Movie of the Day: "Born on the Fourth of July" (1989)

The obvious question here might be, did I pick this movie just for its title? Well, the title didn't hurt, but the truth is this is a very good movie about the transformation of Ron Kovic (whose autobiography this is based on) from an idealistic and uber-patriotic young American soldier to an outspoken and virulent anti-war activist in the late '60's. Tom Cruise gives one of his best performances (truly) in Oliver Stone's film, as the teenager who volunteers for duty in Vietnam, is injured and comes home to find the country changed in its attitudes, which in turn shapes his own feelings about the war. This movie argues that anti-war protesters weren't anti-American in their message, but that protesting is in itself a form of patriotism in supporting the country you love and making sure it doesn't go down the wrong path. That's why it's a good choice for today, as we celebrate the 4th with all the parades, fireworks and barbecues that go along with the holiday. Happy Independence Day everybody!

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Katherine Heigl and Alexis Bledel Get Married in 'Jenny's Wedding'

In a timely move, Jenny's Wedding is a movie coming out soon about a lesbian who must get her family to accept who she is. Katherine Heigl hasn't exactly had a lot of success since Knocked Up and her days on Grey's Anatomy (her recent TV show was canceled almost as soon as it premiered), but maybe this one will be a comeback vehicle. I kind of doubt it, but the subject matter sure hits the zeitgeist.

Trailer for New Documentary 'I Am Chris Farley'

Castmates and friends look back on the life of Chris Farley, the SNL star and comedian who died of a drug overdose in 1997 at the age of 33 (much like previous SNL'er John Belushi before him). Farley was one of a kind of course, as everyone who's seen any of his SNL skits knows, and he was beloved by his peers, as you can see in the reminiscences here. I Am Chris Farley is set for release in August.

Movie of the Day: "Brokeback Mountain" (2005)

What better movie this week to celebrate the 4th of July than with the film that should have won Best PIcture in 2006. It's a movie that became immediately iconic and joked about at the time, but it holds up as a beautiful, tragic love story with great performances all around, but an especially amazing one from Heath Ledger (every bit as good as his Joker in The Dark Knight, for which he won a posthumous Oscar). It really is a shame that he died so young, when you see what he was capable of so early in his career and what more he would have done for years. In this last couple weeks when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states, this is an especially poignant film to look back on, to celebrate the country and how far we've come, and in such a short time, really. In 2006, Crash beat Brokeback to win the Best Picture Oscar in one of the most stunning upsets ever, which many attributed to homophobia within the Academy, but how many doubt that if that same contest were held today, just nine years later, Brokeback would easily prevail?

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Conan Takes His Co-Workers to See 'Magic Mike XXL'

...or another reason why I still love Conan (and why I kinda want to see Magic Mike too). Everyone watch this clip and try not to laugh all the way through it.

Paul Feig Teases New 'Ghostbusters' Pics

I have to admit, even though this is another film that kind of falls into the new era I'm calling the "fanfic" movie (along with Jurassic World and the upcoming Star Wars), I am looking forward to this one a bit more, simply because of the cast. Hell, we know Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig are great, but I'm excited to see SNL star Kate McKinnon break through in film. Paul Feig tweeted pictures of the new proton pack and uniforms the other day, and I kinda wish the uniforms didn't look so similar to the old ones. This is a movie that will not benefit from constant callbacks to the original, in my opinion, and since it supposedly takes place in another universe anyway, why not go wildly different with it?

Morgan Freeman Teases 'London Has Fallen'

Next year we're getting the sequel to the strangely popular Olympus Has Fallen, which was a somber, not especially fun movie about the seize of the White House. Now I guess it's London's turn to be attacked as the world leaders gather in one place. Morgan Freeman, Aaron Eckhart and Gerard Butler are all returning from the first film.

Movie of the Day: "Moscow on the Hudson" (1984)

Paul Mazursky directed this absolute gem of a movie, an unabashedly patriotic, sentimental and wonderful little story that celebrates the very best of what America represents to the thousands of immigrants who come here every year. It's really hard to make a movie so unashamedly patriotic- Frank Capra was one of the few filmmakers able to pull it off, but Mazursky here comes the closest of any other film since Hollywood's golden age to do so, and he does it a modern (well, 1980's modern), genuinely moving and warmly affectionate way. Robin Williams gives one of his all time best performances (none of his usual schtick is present here) as a Russian musician who defects to the U.S. on a trip to New York, and spends the rest of the film working a series of odd jobs, falling in love, and making friends with others sharing his similar circumstances. Mazursky populates the film entirely with immigrants or minorities as he salutes the melting pot that makes America so great- there's no nostalgic longing for the 1950's white man in charge version of traditional America here, and this was thirty years ago, people. That's partly why the movie still feels fresh today, maybe even more so than it did back then. It's a lovely, heartwarming film and everyone should check it out, especially on the week of America's birthday.

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New 'Batman v Superman' Pics Revealed; See Lex Luthor and Wonder Woman Up Close

EW has the new stills from the BvS movie, and okay, that Lex Luthor pic is a joke, right? I mean, as if Jesse Eisenberg wasn't the least intimidating person you could find to be Superman's archnemesis, but they had to go and give him ridiculous hair on top of it? Are they trying to make it funny? At this point, I'm looking forward to this movie as the hot mess it's guaranteed to be- Marvel may have perfected a formula for slick and professional entertainment no matter what the property, but WB is the studio behind the epic disasters Green Lantern and Man of Steel- this is going to be glorious.

REVIEW: "Jurassic World" (2015) Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard. Dir. Colin Trevorrow

The franchise reboot Jurassic World is a bit of a sociological revelation of the elevated power of fan fiction in the movies recently. So many beats of this film rely on winks, nods and callbacks to every frame of the original movie that there's almost no reason to see this unless you've seen the first one, preferably not just once, but hundreds of times, as many people (especially of a certain millennial generation) have. When the movie sends two of its characters out into the jungles of Isla Nublar so that they can get lost, stumble upon the dusty relics of the old Visitors Center and start ogling props from the original set (hey, it's the night vision goggles! And the banner that fell over the T-Rex's triumph! And is that...oh yeah it's the 1992 tour guide jeeps that miraculously still run and are filled with gasoline after twenty years!)...we're in the Twilight Zone of fanboy nostalgia here.

Is there anything in this film that tries to be its own new adventure? Well, kind of. Director Colin Trevorrow seems to take a page out of Roland Emmerich's book on how to make a B-movie that knows it's a B-movie from start to finish. It's very easy to criticize every bit of the ludicrous plot and paper thin characters, but the movie's not taking it all that seriously either and in fact wants you to just have fun and turn your brain off so it can get you to the dino action in reasonably rapid response time. To that end, I do give it some credit for knowing exactly what it wants to be and doing it fairly slickly...although you may feel slightly dumber for having watched it. Twenty years after Jurassic Park failed to open (the park, not the movie), we are transported back to the island which has now officially realized John Hammond's lifelong dream- Isla Nublar has become Jurassic World, a fully functional theme park where dinosaurs roam the grounds and tourists crowd in by the thousands to see the attractions up close.

Like in the first movie, a pre-teen and a teenager are sent there to eventually endanger themselves, but this time it's two boys, the nephews of Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), the business woman who runs the day to day operations of the park and has no time for kids or family (ala Alan Grant in the first film). So the kids wander off on their own while Claire deals with the ramifications of the lab scientists having created a genetic hybrid of an animal called Indominus Rex, who was raised in isolation and is now more dangerous than any creature on the island. You'd think regular old dinosaurs would be impressive enough for tourists, right, but the movie tells us no, people are tired of normal and they want bigger, louder, and with ten times more teeth. This may seem a sly commentary on the expectations of today's audience versus what people were struck by in 1993, but the cynicism of the hypothesis is fully embraced by the movie as Indo Rex of course breaks out of her cage and wreaks havoc on the park and its vacationers.

In the middle of all this, Claire must learn to embrace her own maternal side, while flirting with the raptor trainer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), who unlike her, bonds with the animals and respects them while strutting around in his leather vest and shotgun, ready to protect the female and kids at all costs. Actually Chris Pratt is great in this movie, playing a straight action lead with gravitas and a dose of humor, carrying the screen in an effortlessly charismatic, everyguy turn reminiscent of the kinds of roles Harrison Ford embodied at the peak of his career. I think he proves himself a star capable of a lot more than Star Lord in this big dumb romp, and he may well be the best thing about it. The commentary on what people want from action and action movies nowadays is contradicted by the endless reverence toward the original film, the best scenes from which are not measured up to by any shot of this movie. Spielberg knew how to create suspense like few others, and the old style combination of pro-go animation, animatronic robots and CGI still combine to make the '93 dinosaurs look better than anything on the screen in this film, which are your typical, computer generated monsters (not even Indominus Rex is all that visually impressive- if they're constructing a brand new dinosaur, why would they make her look just like all the others?)

But if anything left me in awe (and not in a good way), it was the climactic battle scene of the movie, where the T-Rex (summoned by flare of course, because that was a famous scene from the first film) teams up with the raptors to take down the villainous hybrid, and not only does this defy logic on principle, but the two then share a "meaningful moment" as they walk away from each other having consciously decided not to fight. They've now evidently become blood brothers, an idea I'm positive a fan fiction writer on the Internet came up with ten years ago, as he replayed the climax of Jurassic Park over and over, pumping his fist in the air in childlike jubilation. At this point, the dinos may as well start talking to each other and nodding, Mr. Ed-style, because that's the cheese level to which we've ascended. Still, despite the ridiculousness of most of the movie, I didn't hate watching it. It moved at a good pace, it was entertaining for the most part, and despite an unnecessary and preposterous military scheme concocted by the hammy Vincent D'Onofrio to weaponize the dinosaurs for foreign invasion purposes (um, seriously?), the charisma and efforts of Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard (who does her best even as she runs through the entire island in heels that never once come off) keep you with it, even as your brain resists. Is this the definition of dumb fun, a competent but slavish devotion to something we all liked as kids? Yeah, probably. But I'll tell you one thing- ask anyone who liked this movie whether it compares to the first by any measure. The answer will be a resounding no- and that should tell you something else important. Maybe it's time to come up with some new stuff for this generation to call its own, instead of clinging to the relics of the past, wanting them to live forever, so that we ourselves never have to feel any older.

* * 1/2

Movie of the Day: "The Music Man" (1962)

One of the peppiest musicals ever made kicks off our next Movie of the Day series, which is also centered around the 4th of July. Yes, I recommended a whole month of movies on that topic, but this week I'm also giving you four bonus picks as we get closer to Saturday. Today it's The Music Man, which stars Robert Preston and Shirley Jones, and gives us the tale of con man Harold Hill, who arrives in River City, Iowa on Independence Day weekend with the scheme of being paid by the local yokels to create a marching band, but plans to skip town with the cash. Preston is iconic in the role of "Professor" Harold Hill (which he played on Broadway originally), and the songs include "76 Trombones" and "Til There Was You." It's a great summer movie that suits the mood this week, since there are few things more American than get-rich-quick schemes, right? Plus, this is one of those movies that just plain leaves you in a good mood.

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10 Great American Movies for the 4th of July

It's July 1st, everyone, and we're celebrating the upcoming holiday by recommending ten patriotic American films for the occasion. These are movies that celebrate some kind of quintessential American value or the country itself and its ideals- some of the films on the list are The Pride of the Yankees, All the President's Men, Yankee Doodle Dandy and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, while there's a couple that just nod the holiday itself, like Rocky and Independence Day. We've also got a tribute to the founding in there, with the HBO miniseries John Adams, which is a history lesson everybody should see at some point, with the great Paul Giamatti as one of the most important founding fathers. Head over to the Movies For Every Month page to read the full description for the patriotic films of July, and then click here for the July Movie Page to see the full list of ten movies, complete with trailers. Happy movie watching!