Extract

I had been looking forward to seeing what Mike Judge's new full-length feature had to offer. Office Space, and to a lesser extent Idiocracy, have both become cult classics in the DVD-world.

I am a huge fan of Office Space and I enjoy Idiocracy on occasion, so I had to love Extract as well, right?

Well, I did not.

Extract was just not funny at all. I watched the entire film without once laughing, and that is hard for me to do. This film should have been hilarious, it starred Jason Bateman, J.K. Simmons, David Koechner and Kristen Wiig - but the so-called comedy actually came out of Ben Affleck, who played Bateman's hippie best friend.

Let's get into the movie. Cindy (Mila Kunis) is a con-artist/thief. She uses her looks to get in with men in order to get a huge pay day. Lucky for her, Step (Clifton Collins, Jr.) has just lost his testicle in an accident at Russel's Extract plant. Joel (Bateman) is the owner of the plant, and Step has already agreed to take the insurance money due to his injury - until Cindy gets involved.

Joel is having his own issues at home. His wife, Suzie (Wiig), hasn't given him anything in months. He tries his hardest to get home before 8 p.m. because once Suzie gets the sweatpants on, they are not coming off.

He first believes that Cindy is flirting with him, and starts to contemplate cheating on his wife. But, being the nice guy that he is, he can't get himself to do it. But his buddy, Dean (Affleck), gets Joel to hire a male prostitute to seduce his wife and see if she would cheat on him - therefore opening the doors for him to cheat on her.

There are just too many stories going on at the same time in this film that only runs just over 90 minutes. It almost feels like two films at once. Plus, too many funny people are just wasted in the film - Simmons and Wiig are way funnier than either of them were able to be.

Overall, I was just not pleased with the overall film. It wanted to do more than it should have, and went in too many directions with the plot. Focusing on one or the other may have given the plot more of a purpose and allow Judge to sprinkle in many more jokes that were just lacking in the final product.

Grade:

Burn After Reading

Brad Pitt in a comedic role really had me wanting to watch this movie - and I have to say, Pitt was rather impressive in this role.

Burn After Reading is a bit of a roller coaster in terms of plot. There are tons of random characters that are thrust upon you - and you don't really understand where they all fit in until the movie picks up towards the middle and end.

I guess, technically, the movie revolves around Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich), who quits his job at the CIA after his superiors think he should be demoted. After quitting, Cox decides to start penning his memoirs - which his wife steals as leverage as she begins the divorce process.

Cox's wife, Katie (Tilda Swinton), is cheating on him with another married man, Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney) - and decides to divorce Osbourne and encourages Harry to do the same with his wife so they could be together. Harry meanwhile is also having affairs with a slew of other women.

The action, and most of the laughs, pick up when we are introduced to Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) - a worker at Hardbodies Gym, an internet dater and someone who is looking for money to pay for four cosmetic surgeries. Pitt's character, Chad Feldheimer, is a co-worker friend of Litzke.

The pair of them find a lost CD, which holds Cox's memoirs (which they believe are government secrets) and Chad believes that if they return it, they should get some sort of reward. Litzke, however, decides to blackmail Cox in order to get the money for her surgeries.

The rest of the movie is pretty chaotic and fun - with some very odd suprises that I was not expecting, but I am not going to ruin it for you.

In the end, everything comes together and all the characters are connected in some way or another

I really enjoyed Pitt's character - and the small role of JK Simmons as a CIA higher up. His lines were very funny and pretty matter-of-factish.

Also pretty funny - the contraption that Harry was building in his basement. I never expected that and it almost floored me.

Grade: