2009 - Brief movie reviews, in (roughly) reverse order of viewing
Year End Rankings I'm going to go about this a little differently this year. Since I wrote little reviews as I went, and did not put ratings on each movie, and in fact only finalized my rankings a couple days ago, I'm just going to do a couple of lists, a best and a worst list. I rank movies on a 1-5 scale, 5 being awesome, 1 being crappy. But we actually got a zero this year! Sweet! I only had four movies rated as 5's so I'll pick out a few 4's to pad out that list. I had 6 movies rated as 1's too and I don't want to slight my several readers by leaving any out, so the length of the lists may be uneven. Let's see how it turns out. Worst seven movies of 2009: 7. Public Enemies - This was the biggest disappointment of the year. Michael Mann is usually pretty reliable but top to bottom this movie was poorly made. Bad direction. Bad sound. Bad soundtrack. Poorly edited. Poorly shot. What a mess. 6. The Box - The first half of this movie was pretty good but it fell apart in the second half. The useless twists and turns were just too much to take and it ended up making no sense whatsoever in the end. Donnie Darko made sense in its own world but this thing was all over the map, not well connected, and just ugly. 5. Youssou Ndour: I bring what I love - What could have been a good biopic about an important artist turned out to be a bunch of whining. 4. Goodbye Solo - The most boring movie I've sat all the way through. I wanted a nap. There was no character development. No meaningful interaction. No compelling story. I wish this would have been a 10 minute short film where the dude just got to the suicide part and spared us the useless lead-up. 3. Gamorrah - This film was touted as some sort of mafia origins story but it turned out to be two Italian wanna-be thugs running around the beach in their underwear. Extremely boring and hard on the eyes. It looked as if two 12 year-olds got hold of a Super-8 camera for a weekend and this is what they ended up with. 2. Waltz with Bashir - Pretentious, self-serving, whiny animated film. Felt like sitting around a table playing Bridge with four old men in their 60's reminiscing about a war they didn't take part in. 1. A Serious Man - Until I sat through 45 minutes of this, I hadn't walked out of a movie since Eyes Wide Shut. We were in such a hurry to leave I didn't even bother to stop to get my money back. The Coen brothers are usually pretty reliable. Even if you hate the movie you're watching there's usually no doubt that the people involved know how to make a movie, but this thing looked as if it was made up of a bunch of vignettes put together by pretentious first-year film school students. From what I've read I would have really been enraged if I toughed it out until the end. By far the worst movie I've seen part of in years. Best 10 movies of 2009: This was a tough one. I initially had four movies ranked as 5's, but upon further review I bumped a 4 up to a 5. I then had 11 more 4's. I didn't want to have such a long list so I pared it down by only including movies that I would watch a second time (or third or fourth) or movies that otherwise stood out as memorable moviegoing experiences from the past year. 10. In The Loop - I was shocked by how much I laughed at this movie. It deserved to be seen by more people. 9. Anvil: The Story of Anvil - Some of this movie was difficult to watch, the lives of the two main characters, and I call them that even though this is a documentary, are utter train wrecks as the movie starts and progresses. The final redemption at the end is pretty compelling, as well as the recognition they've received since the movie came out. 8. The Hangover - I haven't laughed longer or harder at a movie this year, or maybe even the last couple of years. I had low expectations going in but this movie rightly deserves it's title as the highest grossing R-rated comedy of all time. 7. Watchmen - Not a lot of people liked this movie but I did. I liked everything about it, top to bottom. The characters, the story, the special effects, the sound and set design. I don't really know why this movie was not the blockbuster it was designed to be. 6. District 9 - Shockingly, surprisingly good 'low budget' sci-fi thriller. The concept behind the story was new, fresh and shocking and I loved every minute of it. 5. Star Trek - This one was originally a 4 ranking, but then I got to thinking. I purchased the Blu-Ray as soon as it came out, plus this is the only movie I can think of since Star Wars that I've paid to see in the theater twice. We just got finished watching the Blu-Ray and the extras and it makes me appreciate this movie even more. 4. It Might Get Loud - I remember this movie mostly because of Jack White and what a genius I think he is, but it was very interesting to see his history and style contrasted with two geniuses from previous generations of rock. 3. Sita Sings The Blues - The story behind how this movie came to be and the public role of the director as champion of artist's rights is almost as compelling as the movie itself. Thoroughly original and completely entertaining. You can legally download this movie for free over the Internet but if you can I suggest you see it in the theater or purchase a DVD so you can directly support the artist and not the 'machine'. 2. The Hurt Locker - There had been a tiny bit of buzz about this movie prior to it being released. It was not widely distributed but reviews were universally good. We got the chance to see this movie at work and participate in a Q&A with the director afterward. The movie itself blew me away and really turns what you think of as a war movie on it's head. This is what 'cinema' is all about. Top to bottom this movie was perfect. Similar to 'The Lives of Others' from a couple years ago, this is the movie I was constantly going back to and comparing other movies to in my head to gage how good they were. 1. Coraline - What can I say? Coraline the movie and Coraline the character charmed the pants off of me. The fantastical story, the fantastical sets and the fantastical animation hooked me and didn't let go. This movie also shows the state-of-the art in 3D and what can be done with the right material and right people behind the lens. My hope is that this movie becomes a 'classic' and I will have the opportunity to see it in 3D again for years to come. Sherlock HolmesNot bad, not bad at all. Not entirely awesome, either. The acting was great top to bottom. Guy Richie's fingerprints were all over it, but it just didn't seem to have that extra punch that we American audiences expect. The look, sets, costumes etc. were spot on. I bet this one does really well in Europe but not so much in the US. Up In The AirMe like. Me very like. The hype and buzz surrounding this movie was thankfully not all smoke and mirrors. Ivan Riteman's son really knows how to direct. George Clooney and everyone else in this move really knows how to act. This movie is a quality production from top to bottom. The movie has a lot of polish and hit just the right notes of comedy, tragedy and everywhere in between at just the right moments. I'm not sure what else to say about it. It has that low-key tone and character study type of flow that makes you wonder how that piece of crap Lost in Translation could have turned out if decent, professional people were involved in making it. But you actually get interested in the characters and how it all plays out in the end, instead of hoping that Bill Murray shoots Scarlet Johansen in the head then takes his own life. But I digress. If you're on the fence about it, jump off into the yard that says 'see it', you won't be disappointed. AvatarI've now had almost a week to let this one sink in. As ILM did some '911' work on this, we were able to procure a print, which I'm guessing is no longer called a print because it's projected digitally. In that case, what the hell do you call it? In any case we were lucky enough to have some showings up at Skywalker Ranch in 3D. How cool is that? I was told by many people that the theater up there is one of the best in the country, and after seeing Avatar there I believe them. I guess when you have Lucasfilm and especially Skywalker Sound deck out a theater, it gets done right. The projection and sound was perfect and amazing. We were allowed to bring a guest which I guess is pretty rare. I think they wanted to help hype it a bit because if I'm not mistaken this is the first time ILM has delivered something for 3D, or as we like to call it 'stereoscopic', or just plain 'stereo'. So, about the movie. I liked it a lot. My wife liked it more. It's certainly worth seeing, if for anything just the spectacle. It was well written and acted, it didn't seem anywhere near 2 hours and 45 minutes long, the pacing was actually pretty good from start to end. Character development was well done. There were a lot of cliches, but Cameron knows how to write cliches, right? There was some predictability in the plot, but it didn't seem to matter. The stereo was good but I'm not 100% convinced it was necessary. I wouldn't go out of my way to see it in 3D. There were a couple pretty good scenes that utilized it in a very effective way (jumping off the waterfall) but the effect when real, non-CGI humans were on the screen left me feeling a little flat. It seemed to lack a little depth in that the human characters looked (to me) somewhat like cardboard cutouts that were set at different distances from the camera. The full CGI portions of the movie popped but even without 3D there was a lot to see and take in. So why didn't I love it? I'm not sure. Overhype, maybe? I didn't see it as the groundbreaking film that is going to change the industry forever. The CGI characters still looked like CGI to me, especially in movement, especially regarding mouths and hands. There's still something mechanical and un-subtle about fine movements in CGI characters. All the non-humanoid animals and whatnot moved completely realistically because we have nothing to compare them to. Or perhaps it looked that way because birds don't usually emote to us humans so we have no idea how they look when they're trying to convey feelings. One other thing that kinda threw me off was that everything was shiny. The plants were shiny, the trees were shiny, the feathers on the creatures looked shiny, even the dirt looked shiny. Something was missing from the texture of the CGI that just made everything look more plastic-like when it should have had a more organic feeling to it. Overall it's still a monumental achievement in moviemaking and shows what can be done with state-of-the-art CGI, but I still think we're a ways away from realizing full-on human or human-like CGI characters that are believable enough to mistake for real people. So, I'll say that this movie is very good, but not very great, and you should go out and see it just so you don't feel like you missed out. There is a lot to like and maybe I'm being overly critical, but I just don't think it lived up to the hype. Almost, but not quite. And if you do decide you want to see it, see it in a theater. Don't wait for the DVD. A spectacle like this deserves to be viewed on a grand scale. Men Who Stare at GoatsHmmm. Not bad. This was a good antidote to A Serious Man, which we saw the day before. It wasn't the feel-good comedy tour-de-force of the summer (that would be The Hangover) but George and Ewan were pretty good together. Clooney played a convincing nut and Ewan played a convincing whatever the hell he was. Ha ha. It would be worth a rental one day. A Serious Man... was serious crap. At least I was able to sit through The Box. This is the first movie I have walked out of since Eyes Wide Shut. I didn't even last an hour. And I should have left earlier but I usually give the Cohen brothers a little more leeway. This thing was just utterly boring, utterly pointless, and reading some spoilers about the ending I'm glad I didn't stay until then. I would have been enraged. The Cohen brothers know how to tell a story, they know how to make movies. Fargo was great and O' Brother Where Art Thou? is one of my top, oh, 15 favorite movies of all time. I can stand 'artsy' crap if it's entertaining, but this was just like watching a guy from 1967 go through his daily routine. Just like a million other regular guys from 1967. One of the major plot points (as far as I could tell) was that the main character's son owed a bully 20 bucks and ran from him after getting off the bus every day. It never explains why the bully is already home by the time the school bus comes around. Everybody took the bus in 1967. This happened repeatedly. Over and over again. That's it. How fucking profound. (I find that the more time passes from when we left he movie, an it's only been about four hours, the more I hate it.) I feel like the Cohens are playing a joke on us, making garbage just to see what kind of stroke they get from critics and allegedy sophisticated moviegoers. And the'll get a lot of praise for this because they are, after all, the Cohen brothers. If Warner Herzog released this crap it would be universally raked over the coals. And not to reveal too much about the kinds of things I did in high school, but the son owes the bully $20 for a 'lid', meaning a lid of pot. In the 60's, a 'lid' referred to about 1/8 of an ounce. Dealers would keep pot in a 'can' (a 1 ounce Prince Albert Tobacco can) and divide it up by how much would fit in the lid. Anyhoo, if he paid 20 bucks for a 'lid' of pot in 1967 he got severely ripped off. By my calculations a whole ounce of primo weed would have cost no more than $30 back then. So, that bugged me, too. Now I'm just looking for more reasons to hate this movie. The BoxI was 'fortunate' enough to see a preview of this film at work last night. I thought I'd wait a day to try to let some of it settle in, and to partake in the inevitible discussion about it on the message boards at work. Just to see if my opinion was in line with everyone else, or if I was way off base. Turns out this movie did in fact suck. What a let-down. It was written and directed by Richard Kelly, the man responsible for Donnie Darko and Southland Tales. There was a screening of donnie Darko on Monday which I attended, too. These were to prepare us for his visit at work today, which I skipped. I remember disliking Donnie Darko when I saw it in the theater in 2001, but now I'm not sure why. It was pretty good this time around. I'm about halfway through watching Southland Tales on the iPod and it's convoluted but so far it's holding my interest. But back to the box. You pretty much know the main point of the movie. Crazy(?) man delivers a box to a couple. If they press the button they get a million dollars but someone they don't know dies. Moral delimma, blah blah blah. Truthfully, *that* half of the movie was fine. It was a little slow but it built tension and examined the lives of these two characters in a pretty effective way. But in true Richard Kelly fashion, it all went to shit about halfway through. The movie just got worse, and worse, and worse. The beginnings of the explination (spoiler alert) in the second act were going in a nice direction. Basically, the man has an 'employer' that I chose to believe was God and the box/button was a morality test. If too many people pressed the button, God would accelerate the demise of the human race. If more people chose to not press the button, then humanity would be spared and perhaps be better for it. Of course, lots of people have pressed the button. In any case the movie does not end there. In fact, the movie ended about five times. Just when you thought everything was tied up in a nice little bow, fade to black, wait for credits to roll ... the movie started up again. After it was over I think I counted five 'endings'. They just kept coming, and each one added a seemingly random element to the plotline, one that made no sense whatsoever, not even in the context of the movie. Since the main characters snooped around about the box, now their son is blind and deaf and James Marsden has to kill Cameron Diaz to make him normal again. You have to go choose a portal in the library for some reason, something about a preview of heaven. There's something about experiments to control people's brains remotely, and you can tell when this happens because everyone starts getting nosebleeds. Except James Marsden and Cameron Diaz. The fact that these two are seemingly uncontrollable in this vast experiment, which may or may not involve the NSA, is never addressed. People just continue to die in front of them. In fact, James Marsden survives big car wreck with nary a scratch while the person driving the vehicle dies. I'm just waiting for all the smarmy, hipster, New Yorker-style reviews to come out and tell me I'm not 'sophisticated' enough to understand this movie. That I'm stupid and just want to see things blow up. The fact is I'm all for good storytelling, good direction and experimental work. Kudos to Warner Brothers for putting this out, but it's still garbage. I'm a big Cohen brothers fan (save for The Big Labowski, which sucked. Yeah, I said it. The Big Labowski was a stupid movie.) I watch movies in languages other than English. I've seen enough movies in my day, and just this year, to know that this movie was too long and too crammed with useless tangents and additions onto the story at the end to be the slightest bit appealing to moveigoers with even the most discerning taste. The story itself wasn't bad, but the movie could have benefitted from some more time in the editing room. Lop a half hour off of it and loosen up tha narrative. One can only handle so many changes (one) in tone and direction in the final act. This movie didn't have a twist, it had five of them. Lame. The Hurt LockerWow. What an achievement in moviemaking this one turned out to be. My wife and I got to see a Variety sponsored screening after work tonight with a Q&A with the director afterward. It would be difficult to describe how a movie with really no plot could be so emersive and satisfying to watch. This is a very serious film with lots of emotional impact. Everything about the film, the directing, the writing, the sound, the visual style, the acting, was nothing short of perfect. This is a war movie so it won't be for everyone but, as the director Kathryn Bigelow said, and as my wife noticed, it was shot in a documentary style that really made you feel like you were the fourth member of a bomb disposal team in the Iraqi war circa 2004. I sometimes have trouble putting my finger on why exactly I like certain movies, so I'll have to defer to my wife on this one. She says that the three main characters were not entirely likeable, they all had major flaws. But by the end you were really emotionally attached to them as a group and cared about where they ended up. Exactly my thoughts (after she told me what they were. Ha ha.) This movie is well worth your time if you can find it. This marks 41 movies seen in theaters this year (including free screenings at work, thank you) and this will easily crack my top 5 of the year, maybe top 3. Where the Wild Things AreI really wanted to like this movie more. I really did. I never read the book when I was a kid, I just downloaded a PDF of it two days ago and read it for the first time. Spike Jonze has made some good movies in the past. The buzz around it was palpable. But it just fell a little flat for me. Perhaps I missed something and should watch it again. It's rare that a movie will be so universally well reviewed and I won't like it (except for Tropic Thunder, that one actually did suck and I'm convinced every movie reviewer in the world was on drugs that weekend.) There was supposed to be an allegory (or is it just plain 'allegory') between Max and the Wild Things. Some of it was obvious, but some of it was not. I was sitting there wondering what everything the Wild Things did meant, and I suspect that some of it meant nothing. It was hard to sort out what was supposed to be paralleling Max's (the human) life and what was not. Perhaps I'm easily confused. I think I would have liked a clearer deliniation between what was supposed to have meaning and what was not. This movie started filming back in 2005. It's release was delayed for a couple years because the studio originally was not keen on Spike's original vision, which was apparently too dark and went off in directions they didn't think the audience would like. He managed to secure more money and time so he could do it over. I couldn't help but think that this movie was a bit of compromise and that's why it didn't seem cohesive to me. I'd pay good money to see the original cut. One thing I can say is that the puppetry, special effects and overall art direction of the movie is unmatched by anything I've seen this year, save for Coraline. There was a lot of incredible work on the screen and it was enjoyable to watch. A lot of love and craftsmanship went into the look of the film, but the story and everything else did not resonate with me. The one thing that keeps coming back to me (SPOILER ALERT!) was the Wild Thing with the twig arm. I laughed loudly inside every time that thing was on screen. I want an action figure of Twig Arm. Passing StrangeThis one got some good reviews and it seemed interesting. Spike Lee filmed the last two performances of the Broadway play 'Passing Strange', then cut the shows together into one movie. The play was pretty unique and had a lot of great music in it. But I don't think it translated well to the big screen. I would have liked to see this one live and it reminds me that I don't go to plays as often as I'd like to. The Informant!This was a weird little movie, but it was pretty good. It was funny but awfully cringe-worthy in a lot of parts. Matt Damon played a George Costanza-esque character where I was never sure if he was an idiot or a genius. As my wife said, you started out rooting for him at the beginning of the movie but by the end, with every turn of the plot, he became less and less likable. I wasn't sure if he deserved the jail time he got (oops, did I just ruin that for you?) but I don't feel he didn't deserve it, either. I especially liked the FBI agents played by Scott Bacula and that guy from The Soup. At least that's where I think I remember him from. He's kind of like a poor-man's Bill Hader. Very funny in a very subtle way. In The LoopI have not laughed at a movie this much in a long, long time. Okay, perhaps I laughed this much at The Hangover a couple months ago. But before that, it had been a long, long time. I'm usually not much for political comedy, but the Brits really know how to put this kind of material together. The timing and rhythm of the characters, their banter and even their body language was spot on across the board. Even the Americans in it were not out of place and held their own. The movie fizzled out toward the end a little bit, but the rest was a relentless, razor-sharp satire on the level of Dr. Strangelove. I loved it. I'm still sitting here laughing while thinking of the seemingly mundane line 'How is he doing that?', which had me crying because I was laughing so hard. This kind of topical comedy might not be everyone's cup of tea, but if it is you need to seek this movie out, or put it on your Netflix list. My God, I just realized that Dr. Strangelove is approaching it's 50th anniversary. It's hard to believe that a movie like that has remained relevant and funny since 1964. Wow. Inglourious BasterdsNot bad. Not bad at all. I'm not a huge Tarantino follower. Pulp Fiction is one of my favorite movies. I remember Jackie Brown being okay. I did not like Kill Bill at all. I skipped Grindhouse. But this movie feels the most like Pulp Fiction. It's very well done. It has the trademark Tarantino dialog, long scenes involving multiple characters, sudden barrages of violence, seriousness peppered with comedy, and all around great direction and moviemaking. The man surely knows his craft. One thing I really liked about it was that Tarantino didn't put himself in the movie. He's the worst 'actor' ever committed to film. If you read the trivia for Inglourious Basterds in IMDB, it turns out he actually is in the movie, or at least his hands and voice are. But you wouldn't even notice. His scenes in Pulp Fiction, sharing the screen with the great Harvey Kietel, almost brought the whole film down. He's horrible. Anyhoo, none of that in this one. The movie is worth a look if you're in the mood for something on an epic scale (the cinematography was noticeably great) and don't mind a bit of violence and blood. Though, I didn't feel it was any worse that Pulp Fiction. Maybe a little more graphic. But in this one you can generally see the gore coming. One of the most violent scenes in the movie was also my favorite (in the 'cellar'.) The Time Traveler's Wife (Update!)Hmmm. Not bad. Not super-awesome. I guess I'm not one for the romantic movies. This one didn't really do it for me, but it was still pretty good. The acting was good throughout and the story was different and compelling, but it didn't have the emotional resonance with me that some other movies do. My wife cried a lot during it, though.I liked The Lake House better. After the movie was over and I revealed to my wife that I am an uncaring, unemotional sack of rocks, she asked me if there were any movies that made me sad. Philidelphia sproinged right into my mind. I've probably watched it maybe 2 times all the way through, and it made me cry both times. I tend to flip past it if it's on TV. So I got to thinking if there are any more movies in recent memory that affect me in an emotional way. Here's what I've come up with: Saving Private Ryan Children of Men almost made me cry, but oddly they were tears of joy Half Nelson made me really sad Vera Drake Little Miss Sunshine makes me immensely happy when I see it UPDATE: I just remembered that the saddest thing I have ever seen in any movie ever made is the wayward penguin in the great documentary 'Encounters At the End of the World'. I'm not sure if my wife noticed I was crying a little bit when we watched it. That's about all I can come up with. ET back in the day, of course, but I was just a stupid kid back then. If you'll notice, not a love story in the lot. I guess I'm more of a man's man and not in touch with my feminine, girly side. Ha ha. And that's okay with me. District 9I was thoroughly impressed by this movie. I unwittingly came across their viral ad campaign a few months ago, at a bus stop:  I went to the website at the time and eventually figured out it was a movie, then I promptly forgot about it until it came out two weekends ago. I was on the fence about it but it got such good reviews I decided to drag my wife to it today. Anyway, I won't give much away, but the movie outlines an 'aliens on Earth' scenario that I haven't really seen done before. The writer/director Neill Blomkamp was born in South Africa and raised during apartheid, and it shows through in this movie. Undertones of racism, hate, us vs them, fear and propaganda run throughout the movie. The twist to the story was pretty shocking and very well done. Another good thing was that the commercials give away nothing about the plot of the movie. In fact, my wife and I agree that much in the commercials was not even in the movie. This movie was made on a modest, by today's standards, $30 million. The quality of the CGI was way up there, which makes sense since Peter Jackson, who produced the movie, owns the second best digital effects house in the world. :) I bet the District 9 show got a steep discount. Everything was very convincing. Speaking of convincing, the acting was surprisingly superb across the board. Even more shocking was reading the IMDB entry for District 9 and finding out that the main character was played by a man who had never acted before. He played 'sniper' in the original short of this movie. The ending to the movie was very satisfying, yet it left the door wide open for a District 10 (in exactly three and a half years.) If District 10 never gets made it won't feel like there were any loose ends left at the end of District 9. In any case it was satisfying enough to not need a sequel, but with it making back it's production cost in it's first weekend, then going on to total $73 million in ticket sales in it's first 10 days, I suspect that a script for a sequel has probably already been started. UPDATE: Last week Neill Blomkamp gave a talk at work and it was pretty fascinating finding out how he got to make this movie. He was originally slated to direct the Halo movie. When that film was killed Peter Jackson still wanted to work with him and suggested he turn his short into a feature film. So that's what he did. One amazing thing he revealed, or verified really because I've read this in the press, is that the two main characters (human and alien) improvised their performances 100%. That's not a typo, it says one-hundred percent. Neill talked about the process and it was pretty amazing. He had a script but he didn't use the lines. He just told his actors what the situation was, what needed to happen in the scene, and they acted it out. It sometimes took many takes to get the scene correct, as they had a habit of going on too long, but everything you see on the screen from them is made-up on the spot. Also, the entire film was shot in a real slum outside Johannesburg. The alien's shack and the base for the rebels were the only sets they built, everything else was as it existed in real life. So I already had a lot of respect for this movie but hearing how it was made was even more amazing. Hopefully the Bluray will have a lot of behind the scenes stuff going on. I'll buy it for sure. Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I LoveI was really hoping I would like this movie. I really was. It seemed like it could have been important. Turns out this movie was pretty poorly put together. It never decided what it wanted to be. This documentary is about a pretty famous (everywhere but in the US) singer from Senegal named Youssou Ndour. Anyone who is a fan of Peter Gabriel will be familiar with his work, and he really is an extremely talented singer that collaborates with extremely talented musicians. The problem was that over half this movie was concert footage, broken up with a story about Ndour's religion and how it clashes with his music. A movie about either story would have probably been great, but mixing them together in this way made each one seem like too big a piece of the pie. There were clips of concerts that literally lasted 10 minutes. The other thing that kinda turned me off was that the whole story of the 'controversy' about his religious album 'Egypt' was told by him and other people from his inner circle: his brother, his band, his sister the accountant, his sister the publicist. We never really heard from the other side, the people who allegedly 'banned' him. For all we know his album didn't sell in Senegal because it sucked. We'll never know because the 'outraged' people were never interviewed. I guess it's difficult to film people not buying an album, but if his brood is to be believed there were practically riots in the streets of Senegal when it was released. Then he wins a grammy for the album and everything is okay. Seriously, that's basically how it ends. It makes me wonder if the whole controversy was made up as a PR stunt for a mediocre album. Anyway, like I said, a full concert movie may have been good. Also, something more like a straight biography would have been good, too. The short sequences that really scratched the surface on who Youssou Ndour was and where he came from had a lot of substance, I wanted to see more of that story. But the amateurish mish-mosh of the two main stories made the movie out to be less than the sum of it's parts. Big disappointment for a movie about a man that I'd really like to know more about. Julie and JuliaI'm going to use a bunch of words in this review that I don't normally use, so be ready for that. I'll highlight them in purple so you'll know I'm not kidding when I use them. This unique movie, intertwining two stories of two different women at the same time, was truly delightful. Julie is a failed writer in 2002 New York who decides to write a blog about 'cooking' her way through Julia Child's 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking' over the course of a year. Julia, of course, is Julia Child and the other story is about the genesis of her real-life character as perhaps the first true celebrity chef of the nuclear age. Amy Adams, as Julie, is at her usual level of cuteness and awesomeness but Meryl Streep as Julia Child really steals this movie. Who knew she had such great comedic chops? You can tell she has (or developed) a great affection for Julia Child and plays her in a stylized but very respectful way. Julia Child was larger than life, literally and figuratively, in reality and Streep brings that gavitas to the role in unexpected ways. She was just delicious. The always good Stanley Tucci was swonderful as Julia's supportive but weary husband. My only beef with the movie was that they didn't portray Julie's motivation for the project in a very strong or clear way. She was supposed to be in a rut, depressed, aimless, etc., but her life actually didn't seem all that bad. Perhaps it would have taken the movie to a darker place than it wanted to go, but they could have gone deeper into showing the rut she was allegedly in. Perhaps that will be on the director's cut DVD. This one turned out better than I expected and is the best thing Adam Sandler has done in ten years. This movie is more like a drama that's funny than a comedy that has dramatic tendencies. A lot of the comedy comes from the fact that the main characters are comedians, some of questionable skill. But the movie overall was believable. I felt like the life of a famous comedian could really be like this. This was the most realistic of the three main movies in the Judd Apatow writer/director pantheon and it didn't resort to slapstick routines or unrealistic exchanges of dialog. I still liked "The 40 Year-Old Virgin" better, but not by much. 500 Days of SummerThis is the rare movie that I think I like *less* as time passes. I wasn't overly impressed with it in the theater and now that I think about it more my impression is deminishing. It wasn't terrible, but both main characters in the movie were just not entirely likable in the first place. So by the end I didn't really care that they didn't get together. Oh, did I just ruin it for you? Yes, they don't get together, so now you won't have to bother going out to see this one. I liked the way the story was told out of sequence, and it made for some clever editing and funny situations, but it wasn't enough for me to even want to see these two dull people make it all work out at the end. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood PrinceI really liked this one. I've liked all the Harry Potter movies but this one stands out as one of the best. I don't recall exactly what The Prisoner of Azkaban was about, but I remember liking that one a lot. I like this one just as much. This movie is more of a set up for the final battle (and two movies) and I thought it was very well executed. The 'kids' are really getting better and better with each movie, the direction was excellent, Alan Rickman is still awesome, and I just really enjoyed the whole thing. ILM did some amazing work, especially in the underwater lake scenes. I understand that they cut a bunch of stuff out of that sequence and ILM was a little disappointed about it, but what's left is pretty amazing to see on the big screen. There isn't as much action in this one as the other movies, but it was the same way in the book so I was expecting it. I think this one has more of a human touch and we get to see the characters interacting more on a personal level. BrünoWay more hilarious than I expected. I didn't think it would be better than Borat, which itself was pretty funny, but I found myself laughing a lot more at this one. My wife was reluctant to even go to this one with me but she just about fell out of her seat laughing on several occasions. It's a wonder Sacha Baron Cohen doesn't get the crap beat out of him every couple of days when he's filming a movie. This was similar to Borat in that he tried to take a bunch of unrelated interviews and clips and assemble them into a kind of narrative. So that didn't really work, but if you take each skit on it's own and ignore the in-between stuff, you stand to bust a nut laughing. The shortest sketch in the movie (the Harrison Ford interview) was one of the most halarious things I've seen at the movies this year (mostly because of the great lead up to it.) Unmistaken ChildThis was an interesting documentary about the search of the reincarnation of a Lama in Tibet. It didn't really give any insight into the teachings of Buddhism but it was an interesting journey to follow for a time. It was somewhat superficial and I think I would have liked to have been provided a little more in-depth information about the *why* of it all instead of all the *what* that we got. Still, not bad, not awesome. And I just have to mention that one of my favorite scenes in the movie was when the search had just started, the main character (too lazy to look up his name, the disciple of the deceased Lama) had to consult with a Buddhist astrologer. So they show the astrologer doing his thing, and you expect him to go to a sacred cabinet and pull out some ancient scrolls or something, but instead he starts drawing on this giant Magnadoodle board, like a toy from Fisher Price. That struck me as odd and hilarious for some reason. Public EnemiesHoly crap, what happened here? The usually reliable Michael Mann missed the mark by a country mile on this one. This thing was poorly executed from top to bottom. The musical score was noticeably bad. The acting was flat. The movie was not edited together very well. And the digital 'filming' was just horrible to look at. I know for a fact that filming a movie digitally can work (see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for an example of that) but perhaps Mann should stick to actual film. He obviously doesn't have a handle on the technology. The worst part is that on the discussion boards at work the told me that the one scene that was worth a crap, the two second shot of Johnny Depp hurdling over a table in a bank robbery scene, wasn't even Johnny Depp! It was a stunt man with Johnny Depp's face digitally painted on it! What a rip. It Might Get LoudHere's what I said about this movie in my oft mentioned regular blog. I'm going to reproduce it in it's entirety because I know most people won't go back and read it, and I think it's important to understand just how good this movie was: "Another movie that's not out yet that we got to see. I will pay to see this one again in the theaters when it comes out. So far it is the front-runner for my favorite movie of the year. It basically gets Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White together in a room to rap about electric guitars. It also provides a bit of back story on how they developed their sounds and talents. And they play. I'm not a big fan of The Edge's music, and this didn't change that, but I have more respect for the man that is The Edge. I had a healthy respect for Jack White before I saw this movie but at the risk of sounding completely stupid, snooty and insane, I can tell you that his talent almost transcends music itself and nearly becomes a religious experience. Seriously." If you have even a passing interest in contemporary music or the history of rock guitar, you MUST seek this movie out when it hits theaters. Paper HeartMy wife and I got to see a preview of this as part of the Los Angeles Film Festival, except that they were playing it up at my work in San Francisco. Since we saw it a couple weeks before they even started advertising it on TV, we didn't know what to expect. It was a pretty (and I hate this word, but it's appropriate) 'quirky' comedy and documentary rolled into one. The line between reality and fiction was purposely blurred but I thought they pulled it off pretty well. The main 'character', Charlyne Yi, was precariously close to stepping over that line that separates cute and annoying, but she knew just when to pull it back and keep the audience interested. The cut-scene, low-fi animations were hilarious. The HangoverI haven't laughed this hard at the movies in ages. Scene after scene was a relentless, machinegun-like spattering of comedy. I was expecting it to be kinda sorta funny but they really hit the mark on this one. The four main characters were just perfect together and the actors playing them never missed a beat. Normally when I see Zach Galifianakis I want to punch him in his face. Have you seen his stand-up? He reminds me of the most un-funny character on SNL, Nicolas Fehn the political comedian. Hipster douche. Anyway, he was perfect in the burnout brother-in-law role. The shot of him coming down the escalator was one of my favorite parts of the movie. Wall-to-wall hilarity on this one. I already wrote extensively about this one on my regular blog. It was much like the first one, times ten. I would not recommend seeing this in IMAX, you may develop a brain hemmorage. However, I was entertained by it. Sometimes you just want to see giant robots and things exploding. I though Shia LaBouf and Megan Fox had good chemistry, and I'm not bi or anything but both of them are pretty easy on the eyes. You know what you're getting with Michael Bay and he delivered exactly what you would expect. TetroMeh. The latest from Coppola. Francis Ford, not Nic Cage/Coppola. Coppola was going for a kind of French new wave thing here and it mostly worked, but I was kinda bored with it. The acting was uneven and there was one shot where you could clearly see a boom mic in the frame. And not just for a second, it lingered there for 5 or 6 seconds. I almost felt like the movie wasn't quite done. The story had great potential but I think he missed somewhat on the execution. UpImpressive. I think one more great movie from Pixar will make up for Cars. This movie was about an amazing love story and was not at all what I expected. Frankly, the commercials didn't make it look all that good but the set-up for the movie's second act came out of left field and really set the tone for a much more 'adult' movie than I expected. The Disney 3D was very well done, too. It wasn't too gratuitous and a lot of the wide shots from in the air were very well executed. I liked this one a lot. Terminator SalvationI liked this one better than I expected. It wasn't half bad at all. Christain Bale is by far the best John Connor so far. There were a lot of explosions and robots and whatnot but I thought it was very well done. I especially liked the half-human/half-terminator character and his inner battle about what he was. Oddly, it gave it a bit more of a human touch overall. And Arnie was only in it in CGI form so it wasn't ruined by terrible acting. Ha ha. Every Little StepInteresting documentary about the casting process of the revival of "A Chorus Line" on Broadway. It was interesting to me more on general terms about how casting a Broadway play works, rather than the specifics about "A Chorus Line". I had no clue what the original play was about and after the movie was over I still wasn't interested in it (the play.) A lot of they people involved (both with the old and the new production) took themselves way too seriously, like they were curing bran cancer or something. The actors who did *not* take themselves too seriously were tho ones that I thought brought more realism to the whole affair. Goodbye SoloAnother little independent movie that was very well reviewed but turned out to be utter crap. I was bored out of my mind. The two main actors were terrible. And the one we were supposed to feel some sort of sympathy toward was kind of a dick. I never once cared about either of the characters and by about halfway through I was hoping the old guy would hurry up and get to the suicide part. Star TrekWho would have thought this movie would turn out so good? Having hated anything Star Trek my whole life, I was shocked at how much I liked this movie. The plot was really good. The acting was really good. The nods to the original TV show were just about right. There was just the right mixture of action, adventure, tension, comedy, sci-fi and explosions. Extremely well executed. I can't remember the last time I paid to see a movie twice in the theater. it's just that good. X-Men Origins: WolverineNot bad. I thought maybe I was being too critical of the special effects because I've worked for a company that produces them for the past year, but my wife confirmed that some of them were pretty laughable. If you can get past that, the movie is pretty good. It is an origin story and I thought they covered it pretty well, with a simple plot and a very well-played 'enemy' (Liev Schreiber, who is never not good.) The movie didn't take itself too seriously and as is my standard question when I leave a movie: Was I entertained? Yes. Sita Sings the BluesI've already written extensively about this movie in my regular blog. This is an important movie, but it's also highly entertaining and thoroughly unique and original. You can download it for free off the Internet (legally) and I encourage you to do so. Or buy a DVD. Crank 2: High VoltageAs I've mentioned before, I'll see just about anything with Jason Statham in it, no matter how crappy. And this one was utterly crappy. A review I read described this movie as being like watching a video game that someone else is playing for 85 minutes. That's pretty much it. It was 10 times more retarded than any Michael Bay movie, but it's actually still not the worst movie I've seen this year. Anvil! The Story of AnvilThe director of this movie gave a talk at my work and I thought "I must see this movie", so I did. That very night. With my wife, and she never goes to movies at night. We were not disappointed. You know how when they interview old tymie heavy metal bands these days they always say that Spinal Tap is what it's really like backstage? This movie proves that point by following around Anvil, the biggest heavy metal band that never was, from their brink of superstardom in the 80's, through the inexplicable and untimely fall shortly thereafter, to their current attempt at a comeback. The two founders of the band have stuck with each other through their whole lives and the movie really almost turns out to be a love story between these hetero Canadian life partners. I was thoroughly entertained and maybe even a little inspired by this movie. Inspired to do what I don't know, but it really affirmed the notion that no matter what happens to you in life, it could always be worse. My favorite quote from the movie was from lead guitarist Steve 'Lips' Kudlow, talking about the current, utterly failed tour they were on: "Well, at least there *was* a tour to fail." So true. State of PlayI had to go to IMDB to remember what the hell this one was about. Ha ha. Oh yeah, newspapers, dying media, blog, corrupt(?) politician. Now I remember. With the usual exception of Ben Affleck, the acting was good and I recall enjoying the story. Not *too* many twists but I also recall that my initial idea about the end was what really ended up being the truth, so the twisting and turning basically brought you right to where you thought it would go in the end. But still not bad. AdventurelandThis was a nice little movie. Sort of a slice of life, coming of age, blah blah blah. I normally want to punch Ryan Reynolds in the face but he actually played a pretty convincing douche in this one. Bill Hader was hilarious as the theme park owner and all around nut. Kristin Wigg will have me never looking at a stuffed banana again without laughing. Worth a rental for a lazy Saturday afternoon. Monsters vs AliensMeh. Not bad. Not great. The 3D was pretty cool. Certainly a second-tier animation project behind Pixar's mastery of the genre. I laughed a little. The Watchmen: The IMAX ExperienceI barely had a notion of what The Watchmen was all about going into this, so I didn't have any idea going in how close the movie followed the comic book. So you won't see me complaining about plot here. In fact, I was really impressed by this movie. I loved the look of it. I loved the action. I loved the special effects. The dialog wasn't too stupid, and even if it was, hey, it's a comic book. I kind of expect that. I thought the characters were drawn very well and acted with a certain precision that made no performance stand out as particularly worse than the others. Jackie Earle Haley especially scared the crap out of me. If I saw him walking down the street I'd run in the other direction. The Cartoon Art Museum here in San Francisco had an exhibition on The Watchmen which included original art from the comic book mixed in with production design drawings, storyboards and costumes from the movie. It was eerie how well they replicated some of the comic book panels in the movie. They really took a lot of the production design of the movie from the comic book and it does have that feel. I'm not sure I can explain why this movie did poorly at the box office. It wasn't entirely complicated in plot. I wonder if there were just too many main characters and people got overwhelmed by that. Personally I loved it and I can't wait to watch the director's cut Blu-Ray DVD we bought the day it came out. The WrestlerI wasn't sure what to expect from this one. It got a lot of hype and lots of people were stroking Mickey Rourke's dick about his performance long before it even came out. Believe the hype, though. His performance, and well as pretty much everyone else's performances in the whole movie, start to finish, were way better than they had any right to be. The movie was more character study than plot but Rourke nailed it. I believed that he was a wrestler and I could believe that the 100's of middle-aged wrestlers that are no longer on TV ended up just like this. It was a surprisingly sad and moving experience. GamorrahThis movie was well reviewed but I have no clue why. Not even a small hint of what people saw in this movie. This movie was supposed to be about the mafia but it was really about two street thugs, who were really kind of a couple of pussies, running around their town and doing I don't even remember what. It was filmed in a handheld, shaky style that made it look like a string of videos a 10 year-old made of his trips to the beach. Terrible, terrible movie. Let Them Know (the story of Youth Brigade and BYO Records)This documentary was pretty interesting. BYO records is a label that was born out of the punk movement in Los Angeles in the early-80's. Having been a skate rat at the time, I knew about the bands (Youth Brigade especially.) Living in San Diego we didn't have the same exposure to 'the scene' as they did up in LA, but every so often the BYO mini-tour would come down to San Diego and do a show. I'm not 100% sure I ever saw Youth Brigade live, but I most certainly must have seen them or other bands on the label (7 Seconds, SNFU.) It was interesting to see the story behind the forming of the label, and what was going on in the punk world it Los Angeles, which at the time was so close yet so far away for skate-punks in San Diego without a car. A few of the Stern brothers (the founders of Youth Brigade and the record label) were on hand after the movie to answer questions and I found them to be pretty interesting, too. I think they are a few of the rare people that came out of that era in tact, without drug addictions and with a somewhat successful business that has been around since 1982. If I were a teenager now I might have been inspired to do something with my life. Ha ha. CoralineI already went on and on about this one in my regular blog. I can not express how enchanted, yes I said enchanted, I was by this movie. The stop-motion animation was amazing and served the story well. In the theater the 3D was very effective. All the voicework in it was excellent. And the story itself had just the right balance of reality, fantasy and outrageousness. The Blu-Ray DVD has some great extras that show the amazing work that was done behind the scenes to bring this movie to life. The 3D version of the movie on the DVD has some novelty appeal, and the effect of the 3D was surprisingly decent, but you still can't do 3D in the home without the red/green lensed glasses. This, unfortunately, washes out a lot of the color. It fits for the real world scenes but a lot is missed from the vibrant colors and brightness of the 'other' world. Never the less, this was a must-have DVD for me and we purchased it the day it came out. I've basically watched it twice in the past couple weeks (once in 3D and once in regular-D.)Slumdog MillionaireThis one was pretty good. I liked it a lot. I liked the way the narrative was presented, very innovative. There was a lot of hype surrounding this movie, which was somewhat of a turnoff. But the movie itself has a lot of merit, good acting, good music, well directed, etc. Certainly worth a rental. The screenwriter came to talk to us at work and he was quite an interesting guy.ChéWe managed to sit through both of these movies back-to-back. They were both pretty good but completely different in tone. I liked the first one better, which told the story of his rise to power in Cuba. The second movie was meandering a bit (just like his real life) and basically followed him in the latter part of his days when he was trying to become relevant again by starting a revolution with people that didn't want it. And we all know how that ended.Waltz With BashirOh my, but did this movie suck or what? I'm not sure what all the good reviews were about. I kind of admired the look and animation style of it, but the story and execution thereof was just terrible. Horrible to sit through. I felt like the main character in the story, who was trying to find the truth behind an incident in some war or something (I can barely remember) was just whining about everything and essentially blaming everyone else of the ills that befall his country (Israel.) I wanted to slap the guy. I wished through most of the movie that he'd have gotten killed instead. |