War, Inc. (2008)

     Satire shouldn't be that hard.  John Cusack had a minor hit with Grosse Point Blank (1997) where he portrayed a hitman fighting some inner conflicts; that film attempted to send up the overblown combats of hitman movies while still indulging in them.  In War, Inc. (2008), Cusack tries on the same type of character and gives him the same kinds of internal debate (Cusack is a co-writer).  Part Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Love the Bomb (1964) – itself a largely overloved film – part light revenge movie, and not enough bite, War, Inc. is chronically uneven and mostly not entertaining.  It cannot deliver the bite that Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers (2006; brief review found here) and perhaps assumes the audience is familiar enough with how the U.S. government outsourced operations in the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts; likely, people who know this don't find the material suitable for a comedy and would feel underwhelmed by the half-assed attempt at satire presented here.
     What does War, Inc. have going for it?  Cusack still is entertaining as a mild-mannered ass-kicker.  Marisa Tomei looks good and has some decent lines (but the character gets dumber as the movie goes on).  Hillary Duff looks somewhat alien as sex symbol Yonica Babyyeah, and in a way that kind of works.  But Dan Akroyd and (Sir) Ben Kingsley are lead weights that drag what little enjoyment there may be out of the scenes in which they appear.  War, Inc. wasn't the worst movie I've seen recently – do I really need to review Heather Graham and James Purefoy in Blessed (2004) just to tell you to avoid it? – but it is somehow below a real professional effort. 

My Time with Netflix - Part One: Bad for a Purpose

     The first thing I noticed after accepting a free month with Netflix was that I suddenly found myself much less motivated to read.  After all, I had one month to get as much viewing as I could before the charges kicked in.  So, I started looking for movies I might want to see...and was surprised that I wasn't that excited about the movies or television shows I had not seen.  Still – after some problems with Silverlight – I started to like the idea of being able to stream movies whenever I had the time and the mood struck.  I figured that the price, which was all of $7.99/month at the time, wasn't bad.  I would find some good movies eventually and if I ever didn't feel I was getting my money worth, I would just walk away from the service.
     That didn't take a year.  Mind you, I ended up with two months for free; the introductory month and a credited month as Silverlight needed to be re-installed every other day during my third month of service.  I found that in regards to DVDs, I was either fulfilling a near pathological need to see all of Katharine Isabelle's performances or just selecting titles I didn't make any effort to see up to that point.  While there were some titles I greatly enjoyed – I'll note them later in the post – I very much felt like I was wasting the DVD portion of the account.  Was it worth keeping Netflix just to watching movies and TV shows on the computer?  Well, once the User Interface changed, that answer was 'No'. When the ability to use other members' reviews – and I mean going to an individuals reviews page, not the anonymous reviews that were part of the change of removing members' avatars – it became 'No, and I'd like to make sure I don't get charged a cent more than I have to be'.
     So, what were the worthwhile selections?  What were the really bad choices?  What were the movies I found through other members or selective manipulation of the sortable function?  Well, I am going to attempt to answer that, but it will take more than one post here.  I have decided to start with the works of noted Canadian film and television actress, Katharine Isabelle, I watched through Netflix.