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Name |
Bill
Murray |
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Birth Name |
William
James Murray |
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Nickname |
Billy |
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The following DVDs
starring actor Ben Affleck are available through
Amazon.com.
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Amazon.com
Like a good dream, Sofia Coppola's Lost in
Translation envelops you with an aura of
fantastic light, moody sound, head-turning love, and
a feeling of déjà vu, even though you've probably
never been to this neon-fused version of Tokyo.
Certainly Bob Harris has not. The 50-ish actor has
signed on for big money shooting whiskey ads instead
of doing something good for his career or his
long-distance family. Jetlagged, helplessly lost
with his Japanese-speaking director, and out of sync
with the metropolis, Harris (Bill Murray, never
better) befriends the married but lovelorn
25-year-old Charlotte (played with heaps of poise by
18-year-old Scarlett Johansson). Even before her
photographer husband all but abandons her, she is
adrift like Harris but in a total entrapment of
youth. How Charlotte and Bill discover they are soul
mates will be cherished for years to come. Written
and directed by Coppola (The Virgin Suicides),
the film is far more atmospheric than plot-driven:
we whiz through Tokyo parties, karaoke bars, and odd
nightlife, always ending up in the impossibly posh
hotel where the two are staying. The wisps of
bittersweet loneliness of Bill and Charlotte are
handled smartly and romantically, but unlike modern
studio films, this isn't a May-November fling film.
Surely and steadily, the film ends on a
much-talked-about grace note, which may burn some,
yet awards film lovers who "always had Paris" with
another cinematic destination of the heart.
--Doug Thomas |
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Amazon.com
Bill Murray does warmth in his most consistently
effective post-Stripes comedy, a romantic
fantasy about a wacky weatherman forced to relive
one strange day over and over again, until he gets
it right. Snowed in during a road-trip expedition to
watch the famous groundhog encounter his shadow,
Murray falls into a time warp that is never
explained but pays off so richly that it doesn't
need to be. The elaborate loop-the-loop plot
structure cooked up by screenwriter Danny Rubin is
crystal-clear every step of the way, but it's
Murray's world-class reactive timing that makes the
jokes explode, and we end up looking forward to each
new variation. He squeezes all the available juice
out of every scene. Without forcing the issue, he
makes us understand why this fly-away personality
responds so intensely to the radiant sanity of the
TV producer played by Andie MacDowell. The
blissfully clueless Chris Elliott (Cabin Boy)
is Murray's nudnik cameraman. --David Chute
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Amazon.com
Bill Murray was heading toward a career peak on the
back of comedies such as this one from 1981, the
second film in his ongoing collaboration with
director Ivan Reitman (the two went on to make
Ghostbusters). Murray plays a chronic loser who
joins the army and fails to find a fan for his
ironic sensibilities in his by-the-book sergeant
(Warren Oates). When push comes to shove, however,
the smirking hero takes charge of his ragtag unit
and turns them into fighting machines, albeit to the
rhythm of hit songs by Manfred Mann and Sly Stone.
The film is occasionally funny, but it mostly plays
like any one of a dozen underachieving comedies
featuring players from Saturday Night Live
and SCTV. --Tom Keogh |
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Amazon.com
Most critics couldn't get behind Bill Murray's
modern retelling of Charles Dickens's A Christmas
Carol, finding it too unfocused at times and not
nearly wicked enough. Still, if you're a Murray fan,
you have to enjoy his deliciously nasty portrayal of
the world's meanest TV executive, who has his
cathartic moment one cold Christmas night in New
York City. The various ghosts lead him on a
ghost-town tour of Manhattan, with stops at holidays
past, present, and future and a Kumbaya moment when
Al Green and Annie Lennox sing "Put a Little Love in
Your Heart." The effects are otherworldly, but one
wishes the writing were as sharp as Murray's edgy
portrayal. --Marshall Fine |
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Amazon.com
Ghostbusters
Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis wrote the script, but
Bill Murray gets all the best lines and moments in
this 1984 comedy directed by Ivan Reitman (Meatballs).
The three comics, plus Ernie Hudson, play the New
York City-based team that provides supernatural pest
control, and Sigourney Weaver is the love interest
possessed by an ancient demon. Reitman and company
are full of original ideas about hobgoblins--who
knew they could "slime" people with green plasma
goo?--but hovering above the plot is Murray's
patented ironic view of all the action. Still a lot
of fun, and an obvious model for sci-fi comedies
such as Men in Black. --Tom Keogh
Ghostbusters 2
Much less fun than its predecessor, this 1989 sequel
starts off on a bleak note by telling us our heroes
from Ghostbusters have been on the skids for
five years, and Bill Murray's lead character never
did hook up with Sigourney Weaver's lovely symphony
musician character. What's more, she has a kid by
somebody else. Everybody's on an uphill climb, and
Ghostbusters 2 never soars the way the first
film did, despite having the same director, Ivan
Reitman (Dave, Kindergarten Cop). The
lame plot finds the boys attempting to prevent a
disaster on New York City caused by too many bad
vibes in the Big Apple. Yikes! Fortunately,
screenwriters Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis have
penned enough good one-liners to keep Murray busy,
and if the ghostly special effects no longer
surprise as they did in Ghostbusters, they're
at least inventive. --Tom Keogh |
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Amazon.com
The team behind Dumb and Dumber and
There's Something About Mary--two really stupid,
gross-out films that worked and were quite
funny--also made this really stupid, gross-out
comedy that doesn't work and isn't funny at all.
Woody Harrelson stars as a former bowling phenomenon
with a hook for a hand, and Randy Quaid is an Amish
farmer with a hidden talent for pins. The two join
forces and get a sexy business partner (Vanessa
Angel), and the film starts looking more and more
like a jokey variation of The Color of Money.
The Color of Money, however, didn't feature
jokes about having oral sex with a hideous landlady
or defecating in a sink or dragging disgusting stuff
out of one's teeth with a length of floss. Bill
Murray provides some much-needed relief as
Harrelson's ex-partner turned rival. How come this
stuff is obnoxious while the equally perverse punch
lines of There's Something About Mary are a
riot? It's a great mystery, all right, but there it
is. --Tom Keogh |
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Amazon.com
A no-brainer that has become a low-brow classic,
this 1980 comedy makes anarchy the rule of the day,
unleashing the antics of Bill Murray, Rodney
Dangerfield, Ted Knight, and Chevy Chase.
Caddyshack is about the scheme of a vulgar land
developer (Dangerfield) who wants to build
condominiums on the site of a ritzy country club.
Director Harold Ramis (who later reunited with
Murray to make Groundhog Day) is content to
let the comedy follow a variety of wacky detours,
most notably Murray's maniacal war with a gopher
that has been digging up the golf course.
Dangerfield ultimately steals the show, firing off a
battery of one-liners, insults, and tasteless gags.
Caddyshack is the kind of movie some people
have been known to watch several times a year,
reciting every line of dialogue like the followers
of a bizarre comedic ritual. --Jeff Shannon
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