film, and the plot ranged from anger and hurt to hilariously funny. In All Saints Day, however, the acting was terrible (regardless of the fact they used many of the same actors,) the editing was purposefully in your face to try to score a cheap laugh, and the plot wasn't even good until the last third of the film.

The worst addition to the film were two particular characters. Romeo (Clifton Collie Jr) was a Mexican stereotype, and acted as such the entire film. His presence was supposed to replace Rocko from The Boondock Saints, and he did a terrible job of doing so. He wasn't even the worst of it though. Eunice (Julie Benz) did the worst job of acting I've seen since black and white film. That's right, even worse than Robert Pattinson (Twilight) or Keanu Reeves (Matrix.) She was the FBI Agent of this film, replacing Willem Dafoe from the first movie. Where Dafoe magnified the investigation scenes, Benz got in the way. Her accent and nature were reminiscent of Sarah Palin, which nearly ruined the movie for me in the first place. During investigation scenes, she would stand in the middle of them trying to look sexy (she was pretty bad at that too.)

Overall, I spent years waiting on the remake of this film, and I was strongly disappointed with the work of Troy Duffy (Writer and Director) this time around. The movie was left open for a sequel once more, but this time I'm simply not excited about it.

Entry #4 Rear Window

Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) was a set of stories viewed from a single perspective. Almost every shot in the movie was taken from the main character's apartment. Jeff, played James Stewart, is a professional photographer injured from his last assignment. When we meet him, he is wheelchair-bound for the next week in an apartment complex in New York. With two steps leading to the exit of his apartment, he is left with nothing to do but spy on his neighbors.

As the movie develops, so do the lives of everyone in the apartment buildings. His story is a question of whether or not to marry his girlfriend Lisa, played by Grace Kelly. As he watches the people around him, he is evaluating each situation and comparing their lives to his own. Each of his neighbors is in a different state of relationship status. There are newlyweds, a single man, a separated woman, a dancer, and an old salesman and his bed-ridden wife.

During this evaluation, Jeff watches the fighting of the married couple as a foreboding image of his future. As he begins paying closer attention to them, he notices suspicious behavior that leads him to believe the salesman has murdered his wife. As the movie progresses, his girlfriend and nurse become involved in the rear window investigation with him, continuously endangering themselves with the possibility of discovery.