Cut to the Chase – One Last Thing

Sorry about not writing for a while. I’ve been busy and relatively uninspired… that is, until I saw One Last Thing.

Featuring an all-star cast of the greatest actors in Hollywood left over after Stephen Soderbergh chose his cast for Ocean’s Thirteen, One Last Thing (2006) is a film that combines The Girl Next Door and the ironically macabre to make terminal illness look both terrible and amazing.

In this film, Dylan Jameison, played by Michael Angarano who also played young William in Almost Famous, is a terminally ill high school foundation that requests a date with an alcoholic fashion model as his last wish. The hour and a half length of this film is largely focused on Dylan being not on a date with her but wishing he were. That is, until the very end, in which the model spontaneously drives down to Philadelphia, picks Dylan up from his death bed, drives him to the beach, fishes with him, falls in love with him, and then falls asleep with him on the beach.

In the morning, the model wakes up to find a corpse laying next to her.

Also in this film are Cynthia Nixon, Wyclef Jean, Gina Gershon, and Matt Bush, the guy on that AT&T commercial that doesn’t appreciate roll-over minutes.

The end.

Cut to the Chase – Shanghai Kiss

What were my first thoughts after watching Shanghai Kiss? I believe it was, “finally, a Chinese Garden State!”

Shanghai Kiss is about a guy who doesn’t really get along with his dad and is living in Los Angeles, trying to start a career as an actor, when he finds out that a member of his family dies.

He also meets a quirky girl that he pushes away and eventually realizes that he loves.

Oh, and about two-thirds of the way through the film, you realize the tragic story of how his mom died.

Sound pretty good? It was. I enjoyed both Shanghai Kiss and Garden State Handshake. It’s just unfortunate that it went straight to DVD because, you know, lead actor Ken Leung is neither Zach Braff nor not-Asian.

My only real issue was listening to Kelly Hu’s broken English. Why? Because in reality, her English is fine. I’d know. I watched her in Martial Law. To me, listening to Hu’s accent was like listening to a white guy playing a Japanese guy named Kobayashi, speaking with a fake Japanese accent (The Usual Suspects, anyone?)

So that’s it for today’s Cut to the Chase. For those of you that enjoy my cuts to the chases, you’re all in for a treat. I was a saucier ordered the Netflix player for my TV, meaning that I’ll probably be watching even more straight-to-DVD movies.

Cut to the Chase – Meet Bill

What can I say? I’m a sucker for relatively new-looking movies available for streaming via NetFlix that I haven’t heard of but also have an all star cast. When I saw that Meet Bill (2008), starring Elizabeth Banks, Jessica Alba, and Aaron Eckhart was available for streaming, I knew I was in for a treat. It was after finishing the movie that I realized that the formula I was using for picking movies to watch intersects the formula for movies that go straight to video.

Meet Bill is about a man that, after marrying into a wealthy family, finds himself in a job that he doesn’t like with a wife that’s cheating on him. He then decides to leave his job and his wife for a new life. And then what happens? I don’t know. The movie ends there.

Yes, one would think that the starting of a new life, albeit probably a trite theme for writers, would be where the movie begins. Nope, not in Meet Bill. The 90 minute film focuses instead on Aaron Eckhart’s character not liking his boring job, which he states in the first minute of the movie, and not liking that his wife was cheating on him, which we find out shortly thereafter.

I will give this movie a three-star rating though only because Aaron Eckhart’s character cuts his hair at the end of the movie, which was a relief for me, because Eckhart with long hair really bothers me. And on a straight note, Elizabeth Banks is stunning as usual.