iReview

The Candidate (1972)

2012-02-09T19:58:00.000-05:00

Like a brick to the face, The Candidate makes its point: politics corrupts.

But because McKay is no ordinary character, the message of the movie is less convincing.

The problem with The Candidate is that it fails to drive home its point -- at least, it doesn't succeed to do so in the way that Ides of March would 40 years later (but that's a review for a later date).

That message is muddled in part by McKay's mysterious background. Who is this guy? A good looking environmental lawyer? Yes, that, and his father is a former Governor of the state. So when political operative Marvin Lucas (a very bearded Peter Boyle) targets him for a run at a US Senate seat, McKay (Robert Redford) would in fact seem a likely choice.

But, strangely enough, that's NOT how the movie frames it. The Candidate makes it seem like McKay is a political nobody without a shot in the world at winning. After all, McKay doesn't seem to like his father's "insider" political savvy, and his friends call politics a pointless joke. Yes, campaigns seem like they're a fun-less grind, but if you have a purpose, it's worth the pain.

That's what McKay seems to learn, once he develops that message. Sure, I guess a viewer could construe a "politics corrupts" message out of this movie, but to me, it's more about a man's political awakening, learning to combine his passions with his power. McKay becomes a serious candidate when he finds a serious message. The Candidate isn't a great movie, but it makes some great points about politicians, and the process of making them.

Oh, and it ends like The Graduate, which brings us right to the real undercurrent of this movie. A new, young generation was coming of age in 1972, and they faced the choice to become politically involved, or call politics a joke. But for those who did choose politics - like McKay, and Robert Redford and many others in the counter-culture revolution - there remained a great mystery. Is it possible to gain power, and keep one's integrity?

The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004)

2012-02-07T23:00:00.001-05:00

What makes this movie so complex, is that so much of what the deranged lead character says is strangely admirable. Even relatable. It shows just how thin the line can be between sane and insane.

Sympathy for an insane man is a goal for the filmmakers in The Assassination of Richard Nixon. Samuel Byck, played by Sean Penn, feels wronged and overmatched by the machinery of society. In this 1970's setting, Byck sympathizes with black society, saying he feels like he's in the same position as his black business partner (played by Don Cheadle), and even visiting the headquarters of the Black Panthers to lend his support. He also records tapes of his thoughts, like a diary, and sends them to the conductor Leonard Bernstein. Byck pleads his case with desperation in his voice, reaching for empathy, rapport and most of all, relevance.

That need for relevance drives the last third of the movie, when Byck's application for a loan is denied by the federal government. He then turns to the face of the federal government - that of Richard Nixon - to try to change that.

Is this the crumbling of the American dream? Byck thinks so, as did much of America at the time. It's part of what makes this portrait of a psychopath so especially sad. This depressed father and military veteran could never perfectly assimilate with society, but because he felt estranged and suppressed, he lashed out.

The filmmakers of The Assassination of Richard Nixon surround the character Byck with personalities that care, emphasizing his deranged state. His boss, friend, and wife encourage him and try to provide a stable, caring environment for him to succeed. But he is unable to cope with his depression and his feelings of inferiority. It's a good performance from Penn, but the role is not an inspiring one, especially as his whiny and desperate attitude devolves into a wallowing of his own self-pity. Byck's story, though strangely interesting, doesn't stretch far beyond that under the guidance of director Niels Mueller.

Moneyball (2011)

2012-02-03T22:42:00.001-05:00

I forgot, until the closing credits, that Aaron Sorkin helped write this movie. That means someone came in and edited what Sorkin wrote, or - less likely - he's learned to edit himself. Sorkin's writing usually jumps off the screen, as it did in the opening scene of The Social Network and any of his TV shows. In Moneyball, Sorkin's usually-zippy style of screenplay is refrained, though never dull.

As much as I like Sorkin's work, Moneyball is comfortably and realistically paced because Brad Pitt is driving the car. Knowing that all eyes are always on him, Pitt utilizes his comic-like sense of timing and his charm, and delivers his lines his way, and at his pace. The result is a character large enough to fill the screen, and deserving of it.

Pitt's performance reminds me of Robert Redford's in The Natural. The movie was on AMC the other day, and I caught a good chunk of it. They're very different films, but the main characters in each of these baseball stories have great similarities. Confident, but vulnerable, both Roy Hobbs and Billy Beane are baseball-obsessed with something to prove. They both have a melancholy demeanor. It's difficult to pin-point, but both characters feel like they're cut from the same mold, inspired by the same emotions.

Perhaps most of all, the actors Pitt and Redford are extremely similar - in look, attitude, magnetism, fame, the two actors have a similar role in each of their respective Hollywood generations. It's only natural that Pitt played Redford's protege in Spy Game. And perhaps it's only natural that they depict baseball players, since America's past-time is filled with so many wins and so many losses over the long season, and can be a metaphor for life's stories of redemption and sorrow.

Sorkin does shine in one scene in particular, featuring a crude yet humor-filled trade bonanza in which players are traded like kids swapping, well, baseball cards. In this sense, Sorkin's zealous writing, driven by Brad Pitt's version of general manager Billy Beane and his fictional assistant played by Jonah Hill, paints a disgustingly realistic picture of the value of a modern baseball player: worth millions, and yet, totally interchangeable.

Moneyball is based on 'Moneyball' the book, which I haven't read, but as a baseball fan, I know all about. The story of the Oakland Athletics has become a well-versed one in the sports world. Just like the speed of technological advancement in the 20th century, the sport of baseball has changed a lot since 'Moneyball' was written. This movie doesn't go very deep into the statistical changes Billy Beane helped usher in, mostly just glazing over so the viewer gets the point. After considering, I figure this was probably the way to go. Statistics are difficult to make visually interesting to begin with, but more importantly, any baseball fan already knows what 'sabermetrics' has done to change baseball, and anyone who doesn't, probably didn't care all that much to begin with. Overall, Moneyball provides a good depiction of the new world of baseball, and it's also a good baseball movie, as we experience the personality that makes baseball endlessly enjoyable.

Thunderball (1965)

2012-02-01T20:10:00.001-05:00

The following are a collection of facts that I remember from this movie:

Thunderball is a nuclear bomb, not a sport.
The nameless villain wears an eye-patch.
A man is killed in a swimming pool of sharks.
James Bond has underwater sex.

It's kind of like a little poem, right? It's all you really need to know. Once again, the filmmakers improve on the plot and brand of James Bond, increasing the action and the sex, and most importantly, the absurdity of the bad guys which became some easy to mock for Mike Myers in the Austin Powers series.

It's not just sharks and sex that's underwater (and in unrelated scenes, perhaps I should point out) but entire action and chase sequences, which must have been cumbersome to film in 1965. I was impressed.

Thunderball also expands the world of 007, as all the 00-agents are paraded out in a large room in front of the top American and British military brass, and ordered to take back the nukes that SPECTRE stole before the English-speaking world has to buy back the bombs. It was an interesting choice to make this an Mi6-wide mission, and not just a James Bond mission, even though we only follow him, of course. But in doing this, even briefly, the viewer sees Bond not as the center of this world, but as having but a small role in this world. Bond, for a moment, becomes small, and in doing so diminishes our view that Bond is invincible, because he's no longer the central piece of Mi6, just part of the team.

We eventually lose that perspective unfortunately, but I appreciated the attempt to make Bond vulnerable, because it makes the dangerous scenes feel more dangerous, and it makes the other-wise formulaic story a bit more dramatic. Kudos, fourth Bond film for outdoing yourself yet again. If self-improvement isn't a good goal, what is?

Goldfinger (1964)

2012-02-01T19:31:00.000-05:00

Finally, yes finally, we have James Bond in a truly entertaining movie. I was started to have doubts. I was starting to question if the series would pick up the action pace any time soon. I was starting to doubt if I would ever NOT be bored by the plot, and the villain. Goldfinger lived up to the long-standing legend: this IS the best Bond movie, well.. that I'd seen so far.

This third installment is fun and coy from the beginning, as Bond manages to uncover Goldfinger's card-playing deceit, get a girl, and find her dead, all before the starting credits.

From there, the competitive dance between Bond and the new villain Auric Goldfinger sways with rhythm, with a ridiculous hat-throwing henchman adding the extra comedy, a goofy yet intimidating touch. That Goldfinger's plot is deviously devised (and not revealed to the Secret Agent over a dinner date) makes the villain more believable, although he kind of loses my respect when he ties Bond to a board and has a laser slowly cut the table in half, until Bond tricks him into letting him go? I don't know. Classic Bond villain, right? Right.

Again, the filmmakers continue to grow the Bond brand, expanding their promotional tie-ins (Austin Martin), enhancing the use of gadgets (radar), and the characters get more dramatic (Oddjob, Pussy Galore). Action movies today move at an unprecedented speed, which we've become so accustomed to, that seeing an old action movie is simply boring. The first two movies of the series were simply too slow, and even though a lot has changed since Goldfinger, the filmmakers sped up the action just enough to make this one entertaining, even 50 years later.

From Russia with Love (1963)

2012-02-01T18:58:00.002-05:00

In an early sign that Ian Fleming stuck to a formula, here comes the second film episode of the adventures of Secret Agent James Bond. I watched like 4 of them in a row, so to be honest, they kind of blurred together for me, even though is is supposed to be one of the better ones in the series. This one features a more confident Sean Connery, clearly getting comfortable in the role of the charismatic British agent. Plot-wise, he once again lands in a foreign place and is tailed by a devious person, who is ultimately tied to SPECTRE.

Bond is more flamboyant in this one, as everything that makes this series memorable is ramped up. The voyeuristic sexism is on display again, especially at a gypsy camp in Turkey, at which two women feuding over a man are told to fight to the death with tooth and nail. The rest of the camp watches as if they were at a low-grade Coliseum, cheering and jeering their actions, obviously this is supposed to be a barbaric display, eventually stopping the show because it was in bad taste from the British guy, but the thing is... it really wasn't. The chauvinistic action is exactly Bond's style. It seemed like an attempt to show that Bond's relationship with women isn't nearly as negative as it could be, but as a viewer 50 years later, this unnecessary scene flows seamlessly with the narrative that Bond's world is dangerous and seductive, often at the same time.

From Russia With Love succeeds because there is also more adventure, and Bond's life is often at risk, at times in the crosshairs of a sniper, and throughout this movie, lured into a Soviet-related revenge trap.

Dr. No (1962)

2012-02-01T17:15:00.000-05:00

I'm having trouble deciding if James Bond was a parody, or spawned parody. It certainly inspired more secret agent characters, and the series has become a barometer for how other secret agent movies are judged. But watching the first film of the series, I found myself asking, how is this not a joke?

Of course, the answer is that it's outdated. It's a sad, simple fact that Dr. No has not aged gracefully. And here's the thing, it's not the movie's fault. James Bond has been copied and mocked and recreated so many times, that everything about this original seems like a caricature of something else. The set design and cinematography were quickly dated by the repetition of their use. Then, in an effort to keep outdoing itself, the elements of Bond were improved upon again and again. It's impossible not to look back on the first film and point out the flaws; Bond will see its 23rd installment later this year. In comparison, Dr. No was a timid, low-budget movie that lacks any real drama.

Which is also to say, this was not a very good movie to begin with, future improvements aside. And yet, it was successful at attracting audiences, and successfully launched a franchise. The more degrading elements, including the casual sex, the casual gun violence, liquor, cigarettes, and the first on-screen bikini, were a bit dangerous then, and part of the draw. But the plot is also outdated, about some secret world-conquering agency looking to disrupt an American missile project, and Mi6's relationship with the CIA on a Caribbean island, all of which had actual relevance in the months following the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was timely, but apparently not timeless.

All this, without mention of Sean Connery, or any specifics about this movie in particular. I had the thought, James Bond made Sean Connery, but also that Connery made James Bond, his gravitas and swagger is by far his greatest asset, and it's the only true and genuine thing about Dr. No. I'm not sure this movie would have become such a success without him, and there's no questioning what the role did for his career.

Drive (2011)

2012-02-01T11:01:00.000-05:00

Violence is part of the American story -- the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, the Wild West, the Greatest Generation -- the triumphant moments of American history are often plucked from the battlefield. America's time in Vietnam during the 1960's and 1970's briefly changed that, until the mainstream responded with a new wave of macho-male attitude, that ushered in a new age of Hollywood action, making guys like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenager the new American hero.

Since then, a lot has stayed the same, but some directors with a fascination for stylized violence (the kind only previously displayed in comic books) have pushed the genre to new heights, with quicker action and more deadly force, that at times aims for sexy. There's reason directors like Quentin Tarantino are said to have a violence fetish; the man's been perfecting sexy violence (as opposed to violent sex) his entire career. And whether or not you enjoy Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill or Sin City, there's no denying the change. We now expect our film violence to be swift and brutal. The Bourne series and David Cronenberg's A History of Violence display that as well as anything (the latter having both sexy violence AND violent sex). And I'm sure The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series is also part of the cinematic conversation on "cool" violence here as well.

Drive is part of this trend, infusing an otherwise existential film with some of the most violent outbursts I've ever seen.

Who is 'the driver', the nameless lead character of Drive? He's professional and unemotional, his personal background is murky at best, and he has a stone-cold persona. He's a blank-slate, essentially, the 'every-man tough guy' -- and in the sense that actions speak louder than words -- the choices this anti-hero makes will decide what kind of person he is. That he works and lives in the land of vanity and 'make believe' -- Hollywood -- makes his existence all the less real. The big choice that defines his existence has yet to be made.

In these terms, Drive is existential.

This is also a visually powerful film. With little dialogue, Drive relies on images to tell the story. The Driver (Ryan Gosling) courts 'the All American girl' (Carey Mulligan, yes, she's actually British), blonde, petite, literally wearing red white and blue in some scenes, and in one important scene in particular, seconds after kissing her in an elevator, we, and she, watch him bash in the head of thug who was out to kill them. She watches in disgust and we watch in horror as he switches gears (no pun intended) from romantic to violent, and when it's over, he looks at her, and she at him, now, in her eyes, a completely different person than the one she thought she knew, her eyes re-evaluating the character of the man she just kissed, and his eyes, revealing shame rather than pride at his actions, knowing his Hulk-like monster was displayed, and is either upset she had to see that side of him, or embarrassed to have that side of him exist at all, and then with her standing outside the elevator looking in, and him inside the elevator, still hunched over the body he just destroyed, looking out towards her, the elevator doors close, a powerful message that she, for him, is now unattainable.

Powerful scenes like these and others make Drive more than just another Fast and the Furious sequel, but a meaningful homage to the era of romantic euro-disco techno-pop, the cold textures of which director Nicolas Refn skillfully employs alongside the tracking shots of sexy cars in sexy Los Angeles. We need to be careful not to make Drive more than it is, but if The Artist can get rave reviews for being an homage to 1920's Hollywood, let's let Refn celebrate the noir films of the early-80's, about dark streets and darker characters, like Michael Mann's Thief and Steve McQueen's Bullitt, and even Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.

There are other things to consider here, including the morale dilemma of the Driver, who's choices remind me of the choices made in David Lynch's Blue Velvet. In Lynch's 1986 film, the lead character finds himself in too deep in a dark and dangerous mob world he doesn't quite understand, and it ultimately risks his chances with the All-American girl, which in Lynch's film, was played by Laura Dern. Like the lead in Blue Velvet, the lead in Drive exists in the grey area, between good and evil, and like many of Lynch's films, the character of Drive has a choice to make, one or the other. If Dennis Hopper was the epitome of evil in Blue Velvet, then Albert Brooks is the epitome of evil in Drive. Brooks/evil is represented by violence and heartlessness, Mulligan/love is represented by tenderness and innocence. In Blue Velvet, this choice was a coming-of-age story, but in Drive, it's a choice of character: be cool and die, or give up to stay alive.

Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

2011-12-24T20:36:00.000-05:00

Yes, it's a movie about Santa Claus, but it's also a movie about extremism.

Let me explain.

The movie doesn't bluntly say it the way I do, but the mother/Macy's event planner played by Maureen O'Hara is an extremist, at least for her time. She's a no-nonsense realist who sees no point in lying to her daughter or feeding her potentially-harmful fairytales. I have to say, the mother's stance on parenting intrigues me. It seems more honest, and I like the sound of that. And like Natalie Wood's character, I didn't grow up believing in Santa, so I think I can relate to that too.

On the other hand is her new friend Fred Gailey, a lawyer and idealist, who encourages imagination, and goes as far as to defend Santa in court, volunteering to attain the burden of proof in the case, by attempting to prove Santa's existence. No doubt an extreme decision.

Miracle on 34th Street then literally puts Santa to the stand, debating his existence, and the sanity of the bearded man claiming to be him. You can of course only believe in Santa Claus, or not believe, there is no middle ground.

But the question of how to raise Natalie Wood's character is obviously a happy medium of sensibility and idealism, and the filmmakers admit exactly that as the lawyer and the Macy's event planner become a couple at the end, both necessary ingredients for raising a child.

Anyway, just like It's a Wonderful Life, this movie is black and white and splendid.

And yes, even I get in the holiday spirit, occasionally.

The Great Muppet Caper (1981)

2011-12-23T20:33:00.000-05:00

With the new Muppet movie still in theaters (and still unwatched by me), Alex and I watched an old classic that I hadn't seen before. Funny in ways I didn't expect, and boring in ways I forgot the Muppets could be, The Great Muppet Caper is a limited but charming movie.

Well, let me clarify, Kermit is the ever-endearing everyman. Innocent, well-intentioned and "green," Kermit thee Frog, as he says it, is what make the wheels go round for the Muppets. However, some painfully-boring musical numbers make the wheels come off of The Great Muppet Caper. The Muppets really can't sing, so Frank Oz and Jim Henson try to make up for it with spectacle. I'd call some of the attempts desperate. In one scene, Miss Piggy is even dancing underwater with synchronized swimmers, no easy task for a puppet.

Personally, I think the Muppets are at their best with the subtle, quick-witted humor they displayed in their TV Show, which they show off in brief moments throughout this film, including the opening credits, as Kermit and Fonzie comedically comment on the names and titles of the people involved in the movie as they float along in a hot-air balloon. It's those little jokes that make me smile much more than the big song-and-dance parts.

In this story, Kermit and Fonzie are newspaper reporters who travel to Britain to investigate a jewelry heist. With cameos by John Cleese and the famous muppeteers, this movie rips off 1960's-style British caper films, including in it the counter-culture movement the filmmakers so likely felt more connected with than the upper-crust of British culture that proves to be self-indulgent and dishonest. The movie -- and it is of course mostly a kids movie -- doesn't really acknowledge these undercurrent themes, but does establish positive attributes to the quirky but sincere hippies, and paints the rich people of London as unscrupulous. These values remain consistent in the new The Muppets movie, from what I understand, pitting the "Anywhere, America" muppets against the evil oil tycoon business owner who is threatening the old Muppet theatre.

Everything Must Go (2010)

2011-12-22T13:12:00.001-05:00

Will Ferrell proved he can act in Stranger Than Fiction, and he proves it again in Everything Must Go. Undoubtedly, and deservedly, Ferrell will forever be remembered for his wildly amusing comedic characters; impressions of Alex Trebek and George W. Bush, and roles like Ron Burgundy and Frank from Old School are just undeniably funny. But I think Ferrell has proven intriguing and has more to offer than his excessively-obnoxious characters, which wears thin in roles like Elf (though I also enjoy that movie) and especially in films like Blades of Glory.

This movie from first-time writer/director Dan Rush doesn't do many original things, but it does them earnestly. In it, the main character loses his business job and is kicked out of his house by his wife, all, of course, on the same day. It's a tried and true formula that quickly sends this beer-lover towards desperation. With all his belongings now littering the front lawn, he decides to hold a yard sale, and it proves a means for starting over.

Everything Must Go is mostly just sad with some humorous moments. As with any movie about 'starting over,' the protagonist is painfully forced to reflect on them-self, identify what needs changing, and then find the strength to change it. The character feels similar to the one he plays in Old School, but years later. An alcoholic might be fun to party with, but they are likely difficult to live with, and can be unreliable in the workplace. The character might be funny drunk - as he is through Old School - but he's just depressing the rest of the time.

In these types of movies, the protagonist also tries to find a new way of life, and the idea is that self-reflection can also lead to new truths. These insights can make or break the movie, depending on how honest they are. Rush finds truth in loyalty and friendships, although not from the likeliest of places, delivering his message of sobriety and integrity through this conventional storyline. The end result is a movie with a good message, but not one with enough comedy or wisdom that would have me recommending it.

Morning Glory (2010)

2011-12-22T13:08:00.000-05:00

I thought Morning Glory might be a movie about the news business, so I gave it a go. Instead, it's really about trying to succeed in the workplace, and that workplace just happens to be a newsroom.

In many ways Morning Glory is simply a working girl's romantic comedy. Centered around an up-and-coming producer played by Rachel McAdams, the antics of putting together a morning news show is part of the fun of this movie, reminiscent the skrew-ball comedy that Tina Fey's Liz Lemon deals with on 30 Rock. But the film also aims for romantic and meaningful, but fails because it lacks much of the grace and charisma found in The Devil Wears Prada, a very similar movie about a young working woman trying to assume the lead in the next generation of Blackberry-wielding careerists.

I do think newsrooms naturally provide a little more drama and personality than the typical workplace, although the TV show The Office has prospered by finding the little gems in the quirks of otherwise ordinary characters. Like in any office, one of a manager's greatest tasks is pleasing and balancing egos and talents while improving the business; aiming for a poetic balance that makes the employees happy and upper management even happier.

So I wrote a poem that reflects the mood of much of the film:

Gloomy people
struggle faking fun
while spotlighted in brightly-lit studios.

In Morning Glory, the on-camera and feuding personalities played by Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton are presented as slow and self-obsessed compared to the speedy and resourceful McAdams, although all find life lessons in each other, generating a sappy feel-good story meant to reinforce our values of hard work and loyalty, as if someone being stuck with a job they don't like for much of their life compares to the story of a New Yorker's decision not to join the Today show because a different major television network wants her to be the executive producer of their morning show.

Religulous (2008)

2011-12-20T09:02:00.000-05:00

Right now, I'm reading an 800-page book called "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln" by historian-author Doris Kearns Goodwin (who I've watched on Meet the Press enough times to feel like I know her personally) and to my surprise, I'm really enjoying it. "Team of Rivals" is written with more narrative than any other historical work I've ever read, which to be honest, is very very little, because I usually don't like historical things. Which, now that I think about it, can't really be true, because History and Social Studies were always my favorite and best classes in school. I wonder where I got lost?

Anyway, one of the things that has stood out for me in "Team of Rivals" is Lincoln's religion, which I would say, based on Goodwin's story, was not really in God or Christianity, but in the United States Constitution. Lincoln comes across as a closet atheist, and knowing he is in the minority, avoids the subject in public. There are still a great deal of people who are like Lincoln today -- closet atheists -- and Bill Maher's Religulous is for them. This will be straight-forward comedy for public atheists, this will be detestable for anyone who is actually religious, and for someone on the fence about religion, I assume the words of Bill Maher won't be the difference that pushes you over the edge. No, I think this is a movie for people a bit embarrassed to say they're atheists, providing them some comfort, and maybe even the strength to say they are proud to be atheists.

Maher's greatest accomplishment with Religulous is to address this subject at all. Similar to the 'documentaries' of Michael Moore in many ways, Maher is not out for "A Spiritual Journey" as his fake working title suggested in order to trick religious leaders into being interviewed. Still, that he tackles an American cultural taboo is bold.

That's me setting myself up for an otherwise unfavorable review.

I laughed through Religulous, because there are funny moments, but a good documentary would not interview the fringe and uneducated of a religion and pretend they represent it. Most of the movie is about Maher asking his questions, pointing out hypocrisy, and then grinning at the camera, obviously uninterested in the answers. Maher goes around Michael Moore-style to a creationist museum, a trucker's chapel, a Holy Land theme park, and even finds a skeptical priest outside the Vatican. He makes his point and gets some good laughs, but it's at the expense of people who aren't armed with the knowledge to defend themselves.

Religulous is an okay comedy, and a terrible documentary.

Contagion (2011)

2011-12-19T09:02:00.000-05:00

One of the best new films I've in a while, Steven Soderbergh's Contagion is a frightening and seemingly realistic movie about a deadly and swiftly-moving virus in a modern day era of wide-spread transportation but not yet comprehensive food-safety and sanitation practices.

The plot sounds similar to the 1995 film Outbreak starring Dustin Hoffman, and it has many similarities, but it's more than just an updated version. Both are science fiction, but this one hardly feels far-fetched, bringing an intimate yet brutal account of this near apocalypse.

Most frightening about the experience of Contagion is that no one does anything very wrong, and yet it still can't be stopped. No one spills a chemical or does a blood transfusion between animal and human, or anything negligent of that matter. And all government officials seem to do their job to the best of their ability, fighting bureaucracy and the snails pace of science to the best of their ability, doing what they feel is best to protect their own. As the virus spreads across the planet, the risks taken by scientists often work out, and those acting a bit too selfishly are unrewarded, and yet, millions upon millions die, and a feeling of helplessness takes over. This is Soderbergh's greatest accomplishment with Contagion, and why the film comes across as realistic. Unmercifully killing off some of his Hollywood ensemble cast, Soderbergh takes exactly the world we live in and simply applies a bit of random but dangerous happenstance, and we, despite the medical and technological means to end the virus, plummet towards anarchy and animalistic savagery only similar in recent American history to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and more like the violence associated to third-world countries.

Despite all that, the film is also a tribute to the human race's ability to adapt in a way that might always be more advanced than any virus, no matter how bad it gets. For all of that and more, Contagion is a great movie fashioned out of a genre I thought too worn out to be of any use anymore.

Twilight (2008)

2011-11-29T10:10:00.000-05:00

Only in this world, as in the mind of a teenage girl, might it be quite normal for a dude to showcase super-human abilities, and then claim the girl is just being silly for claiming they exist.

Only in this world, as in the mind of a teenage girl, might it be okay for a guy to stalk a girl, and then claim that he A) wasn't and B) is just protectively looking after her.

Borrowing unfaithfully from multiple genres, writer Stephenie Meyer created a world with few rules, except that lust is sin. In what feels a little similar to Shakespeare's 'Romeo & Juliet,' Twilight is about two young pale teens who aren't suppose to interact, but meet and then obsess over each other.

In this case, one's a quiet transplant to the North-Pacific named Isabella and the other a vampire named Edward Cullen who goes to the same high school. The key to the story is this vampire is seemingly defanged, choosing not to hunt human blood, despite the temptation. He does come equipped with super powers (super strength, mind-reading, glittering in the sunlight) so I can see the appeal, but for the most part, this perpetually-teenaged vampire is just plain boring.

Through goofy conversations, plenty of whispering among students, and lots of menacing glances between the main characters, a teenage romance plays out that tempts the vampire's self-control, tempts Bella's bravery, and tempts my patience. I know the vampire's restraint is a metaphor, but it does more than rob the film of some sex scenes. The crucial piece missing is why the vampire bothers to profess his love for a living person if he thinks he's never allowed to fulfill that love in the first place.

What we're left with is a movie that didn't really have someone like me in mind as the audience of course. My goal here was only to try to understand why 'The Twilight Saga' has become a cultural phenomenon, not necessarily to enjoy it. I did enjoy laughing at it, but really I was disappointed by the quality of the filmmaking, the dialogue, the acting, and even the lame sub-plot about a rival gang of vampires. The fascination likely comes the fulfillment of a fantasy: to date a super-human un-dead creature who can take you away from boring grade school and transform your experience into a dangerous and sexy affair.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II (2011)

2011-11-16T10:13:00.001-05:00

Honestly, I'm just glad it's over.

The final battle scene didn't live up to expectations, really the series never lived up to expectations.

Society as a whole moved on to other things, like the Twilight series.

I liked what the Deathly Hallows legend added to the whole of the story.
I liked that much of the Hogwarts school, teachers and all, get behind Potter.
I loved the revelations about Severus Snape, who is ultimately revealed to be the sorriest and perhaps the most sympathetic character in the whole series.
I didn't even mind the hunt for the horcruxes by the end of it.
If you're reading this, you're probably laughing at me.

Actually, I think most of my disappointment comes from the fight scene.
I think I wanted to get "into" the battle more, but most of it was glazed over with slow-motion and orchestral music and montages of shooting and explosions of color.
The one-on-one between Potter and Voldemort was especially disappointing; it was a kind of light-saber duel but without the dueling, just... pointing... and grimacing.

I'm just glad it's over.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I (2010)

2011-10-28T08:57:00.003-04:00

It's bad news when a filmmaker says they they can't fit the story into one movie.

When they announced the plan to make Harry Potter 7 into two separate films, I made a decision too: that I would wait to see Part I until the second one was available to see soon afterwards.

When a filmmaker needs to split one story into two parts, the first half usually isn't all that interesting. I say this, because usually the dramatic conclusion is the best part of a movie, especially a movie like these Harry Potter movies, and usually, the dramatic conclusion is towards the end of the movie, ya know, the conclusion. So what ends up happening, is "Part I" is always anti-clamatic, unfulfilling, and therefore disappointing.

Well, Harry Potter 7 Part Two started playing at the "second-run" movie theater, this became the perfect time to rent Part One, because that way I could see Part Two soon afterwards.

(My girlfriend recently called me amazingly "self-reverential," which is probably something I should work on, but I can't help it.)

Harry Potter 7 Part One is exactly what I expected, except maybe even more disappointing than that.
It's anti-clamatic, more frustrating, and more boring than it should be for a kids action-adventure movie.

The purpose of this film is to build up to the second half, but director David Yates fails to create enough suspense to make this interesting, especially since most of the audience knows what's going to happen.

Though visually impressive, Part One embodied some of the worst elements this series has brought to theaters: ungraceful acting, awkward writing, clunky plot development, and perhaps worst of all is the uninspired character maturation. The characters cliched roles take precedence over actual growth or evolution. They seem to learn lessons each movie, and then forget them the next movie. Their roles echo again and again, Hermoine is smart, Ron is jealous, Luna is weird, Harry is awkward. They add more characteristics as the story advances, but their roles never change. Harry is constantly a character with absolutely nothing special, and yet is always the center of attention, while the side characters play their part.

I guess I can only really play JK Rowling for that, but as someone who's just looking at the quality of the movie, and the series, I'm only increasingly frustrated by the repetition.

Hereafter (2010)

2011-10-22T16:38:00.000-04:00

The other supernatural thriller about the afterlife that Matt Damon made recently. It really would be difficult not to spend this entire post comparing it to The Adjustment Bureau. In fact, the production of Hereafter was suspended for a month so Damon could film The Adjustment Bureau.

But, ugh, okay I'll try:

Death is the ultimate motivator for life, but the afterlife is the ultimate arena for our imagination. It's part of why I like movies about the afterlife; they're a place for endless creativity, where no one can prove you wrong. Unfortunately, most interpretations of the afterlife are quite unimaginative. In Hereafter, people go to a bubble and stand around as silhouettes against a glowing backdrop until Matt Damon closes his eyes and talks to you. A painting known as 'Dickens Dream' seems to be what inspired this version of the afterlife. When the possibilities are endless, it can be disappointing when the end result is a little lame. ~~Like The Adjustment Bureau, Hereafter plays it a bit too safe.~~ (Sorry, forgot, not comparing the movies.)

In Hereafter, we follow three characters living very separate lives, but director Clint Eastwood makes it very clear they are destined to interact by the end of the film. It constantly feels like they are hurtling towards some conclusion that must involve the three of them, even though it takes the entire movie to come to fruition. The characters: a boy who loses a twin brother, a disillusioned psychic, and a journalist who survives a destructive tidal wave. Eastwood is an expert filmmaker, and successfully makes the audience yearn for an answer to what they seek, but even though I want them to find what they're looking for, I found no greater meaning in the answers they find. The characters find resolution, but not enough is revealed about our human nature for this to be a memorable movie.

The Insider (1999)

2011-10-21T00:05:00.002-04:00

The thing that will stick with me most from this movie are the scenes inside the CBS building. Cigarette company executives who lie is what drives a lead scientist to become a whistleblower, but it's the drama between a "60 Minutes" producer and his executives that is most interesting. Like the cigarette company executives who manipulate their employees, the consumers, the courts, heck the whole system, so too must Al Pacino's character manipulate the people in his world to get done what he needs to get done.

Most impressively, and most unpleasantly, the producer Lowell Bergman must manipulate CBS giant Mike Wallace (played amazingly by Christopher Plummer). In a way that is nothing but disheartening, director Michael Mann takes a titan of the industry in Mike Wallace and makes him mortal; he's turned him into a man more concerned with reputation than integrity, more status than substance, and strangely enough, it makes him more real and relatable. To have Mike Wallace on your side in a debate within CBS is to win the debate, and to get Wallace on your side, you need to have Wallace fear for his legacy. Bergman is just one man, but he reigns the strings as impressively as a cigarette executive. In poorly-lit offices and hallways, two old man sit in a shiny new building discussing what they can and can't do to make a difference anymore. Their wisdom is the only relics left over from the 'good ole days' of CBS, set in contrast to all that is new and fancy about the building and the industry they still work in.

At the time of this movie, 1999, cigarettes and their lying manufacturers were probably a big deal. I don't hear talk of the dangers of Big Tobacco anymore -- I think it's a generally accepted evil at this point -- but as a journalist in a transforming industry, The Insider showed that integrity will have meaning no matter where the business goes.

The Insider is about two men who fight the system to tell the truth, and need each other to do it. Bergman is the medium. Jeffrey Wigand, played by Russell Crowe, is the message. Their idealistic beliefs dictate their methods in a way that's inspiring.

The acting is also stellar, not a point to be overlooked. Russell Crowe was at the top of his game. From 1999 to 2001 Crowe had three roles that, for me, will define his career. A year following The Insider, for which he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor, came Gladiator in 2000 for which he won an Oscar. In 2001, he was nominated for his role in A Beautiful Mind. Since then, Crowe has sustained his career through action movies, but during this stretch, his characters were dynamic and showcased his talent. In this film, Crowe's character uses his body and the extra weight he gained to create an unattractive scientist, who is awkward, sympathetic, but never cartoonish or overplayed.

Al Pacino on the other hand has almost become an over-animated version of his old self. The other movie he made this year was Any Given Sunday. Oliver Stone's version of the NFL was a steroid-enhanced version of the real thing, and Pacino's knack for overzealousness played to Stone's tastes, but not to mine. Pacino resembles a barking dog more than he does an NFL executive in that movie. But in The Insider, the energy Pacino brings is turned into passion in the character, as opposed to aggression. That passion makes Lowell Bergman an entertaining crusader.

However, the movie drags on a bit, probably because our court system isn't all that speedy in real life, but also because Mann wants us to take the time to see his characters tormented by the decisions they have to make. It makes for good acting opportunities, but requires a patient viewer. I found it quite rewarding.

Cowboys and Aliens (2011)

2011-10-14T00:00:00.002-04:00

It amazes me movies like this are still made. It amazes me this move wasn't made yet. In fact, I'm not even sure this isn't a remake of something (not quite, according to IMDB, but inspired by the Predator series and many of the works of Spielberg). This familiarity is essential to the movie, it's simplicity is its secret to success.

This isn't anything clever, it's the American Western film genre and the Science Fiction film genre, combined. And, as it should be, it's kind of hilarious. It's a serious take, but it's impossible to take seriously. The actors have trouble navigating this genre-meshing movie, creating hilarious interactions.

Olivia Wilde's blank-faced stare and zombie-esque gait, trying to play an alien.
Daniel Craig's action-sequences prove he can't escape James Bond.
Paul Dano is stuck in the 1800's, although no milk-shake this time.
Harrison Ford does his best Harrison Ford impression.
And, I don't know why Sam Rockwell is in this movie.

All this, and we haven't even touched on the plot of Cowboys and Aliens, a mystery movie about why aliens are abducting people from the American desert in 1873.

Director Jon Favreau delivers the comedy with the serious, trying to make us care about the characters and the loved ones they're trying to save, while also providing all the explosive action you would expect from a showdown between cowboys, space aliens, native americans, and other space aliens.

And then, I started looking for a metaphor.

There had to be a metaphor here: technologically advanced peoples mining foreign lands for a rare substance, threatening to destroy the native people and culture. Unlike the movie Avatar, there's nothing nearly as overt, and I may be reaching a bit, because Favreau never really spells it out that this is his point. It seems all fun and games. I'm left wondering if he meant it to say more, but then gave in to laziness.

Anyway, consider me a fan of 'Dollar Tuesdays' at the local theater.

The Adjustment Bureau (2010)

2011-10-11T19:25:00.001-04:00

In the world of the Adjustment Bureau, people are guided by guys who look like they came out of the television show 'Man Men' (including the actor John Slattery, who actually did). It's all a thinly veiled metaphor for God, Angels, and the supernatural forces that may or may not dictate our world.

Actually, I'm not even sure it's all a metaphor as much as it is an entertaining interpretation with euphemisms for the things we typically call 'God' 'Angels' and 'Decisions.' Instead we get 'Chairman' 'Adjusters' and 'the Plan.'

The film's interpretation is is a little easy to mock -- but mostly because it comes awfully close to interesting, but instead chooses to play it safe. When the lead character is given a history lesson in 'free will,' he's told there's only the appearance of 'free will.' He's told that during all the good eras of modern humanity (Roman Empire, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Scientific Revolution) there was only the illusion of 'free will,' but in all the bad times (Dark Ages, Great Depression, Holocaust) humans were making decisions for themselves.

Really?? Tell me more! Like, what's the point? What are we working towards? Who are we working for?

Moments like that provide a glimpse of the mythology that writer/director George Nolfi created for this movie. But this is Hollywood, so there's a sex scene, and plenty of chase scenes, but not enough revealing conversation about the notion that makes this an interesting movie in the first place.

I think the filmmakers kept things vague to play it safe with the audience, but I would have preferred something more daring. All of it is constructed and arranged in a way that reminds me exceedingly like Inception.

Still, I found the movie refreshing for trying to break the mold a bit. It's even a bit inspiring if you just go with the premise and accept the ultimate message of 'carpe diem.'

Transamerica (2005)

2011-10-09T20:11:00.000-04:00

Vulnerability is perhaps one of the most avoided situations, whether physical or emotional. The success of Transamerica comes from the director's embrace of a character's most vulnerable experience, creating a candid look at a man transitioning into becoming a woman.

In her pre-'Desperate Housewives' career, Felicity Huffman rocked the cinema world with this complicated but likable role. She was a woman playing a man transitioning to a woman, and that alone would seem to me to be an intimidating part to take. So credit to her there. But heaps more praise earned for the performance. The complex emotions of shame, pride, acceptance, sense of purpose, and the balance of masculinity and femininity are all portrayed convincingly and even movingly. Her character does this, as she tries to win the affection of her son, and win back the affection of the rest of her family.

Transamerica is a contemporary - maybe the most contemporary - road trip movie, as a son and his father-turned-mother travel from New York City to Southern California. I think there's extra meaning in the transitions, within Bree and around her as well. Huffman's character Bree, along with her son morph into a family, racing to get back to the West Coast in time for her scheduled surgery. The American road trip genre provides spontaneous character-building moments, as well as plenty of down time for introspective conversation. In a sense, it's the perfect way for people to get to know each other better. So appropriately, it helps the viewer get to know Bree even better, and since she's at her most vulnerable during her transition, Transamerica is a triumph. It's a film of with great insight into the human spirit, and the American landscape becomes a brilliant metaphor.

Bringing Up Baby (1938)

2011-09-25T21:08:00.001-04:00

A zany romantic comedy that teeters dangerously close to annoying, Bringing Up Baby is a black and white film that plays it safe when it comes to flirtation, but goes all-out screwy when it comes to the situational humor.

Cary Grant leads the way here as a dinosaur-obsessed paleontologist, and Katharine Hepburn plays a rich heiress who pursues him so passive-aggresively, it makes your girlfriend seem sane.

The paleontologist is pretty boring and surprisingly oblivious, but at least he's not annoying.

The heiress is the opposite; entertaining, surprisingly perceptive, but incredibly maddening.

The paleontologist is looking to secure a $1-million dollar grant for his museum, which is controlled by the heiress's family. Utilizing a tiger from Africa (named Baby) as a ploy that she keeps reinventing, she manipulates the pluck-less scientist into a never-ending labyrinth he's too witless to escape.

Carey Grant shouldn't play such a pathetic character. He has an 'aw-shucks' quality to him at times, but by the end of the film he's a chicken with his head cut off, frantic and hopeless as he yells and runs in circles to no avail.

This was the last of the Kentucky Theatre's Classic Movie Summer Series we saw, not because it was a so-so movie, but because it's not the summer anymore. It wasn't my favorite of the series, but I'm glad I saw it, and glad this series happened.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)

2011-09-04T20:45:00.001-04:00

"MmmMmmMmm, I just love me some Tennessee Williams."

That's not me saying that, that was a young woman behind us as the credits rolled at the Kentucky Theatre in Lexington the other week. I can't say I truly share the sentiment. To be very fair, I've only seen movies based on the work of Tennessee Williams, and never any of his plays on stage. But the enthusiasm she had for the melodrama was deep, and her expression one I could never imagine myself sincerely saying.

And Oh Boy is it melodramatic, but at least the seriousness of the subject matter makes it tolerable. Alcoholism, suicide, suppressed homoerotic emotions and cancer are all good reasons for tears and even the occasional sappiness. On the other hand, the resentful competition between sisters in law, and the 'Southern' cultural norms, were so painfully sensationalized they became comedic by the end of the film.

Yet no doubt, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a good movie, because it's a well-acted movie, and a very-well written movie. I was impressed with the script's ability to bit by bit dig up the dirt and get to the bottom of Brick's alcoholism, in addition to the underlying tensions between the protagonist and his father, in a way that was both engaging and tantalizing. It was a story I found intriguing, and it was fueled by Brick's total ambivalence, and Maggie the Cat's perseverance, portrayed earnestly by Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor.

The Kentucky Theatre's classic movie night was a treat; the entire theater was completely packed on a Wednesday night for a movie over 50 years old. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was not 'my kind of movie,' at least in comparison to the Tennessee Williams lover we were seated near, but I think I appreciated the acting and the script, while still being entertained.

Beginners (2011)

2011-08-17T23:07:00.009-04:00

This is a sad movie. The premise is comical, and moments are comical, but Beginners is a sad movie.

Quickly, the plot: a 38-year-old LA-based graphic designer learns on the same day that his father is dying of cancer, and that his father is gay. After his father dies, the artist tries to take the lessons his father showed him and apply them to his own love life.

It would never have presented itself to me in a different setting, but leaving a movie theater filled with people older than myself, the words of our fellow movie-goers stuck. Well, not their exact words (it's been a few days now), but their frustration and dissatisfaction stayed with me, maybe even briefly bothered me. Was there an age-related, or generation-created difference in the way we viewed this movie? It didn't occur to me why at first, but not only was it true, but I think the reasons why are important to the story.

I don't just mean 'viewed' in the sense that every individual sees the world, and sees stories, and relates to stories differently. Of course we do. But shared and similar experiences among different generations does create analogous reactions.

First of all, there's almost no way I can relate to the gay, dying father. He lived in a different era, repressed and unsatisfied. But we don't have to relate to that person. The character we spend time with, portrayed with the utmost grace and charm by Christopher Plummer, is a rejuvenated and determined man, living out the final few years of his life with fervor and pleasure. He's an enjoyable character, but, now living life on the other side of the emotional spectrum, is still not someone to whom I can relate.

Instead, it's the artist played by Ewan McGregor to whom I obviously relate. He's a character so familiar to me; he's morose, he's lost, and it's not to say he's not driven, but he's clearly uninspired, except maybe by his own melancholy. He's also creative, an overall good guy, and he's played by Ewan McGregor, so he has some things going his way. He tells his story with wit and humor, distilling commonplace artifacts (trash bag, pink flamingo, photograph) like an anthropologist explaining a foreign culture. And yet despite his self-awareness, the character has the same sense of disorientation that plagues the lead character of The Graduate, and I think it says says something true and meaningful about the difference between generations in America; there are some surprising similarities between a 38-year-old artist today, and a person just out of college in 1967.

We, of the iPod generation, like to think our problems are unique and new. But dissatisfaction with life isn't new -- it's had people searching for a greater meaning to everything for thousands of years. What is different today is the way we prolong our search for love. History says we're marrying later in life than any other time before, and like the character played by Ewan McGregor, some in my generation do their best to avoid emotion and commitment in a way that is all too familiar to myself.

Beginners is semi-autobiographical, and in a way, filmmaker Mike Mills is saying that his childhood made him this way. Living with a secretly-gay father and an ostracized Jewish mother, the character grows up in a world where intimacy was very rare. We're meant to surmise that McGregor's character Oliver is often melancholy and even emotionless, because that's the way he was raised. Oliver keeps intimacy at arm's length, creating a sense of detachment between lovers. It's why he hasn't stayed in a relationship, and it's possibly why Oliver isn't succeeded as an artist: he's connecting to his own sadness, but not to the customers he's commissioned to design for.

Beginners must have been a difficult movie to write. Mills tries to balance the important intimacy between these characters, but maintain the emotional detachment Oliver is feeling. What we're left with is something that feels a little false; Beginners is a sad movie, but the emotions aren't passionate. I think it's that 'falseness' and emotional detachment that bothered some of the other movie-goers that day, even if they didn't strike me as strange.

We are left with some truth though. Oliver's father didn't find happiness until the final years of his life, showing it's never to late to be a 'beginner' at love.

Oh, and there's a talking dog.

Midnight in Paris (2011)

2011-08-07T11:29:00.003-04:00

Woody Allen's latest is both a tribute to nostalgia, and a rebuking of it. At times it's a celebration of 20th century literature, but also mocks the famous authors. The only consistent thing about Midnight in Paris is Woody Allen's professed loved for the city.

Owen Wilson does his best Woody Allen impression here as a screen-playwright and a wannabe fiction writer vacationing with his fiance (Rachel McAdams) in Paris. Unsatisfied by his own writing - and with his fiance - Owen Wilson goes on a stroll at midnight in search of inspiration, and travels back in time to Paris of the 1920's, the world of Zelda & Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Cole Porter, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Josephine Baker, and plenty others I don't remember or didn't recognize.

The characters we briefly meet are sometimes as thinly devised as the paper they wrote on. Especially Hemingway and Stein, the character give our time-traveling protagonist advise on his writings and love life as though the words were pulled directly from their work. In short, Woody Allen does little to imagine these literary and artistic celebrities beyond their stereotypes. Disappointment would be a reasonable reaction, so I took a metaphorical step back, and looked for their meaning and purpose: everybody likes to imagine living in a different time period every once in a while, but you can't actually go back in time, so you should probably start living in the moment.

Midnight in Paris is like many other Woody Allen films: comical, fanciful, and a bit sad. The 1920's characters are entertaining, but unfulfilling, because a conversation with Ernest Hemingway should be more insightful than they're portrayed here. And they're also distracting, for the viewer and Owen Wilson's character, because they're not the point. The message is... to do you what you like, not what you think you should like, and as simple as it sounds, if you love Paris at night in the rain, find someone else who does too. (Woody Allen count: 28 down, 12 to go).

2012 (2009)

2011-07-31T17:54:00.003-04:00

Dear Roland Emmerich,

That's enough. Stop right there. You've done it, you've destroyed the planet enough times, and you're not getting any better at it. Your movie 1996 film Independence Day starring Will Smith, Bill Pullman and Jeff Goldblum was one of the very best the genre has ever had. It was exciting, destructive, and frightening. But your 1998 film Godzilla, not so much. Radioactive reptiles draw a limited amount of interest. Yes, global warming was a more convincing form of destruction for your 2004 film Day After Tomorrow, but your execution of that that destruction was not very convincing. Nonsense really. And it still wasn't a good movie.

The Mayan Calendar happens to conclude at the end of the 2012 A.D. year of the Christian Calendar, and this fact is mentioned once, maybe twice in your 2009 movie named 2012. It becomes very quickly clear you've used the legend of 2012 merely as an excuse to destroy the world once again, and once again you've squandered a cool idea just so you can keep loads of special effects designers employed and destroy and flood the planet, again.

I do like the conspiracy angle, in which the government devises a plan to save the special people to re-populate the Earth. Of course, John Cusack is always a good add if you want to get me to watch something. And the destruction of Los Angeles and the rest of the country was incredibly cool looking. 2012 could have been a decent destruction movie without the whole Mayan prediction thing, an empty gimmick that made what was already a silly apocalypse movie into an unintended comedy.

You're really not a bad filmmaker, I think. In fact as a teenager, your 1994 film Stargate was one of my favorite science fiction films. Universal Soldier (1992) was pretty bad, as was The Patriot (2000), but I think it's your drive for mindless entertainment that's stifling your creativity. A few years ago I might have said to you that if you would just come up with a more creative way to destroy the world, then please, go on right ahead. But after watching 2012 today, I don't think you can be trusted. Stop now, and do something else.

With love,
- AZ Winer

Winnie The-Pooh (2011)

2011-07-30T10:37:00.001-04:00

Nickelodeon recently announced they'll be rerunning much of their programming from the 1990's, and many friends of mine cheered the move. They grew up on this stuff they said, and this was good stuff they said, better than today's kids stuff they said, so of course they were happy, they said.

I get that, but at what point should they be expected to grow out of it? I watched as much Doug Funny and Pete & Pete and Rocko and Alex Mack as the next kid, but that's it. I'm good. No need to go back for me.

The newscaster who I heard read the story is probably in their 50's, and asked rhetorically, can people who grew up in the 1990's already have nostalgia?

Is nostalgia what this is all about? Is my generation rushing to remember the past just as their life is really beginning?

Trying to find some greater meaning out of a desperate move by an increasingly insignificant entertainment source is probably ill-advised, but I do see a trend, and Winnie The-Pooh is definitely part of that trend.

My girlfriend was literally coming to tears every time she saw the trailer for this movie, so with her birthday around the corner, it was an obvious choice to see. The movie was adorable, whimsical, and maybe most importantly, stayed true to form. No 3-D revolution needed here; A.A. Milne's honey-obsessed bear and all his friends of the Hundred Acres Wood stand on their own without updating, and Disney deserves credit for keeping the spirit and style of the original cartoons. Pooh Bear literally jumps up and climbs down the sentences of the narrator's story as he and his pals search for Eeyore's missing tail through this imaginary world that is at times frightening (especially for little Piglet) and comforting (especially for viewers in the mid-20's!).

These days, many kids' movies pander to adults with innuendo and pop-culture references as a way to keep both parties entertained. Pixar does it the best. Winnie The-Pooh doesn't do this. What's left is 65 minutes of children's entertainment, but one that adults can still enjoy.

So is it just about the nostalgia factor? Maybe. And maybe they just don't make them like they used to.

Bedtime for Bonzo (1951)

2011-07-29T14:23:00.000-04:00

As I write, the legend of Ronald Reagan continues to grow. It grows every day. He was already a popular guy, from what I understand, but in the last couple years, his reputation has become epic. A man who was shot point-blank but didn't die. A man who sledge-hammered down the Berlin Wall by himself. There's probably a joke out there about his ability to make Chuck Norris cry in terror. And today, Reagan is the most likely addition to Mount Rushmore.

All this might have seemed absurd in 1951, when actor Ronald Reagan starred opposite a monkey in Bedtime for Bonzo. I started watching out of curiosity, simply because I'd never actually watched Reagan in a movie. When I realized the movie was about Reagan training a chimpanzee to act like a young person, it became a must-watch. Well, not really, but it was worth it.

Bedtime for Bonzo is actually an entertaining little film that aims to prove nurture over nature, when it comes to animals, and therefore, people. Ultimately, the movie is a romantic comedy, even though the romance is comically restrained, as are the sexual innuendos. Reagan, like this movie, is very much a product of its time.

Blue Valentine (2010)

2011-07-11T16:34:00.000-04:00

What does it mean for a movie to be 'poetic'?

Blue Valentine is a beautiful movie, but beginning to end, it's about a failed marriage, and even though it painfully trudges through the low points, the film maintains a transcendent quality that seems to say something about the modern American experience.

Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) are a relatively young couple with a young daughter, but they carry so much baggage that they seem old and doomed before they even reach middle-aged. It's quite a transformation for two sexy actors. Dean is balding painter and mover and is very content being a father and working without ambition. Cindy, working at a medical clinic, is disappointed in Dean because he's wasting his 'potential' and she seems distracted by the possibilities other men bring. Neither Cindy or Dean grew up with good role models for what a working marriage looks like, and it's not clear Cindy ever really loved Dean in the first place, but loved his company. Both characters are flawed, and both are relatable. Ultimately, Cindy's discontentment trumps Dean's contentment.

Is this America? Is this American? Is this the real American story? Is this the real American love story? Is this love? Is this the modern American family? Is this her Independence Day?

A couple's genesis, evolution and conclusion. A short marriage beginning to end.

The anti-thesis of The Notebook, indeed.

Based on real moments from the director's life, Blue Valentine was a project about 10 years in the making. Derek Cianfrance finally 'lived up to his wife's expectations' and completed a script that had taken him about a decade to finalize. But what really impresses me about that story, is that he quickly told his actors to improvise at will. It's incredible to me that the director/writer could have worked on the script for so long, but then was so quick to relinquish control to his actors. There's no doubt in my mind that it's that kind of artistic collaboration that really makes this film, that transform it from "good but just depressing" to "good and really rather moving" because the emotions are so raw and so impulsive, the characters take over the actor, and really become alive.

This is such an intimate movie, and so heartbreaking. The pushing and pulling between the characters is so evident, so exhausting. The story cuts back and forth between different points in their relationship, beginning, end, high points, low points. It's depressing and inspiring, I think it says something about happiness and love in America, and I think Blue Valentine is a great American film.

Quantum of Solace (2008)

2011-07-06T14:20:00.002-04:00

I say Bond, you say... gadgets.

I say Bond, you say... women.

I say Bond, you say... a nice suit and an Aston Martin.

How about this word association game: From the director of Finding Neverland and The Kite Runner comes... the latest James Bond movie?

I've actually seen many of the movies directed by Marc Forster, others include Stay and Stranger Than Fiction, but I didn't realize that when I went to watch Quantum of Solace. I just wanted to mindlessly watch the latest Bond movie.

Because that's what you do with Bond movies, you mindlessly watch them.

It must have been part of a Bond movie marathon, because I also watched Goldeneye on TV a few days later (and certainly not in chronological order). None of these movies are all that brilliant, but the action sequences have certainly changed in the past 10 years or so. Honestly, I think the Bourne series made a real impact on this series. That 3-part film series starring Matt Damon was so intelligent and well-executed and most-importantly, outdid just about every other movie when it came to hand-to-hand combat, the makers of the James Bond movies realized they would become obsolete if they didn't at least try to keep up.

So, that's what they did. They tried. They found a more capable action star in Daniel Craig, and they increased the amount of hand-to-hand combat.

I don't know if they had to go that direction. Bond hadn't ever been a hand-to-hand combat kind of action figure. Like I mentioned above, Bond is known for gadgets, women, and clothes. James Bond has also been involved in action, but he's never been this athletic. I guess he needs to be if he's going to even keep up with Jason Bourne.

Everything else is the same, the story is about a mysterious businessman trying to get oil pipelines to go his way, or something, but it's an athletic Bond who's careless and lethal. His boss 'M' (Judi Dench) is worried about Bond's loyalty after losing his 'love' in the previous movie, but we all know Bond is beyond that.

Rescue Dawn (2006)

2011-06-18T10:02:00.002-04:00

Known mostly as a documentarian, director Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man) is a confusing entity. That he made Rescue Dawn is also confusing, although I'll present a hypothesis.

In contrast, Rescue Dawn is not confusing. It's so straightforward in fact, it's rather boring, despite being an entertaining POW escape movie. Captured in Laos during the early years of the Vietnam War, a US fighter pilot (Christian Bale) carefully plots and then executes an escape with his fellow prisoners. And thats it: he crashes, he's captured, he plans escape, he escapes.

What does it tell us when a movie is good but is this simple?
It means focus you should focus on the details.

Herzog usually does documentaries, but when he isn't, he's doing movies based on true stories. Rescue Dawn is based on a true story, and in this, the movie is rather perfect. Each character has their quirks, each characters decision is believable, and the details seem not just plausible but probably. The POW's debate whether it's even worth escape because their camp is surrounded by so much jungle, and Bale's character just laughs them off, as if aware his destiny doesn't end in a camp.

Steve Zahn lost 40 pounds for his role as a goofy but good-hearted POW. Jeremy Davies lost 33 pounds for his role as a paranoid and burned-out POW. Somehow, Christian Bale reportedly lost 55 pounds for his role. It's all for an impressive portrayal of what likely happened in that jungle in 1965, and I'm sure that was Herzog's purpose. He couldn't really make a documentary, so this is the closest he could do. I just can't place why. Maybe he thought, that since there aren't any documentaries of these kinds of stories, it was a story that needed to be told. I would counter, that's all well and good, but I'm not sure the plot had enough compelling surprises to justify making this movie.

Clear and Present Danger (1994)

2011-06-15T15:46:00.000-04:00

I think it was TNT or some channel that was having a Jack Ryan movie marathon, and for some reason, had never actually watched all of Patriot Games or Clear and Present Danger. And that's coming from a Harrison Ford fan.

I found Danger to be much more interesting, perhaps because it was more conspiracy-driven, adding a little more thinking to an otherwise action-filled series. This story revolves around Colombian drug-lord and an illegal war in which the American military is engaging in covert operations in the jungles of South America.

Maybe most interesting is the moral battle between Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) and the President, including a confrontation at the end in the Oval Office. Ryan refuses to sacrifice ideals, the President does, and in Hollywood - where things are only ever black or white - that makes one of them right, and the other wrong. Ultimately though, Danger is a more interesting story, and so it's no surprise it turns into a better movie. It successfully filled the time while I got some ironing done lazy one afternoon.

Patriot Games (1992)

2011-06-12T18:04:00.000-04:00

In a lot of ways, Patriot Games was just part of a trend. Political action thrillers weren't new in 1992, but they somehow became trendy during 1990's.

The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Three Days in Condor (1975) may have been good movies, but it's not like they were having an effect 30 years later, right?

Well, maybe they were.

Like many movies, Patriot Games is based on a book. In this case, a Tom Clancy book. The real trend to watch was the increasing popularity of Clancy's work and loads of other political thriller novels that, during the 1980's, were probably considered too geeky for the big screen (audiences were preferring Terminator and Rambo) but by the 90's were ready for the thinking-man's action movie.

Still, the plot is really quite simple: CIA agent Jack Ryan spoils an assassination attempt in London, and so the IRA sets its sights on him. Like another trend (think: Die Hard series) Patriot Games features a European madman with an eye only for revenge. If only he had a heart, maybe he'd stand a chance. Although, that's also the story of Voldemort. Hmmmm.

Patriot Games has some depth, but it turns out mostly to be an action movie about a family tormented, really, for no reason. Ultimately, Harrison Ford can only make a movie so interesting.

Rendition (2007)

2011-06-11T11:01:00.004-04:00

A political thriller that was aiming to be cutting edge, but made the mistake of cutting corners. Rendition contains complicated stuff for a Hollywood film, but dumbing it down was not the way to go.

First, a definition: "Extraordinary rendition (or irregular rendition) is the abduction and extrajudicial transfer of a person from one nation to another. "Torture by proxy" is used by some critics to describe situations in which the United States has transferred suspected terrorists to countries known to practice torture."

That's from Wikipedia, and the movie Rendition looks to expose the truths behind this practice through a fictional take on a real-life scenario, in which an Egyptian-born American was kidnapped, jailed and tortured until he gave up information about a terrorism plot he had nothing to do with. Meanwhile, his wife, played by Reese Witherspoon, makes a futile attempt to get him back. Also includes Meryl Streep (CIA official), Alan Arkin (US Senator) and Peter Sarsgaard (Arkin's assistant).

Rendition has a sense of destiny about it -- because all the characters do exactly what you expect them to do, and there's only one moment when a character breaks rank, and it leads to the resolution of the crux of the dilemma. Unfortunately, this makes Rendition a little boring. The terrorists act like terrorists, the CIA officials and US government officials go through the obvious motions of denial, the wife pleads to no avail, and a family-man with nothing to hide is tortured to no end. It's all up to CIA analyst Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) to either follow orders, or do what he thinks is right.

This movie, from director Gavin Hood (Tsotsi, a very good film), is out to prove a point about this terrible practice of 'torture by proxy,' but does so on black-and-white terms. The good guys and the bad guys are pretty obvious, and I'm left asking, what if they weren't? What if their captured suspect really did have a hand in terrorism? Would torture for information be acceptable then? At least there would be SOME debate.

Instead, Rendition is a simplified version of the truth. The filmmakers chose an obvious mistake the government made to make their point about this torture practice. In doing so, they took a controversial issue about American civil liberty ideals and how they relate to fighting terrorism, and reduced it all to "right or wrong." It's a brave movie that could have been much more so.

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010)

2011-06-10T14:08:00.002-04:00

"You see how beautiful and ironic life is?"

Few people ever do, except in this case Antonio Banderas, who delivers the line, and possibly Woody Allen, who wrote the words. Almost everyone else however is a victim in Allen's story of unfulfilled relationships.

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger has all the familiar elements of a Woody Allen film, including self-inflicted misadventures of romance, but what stood out to me was the recklessness of Roy (Josh Brolin), a husband and writer so frustrated by his own inadequacy at writing, he abandons his marriage and turns to plagiarizing.

Stranger is also a movie about fate, luck and prophecy. A recent divorcee sees a woman she thinks can read her future and fortune, and even though she's a fraud, she instills confidence and hope into the life of a woman who felt there was nothing left for her. This woman, Helena (Gemma Jones), starts the movie on the bottom, after being dumped by her longtime husband Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) and finishes on top, when she meets her faux-predicted "tall dark stranger" - which makes this movie a story more about karma (or luck) than about any one person's ability to control their fate.

Woody Allen movies like this one are full of morality tests. His characters make decisions that effect their lives, and he divies out judgement. Alfie breaks with his loyal wife for a blonde bimbo, and he gets punishes physically and emotionally for it. Roy is inconsiderate and selfish in his quest for success and a beautiful sidekick, and hastily moves to better himself, and he too is punished. Even Roy's wife (Naomi Watts) is judged by Allen's screenplay for impure thoughts (for Banderas).

It's not nearly as good as Vicky Christina Barcelona and not nearly as bad as Whatever Works, but I'm left to ask, why? Stranger doesn't do cover any new territory, and I'm left to wonder how hard he's really trying sometimes. His characters in Stranger are unpleasant and uninspired. So while Banderas sees the beauty in the irony, the audience is left looking at beautiful architecture full of beautiful but unhappy faces. (Woody Allen count: 27 down, 13 to go).

The Fighter (2010)

2011-05-27T11:40:00.003-04:00

Similar to war movies, I usually don't prefer boxing movies. I think it's the glorification of aggression and simplistic violence that bothers me. The Fighter truly surpasses expectations, because the boxing comes second to the family dynamic that dominates this movie.

Through a perceptively written screenplay and piercing acting, director David O. Russell and producer/actor Mark Wahlberg created a film that depicts a relatable and compelling dilemma.

The protagonist "Irish" Micky Ward (Wahlberg) is who you root for, and his half-brother, the self-celebrating Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale) is the deplorable antagonist. More than just rooting for him to win his boxing rounds, I found myself rooting for Micky to break ties with his selfish brother, and even more so, to break ties with his domineering mother (Melissa Leo).

It would seem Micky would be better off without his controlling brother/mother and their lollygagging extended family, until Micky directly addresses the dilemma: he's not, although he does have to develop a workable balance between normalcy and family to find success.

So who has to adapt? The family? Or him? Is life really about compromise? Or does compromise create success? For me, it's Micky's dilemma that made this film so fascinating.

The Fighter is based on a true story, but facts aside, the actors deliver convincing portrayals of some really contemptible characters; their ugliness makes them all the more absorbing. Bale and Leo deserved their Oscars, and this film deserved all the recognition it got.

Black Swan (2010)

2011-05-15T22:39:00.004-04:00

The films appears to use the struggle of 'good' versus 'evil' as the framework for telling the story of Swan Lake, but I think that's misleading.

Black Swan is a drawn-out spiral into madness, not 'darkness.'

Natalie Portman's character Nina Sayers isn't a "good girl gone bad," and Mila Kunis's character is not a Devilish temptress. It might appear that way as the two characters compete for the lead role, and Sayers is pushed by the show choreographer to show more aggression and take risks.

But Sayers doesn't have angels and devils sitting on her shoulders. She just goes crazy.

What drives Nina Sayers to madness? Well unfortunately, Darren Aronofsky doesn't give more of a definitive answer. At least his body of work gives plenty to draw from.

In his previous film, The Wrestler, the title persona played by Mickey Rourke becomes so driven to keep up his character, it leads him to sacrificing his body.

Before that, The Fountain has a doctor so driven to find a cure for his diseased wife, he sacrifices his relationship with her.

Requiem for a Dream isn't about being driven, except for maybe the drive for drugs. It is of course about addiction, perhaps the deadliest combination of mindless obsession.

And of course, Pi, Aronofsky's first feature, a movie about trying to find meaning where there is none, the story of a man desperate to find answers in a number.

With all this in mind, it's clear Black Swan isn't anything new for Aronofsky, but rather an adaption of his continuing chronicle of obsession.

Sayers gives into that obsession in an attempt to reach perfection. With her, the audience is seduced by the passion it takes for her to embrace the role, but with the pursuit comes instability. Ironic, because her craft is one of extreme diligence.

I'm a huge fan of Aronofky's work. His films are always gorgeous, his stories entertaining, and his themes challenging. Still, I felt Black Swan didn't pack quite the punch it could, because the motivation behind the madness isn't clear. Unless you blame the Sayers mom, but that seems to put an excessive blame on overbearing mothers. Lots of people have overbearing mothers; they don't all go bonkers.

127 Hours (2010)

2011-04-30T23:40:00.004-04:00

The most obvious thing that impresses about 127 Hours is that all 94 minutes of the movie are interesting. In fact, anytime I asked someone what they thought of the movie? -- they said they were simply impressed that it sustained their interest.

Really? That's it? I couldn't imagine audiences expecting 1.5 hours of just a dude sitting around in a cave. I assume the expectation of everyone is that, somehow, the director turned an interesting premise into an interesting movie.

Perhaps what is surprising is just how interesting the movie is. Danny Boyle displayed his experience in cinematography and editing in Slumdog Millionaire, and again he impresses in 127 Hours. None of it was groundbreaking, but the visuals were all astounding. In the wilderness of the Utah mountains, Boyle delivers humbling and sweeping camera shots of the landscape. We also get extreme close-ups of beads of sweat, cracks in the rocks, water traveling up and down a straw. A camera accompanies Aron Ralston as he bikes and runs through the desolate and beautiful national park, and follows his reactions - thrill, astonishment, fear, panic, anger - each one displayed as he falls into a crevice that was almost his grave. In all, 127 Hours is an enjoyable watch.

Aron filmed himself throughout his ordeal, creating a diary of his attempts at escape. As incredible as Aaron's real-life story would have been anyway, that he actually recorded the experience allowed Boyle to create as close to a documentary as is humanly possible, and that's exactly what Aron called it when he watched. It allows Aron to tell his story, to recount his memories, and a realistic way for the character to verbalize his thoughts without feeling like narration. Similar to when Tom Hanks got stuck on an island in Cast Away, the filmmakers had the actor befriend a volleyball, and in a similar technique, gave the main character a way to talk out loud even though he is all alone. In 127 Hours, actor James Franco plays an honest and naive character driven by frenetic energy and frequently talks to himself, and the camera. He's the kind of lovable oddball who would have been fun to watch no matter how long he was stuck in a cave.

Believe it or not, one of my favorite scenes is the one that will make you grimace. Aron has to cut his arm off to escape - it's what made him famous after all. It's an incredibly gross scene, but Boyle is extremely creative, especially with sound, as Aron cuts bit by bit, especially through nerves. It's the climax of the movie, and even though it's difficult to sit through, it's executed brilliantly.

Monsters Inc. (2001)

2011-04-25T14:48:00.000-04:00

One of the few Pixar films I hadn't seen, but now one of my favorite, Monster's Inc. is creative, entertaining and leaves you smiling.

The animated movie is about the monster world and the human world, connecting by bedroom closets. Lets see if I can describe this is a less disturbing way: the monster world is powered by the sound of screams from children, and to get that sound (which acts like electricity and the electricity company is named 'Monster's Inc.'), monsters sneak in through the closet portals, scare the kids, and then run out. They run out, because they're scared, because the twist is that the monsters are afraid of being contaminated by the children.

Within minutes of watching Monster's Inc., I realized this Pixar movie would be a little bit different from a character stand-point.

I think it's easy to get into the characters of an animated film, because you can't see the people doing the voice-work - you can only hear their voices. Sometimes when you watch an actor, you feel like you're watching the actor in the movie, and not the character. For example, lets use John Cusack, who I happen to enjoy watching, but no matter what role he plays, I always feel like I'm watching John Cusack, and never do I lose him to his character. In animated films, it's even easier to It's how Pixar was able to make Woody and Buzz so successful for instance. You quickly lose Tom Hanks and Tim Allen, and get attached to the toys. By the time Pixar made its way to a movie like WALL-E, the filmmakers didn't even need real actors to create a character.

Monster's Inc. is equally good, but different. This movie feels as though it was written with its actors in mind. I really felt while watching that Billy Crystal and John Goodman had written the jokes and were on my screen in costume or something. Maybe it's because there's simply no way to contain Crystal, or that both have such distinct voices you can't hide them no matter how hard you try. I like to think it's the other way around, that the writers used the actors well-known personas and used them to enhance their monster characters. Or just perfect casting? Either way, the premise is extremely creative and the characters are quite funny, creating another successful Pixar movie.

Spartacus (1960)

2011-04-24T11:19:00.000-04:00

There's a lot of 1960 famousness happening in this movie: Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier and Tony Curtis all starring in a Stanley Kubrick film with the famous line "I am Spartacus!" I guess I could have guessed I'd be disappointed - and bored - but sometimes I just like to see famous movies just to add them to my cinematic lexicon.

The biggest program with Spartacus is that it isn't a Kubrick film, but rather a Kirk Douglas film. Kubrick's dark sense of humor and world is always his biggest imprint on a story, and there's none of that in Spartacus. Instead, Spartacus is more of an guidebook on how to be a heroic and ethical leader of a rebellion, that is, if winning doesn't matter to you. No surprise then that this would be the last time Kubrick would film something in which he was allowed no artistic input.

With this movie, Kubrick was just doing what he was told to do - and in this case, he was being told by Douglas, who was still disappointed that Charlton Heston was chosen over him to play Ben-Hur, and wanted to prove Hollywood wrong. Ben-Hur was about 40 minutes longer and infinitely more entertaining to watch. Spartacus spends too much time on ancient Roman politics, and an unnecessary amount of down time between action sequences, which were pretty lame anyway. I don't always say this, but in this case, the re-make is much much better. So just go re-watch Gladiator instead.

In The Loop (2009)

2011-04-23T11:18:00.001-04:00

In the Loop is a satire about the ineptness of bureaucratic government middlemen on both sides of the pond. It was created by Armando Iannucci, known in the UK for his TV show "The Thick of It." His movie version of his television show is not known, at least not in the United States, and I think the reason for that is a combination comedy of perspective: there's not a lot of comedy, and it's not from our perspective.

Still, In The Loop has some good moments and is comedic. It's also random and rather pointless, full of characters who act like chickens with their heads cut off running around and thinking that they're making a difference. That's part of the comedy, In The Loop is in the end pretty pointless because the characters have no power but think they do. It's full of British diplomats bumbling their way around the State Department in Washington, DC trying to convince both countries not to go to war, while American government employees (including a general played by James Gandolfini) try to do the same. And since, of course, the people in charge don't care, it's all rather silly.

In The Loop has a similar parody feel to 2008's Burn After Reading. In The Loop is about bureaucracy, Burn After Reading is about paranoia, but both are fueled by delusional characters trying to be opportunistic, without realizing how small they are and how futile their plans are. So, like a British, more vulgar version of Burn After Reading.

Runaway Bride (1999)

2011-04-22T15:27:00.001-04:00

As if I thought Pretty Woman wasn't predictable enough, Runaway Bride makes it painful.

For a Hollywood-style romantic comedy, there's little suspense. Instead, the joy is in the process of flirtation, comedy, and elements of insight into relationships that the filmmakers can bestow upon the audience. Runaway Bridge simply doesn't have any of that.

TBS must have been having a Julia Roberts marathon, or a bad romantic comedies marathon, because somehow I suckered myself into watching both Pretty Woman and then Runaway Bride consecutively. Damn you DVR, damn you. I tell myself things like, "well, they're famous movies, I should see them." And, "if they're famous, they can't be that bad." They can.

I don't know, maybe I didn't like it because of the lame journalism jokes, which I might be a little bit more sensitive to. The 'small-town' girl and 'big-city guy thing seemed lame to me too, ineffective at showing the stereotypical 'opposites attract' or even 'finding happiness in small town America' -- either of which are romantic comedy points I've seen and can be effective.

Instead, Runaway Bride settles for lessons in growing-up and maturity. It turns out, Julia Roberts runs away because she's not ready to get married. Great. It turns out that Julia Roberts has an inability to express her feelings, choosing instead to pretend she hates Richard Gere instead of addressing her emotions. I can believe the immaturity from a younger Julia Roberts -- like in Pretty Woman -- but 9 years later, with the same director in Gary Marshall, I think it's asking a lot for the viewer to still believe.

Few movies run away from its own pay off quite like Runaway Bride, which is ironically, the only enjoyable part of this movie.

Pretty Woman (1990)

2011-04-21T14:47:00.001-04:00

I love doing this blog, but believe it or not, there are downsides. One of them is bothering to write something thoughtful every time I see a movie. I see a lot of movies, and I'm not very thoughtful. You can imagine the problem.

The bigger snag for me is that sometimes I watch some embarrassing stuff, and Pretty Woman is pretty embarrassing.

I also have some bad habits I clearly haven't been able to shake. I sleep in too late. I convey sarcasm even when I'm not trying to, and I'm sometimes lazy. I also have a habit of watching things just because they're on TV, and that's why I'm writing about Pretty Woman.

This movie, starring of course Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, is what I call an 80's movie set in the 90's. Pretty Woman tries to be progressive and modern - but it's held back by the music, the clothes, and a painfully predictable plot.

The appeal here is the fantasy. The businessman played by the handsome Richard Gere gets to 'rescue' and 'transform' a gorgeous woman off the streets. Julia Roberts is the princess prostitute, who is swept off her feet into a world with unlimited shopping trips and penthouse excesses. Both characters have an epiphany moment, which might be confused with actual character evolution. It would have been much more interesting if their epiphany was that they shouldn't be together.

UPDATE: I wrote this on a Sunday afternoon, and hours later, came across the following article in the New York Times titled Thelma, Louise, and All the Pretty Women. It's a fantastic explanation of how Vivian (Julia Roberts) has a false character transformation, is the character ancestor to "Sex And the City," and her relationship with Gere's character is more or less a financial transaction.

Arizona Dream (1993)

2011-03-31T10:46:00.001-04:00

Serbian writer/director Emir Kusturica must be a really weird dude, because he made this movie Arizona Dream, and it's a really weird movie.

Maybe I should preface that. For a movie with Hollywood stars, Arizona Dream is a really weird movie.

The question is, is this the strangest movie with Hollywood stars I've ever seen?

Possibly so.

Johnny Depp, who has never shied away from strangeness, joins Faye Dunaway, Vincent Gallo, Lilli Taylor and Jerry Lewis in a movie about broken dreams. A mumbling Depp looks for purpose in life as he heads back to Arizona to hang out with his friend (Gallo) and briefly work for his uncle (Lewis) at a used-car lot. In Arizona, he meets and then moves in with a widow (Dunaway) and her step-daughter (Taylor).

Then, adventure ensues. In this dusty landscape Dunaway and Depp shack up together in a large rundown home, and live with Taylor, who threatens suicide and charms baby turtles with an accordion. It's a complicated sexual relationship the three have together. The main driving force of action is that Dunaway and Depp try to build a plane together. And all throughout the film are quick images of a giant floating halibut, talk of dreams and impending doom, and the suggestion that there is a greater meaning to everything that's happening.

Is it all a metaphor? How much of it is real? Why the obsession with dreams? Is this an experience meant to feel like a dream? Is this about the American dream?

I'm still debating.

I think it would be easy to cast Arizona Dream off as 'artsy' and I don't want to do that. I want to find the meaning in the film. But that seems as futile as trying to find meaning in any of the dreams we have at night.

Megamind (2010)

2011-03-30T18:40:00.001-04:00

What if Lex Luther actually defeated Superman?

That's where the makers of Megamind take us. In fact, it seems all the characters are derived from someone else's imagination. Other main characters include the Lois Lane character and the Jimmy Olsen character. In the visual style of other Dreamworks animation movies, Megamind uses what we know about the comic book legend and is able to subvert the story to create comedy.

Like with all Dreamworks animation movies, Megamind is not as good as Pixar at combining meaningful life lessons with comedy. However, it was funnier and more meaningful for me than Despicable Me, which came out in the same year and also has a similar theme of ugly-looking evil mastermind with a good heart.

In fairness, Despicable Me might be more original in story. One of the strongest parts of Megamind the movie is that the plot and themes are well-developed, a by-product of using the themes of an American classic in Superman. But in a head-to-head contest on which is funnier and more interesting - Megamind is the easy winner.

The giant-brained blue-skinned Megamind, voiced by Will Ferrell, assumes he's playing a kind of game with Metro Man, the Superman of Metrocity. They go through the motions: he comes up with an evil ruse, it likely involved kidnapping Roxanne Ritchie, Metrocity's version of Lois Lane, and in the end, Megamind saves the day. They have a role to play, and everyone's happy.

With no Metro Man, the usually-evil Megamind takes over the city with ease, and quickly finds himself bored. It's funny, because it plays on the idea that these evil characters who want to take over the world seem to have baseless motivation for their goals. Megamind never really had a reason - he was good at what he did so he just always did it. The irony is predictable but still funny.

In the real world though, 'evil' people (we assume) strive for power (and money, sex, drugs). Megamind doesn't try to make this point - it merely alludes to the question - does power bring happiness? And isn't the answer yes, and no?

Despicable Me (2010)

2011-03-29T13:20:00.001-04:00

Perhaps more of a kids movie than I was expecting, or failed to predict. Or maybe, more aptly, I've become so accustomed to animated kids movies also being just enjoyable movies in general - ie: Pixar - that I started to overestimate today's kids movies as a whole.

Despicable Me is a cute and entertaining 95 minutes about an evil criminal mastermind who wants to outdo his even-more-evil nemesis... by stealing the moon.

Gru, the despicable one voiced by Steve Carrell doing an evil Russian accent, is a curmudgeonly, hunched-back adult male. As part of his evil plot, he adopts three young orphan girls to infiltrate his competitor's lair.

Gru is the main character, but the girls serve as the perspective for the Despicable Me's targeted audience. One of the main themes of the movie is a father-daughter relationship. Despicable Me is not a Pixar movie, and therefore can't handle sophistication of message, but the message is still served: adults can be mean sometimes, but that doesn't mean they don't love their kids.

Gru's small army of little yellow ticktack-shaped monsters are the henchmen and the comic relief.

Proof (2005)

2011-03-28T14:03:00.001-04:00

By the time Alex's show of Proof began its run -- I pretty much had every one of her lines memorized, and much of the other characters too.

By the time I saw Proof, the movie, I'd seen the show performed by two different groups of actors.

Part of the reason Proof the movie wasn't enjoyable for me, I think, is that there was so little surprise because I was already so familiar with the dialogue and characters.

However, if that were entirely the case, then we'd all have trouble seeing movies again and again. I watched Donnie Darko the other day with friends from work. I've seen the movie half a dozen times, at least, and still, every time I watch it, I catch more things. The movie has even more depth to it than I realized, and proves that knowing a film well doesn't make it less enjoyable to watch if it's a good movie.

I think this play has a great deal of depth as well. So I've come to the conclusion that this movie just wasn't very good. The acting is okay at best, even though the cast is talented (Gwyneth Paltrow, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anthony Hopkins and Hope Davis). Mostly though, I think the visual storytelling was unoriginal. The adapted screenplay was hardly adapted, and, fact: a good film requires more than good dialogue.

Proof is inspired by the story of schizo-genius John Nash, who's work in mathematics changed the world. The play is great, but for a better film version, see A Beautiful Mind.

Howl (2010)

2011-03-27T10:42:00.007-04:00

Howl is quite magical.

James Franco is Allen Ginsberg, and the story jumps around from moment to moment in his Howl experience: the inspiration he gets from friends like Solomon and Cassady and Kerouac, to his writing experience bent over a type writer, to his performed readings in a crowded speakeasy, and then to the obscenity trial where his work is critiqued for its literacy merit.

But what completes Howl, the movie, is the animated recounting of Ginsberg's poem. Franco copies Ginsberg's awkward reading, reading the famous phrases of Howl over and over, meaning something different with each repetition, and then meaning something again when they're visualized in cartoon form.

The obscenity trial is an essential element in telling the story of Howl. Nothing gave Howl as much exposure as that trial that meant to belittle and bury the poem. Still, it was the less-magical part of this movie.

The filmmakers of Howl use the trial as a way to defend art in a more general sense. The court-room debate is philosophical, and pretty one-sided. The film's prosecutors against Howl make a lame argument, mostly, "I don't get it," and then the judge tells it like it is - probably a bit redundantly since anyone watching this movie probably agrees with the verdict - that just because you don't get it, doesn't mean it has no merit.

Howl also recreates interviews done with Ginsberg, which serve as more opportunity for James Franco to do his impression, and for the filmmakers to explain his work to the general public. It's intellectual and engaging dialogue, but it's those moments in the bars, and on the road trips, and in the animated scenes that makes this movie quite a special experience.

"Angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night."

I could argue that one's own imagination serves as a better tool to see Ginsberg's vision in a line like this, but the filmmakers here do such a good job, that it's better to just appreciate the art.

The Town (2010)

2011-03-26T20:20:00.005-04:00

Ben Affleck has a thing for the sentimental.

The Town could have just been an action movie about bank-robbing thugs from Boston. Instead, the director and lead actor - Ben Affleck - made a movie with heart. He has the ability to illicit empathy even for the less likable characters.

In fact, Affleck's affinity for sympathetic and emotional characters has him fitting in nicely with other recent movies about Boston.

Boston has been a peculiar movie town over the last decade. Filmmakers have gone to it to tell small-town stories in a major urban city. They're usually dramatic movies about thugs, perhaps one of the last vestibules for mobsters the American public is willing to accept as plausible.

In that sense, The Town bears similarities to The Departed, Mystic River, Boondock Saints and of course, Gone Baby Gone (also directed by Ben). All feature Boston Police Department members with questionable morals engaging violent criminals. They're also similar in theme, weighing the importance of family/blood ties and friendship.

In the end, I expected more twists and turns than The Town actually delivers. I think I was a bit mis-led by the previews. This is a straight-forward story: it has that classic storyline of a youthful lower-class male lead who longs to escape the slums, meet a respectable girl who's not a townie, and yearns for a more respectable lifestyle. Jeremy Renner is good here as well as Affleck's bestie, and the movie also features the last of Pete Postlethwaite.

WarGames (1983)

2011-03-07T06:30:00.003-05:00

A combination of Terminator, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Dr. Strangelove.

WarGames stars a teenage Matthew Broderick, who almost accidentally starts a nuclear war with Russia when he activates a super-smart government computer system programmed to destroy the world.

Like any 80's movie about technology, WarGames is so outdated its funny. But for the most part, this science-fiction teen-thriller actually holds up pretty well. The Cold War is over, and so the psychology that drove that era, and this movie, has since faded. So too (for the most part anyway) has our inherit fear of technology that people must have lived with during the 1980's. So while our general paranoia about technology and Russia has subsided, paranoia still exists, and as long as it does, WarGames will have its place.

The movie is in effect a 1980's teenage version of Dr. Strangelove.

The rest is history:
- Matthew Broderick became Ferris Bueller.
- Ally Sheedy became the weird girl from The Breakfast Club
- Director John Badham created a movie about a lovable robot called ~~WALL-E~~ Short Circuit, and then went back to making made-for-TV movies.
- James Cameron stole Badham's and other people's ideas and created Terminator.

Inside Man (2006)

2011-03-06T16:58:00.001-05:00

Inside Man isn't much of an action movie. It HAS some action, but it's not an action movie. It's a heist movie. Heist movies have a little action, and a LOT of waiting. There's action when the criminals take hold of the bank, there's some scuffling around for some time, and then there's the action when it all ends. That's Inside Man. Waiting to find out how it all ends is the only point of a heist movie -- unless you have something meaningful to say, like in Dog Day Afternoon -- but that's rare.

Spike Lee probably read the screenplay for Inside Man, and imagined a heist movie that was different and creative from the many others that came before it.

And it's true, Inside Man is an unusual take on a bank-robbery movie, but not very.

Lee put together a formidable cast for his heist movie: Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, Christopher Plummer, William Dafoe and Chiwetel Ejifor.

But it stars Denzel Washington.

Spike Lee loves Denzel. Loves him. He loves to dress him up in big yellow suits and large fedoras. He loves to stick cigars in his mouth and make him cackle. Lee loves to spin the camera around Denzel as he walks down the sidewalk. Lee loves that Denzel is always boisterous, confident, and razor-sharp.

But Spike Lee focuses on Denzel so much, he sometimes overlooks all the other characters.

Ejifor, for instance, is Denzel's police investigation partner, but the role of the skilled actor is diminished to being a tag-along character with few lines.

Same with Dafoe.

Owen, making full use of his British accent, is the usual 'European Mastermind' - a Hollywood favorite (the Die Hard series is the first thing that comes to mind). Of course Owen devised the heist, and its all the more sinister because he's not American, and has an effective scowl.

Foster is her usual cold unemotional self as a negotiator working for Plummer's character, the bank's owner.

Inside Man just didn't do it for me. Denzel dominated the movie, but his character wasn't that interesting.

Red (2010)

2011-02-28T23:16:00.004-05:00

A film that begs the question: is a secret agent a viable candidate for a dating relationship?

Oh sure, you could argue that the answer to this question has been made in previous secret agent films. James Bond is a womanizer, Ethan Hunt will have trouble protecting you, and David Bourne wouldn't remember you anyway.

Red takes this all into account as it presents its argument against dating a secret agent.

In this case, Bruce Willis plays our protagonist secret agent, or retired secret agent. I don't think Bruce Willis has played a secret agent in previous films, but he's played a number of heroes and superheroes, so it's pretty easy to get used to him in the role. In Red, Willis's character tries to have a normal relationship with Mary-Louise Parker, but, because he used to be a secret agent, things don't start so great, and there are people trying to kill him.

So, in an attempt to find out who's trying to kill him, Willis turns to his old friends, with emphasis on the old: John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren and Brian Cox.

I should mention here, that RED means: Retired & Extremely Dangerous.

And herenlies the gimmick: the action heroes of Red are old, and yet still out bad-ass all the other younger secret agents.

And yet, in the same way that Scream made fun of slasher movies but was still an effective slasher movie, and in the same way that Shaun of the Dead made fun of horror/zombie movies but was still an effective horror/zombie movie, Red makes fun of secret-agent actions movies and is still an effective secret-agent action movie. It's a little less self-referential in comparison to Scream and Shaun of the Dead, but Red takes its action and its plot seriously.

Red is an action-comedy genre movie, but the gimmick works. And by that I mean, it's relatively funny and entertaining.

And it even makes the idea of dating Bruce Willis or Helen Mirren, young or old, seem like too dangerous an endeavor.

Sarah Ross: What do you supposed the punishment is for what we're doing here?
Frank Moses: Death. Maybe life in prison.
Sarah Ross: Awesome.

Yeah, good times.

Victoria: I was in love with an agent once.
Sarah Ross: What happened?
Victoria: Well, I was with MI6, and the relationship wasn't... sanctioned. So when it came to light, my loyalty was questioned, and I was ordered to kill him. It was a test.
Sarah Ross: What did you do?
Victoria: I put three bullets in his chest.

Romantic.

Marvin Boggs: Do you know what's wrong with this country?

Sarah Ross: They all are trying to kill us?
Marvin Boggs: Exactly!

I bet you see my point by now.

Violent, yes, but the film is filled with zany characters played by some great actors, making Red an overall entertaining movie.

State and Main (2000)

2011-02-22T06:35:00.001-05:00

A strange choice, I admit, but I've been interested in seeing this quirky comedy for some time now.

From the mind of David Mamet comes a comedy about filmmaking, but also, a search for something natural.

The natural in this case is a small town in Vermont. The unnatural is the Hollywood filmmaking crew that takes over the small town in the attempt of making a movie called "The Old Mill."

But one of the sub-plots of the movie might actually be the most important plot: a romance between the writer of "The Old Mill" played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and a local book store owner, played by Rebecca Pidgeon, Mamet's real-life wife. It's here where the real life and the film become blurred, because Hoffman is basically playing Mamet: a man who doesn't fit in with the drama of Hollywood, and is searching for something more real and natural. In Vermont, he finds love.

In this light, State and Main is a metaphor for Mamet's artistic and moral life journey.

Mamet and actor William H. Macy created The Atlantic Theater Company in NYC as a way to explore a more natural way of acting. It appears they also created State and Main as a way of explaining the genesis of their exploration. (Macy plays the director of "The Old Mill.")

State and Main also features Alec Baldwin, Sarah Jessica Parker, Julia Stiles, as well as others you'll be able to recognize but not name. It's a humorous movie, and enjoyable, but not all-out funny. The more I think and read about it though, it's clear this isn't just a comedy poking fun at film producers, but something of a subtle manifesto for playwright David Mamet.

Point Break (1991)

2011-02-21T06:35:00.002-05:00

There's a story here.

A former journalism professor of mine at the University of Maryland - Kevin Swift - is passionate about surfing, and Point Break is his favorite movie. He made this well known. I'm pretty sure that Point Break trivia questions appeared on multiple quizzes. I'd never seen the movie, and I'd never surfed, so I'm pretty sure I got those questions wrong.

More importantly though, his passion for Point Break, and well, good photography skills, have stuck with me for some reason.

I can't explain why, but I noticed Point Break was playing on Comcast's Golf Channel. I was confused, but I DVR'd the movie anyway, with little real expectation of ever watching it.

As Alex and I tried to decide what to watch one recent night, Patrick Swayze's name caught her attention. We had just watched Dirty Dancing. So, call it a Swayze streak. We decided the ridiculousness of the cast was enough to give the movie a try: Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze and Gary Busey. And, the plot helped too: FBI agent goes undercover as a surfer to find a well-organized group of bank thieves who dress up and call themselves 'The Presidents.'

Utter insanity.

Surprisingly violent.

Unintentionally comical.

Overall amusing.

Keanu is his usual stone-cold self. Busey is his usual nut-job self. Lori Petty plays the likable love interest. Swayze is the likable bad guy. He's also the Bodhi.

For all this film's antics and overly-aggressive action sequences - the makers of Point Break show they had at least some affinity for the sport of surfing. And that sincere interest is exhibited mostly through Swayze's character Bodhi.

Also turns out that Point Break was directed Kathryn Bigelow, who would go on to direct last year's Oscar winner The Hurt Locker. Ms. Bigelow obviously has a thing for adrenaline.

Dirty Dancing (1987)

2011-02-20T09:59:00.003-05:00

Yup. It happened. I watched Dirty Dancing. And I cried.

Okay, I didn't cry. Most of the time I laughed. But I did watch it.

And what's more - I get it now. I get why women are obsessed with this movie. And I get why men avoid it. It all makes sense now.

Dirty Dancing is attractive because it's easy for women to fawn over Patrick Swayze, but this movie works because Jennifer Grey is convincing. She exhibits nearly palpable teen angst and pent-up sexual energy so compellingly it hardly seems like acting. In this sense, Jennifer Grey is Molly Ringwald - you might think the other characters were better, but she was the one that makes the movie work.

And for a movie to win over females, you need a strong female character. You need a character that feels real and relatable.

As for why guys hate this movie -- well that's easy. The answer is Patrick Swayze.

First of all, Swayze makes every other guy look bad - no guy I know at least can dance that way. But it's not as simple as that. Swayze's character is the anti-Jennifer Grey. He is the James Dean character. He's whiny and annoying and brooding but not intellectual at all. He represents unsophisticated masculinity, he just hides it by dancing well.

Wait. Wait a second. That's wrong. I'm wrong. I've judged him wrong.

Mark Ruffalo's character in The Kids Are All Right represents unsophisticated masculinity. Ruffalo's character just hides it well by being a "localvore" who embraces a "different" kind of family. But his character proves to be the unsophisticated one.

Swayze is the one you root for, and is the morally-sound character. Ruffalo is not. James Dean falls somewhere in between?

Of course, Swayze and Dirty Dancing cheat, because James Dean represented a generational movement as it was happening. Swayze's character represents the changing 1960's culture, but Dirty Dancing was made in the 1980's, with all the advantage that 20 years of hindsight can bring. Dean was daring. Swayze is just sexy.

Either way, I lose. Guess it's time to see Footloose soon, huh.

Pirate Radio (2009)

2011-02-19T10:36:00.000-05:00

For a good time, please rent.

Pirate radio ships broadcast rock music from the seas as the sinister UK government tries to shut them down. And that's really the plot. There is some drama between the DJ's about who's shagging who, who is cooler than who, and what music is worth saving if the ship sank, but for the most part - it's about a bunch of dudes hanging out, doing drugs, and not doing much else.

Pirate Radio is a fictitious take on a real-life situation in which rock music was loved but not yet mainstream. Above all else - Pirate Radio is a celebration of rock music. It seems the director wanted to play rock music for an hour and a half, and so he just got some amusing British actors, and came up with an amusing scenario and to do so.

Pirate Radio is the Kinks the Beach Boys the Who the Box Tops the Supremes the Hollies the Isley Brothers the Moody Blues. It is Jimi Hendrix and Mick Jagger and David Bowie and Leonard Cohen.

But it's not much more than that.

The Ladykillers (2004)

2011-02-16T22:14:00.000-05:00

I realized, as I wrote my review of the remake of True Grit, that I hadn't seen a good portion of the Coen Brothers film collection. In fact, I've seen all their 'famous' movies, but not there lesser-ones. One of them, The Ladykillers, happened to be on TV, so I DVR'd it, and watched it later.

I'm a pretty good judge of the films I think I'm going to like. I can usually tell ahead of time of I'm going to be interested or impressed by a movie. It's the reason I hadn't seen the Ladykillers in the first place, and my watching it only reaffirmed my confidence in my judgement.

The Ladykillers is a Coen Brothers movie created during their, well, what A. O. Scott of the New York Times called their "artistically deprived" period. This is not a good movie, in many many ways.

What's especially sad is that the material in which they are working with, isn't at all the problem. It's a heist movie, and heists have made for many successful movies over the past hundred years. In this case, it's about a bunch of oddballs digging a tunnel from under an old woman's home to rob a casino safe, and then offing each other one by one in an attempt to cleanly escape the situation. As each one tried to kill the old "lady," something unexpected and unfortunate arises. Thus, it's a comedy, and would be almost difficult to mess up.

And the actors they're working with include Tom Hanks, JK Simmons and other accomplished people.

But the Coen Brothers try to inject themselves almost too much into the movie. There's something just not right with all the characters. They're too jittery, uneven, and one-dimensional.

And then, there's the fact that the film is at first just boring, and then dissatisfying. I laughed only in astonishment at what a terrible movie Tom Hanks had gotten himself into. It's a movie like this that makes me realize I may be judging movies like The King's Speech far too harshly.

The King's Speech (2010)

2011-02-13T14:40:00.000-05:00

In the same way that 2006's The Queen was a polite yet meaningful movie about British royalty, so is The King's Speech. It deserves all the praise it gets for being a very good movie, and deserves the Oscar nominations its been receiving.

And yet, I walked away from the theater with a tinge of disappointment. Like The Queen, it's a nice story, but a bit simplistic. I guess, for that reason, I just wasn't entirely impressed.

What's more, I can't say I was inspired by the story, and I think that was a major purpose for the film. It's about a friendship between a stuttering king (Colin Firth) and a speech therapist (Geoffrey Rush). Sure it's not a typical duo, but the movie acts like it was a revelation. I'll trust the filmmakers -- for that time and place, I'm sure it was a big deal -- but I couldn't really relate.

What's more, it's the amount of sympathy that we're supposed to have for the king that bothered me a bit. Sure, he's not as pathetic as his older brother, who abdicates the throne for an ugly American woman, but King George VI isn't exactly a likable personality either -- consistently stubborn and temperamental. Sure, I can relate to those qualities, but the film relies on the speech therapists's character to provide someone to root for. In fact, even though George is the obvious protagonist, the king's speech therapist is as much of a principle character and maybe even more of a hero than the king himself.

Then, there's World War II. The speech in question is a rallying one before the start of war. But even in this "darkest hour" the king's stuttering problem seems to take precedence for the film's main characters than the impending attack by the Germans. Seems to me like it was a pretty darn good thing Churchill was around - a man who apparently got over his own childhood stutter and actually led Great Britain through a tough time, as opposed to just pretending to. For me, it ignored a bigger issue in an attempt to make a hero out of King George VI.

It's the little things that are adding up for me in a way that has me considering The King's Speech a very good movie, but not a great movie, and not the kind of movie that will have a lasting effect on me. I'll mostly just remember a stuttering Colin Firth, and I can see that in almost any Colin Firth movie.

True Grit (2010)

2011-02-05T15:31:00.000-05:00

Joel and Ethan are in such a groove right now, it seems they can do no wrong. So I ask the question, is this their best streak yet?

Let's break their cinema career into 4 parts, shall we?

Breaking Out: From 1984 to 1991 came Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, and Barton Fink. Almost everything the Coen brothers have done in their careers was started early during the 1980's. Film noir, comedic farce, stylized genre film, black comedy -- all established here.

Becoming Famous: From 1994 to 1998, the Brothers Coen became a force. It starts with the under-appreciated Hudsucker Proxy, and then the famous one-two punch of Fargo and then The Big Lebowski. The three were all very different, they were all very well-made, and they were all very funny. Fargo and Lewbowski came to define the Coen brothers movie style: one a streamlined neo-noir, one a chaotic farce.

Balking at Greatness: From 2000 to 2004 came O' Brother Where Art Though?, The Man Who Wasn't There, Intolerable Cruelty, and The Ladykillers. None bad, but had fans of the directing duo reminiscing about the mid-1990's. The brothers chose flaky characters and comedy over serious filmmaking, and the result was mostly mediocre.

Back to the Oscars: From 2007 to 2010 came No Country For Old Men, Burn After Reading, A Serious Man, and True Grit. On a comedy scale - on a scale just based on laughs - their "becoming famous" phase was more funny than their current streak. But in terms of overall quality, their current streak is their strongest yet.

Joel and Ethan have always taken their work, and especially their comedy, very seriously. Yes it's eccentric, unconventional, sometimes skrewball - but always serious. And yet, if you look at their film history, they really hadn't made a "serious" movie since their 'Breaking Out' period, until No Country For Old Men. What do I mean by a "serious" movie? I mean one that isn't sardonic, and so even Fargo is just a bleak comedy from that perspective.

And then, Joel and Ethan Coen seemed to get serious. They turned to Cormac McCarthy, and got serious about their filmmaking.

In 2007 we got the straight-forward Oscar-clutching drama No Country For Old Men. Then we got the serious comedy Burn After Reading. Then in 2009 we got A Serious Man, their most personal movie yet, about a Jewish father's quest for meaning in the hollow suburbia of Minnesota. There's no doubt in my mind that the Coen Brothers, who always acted serious about their comedies, got serious about their seriousness.

Hey, maybe I've lost you by now, but if you're still with me, here's my review of True Grit.

Well actually, I don't have too many thoughts on True Grit. Instead, I see the film as part of the greater collective which the Coen brothers are putting together. This is a very very good movie. In fact, everything about it is really good. It's got great acting, well shot, well scripted, well designed. It's dramatic, and scary, and exciting and sometimes a little funny. Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and the girl Hailee Steinfeld are all great. I was afraid it was going to be a western because of the original featured John Wayne (I don't like westerns), but it isn't. It's an adventure film.

However, I didn't like the end. I didn't like it because it trivialized the "adventure" the girl has in her crusade to kill her father's killer. So while that's disappointing, that's also kind of the point: the life of killers are not filled with adventures, but with gritty, deadly violent moments of fear and mortality.

I just think the point of True Grit would have been more convincing if the movie wasn't so much fun.

Oh, and a note from #twitter that will either give fans of the Coen Brothers something to look forward to, or scare them: IMDb IMDb: Cameron Diaz is joining Colin Firth in the Coen brothers-scripted remake of 1966 caper comedy Gambit. http://imdb.to/hnTUog

The Kids Are All Right (2010)

2011-01-30T17:43:00.006-05:00

The Kids Are All Right is like a living creature. It's alive. It's a film meticulously constructed with insightful and observational wisdom, and breathed to life with superior acting, maybe perfect casting.

The movie is about a family unit: two moms, two children. The movie breaks down into four sequential parts.

Part one, establishing the norm.
Part two, inserting the variable.
Part three, the unit processes the variable.
Part four, aftermath.

Simple enough right? It's a formula I find typically used in "character study" films - when a storyteller is interested in seeing how a character archetype reacts to something unforeseen and dramatic. In my eyes, The Visitor is one of the more recent and best examples of a character study: The film established a lonely man's lonely life, his life is suddenly interrupted by a young couple who are illegal immigrants, he interacts, then reacts, and there is an aftermath.

The Kids Are All Right follows a similar pattern. A normal family is living their normal life, when the kids of "the moms" (Julianne Moore and Annette Bening) decide to meet their biological father, played by Mark Ruffalo. The father then becomes a part of their lives, each character responding to him differently. Ultimately, the unit responds to him as a whole, and there is an aftermath.

Using subtle but important social cues, the filmmakers establish "the norm" quickly and effectively. This might be the most important part of the movie, because if you don't get attached to the characters early, you'll lose interest later. A good film like this will establish the norm while still maintaining the interest of the audience, and here, the filmmakers use your prior knowledge and assumed life experiences to create a family that should feel familiar, even if they are different than yours.

And they are different than yours, because it's unlikely that you, the audience, has lesbian parents. And they're all believable characters, in part because as a total unit, they exhibit the kind of functioning chaos we're all used to in our daily lives. The parents argue with each other about how to respond to their kids' needs, and they argue with their kids about responsibilities, like what kinds of friends are good influences on their teenage son, and embarrassing their college-bound teenage daughter. Curfews and family time and kids whining and parents whining with each other when they're cranky and over-worked and all the other normal things families do that makes for an acceptable "normalcy" we can all feel comfortable with, even if it makes for uncomfortable viewing.

The most fascinating element of The Kids Are All Right is the way in which certain themes are played out through the four parts of the movie. One theme, as I see it, is the rejection of unsophisticated masculinity in a family unit. The filmmakers construct an argument, a thesis really, that families are capable of functioning without "men" if not even superior without them. I make this assertion based on that way the "variable" - which is in this case Mark Ruffalo's character - is at first welcomed but then ultimately rejected by the family unit. Ruffalo's character is a good-natured womanizer, and all though he clearly means well, he fails to deftly manage dynamic relationships. His masculinity ends up doing more harm than good, and I believe his role as the variable makes his character's actions more important than anyone else's.

And yet, there movie isn't really about him, but about the family unit. How they react to him: welcome him, learn from him, learn with him, or reject him, is what moves the story plot forward.

There is of course, one other point the movie is trying to make. For all the effort the film makes at being an earnest "unit" study, the filmmakers are undoubtedly making a point about gay marriage and how capable these parents are at raising children. They show that gay parents are no better or worse than other parents, and in the end, the film's title is made to make that exceptionally clear.

This is not a 'daring' film because it's 'about lesbians.' And it's not 'more real' because it's 'about lesbians.' I think to look at it that way would be dismissive. In fact, I see it as a superior work of cinema than other 'family dramas' like say, The Squid and the Whale or Running with Scissors. It feels more real because through it all, The Kids Are All Right really feels like a chapter in the lives of real people, and there's a bit more closure to it than other 'family dramas' like American Beauty. By having a true ending, the filmmakers allow us to watch and feel the aftermath of their ordeal with Mark Ruffalo, and you can see how the characters have been affected and will move forward with the rest of their lives.

Editor's Note: Oh, so where have I been all month? Alex and I have been obsessively watching episodes online of the CBS series "How I Met Your Mother." I went weeks without watching a movie. My longest drought in a VERY long time. Even when coursing though episodes of "The West Wing" or "The Wire" I was watching more movies than this. It's just been very time consuming. What's more, we still have many episodes of HIMYM to go, so I expect another drought in the near future. But there is no hiatus for iReview. When I watch a movie, I review it. Simple as that. And of course it's Oscar season, so expect some reviews of other Oscar-nominated movies on the horizon.

Sixteen Candles (1984)

2010-12-31T10:00:00.002-05:00

When John Hughes passed away last year - the newspapers and television networks gave his life and body of work a proper sending off. With the tribute montages and essays still pretty fresh in my mind, it would seem redundant to 're-celebrate' his brilliance, other than to say that as I finally watch his movies one by one, I see that he earned his reputation.

And yet, for all the times I'd seen The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller and the Home Alone movies, if you'll allow me to give those to him (he produced them), there was a different kind of joy watching his first famous feature film, Sixteen Candles. Awkwardness was a fruitful muse for Hughes, and he was just beginning to take advantage. Truly a joy to watch - in a guilty pleasure sort of way.

I think something that struck me was that even though Sixteen Candles was soooo unabashedly 80's, there was something timeless about it. That impressed me. The film opens with close-up shots of things that just scream "this is the 1980's, hear me roar!" They're all pop-culture imagery: things like new wave band pins on jean jackets and highlighter colored hightop sneakers. Hughes doesn't shy away from the pop-culture in his attempt to capture the experience of high school life, and in doing so he succeeds in making something capable lasting a long time anyway.

For all the ridicule Molly Ringwald has received, she does successfully carry the movie, with the help of Anthony Michael Hall of course, and I look forward to finally seeing Pretty in Pink so that I've seen as many Ringwald and Hughes movies as any one person should feel compelled to watch.

Horton Hear's a Who! (2008)

2010-12-30T13:00:00.000-05:00

Jim Carey as the Grinch wasn't bad, but the movie was too much Carey and too little Seuss. What I liked about Horton Hear's a Who! is that it felt as much like a Dr. Seuss movie as a Dr. Seuss book could. It was charming, daring and wonderful all at the same time.

Jim Carey here is the voice of Horton, a harmless goofy jungle elephant. While hanging out in the jungle with his jungle friends, Horton literally hears the town of Whoville. This is a big deal and pretty darn impressive, because Whoville can't be seen. Whoville is in fact smaller than the size of a speck. It's microscopic.

Whoville of course, is the same town the Grinch tried to ruin for Christmas. Their mayor is voiced by Steve Carrell, and their world is a bustling center of physics-defying architecture and Seuss-minded idealism. As the Grinch found out the hard way, the people of Whoville are an indeterminably positive people.

This comes in contrast to Horton's world: a jungle area ruled by a frightfully passive-aggressive mother Kangaroo who strangles originality and encourages conformity. The Kangaroo is a disturbing blend of the fear-driven anti-communist propaganda that popularized 1950's American politics, and modern soccer mom. I would go as far as to call her a cartoon Kangaroo version of Sarah Palin.

With phrases like "a person is a person no matter how small" and "I meant what I said and I said what I meant," Horton the elephant personifies the Dr. Seuss mentality, and crusades to save the people of Whoville from peril and prove his faith that Whoville exists at all.

Dr. Seuss succeeded at simplifying politics with dumbing it down, and Horton Hear's a Who! succeeds because it successfully transforms a Dr. Seuss book into a fun yet enlightening film.

Wag the Dog (1997)

2010-12-25T22:52:00.001-05:00

Was having the debate... are you more often disappointed by movies, or pleasantly surprised? Of course, it's a question of expectations... and maybe even... a question of what kind of person you are: pessimistic, optimistic, ambivalent? Do we often go into movies expecting to be impressed? At the very least, I figure we expect to be entertained - in the end it's the driving force behind cinema for an audience. For the filmmakers, it's some kind of storytelling, maybe art, but in the end, entertainment is an essential part of the recipe, no matter what.

What was that there? Yeah, that was a tangent. It stemmed from a comment from a conversation about Wag the Dog, but in the end, has little to do with the movie. Wag the Dog isn't an art film, and doesn't require a philosophical debate about the meaning and purpose of storytelling and film-making. Wag the Dog is a satire, and a good one, and both Alex and I were pleasantly surprised by the entertainment value of the movie, and that's what set off that little tangent above.

My mom just texted me that, for Christmas, she saw Little Fockers, the third movie in the Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers trilogy. As commercials run every 10 minutes on TV about the third installment, it struck Alex and I that we were watching Dustin Hoffman and Robert DeNiro, who star in Little Fockers, here starring together in a movie from over a decade ago. How often do those to act in movies together? Not very often I think.

In Wag the Dog, they're great. Really, DeNiro is good, and Hoffman is fantastic. But it's the screenplay that makes it a really good movie. It's a satire about wars and political cover-ups. What to do when something goes wrong: distract the media, distract the public, and wag the dog. It's funny because even though it's really silly, it's also almost believable. Hoffman plays a film producer tasked with covering up a political scandal days before the Presidential election. Using the same techniques he would in Hollywood - he creates a fake war, a fake national hero, a fake iconic image - and by the end of it, who's to say what's real and what's not.

Even though the film is over 10 years old, it's not outdated or stale at all. As long as war and politics are so closely entwined, Wag the Dog will have relevance, and humor.

Having not yet seen Little Fockers, I can't tell you whether it's worth seeing or not. I think my mom would say that she liked it, having like the previous one. But maybe it's matter of expectations. That was my point earlier, right? Anyway, my bet is Wag the Dog is the superior movie, and much funnier.

Eagle Eye (2008)

2010-12-18T17:25:00.003-05:00

Think: Terminator meets 1984.

Eagle Eye is a science-fiction action movie soaked in paranoia.

Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monoghan are on the run, but we don't know where to, and we don't know what they're running from. All we know is that an all-controlling "voice" (the voice keeps calling their cell phone) is using them as puppets for some terrible plot, and "the voice" controls all things electronic and has omnipresent surveillance capabilities. The FBI (Billy Bob Thornton) and others (Rosario Dawson) are also trying to keep up.

The plot reveals itself over time, and it turns out that Eagle Eye is a pretty effective thriller, in part because of it's fast pace and ability to keep you guessing. It really did remind me of the Terminator series, because the movie is an endless chase scene. And the movie's plot relies on our fear of surveillance and technology we don't understand, which reminded me of 1984.

The director DJ Caruso is pretty good at focusing LaBeouf's jittery energy, as he also did in 2007's Disturbia. It probably helped that Steven Speilberg was the executive producer of both.

The movie requires a severe suspension of disbelief, because its irrationality becomes downright silly, but by the time the ending was clear, I was hooked -- I wanted to see how it would all end, and I wasn't all that disappointed. I started watching the movie because it just happened to be on TV, but I finished watching the movie because it was fun to watch. And I didn't feel stupid for watching it by the end. The ending is grandiose, and hey, low expectations can go a long way.

And a happy birthday to Steve Spielberg by the way. He turned 64 today.

Cold Souls (2009)

2010-12-16T21:26:00.002-05:00

While writing my little frivolous blog posts, I usually check out the movie's page on IMDB.com mostly just out of curiosity. For instance, I like to make sure I'm spelling names right, and see what other movies the director has been involved in. I also like to check the "trivia" page just to humor myself.

In this case, I started writing my post, and wrote the following sentence: "I'm having trouble discerning the intentions of the filmmaker Sophie Barthes."

After writing that sentence, I paused, and thought to myself that this would be a good time to consult IMDB. Maybe the director had done something in the past that might cue me in to what she was going for? No, it's her first feature film in fact. And she wrote the story too. And this time, as opposed to a whole list of facts, there was merely one bullet point on the trivia page, and it says this:

"This film was inspired by a dream in which Woody Allen discovers that his soul looks just like a chickpea."

And then, everything suddenly made sense.

This isn't a movie that has anything to do with Woody Allen, and the lead, Paul Giamatti, while similarly short, bald and generally curmudgeonly, is also original enough that he wouldn't be confused with Woody Allen. However, it's clear that Woody Allen inspired a great deal about this film.

Paul Giamatti basically plays a version of himself as a theatre actor who's having difficulty really getting into the play written by Chekov, and is having trouble separating his personal depression with the Russian material.

The film starts out really strong, in fact for me, it was laugh out loud funny for a good portion of the first half of the movie. It's just extremely well-done satire that critiques anyone who might be reading the New Yorker. And you can see where the Woody Allen comedy would apply (at least I do?). The films drags in the second half, as the movie becomes less of a science-fiction farce and transitions into a melancholy tale in Russia. Cold Souls actually gets many of its early laughs by talking about how sad Russians are, but then goes to Russia to explore their sadness.

The coldness, the loneliness, the underground black market 'soul' industry, it all makes for a solemn meditation on the difference between 'happiness' and 'sadness' but loses the science-fiction satire I was truly enjoying. Cold Souls confused me because I thought the Russian thing would just be a subplot, but it turned into the point of the movie. In fact, the movie intentionally says very little about "what" a "soul" is, deliberately avoiding religion and other controversial subject matter. Still, Cold Souls is original, comedic and very interesting.

Winter's Bone (2010)

2010-12-12T14:03:00.000-05:00

Winter's Bone is a straight-forward story. There's no hidden meanings, no subtext. It's just a long, hard look at a hard life.

And for delivering just that, Winter's Bone is a good movie. It looks at lives we normally ignore in movies. It tours an American back country rarely explored in film.

Our tour guide is 17-year-old Ree Dolly, a stoic female teenager who's taken on adult responsibilities when her dead-beat dad goes missing. Left with two young siblings and a mentally-ailing mother, Ree tries to balance take care of everyone and look for her dad. By taking care of the family, I mean hunting squirrels for food, chopping wood, and trying to convince "the law" not to repossess their log-cabin home.

This is life on the brink. You can almost feel the edge, the line between survival and failure on upon which Ree is forced to walk. This is a fictional story, but feels more real than some documentaries I've seen. And the filmmaker just watches as Ree tries to balance on that line. No deeper meaning. No greater message about society or the economy or desperation.

If there's anything to take away from Winter's Bone, is that it's a story that says some teens are no worse at handling responsibility than some adults, and perhaps even better. Ree basically doesn't have a mother, and then loses her father. The other adults that surround her seem less capable than she: drug-abusers and women-abusers. Ree admits she doesn't know what to do, and asks for advice, but in every situation, no matter how desperate, she proves to make a respectable decision.

Winter's Bone is just a moment in time for the Dolly family. There doesn't appear to be much hope for a better life for them in the future - but the filmmakers have created a capable lead character who gives the audience hope that if there was an opportunity to improve their life, she would guide them through it.

Duck Soup (1933)

2010-12-09T22:34:00.000-05:00

Well, I'd never seen a Marx Brothers film until now, and after this one, I plan to make sure it stays at one.

I make the same point I'm about to make about Alfred Hitchcock films. Hitchcock's movies were cutting edge for their time, but these days, they aren't scary or very suspenseful anymore. They're simply outdated.

At least with Hitchcock films, they're usually comprised of wonderful storytelling and brilliant cinematography. Marx Brothers comedy is outdated, but the elements of the movie don't do anything to help.

So today, Duck Soup is a bad movie.

It does mock the melodrama, and I kind of liked it for that. I've seen some of these black-and-white 1930's and 1940's movies where the plot is so distressingly serious, and the actors use that super-proper pronunciation, and where gaudy costumes, and have obnoxious conversations. The Marx brothers take these archetypes and insert their goofy, lowbrow style of physical comedy, and the contrast creates satire. I can appreciate that. Duck Soup might be a parody of politics, or just something that was fun for movie-goers.

But it wasn't fun for me to watch.

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

2010-12-09T22:02:00.000-05:00

To describe this movie as a war movie would be misleading. It's more of a prisoner-of-war movie. But it's not like most of the other prisoner-of-war movies I've seen. I mean, it's not like Deer Hunter or Stalag17. Actually, it is kind of like Grand Illusion. In most movies where prisoners are in war - it's kind of like being in jail - they just do nothing. They sit around and suffer.

In River Kwai, they work. They work on a bridge. And that's the exciting part.

To describe this movie as an epic movie would be misleading. It's more of a its-long-boring-and-takes-place-in-a-foreign-country-so-by-default-we-just-call-it-an-epic movie. It's also from the director of Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, Great Expectations and Oliver Twist, so I guess we should just assume it's an epic.

For a movies that's almost 3 hours, The Bridge on the River Kwai doesn't get remotely interesting until about halfway though, and that's unacceptable. The plot is about a group of mostly-British PoW's who are told by the Japanese to build a futile bridge. With Alec Guinness as the British colonel who was in charge of the troops, the movie doesn't develop any sense of urgency until the British take over the bridge-building project.

And that's the big failure, in my opinion, about River Kwai. You just can't have a movie go 1.5 hours without any sense of urgency. They make no effort to escape, no effort to do anything but follow directions, no effort to win the war. It's just plain boring.

It's bad too, because the characters this movie is based around makes for an engrossing comparison of ideologies. The American PoW, played by William Holden, doesn't care about the antiquated 'rules of war' and his character Shears seems to represent a modern American ideology at the time. Alec Guinness plays a British leader and PoW, and values those old school rules. It's like a matchup between old Revolutionary War rivals. Except in the jungle. On the island. Building a pointless bridge.

This Film is Not Yet Rated (2006)

2010-12-04T16:21:00.001-05:00

This kind of movie isn't really a documentary, but more like a film essay.

I say that, because This Film is Not Yet Rated is filled with what feels like a 75-25 opinion-to-fact ratio. It's not that there was fiction, but filmmaker Kirby Dick chooses to make his point -- that the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings system (G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17) is an inherently flawed process -- mostly through interviews with scorned film directors and other industry observers who agree with his point of view.

That's what a documentary is, right? A point of view about something in real life? Well sure, any story has to have a point of view I suppose. But Kirby Dick could have made the same point without assailing the MPAA.

The condemnation sure is entertaining though, and also convincing. This Film is Not Yet Rated is a persuasive argument towards tossing out film ratings altogether, if not at least changing who hands them out, and changing the process in which they are determined. Dick makes a powerful argument that they are a controlling industry tool, and not at all the family-friendly guidebook they pretend to be. With MPAA President Jack Valenti and his colleague Joan Graves as the film's antagonists, Kirby Dick unleashes a devastating expose against the MPAA system.

Some of the concepts Dick explores aren't necessarily original. For instance, in Europe, sexual intercourse won't necessarily get you a strict rating, but the over-glorification of violence sure will. Meanwhile here in the States, you can kill as many people as you want in your movie (like Saving Private Ryan) and still get a PG-13 rating, but a girl simply discussing masturbation (like Jersey Girl) will get you an R rating.

Parts of this movie are a little bit gimmicky too, like when Dick hires a mother-daughter team of private investigators to spy on the "super secret parent panel" who supposedly come up with the ratings. Still, some are extremely entertaining, and the interviews with the directors were especially revealing. Dick makes it clear that a film that receives the NC-17 rating is all but doomed, because few film distributor will pick it up.

Using clips from popular films, as well as interviews, some spy video, and the occasional cartoon montage, Kirby Dick created a hip, amusing, and biased account of the MPAA ratings system that is both relevant and extremely revealing.

Top Gun (1986)

2010-11-30T21:59:00.000-05:00

I knew this was going to be a terrible movie. I knew this was going to be a terrible movie. I knew this was going to be a terrible movie.

And still, it just blew me away how terrible Top Gun was.

When I finished watching, I quickly went to Wikipedia, to find out if people back in 1986 really loved Top Gun? The movie was critically assailed - and used as comic fodder for years to come - but people flocked to the theaters to see it.

What was happening in 1986 that would get someone seriously excited about this? What was going on back then?

The obvious explanation: it's a combination of Reaganism and the decline of second-wave feminism. Top Gun was part of a series of films meant to restore machismo to American men and pride to America's dignity.

In the mid-1980's, American film culture decided to lash out against too much Dustin Hoffman - famous at the time for films like Tootsie and Kramer vs. Kramer. These movies encouraged a shift in power between the genders, suggesting that women can be as professional, intelligent, and as powerful as men. Many saw this as an attempt to emasculate American men, which perturbed and even offended. Cinematically, the response was a wave of aggressive action movies, like Rocky, Lethal Weapon, and the advent of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Top Gun was just riding a wave of male chauvinism action films.

All these movies was everything melodramatic or machismo, and nothing in between. And the Reaganism? Different than Reagan-omics - Reaganism represents the return of American pride lost in the 1970's, lost amid the embarrassments of Watergate and the Iran Hostage Crisis. It's represented in the pride of the Top Gun cadets.

This is the best I can do to explain an uninspired plot, a 'Man vs. Everyone Else' world-view, a father-less principle character who's a hothead obsessed with walking the line between life and death, and who always gets what he wants.

Of course, none of this explains the poor acting, the awkward romance scenes, the over-glorification of violence, and perhaps most importantly, the miserable soundtrack dominated by "Take My Breath Away." But hey, it was the 80's.

Patton (1970)

2010-11-22T00:01:00.002-05:00

I know I've told this story before, but I just like telling it... because it got me here, to this blog, and I like this blog, because I like fleshing out my thoughts onto a page and telling these stories if only to better understand my own opinion of them.

I started this blog because I wanted to write about the movies I was adding to my movie list. Who doesn't love a good list? The list is a way for me to 'collect' movies. Like a conquest. It's a guilty pleasure that merely acts as the sidebar to my insatiable love for the art of film and storytelling. And I started this list, because I realized there was a certain type of movie I had neglected to see: war movies. Of course I'd seen some war movies, but never really enjoyed watching them, so I just avoided them - never bothered to see the classics, or the famous ones. So I started to list the war movies I should see: Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Jarhead, the Bridge on the River Kwai, MASH, and yes, Patton. I wanted to list them, and tackle them head-on. No longer would I be inept about a whole genre of popular and over-glorified cinema.

Over 3 years later, my list of 'movies to see' has morphed into a list of 'movies I've seen' since then. Netflix helps me keep track of the movies I still want to see. And it's also helped me finally see many of these films. Patton is one of those movies on the original to-do list that I just kept putting off until now.

Patton feels and looks so straightforward - a standard war movie. An epic war movie. And that's part of the reason I've ignored it for so long. There's more there though, and it seems Francis Ford Coppola has a lot to do with it. He wrote a screenplay that really gets into the mind of 'blood and guts.'

Most telling for me was the references to Don Quixote. After 8 or so months of laboring away, I finally finished reading Don Quixote just the other week, and so I was especially keen to the allusion. A telling moment was when George Patton awards himself a third star on his general's helmet. Reminds me of the Quixote mindset - that if you want to be something, then just strap on some armor and go be it.

And for some reason, the film has a Nazi providing the insight into Patton's war strategy and cerebral personality. In fact, there was a moment there where I felt like I was watching the inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's Hans Landa, the Nazi character played by Christopher Waltz in Inglourious Basterds. He's a literary, well-read and thoughtful Nazi. The kind of character that subverts the stereotype. Like their analysis into Patton's beliefs about reincarnation. And the perceptions that Patton had of himself... of being part of a lineage of great soldiers. The image that Patton wants for himself is to be compared with the other greats of wars past.

The most famous scene of Patton is the first one - the one with George C. Scott standing in front of a giant American flag and growling his mantras on the meaning of war. But Patton, the movie, isn't patriotic, and maybe neither was the man. He just happened to be American, and had a knack for war. At least that seems to be Coppola's theory.

Toy Story 3 (2010)

2010-11-18T23:22:00.002-05:00

Pixar has always been a master at making children's movies with universal themes that are entertaining for adult audiences. Those universal themes have in the past included things like friendship, companionship, loyalty, cooperation and perseverance. The Toy Story series exemplifies those qualities as much as any other of their movies. With Toy Story 3 though, they add something a little different. There was something curiously political about this movie.

Naturally, this is Pixar, so I wouldn't say it comes close to propaganda. But on top of the usual subject matter the Toy Story series tackles - like the bond between Woody and Buzz, and the love triangle that includes their owner Andy - the movie's biggest tension is about the injustice of communism, at least in the way it was carried out by the USSR.

Once Andy's famous toys are donated to a day-care center when he departs for college, Woody, Buzz and the rest of the team believe they've found an ideal world. In fact, Buzz Lightyear says with a dirty enthusiasm, "I get older, but the girls stay the same age." No wait, that's what Matthew McConaughey says about high school girls in Dazed and Confused. But the idea is kind of the same. Unlike in the real world where owners like Andy eventually grow up and dump their toys in the attic, a day-care center provides a never-ending cycling of youngsters to come and play with the toys, to their delight. The ideal world could be ideal if it was run differently and with a democratic system, but instead it's run by a ruthless Stalin-like figure, or in this case, Lotso, the cute and adorable giant pink stuffed teddy bear who rules with an iron fist and utilizes different 'class' systems to exert control.

The more I describe the film, the more Toy Story 3 sounds like "Animal Farm." So yeah, Toy Story 3 is like a funny version of Animal Farm. And less paranoid. But still, I guess I just didn't see that coming.

And is it fair that I'm not thrilled with the 'Deus Ex Machina' ending?

Anyway, Toy Story 3 is also pretty amazing. The combination of humor and meaningful subtext is exactly what I expect and always get from Pixar.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)

2010-11-11T00:45:00.001-05:00

I liked so much of Scott Pilgrim vs The World - after all there's so much to like - but it was missing a lot of important elements as well that would have made it a successful movie.

But because the movie completely fails to deliver on those few but important components, the movie crumbles.

Surprisingly, and despite the efforts of Michael Cera, the movie lacks heart. The makers of Scott Pilgrim did such a good job creating gimmicky characters, it seems they neglected to give them life. These are really funny gimmicks too. Like the 'evil boyfriend' that has super powers - so pretentious and elitist because he's a vegan. Or the stereotypical 'asian groupie girlfriend.' Or the dude who's not in the band but hangs out with the band as if he was actually in the band (that was me). The filmmakers are brilliantly observant on the hipster-indie band culture and what makes it unique, which makes the lifelessness of their characters all the more disappointing.

Maybe I'm missing part of the point? Some hipsters are holdovers from the abridged 'emo-generation' but others are just frigid and stiff. Perhaps that explains things? I don't think so.

The '7 evil boyfriends' as well as many of the other peripheral characters of the movie are all pretty one dimensional, and as dismaying as that was, it was much more unfortunate how little depth there was to the main characters: Ramona and Scott Pilgrim. There was no chemistry between them, nothing that should have attracted her to him, nothing really that would illicit the word or emotion of 'love' between them whatsoever. Their relationship, upon which the movie is founded, was so completely uninteresting and it was so difficult to even care.

There are a lot of positives too: the re-creation of hipsters I'll mention again, in conjunction with the fantasy/video-game based world in which Pilgrim lives. The world which they pull from the comics is truly unique in a movie, and truly encapsulates the mind-set of a very specific portion of my generation. Again, observationally, the filmmakers do a great job, but mimicking the world is only part of the job.

There was one other surprising thing about Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. At first the quick transitions and quick cuts between or during scenes seemed impressive, however I realized they were a way of making up for the monotonous storytelling. Truth is, and surprising really considering the lunacy/brilliance of the plot, this was a rather boring movie. Again, I'm going to have to toss blame on the lack of character development. It's very difficult to become invested in the drama surrounding a character if we don't care about the character. I laughed and enjoyed watching Pilgrim/Cera do his thing, but he never really got me to care.

I Love You, Man (2009)

2010-11-07T20:36:00.001-05:00

This weekend, a friend described to me an unfortunate situation. A friend from his college days was looking for people to be "in" his wedding, and apparently, was a little desperate about it. This friend was surprised himself that he was asked to be a groomsman, and the others asked "so far" were surprised as well. None of them had talked to the groom-to-be in a long time, creating a good many awkward situations.

It's tough to say whether or not the character Paul Rudd plays in I Love You, Man is in a more or less pathetic situation than the real-life one. In the movie, Rudd's character doesn't have any male friends. He just doesn't. But he sees it matter-of-factly, and doesn't feel like he's missing out. This real-life guy described above though seems to think his friends are "groomsman" worthy - to the surprise of the friends.

So you tell me, which is more sad?

I Love You, Man would say both, because neither Paul Rudd's character nor this real-life guy would seem to know what it's like to have a good guy friend to connect with.

I Love You, Man is a celebration of the casual but significant intimacy of guy-to-guy relationships. The movie attempts to measure the importance of male friendships, presenting an argument like a lawyer would in a court room to a jury. Guy friends are for goofing off with, guy friends are for doing stupid stuff with, they are for shopping with, they are for drinking with, and talking about women with. Paul Rudd's character really does appear happy even without guy friends. He gets along great with his normal family and his normal girlfriend, that is, until he meets "the one" - who in this case in Jason Segel (Forgetting Sarah Marshall). By the time the movie reaches its end, the characters seem like they wouldn't just be miserable without each other, they were basically main for each other. I Love You, Man doesn't actually say the cliche phrase "bros before hoes," but that's the point.

Describing I Love You, Man as a "bro-mance"is more accurate than you might realize. More than just about a friendship, this really is about a romance between friends. Director John Hamburg (the writer of the Meet the Parents series) rather brilliantly inverts the class "boy meets girl" scenario. Instead, it's boy meet boy, boy loses boy, boy gets boy back because, of course, the bond between two male friends is so strong.

Let me compare this film to Wedding Crashers. In the final "wedding" scene of Wedding Crashers, the climax of the film, Owen Wilson's character is tasked with winning back "the girl" Rachel McAdams, as well as his best friend played by Vince Vaughn at the same time. In I Love You, Man, the re-uniting of Rudd and Segal is the climax, and the Rudd's relationship with Rashida Jones is a secondary one.

So, what's the point of making a movie like this? Yes, it's funny. But the obvious audience for a movie called I Love You, Man starring Segel, Rudd, and smaller roles by Jon Favreau, Andy Samberg and JK Simmons is the same audience that watches Judd Appatow films. The audience is guys, ages 16-35, and they have mostly guy friends. So unless the director expects to convince these guys' girlfriends that the "bros" are more important than them, then the movie is mostly just about re-enforcing the values of this assumed audience. So, if you're a guy and you're feeling guilty about having a good relationship with your male friends, just watch I Love You, Man.

Iron Man 2 (2010)

2010-11-06T14:13:00.010-04:00

Iron Man 2 is but another "episode" in a series of Marvel Comics movies. As the studio company builds towards its 'Avengers' finale - dropping in bits of Captain America, Thor, and Nick Fury - this movie only inches us closer. Director Jon Favreau doesn't really move the story too much further along, he just carries over some of the sexual tension from the previous film, melds together some of the comic book villains into one, and recycles the basic plot of Iron Man to make Iron Man 2. It's a fun movie - but hardly reinvents the wheel.

Is that what's expected though? Did anyone expect anything "groundbreaking" for a sequel, any sequel? The original wasn't groundbreaking either. It was just extremely entertaining, witty and enormously successful. An action film done really well.

Even more than in the first Iron Man, the sequel heavily relies on the charm of Robert Downey. It's a film stocked with Hollywood stars - but their characters more or less swirl around the world of Tony Stark, as he manipulates their one-dimensional roles to get what he wants: Don Cheadle, Scarlett Johansson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jon Favreau act of Downey's rotating play-things.

Sam Rockwell is Justin Hammer, reinvented as a comically annoying and jealous "arch-rival." Mickey Rourke is Stark's mash-up nemesis of the movie, an annoying quiet and revenge-bent Russian, a character thats probably a hold-over from back when every evil character in the world of fiction came from the USSR.

Samuel L. Jackson - as Nick Fury - just kind of hangs out.

Downey acts drunk. Downey flies around and blows stuff up. Downey is funny. Overall, I'm on board for what Marvel Studios is doing, and what they're working for. This one just felt a little too much like the first Iron Man. It's good, but not quite as good.

Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)

2010-10-15T18:36:00.004-04:00

"It's some kind of... hot tub time machine," says Craig Robinson, turning to look into the screen at the audience, about 20 minutes into the film. It's that kind of facetious, breaking-the-4th-wall attitude that sets the tone for the rest of this comedy about 4 guys that travel from 2010 to 1986.

The next 20 minutes is a bombardment of pop culture references: neon, SNL, 21 Jump Street, Chevy Chase, Michael Jackson, legwarmers, cocaine, Back to the Future, MTV, Reagan and communism.

The movie serves two purposes: one is a message for people my age, and the second is as a nostalgia trip for people in their 30's and 40's.

The movie is about guys having a kind of mid-life crisis because their lives didn't turn out as awesome as they'd hoped. When they accidentally go back in time, they learn they didn't take enough risks when they were young. So for those in my generation - those born in or around the year 1986 - this is a movie that encourages us to take risks now, while we still can, if it's not too late. Using John Cusack's computer geek nephew as an example, the message to those my age is that we should stop texting and playing online video games, and go out and meet people.

It's a reasonable message I suppose, but what about the 3 main characters?

The characters played by John Cusack, Craig Robinson and Rob Corddry are depressed, and seemingly "washed up."Instead of a positive, encouraging message to take from this movie, Hot Tub Time Machine has only fond memories of debauchery for this generation of 40-somethings. Unfortunately, the movie paints the picture that people of their situation really haven't much to look forward to.

Of course, the characters of Hot Tub Time Machine are aided by their ability to know the future to better their lives, thus not really serving as a lesson, but a daydream, an impossible reality thats more depressing than encouraging, because, alas, you don't have a hot tub time machine.

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

2010-10-14T16:21:00.001-04:00

It's my belief that - when it comes to movies with characters who have questionable morals - the end of the film is the most important, and usually most interesting part. It's the success or failure of the character in their final moments that tells the audience whether those morals were appropriate or not, according to the writer/director.

And when reviewing a film - it's my belief that I shouldn't reveal the ending of the movie for those who might not yet have seen it. It can be difficult though, because the ending is often the most interesting part.

Well, the ending of The Talented Mr. Ripley isn't the most interesting part, so I don't feel any desire to give it away. However, it is the saddest part, because it's when we completely lose the main character to insanity. By the end of the movie, Tom Ripley is a despicable crying heap of a monster sitting on a bed inside a cruise boat. By the end of the movie, I stopped feeling sorry for Mr. Ripley, and began hating him. By the end of the movie, the writer/directors make it painfully clear that this is a character with the moral compass of a psychopath. By the end of the movie, Tom Ripley has become a psychopath. It also kind of ruins the movie for me a little bit. As creepy as Ripley is, I'm still rooting for him for much of the movie to overcome his lower societal status and end up happy. This movie subverts those hopes, and it's a little disappointing.

The ending, that is, the ending is a little disappointing, but The Talented Mr. Ripley is not a disappointing movie. It's a brilliant and beautiful thriller - sexy and full of originality. It's scary, and creepy, and yet, as charming and inviting as Matt Damon, Jude Law, Cate Blanchett and Gwyneth Paltrow are capable of being. The movie feels like a "Twilight Zone" episode written by Jack Kerouac. The characters bring to mind the excitement and unpredictability of Kerouac, Cassidy, Burroughs and Ginsburg. It's about wealthy 1950's New Yorkers rollicking through Europe, partying, listening to jazz, and sleeping around. It's exciting, appealing, and charming - and so it can't last.

The movie is directed by Anthony Minghella, who also directed The English Patient and Cold Mountain, and wrote their screenplays, as well as the screenplays of Breaking and Entering and Nine. Overall, most of these movies didn't appeal to me, but The Talented Mr. Ripley is a movie that succeeds in orchestrating together great acting, great cinematography, and a great screenplay into one great movie. It's really a modern Hitchcock.

The Social Network (2010)

2010-10-08T12:26:00.000-04:00

I learned about creation myths in my anthropology class. In those stories about the creation of the modern world - deities would come together, conflict would would ensue, then the stars would align and everything would fall into place.

Using the book "Accidental Billionaires" by Ben Mizrich, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has written one of these creation myths (part truth, part Hollywood). Like the creation myths I read about in school, The Social Network could very well have been about the creation of a new modern world. However, Sorkin doesn't see things that way. He doesn't see Facebook and social mediums as a new transcendent society-changing invention, and so the movie he's written doesn't reflect the magnitude of change that Facebook may have created.

Of course, that's Sorkin's world view, and even if we disagree with it, that doesn't mean this isn't a well-written, well-executed movie about the makings of Facebook.

It's not a surprise that The Social Network is a really good movie, and an intelligent one at that. Sorkin wrote some of the most intelligent and wittiest dialogue in television history for The West Wing. Director David Fincher has created his own kind of genre: the intelligent thriller - Se7en, The Game, Fight Club and Zodiac. The Social Network fits into this category of intelligent thriller. Fincher succeeds in turning a movie about two lawsuits and the creation of a website into something sexy and exciting.

Much of this film is made up of a series of scenes in which friends argue with each other about the business, and what to do as their website balloons into something larger and larger. Jesse Eisenberg plays Mark Zuckerburg excellently, but Sorkin has written the character as obsessed and jealous, whose reason for creating Facebook in the first place is do what he couldn't do in real life - which is stay friends with his ex-girlfriend. This perspective is likely a side-effect of the story that originated from "Accidental Billionaires" - a book that seems to be of the perspective of Zuckerburg's friend Eduardo Saverin. The result is a critique of Zuckerburg and Sean Parker (played by JT). But who can say what truth there is to it - it's a creation myth - based in fable and based in truth. For Hollywood, that's good enough.

When Harry Met Sally... (1989)

2010-10-03T22:27:00.003-04:00

I underestimated this movie. I thought this movie was about Meg Ryan faking orgasms and lame conversations. But it's actually about not having orgasms and has fascinating and insightful conversations.

When Harry Met Sally was the final film of the Nora Ephron/Meg Ryan movie marathon of my rainy day off, and I finally found myself laughing out loud. By the end of the movie marathon, it was Billy Crystal that had made my day.

The difference between Tom Hanks and Billy Crystal is Hanks is nice, but Crystal is funny - in a Woody Allen kind of way. I've seen City Slickers, and Analyze This, but I'd never seen Crystal in the role of a romantic lead.

After all, Crystal is not your typical leading male. Tom Hanks is clearly more comfortable in the role of 'leading male' and his characters are always more likable. For me though, Crystal is more relatable, more familiar, and more entertaining. He might even be the antithesis of Hanks. Hanks chases and seduces Meg Ryan with his persistent and tireless charm. Harry/Sally is a romantic comedy, but Crystal fends of romanticism with his NYC sarcasm and cynicism - and it makes for something more refreshing.

When Harry Met Sally is probably most famous for Meg Ryan faking an orgasm at Katz's Deli in Manhattan, but I'll remember this movie for Crystal, because he actually made me laugh out loud numerous times - something Hanks and Ryan failed to do to me throughout the day. Written by Nora Ephron and directed by Rob Reiner, this movie tackles a relevant concept I think we still question: can men and women be friends without sex getting in the way? I disagree with Reiner, because I think the answer is yes, of course men and women can just be friends... but I'll be the first to acknowledge, it doesn't usually work out that way.

You've Got Mail (1998)

2010-10-03T21:09:00.001-04:00

Maybe the most surprising thing about You've Got Mail is that it isn't as outdated as I thought it would be.

In just a few short years, the dial-up tones and the phrase "you've got mail" became outdated. 12 years has proven to be a generation's time lapse when it comes to technology. Writer/director Nora Ephron could not have know that Facebook and Google would make AOL obsolete, but she smartly made a film that, while not eternal, does have some staying power.

Part of the charm of the film is the balance between the internet, and 'real life.' You've Got Mail celebrates the use of the internet to connect people, but demonstrates the importance of connecting in the real world. The characters are important too - they're normal everyday working people who just happen to use the internet - they're really the first of their kind.

This is an enjoyable romantic comedy that shows off the charm of Meg Ryan (an independent bookstore owner) and Tom Hanks (the owner of a mega-book store chain similar to Barnes & Noble). For as long as the internet is an everyday part of communication, Starbucks is on every corner, and giant chain stores close out independent retailers, You've Got Mail will maintain some relevance. One day though this movie will be too outdated but to laugh at. Soon, we'll all email exclusively from our phones and iPads, and we'll all read books on our phones and iPads. Really, that day might be soon, so I recommend watching You've Got Mail now while it's still enjoyable.

Sleepless in Seattle (1993)

2010-10-02T02:15:00.001-04:00

Deciding to turn a lazy Sunday (well, actually it was a Thursday - but its my Sunday) into a Meg Ryan-romantic-comedy-movie-marathon day is not a decision to be taken lightly. Other factors - like a productive morning, a dozen apples that needed to be turned into home-made apple sauce, and most importantly, an enduring rain storm that brought 6 inches of water into the streets of downtown Frederick - provided a strong excuse to do little more than hang out and watch movies all day. Knowing in advance that movie-watching was going to last into the evening... it was clear that a theme was necessary. A movie-watching marathon can feel like a waste of time, but a movie-watching marathon based on a theme can feel like an accomplishment.

I have an unabashed love for romantic comedies. In fact, I'm even pretentious about my romantic-comedies. (i.e.: Bridget Jones's Diary - bad; Love, Actually - good). For this day's entertainment: Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail. Nora Ephron, Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks, applesauce, and my girlfriend. Consider it a date. Billy Crystal would crash the party later that evening.

Despite its notoriety, I hadn't seen Sleepless in Seattle before, and I think it's mostly because I knew it wasn't my kind of movie. You know how sometimes you just know whether or not you'll like something before you try it - but then you still have to try it just to prove yourself right? That's me with Sleepless in Seattle. I should clarify - I didn't not like it -- but I liked You've Got Mail more. For a romantic comedy - it's not very romantic (they only meet each other at the end?) and the comedy is mostly based around Rosie O'Donnell, and that's not a great sign.

Sleepless in Seattle has some charm and has some comedy, but not enough of either. The concept of a romance between two people who don't meet until the end is a challenging one for a film, and yet it's still pretty well-executed. But the side-effect is the lack of chemistry that Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks could have together - and show off in You've Got Mail.

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2008)

2010-10-01T21:43:00.001-04:00

At the end of the movie - I'm still left with essentially the same question about the monster that torments Precious as I had at the beginning of the film.

Mo'Nique plays the mother of Claireece Precious Jones, and the mother of Precious Jones is a monster. More than an antagonist - Mo'Nique's character Mary is the Devil, and her home is Hell. At the end of the film - the monster tells a story about her transition from mother to Devil. The transition is best defined by an event that happened very early in Precious's life, when she allows her daughter to be raped at the age of 3. In that moment as she describes this event to a homely-looking social worker played by Mariah Carey, the mother we hated all movie becomes even more disgusting than we thought possible. She becomes the Devil. She becomes something so unsalvageable, something completely unable to be saved, something for which we can feel absolutely no empathy.

The monster has an excuse about wanting to keep the rapist around because she wants someone around who will love her. She sits in her chair and sobs and begs. Never apologizing - because she believes what she did was right. The movie ends (I don't think I'm giving anything away) with the 16-year-old Precious walking away, inspiringly optimistic, with her own two children in tow. The entire film is a buildup to those two scenes. By the end, Precious has painted a picture with just two colors: black and white, good and evil. That final distinction between good (Precious) and evil (her mother Mary) leaves the audience feeling good about the movie, and good about life, because everything ends in its place - just the way things should be. It's a fitting ending for 'an Oprah move.'

Like I said though - I'm left with a question at the end - a question about who and what this monster of a mother is, and what drives a person to that point. To me, Mo'Nique's character is the one I want to learn more about. Instead, she's cast off as unexplainable. I continue to ask the question because the monster this film depicts is not a unique one, but an upsettingly common one. Mothers who are addicted or desperate or abuse their children... these people may seem like monsters, but they are people too, and while it might seem fitting to cast these people off, I want to know what makes these people become monsters. It's not good enough to me to just label "good" and "evil." I'm not looking for closure and for everything to fall into place in a movie like this. Precious is a well-told story and very good film-making, but I wanted something that peered deeper into the soul, and instead I got Oprah.

The Producers (1968)

2010-09-22T11:14:00.004-04:00

I can't believe it myself that so far, The Producers is the only movie I've watched this entire month. Part of this anomaly is due in part to moving, which was far more labor-intensive than I remember previously. Much of this is also due to watching The Wire. I'll probably always seriously favor movies over TV shows, but HBO's The Wire is undeniably fantastic.

Anyway, my thoughts on The Wire and the current state of television as a whole is for another time. This blog post is about The Producers, the original movie. It's the film that launched the careers of Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder, and is one of few high points in the career of Zero Mostel. It's also a very short movie - 88 minutes - but it's enough time for them to tell this goofy story and tell it well.

This original 1968 version of the story is mostly still enjoyable because a movie about a play called 'Springtime for Hitler' is just brilliant - and it makes sense that Brooks goes on to become a career satirist. Gene and Zero do their roles well, but for me, I enjoyed this movie for two reasons. One is because of Dick Shawn, who plays 'LSD' who plays a hippie version of Hitler. the other is the story Brooks has constructed. It's a good sign when my biggest complaint about the movie is that it's too short. I only wish we could have seen more of their terribly awesome Broadway play.

No, I haven't seen the remake.

Raising Victor Vargas (2002)

2010-08-22T20:58:00.001-04:00

Raising Victor Vargas reminded me of Do The Right Thing. In terms of plot, they're nothing alike. But the feeling of being in New York City on a hot, sticky summer day? Both films succeed at relating this experience as well as any film I've ever seen.

They also deal with youth culture and maturation borne from conflict. Victor Vargas is a city teen trying to get a girlfriend, and the girl is just trying to get him to be himself and not act like a jerk. The film paints the picture that most guys in their neighborhood are like him, if not worse, and most girls are like her, except less demanding.

Overall, it's a pretty timid film when it comes to love and sex, especially for a film about inner city kids. But the director creates endearing characters - the cooky grandmother who can barely speak English is sad but funny, and her three grandchildren, including Victor, feel like one character just diced three different ways: the good one, the lazy one, and the wild one - but at least all are relatable.

I also appreciated the director's scope. Similar to Do the Right Thing - which impressively keeps the story of racial tension limited to one sweaty city day on one neighborhood block - Raising Victor Vargas is about inner city kids in a small neighborhood, with small families and a small group of friends, and yet really hones in on the daily struggles of the characters.

Director Peter Sollett goes on to direct Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, a film with an infinitely different budget (and soundtrack), but also about teens learning maturation and honesty. There's a lot to like from Raising Victor Vargas, but I can't recommend it anywhere as much as Spike Lee's 1989 classic, or even Sollett's 2008 hipster adventure.

The Ghost Writer (2010)

2010-08-22T20:21:00.002-04:00

This is my kind of thriller. Smartly devised as a kind of modern historical fiction, Roman Polanski's new film is a conspiracy theory about Tony Blair, strangely enough. In it, Pierce Brosnan plays a former Prime Minister of Britain (named Adam Lang) looking to pen a memoir to make money, and Ewan McGregor plays his ghost writer, getting paid to take the divisive leader's words and turn them into something that will actually sell books. But as the ghost writer reads and learns about the former Prime Minister's past, inconsistencies turn out to be alarming secrets about his past.

The writers of The Ghost Writer play with pop culture news knowledge and effectively use it to weave a fantasy (perhaps?) underworld of corruption to explain the "true" motivations behind Blair's actions in office. That weave - makes for some interesting political commentary that gets you thinking about what our political leaders are really up to.

Kim Cattrell (of Sex and the City fame) plays the former Prime Minister's assistant with a British voice, which seems a little strange to me but it worked, and Olivia Williams (um, well she was the teacher from An Education - which was a very good movie) as the wife. Always awesome is Tom Wilkinson, who shows up later in the movie.

I mostly wanted to see The Ghost Writer because the cinematography surrounding Martha's Vineyard and the plot intrigued me. I have no devotion to Roman Polanski films and I'm indifferent to his legal troubles, but this is a movie I really liked.

Quiz Show (1994)

2010-08-08T21:49:00.002-04:00

Looking back in time, director/producer Robert Redford paints this 1950's post-McCarthy era as a game-changing moment, a moment where the government failed to hold NBC accountable for frauding the public. Redford has selected this moment for recreation because he sees this failure as part of a trend, referencing McCarthy intentionally as a precursor to this moment. It's a different topic, but like 'McCarthy-ism,' the Congressional hearings depicted in Quiz Show are also a witch hunt, Redford tells us, they're a show to entertain and please the public, and perhaps, even fraud the public. And that's where Redford makes a direct connection between the fraud that was the game show "Twenty One," and some major institutions of American society: television, government, law and order.

It's easy to make movie characters sound smart if they're prophesizing about the future of reality TV in a movie based in the 1950's but created in the 1990's. The way Redford depicts the tensions in his movie, you would think it was obvious that this moment was the government's chance to hold television accountable. But accountable for what exactly? Yes, the game was rigged, and yes, Redford tells us that NBC upper-management was aware, but what does that mean for us today? Unless he's suggesting the public is still being duped by game shows and this was merely the beginning?

I was also intrigued by some of the subtext. The complexities of a WASP vs. Jew tension are laid out, but those too, don't quite lead anywhere. It's suggested that the game is rigged so that WASP Van Doren beats the geeky-looking Jew Herbie Stempel. I would have liked to hear something substantiated about a religious/cultural tension in Quiz Show.

I take the time first to question Quiz Show, because what requires little mentioning is that this is a very good film, well-made and well-acted. The cast is very strong: Ralph Fiennes as the famous Charles Van Dorn, Rob Morrow as the congressional investigator, David Paymer and Hank Azaria as two NBC producers, and John Turturro, as the annoying Herbie Stempel. The costumes and set designs feel real, and the movie is always entertaining, both intellectually and visually. It's just that Redford approaches becoming a conspiracy theorist, the way Oliver Stone does in JFK (1991), and I'm not sure he had to venture into territory even he was unsure of. But I definitely enjoyed watching this one.

Inception (2010)

2010-07-31T19:15:00.002-04:00

When the Matrix came out in 1999, it blew all other action films away by creating not just the most exciting action scenes ever, but putting them in an original environment we had never seen before - an intelligent, imaginative universe. Where the Matrix 2 and 3 failed - besides the forced allegorical references to Jesus - is that the sequels didn't outdo the original. What blew us away in the Matrix was simply rerun and sped up for the sequels...

... and we haven't seen a completely original action film since the Matrix... until now... until Inception.

It can be difficult to write a movie review after reading one. In this case, I've read close to a dozen reviews and listened to the thoughts of a dozen friends. Inception is a popular film, and a mind-blowing one. But after reading analysis after analysis, even the best of movies can have holes poked into it. At this point, I can't help but see Inception without the critiques: because for all that is beautiful and incredible about the movie, I have to admit it feels a little bit empty, possibly because it too often catered to the Hollywood standard of offering violent action chase sequences when they weren't necessary. And the cause for all this idea-implanting mischief? So that one corporation can gain leverage over some other corporation. It's difficult to feel emotion for corporations.

I value originality and creativity over cool action scenes though, and too often Inception chose action over intellectual stimulation. Not to say Inception wasn't confusing, but lets not confuse that with absorbing. Director Christopher Nolan has his characters discuss, and show, the complexities of "ideas" and what it takes to plant them into someones mind - but I would have preferred hear more about that, to truly involve the audience into the complexities of dreams, not just the confusing action sequences going on inside them.

Inception is not a perfect movie - but I wanted it to be. I can't say I actually expected it to be perfect (that's just not fair), but there's something about its concept that teases perfection. Maybe it's that the ingredients for perfection were all there, but the recipe was just off. A brilliantly designed science fiction movie, entertaining as all hell, filled with action, adventure, mystery, drama, comedy, good acting, and most importantly, an imaginative plot that kept me guessing, and for lack of a better description, blew my mind. Inception did what Matrix 2 and 3 failed to do, in that it took actions sequences to the next level, and did it within an original environment. It's just that, it could have been more - it could have been perfect.

El Orfanato (The Orphanage) (2007)

2010-07-27T02:43:00.001-04:00

A couple decent thrillers in (The Lovely Bones, Shutter Island), and I was ready for The Orphanage, a foreign horror film I'd had my eye on for some time now. It's produced by Guillermo del Toro, the director of Pan's Labyrinth and the Hellboy movies, and like Labyrinth and many other Spanish films, it's a dark fantasy movie about spirits and, possibly, the after life.

But most of the movie is about a really creepy house, with really creepy kids haunting this house, and it left me disappointed and with a lot of questions. Another haunted house movie? Yes indeed, including a parallel ghost world, paranormal psychics, creaky floorboards, creepy old people, scary looking kids (haunted kids are always the scariest), and of course, the family that doesn't believe the other half of the family is really seeing dead people.

Very much unlike Shutter Island, The Orphanage movie is inconsistent, and really, it doesn't make much sense to me. It's about a family who loses their adopted child to ghosts - and it turns out this is no random or ordinary kidnapping, but the film doesn't really explain why. The mother of the adopted child was an adopted child herself, and it appears the orphans she used to live with are haunting her family, but without giving away the ending, I'll just say that the reasoning doesn't really add up.

The Orphanage was scary, and has good moments, such as the way the mystery of her missing child is uncovered, but it wasn' good enough. After three straight thriller/horror movies, I'm ready to move on to a different genre.

Shutter Island (2010)

2010-07-26T13:56:00.007-04:00

After watching the Lovely Bones, I was in the mood for another thriller, and maybe, a better thriller, one that's actually more thrilling. Shutter Island did not disappoint.

It's about two U.S. Marshals, Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo, investigating a disappearance at a remote mental institution for the dangerous, which is run by Ben Kingsley. Shutter Island, like most mental institutions, is pretty easy to turn into a scary place - mostly because the people inside are perceivably unpredictable, and in this case, they've probably killed someone, and likely capable of doing that again - although the constant storms outside and the drab setting helps as well. Director Martin Scorsese also plants this story in the 1950's, which should remind audiences of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which makes lobotomies and pharmaceutical drugs common yet still in the introductory stages of development.

Shutter Island scared me, and kept me interested, and delivered in the end, and those are the basic things I hope for in a horror/thriller movie. I heard a lot of discussion about Shutter Island when it came out to mixed reviews - but before I watched it myself for the first time, a friend wisely explained that the film's 'twist' isn't as impressive as the process and execution, and I couldn't agree more. The twist itself wasn't so shocking. I'm not saying I knew it would end that way - but it seemed a possibility. What was impressive was the delivery of that twist - which gave meaning to the goosebumps moments in the beginning and the thriller that Shutter Island becomes in the second half. Most importantly, the ending is convincing, and consistent with the rest of the film, proving that the story has been thoroughly thought-out, and not haphazardly constructed or finished, not that I would expect Scorsese to do differently.

This is the fourth time that director Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio have worked on a film together. Scorsese is an expert enabler of DiCaprio's skills. This is not at all either of their best work - but for a horror/thriller film, I liked it.

The Lovely Bones (2009)

2010-07-15T09:07:00.001-04:00

It is into dark corners and strange places of the imagination that an interest in depictions of the afterlife will take you. The next film in this exploration is Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones, a film adept for comparison - mostly because it isn't very original

That doesn't mean that The Lovely Bones is a bad movie. It isn't, and it's also a magical work of cinematography, and CGI effects. The first film I will compare it to, in this case, contrast, is the Japanese film After Life, which doesn't have a touch of CGI, but is wildly imaginative and original. The question of 'which is better' is a subjective one of course, but I'm willing to bet that the answer to 'which is more memorable' is After Life because of the way it approaches what purgatory, or that in-between world somewhere between dead and alive, is like. After Life depicts this world as a place to find the meaning of life, to find that most meaningful and most enjoyable moment and distill it for eternity, literally having people recreate the moment in a studio and filming the scene. The Lovely Bones gives us something more typical: a 14-year-old girl haunts her family as she tries to get in touch with them, her soul is seemingly attached to inanimate objects like roses and bracelets, and she and others float through green-screen-created fantasy landscapes that remind me of a less-impressive version of What Dreams May Come, the failed Robin Williams take on heaven.

And last night, I saw a production of 'Our Town' in New York City, featuring Helen Hunt as the narrator. The third act is mostly tombstones communicating with each other, and a soliloquy from the narrator about the longing for something in all of us to be eternal, something like a soul. 'Our Town,' a play by Thornton Wilder which first premiered in 1938 about the boring, daily life of Americana, has a more unique take on the afterlife than this movie.

The Lovely Bones can be broken down into two main elements. One, is this purgatory world I've described, and the other is the earthly story of a family tormented by a murderous but secretive neighbor, played by Stanley Tucci. This story is familiar, though no less disturbing. A young girl abducted and murdered by a lonely, strange and obsessive man in the 1970's. It reminds me most of the 2007 film Zodiac, directed by David Fincher and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, a movie that wasn't anything more than okay in part because the experience of watching it was so laborious.

The plot of The Lovely Bones is so similar to what we've seen before. It's a thriller with a fantasy twist, but as described above, that twist, the 'purgatory' element, isn't really too original either.

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

2010-07-13T01:36:00.001-04:00

The story is Roald Dahl's, but the movie still feels very much like any other Wes Anderson film. This stop-motion adaptation is an enjoyable tandem of creativity between two men who have never and will never meet.

Beginning with Dahl's 1970 children's book as a starter, Anderson molds a film with his usual style and touch. Like most Wes Anderson films, Fantastic Mr. Fox is about a family, and like all his films, the interactions between family members are always poignant, each line of dialogue is meaningful, and their relationships are complex but never cluttered. What I mean by that is, there is real emotion here being portrayed by the little animated forest animals who fill the screen of Fox, but it's never sensationalized and always pretty innocent, which helps transition Fantastic Mr. Fox - a good children's book - not just into a good children's movie, but a good movie overall.

I find writer Noah Baumbach's influence to be important here as well. The writer/director of the Squid and the Whale, and the writer of the Life Aquatic, Baumbach's way of writing about family and the way family members communicate with each other has become perhaps rather indistinguishable with Wes Anderson's. Even if their read on families are identical in this regards, they're producing something unique, together that is, about those connections. Movies like the Squid and the Whale, like Life Aquatic, like Darjeeling Limited and Royal Tenenbaums, these films don't ignore the noise and clutter of daily life, but they do demonstrate the way the connections between family members cuts through all daily disorder of life. The dialogue technique that has the two writers cutting down to the bone is revealing to the true nature of their characters, and I find that blunt honesty rare. At times it feels unnatural or awkward and therefore uncomfortable, but at times it can also be refreshing.

And another thing that amazes me is how much children's stories seem to influence grown-up artists. Rudyard Kipling influences Roald Dahl, Dahl influences Anderson, and I'm sure the trend will continue. So many writers and directors and musicians seem to derive inspiration from children's stories and memories from their own childhood. Is adulthood just not inspiring enough for them? Does childhood's innocence and endless creativity provide the artists with endless material? Do they use young characters as an excuse to be imaginative in ways they would feel otherwise embarrassed? Does the innocence of their characters help them ignore the clutter and noise of adulthood, whereby helping to cut directly to core emotions? So often, artists like Anderson and Baumbach portray adults as confused and misguided, with the children being forced to simply 'put up' with the deceitful ways of parents. That's certainly one perspective, but Anderson and Baumbach are adults; at what point to they become the deceitful, misguided ones?

The Class (2008)

2010-07-06T01:47:00.001-04:00

A lesson on how not to handle a classroom of rowdy French students.

You know, it's kind of funny because I expected this movie to be about one of those inspiring types, where the white teacher transcends the boundaries of race and culture and makes a difference in the lives of his students, where the teacher is able to instruct them about academics as well as life lessons, and most importantly, they all learn about each other, and the teacher grows as a person. You know, like Freedom Writers, or Dead Poets Society, (even Half Nelson), only about French people.

Except The Class is not what I expected. It was close - maybe even frustratingly close - because the film does contain great truths about racial divides and cultural divides and age divides. In fact, The Class was comically different than my expectations, because the teacher fails so miserably - epically so - at connecting with his students, that it becomes the comedic opposite of those others films... it might even be playing on those "transcendent teacher" movies as part of the comedy.

And yet, it's more real this way. It's not more enjoyable to watch: you enjoy watching Robin Williams showing Ethan Hawke the adult world of literature and adventure in Dead Poets Society, but it's not real life. Real life is when the teacher sinks down to the students' level, getting in yelling matches, becoming similarly immature, and failing to bridge that gap, those divides, and making any sort of difference in their lives. The lead character of this movie means well, but he's downright annoying and clearly in over his head, making The Class a lesson in what not to do.

The Secret of My Success (1987)

2010-06-29T00:53:00.007-04:00

I think I can write all my thoughts on this movie in 5 sentences, so I'm going to try:

1) The Secret of My Success is Michael J. Fox auditioning for a future role in the TV show 'Spin City.'
2) Its listed genre is comedy, but I think that's generous.
3) I wish I could say I only waste my time watching a movie like this when I leave AMC on while trying to fall asleep, but that's not entirely true.
4) The title is misleading, because the real title should be "I Frauded and Slept My Way to the Top," which, coincidentally, is the title of my future biography.
5) This movie is really really 80's: music, clothes, and classic MJ Fox chase scenes.

You see, the secret of this blog's success is my ability to say what I'm thinking about a movie whether or not I think anyone else is reading!

A Serious Man (2009)

2010-06-15T21:59:00.002-04:00

Ever since reading this article from the New York Review of Books - the world surrounding Judaism feels just a little different. The article didn't actually provide too many new perspectives for me, but phrased things in such a way that has me re-thinking Jewish American culture and it's relationship with Israel. The article takes general observations that many American Jews have long been making, and gave them some context, and envisions where that Jewish American-Israeli relationship is going. In just the few weeks since I first read the article, Israel attacked a 'flotilla' and Helen Thomas retired, and I can't help but looking at these recent events through the new frame of mind provided from the article.

So when I watched A Serious Man - the most recent Coen Brothers film - I watched this movie with my new, slightly altered disposition. It's a film filled with characters in a constant state of paranoia, but justifies the emotion by calling it survivalism.

The main character of A Serious Man, physics professor Larry Gopnik, doesn't quite have the weight of the entire Jewish population on his back, but for him, the hits seem to just keep coming. His wife threatens divorce and kicks him out of the house, he feels threatened by his neighbor, he's bribed by one his students, he moves into a motel room with his troubled brother, and occasionally, random people in his life just die.

Is Larry the equivalent of Job? It's unclear if he's meant to be a direct association to the abused Biblical character, but when Larry does go to find religious guidance to explain it all, he finds three Rabbis, all with no helpful religious direction to offer.

This suddenly leaves Larry in a state of panic: he's having a religious crisis, he's lost his home, he's about to lose his family, he feels surrounded by death, and he might even lose his job. As if he wasn't already conscious of it, Larry becomes keenly aware that he has a lot to lose, and begins to act like his life depends on it. Larry is paranoid that God is against him, but maybe it's not paranoia at all, because as we find out, the worst is yet to come.

Which brings me right back to that article from the New York Review of Books, and its article, the Failure of the American Jewish Establishment. A Serious Man never once mentions, or even references Israel, but like Larry, the hits keep coming: the people of Israel are having a religious crisis, the people fear they might be driven from their homes, the people feel threatened by their neighbors, they feel surrounded by death, and appear paranoid that the worst is yet to come.

Most frightening of all, is the worst really might be yet to come.

Touch of Evil (1958)

2010-06-10T19:19:00.002-04:00

Not your typical black and white's 1950's film noir, but when the idiosyncratic Orson Welles gets his hands on something, there's no way it's going to turn out conventional. Call it 'the touch of Welles' I suppose? In the history of film, 1958 seems pretty late in time for a black-and-white film-noir, though that's exactly what it is, and it's as good as any other I've seen.

It's a story of corrupt law enforcement on a border town somewhere along the Mexico-Texas line. It's a shadowy movie, appropriately filmed at night, complimenting the murderous and sexual undertones. Touch of Evil is also an Orson Welles film - so it's well acted, has smart dialogue, and includes masterfully-shot scenes, including a gorgeous one that begins the film, following a walk with a Mexican narcotics officer, played by Charlton Heston ("He doesn't look like a Mexican" - Captain Quilan, played by Welles) and his new wife played by Janet Leigh, as they come by across the border for their honeymoon, talk to the guard as a car passes by, only to witness a car bomb go off, killing the driver and his mistress, all in one shot. And hey, that's just the beginning.

To be fair, I really wanted to see Touch of Evil after watching Linklater's Me and Orson Welles, because I realized I had only seen Citizen Kane, and not much else he'd done, and heard good things about this movie. A great director is not made by one movie, and so I was thrilled to see that Welles could do other marvelous things as a filmmaker.

Almost as impressive is his acting. The movie stars Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh, and while both are good, the movie seems to be about Welles's character, the corrupt police captain of the town. Captain Hank Quilan is both enraging and pathetic. He's nearly demonized, but Welles gives him more depth than that. Quilan is given more motive than just 'evil.' He's given some heart, and shows human vulnerabilities like struggling with obesity, and it becomes clear that the captain is a self-destructive fraud. Instead of coming clean though when seemingly exposed, he battles and lashes out to the very end.

The Right Stuff (1983)

2010-06-09T03:42:00.002-04:00

The Right Stuff has a lot of good things going for it, but it lacks a consistent focus that I believe would have made this a much better overall movie. The film, based on Tom Wolfe's book, is an expansive and comprehensive look at America's path to space through the eyes of the original astronauts. Beginning with their fearless attempts at breaking the sound-barrier, these astronauts were first 'test pilots,' and recruited by NASA, the movie explains, because they didn't seem to fear death. That, and they could fly.

It's that combination of overwhelming confidence, dare-devil nature, and natural instincts that is the focus of The Right Stuff. More than being about the inception of space-travel, this movie is about the rag-tag group of pilots that became the face of the program, even if they weren't the brains behind it all. Call it an 'it' factor, whatever the 'right stuff' was, only certain guys had it.

The pilot who embodied 'it' more than anyone else in this movie, the character Chuck Yeager, never actually joins NASA. His role in the film is that of a godfather to the test pilots, a mostly-symbolic meld of glorified soldier and old-fashioned independent bravado - perhaps becoming something like the final cowboy of the Wild West, or the archetype for the 20th century American hero - a Dirty Harry kind of workman who lives and labors by his own rules, unflinching and seemingly invincible.

In a sense, Chuck Yeager is the point of the movie, and in another sense, he's absolutely pointless. Yeager really wasn't anything special: he never does something that someone else can't later beat, and he never becomes one of the original NASA pilots. By the second half of the movie, he's left to be a ghost, haunting the desert landscape of the West that was once the breeding grounds for the first sonic boom, and left to haunting the memories of those future NASA astronauts.

It's that contradiction that leaves The Right Stuff feeling kind of aimless. Perhaps this was a byproduct of the movie trying to make a different point than the original book, but that's merely a guess. The Right Stuff is made of good stuff, but if you're going to make a 3.5-hour movie, please give it a little more direction.

Doctor Zhivago (1965)

2010-06-01T20:49:00.003-04:00

I've always associated Doctor Zhivago with Lawrence of Arabia. Something about their long run-times (3+ hours each), similar actors (Omar Sharif, Alec Guinness), and their overall 'epic' nature always tied the two together for me. Lawrence came only only three years before Zhivago as well. So when I at long last saw Lawrence - and loved it - I knew I'd have to see Zhivago too. When Netflix finally decided to make this movie available, I jumped all over it.

Doctor Zhivago is immensely famous, and wildly praised by critics -- for good reason too, it's a well-made film. Often, these two reasons are all I need when deciding what movies to watch. This is occasionally problematic though, especially when these films are epic romances. I knew it was an epic romance though, which is me admitting that I should have known better.

See, I have a problem with epic romances. A big problem. And that is: I don't like them. I actually really love many classic epic films, especially ones like Lawrence of Arabia. But I simply can't stand most romance movies. And an epic romance... well that just means it's not just a romance movie, but a very very long. I would like to be clear: I do not mean that I don't like romance comedies! I love romantic comedies! What I mean is movies like The English Patient, A Very Long Engagement, Atonement, Gone With the Wind... can't stand any of them. There are exceptions to the rule, but this is generally the rule.

Then of course, there's another problem with this film, Doctor Zhivago. This movie is about Russia, and in Russia, it is depressing. Very very depressing. Very cold. And very depressing. Doctor Zhivago is a long, depressing romance. It's miserable.

An Education (2009)

2010-05-24T02:02:00.001-04:00

A movie about a choice. The makers of An Education don't really care too much how you feel about a 16-year-old dating a man about twice her age, but rather they want you to think about a girl in a pre-Beatles Britain, choosing what kind of education she would like to pursue: the University of Oxford, or the school of David - the older gentleman offering her a very different kind of life.

Peter Sarsgaard plays David, a man who seems to make questionable life choices. David steals from old women, gambles, lies to anyone, and is having an affair with a teenager. But he's charming and disarming, appreciates the fine arts, and seems to genuinely appreciate the people in his life. So confident and practical seems David, that the movie doesn't even bother weighing the principles of David's life choices.

Instead, the focus is on Jenny, played by Carey Mulligan, and even if you do find her age-defying relationship with David a bit disturbing, it doesn't stop the teen from making some strong points as she disputes the principles of her parents and teachers. After dedicating her young life to getting into Oxford, and as she reaches the threshold of going, she begins to gain perspective, and questions whether Oxford will bring her happiness in life. In early 1960's Britain, there aren't many career choices for women, even one with a college degree. A girl who graduates from Oxford is likely to become a teacher, she realizes, and all her teachers seem unhappy! So, she asks, why bother? And can you blame her? Her debate spotlights gender discrimination of the time, which at times overshadows the age problem with David.

An Education is one of those "coming-of-age" movies that successfully avoids annoying 'growing up' cliches. It also features Alfred Molina as Jenny's father, Emma Thompson as Jenny's principal, and novelist Nick Hornby helped write the screenplay. An Education is well written, well-acted, and well-worth watching.

The Informant! (2009)

2010-05-20T09:57:00.001-04:00

Getting inside the mind of FBI-informant Mark Whitacre is the subject of this film, but Whitacre's inner dialogue provides no insight on why this VP abruptly turned on his company. It's this quandary, this contradiction, that makes The Informant! so enjoyable.

Naturally, this inconsistency is frustrating as well.

One of Whitacre's great skills is lying. It's just plain skill. He's so good at letting his imagination get the best of him that lying comes easily and smoothly. However, it's one thing for him to lie to his bosses, and another to lie to the FBI, but what makes Whitacre so deceiving is that he lies to the audience. His inner dialogue, narrated as he goes about his "informant" ways, is insignificant dribble - the kind of daily absurdist thoughts that pop into anyone's head during the day - are actually the only kind of thoughts that Whitacre provides for the audience.

In short, even though there is an inner dialogue, we never know if Whitacre is telling the truth. Ever.

Example: "What's the German word for 'corn?' The word in German I really like is kugelschreiber. That's 'pen.' All those syllables just for 'pen.'

Enabling this persona is a dream duo of Matt Damon and director Steven Soderbergh. Combined, they create a pathetic, yet sympathetic Mark Whitacre in an environment that allows him to pull at strings for years until there's no strings left to pull. With Scott Bakula and Joel McHale playing the FBI agents along for the ride, The Informant! is a wacky piece of satire, a comedic version of a true story, and a good movie.