Ricardo Montalban

Ricardo Montalban (left) and Pricilla Presley
Photo courtesy of http://www.flixster.com/photos/ricardo-montalban-the-naked-gun-from-the-files-of-police-squad-ricardo-montalban-as-vincent-ludwig-in-the-naked-gun-from-the-files-of-police-squad-11338651

Happy birthday to Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán y Merino, or more commonly known as Ricardo Montalban. He would have turned 91 today.  He sadly passed away in early 2009 from congestive heart failure at the age of 88.  Montalban is probably best known for the TV show Fantasy Island.  I chose to watch his movie The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! from 1988.  One thing to note about this movie is that it is a spoof movie on the TV show Police Squad.


On with the movie.  I personally love this movie, mainly because I like spoof movies and I love Leslie Nielsen.  This movie is funny in that corny, 80's comedy kind of way.  The humor in this movie would not have been possible without the amazing cast, which includes Leslie Nielsen, Pricilla Presley, and O.J. Simpson.  Montalban plays the bad guy in this movie, but in a funnyish kind of way.  I haven't seen any of his other movies or shows so I only know him as this role, and he does a good job at it.  And with that, I raise my lighter to light the candles on Ricardo's cake.


I give this movie 3 cakes out of 5.  

Owen Wilson

Luke Wilson (left) and Owen Wilson in Bottle Rocket
Photo courtesy of http://bullmurph.com/2011/06/29/a-different-kind-of-independence-day-revisiting-bottle-rocket/

Happy birthday to Owen Wilson, who turns 43 today.  Everyone knows Wilson for his work in Meet the Parents, Cars, Wedding Crashers, and Zoolander, but I wanted to see the movie that started it all Bottle Rocket from 1996.  This was Owen Wilson and his younger brother Luke Wilson acting debut.  It was also writer, directer Wes Anderson's writing debut.  He co-wrote this film with our birthday boy.

On with the movie.  I love Wes Anderson movies, so I was really excited to watch this film.  Sadly, I was very disappointed.  The movie started out really slow, and didn't pick up until the final 15 minutes of the movie.  The only scenes worth watching in this entire movie were the escape from the hospital at the beginning, the robbing of the bookstore, and then from the big heist to the ending of the movie.  In the bookstore robbery, Owen thinks putting a piece of tape over his nose will protect himself from being identified, but it just causes the employee to say "why is there tape on your nose?" (which is my favorite line in the whole movie).  I found it a little weird/distracting that Luke Wilson was cast to play Owen's friend, even though they are brothers and look very similar to each other.  I think that this was either poor casting or poor writing.  Either way, it didn't really work for me.  Owen did an okay job on his acting.  He didn't really get to showcase his humor, which was a little saddening.  I did like the jumpsuit that Owen started wearing and his motorcycle scene.  His writing could have been a little better.  I mean they never really stated what they were stealing in the big heist, and they jumped around in a couple scenes without any transitions.  I am glad that Owen's writing and acting has gotten better.  And with that, I raise my lighter to light the candles on Owen's cake.

I give this movie 2 cakes out of 5.  If you are a Wes Anderson or Owen Wilson fan, I think that you should watch this film just to see how it all began and how far they both have come.

Leonardo DiCaprio

Leonardo DiCaprio in The Aviator
Photo courtesy of http://wabootboy.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/classics-the-aviator/

Happy birthday to Leonardo DiCaprio, who turns 37 today.  In honor of his new movie J. Edger coming to theaters, I chose to watch The Aviator from 2004.  The Aviator is the real life story of director and aviator Howard Hughes.  It follows Hughes's career from 1930 with his film Hell's Angels to 1947 with "the way of the future."
On with the movie.  Leo did an amazing job doing a slow decent into severe OCD.  Throughout the movie, Hughes's OCD gets progressively worse, and Leo does a great job at capturing this.  I am also going to credit some of this awesomeness to the director, Martin Scorsese, but a majority goes to Leo.  I always enjoy a good biopic, but this one was a little hard to watch.  The length of this movie was far to long.  It was 2 hours and 50 minutes.  It did NOT need to be this long.  I believe that this could have been a fine movie at 2 hours or even 1 hour and 30 minutes.  I was also extremely disappointed with the lack of a biographical wrap up at the end of the movie.  You wouldn't think this is a big deal, but the ending of the movie really left a lot of wondering.  I do enjoy knowing what happened to people after the movie has concluded.  Leo did an overall good job on portraying Hughes.  And with that, I raise my lighter to light the candles on Leo's cake.

I give this movie 3 cakes out of 5.  I'm not sure how I feel about this movie.  I think that if I watched it a couple more times that I would be able to give a more definitive rating.

Matthew McConaughey

Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew McConaughey in Failure to Launch
Photo curtesy of http://www.allmoviephoto.com/photo/2006_failure_to_launch_002.html

Happy 42^nd birthday to Matthew McConaughey.  This week I picked McConaughey's movie Failure to Launch from 2006.  This movie is about Tripp (McConaughey) who doesn't want to move out of his parents's house (played by Kathy Bates and Terry Bradshaw).  So his rents hire Paula (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) to pretend to be Tripp's girlfriend in order to boost his confidence and get him to move out of their house.  Bradley Cooper, Justin Bartha, and Zooey Deschanel also star in this movie.

On with the movie.  I'm going to be honest, I didn't really have high hopes for this movie.  I feel that having very low expectations for this movie, made it a decent and funny movie.  I know that the combination of McConaughey and SJP doesn't sound like a very promising pairing, but I guess it was ok...  I don't know that I would have chose them to star together, but then again I'm not the casting director.  I would like to know what the casting director was thinking when putting them together...  McConaughey is playing his normal outdoorsy type guy, so there really isn't much acting involved.  I believe that there is only two scenes where McConaughey has his shirt off.  With McConaughey playing himself, I can't really bash him that much on his acting.  And with that, I raise my lighter to light the candles on Matthew's cake.

I give this movie 2 cakes out of 5.  The 2 cakes is based on going into knowing it is a bad movie, also the dead pan humor of Zooey Deschanel and the good looks of Bradley Cooper.  If those things were not a factor, this would easily be a 1 cake or even ½ a cake...