I know I am late with this, but I was really wanting t0 wait until I had seen everything I believed would end up on my top list. I hope the lateness does not deter people from reading it. I am not sure how much longer I will really continue updating this blog, but we shall see. Anyway, what follows is my end of the year stuff: favorites, least favorites, surprises and whatnot.
My Ten Favorite movies of 2008
10. Forgetting Sarah Marshall- This was my favorite straight up comedy of the year. It made me laugh from beginning to end and there were singing vampire puppets!
9. Frost/Nixon- Amazing acting and writing and somehow made an interview crazy intense. It found a way to make me feel sympathy for Richard Nixon
8. Milk- The most relevant story of the bunch. It has great acting and a tremendous heart. Sean Penn throws himself into the role and everyone around him follow suit.
7. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button- An impressive marriage of intimate and epic. Brad Pitt gives the performance of his career and the technical side of the movie will change the way CG is used.
6. In Bruges- I loved this nice little surprise of a movie. It is funny, politically incorrect, featured a few cool shoot outs and gave Colin Ferrell the best performance of his career. I really hope more people find this little gem.
5. Slumdog Millionaire- I expected nothing out of this story, but it moved me and made me, even if briefly, believe in the idea of fate. It never feels false and it somehow makes beauty out of an ugly situation. It is a moving and powerful story.
4. The Wrestler- Heart breaking in so many ways, this is an intimate and tragic story, with a big heart and a powerhouse performance from the most unlikely of sources. It is really a movie about love and going out on your own terms. Live the life you want to live!
3. Wall-E- I cannot believe how amazing I found this movie. It is a gorgeous love story, a sweeping sci-fi epic and a message film all rolled up into one. Plus, Wall-E is soooo damn cute. How could you not fall in love with the little robot who wants nothing more than to hold hands with something?
2. The Dark Knight- I cannot say anything else about this movie that has not already been said. It is a moving, violent, sweeping and manic movie that makes superhero movies look good. I wonder how the pessimism of Gotham City will look under the new administration.
1. Rachel Getting Married- This is somewhat of a sentimental choice, I admit that, but I was so unbelievably moved by this suffocating family struggle. The way music and cameras are used to further the story only made things more intimate and interesting. I cried my way through it and when it was over, I wanted to believe in love and change.
The Next Five (11-15)- Tropic Thunder, Redbelt, Valkyrie, Ironman, Revolutionary Road
The 10 worst movies of 2008
10. Twilight- This movie carried hype, otherwise, it might have just been some forgettable movie I saw once and it would not have made this list. It sucked. The romance sucked, the action sucked, the effects sucked and the music sucked. If you liked this movie you are just flat out wrong.
9. The Mummy 3- Pointless sequel alert!! This was a mess from beginning to end and having Yetis that somehow understand Chinese and Yetis that have a sense of humor did nothing to help matters. This was also plagued with bad CGI.
8. Mamma Mia- I am still trying to forget I ever saw this garbage. Meryl Streep is not one for musical comedy and it was sad to watch her try. It was an uninspired movie, with one good sequence and a bunch of hot people, but still a waste of time and money.
7. Prom Night- Characters is slasher flicks have to be a bit stupid for a movie to exist, but this movie is full of the stupidest characters doing the stupidest things. I hated this thing so much because I just wanted them all to die of stupidity.
6. Speed Racer- This was probably the biggest disappointment for me this year. I wanted to like it but it was a disaster. The colors got headache worthy pretty early on, and the story did nothing to save it!
5. Saw V- It is not every year that a Saw movie does not end up in my worst 3 list, which means this was either not as a bad as the other ones or this yr just had more worse movies. You can pick whichever you like.
4. Punisher: War Zone- Gore, blood and bullets can help make a movie better, but if the movie is awful, they cannot change that. This was awful in every way imaginable. It should have gone right into the DVD bin.
3. Bangkok Dangerous- Such a string of pointless cliches tied together into a movie. Nic Cage has awful hair, again, and his acting is even worse. I am not sure what the point of it all was, I just know I was glad when everyone was dead.
2. In the Name of the King- I was so sure this would be number 1. I guess it should thank number 1 for coming out. I guess it is fitting that this is number 2 because it is a big steaming pile of crap.
1. The Love Guru- Words cannot even fully describe just how bad this movie is. Superlatives do not exist with enough gusto to properly place this movie in the right amount of suck. Actually let me try, if this movie had been released in the same year as Pirates of the Caribbean 3, this would have been the worst movie and not Pirates, which is saying something.
S0 there it is my 2008 wrap up. It is time to look forward to The Oscars and then of course, to 2009. Please let me know what some of your favorites of 2008 were, unless you just want to talk about how amazing Twilight was. In that case, just keep it to yourself, no one needs to know that. :-)
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Revolutionary Road
Before I walked into the auditorium of this movie, I saw a friend who was also going to watch this movie. We were commiserating that perhaps watching a depressing movie while we were jointly depressed was not such a good idea. Then he said that maybe it would provide a sort of catharsis and it could cleanse the soul to cry. I think that is what I was hoping for all along. When I saw Rachel Getting Married, that is what happened. I felt terrible going in, cried a lot and felt better when the whole thing was over. I did not get my catharsis in The Wrestler, even though I had just watched it, so I was kind of hoping to get it from a movie about a very unhappy couple. That was my mind set going in. Iw as expecting sadness and I was expecting tears. I needed sadness and I needed tears. Perhaps that is too much pressure to put on a movie and to put on myself. I find that when you expect to cry, you can force the tears and that does no one good. Perhaps I was expecting too much? I had no idea what to expect, really.
Frank and April meet one night at a party. he is fresh from the war and spending time in France. She is studying to be an actress. The next moment, they have been married for 9 years and she was just in a miserable community play. Frank and April proceed to have a knock down drag out fight on the side of the road. The kind of fight movie couples have at the end of the movies, not at the beginning. It leaves them both rattled. The next day Frank cheats, while April tries to fix things. She remembers when they moved into the suburbs. She feels trapped. She believes Frank feels trapped. She knows what to do; she will move them and their two kids to France where she will work and he will find himself because he is miserable in his job. With that decided the couple finds happiness again. All the have to do is make it through the summer and then they will be gone. No one understands them. Everyone believes they are a perfect couple. When you live in the perfect house, have two kids and make good money, is that not the American Dream? Things are far from perfect and a few things keep Frank and Alice from moving. Alice gets pregnant, again and Frank gets a promotion and raise, and he thinks he is supposed to take it. He needs to provide for his family. he cannot have a child born in France. Their unhappiness spills over immensely. She cheats, he cheats again. He tells her he cheated and she asks him why he told her. He responds in some inane way and they explode yet again. With all of this going, everyone continues to think they are perfect, until they are not perfect anymore.
I did not find the catharsis I was seeking from Revolutionary Road because I did not find the tears. The movie is one of the relentlessly depressing movies like Requiem for a Dream, Leaving Las Vegas or The Fall. When it was over, I just sat in the auditorium trying to move, but feeling paralyzed by anger, by fear and by sadness. When I got to my car, I just sat there for 10 minutes wondering "why?" Why that movie? Why did those characters say those things and why did those characters do those things? What was the movie trying to say to me? Was I supposed to feel something other than rage for both of the characters? I could not figure it out? I felt like I was sitting in the front row of a play starring real life lovers as a couple who fight all of the time and at some point the characters are taken over by the actors and they are using the play to say the nastiest things to each other. I was uncomfortable the whole time. I could not sit still. I felt like I was gasping for air. I wanted the camera to move back. I wanted to get out of the house, but I couldn't because everything was just so damn interesting. I needed to know what was happening and why it was all happening. I have been sitting with this movie for about 18 hours now, and the questions still linger.
As far as the movie itself goes, everything is pretty flawless. Leonardo DeCaprio and Kate Winslet are combustible in every moment together and both are playing characters that are shallow, but they give them some kind of subtext. I was trying to read between the lines in every moment. They have an amazing chemistry on screen and they sure do look good together. Winslet was made for movies set in the 1950s. The way those outfits hug every perfect curve of hers, gives her character the outward appearance of perfection and Winslet does phenomenal work at making April far from perfect. The screenplay is brutal, but literary. The words roll of the tongue of the actors and it is smart, but it never strays from feeling realistic. There is strong supporting work from Kathy Bates as that Suburb neighbor woman and Michael Shannon shows up in two scenes as a man who has been trapped in a loony bin. He tears through his two scenes, putting to rest subtlety, in favor of blunt and loud honesty. His scenes pop and he is important to the story, but I am still not sure what I thought of him and what he really brought to the story.
Revolutionary Road is all about the show. We see pretty people in the perfect house, putting on the show of happiness, but it exposes an ugly truth. It is not a new ugly truth, but they do it very effectively. There are no good guys and no bad guys and when the whole thing is over you will wonder if something important just happened. There are two epilogue type things that I think could have been eliminated, but I understood the message behind them, I just feel emotionally it would have resonated more without them. I was emotionally detached from Frank and Alice, but was very involved with their lives. I wanted to cry for both of them, but could never figure out if they were worthy of my tears. Maybe that was not really my decision to make and perhaps I would have found my catharsis if I was not being so hyper-judgemental about Frank and Alice as a couple and as people. I guess I'll never know.
Final Grade: A-
Frank and April meet one night at a party. he is fresh from the war and spending time in France. She is studying to be an actress. The next moment, they have been married for 9 years and she was just in a miserable community play. Frank and April proceed to have a knock down drag out fight on the side of the road. The kind of fight movie couples have at the end of the movies, not at the beginning. It leaves them both rattled. The next day Frank cheats, while April tries to fix things. She remembers when they moved into the suburbs. She feels trapped. She believes Frank feels trapped. She knows what to do; she will move them and their two kids to France where she will work and he will find himself because he is miserable in his job. With that decided the couple finds happiness again. All the have to do is make it through the summer and then they will be gone. No one understands them. Everyone believes they are a perfect couple. When you live in the perfect house, have two kids and make good money, is that not the American Dream? Things are far from perfect and a few things keep Frank and Alice from moving. Alice gets pregnant, again and Frank gets a promotion and raise, and he thinks he is supposed to take it. He needs to provide for his family. he cannot have a child born in France. Their unhappiness spills over immensely. She cheats, he cheats again. He tells her he cheated and she asks him why he told her. He responds in some inane way and they explode yet again. With all of this going, everyone continues to think they are perfect, until they are not perfect anymore.
I did not find the catharsis I was seeking from Revolutionary Road because I did not find the tears. The movie is one of the relentlessly depressing movies like Requiem for a Dream, Leaving Las Vegas or The Fall. When it was over, I just sat in the auditorium trying to move, but feeling paralyzed by anger, by fear and by sadness. When I got to my car, I just sat there for 10 minutes wondering "why?" Why that movie? Why did those characters say those things and why did those characters do those things? What was the movie trying to say to me? Was I supposed to feel something other than rage for both of the characters? I could not figure it out? I felt like I was sitting in the front row of a play starring real life lovers as a couple who fight all of the time and at some point the characters are taken over by the actors and they are using the play to say the nastiest things to each other. I was uncomfortable the whole time. I could not sit still. I felt like I was gasping for air. I wanted the camera to move back. I wanted to get out of the house, but I couldn't because everything was just so damn interesting. I needed to know what was happening and why it was all happening. I have been sitting with this movie for about 18 hours now, and the questions still linger.
As far as the movie itself goes, everything is pretty flawless. Leonardo DeCaprio and Kate Winslet are combustible in every moment together and both are playing characters that are shallow, but they give them some kind of subtext. I was trying to read between the lines in every moment. They have an amazing chemistry on screen and they sure do look good together. Winslet was made for movies set in the 1950s. The way those outfits hug every perfect curve of hers, gives her character the outward appearance of perfection and Winslet does phenomenal work at making April far from perfect. The screenplay is brutal, but literary. The words roll of the tongue of the actors and it is smart, but it never strays from feeling realistic. There is strong supporting work from Kathy Bates as that Suburb neighbor woman and Michael Shannon shows up in two scenes as a man who has been trapped in a loony bin. He tears through his two scenes, putting to rest subtlety, in favor of blunt and loud honesty. His scenes pop and he is important to the story, but I am still not sure what I thought of him and what he really brought to the story.
Revolutionary Road is all about the show. We see pretty people in the perfect house, putting on the show of happiness, but it exposes an ugly truth. It is not a new ugly truth, but they do it very effectively. There are no good guys and no bad guys and when the whole thing is over you will wonder if something important just happened. There are two epilogue type things that I think could have been eliminated, but I understood the message behind them, I just feel emotionally it would have resonated more without them. I was emotionally detached from Frank and Alice, but was very involved with their lives. I wanted to cry for both of them, but could never figure out if they were worthy of my tears. Maybe that was not really my decision to make and perhaps I would have found my catharsis if I was not being so hyper-judgemental about Frank and Alice as a couple and as people. I guess I'll never know.
Final Grade: A-
The Wrestler
At work we often get miniature sized posters to give away to our customers. Typically we only put out the posters for movies we are actually playing, but when we got minis in for The Wrestler, I put them out anyway, because I wanted to promote the movie, even though I had not yet seen it. This kind of movie is, for the most part, lost on the general Woodland audience. This has been further confirmed by the youth of the town who see the mini posters and are trying to figure out which WWE superstar that is on the poster. How funny would it be if these kids ended up seeing the movie and got very confused as to what was going on. In fact, there is no John Cena, The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin or Hulk Hogan references to be found. There are real wrestlers in the movie, but they are has beens or never weres. People like K-Kwik and other low level guys who are cameoing it up in Darren Aronofsky's latest film.
Randy "The Ram" Robinson(Mickey Rourke) was quite a big deal as a wrestler in the 1980s. He was a super power. However, 20 years later, The Ram is no longer on top. He is still wrestling, but he is wrestling in high school gyms and small auditoriums. He gets paid in cash and often it is not the amount he hoped because the turn out was not big enough. He is the kind of guy who cannot make enough money to keep paying rent on the mobile home. He has hearing loss and scars all over his old and broken body due to the punishment of wrestling. The kids around his trailer love him, but he is all alone. His only "friend" is an aging stripper Cassidy(Marisa Tomei), but she still makes him pay for dances because she is as broken and tapped out as he is. After a brutal hardcore match, where he had staples shot into him and glass fragments jammed into his body, The Ram suffers a heart attack. His career is over. The thing he threw himself into, was being taken from him. He is all alone, but he does not want to die alone, so he tries to get back in touch with his daughter, Stephanie(Evan Rachel Wood). He was not a good father because wrestling was everything to him. He is trying to make it up to her, but he has beaten into her years of emotional scars and will not be let off the hook easily. He works the deli counter at a local grocery store and is wasting away, trying to feel anything at all. Unfortunately the only time he feels anything is in the ring and the opportunity for a re-match with his most heated rival from the 80s has come up. It will not take place at Madison Square Garden like their last match did, but it is something. The Ram is a wrestler. He bleeds, he lives and he breathes wrestling. He needs wrestling. he needs to know there are people out there who want him and want to cheer for him.
Much has been made of Mickey Rourke's performance and it is all deserved. Who knows what kind of movie this would have been if someone else had been The Ram. The story is small, slow and requires an acute attention to detail and there are long sequences where there is no dialog at all and the role requires so much pain and who knows the pain of recapturing glory the way Rourke does? Is he playing an extension of himself? Yes, of course he is, but to watch an actor leave it all on "mat" is quite a stunning thing to watch. Rourke is funny when he needs to be and infinitely charming, which is good because he is in every scene, but he will also break your heart in the final 30 minutes and he will melt your heart when he needs to. He is an incredible talent and this is the perfect vehicle for him to show what he is capable of doing. That being said, he is matched every second of the way by Marisa Tomei. Now, I do not know any 40 yr old strippers, but my guess is Marisa is prettier than most of them, but she is void of all vanity here as a woman desperate for something, anything good to happen to her. Tomei conveys so much in her body language, even when she is not writhing around the stage naked. She matches Rourke's hopelessness and his sadness and their scenes together are quite a study in subtle acting.
Aronofsky is an odd director. I find that people either love his movies or loathe them. However, he is a very visually aware director and his movies have this flare to them. Requiem of a dream and The Fountain are both excellent movies, but they would be less so if they weren't visually stunning with colors, lights, effects and camera tricks. The Wrestler is about as far away from that as possible. The movie was shot using mostly natural light and everything is minimalistic. The camera follows The Ram wherever he goes, and the camera work is so straight forward, it is almost a documentary. Gone are Aronosky's visual tics, replaced by a bobbing and weaving camera in the style of that handheld camera so common these days. It takes a good clean director's eye to make it work and Aronofsky has pulled off quite a feat. He is set to remake Robocop next, showing he is not afraid of tackling things so diverse. He deserves much of the credit for making this movie what it is. He never rushed a shot, never rushed a scene and he was confident that his audience would allow him to tell this story in a real way. It is nice to see a movie that is not so concerned with quick jump cuts. Only in the wrestling is there a lot in the way of editing.
As for the actual wrestling, it is fantastic looking. I remember watching Ali and thinking boxing could never be filmed better than it was in that movie. You felt every punch and felt every near punch. In The Wrestler, the wrestling scenes are so intimate they are suffocating. Audience members winced at every drop, every slap and every fall. People know the outcomes of matches are rigged and much of the action is "fake" but the bumps people take are real, especially if you are not making tons of money doing it and the wrestling in the movie feels real. I know real wrestlers choreographed it and The Ram's rival used to wrestle under the name "The Cat" in WCW and The WWE, and I know Mickey Rourke trained endlessly for the wrestling and it shows. It comes out a gritty, dirty ballet worthy of the title "action sequence." Of course, the wrestling is secondary in the movie, but it is not treated as such and it makes the climax that much more satisfying.
I will not give away the ending, but I just want to say that the final shot is perfect. Much is being made about what happens or what did or did not happen, but I think those people are missing the point. It is a perfect ending to a wonderful story. I am not sure I would call this the best movie of the year, but it is definitely in the conversation. It is hard not to feel something throughout The Wrestler. We feel for the stripper, for The Ram and mostly for the man playing The Ram.
Final Grade: A
Randy "The Ram" Robinson(Mickey Rourke) was quite a big deal as a wrestler in the 1980s. He was a super power. However, 20 years later, The Ram is no longer on top. He is still wrestling, but he is wrestling in high school gyms and small auditoriums. He gets paid in cash and often it is not the amount he hoped because the turn out was not big enough. He is the kind of guy who cannot make enough money to keep paying rent on the mobile home. He has hearing loss and scars all over his old and broken body due to the punishment of wrestling. The kids around his trailer love him, but he is all alone. His only "friend" is an aging stripper Cassidy(Marisa Tomei), but she still makes him pay for dances because she is as broken and tapped out as he is. After a brutal hardcore match, where he had staples shot into him and glass fragments jammed into his body, The Ram suffers a heart attack. His career is over. The thing he threw himself into, was being taken from him. He is all alone, but he does not want to die alone, so he tries to get back in touch with his daughter, Stephanie(Evan Rachel Wood). He was not a good father because wrestling was everything to him. He is trying to make it up to her, but he has beaten into her years of emotional scars and will not be let off the hook easily. He works the deli counter at a local grocery store and is wasting away, trying to feel anything at all. Unfortunately the only time he feels anything is in the ring and the opportunity for a re-match with his most heated rival from the 80s has come up. It will not take place at Madison Square Garden like their last match did, but it is something. The Ram is a wrestler. He bleeds, he lives and he breathes wrestling. He needs wrestling. he needs to know there are people out there who want him and want to cheer for him.
Much has been made of Mickey Rourke's performance and it is all deserved. Who knows what kind of movie this would have been if someone else had been The Ram. The story is small, slow and requires an acute attention to detail and there are long sequences where there is no dialog at all and the role requires so much pain and who knows the pain of recapturing glory the way Rourke does? Is he playing an extension of himself? Yes, of course he is, but to watch an actor leave it all on "mat" is quite a stunning thing to watch. Rourke is funny when he needs to be and infinitely charming, which is good because he is in every scene, but he will also break your heart in the final 30 minutes and he will melt your heart when he needs to. He is an incredible talent and this is the perfect vehicle for him to show what he is capable of doing. That being said, he is matched every second of the way by Marisa Tomei. Now, I do not know any 40 yr old strippers, but my guess is Marisa is prettier than most of them, but she is void of all vanity here as a woman desperate for something, anything good to happen to her. Tomei conveys so much in her body language, even when she is not writhing around the stage naked. She matches Rourke's hopelessness and his sadness and their scenes together are quite a study in subtle acting.
Aronofsky is an odd director. I find that people either love his movies or loathe them. However, he is a very visually aware director and his movies have this flare to them. Requiem of a dream and The Fountain are both excellent movies, but they would be less so if they weren't visually stunning with colors, lights, effects and camera tricks. The Wrestler is about as far away from that as possible. The movie was shot using mostly natural light and everything is minimalistic. The camera follows The Ram wherever he goes, and the camera work is so straight forward, it is almost a documentary. Gone are Aronosky's visual tics, replaced by a bobbing and weaving camera in the style of that handheld camera so common these days. It takes a good clean director's eye to make it work and Aronofsky has pulled off quite a feat. He is set to remake Robocop next, showing he is not afraid of tackling things so diverse. He deserves much of the credit for making this movie what it is. He never rushed a shot, never rushed a scene and he was confident that his audience would allow him to tell this story in a real way. It is nice to see a movie that is not so concerned with quick jump cuts. Only in the wrestling is there a lot in the way of editing.
As for the actual wrestling, it is fantastic looking. I remember watching Ali and thinking boxing could never be filmed better than it was in that movie. You felt every punch and felt every near punch. In The Wrestler, the wrestling scenes are so intimate they are suffocating. Audience members winced at every drop, every slap and every fall. People know the outcomes of matches are rigged and much of the action is "fake" but the bumps people take are real, especially if you are not making tons of money doing it and the wrestling in the movie feels real. I know real wrestlers choreographed it and The Ram's rival used to wrestle under the name "The Cat" in WCW and The WWE, and I know Mickey Rourke trained endlessly for the wrestling and it shows. It comes out a gritty, dirty ballet worthy of the title "action sequence." Of course, the wrestling is secondary in the movie, but it is not treated as such and it makes the climax that much more satisfying.
I will not give away the ending, but I just want to say that the final shot is perfect. Much is being made about what happens or what did or did not happen, but I think those people are missing the point. It is a perfect ending to a wonderful story. I am not sure I would call this the best movie of the year, but it is definitely in the conversation. It is hard not to feel something throughout The Wrestler. We feel for the stripper, for The Ram and mostly for the man playing The Ram.
Final Grade: A
Monday, January 12, 2009
Gran Torino
First a story entitled "The Time I met Clint Eastwood." It is about, well, the time I met Clint Eastwood.
For a few years, my father, my brothers and I would go to Pebble Beach for the ProAm golf tournament. We set up shop at one hole and watch everyone come through. We were usually the first ones at the hole and as people came, we would get trapped into our spot. This was not usually a problem, but when a pro golfer hit a shot that was off and coming right towards us and there was nothing we could do. I turned away from the ball so it would not hit me, but it hit me right on my ass. It stung badly, and while the golfer was trying to figure out how to hit his ball (it ended up under a chair and blanket), I heard a voice saying "The ball hit you on the ass, huh?" I turned to the voice and had to look up to see the face and there he was, Dirty Harry in the flesh. I nodded my head and he said "Well you took like a champ" he touched my shoulder, started laughing and walked off." As he walked off, I regained my ability to move and think and I thought about it and realized, Dirty Harry had just touched me, had just made a joke at my expense and I was still scared of him! The man is walking danger. If ever there was a man at over 70 years old who could make a movie about an old man killing some young gang bangers it is him.
Watch the trailer before going further:
I start with the trailer because my review is going to discuss the trailer, possibly at length. It will not become common practice for me to use the trailer as my synopsis, though, so do not worry.
What the trailer shows is a movie that looks an awful like a generic revenge film, like Death Wish, Falling Down, Death Sentence or The Brave One. You see a lot of violence and guns and Clint being a bad ass. This gave me the impression that the movie was going to be a run of the mill movie with a Vietnam war vet who hates everyone else, drinks beer and shoots people. If I was not into watching all possible Oscar contenders, I never would have seen Gran Torino because of what the trailer showed me the movie was. The trailer is wrong. I cannot believe how badly marketed this film is. I mean, I understand it because it is marketed for maximum appeal, but it is not the trailer. In fact, with one exception all of the guns in the trailer make up all of the guns in the entire movie. The movie is not at all a revenge film. It is not at all generic. I was wrong when I told Robbie how basic and run of the mill it looked. But, can you blame me?
Walt Kowalski(Eastwood) is a Vietnam vet. He is a racist, he does drink beer, a lot and he hates religion, but that is only the beginning of the movie. Walt is a dying breed and he sparks a friendship with a Hmong family. A family that puts up with his horribly racist comments and a family that loves feeding him delicious food. Gran Torino is a movie that is exploring Xenophobia or what it means to be American. It is exploring what it means to be a real man and it shows political incorrectness in a world increasingly more politically correct every day. It is a sometimes funny, often times uncomfortable film with a tender center and Eastwood has done a wonderful job as a director and a good job as an actor. Yes, Walt does kick a bit of ass and he is a scary man who is not afraid of threatening people, but that is only the surface of the movie. If the trailer had focused on his budding friendship with the two Hmong children, I would have been singing a different tune. If I knew at its core, Gran Torino was discussing cultural events in a real way, or had been a movie about what being a man means, I would have been interested.
Now, as it has been discussed at great length at my job, I am not ever the target audience for the mainstream, regular guy movie goer. I saw this movie even though the trailer turned me off. I am just that guy. So, trailers are not meant to appeal to me. I am an oddity in terms of movies. However, I can be won over by trailers. I can be suckered by them (Hello, My Bloody Valentine) and I want trailers to reflect what the movies will actually be about and Gran Torino's trailer fails on a massive level. Now, the movie does not always succeed, either. I respect Clint for wanting to cast actual Hmong people, but in order to do that, he had to cast a whole bunch of non-actors and it shows. There are moments when the acting from the kids is so bad it distracted me to no end, especially around the climax. The screenplay is a bit too repetitive at times and The stuff with the young priest gets a annoying at times, although the conclusion of the Walt/Priest dynamic is nice. However, considering what I expected, I was pleasantly surprised by Gran Torino and I can respect what it was trying to do.
Final Grade: B+
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Frost/Nixon
If only two people could be nominated for an award together. That would be the perfect scenario with Frost/Nixon. Frank Langella as Richard Nixon gets the big showy performance with an incredible monologue during one off the most powerful phone call conversations to be captured on film and Langella deserves all of the accolades coming his way as he gives us a Richard Nixon who is smart, funny, nasty and accountable. However, Michael Sheen as David Frost is every bit as good. He does not have the big Oscar moments, but his performance is a study in nuance and subtlety and he is just as deserving. Together, though, they are a whole other animal. Each of their scenes pop with energy, intensity and if there was a way for them to be nominated as a collective, it would serve them both nicely.
David Frost is a playboy talk show host with dreams of interviewing Richard Nixon right after Nixon resigned the presidency. No network believes it will happen and Frost has to try and raise the money and conduct the interview. He hires a "crack investigative" team to help research and plan and they land the interview. The interview takes place over 4 2 hour sessions, spread out over a few weeks. The contract allows for certain things and both sides must stick to it. Nixon thinks he can use the interview to rebuild his reputation and Frost, at first, just wants the ratings and the glory of the American audience. However, he also wants to get Nixon to admit wrong doing.
The movie is told sort of documentary style in parts, with most of the players speaking directly to the camera, as if they have been asked questions about what was going to happen or what happened. The 4 interview scenes are perfectly paced and we get a very good idea as what is going on inside the heads of the two combatants. Kevin Bacon, as Nixon's right hand man deserves some consideration this awards seasons for his performance as a man willing to follow Nixon until the very end. Sam Rockwell and Oliver Platt add some great drama and comedy as the team assembled by Frost to prepare him for the interview. I was expecting to feel bored at some point, but Ron Howard really kept the action moving, even within scenes. He displays a confidence in his material and is not interested in getting in the way of his actors, the story of the wonderful script. He is a facilitator in this project and he understands his role and makes the most of it.
Frost/Nixon continues a trend for me this fall/winter: great movies that are just missing something to make them better than great. I could not put my finger on it with Frost/Nixon, but it joins Milk, Slumdog Millionaire and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in that category. There is nothing technically wrong with Frost/Nixon. Everything is sound and it all functions perfectly, but there is element missing, a sense of cinematic wonder or surprise.
Final Grade: A-
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Doubt
Very few things scream Oscar season like Meryl Streep and Phillip Seymour Hoffman and when you combine their talents in one movie, it is an Oscar's wet dream. Such is the case with Doubt. Throw in 1 time nominee Amy Adams and a story about Catholic pedophilia and you have the makings of an Oscar sweep. Not so fast, though because the movie is written and directed by John Patrick Shanley. This is the man responsible for writing Congo and the last movie he directed was Joe Versus the Volcano, not exactly movies that were winning awards, or winning anything positive for that matter. Yet, on stage Doubt was a success, critically and so it made sense that transferring it to the screen and sticking Hoffman and Streep in it, all would be good, right?
Set around the time of JFK's assassination, Doubt takes place in a Catholic church and school, where Sister Beauvier(Streep) is the principal and she rules with an iron fist. She is a prison warden and she likes it that way. She is uneasy about the new Father, Father Flynn. Flynn gives sermons on doubt and he is a friendly man who preaches love, compassion and understanding. He wants to add secular songs to the Christmas pageant and wants to bring the church forward. Meanwhile, Sister James(Adams) is a young teacher and she is worried about the lack of warmth from the sisters and teaches her class without the super strict rules that Sister Beauvier tries to get her to enforce. One day Sister James thinks she sees things that do not seem right. Donald Miller, a student is called to a private meeting with Father Flynn. He comes back and Sister James thinks she smells alcohol on his breath. He is lifeless and sad. Later she sees Father Flynn putting one of Donald's shirts back in his locker. She tells Sister Beauvier what she thinks because Sister Beauvier warned everyone to keep an eye on Father Flynn because she did not like him. Sister James and Sister Beauvier call Father Flynn into an office and state their unsubstantiated claims. He gives a logical reason for everything, but is he lying? He has moved around a lot in the church and the church has been known to protect their priests.
I have a tell. When I am bored in a movie, it is not difficult to know. Erik figured it out years ago. I fidget. I do not mean just shifting in my chair because I do that often, but I get unusually fidgety. I check my watch often, but the biggest sign that I am bored is when my watch comes off. When I take my watch off to start playing with it or whatever, the movie has lost me. I believe about 35 minutes into Doubt, my watch was off. At first, I could not put my finger on it. The acting is phenomenal and the one scene where Streep, Hoffman and Adams share the screen is a knock out blow. The writing is exceptional and the story is interesting and I loved how ambiguous it was about whether or not The Father was innocent or guilty. Yet, there I was, sitting in The Tower Theater, fidgeting, checking my watch and eventually removing it. Something just was not working. Then in one moment, like a giant gust of wind, it hit me. Well, it hit me like a giant gust of wind, because it was a giant gust of wind. A giant gust of wind in the movie directly after Streep said something about the winds of change. It was not enough for her to say "The winds of change," the director felt need to include actual wind! There it was, the moment that brought the movie into focus for me.
I understand the idea of using weather or setting as a metaphor for something else. Yes, I get German Expressionism. it is easy to grasp but according to film classes, it is the end all be all in movies. Movies are brilliant when they use weather a symbol or metaphor, brilliant! I do not, on principal, take issue with it. I take issue with a director not trusting his writer, his actors or his audience to get the ideas. His actors are on screen acting their collective asses off and he ruins it. His screenwriter wrote an amazing script and he ruined it. His audience is most likely smart enough to appreciate the great level of talent involved and he ruined it. The whole thing is made worse when you realize he was his own screenwriter! Rarely has a movie had such a high level of acting and such a low level of directing. Here was a man who was just out of his league. Someone should have stepped in on this project and realized all of these amazing performances were going to go to waste, especially Viola Davis. Davis, in 1 scene as the young man's mother, gives the performance that makes careers. She is unbelievably heart breaking and it is even more impressive when you realize she is with Meryl Streep the whole scene and I have to give Streep credit because she gave the woman the scene. In fact, all of the actors are very giving, in the whole movie. They all believed in the project and they were let down.
A movie like this should have left me with questions and I should have been pondering the questions the movie poses. I should want to discuss with others my thoughts on the guilt or innocence of Father Flynn, or what Sister Beauvier means at the end when she breaks down and says she has doubts, but honestly I did not care. I just wanted it to be over. I wanted to get away from the German Expressionism and the bad handling of it all from the director. I wanted to get away from the crows, the dead rats, the feathers, the open windows and the literal winds of change.
Final Grade: C-. but the acting gets an A.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
The Spirit
A word of caution before I proceed. In this review I will heap; praise upon this movie and talk about how much I love it, but I do not recommend this movie to anyone. Please remember that! The Spirit will have limited appeal and even in its limited appeal, that person has to be in the exact right mood for it. I repeat, I am not recommending it to anyone, please do not see it because I loved it and then blame me when you hate it!
The Spirit of Central City lives inside a man who cannot be killed. He is an impeccably dressed man, with a red tie, nice hat and converse all star looking shoes. He is an actioneer, but he takes a serious beating. He wears a mask and falls in love with every woman he faces. He is a smooth talker and narrates his story to a cat (the symbolism there, of a cat having nine lives). His Nemesis, The Octopus(Samuel L. Jackson) is some whacked out scientist with an affinity for eggs, or a hatred of eggs, it is hard to decide. He injected himself and The Spirit to make them invincible, but in order to be truly immortal he has to drink from the blood of Heracles, but he got the wrong treasure chest. He got Jason's golden fleece and Sand Sariff(Eva Mendes) who likes shiny things accidentally got the blood of Heracles. The Spirit, when he was alive was in love with Sand Sariff when they were young, but after an accidental shooting, Sand took off vowing to never come back to central city. The Spirit wonders why she is back. He is also wondering what the deal with him and the Octopus is. Oh and The Octopus has a side kick named Silken Floss(Scarlett Johansen) and they are helped by petrie dish creations who all look the same but have names like Logos, pathos, mythos and such.
Frank Miller, who created The 300 and Sin City also created Elektra. In doing so, he openly admitted he stole from Will Eisner's The Spirit. As the writer and director of The Spirit he is homaging Will Eisner. However, he is shooting it and making it look like Robert Rodriguez's Sin City, which, as I mentioned before, was created by Frank Miller. What that means is Frank Miller is homaging Eisner, by copying Robert Rodriguez, who was copying from Frank Miller. It is as if the original artist he painted something based on a tracing of his work. The new version is not as good as the original or the tracing. However, it is perfect for me. With dialog that sounds like it was taken from a hardened 1940s detective story, for example "I've known some pretty strange women in my time but this one, she's got the final word on strange" and my personal favorite "I'm gonna kill you all kinds of dead" I felt like Frank Miller had written this movie specifically for me to enjoy. Those kinds of lines are the reasons I loved Frank Miller as a comic book artist growing up. He found a way to move words around to create the perfect lines one would never say, but would want to say.
Miller directs The Spirit half like a detective story, with 4th wall breaking narration, and half like a goofy action comedy, like a 1950s sci fi action movie. For example the half hilarious half absurd first fight between The Spirit and The Octopus where a toilet comes into play. He is not as sure footed as Rodriguez as a director, but I kind of enjoyed that genre mashing stuff. I feel like Miller had been waiting too long to direct a movie and figured he may as well get it all in there in one movie. He even goes into Bergman like Surrealism when The Octopus puts on a German Nazi outfit and brings in a belly dancer who wields serious swords.
Miller loves sexy women too. Lady Death is a sexy lady, floating with jewels all over her and she tries to seduce The Spirit to join her by kissing him. Then, Scarlett Johansen, with sexy glasses and cleavage bearing, acknowledges she is eye candy and that is pretty much her entire purpose being in the movie. But all of that pales in comparison to Eva Mendes. I was starting to worry the screen was going to catch on fire every time she was on screen. She wears diamonds so well, it is as if they would depreciate in value if she took them off. With outfits that cover just enough to make a guy tilt his head in every direction just to try and catch a peak, Mendes ignites the movie with her pure sex presence and when she drops her towel and gives the world a look as her glorious behind, nothing else in that moment mattered. She is perfect and Frank Miller understands how to perfectly use her in his movie.
Everything in The Spirit is an acquired taste and my guess is most people will not be able to acquire it, but it was perfect for me. It has so much in it that just results in giant belly laughs, whether intended or not, I will never know and it will ultimately confuse you and when they movie is over, you will probably wonder what just happened and why we heard Samuel L. Jackson talk about eggs so much, but I loved every glorious second of it. When the movie was over I was ready to go sit through it again, just so I could soak in all of Frank Miller's non-sequitor dialog and nonsensical CGI backgrounds and the awesome shadows only fight sequences. Oh and Eva Mendes' perfect behind. Thank you Frank Miller for not disappointing me with your absurdist brain!
Final Grade: My brain says A, but my heart knows it is a C
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
After The Dark Knight, this was the movie I was waiting all year to see. Before I saw a trailer or pictures or anything, I wanted to see it. I wanted to see it based on three things: Brad Pitt, David Fincher and it was about a guy aging backwards. Those three things combined assured me of awesomeness. After a beautiful trailer, great reviews, some great write ups and one awesome Pitt Rolling stone interview, my appetite for this movie was insatiable. I needed it in my life. I was pinning high hopes on Benjamin Button, which can ultimately spell bad news for a movie, but this was Brad Pitt and David Fincher. The men that combined for Fight Club and Se7en, two of my favourite movies. Hell, Fincher even made Jodie Foster watchable in Panic Room! Plus, it was a movie about a guy aging in reverse!
The year is 2005. A woman is near death in a hospital, her daughter is by her side and outside Hurricane Katrina is slowly making her way to the shore of New Orleans. The old woman, Daisy(Cate Blanchett) asks her daughter, Caroline(Julia Ormond) to get a diary out of her bag and asks her to read it aloud. We then hear another voice, the voice of Benjamin as he tells us "My name is Benjamin Button, and I was born under unusual circumstances. While, everyone else was agin', I was gettin' younger... all alone." Benjamin's mother died during child birth and his father could not bare the sight of him, so he left him on a random door step and Benjamin was picked up by a black woman, Queenie(Taraji P. Henson). The doctor does not believe Benjamin will live long, but he keeps on living. He is raised in an old folks home,where death is a constant companion. Benjamin is an ordinary person, living an ordinary life in extraordinary circumstances. He meets a girl, Daisy, when she is 7 and he 9, but he looks like an old man. When Benjamin gets his legs under him he goes off to sea. He is a hard worker, but is still ordinary. He goes to war, comes home and looks closer to 40 in age now. His real father reveals himself to Benjamin and Benjamin finds his real last name is Button and his Father dies leaving everything to Benjamin. Benjamin and Daisy meet up again, this time Daisy a young woman in her 20s and Benjamin looking like he is in his 40s. They share a sensual moment, but Benjamin rejects it. He works at the old folks home and continues to live an ordinary life. He and Daisy reconnect again, this time they are "meeting in the middle" and they have an awful lot of sex. However, Benjamin knows what is coming in his life and he refuses to let Daisy deal with it, so he leaves her. He now looks like he is 20 and he is touring the world, doing everything and anything a man can do in his life. He tells us that you are never too old to start again. This is your life and life is not measured in minutes but moments.
Eric Roth(Forrest Gump) has written a script that is long, slow, insightful and just a bit self important and it works most of the time. However, there is an emotional disconnect I felt during the movie. There were moments where I should have been moved to tears, but something was missing. I am under the impression that was the narrative style that left me feeling disjointed. Daisy narrated, Caroline narrated and Benjamin narrated and I think using the three different narrators caused this detachment from the story. Whose story were we hearing? Was this Daisy's life where Benjamin is featured, or is this Benjamin's life? I enjoyed the idea of a diary of events, but there was something missing throughout the whole film. Perhaps it is just because the premise is so odd that is difficult to comprehend, or maybe because the whole thing is kind of creepy with Benjamin and Daisy, especially the end, yikes! There are tons of great lines about life, death, love and living life and thematically it is not hard to understand what is going on here. Benjamin's condition is considered a miracle, and maybe it is. Perhaps he lived the life he did because of how he was born. Maybe he was so open to experiences because of the unusual circumstances of his birth. Maybe being raised around death or knowing that death could always be around the corner for him, made him understand life is to be cherished.
Whatever disconnect we feel, though, is softened by the tragic and timeless love story of Daisy and Benjamin. Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett are magnificent together and they are able to play versions of their characters at various ages and we see a progression in both of them. They are both full of love and life and when they come together it is beautiful. Pitt is mesmerizing in every moment of this movie and he transforms himself over and over again. Some of his best work comes when he isn't even saying anything. There is a scene where he goes to New York to surprise Daisy and it does not go well and Pitt does not say anything for at least a few minutes, but we can tell exactly what he is thinking. We understand what is in his heart and his soul, just with his eyes and his lips. It breaks your heart to see someone so good and know you will never be that good. It has been said that playing real people gets people an Oscar because we know too much about our actors and only see them unless they are playing someone else who actually existed and I hope that is not the case, because at this moment, Pitt is my pick for best actor of the year. Blanchett also gets to age, playing Daisy from 20 until her 80s and she is remarkable. I have always loved her but she is soaring in the role here. As Benjamin's mother, Taraji P Henson just shines. She is radiant, lovable, and heartbreaking. She is an actress on the cusp of something huge and this should push her over.
It is impossible to talk about this movie without talking about the technological side. Using the kind of CGI that is popular in video games, Pitt's face is successfully transplanted on other bodies, so Pitt can be Benjamin for pretty much the entire movie. Then we have the make up. What glorious make up it is. Brad Pitt, in Benjamin's 60s looks exactly like Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise. How this is even possible is so glorious and outstanding that I hope it gets recognition. I was consistently amazed by how the movie looked as well as what was going on. The war in reverse shot featured in the trailer looks even more impressive on the big screen and is a bit longer and there is a truly impressive action sequence on a boat that rivals The Titanic for sheer at-sea-awesomeness. It shows that Fincher doesn't only understand how to tell a story, he can use effects and action stunts to further his story telling abilities. I wonder how long until he tackles a big summer project.
Considering the massive scope of the story and the hindrances from a screen writer a bit too in love with Forrest Gump, The Curious case of Benjamin Button is an excellent movie that underwhelmed on the emotional side, but that could be just a by product of a story so strange and creepy. The performances are stunning and the technical side is unrivaled in pictures like this. I was hoping to feel something emotional, but I will settle for watching great actors do great work and I will settle for a movie whose themes include taking advantage of the moments we have because life is measured by those moments and even the most ordinary of men can live a life worth telling.
Final Grade: A-
The year is 2005. A woman is near death in a hospital, her daughter is by her side and outside Hurricane Katrina is slowly making her way to the shore of New Orleans. The old woman, Daisy(Cate Blanchett) asks her daughter, Caroline(Julia Ormond) to get a diary out of her bag and asks her to read it aloud. We then hear another voice, the voice of Benjamin as he tells us "My name is Benjamin Button, and I was born under unusual circumstances. While, everyone else was agin', I was gettin' younger... all alone." Benjamin's mother died during child birth and his father could not bare the sight of him, so he left him on a random door step and Benjamin was picked up by a black woman, Queenie(Taraji P. Henson). The doctor does not believe Benjamin will live long, but he keeps on living. He is raised in an old folks home,where death is a constant companion. Benjamin is an ordinary person, living an ordinary life in extraordinary circumstances. He meets a girl, Daisy, when she is 7 and he 9, but he looks like an old man. When Benjamin gets his legs under him he goes off to sea. He is a hard worker, but is still ordinary. He goes to war, comes home and looks closer to 40 in age now. His real father reveals himself to Benjamin and Benjamin finds his real last name is Button and his Father dies leaving everything to Benjamin. Benjamin and Daisy meet up again, this time Daisy a young woman in her 20s and Benjamin looking like he is in his 40s. They share a sensual moment, but Benjamin rejects it. He works at the old folks home and continues to live an ordinary life. He and Daisy reconnect again, this time they are "meeting in the middle" and they have an awful lot of sex. However, Benjamin knows what is coming in his life and he refuses to let Daisy deal with it, so he leaves her. He now looks like he is 20 and he is touring the world, doing everything and anything a man can do in his life. He tells us that you are never too old to start again. This is your life and life is not measured in minutes but moments.
Eric Roth(Forrest Gump) has written a script that is long, slow, insightful and just a bit self important and it works most of the time. However, there is an emotional disconnect I felt during the movie. There were moments where I should have been moved to tears, but something was missing. I am under the impression that was the narrative style that left me feeling disjointed. Daisy narrated, Caroline narrated and Benjamin narrated and I think using the three different narrators caused this detachment from the story. Whose story were we hearing? Was this Daisy's life where Benjamin is featured, or is this Benjamin's life? I enjoyed the idea of a diary of events, but there was something missing throughout the whole film. Perhaps it is just because the premise is so odd that is difficult to comprehend, or maybe because the whole thing is kind of creepy with Benjamin and Daisy, especially the end, yikes! There are tons of great lines about life, death, love and living life and thematically it is not hard to understand what is going on here. Benjamin's condition is considered a miracle, and maybe it is. Perhaps he lived the life he did because of how he was born. Maybe he was so open to experiences because of the unusual circumstances of his birth. Maybe being raised around death or knowing that death could always be around the corner for him, made him understand life is to be cherished.
Whatever disconnect we feel, though, is softened by the tragic and timeless love story of Daisy and Benjamin. Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett are magnificent together and they are able to play versions of their characters at various ages and we see a progression in both of them. They are both full of love and life and when they come together it is beautiful. Pitt is mesmerizing in every moment of this movie and he transforms himself over and over again. Some of his best work comes when he isn't even saying anything. There is a scene where he goes to New York to surprise Daisy and it does not go well and Pitt does not say anything for at least a few minutes, but we can tell exactly what he is thinking. We understand what is in his heart and his soul, just with his eyes and his lips. It breaks your heart to see someone so good and know you will never be that good. It has been said that playing real people gets people an Oscar because we know too much about our actors and only see them unless they are playing someone else who actually existed and I hope that is not the case, because at this moment, Pitt is my pick for best actor of the year. Blanchett also gets to age, playing Daisy from 20 until her 80s and she is remarkable. I have always loved her but she is soaring in the role here. As Benjamin's mother, Taraji P Henson just shines. She is radiant, lovable, and heartbreaking. She is an actress on the cusp of something huge and this should push her over.
It is impossible to talk about this movie without talking about the technological side. Using the kind of CGI that is popular in video games, Pitt's face is successfully transplanted on other bodies, so Pitt can be Benjamin for pretty much the entire movie. Then we have the make up. What glorious make up it is. Brad Pitt, in Benjamin's 60s looks exactly like Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise. How this is even possible is so glorious and outstanding that I hope it gets recognition. I was consistently amazed by how the movie looked as well as what was going on. The war in reverse shot featured in the trailer looks even more impressive on the big screen and is a bit longer and there is a truly impressive action sequence on a boat that rivals The Titanic for sheer at-sea-awesomeness. It shows that Fincher doesn't only understand how to tell a story, he can use effects and action stunts to further his story telling abilities. I wonder how long until he tackles a big summer project.
Considering the massive scope of the story and the hindrances from a screen writer a bit too in love with Forrest Gump, The Curious case of Benjamin Button is an excellent movie that underwhelmed on the emotional side, but that could be just a by product of a story so strange and creepy. The performances are stunning and the technical side is unrivaled in pictures like this. I was hoping to feel something emotional, but I will settle for watching great actors do great work and I will settle for a movie whose themes include taking advantage of the moments we have because life is measured by those moments and even the most ordinary of men can live a life worth telling.
Final Grade: A-
Valkerie
Perhaps if Tom Cruise was not in this it would be a different movie. Maybe if it was not from Christopher McQuarrie and Brian Singer, this would be a different movie. It is possible that Valkyrie could be a 2 hour and 45 minute dramatic character study ready for Oscars. There is no way to know because what we got was a movie written by Christopher McQuarrie, directed by Brian Singer and starring Tom Cruise. Those three individually do not really do dramatic character studies. Those three individually do tight, intense thrillers. Therefore, the hypothetical Valkyrie does not exist. We do not get a movie where actors spent months learning German accents and we did not hear any stories of the lead spending extra time wearing the eye patch to stay in character. That Valkyrie would have long sustained shots and would probably not have Eddie Izzard in a supporting role. This Valkyrie does not have German accents, at all. This Valkyrie does have Eddie Izzard in a supporting role. If you wanted or were expecting something else, well, that is on you. You knew the players going in. You know who Tom Cruise is and what he does on screen. If you can accept that, well good for you.
When the movie ends we are told that 21 attempts were made on Adolf Hitler's life by other Germans. This movie is about one such attempt. We know it was not successful because, if it was, this would not be the first I had heard of this story. If this group of men had been able to kill Hitler and take over Germany, like they had planned, I would have known all of the names of the players. I did not therefore, you know right off the bat this story will ultimately end badly and because Hitler is involved, you know this story is going to end in a lot of death. That is the risk these men were willing to take. These men, portrayed by Tom Cruise, Eddie Izzard, Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy and Terrance Stamp knew the risk but they hated Hitler and they had to "show the world that not all of us are like him. Otherwise, this will always be Hitler's Germany." Hitler had a reserve army for the intended use of keeping everything in check should he die, or should Berlin be taken over. Stauffenburg(Cruise) comes up with a plan that will use Hitler's reserve army against him. Stauffenberg will bomb Hitler, then with their team in place, will blame it on Hitler's people and the reserve army will arrest all of Hitler's allies and the "secret Germany" will take over. It seems like the perfect plan, but we know it is not perfect, even in the movie it is said "Just remember: nothing ever goes according to plan."
Tightly paced, brilliantly directed and awesomely written, Valkyrie is two times the movie I would have expected it to be. I knew Brian Singer still had it in him to direct something good, but I worried that Superman Returns had ruined him. He did not disappoint here. He has paced this movie so that it is so quick, even the scenes where a group of people are just sitting around talking seem intense. When we know the failure going in, finding a way to make it still intense enough for us to care, is no easy feat and Singer pulls it off nicely. I was on the edge of my seat as they carried out their plans. First the time they did not get the bomb off and especially the time they did get the bomb off. Who knew walking could look so intense. Having a very intense, timpani heavy score sure helped as well. Every time things were heating up, the percussion hit like my heart beat trying to break free from my chest to beat for these men who gave their lives trying to make something right in the world. Singer and McQuarrie made killing Hitler an absolute. People wanted to find a way to impeach him, but it is obvious killing him is the only way to accomplish changing Germany.
Christoper McQuarrie who has given this world such quotes as "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. And like that, poof. He's gone" and "I'd never ask you to trust me. It's the cry of a guilty soul." offers us a few more gems such as "When the S.S. catch you, they will pull you apart like warm bread" and my personal favorite for some reason "What makes you think you're stronger than the very momentum of history?" Now, I have no idea how accurate the story is, but McQuarrie certainly used his words wisely and constructed not only a tight script but a script that has some humor and intelligence to it. I find it amazing that this guy does not write more, or maybe he just needs this much time to get his scripts just perfect, because in my book he has 3 gems and that is not an easy feat.
As for the acting, it is all solid. Every one in the movie does what they are supposed to do, I only wish there had been more for Kenneth Branagh to do because I liked what he was doing. The lack of German accents from the cast did not bother me, because no one had it. No one was trying and failing or trying and succeeding. It was an adjustment right at first, but I got over it quickly and focused on the task at hand. Bill Nighy as a kind of wannabe leader was probably my favorite, but Terrance Stamp and Tom Wilkinson added some grace and brevity to the proceedings. Eddie Izzard pulled off being very fidgety about the whole thing very well and he is memorable even if he is not in the movie much. Then there is Mr. Tom Cruise. Early in his career Cruise made a living playing characters who stay cool under pressure. How much more pressured does it get than trying to kill Hitler. With his voice always at an intense low roar and his stoic facial expression Cruise is the final piece of this glorious puzzle. He does an excellent job portraying a man who knows what has to be done and is willing to sacrifice it all to do it.
Valkyrie is not perfect. It features a lot of players and at times they got lost in the shuffle of the pacing and when they all come back at the end, it is tough to remember who was who and what part they played, but that is minor considering the tight pacing is what kept the movie afloat when we knew how the story would end. As thrillers go this was top notch, which should have been expected of the two guys who created The Usual Suspects, my all time favorite thriller and my all time favorite movie. I am sorry I ever doubted Brian Singer and Valkyrie makes up for Superman Returns in spades.
Final Grade: A-
Bedtime Stories
One day a year I have no say in the movie I watch and that day is Christmas. Usually my family sees something worthwhile and entertaining, but after last years National Treasure: The Book of Secrets debacle, I did not have high hopes for anything this year. As the day approached I realized I was going to be subject to either Bedtime Stories or Marley and Me. Would I rather drown or be burned to death? It was a lose lose situation going in. The family, thankfully, did not choose Marley and Me, but that still meant I had to sit through an Adam Sandler family movie. Granted, it co-starred Russell Brand and it looked a lot like Night at the Museum, which was big cheesy fun and entertaining enough, so maybe this would not be so bad, but it starred Adam Sandler!
Raised in his family's small quaint motel, Skeeter(Sandler) loves the motel business. As a kid he had to watch his father sell the place, with a promise from the new owner that Skeeter would one day run the place. The small motel was turned into a massive luxury hotel and Skeeter, well Skeeter is the janitor there. The guy who will be running the place, Kendall(Guy Pierce), is a suck up who is dating the boss' daughter, Violet(Teresa Palmer, looking delicious in a gold bikini). Skeeter works hard, is well liked and still believes in the idea of hotels being magical places. Skeeter's sister, Wendy is losing her job as a school principal because the school is being torn down, but she has some prospects in Arizona and needs Skeeter to watch her kids. Skeeter has not been allowed to their house in three years because he punched out the kids' father, who is no longer int he picture and Skeeter does not know the first thing about kids. He will be splitting babysitting duties with Jill(Keri Russell) and he gets the night shift, which means bedtime stories. Skeeter's dad always told the best stories to him as a kid, so he tries his best with the kids. His stories come from real life but get transplanted into the middle ages, the future, the wild west, etc. After the first story, the next day, the story comes true and Skeeter has a chance to run the hotel, if he can come up with a better theme than Kendall. So, every night Skeeter tries out a new story, in hopes of getting the things he wants, but the kids control the stories, so what he wants and what they want clash, but the kids and Skeeter grow close and it is a family movie after all!
Considering my feelings going in, I was pleasantly surprised. Bedtime Stories has some charm and few laughs and Sandler is really good with kids, not that that should be surprising! The stories feature effects that are at times very impressive(The future space craft) and the not so impressive(Skeeter's flips on the chariot) and the story does get lost in the effects and the cheap laughs (The constant shots of that bug eyed guinea pig from the preview), but I was not bored and I laughed. yes, most of the laughs were courtesy of Russell Brand, but Sandler had his moments as well. I am not sure how it happened, but Keri Russell and Sandler have a really nice easy chemistry and it actually works that she could fall in love with him. Their date is one of the highlights of the movie in it's absurd comedy mixed with gentle sweetness. Sandler appears to be having a fun time in all the different costumes and time periods and it is clear he wanted to make a movie for his new family, as his baby girl has a small cameo, and there is nothing wrong with that. I have seen worse Sandler movies and I have seen better ones, but this is the first one my whole family could watch.
One of the things I liked about it until the very end, was the lack of gross out humor. Until the final act, there was no booger, fart, or gross out jokes, which was nice because PG movies for kids always feature farts because they are apparently funny. Then int he third act we get a slimy booger monster and then the bug eyed guinea pig farts at the end, congratulations on ruining that! Adam Shankman(The director) has directed far worse movies than this, but I thought he was turning a corner with Hairspray. He is out of his league with the effects and he does not have a confident eye, but in a family movie I guess it is not important. Also not important, is how the whole thing happened. It is never explained how and/or why the stories come to life. I was okay with it and each of the things in the story had an interesting way of coming to life, and I am sure if this movie ends up a hit, we will get a sequel or two. For my money though, this should be a one time thing. It had it's moments, like Russell Brand just agreeing with everyone at the end of every story, or the little nephew saying "What, she's hot" but I do not think I need a whole other movie of Sandler encountering random things, unless they bring back the gang of little people back. That was by far the funniest stuff in the movie.
Final Grade: C+
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Seven Pounds
Rarely has a movie gone to such lengths to keep a potential audience from knowing anything. The entire cast said they had no idea what was going on when they read the script, the previews admit nothing and even the title is almost indecipherable, so giving a synopsis is going to be a bit difficult, but I shall try to do my best.
Ben Thomas(Will Smith) is an I.R.S. agent who is on a mission that is very clear to him and only to him. Well, it is also clear to his childhood friend, but because it is perfectly clear to them, there is no need for exposition. Ben is not interested in anyone else knowing anything, so we get nothing. Ben is interested in finding out if people are good people, when no one is watching. He is genuinely nice, except when he is berating a blind man or when something does not go the right way. Then he is a nasty, mean and cold human being. He is haunted by something, but we don't know what haunts him. He is selfless, or is he? He meets Emily(Rosario Dawson) and it takes him back. He has not been kind to himself and she is trying to change that, except she is dying. Ben is kind to her and they strike up an odd friendship. Ben's brother is looking for him because Ben may have stolen something from him, but maybe he didn't. Ben gives his house away to a woman with an abusive husband, just because he wants to help, but why? He has a deadly jellyfish, but why?
I have read all kinds of reviews saying that your enjoyment of the movie will depend on what you think of the pay off, I am not sure if that is entirely true, but maybe I am just blinded by my love for Will Smith. And in Seven Pounds, Smith is a whole different person. Yes, he has some of the charm he always has, but he is awkward on screen. He is a man holding everything back, but trying to show a smile and it is not the usual Will Smith smile we see, it is a painful, hiding the truth smile. Also, I knew exactly what was happening less than 15 minutes in and it did not deter me from anything. I am not sure it is obvious what is going on, but for some reason I figured it out. I did not always know the how or why, but I knew what was going on, but when the moment came it was still emotionally resonant. Smith and Dawson have a wonderful chemistry and Dawson does some great work as a woman trying to live her life, but is dying and will never be able to run because of her congestive heart failure. I like that the pacing of the movie slowed way down when this pair came together because for a while what we saw was a series of short confusing scenes and then the movie slows down and gets comfortable as we watch this friendship blossom and we want it to succeed. We don't want whatever is going to happen to actually happen because we know whatever it is it is not good.
The jellyfish has been the topic of many a review as being distracting, but as a symbol the thing is very clear. Ben narrates to us that when he first saw that kind of jellyfish his dead said it was the most deadly creature on Earth, but all Ben saw was how beautiful it was. The Jellyfish then becomes a symbol for life. Life is dangerous but life is beautiful and every time they cut to the jellyfish that is what we are being reminded of. Seven Pounds is exploring the dichotomy of the beauty and danger of life. I am not sure how people did not get that because it is spelled out for us, but maybe people were trying to hard to figure out the rest of the movie. The Jellyfish is a pretty gorgeous creature in the movie and I enjoyed the cutaway shots to it swimming in Ben's aquarium thing.
I am not sure how we are supposed to feel when the movie is over, but I was sad and kind of felt depressed. I think there are elements of something uplifting and maybe even life affirming to be found in the movie, but I was sad when it was over. I wanted to go home, hug someone and eat ice cream. That is not to say I did not enjoy it because I did, but I enjoyed the movie as a whole, not how it made me feel. I enjoyed the performances, the interesting story and the cool camera focusing tricks, but it is a downer, a big downer, not that movies have to be uppers and I admire this movie for having the guts to follow through on a tough premise and I admire how difficult it was to market such a movie, when you are trying to keep it all hidden. I am not sure it is necessary to keep it hidden, but like I said earlier, Ben Thomas knows what he is doing and he is not going to tell anyone so how could we know. I will say this, the opening 2 minutes of the movie will grab your attention and make you sit up and say, "What the hell" and as someone who has seen far too many movies, that is saying something.
Final Grade: B
Australia
There are so many things I could say about how badly this movie went in the making, or even the editing, but you could go anywhere to find that stuff. I love Baz Luhrman's romantic sensibilities. He makes these big broad sweeping romances and I fall for it every time. He even modernized Romeo and Juliet and made me like it ( i prefer my Shakespeare traditional). His vision is expensive, bold and always romantic. It is hard to make a big budget movie that holds limited appeal to young people. Look at Pearl Harbor for how not to do it and look to Titanic on how to do it. Australia owes much to those contemporary movies and even more to the big romantic dramas of the late 1930s and early 1940s. It is a long, 2 hrs and 45 minutes, romantic drama with previews that did not even promise the action stunts of a Pearl Harbor. It promised only a Romantic drama of the highest order. This is a lot to swallow for an audience and it was hard to swallow for me as well, but again, I fall for Baz every time, so how could I not see it?
Set a little before that infamous day of Pearl Harbor, Australia is narrated by a young aboriginal boy, Nullah, who tells us this is a fairy tale. You have to remember we are watching a fairy tale for the rest of the movie to make sense. If you cannot remember this is a fairy tale, or a story, then you will not be able to watch it. Nullah tells us life is about the stories we leave and our lives are successful if we leave great stories. The aboriginal people only have history through their stories. Nullah is not fully aboriginal though, he is half white and black, or a "creamie." At this stage in Australian history, "creamies" were ripped from their homes and shipped to an island where men of faith tried to get the black out of them. Nullah manages to always elude the law as he lives on a cattle ranch called Faraway Downs. Lady Ashley(Nicole Kidman) has come to Faraway Downs, which is owned by her husband to get her husband to sell it, but her husband has just been killed and Nullah tells her that all of her cattle are being stolen. Lady Ashley will not stand for it, and she needs to find her cattle and get it to the Australian Army to make money off of it, to sell her land. She enlists The Drover(Hugh Jackman) to help her and they set off on an epic cattle drove. When the drove ends, Lady Ashley and The Drover try living together in harmony but much stands in their way and eventually the drover leaves, and Lady Ashley loses Nullah and then The Japanese bomb Australia the way they bombed Pearl Harbor.
If it seems like my synopsis is a little too broad or doesn't cover it all, that is intentional. There are so many little things that are going on in Australia that one could never cover it all, without just linking someone to the wikipedia site. Baz Luhrman has never been known for thinking small, but with Australia he took his large thinking to a whole new level. Trying to get an epic romance in, tackle racism and religion, fit in a war and try and show how gorgeous Australia is, is no small task, but Baz is supremely up to the challenge. I expected this movie to be a total mess, but that damn Baz Luhrman totally got me again! Every time Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman were on screen together I just could not wait for fireworks from the two. Jackman seems to be relishing the chance to be a full blown Australian man. he is always just a bit dirty and he has a glint in his eye oh and his body made me briefly question my sexuality, I mean DAMN! But beyond that, Baz captures everything he wanted to without flinching. He wants us to watch a long cattle drive and we will watch it all, including a seriously thrilling stampede that relies on us remembering this is a fairy tale.
Luhrman loves his sweeping shots too. I am not sure if there is a crane big enough to capture the scope of his vision, so I am fairly certain some of the big aerial shots had to be shot out of an airplane of some sort. This movie is an expensive love letter to his home continent and he is not sparing anything. Australia looks the way The Lord of the Rings made New Zealand look. You just want to go there! The scope of Australia had to make many a producer nervous and unfortunately the movie tanked, but it did not deserve to, at all. I wish the buzz did not get so bad and I am glad I saw ti regardless of hearing all of those negative things. Luhrman continues his trend of creating these grand sweeping romantic epics. His heart bleeds all over the film here and he goes to painstaking depths to show us the whole story. The entire story hinges on "Somewhere over the Rainbow" and they always use it perfectly to remind us we are watching a beautiful fairy tale. Nullah is our point of view character and we are rooting for him and we are rooting for Lady Ashley and The Drover to make it, but we do not know if this is how it really went, what we know is this is the story they left and that is good enough for us.
Oh and do not think the movie is only about romance. The bombing of Australia is just as epic. With explosions on a grand scale, and a decimated set piece, World War 2 gets very real and then after the initial blast, we get a very tightly shot and paced finale, which includes some very intense moments with Japanese soldiers. Again, the scope of this movie is so massive, it is impossible to cover it all, except to say that Luhrman accomplishes his mission. He manages to tell a truly remarkable love story in the context of World War 2 and the insane racism that existed in Australia. He shows us the ugliest side of his home country, but he redeems it by giving us such romance! Oh and their rain kiss is giving Spiderman a run for its money
Final Grade: B+
Yes Man
Yes, Yes Man is derivative of earlier Jim Carrey movies, but what does that mean exactly? Isn't that what comedians do? Has Adam Sandler ever made a movie that was derived from an early Adam Sandler movie? Isn't Knocked Up an off shoot of The 40yr Old Virgin? That is what comedy is. Someone, usually an actor, finds something they are good at and they mine that to create a string of movies. Every Will Ferrell movie is essentially the same thing, right? The results typically depend on the energy of the performer and whether or not one likes that particular performer. I love Jim Carrey. Liar, Liar is one of my all time favorite comedies and Carrey's physical comedy prowess is unrivaled by anyone else in movies. The problem is, comedies do not look like the Jim Carrey 1990s comedies anymore. The entire landscape has changed and Carrey's career has gone to another place, a sort of movie limbo. Yes Man looked like an attempt for Carrey to go back to the well and one has to wonder if that well was dry this time or was there just enough left for Carrey to make something funny.
The trailers are a bit misleading, because Carl Allen(Carrey) probably has not been saying no his life. It is not said for sure, but it is implied that 3 years earlier when his wife left him, Carl changed. If he was as miserable his life as he is when we meet him, I doubt he would have had friends at all. As is, his friends are fed up with him. He is a loan officer and spends his nights alone with a bunch of movies. He won't answer his phone and makes excuses for everything. He misses all of the big events in his friends lives and even has a nightmare about the day he dies and how no one will care. That is just who Carl is when we meet him. Then he goes to a YES seminar. At first, he thinks everyone is crazy, but Carl is willing to try the idea of saying yes to everything. On the first night, he gives a homeless person a ride and all of his cash. He runs out of gas and has a run-in with an absolutely adorable young lady, Allison(Zooey Deschnal). Carl likes where this is headed and starts saying yes to everything. The first time he says no, he falls down some stairs and almost gets mauled by a dog, so he realizes he has to say yes to everything. He learns to fly a plane, play guitar, speak Korean, and at work he says yes to every person who wants a loan. These events help change his life. Carl is living life instead of watching it pass him by. He runs into Allison again, and they start a relationship, something Carl never would have done before.
After over an hour of not having a real conflict, it becomes obvious that Yes Man is that kind of movie where the conflict, climax and resolution are all going to come in the final 15 minutes, which is how romantic comedies typically go, especially the ones where people are keeping secrets from each other. It can be frustrating, and it is somewhat here as well, but until that time, Yes Man offered enough laughs to forgive the lack of conflict. Carrey wears Carl like a comfortable old robe, and in turn we are warmed by the familiarity of it all. We know Carry has done this a million times before, but we always liked when he did it before, so why would now be any different? His rubber face gets some nice use, but over the last few years Carrey has also become a much better actor and I think that makes the climax and resolution a lot stronger. The final confrontation has an actual emotional resonance and I have watched that final scene more than a few times now. The comedy is broad and will take you back to a time when comedies were not so verbal and more visual. I like where comedy is today, but I really enjoyed watching Jim Carrey do his Jim Carrey thing, here.
Zooey Deschenal with her big expressive blue eyes is adorable beyond belief and while the age difference is a bit annoying, I really believed her and believed she could fall for Carl. Allison is a total movie woman. She does things that people in real life do not do. She is a musician (the scene of her song is hilarious), a painter and a photographer, but she teaches a class in taking pictures while jogging. Why? Because it is totally adorable that she does these things. She could not exist in real life, because in real life, someone could not make money trying to teach a class in how to take blurry pictures, but in the movies, it is perfectly acceptable and an adorable movie girl thing to do. Allison is a free spirit who is up for anything without the need for the Yes seminar, but she feels grounded, for the most part. Carl's friends are also movie people, but it works. Danny Masterson shows up as the friend totally taking advantage of Carl's need to say yes and Bradley Cooper(With his looks how is he not a star yet?) is the friend who has Carl's best interests at heart and he and Carrey have a very nice moment towards the end of the film. Then there is Carl's boss, Norman. Norman is a total dork, but is hilarious and gets a lot of the comedy. The scene where Norman and Carl exchange funny faces reminded me just how good Jim Carrey can be.
The last thing I want to mention about Yes Man has to do with a song and that song is the epic "Separate Ways(Worlds apart)" by Journey. Carl has it as his ringtone and the keyboard sounds pretty cool coming out of the phone, but the movie is not finished with the song. The climax finds Carrey zipping around Los Angeles in a sick motorcycle and this song is blaring through the whole scene. Each revving of the bike is right in tune with the song and the epic feeling of the song, adds to the epic feeling of the scene. The scene is funny and thrilling, but this song gives it something extra. Music can often add something to a scene or a movie, but this song almost makes the movie better, just with how perfectly it is placed. Yes, the lyrics make sense, too, but that is not the point. I wanted to cheer as soon as the song started up at exactly the perfect moment. It really is a fantastic moment and it still makes me smile when I go up and watch it.
Final Grade: B-
Slumdog Millionaire
If you have ever had a lengthy movie conversation with me, chances are I will eventually begin talking about how much I hate Danny Boyle's overrated movies and his general lack of ability to tell a story. It is one of Kyle's universal movie truths. I think Shallow Grave and Trainspotting are pretty good, but overrated and then after that he made 2 bad movies (The Beach, 28 Days Later) and 1 movie so bad I am pretty sure a child made it (Sunshine). However, with the positive reviews and intriguing premise, I found myself drawn to Slumdog Millionaire, even with that burning hatred for Mr. Boyle. I can respect the guy's visual style, but I needed him to be able to successfully tell a story and not just focus on interesting visuals. This movie seemed like the perfect opportunity, plus the story is just so fascinating!
Jamal Malik(Dev Patel) is 1 question away from winning it all on an Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, when the show ends for the night and now he has to come back the next day to try and win. There is a problem, though, Jamal is a poor kid from the streets, a Slumdog, and a slumdog cannot be this smart, so he must have cheated. He is arrested, tortured and then questioned. How did he know the answers to all off these questions? Is he a genius? Is he cheating? Or was it just written in the cards for him to win? During that night, Jamal tells all of these incredible, brutal, sad, heartwarming, tragic, funny and enlightening stories of his life and all of these stories led him to knowing each of the answers in the game. Jamal grew up without a family and he and his brother, along with a girl named Latika, run the streets, trying to stay afloat in the world. Jamal's life is ultimately depressing, but he is also endearing because he has an eternal love for Latika that keeps him going and keeps him living no matter what tragedy he lives through. Every time the pair gets broken apart, he finds his way back to her and it becomes obvious, he is not on the show to win the money. The money does not matter to him. He needs to find Latika and this show, he hopes, will bring her to him.
Danny Boyle has finally found a way to put together great visuals with great storytelling. I think this is the kind of story that could get confusing by switching from past to present and throwing in random images that do not always make sense until later and Boyle handles it perfectly. This is the kind of movie that really speaks to the human spirit and everything about just feels beautiful and magical. What makes it even more riveting is that we do not know if he will get the last question right. He does not know the answer to it and he never did, and when the question comes up, we know the money does not matter to him, so there is some tension to wondering whether or not he will win. Dev Patel does an excellent job making Jamal street savvy, hopelessly romantic and funny. He creates a complex "slumdog" who is probably smarter and more ready for life than most academics because he has lived his life. he knows how to read people and he understands how the world works because his life has shown him the ugly realities that exist.
For two hours, we are asked to believe in the power of fate, which is not always easy to do, but Danny Boyle and company made it very easy for me to believe that it was just written in the cards for Jamal to be on that show at that very moment. There was never a moment where I thought the whole thing was absurd and I never felt manipulated by the movie, the characters, or the dialog. I know it is adapted from a book, which I would now very much like to read, but the screenplay is fantastic and we always know exactly what we need to know and the reveals are done very well. I did know what the final question would be very early on, but that did not stop my enjoyment from the movie. I was fully inside of this story. I felt like I was living this story along with Jamal and I felt every brutal moment of torture, which Boyle makes even more brutal with how he shoots it and how the colors bleed on the screen. The whole experience was so vivid.
I am not quite prepared to put this in my very top of the year, but it certainly will have a spot in my top 10. Slumdog Millionaire is the kind of movie that can revive your belief in the human spirit and helps you believe in the idea that love can conquer all and that love can make one stronger. It believes in the idea that that which does not kill you makes you stronger and perhaps everything we go through will help us one day and will in fact, make us stronger. These are all things I am not sure I believe in, but for the two hours of Slumdog Millionaire, I was a full believer and when it was over, and the cast did a Bollywood dance, I wanted to join them and dance the joy this movie filled my heart with.
Final Grade: A-
Sunday, December 14, 2008
The Day the Earth Stood Still
I have to confess that I have not yet seen the original. I know it is a bad confession to make, but there it is. I was going to watch it, but I decided to wait until after seeing the sure to be awful remake so the original would not get ruined for me. I do, however, like my alien movies to be action packed Independence Day style movies and this remake looked like a rollicking good time with trucks dissolving and big spheres hanging out in central park.
The Government is rounding up all these intellectual types because something is happening in New York and they have to be flown away from New York in order to study what happened. It is like gathering the best of our country to keep them safe and repopulate the Earth in case some bad stuff goes down. Only, whatever bad thing they expected to happen does not happen. Instead a giant sphere lands in central park, it gets very bright and something steps out of it. Being America, we shoot first and the alien goes down, then out of the fog comes a giant robot alien, who shuts down all of our weapons to a trend to the fallen alien. The fallen alien comes around, is born and grows up to be Klatu(Keanu Reeves). He desires to speak to the world leaders, but instead he is going to be questioned and possibly tortured. This does not sit too well with Klatu and he works his alien mojo and gets free, but he needs to heal himself so he finds a way to get in touch with Helen Bensen, one of the smart people who found Klatu. They bond and she helps him until he reveals that the human race is going to be destroyed because they have treated the planet poorly. Oh man Al Gore would be so happy! Helen spends the rest of the movie trying to convince Klatu that the human race is worth saving by taking him to see a Nobel prize winning genius and getting Klatu to spend time with her step-son, Jacob (The all too adorable Jaden Smith). While this is going on, the giant robot thing dissolves into thousands of little termites that eat away at the planet in seconds.
Every sort of action that you see in the trailer is all of the action that is in the movie save for one moment where Keanu kills a dude and brings him back to life (the only good moment). The Day the Earth Stood Still is so boring I forgot I watched it briefly. A lot of talking goes on about how humans are bad, but we have this other side. The other side is love, compassion, forgiveness and manners. Those outweigh our nasty shoot first side. The movie portrays our government as anti everything but pro war and does not care to communicate with an alien life force. I wonder what our government will be portrayed when Obama officially takes over. Jennifer Connelly, as Helen, must have wanted a quick check because she is way too good for a movie like this and Keanu, well he is actually exactly as good as this movie deserves. He keeps getting roles for some unknown reason, but here he is totally vacant and is almost laughable at times.
The Day the Earth Stood Still wants us to think about how we treat the world and how we treat each other, which is all fine and good, but within the story of the movie, the leaders never know that is the problem. Klatu never gets to tell anyone but Helen what is supposed to happen. The idea of alien life is never given its proper respect and people come to accept it just a little too easily for my taste. I wanted some people to be totally crazed by it. The effects make up for some of the downsides, but the movie as a whole just kind of sucks. I have seen many movies that are worse than it, but I think in a few days I will have completely forgotten this movie exists. It is just so bland and vacant.
Punisher: War Zone
Most times when a movie is this level of bad, it deserves some sort of mocking review, so, I will probably keep this kind of thing short.
The movie opens on some sort of Italian mob meeting of the minds that looks like it is a SNL parody of The Sopranos with Dominic West doing such a gross and over the top Italian accent, I am still waiting for real Italians to kill him. Eventually the action moves to some typical on the docks warehouse where we meet a trio of villains who like to jump and do flips, I called them the Wiskerhsam brothers after the monkeys in a Dr. Seuess book. The Punisher kills people including an undercover agent and he feels bad about it, very bad, bad enough that he want sot quit killing bad guys and being wanted by the good guys. Being a fugitive, The Punisher is hard to find for the good guys, especially when he is hiding out by walking down the middle of the street in full artillery!!
Punisher kills a guy by impaling him with a fence post, cool, then he jumps down and uses the dead guy's face to break his fall, even cooler.
Then there is the dialog, oh the dialog. This movie features the kind of dialog that you would put in movies that are meant to parody serious action movies for example:
Dying man: I guess I'll see you in hell
Punisher: If I see you anywhere near hell, I'll kick your ass
That is said in all seriousness!!
There is a lot of blood and a lot of bullets sprayed and the body count is unbelievable, which is usually a high selling point for me, but it is just a disaster.
A woman directed it and it sparked a conversation as to if she made it bloodier to prove that women could play with the boys, or is this just her style? I do not have the answer, but trust me this girl can play with the big boy sin the blood department:
Punisher actually punches a dude through his face!!! I mean Punisher's hand hits the guys face and then goes through his head and comes out the other end!!
ROCK ON!
The movie opens on some sort of Italian mob meeting of the minds that looks like it is a SNL parody of The Sopranos with Dominic West doing such a gross and over the top Italian accent, I am still waiting for real Italians to kill him. Eventually the action moves to some typical on the docks warehouse where we meet a trio of villains who like to jump and do flips, I called them the Wiskerhsam brothers after the monkeys in a Dr. Seuess book. The Punisher kills people including an undercover agent and he feels bad about it, very bad, bad enough that he want sot quit killing bad guys and being wanted by the good guys. Being a fugitive, The Punisher is hard to find for the good guys, especially when he is hiding out by walking down the middle of the street in full artillery!!
Punisher kills a guy by impaling him with a fence post, cool, then he jumps down and uses the dead guy's face to break his fall, even cooler.
Then there is the dialog, oh the dialog. This movie features the kind of dialog that you would put in movies that are meant to parody serious action movies for example:
Dying man: I guess I'll see you in hell
Punisher: If I see you anywhere near hell, I'll kick your ass
That is said in all seriousness!!
There is a lot of blood and a lot of bullets sprayed and the body count is unbelievable, which is usually a high selling point for me, but it is just a disaster.
A woman directed it and it sparked a conversation as to if she made it bloodier to prove that women could play with the boys, or is this just her style? I do not have the answer, but trust me this girl can play with the big boy sin the blood department:
Punisher actually punches a dude through his face!!! I mean Punisher's hand hits the guys face and then goes through his head and comes out the other end!!
ROCK ON!
Cadillac records
My knowledge of Chess records is relatively limited except that I know it was the record company who signed Chuck Berry. I do know now, that some of the things that happened in the movie are not fact based, but the movie made me set out to find that out. Also, only a few years ago I was not at all a fan of Adrien Brody but have slowly come around on him.
Leonard Chess(Brody) seems to have one goal in life: get rich enough to afford a Cadillac. Everything after that is gravy. He owns a nightclub but it gets shot up and thus ends that. Instead of pressing charges on who got it shot up, Chess offers the guy a deal. That guy happened to be Muddy Waters(Jeffery Wright) owner of the fingers that could pluck a guitar like never before and he happened to be band mates with Little Walter(Columbus Short, in what should be a star making performance), a man who could play the harmonica like you wouldn't believe. With Waters as his top talent, the business savvy Chess bribes a few djs, makes a few records, blows up his club to get the insurance and soon he has his own record label and recording studio. He breaks the bank making "race music." He rewards his acts with a fresh Cadillac every year, but does not tell them it comes out of their royalty checks. Soon, Chess records is signing artists like Howlin Wolf(Eamon Walker), Chuck Berry(Mos Def) and eventually Etta James(Beyonce). Waters is barely making any money, but Leonard seems to be rolling in it and like any music biopic drugs, sex and bad business signal the downfall of the label.
Trying to tackle 2 major stories plus 3 or 4 smaller stories is a tough task, but somehow Cadillac records manages to weave the stories together pretty well. The acting is all top notch with Brody and Wright anchoring some of the wilder and more fierce performances from Short and Beyonce. Mos Def's Chuck Berry is a jokester and Berry's well documented love for white women is factored into the movie. The movie tells an important story about American Music history and I am sad more people are not going out to see it. This is record label that helped turn the blues into rock and roll. This is record label that inspired The Rolling Stones and inspired millions of people everywhere to pick up a guitar or a harmonica and the music is great. Every scene that takes place in the recording studio is on fire especially Columbus Short's rendition of "My babe" and Beyonce ripping her way through "At Last." This is the kind of movie that you watch and wish you could sing that well or play an instrument that way. It gives you an awful lot of respect for musicians and what they are able to do.
The movie is narrated by Cedric the Entertainer who plays Willie Dixon, the principal song writer for Chess Records and that is an interesting choice I think. The narrator is part of the story, but far enough removed from the immediate action that we trust him and his point of view. Eventually, Chess Records gets bought out because Leonard was losing money and he did not treat his acts very well, and our narrator informs us that he successfully sued Chess Records for back royalties, so it does give us a second of pause on how much we can trust him. We also learn that Berry did get money from the Beach Boys for stealing his riffs for their beach music. This movie only made me want a full Chuck Berry biopic because his story is so interesting. He broke the race barrier and then when he went to jail it all went away and then a bunch of white artists took from him and thus began rock and roll to the rest of America.
I know this movie has a limited appeal, but it really is worth the time and the money to watch. Brody and Wright do great work together spanning 30 or so years with each other and the music is really sexy and fun and the movie works in that way as well. Cadillac Records is going to get overlooked this season, but I hope people go to it and watch it later and when they do I hope they are like me and go searching for the truth with what happened with this seminal record company and recording studio.
Final Grade: B+
Milk
I wish this movie could have a better title. I understand that "The Mayor of Castro Street" was already taken, but seriously, could they not come up with a better title than Milk? Okay with that out of my system, I move on to reviewing.
Harvey Milk(Sean Penn) is 40 years old and he laments that he has not done anything with his life. Scott Smith(James Franco), the young man he picked up for the night tells Harvey that he should move. The two men set out for San Francisco and soon, they open a camera shop on Castro street. In the 1970s the gay movement was making waves in hopes of capturing what the civil rights movement of the 60s did. Milk knows that in order to make change, they need one of their own in office. Harvey is not a man who was born to be a hero, but he could see no one else would do it, so he did it. He tried, at least. After 3 unsuccessful attempts at running for office, even though he got the unions, old people and the gays, Milk swore to Scott he would give it up, except new zoning laws made it possible for Milk to win. Scott has to leave and Harvey soon shacks up with Jack(Diego Luna)and Harvey wins a seat on the city board of supervisors.. He, along with Dan White(Josh Brolin) make up the new members and they forge an unusual relationship that will ultimately be the downfall of Milk. In 1978, Anita Bryant was making the rounds across America condemning homosexuals and states across the nation were putting in propositions stating that gay people could be fired or lose rights just for being gay. The movie climaxes with California's Proposition 6 and Milk's fight to beat the proposition. It is a story that is sadly still all too relevant today.
If it seems I kind of plowed my way through the story, I kind of did and I apologize for that, but this is not going to be a typical kind of review except to say this: Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, James Franco, Emile Hirsch and everyone else acting in this movie are superb and my issues with the movie lay with Gus Van Sant's spotty pacing and the kind of nauseating story structure.
But none of that matters with this movie. Milk is evidence that a movie with flaws can rise above them when the message in the movie is important or clear. Harvey Milk was a very flawed individual with a taste for young men and the movie does not shy away from that, but Milk was more than just a gay politician and this movie paints the portrait of a man who believed in giving people hope above all else. Yes, this is a movie about gay rights, but it is a movie about having faith in what is right and knowing in your heart to have hope that things can be better and while the screenplay is not perfect, Dustin Lance Black, wrote some amazing stuff for Penn to speak, especially towards the end as we watch Milk dictate his life in a sort of last testament and will of a man who believes he could be killed at any moment for just trying to make people equal.
I cannot in good faith place Milk at the top of my list for the year because the movie is slow, boring and at times too tedious for its own good, but it perseveres through it all with a message of love and hope. Penn's Milk is a smart, innocent bookish dork with an unusual oratory style, but has gusto and balls and is willing to do whatever it takes to get his message across. he is a man who believes in his cause and by contrast, Josh Brolin's Dan White is a closet case, unsure of who he is and sees Milk as too confident, too sure and it scares him. Their scenes pop with life and both men give the words meaning and a life of their own.
Milk is the kind of movie I expect to be with me for a while, and a movie that is sadly needed in this day when homosexual people are still fighting for equal rights. Luckily this movie fills me with hope that their day is coming and this movie makes me believe that when that day comes it will be the most fabulous of occasions.
Oh and I dare you to not tear up when Milk recieves a phone call from a wheel chair bound gay teen who wants to kill himself.
Final Grade: A-
Monday, December 08, 2008
Four Christmases
This is kind of a convoluted movie to review and describe, so I am going to break it down into sections, which the movie supplies to us the viewer.
Section 1: We meet Brad(Vince Vaughn)and Kate(Reese Witherspoon) as they are in their 3rd year of unwedded bliss. They keep the spark alive by role playing in clubs and having quickies in bar bathrooms. They take dance lessons that are usually reserved for engaged couples. They take this opportunity to give us exposition as to their thoughts on marriage being gross and nasty. They cite the wedding vows as slightly misogynistic. They both come from broken homes and do not want to bring people into the world due to it, so no kids either. They get out of Christmas with their families each year by lying. One year all the flights are cancelled, they end up on the news and suddenly they have to do 4 Christmases in one day.
Christmas 1: Brad's dad and brothers are blue collar guys. They are manly men and they give Brad a hard time for being rich and smart because he became a lawyer and got out. Physical comedy ensues with pratfalls and comedic fights. The point of the scene is that Brad hid things from Kate, (his real name) and is meant to point out the differences in class. There is a deeper cultural context here, but the movie is more interested in playing the poor vs. rich for cheap laughs, which is fine I guess.
Christmas 2: Kate's mom's house is "a bit of a cougar den." Kate's sister has a little baby girl and ample cleavage, both of which get much attention in the scenes. This scene offers the best laughs all the way around. It sounds like Vaughn had a hand in writing this scene. Plus, it has some awesome physical comedy from Witherspoon as she is trapped in a bounce house. The point in this scene is that Kate begins to think that she wants a child and begins to wonder if Brad can give her what she wants.
Christmas 3: Brad's mom is sleeping with Brad's former best friend. She is a hippie and bakes pot brownies. Here they play a couples game and Brad and Kate come in last but Brad appear oblivious as to what is happening. Kate is really starting to doubt what they have and is worried that she is wasting her time with Brad.
Christmas 4: By the time Kate and Brad have reached this house, they have broken up. Brad likes things the way they are and Kate wants more. Brad drops her off and leaves. Kate goes inside and sees both of her parents there, which surprises her. She is now believing that she does want a family and that love can work.
We all know where the movie is going and it does not waste time getting there, clocking in at under 90 minutes. There are a lot of predictable laughs, but I found myself charmed for the most part. I like Vaughn and while there are time Reese is struggling to keep up, she does a pretty good job with the broad humor. Be warned that the movie is a bit filthier than I would have imagined given its Christmas season release, but there is some serious language and a pretty nasty scene involving a grandfather. There is nothing ground breaking, but it isn't bad either. It will not be a classic Christmas movie, but they cannot all be classics can they?
Final Grade: C
Transporter 3
The movie that began my enjoyment of watching Jason Statham driving and fighting was The Transporter. With its ridiculous action stunts (Statham used a cookie tray to deflect a rocket headed his way) I was totally hooked. Statham has gone on to make better movies (The Bank Job) and crazier movies (Crank) but it all begins The Transporter. The second installment pushed the crazy action stunts further (hoses were involved in a crazy fight)and I kind of figured the pg-13 actionfest was done. Much to be joyous surprise, Jason Statham had another one in him! Only this time it would be directed by a guy whose last name is Megaton. In the world of action movies, could there be a more perfect name for a director, I mean seriously!
Frank Martin(Statham) is a man of principals. He follows his rules for every job. He does not open the package, he drives his own car and no names are used. He has lived by this code and it has kept him alive in the dangerous world of driving packages. (Side note, where can I hire someone to do this kind of stuff?) He turned down a job and recommended someone else, well that someone else violently drives his car into Frank's house, where a lovely passenger(Natalya Rudakova) is knocked out cold. Frank is then kidnapped and now he has to deliver the package he refused earlier. There is a catch: If Frank goes 75 feet away from the car, a mechanism on his wrist will explode him and his car. The journey starts as any other, but soon, Frank will start to break his rules. He eventually realizes the girl is the package and he falls for the girl, although it is hard to see why, she is beyond obnoxious!
Transporter 3 is not a perfect action movie, but it is a solid one. It delivers Statham driving, fighting, looking stoic and manages to put Statham in numerous scenes where he is shirtless. What else can one want? The basic premise of the dangers involve the planet being harmed, as is the usual thing for villains to be after these days. It gets old having all of the villains after polluting the world, but I guess it is the times we live in. I am waiting for more horror movies based on characters who were deformed by waste in water! Statham is still looking mighty impressive in the muscular sense. he is ripped from stomach to neck and he is not afraid of getting down to please the ladies. The fight sequence where he is stripping to use his clothes as a weapon is funny, clever, interesting and pretty brutal, for a PG-13 action flick. Statham never takes himself too seriously and the movie follows suit, which keeps The Transporter from derailing.
Natalya is an oddly gorgeous action girl, but it is obvious she is not an actress. The story goes that Luc Besson (The Producer) saw her walking down the street and he recruited her for the movie, promising to give her acting lessons. I am not sure if it was as sleazy as it sounds, but the acting lessons did not pay off. Her character is supposed to be a whiny little club girl, I guess, but her line readings are so god-awful i just wanted it to stop! It is funny that she is sexy when the character is reacting, but when she is supposed to be the aggressor it is just silly. It is like watching Tina Fey give a lap dance. You know it is supposed to be sexy, but it is just awkward.
I have never expected much from Jason Statham movies and I am rarely disappointed (Damn you War). I got great action stunts, cool driving and sexy clothes. I should probably have higher standards, but sometimes I just want to watch something ridiculous and utterly impossible. Plus, I like to think that if I was in a car that was being shot at, I could drive it into the ocean and give the impression I was. Then, I could make the car float to the top, pull it out of the ocean, dry it off briefly and go on driving it!
Final Grade: C
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