The Special Relationship, Blood Diamond, Funny People, Repo! The Genetic Opera, & How to Lose Friends & Alienate People

The Special Relationship is from Peter Morgan (and starring Michael Sheen as Blair), who also wrote The Queen and The Deal. Unfortunately, this is a 90 minute version of Blair and Clinton's relationship, which really doesn't give enough time to do anything other than gloss over details and hit some high points. Also, I really didn't like Dennis Quaid as Bill Clinton. He was much better as a faux-Bush in American Dreamz. Sheen is again perfect as Blair, but there is little else to recommend about this film.

Blood Diamond hits all the major points a good liberal movie about Africa in the 1990s and 2000s has to: conflict diamonds, child soldiers, mutilation to send a message, apartheid, mercenaries, white journalists trying to make a difference, Rhodesians unwilling to acknowledge that their country isn't called Rhodesia anymore. Oh, wait, that last one is just funny to me. It's also way too long, trying to fit all of those things in, and suffers for it. Leonardo DiCaprio's accent comes and goes, and that may be the best thing I can say about his performance. Sorry, Leo, but this was far from your best performance.

Funny People is indulgent. Did we really need Judd Apatow's duaghters in the movie, let alone one singing Memory being a huge plot point? Also, two and a half hours was way too long. There were some very funny bits, but the "emotional" parts were just ugh. He needs someone to take a vicious scalpel to his films to cut them down to a reasonable amount. Some subplots really went nowhere (The charity stuff? What the hell was the point of any of that?), and we really didn't need quite so many unnecessary cameos (the Eminem-Ray Romano bit was funny, though). I'm sure there were many other things you could've cut down or out to make it closer to two hours, or even less.

Repo! The Genetic Opera is utterly unwatchable. I am a huge fan of Anthony Stewart Head. I made it through 20 minutes before I had to turn it off. The songs are horrendously bad, full of muffled lyrics and unnecesary guitar and industrial flourishes. Nothing can save this film from just being aggressively terrible. Do not watch. Do not consider watching. Do not consider considering watching.

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People is full of a great cast. Including both non-Moss IT Crowd people. It does, however, suffer from having multiple elevator wipes. Plus an all-too-obvious transsexual. Not-too-obvious that they actually showed penis. Maybe the only one in a major film besides The Crying Game. That one was a great movie full of fine performances. This one is... mediocre. Not quite good enough to recommend to anyone, not bad enough to watch as a bad movie. Actually, the faux trailer for the fake Mother Teresa movie was the best thing in it. Otherwise it's a crappy version of The Apartment.