Win Win Movie Review

On Saturday, we went on our first date night since our baby arrived. We planned on going to dinner followed by watching a movie, but what movie to see. I wasn’t interested in seeing a movie about watering elephants, animated birds or anything with Madea in the title. A friend recommended seeing Win Win, a movie that I had never heard of before the weekend. I saw that the film starred Paul Giamatti and Amy Ryan and scored a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, so I figured it was worth a shot.

Here is the film’s premise from the aforementioned website:

Struggling attorney Mike Flaherty, who volunteers as a high-school wrestling coach, takes on the guardianship of an elderly client in a desperate attempt to keep his practice afloat. When the client's teenage grandson runs away from home and shows up on his grandfather's doorstep, Mike's life is turned upside down as his win-win proposition turns into something much more complicated than he ever bargained for.

The film also features Bobby Cannavale and Jeffrey Tambor for comic relief. Of course, you will then spend the rest of the movie trying to figure out where you know Cannavale. He sort of reminds me of Joey from Friends if he moved to the suburbs, didn’t hang out with Ross, Chandler and company anymore and completely moved on from his spin-off show, Joey. In reality, I remember Cannavale from the short-lived show, Cupid. Anyway, I’m getting a bit off topic. What the movie description fails to mention (and the trailer only shows briefly) is that Giamatti’s elderly client is Burt Young. Burt Young! You know Burt Young as Paulie from the Rocky series and as Rodney Dangerfield’s driver in Back to School. It was great seeing Young again, and I feel like the movie company should promote this more.



As for the movie itself, Win Win has plenty of funny moments to go with some serious parts. It’s a good story that will keep you entertained for two hours. Giamatti and Ryan are both terrific, and overall, the film features a great cast.

Two final thoughts:

1. I don’t think I’m very good at movie reviews.

2. It’s unlikely that I’ll see many movies over the next year or so. Therefore, I need to choose what I see wisely. I’m glad that we selected Win Win. Solid movie plus Burt Young.

Selling Out?

You may be surprised to know that the main reason I write this blog is for the money. Unfortunately, in the three years since I have started Sean’s Ramblings, I have earned a total of $0. Therefore, when I received e-mails over the past month or two with offers to send me free stuff, I jumped at the opportunity.

First, Turner Publishing asked if I wanted a complimentary copy of their title, Historic Photos of Washington, D.C. by Matthew Gilmore and Andrew Brodie Smith. I think I replied within two minutes of receiving the e-mail with a yes. This is one of the few books where you can honestly write that you could judge the book by its title. There’s a nice mix of pictures of historic events (Harry S. Truman’s inauguration in 1949; the Spirit of St. Louis arriving at the Smithsonian in 1928), monuments (the Capitol building and Washington monument) and pictures of everyday Washington people and places. There are some very cool pictures and makes an excellent coffee table book.



Last month I received an offer to receive the movie “Somebody Help Me” on DVD as long as I provided a review on my website. As I mentioned above, I’m all for free stuff, so in upholding my end of the deal, here is my movie review.

“Somebody Help Me” stars Omai Grandberry (better known as Omarion), Alexis Fields, Brooklyn Sudano and Marques Houston. You know all of these actors from um, um, well, if you are in your early 30s like me, you don’t know them. I guess you might know Omarion and Marques Houston from “You Got Served.” Omarion was also part of one of the worst named music groups of the past 10 years, B2K. Before I get into the movie itself, here is the description from the back of the DVD case:

From the director of You Got Served and House Party 4 comes this urban horror-thriller nail-biter on the order of Cabin Fever and The Hills Have Eyes.

Wait a second. There was a House Party 4? House Party starring Kid N Play came out when I was in high school. There was a fourth edition? How have I lived without seeing House Party 4?

Delivering a chill a minute, Somebody Help Me is the story of Brendan Young (Marques Houston) and Darryl Jennings (Omari Grandberry) as they head off with their friends and girlfriends for a weekend’s stay at a remote cabin in the woods.

"Somebody Help Me" is 100 minutes in length. There certainly were not 100 chilling moments during the movie. I’ve watched enough Law & Order so I may be qualified to write “objection, misleading statement.” The judge would support me.

After the couples settle in, things take an eerie turn.

Not Erie, Pennsylvania. The movie would have been less mysterious (and much better) if the characters ate at Perkins, Quaker Steak & Lube, or hung out on Peach Street.

One by one, the group ends up missing or dead, while the remaining few are forced to band together in order to figure out who – or what – is behind the killings.



I’ll freely admit that horror films are not really my genre. I watched some of the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street films, but once was enough. Poltergeist freaked me out as a kid. However, I thought Scream was great because of the mix of comedy and horror. Therefore, I was hoping that Somebody Help Me would have a bit of Scream in it. Nope. I don’t remember laughing or even smirking once during the movie. The beginning scene features the four characters in the car on their way to a remote cabin. As the dialogue developed, I started rooting for the characters to die.

Here’s the basic story: they get to the cabin, see a strange neighbor, meet the sheriff who is mean at first but warms up to them, the main character dreams about a little girl on a swing, their friends arrive at the cabin and drink, a random person walks around the cabin, and then the friends go missing and die. There’s really not much more to the movie. It’s very predictable with a few gory moments (I fast-forwarded through them) and even set up for a sequel that I hope is never made. It wasn’t a terrible movie, but it wasn’t good. Actually, it was on the pretty bad side. While I haven’t watched a horror movie in some time, I thought they usually have nudity. Well, there was no nudity here, probably since the target audience is high school boys. Wait, that doesn’t make sense.

Anyway, if you like seeing predictable horror films geared for high school students with decent acting and not much of a plot but with some suspense and scary scenes, Somebody Help Me is for you. For everyone else, start working on your tax returns.

Eastern Promises Movie Review

Welcome to the first ever movie review here at Sean’s Ramblings. I’ve written about movies numerous times in the past although it generally involved movie quotes, the Oscars or a debate about the genius of Kevin Costner. Anyway, over the weekend, I saw the movie “Eastern Promises” starring Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts. Although this movie has been out a few weeks, I have heard very little about it except for positive reviews from BDK on the Junkies and my friend Chris. According to the October 5-7 box office numbers, "Eastern Promises" finished 11th this weekend with slightly less than $2.1 million. Compare that to "Mr. Woodcock" that finished in 9th place earning $2.3 million. Now in its fourth week in theatres, Eastern Promises has only made about $14.5 million in cumulative gross, so this is obviously not going to be Titanic or even The Kingdom (that’s the current movie where The Rock is a quarterback who learns he has a daughter; the daughter grows up to kidnap approximately 100 Dalmatian puppies for their fur, or something like that).

Since I don’t feel like writing a summary of the movie (I’m great at this movie review thing), here’s the plot outline “borrowed” from IMDB: “The film follows the mysterious and ruthless Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen), who is tied to one of London's most notorious organized crime families. His carefully maintained existence is jarred when he crosses paths with Anna (Naomi Watts), an innocent midwife trying to right a wrong, who accidentally uncovers potential evidence against the family. Now Nikolai must put into motion a harrowing chain of murder, deceit, and retribution.”

So here’s my review: “Eastern Promises” is a fantastic movie. The acting is terrific, particularly Mortensen and Armin Mueller-Stahl (I had to look up his name), who plays the head of the Russian crime family. I think both of them will earn Academy Award nominations for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor respectively. The story certainly kept me intrigued following Watts enter this completely different world and watching Mortensen just being a bad-ass. I’m not going to give away anything regarding the plot, but I just wanted to give a warning: there are a few scenes that are extremely violent. There were audible gasps by most of the audience on one or two occasions, and one woman ran out of the theatre appearing to suppress vomiting. You really could just close your eyes or look away for five seconds. So because of her, I’m writing to highly recommend Eastern Promises, but if you are against strong brutal violence, you may want to pass.

Failure To Be a Good Movie

I'm currently watching the movie "Failure to Launch" starring Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker. What a terrible movie! I guess this is a technically a "chick flick" but it's so bad that my wife left about twenty minutes ago. Actually, it just got worse...they showed Terry Bradshaw's ass. Not cool and not funny. I'm really glad that I didn't pay money to see this in the theater or from Blockbuster. I borrowed this piece of crap (I don't think I've ever used this phrase on this blog before) from a co-worker because a classmate from high school is in the movie. Anyway, here is the IMDB profile of Gretchen Cleevely. She was on screen for an entire minute and had maybe two lines. I'm really looking forward to Sunday night football or even Desparate Housewives.

Airplane Movie Reviews

No, this is not in reference to Airplane! and Airplane II: The Sequel, two very funny movies (particularly the first one) from the early 1980s. This is about my flight to and from San Diego last week and the fact that the two movies during the trip were Fever Pitch and Ice Princess.

WARNING: IF YOU ARE REALLY INTERESTED IN THE ENDING OF THESE MOVIES, (are you really?) DO NOT READ BELOW HERE.


(I put a few extra spaces here if you accidentally looked down.)








Let's just say, these are not the best movies ever made (like Airplane!). Ice Princess features Michelle Trachtenberg (from Buffy) as a high school physics nerd who becomes a great figure skater by figuring out scientific equations and formulas. She is able to qualify for the U.S. Nationals even though she has only skated in one competition prior to Sectionals, her coach tried to sabotage her, she asked the coach back, she finished 5th in the short program, then proceeded to fall very hard in the long program, stopped to stare at her mom for about 20 seconds in the middle of the routine and everyone in front of her seemed to do fine in their long program. Yet, all of this was more believable than Fever Pitch. In this movie, Jimmy Fallon decides to sell his season tickets for life near the end of Game 4 of the Red Sox-Yankees game, Drew Barrymore is able to buy two tickets from a scalper in the 8th inning of the game (what scalper is still around to sell tickets that late in the game?), drop down from outfield seats on to the field, elude two security guards by using Johnny Damon as a shield (Damon is perfectly calm even though someone who married Tom Green is running around him) and makes it all the way to the 1st base seats without getting caught by security. After 9-11 (even before 9-11), you would think that Fenway and Major League Baseball would have better security especially during a playoff game. The worst part is the book by Nick Hornby is great. The movie has nothing to do with the book. I hope that Hornby at least got a lot of money for this.

Striker!