OCEAN'S ELEVEN (2001)

A professional criminal, Danny Ocean (George Clooney), comes up with an idea to simultaneously rob three large casinos in Las Vegas of around 150 million dollars in cold hard cash money duckets cheddar. Naturally, in order to do this, he will need ten of his trendiest and dorkiest friends. You got the one guy with the computers and the other guy who’s good at the thing and the one guy with perhaps the most distractingly bad British accent in movie history. You catch what me drippin', guvna? Oh yeah, the casinos are all owned by the guy (Andy Garcia) who is now long-dicking Ocean’s ex-wife, Julia Roberts. Imagine that.

Every time I sit down to watch OCEAN’S ELEVEN I end up watching part 2 and 3 also. I think my handsome brain just sees all three of them as one singular six-hour movie. The entire series really is super enjoyable junk food for the brain. Solid acting by the entire cast, a goofy story that’s about as believable as the Book of Genesis, not as many location shots of Las Vegas as I wanted, zero nudity, zero cheerleaders, two bumbling Oceaners who bicker back and forth so much that you wanna bash their skulls together like in HELLRAISER: BLOODLINES, a two-hour runtime that flies by and leaves you wanting more, lots of goofy dialogue that super fun to laugh at, confident direction.

As far as dude-centric, early 2000's American heist films go, OCEAN'S ELEVEN is one of the better ones. It's a good comfort movie to have playing in the background. I wish the people behind the movie would edit together a six-hour supercut of all three films. That way when you're playing it you don't have to flip over to the next film.

Original - Ocean's 11 (1960)
Part 2 - Ocean's Twelve (2004)
Part 3 - Ocean's Thirteen (2007)
Spin-off - Ocean's Eight (2018)

SEVEN (1995)

Sometimes Fate is a bitch.  Homicide detective Morgan Freeman has been walking the streets of this nameless, filthy, rainy metropolis for 34 years.  Cruelty for no reason, rampant crime, heartless citizens, dogs and cats definitely not living together.  It's a hellhole.  He's only got one more week before his retirement and then he can finally leave this dump forever...and what do you think happens?  That's right.  Some screwball starts killing people based on the seven deadly sins: gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, pride, improper twerking technique, lust, not using your blinker when changing lanes, watching Will Smith movies, taking up the entire fucking aisle in the grocery store with your sideways grocery cart, talking in the movie theater, driving down W. Parmer Lane in Austin at 30mph when the motherfucking speed limit is 65, animal hoarding and envy.  Freeman soon sees that his young sexy replacement, Brad Pitt, is in way over his head and that the killer is leading up to something.  Will they be able to stop the killer before he completes his masterpiece?

One of my favorite things about watching a lot of movies and being in love with movies is seeing how they influence each other.  I remember watching SEVEN when it first came out and it blew me away.  The opening credits were especially awesome.  It was like a Brothers Quay film, but in a mainstream movie!  The other thing was just how gritty and fresh it felt.  It's kind of hard to explain it now, since SEVEN (like it's opening credits sequence) has been cloned endlessly since then, but at the time it was pretty awesome.  Watching it again now, for the first time in many years, SEVEN has lost some of it's punch but it's still a fun ride.  For some reason, I remember it being a much darker film, but I guess that can probably just be chalked up to me being more innocent back then.

Quick pace, highly influential, good acting, plot holes, great camerawork, strong cast.  SEVEN is mandatory viewing for all movie lovers.

The "vomit" story was repeated at least three times in the above pages.

Why is the police tape on the inside?