Woody Harrelson Film Festival

I seriously cannot recommend this movie at all. It sucks and I had to watch it in German without subtitles and while I know a little German I don't know enough to understand a movie about a circus and an elephant that smokes weed, or something. I watched it on 2x speed.

A shockingly underrated and under-talked about Woody Harrelson masterpiece. Reminsicent of the classic Marty Robbins banger, "Tall Handsome Stranger," this is a must watch for cowboy fans and Woody Harrelson fans alike. Unequivocally Woody's best cowboy role!!!!!

Incredibly bad garbage trash movie, which I think director/creator "Adam Rifkin" probably thought was clever, ironic, and blisteringly self-aware, but was in fact quite the opposite of each of those things. A real slog.

This is a sad case of Wow-I-Really-Was-Looking-Forward-To-This-Movie-Because-It-Has-'Cowboy'-In-The-Title-And-I-Love-Cowboys-And-Therefore-I-Assumed-I-Would-Enjoy-It-But-Instead-I-Was-Once-Again-Reminded-That-My-Idea-Of-Cowboys,-Which-Was-Forged-In-The-Fires-Of-My-Youthful-Days-As-An-Almost-Horse-girl-And-Nurtured-By-My-Continuous-Consumption-Of-Cowboy-Related-Media-Which-Originates-From-Or-Takes-Place-In-The-60s-(and by 60s I mean the ones that took place either in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries),-Does-Not-Always-Align-With-Other-People's-Ideas-About-Cowboys-And-Therefore-I-Am-Often-Dissappointed-By-People-Trying-To-Make-Cowboys-And-There-Stories-"Funny"-And-Crass-Rather-Than-Mournful-And-Wholesome.

Deeply, painfully, meaningless and irrelevant. Woody's only been in a few movies that were actually difficult for me to get through—most of the bad ones are at least entertaining or hateful enough that it doesn't feel like one thousand eternities pass in the time it takes me to watch them. And if they are that dreadful, at least Woody's presence in them serves to sweeten the deal enough to make the experience bearable. In this case, unfortunately, Woody's appearance is one of the most irrelevant yet, as he plays a role in a movie which the characters go to see, and is on screen for no more than a few seconds.  It's easy to tell what kind of movie this movie was trying to be. But don't we already have enough incompetent dads and precocious daughters filling up our silver screens? And if we wanted more, wouldn't we turn our attention instead to Hallmark Movies and Mysteries so we could at least get a dose of Christmas spirit along the way? In short, this movie...

Today's popcorn classic is L.A. Story , starring the great Steve Martin ( The Pink Panther and Father of the Bride ). This is a real a Hollywood movie for you Hollywood buffs and also for you movie buffs. It's about the magic of Hollywood, and therefore it's also really about movie magic. And the runtime is 98 minutes, which is a little more than an hour and a half. Steve Martin! One of the greats.

I really thought that after seeing nearly 70 Woody Harrelson movies in a little more than a year that I had a pretty full grasp on his range—which indeed is quite wide. There's cop Woody, criminal Woody, rough-around-the-edges Woody, heart-of-gold Woody, cowboy Woody, military Woody,  and bespectacled Woody, and so on. I thought on this, my sixty-seventh movie, nothing could surprise me anymore. Nothing really could have prepared me for deranged, middle-aged, fleece sheep costume Woody.  It's alright, I guess. Just nothing I'd ever call 'necessary'—an assessment which holds true for the rest of this movie, too. 

If Pa was here he simply would have taken Freddy fishing and talked some sense into him and then everything would be better. Not sure what Laura was doing in the big city, anyway.

I was all ready to write a terribly mean review of this awful movie. I would have said that John Hughes was a stupid annoying baby who thought he was sooooo special and sooooo quirky and that his characters were soooooo unique that they were the only ones in the world who ever felt like they didn't quite fit into suburban life. I would have said that he should have stopped making movies long ago; in fact, I would have said that the only movie he ever should have made is Pretty in Pink . I would have said that Kevin Bacon looked like and idiot, and I would have pointed out that Alec Baldwin grew up to play the boss baby. I would have mentioned that the only good thing in the whole movie was the mom from Downton Abbey's haircut. I only got madder when the credits began to roll and I realized that Woody had not been in the movie at all. Was this another false alarm? Another movie for me to suffer through for no reason? I was opening this page to type out my furious blog post when ...

It was around this time in my Woody Harrelson Film Festival—that is to say, the day before the night when I watched this movie—that I came to the realization I had in fact failed to include several movies from Woody's filmography on my master list of (supposedly) every movie Woody Harrelson had ever been in, and thus I was not so close to completing my task as I had previously believed. It was a hard blow, at first. Almost demoralizing. Here I was, having spent more than a year of my life believing I had a list of Woody's every movie, and all along that list had been incomplete. It's a matter of the Wikipedia article of Woody's filmography  not being complete (something I intend to take up with the editors in due course) and my own late decision to include TV movies and subsequently not being careful enough to make sure I discovered every TV movie Woody's been in.  In the end, though, I'm grateful for this mistake, because otherwise I never would have had the bl...

When God closes a door, he opens a window.  And boy, does this movie feels like a hundred doors slammed in your face all at once. Bad inspiration. Bad plot. Bad characters. Bad outfits. Is there even a window in this limp and lackluster drudgery for God to open? You know the answer, of course. It's the reason you're here. It's the reason I'm here. It's the reason the world still spins on its axis and the sun rises in the morning.  It's Woody Harrelson! Here's your window, God. Thanks for opening it :) 

Glasses Woody: ✅ Father figure Woody: ✅ Woody committing crimes: ✅ Roadtrip: ✅ Unlikely friendship: ✅ Sweeping western landscapes: ✅ Tragic death: ✅ Whimsical circumstances: ✅ Astonishing visual effects: ✅ An opportunity for me to think about Sully from Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman: ✅ Good ending: ❌ 

Not really anything special! Only wait I just remembered at the end Woody's character is in jail and he decides he wants to be an author or something (????) and so he pulls out his type writer and then the camera zooms in on the paper and he types out the credits. Which I thought was nice. 

I just think it would have been smarter to make this movie before all the original star war movies so they would actually been able to have a young harrison ford play the role of "Han Solo." Then I wouldn't have to watch it because Woody wouldn't have been in it.

Maybe boxing shorts are the answer to all my summertime clothing woes! If only I could find these awesome metallic gold ones with crosses on them. I really liked this movie for the first two thirds, when it was a fun road trip movie about a couple of friends. But then it became about boxing and I didn't understand what was going on and I got so bored I wanted to cry.

Michael J. Fox! Again! One of the best Hallmark Christmas movies (and believe me, I'd know) is called Christmas Under Wraps . I've seen this movie maybe twelve times, and I want you to know that I have never been able to figure out why it's called that. But that's now what matters wright now. What matters, is that for me, Christmas Under Wraps  is the prototype of one of the best tropes in all of TV and movies. In the movie, Candace Cameron Bure (of The View  fame) is a newly minted doctor looking for work. Instead of getting the prestigious position she always dreamed of getting in Boston, the only job offered to Candace is in a remote Alaskan town. Against her better judgement, she decides to take the job. If you're familiar with the Hallmark genre, you know where this is going: her big city attitude gets adjusted, she meets a handsome local fellow with a beat up pick-up truck, befriends an old man with a white beard and a reindeer farm, and generally becomes enra...

Talk about short movie stars!!! Michael J. Fox is only 5'4"!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He did a great job with being that height. Notably, as the shortest man in this movie, he also happens to be the moral center—the only one, among a sea of tall men, who does the right thing. It makes you think.... Something else that makes you think is the question, "Is Woody Harrelson in this movie?" Sources disagree. Wikipedia and IMDB say no. Fandango and Vudu (not sure what this is) say yes, but offer no explanations.  I wasn't really willing to take any risks, though, so I watched it anyway.  I really don't think Woody is in this movie. If he was, he was an extra in the background of a scene. But by 1989, Woody was already several years into his successful career, so it wouldn't make sense for him to be a mere extra in a big movie like this.  So, at the risk of being wrong, and at the risk of losing my claim as the world's foremost Woody Harrelson scholar, I'm making th...

Sometimes, it feels like the universe is giving me a sign that I am right about every single thing I have ever thought, and everyone else is wrong. Like, when I discovered that Al Pacino was but 5'7" tall. This fact—simple, charming, enlivening—got me thinking about something important. Why are all movie stars these days tall?  Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ben Affleck, Idris Elba, and countless others—all absurdly tall men, all movie stars. And yet, there's something sickeningly modern about each of these men, about their action movie careers, and yes—about their height.  Tallness is one of the great modern scourges. No one, attending the movie theater, wishes to see a very tall man with long rangy limbs and sunken tallman cheekbones punching and flipping and shooting guns. Rather, I want to see a petite compact movie star. Short actors fit on the screen better. Their clothes fit better. And they're just nicer to look at overall. You can't deny me this! So, a cou...

Much as Rain Man  is a film primarily about Tom Cruise's high waisted pants, Wildcats is a movie primarily about Goldie Hawn's incredible haircut. It's a haircut that makes it hard to notice anything else in the film. Even when Goldie isn't on screen, you're still just sitting there, thinking about that haircut. Which is probably fortunate, considering other haircuts in the movie (more specifically—though it pains me to say it—Woody's early onset of male pattern baldness which isn't necessarily convincing when he's playing a high school student) aren't particularly remarkable.  Like other great gym class movies ( Miracle , Cool Runnings , and so forth), Wildcats is a movie about the underdog sports team and their inspiring coach. We never watched this one in gym class, though, which I'm choosing to believe is due to societal prejudice against Woody Harrelson, and not because of its R rating. People love to say they love Woody Harrelson, but they ...

The date is June 3rd (at least, that was the date when I watched this movie). There are fifty days until July 23rd, which is Woody Harrelson's birthday and the date I have chosen for this prestigious film festival to come to an end. I'm no mathematician, but I've done the calculations, and I believe that means I have to watch approximately one movie every two days until July 23rd in order to reach this goal. So, that's what I'm doing. Like the great Gregg Turkington did in his quest to watch #500moviesin500days, I'm even going to take it at a faster pace than that to start, so if something comes up I'll be ahead and able to finish nonetheless. I'm not saying it will be easy—but we don't do things because they are easy. We do them because they are hard. And finding a way to watch Free Jimmy , a 2008 English dub of the 2006 Norwegian CGI-animated stoner circus comedy certainly will be hard. But that's a problem for another day. Today's problem ...