John Cusack

She Gave Me a Pen

  • Title: Say Anything…
  • IMDB: link

“Get ready for greatness.”

say-anything-posterThe quote is stolen from the film as Llyod shares his love for Diane with his two best friends but I also think it’s appropriate for those who are getting ready to watch the film for the first time.  Cameron Crowe’s love story between the likeable slacker and the class brain “trapped in the body of a game show hostess” is pure movie magic and is indeed the stuff of greatness.

Llyod Dobler (John Cusack) is a friendly underachiever who everyone knows and likes.  The film begins with graduation and we learn that Llyod has no idea what to do with his future except maybe become a professional kickboxer and take Diane Court (Ione Skye) to the end of the year party.  Llyod has carried a torch for the beautiful but aloof valedictorian for years and the scene where he invites her to the party should bring smiles to every guy who has ever shot for the moon and asked out his dream girl.

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End of Days – Armageddon: The Day After 2012

  • Title: 2012
  • IMDb: link

I didn’t expect much from director Roland Emmerich’s latest disaster flick other than a little dumb fun. 2012 couldn’t even deliver that.

What follows is a short, and hopefully concise, review for a long, and depressingly boring, film (158-minute running time) that is almost as much fun as spending three hours alone in a doctor’s waiting room.

Maybe it was asking too much of Emmerich to give us another big disaster flick (after all, it’s not like 10,000 B.C. did anyone any favors). The man who gave us Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and that woeful Godzilla remake, it seems, has nothing new to share. Instead he brings back the same tired storylines, with new actors and larger special effects, in hopes that this alone will be enough to satisfy.

It’s not.

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Fool Me Twice, Shame On Me

  • Title: The Ice Harvest
  • IMDb: link

Pushing Tin was released in 1999.  It was a semi-dark comedy with Cusack and Thornton as air traffic controllers that missed the mark badly and crashed right into the control tower well before it’s scheduled landing.  It seems history was doomed to repeat itself as the two have re-teamed up to give us the drab and rather ordinary The Ice Harvest.  Maybe these guys should just stay out of each other’s careers for their own sakes and ours.

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