Mike the Movie Guy

Man On a Ledge - 2 1/2 stars

2012-01-27T09:11:00.000-08:00

Sam Worthington plays an escaped convict. He checks in to a hotel and climbs out on the ledge. Everyone thinks he is a jumper. A crowd forms and the police come to talk him down.

What they don't know is that he is not planning on jumping. He is there to prove his innocence. He was accused of stealing a diamond from Ed Harris. While he is serving as a distraction, his brother and his brother's girlfriend are going to break in to Ed Harris's safe (in the building across the street) and get the diamond. Then he will be able to prove that he never stole it. Harris said the diamond was stolen so he could commit insurance fraud.

The script is very by the numbers. Every move and plot twist can be seen a mile away. Plus the dialogue is pretty bad.

There are a few bright spots. The couple breaking in are a lot of fun. They are lovers but they are fighting about stuff the whole time. The finale of the movie is pretty good. It is ridiculous, but entertaining. And there are a couple of refreshing things that happen during the finale that I did not expect from such a by the numbers screenplay.

Sundance Monday, January 23

2012-01-24T09:45:00.000-08:00

Best day yet. I saw 4 movies today.

Slavery by Another Name - When did slavery end in America? If you think it ended with the Emancipation Proclomation, you are wrong. The 13th ammendment included words about how slavery is outlawed except in cases where someone has committed a crime. This put a lot of wiggle room in, and the south exploited it for over 70 years.

One method of slavery was for states to lease prisoners to corporations or individuals. These prisoners were worked almost to death. During slavery, owners had some incentive to keep their slaves healthy, as they were valuable property to them. But once they were prisoners to be leased out for work, there was no incentive to keep them healthy. They were only temporary workers. The states made tons of money leasing these people out to companies including U.S. Steel.

And the charges people were arrested on were ludicrous. Someone could be arrested for vagrancy, which could be nothing more than standing around doing nothing. Thousands of innocent people were arrested for nothing more than being there when the state needed more prisoners.

Another way people were kept in slavery was peonism. A wealthy white man said a black man owed him money. The black man was arrested and given to the white man to work off the debt. There was no proof of debt, and the man could be held as long as the white man wanted.

There was an effort to stop this in 1903, but the federal government turned a blind eye and allowed it to continue. Between the 1860s and the 1900s, there was a real danger of the country overturning the Emancipation Proclomation. There was an attitude that maybe it was a mistake to grant black people their freedom. This was not just in the south - the north was slowly starting to adopt the attitudes of the south.

Slavery didn't really end until 1941 when the US entered World War II. FDR was responsible for making sure all these cases ended and the perpetrators were brought to justice. But think about that. As late as the 1930s, there were black people in the south being held as slaves. They weren't called slaves, but it was the same.

This is a very important documentary. Like many people, I thought slavery ended after the civil war. Most of what I know about civil rights are from the 1950s on. This movie should be included in every American's history education.

Nobody Walks - Martine (Olivia Thirlby) is a 23 year old artist from New York. She moves to LA to stay with Peter (John Krasinski) and his family. Peter is a sound mixer, and Martine wants him to help her with the sound editing.

There isn't much story here. I was kind of bored. Things get a little interesting when Martine and Peter sleep together. Will this destroy Peter's marriage? Will his wife find out? As the movie went on, I really didn't care. Skip this one.

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry - This is a documentary about Ai Weiwei, an artist living in China. He isn't afraid to speak out against the government. The movie is as much about his art as it is about China's social injustice. This sounds like a great subject for a documentary, but it kind of left me cold. I guess I felt like I learned everything this movie had to tell me in the first 10 minutes.

Yound and Wild - Daniela is a 17 year old girl living in Santiago, Chile. She writes a blog called Young and Wild where she talks about two things - sex and religion. She is very horny all the time, attracted to men and women, but she is also an evangelical christian.

The movie wasn't written very well. It is basically a bunch of different scenes thrown together. There is no narrative through line. You could walk out and miss 20 minutes of the movie and you wouldn't even notice it. It also isn't edited very well. There are a lot of cuts that just seem awkward.

The movie is based on a true story, and the real life blogger was there at the screening. When she was asked about her relationship with her mother today, she said that her mother just found out about the movie and was not happy about it.

Sundance Sunday, January 22

2012-01-24T09:35:00.002-08:00

A couple of good movies today.

Elena - set in Russia, Elena is married to Vladimir. They are both older and have children from previous relationships. Their marriage isn't very passionate, and she is more caretaker than wife. Her son's family is in need of financial help, and Vladimir is getting tired of giving them money. He says her son should be responsible for his own family, and why is it his (Vladimir's) responsibility to take care of them? They are strangers to him.

The movie moves very slowly. The first 5 minutes consists of a shot of a bird outside their home. The movie could have easily lost 20 minutes. There isn't that much story to it, but as it progresses I started to feel for Elena. She gets to a point where she makes a hasty decision that will solve all of her problems. I expected there to be consequences to her choice, but there were none. I guess I was a little disappointed that it had no real ending. I expected something.

And I didn't really understand what happened at the end with her grandson. He goes off with his friends and gets in a very vicious fight with some other boys. They are trying to kill each other, and I didn't understand who started the fight or what it was about. A little more explanation there would have been nice.

Excision - Pauline is a very disturbed teenager. She is very anti social and she fantasizes about performing surgery on strangers. She has lots of very twisted fantasies which are shown to us in all of their shocking details. There is quite a bit of blood in this, and it isn't for the squeamish. I saw quite a few walkouts in this movie.

Her mom is played by Traci Lords, and her pastor is played by John Waters. Nice bits of casting there. Waters is stunt casting, but Lords does a very good job playing Pauline's mother. She starts out as a very overbearing mother, but as Pauline's behavior gets worse, we start to sympathize with her mom. This girl should be committed.

I enjoyed the movie because it had an interesting story. It was disturbing, but I like movies that take chances and provoke a real reaction. I won't give away where the story goes, but the ending packs a real punch.

Sundance Saturday, January 21

2012-01-24T09:35:00.001-08:00

I was not able to attend Sundance today. Coverage will resume tomorrow.

Sundance - Friday, January 20

2012-01-22T13:11:00.000-08:00

My first Sundance movie this year was THE AMBASSADOR. This is a documentary about a man who buys diplomatic credentials so he can get diamonds in and out of the Central African Republic. His cover story is that he is a businessman and his purpose there is to open a factory making matches.

The filmmaker is the subject of this documentary, so his real purpose is not really to get diamonds illegally, but to expose corruption. We see how easy it is for anyone to purchase diplomatic credentials, and we see that every diplomat in the CAR is involved in illegal activities.

This could have been a really interesting documentary, but he somehow manages to avoid the most interesting things. At the end, I really didn't see the point of the movie. We learn about the corruption early on, and from there nothing really happens. This movie was a waste of time.

The next movie I saw was MADRID, 1987. Set in Madrid, it's about an older man who writes a daily newspaper column. A hot young college student wants to interview him, and all he wants to do is sleep with her. They meet in a restaurant and he gets her to come with him to a friend's apartment. Eventually they end up locked in the bathroom together with no hope of rescue.

The bulk of the movie is these two people locked in a room together. But the dialogue is so good that it never drags. The man is one of those guys who thinks he has life figured out. He is constantly telling her about how things were in his day, how things should be, and how smart he is.

The writing is great, and the performances are incredible. I'm glad I saw this one.

UPDATE

I also saw 4 shorts:

A Morning Stroll - Animated about a guy taking a stroll and running into a chicken. It replays the event 3 times, but each time is different with a different animated style. The last one includes zombies and is a lot of fun. It ends with a bang.

Las Palmas - This was strange. It's a baby surrounded by puppets. I didn't make it 5 minutes into this one.

Una Hora Por Favora - A single, neurotic woman hires a day laborer to be her boyfriend, which basically consists of watching reality shows together. Interesting, not bad.

Tooty's Wedding - An unhappily married British couple go to a wedding, and each one tries to have an affair. A couple of funny moments but not memorable.

Sundance - Thursday, January 19

2012-01-22T13:05:00.000-08:00

Today was the opening day press conference with Robert Redford, Festival Director John Cooper, and Executive Director Keri Putnam. They talked about independant films, with Redford remarking that this is the only festival that he knows of that is 100% independant. He also talked about the Sundance labs for filmmakers, which is the most important part of Sundance for him. The film festival is just the most visible part.

There was also talk about how the film festival is expanding. Last year they started taking Sundance on the road. Films and their filmmakers go to various cities that have art house cinemas in order to help get the movies out there. They will also be doing a mini film festival in London at the O2 arena.

Redford also talked about the New Frontier. This year, it is being held at The Yard, which is a much more appropriate space than the Miner's Hospital where it was held last year.

I went back to Salt Lake after the press conference, so movie watching will start Friday.

Red Tails - 2 1/2 stars

2012-01-20T18:14:00.000-08:00

George Lucas produced this movie about the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African American fighter pilots in World War II. At the start of the movie, none of the white generals believe that African Americans are as qualified as white servicemen. They are given hand-me-down planes and given the most meaningless missions possible.

At some point in the movie, they are given an important mission: to protect a group of B-17 bombers in a boming mission. In previous missions, the fighter pilots left the B-17s unprotected as soon as enemy fighters showed up. They would go off and dogfight the enemy planes while the B-17s would get shot down. The Tuskegee Airmen are the first company to actually do their job. No B-17s are lost and they get respect from the other men in the service.

The idea behind the story is great. This is an important chapter in American history, and it deserves a better movie. This movie is not very well done. The dialogue is hokey and corney, and it is so bad I can't believe Lucas didn't write the screenplay himself.

The best scenes in the movie are the dogfights. It's in incredible sight seeing hundreds of planes in the air flying around each other. This is the kind of air battle that wouldn't have been possible before CGI. The music works really well in these scenes too.

If the dialogue and story lived up to the battle scenes, this would have been a great movie.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close - 3 stars

2012-01-20T18:03:00.000-08:00

This movie is about Oskar, a very precocious 10 year old. His parents are played by Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock. His father was working in the World Trade Center on 9/11 and was killed. Before he died, he used to set up scavenger hunts for Oskar.

A year after his father's death, Oskar finds a key and a newspaper clipping in his father's stuff. Using the clues he finds, he assumes that this is a scavenger hunt his dad devised for him. So he sets off through the streets of New York City to find the lock that the key opens.

For the first half hour or so, I was kind of bored. While I empathized with Oskar, I didn't really care what he was going to find. I also didn't think there was a chance he would find the lock for the key. But then Max von Sydow enters the picture. He plays the mysterious guy who rents a room from Oskar's grandmother. Von Sydow's character doesn't talk, and he gets to show how great an actor he is without saying a word. He starts to go with Oskar on his travels and help him unravel the mystery.

The movie is a bit melodramatic but I really felt for the characters. Oskar may have Asperger's syndrome (the tests were inconclusive), and he has a much harder time than an ordinary kid would expressing his grief. He talks about his father's death in such a matter of fact way that it is even more heartbreaking than if he were to break down. His mother has a hard time dealing with things as not only has she lost her husband, but her son will hardly talk to her.

By the end, I was very emotionally invested. It is a movie that will make you cry. I liked it but I'm not sure I would want to experience it again.

Joyful Noise - 2 stars

2012-01-12T17:39:00.000-08:00

This is a movie about a small town church choir and their aspirations to compete in the national Joyful Noise choir competition.

Queen Latifah plays Vi Rose Hill. She has just taken over as choir director when the previous director (Kris Kristofferson) died unexpectedly. She has two kids, a son with Asperger syndrome, and a daughter named Olivia (Keke Palmer), who seems to be the lead singer of the choir.

G. G. Sparrow (Dolly Parton), believes she should be the new choir director. Her late husband was the former choir director, and she helped him with the song arrangements. G. G.'s grandson Randy (Jeremy Jordan) has just arrived in town, and he immediately becomes interested in Olivia.

Randy starts to sing in the choir, gives Vi's son piano lessons (apparently for free), and helps bring him out of his shell, but because there needs to be some conflict, Vi doesn't approve of him. She also refuses to modernize the songs the choir sings. Everyone but her wants to do more modern arrangements and even include some pop songs, but Vi is the most stubborn woman in town and she refuses.

This is a movie made for a Christian audience who loves gospel music. There is a lot of church, God, and faith in this movie. The writing is corny and the directing is horrible. There are cuts that make no sense, and there are a few too many scenes of Vi and Olivia having the same fight.

Latifah and Parton each get a big musical number, and they are good songs. I especially liked the scene where Dolly Parton is looking out the window, singing a song she used to sing with her late husband, and imagines him walking up to her and dancing. That (almost) brought a tear to my eye.

But real emotional scenes are few and far between. The rest are obvious and over the top. There are some laughs, but the funny scenes are juxtaposed with scenes that try to make you cry, and the combination doesn't really work.

If you like this music, buy the soundtrack rather than see the movie.

Contraband - 2 1/2 stars

2012-01-12T17:30:00.000-08:00

Mark Wahlberg stars as a former smuggler who has decided to go legit. He now owns a security company, but when he was a smuggler, he was the best smuggler there was. There are a couple of scenes where he tells other smugglers how he pulled off an incredibly difficult job.

He is married and has two kids, but his wife's brother is trying to get into the game. When he gets into trouble with a local criminal, Wahlberg has to pull off one last job to save his brother-in-law.

I feel like I've seen this movie before. Will he successfully smuggle the contraband into the US and deliver it? Will he stop the bad guys from killing his family? Is there a surprise twist or two? I'm not calling this movie predictable, but ...

There are many scenes that are just completely implausible. One is where he is making a large hole in the ship he is working on. He manages to create this hole and conceal it with a panel while other crew members are around, and he could be discovered at any time, and it would take many guys a lot of hours to complete, and on and on. But he is able to do it in no time flat without ever being discovered.

There were also a lot of scenes where he just got lucky. He finishes concealing something, turns the corner, and a split second later the ship's captain comes around the corner. After a while I started to hope he got caught. He wasn't being careful so much as just counting on luck.

This isn't a bad movie, but there is nothing special about it. If you need something to go see tonight, you could do worse but you won't remember this movie a month from now.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - 4 stars

2012-01-06T15:16:00.000-08:00

There is a mole at the top of British intelligence. He's been there for years. In order to find him, George Smiley (Gary Oldman) is brought out of retirement. He can't trust anyone, and he is being watched all the time.

This is a rare intelligent spy thriller. There are no explosions or car chases. Everything is done with dialogue and restraint. Oldman's performance is a master class in minimalist acting. Rather than going over the top, he barely says a word. Sometimes he raises an eyebrow.

I was lost for the first half of the movie. It keeps jumping around in time, and sometimes it's hard to tell which timeframe a scene is taking place in. But by the second half, it was all making sense. This is a movie to watch and enjoy, just letting the dialogue and atmosphere wash over you.

Besides Oldman, the cast includes John Hurt, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Toby Jones, Ciaran Hinds, and Tom Hardy. If you can pay close attention and not get too frustrated by the confusion going on, you will enjoy this. And it is even better the second time.

The Devil Inside - 2 stars

2012-01-06T15:06:00.000-08:00

This is another one of those fake documentary style movies. In 1989 a woman killed 2 priests and a nun during an exorcism. 20 years later, her daughter wants to make a documentary about what happened. So she takes a filmmaker with her to Rome where her mother is being held in an insane asylum.

The usual possession stuff happens, and nothing scary happens. The movie made me jump a few times, but startling someone is easy. The movie is more unintentionally funny than scary. I think I was generous giving the movie 2 stars. Don't waste your time.

Top 10 movies of 2011

2011-12-30T09:27:00.000-08:00

For my top 10 list, I tried to keep in mind how I felt about each movie. There are different ways to review a movie, but ultimately it comes down to how much I enjoyed it, and whether I want to see it again. So if I were going to sit down and watch any movie released in 2010, here are the 10 I would choose:

10 - Paul

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) are basically playing themselves. They are hard core sci-fi geeks who go to Comic-Con for the first time. After Comic-Con, they take a road trip to visit all of the famous alien landing sites in the southwest. They run in to Paul, a little green man voiced by Seth Rogen. What follows is a funny adventure with tons of references and in-jokes that anyone who grew up with Spielberg and Lucas will get.

9 - Buck

Buck Brannaman is the real horse whisperer. This guy can take any wild horse, tame it and ride it within minutes. It's like he and the horse are sharing the same mind. He tours and gives clinics all over the country, and if anyone has a problem with their horse, they bring it to him and he helps them. But as the movie goes on, we learn that he is just as good at healing people as he is horses. This is the feel good movie of the year.

8 - X-Men: First Class

I liked the first X-Men a lot, and I loved the second X-Men. The 3rd one (The Last Stand) was a major disappointment, and the less said about Wolverine, the better. I had very low expectations going into this movie, and I was blown away. I didn't think anyone could play Magneto as well as Ian McKellen, but Michael Fassbender does a great job. James McAvoy has never been better as Charles Xavier, and Kevin Bacon plays a great villain. This movie was very engaging and it actually felt like the first two X-Men movies. Forget Thor, Captain America, or Iron Man. This is the best superhero movie of the year.

7 - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

The English language remake of the 2009 Swedish film is every bit as good as that one was. There is some pretty brutal stuff in this movie, including rape, torture, and animal cruelty, but if you can stomach it, it's an incredible thriller. And Lisbeth Salander is the best movie heroine to come along in a long time.

6 - Incendies

In this French Canadian movie, a woman has just died. Her grown kids are meeting with a lawyer to go over her will. The lawyer produces two letters. The kids are to find their father (who they thought was dead) and deliver one letter. The other letter they are to deliver to their brother (who they never knew existed). So they set out on a journey to discover where their mother came from. This journey takes them to the Middle East and we learn about her life through flashbacks. This is a very powerful movie with some haunting scenes showing the brutality of war. It has been almost a year since I saw this film at Sundance and I am still haunted by it.

5 - Young Adult

Charlize Theron plays Mavis, the former high school beauty queen / most popular girl in school. It's all been downhill since then, and Mavis goes back to her small town to steal her old boyfriend back from his wife and child. It is a very risky move for a movie to make the protagonist so unlikeable. But the movie pulls it off. Mavis is a pathetic character and it is painful to watch what happens to her, but the movie works. It's also very funny (and dark), and Patton Oswalt has never been better as the guy Mavis never noticed in high school, but now is her only friend.

4 - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

Yes, I know. It's Harry Potter. As a movie by itself, this doesn't really work that well. The only way to really get the emotional impact of this movie is if you have gone through 7 previous movies with these characters. This is the payoff to 7 movies of setup. The scenes with Alan Rickman as Professor Snape are my favorite. His character and his performance make this movie (and the entire series) so special.

3 - Bridesmaids

The funniest movie I have seen since Superbad. Annie (Kristen Wiig) and Lillian (Maya Rudolph) have been best friends since they were kids, and when Lillian gets engaged, Annie's world comes apart. Not only is she jealous of her friend's happiness (none of Annie's relationships have worked out), but she is being replaced by Helen (Rose Byrne) as best friend. If you took out all the comedy, this would make a good dramatic movie. It doesn't hurt that the movie is also hilarious from beginning to end.

2 - The Descendants

George Clooney stars as Matt, a lawyer living in Hawaii. His wife has just been injured and is in a coma. He has two young daughters he isn't very close to, and he learns that his wife has been cheating on him. So he decides to take his daughters (and a tagalong stoner named Sid) to find his wife's lover. At the same time, he is also the trustee for his family's inheritance. Along with all his cousins, they own 25,000 acres of land that they are considering selling. The entire island is waiting for his decision about what to do with the land, since the sale will affect everyone.

This is the first movie from Alexander Payne since Sideways. It isn't as good as Sideways, but it is up there. It isn't conventional - it doesn't have the traditional story arc that most movies have. Thanks to that, you never really know where this movie is going.

1 - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Based on John le Carre's novel, this is a spy thriller for adults. As much as I love James Bond movies, this is a total opposite. There are no car chases, explosions or gunfights. It's incredibly intelligent, and that will put some people off at first. The movie requires you to pay attention and see it more than once. The first time, you probably won't understand all the details. And the ending is not a climax like you would expect.

Much of the movie is told in flashback, and the flashbacks are out of order so sometimes it's difficult to know where in the story a scene is taking place. But if you stay with it, it is very rewarding. The movie is set in the 70s and it looks perfect. The casting is top notch (Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, John Hurt, Tom Hardy, Mark Strong, Ciaran Hinds, Toby Jones) and even when I was confused by the plot, I enjoyed the performances. John Hurt steals every scene he is in (not easy considering the calibre of the cast), and Gary Oldman does a great job mimicing Alec Guinness (who played the character in the BBC miniseries) while creating his own character. This is probably the most low key Oldman has every played, and it's pitch perfect.

Into the Abyss - 3 stars

2011-12-21T16:23:00.001-08:00

This is a documentary about a triple murder that took place in a small Texas town back in 2001. Two young men broke into a house, murdered a woman, her son and his friend, and stole a camaro. Ten years later, the two men are in prison. One is serving a life sentence and the other is on death row.

Herzog interviews everyone connected to this case, and the things they say are fascinating and heartbreaking. The two men came from broken homes, or had no homes at all, and the victim's daughter has not been able to carry on with her life.

This is not a political movie about the death penalty. It isn't trying to persuade you to be for or against the death penalty. It just gives us the facts of the case, and allows the people involved to tell their story.

Young Adult - 3 1/2 stars

2011-12-21T15:41:00.000-08:00

Charlize Theron stars as Mavis Gary. Mavis was the prettiest and most popular girl in high school. She left the small town in Minnesota and went to the big city, and now she is a successful author.

When she learns that her old boyfriend Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson) and his wife just had a baby, she decides to go and 'rescue' him. She is convinced that he isn't happy and he really wants to get back together with her.

This is a really funny but dark movie. Mavis is a pretty horrible character, and it is a testament to Theron's great acting that we care for her even while she is doing these terrible things.

Patton Oswalt turns in a great supporting performance as Matt, the guy she never noticed in high school. He sees how pathetic she is, but because he is just as lonely as she is, he hangs out with her every night, listening to her go over her plans to ruin Buddy's marriage.

I thought this was a very original movie, and I really liked the ending. There is a point where you think Mavis is going to learn the error of her ways, but that's not where this movie is going. I really liked the way the story stuck to its guns and stayed true to the character, even though the ending is not the happy ending some people may be looking for.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows - 3 stars

2011-12-21T15:21:00.000-08:00

I didn't care for the first Sherlock Holmes movie very much, so I wasn't expecting much going into this one. But this movie is an improvement on the first film in every way. For one thing, it's a lot funnier. Robert Downey, Jr. is hilarious. I think I missed half of his one liners because the audience was still laughing at a previous one.

The villain is better in this one too. Jared Harris (son of the late Richard Harris) plays Professor Moriarty, and he is just as clever as Holmes. Stephen Fry turns up as the other Holmes, and I wish he were in the movie more. He nearly steals the movie from Robert Downey, Jr. with just a few scenes.

I am now excitied for this franchise and look forward to the next installment.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol - 3 1/2 stars

2011-12-21T15:06:00.000-08:00

This is probably my favorite Mission: Impossible movie since the first, although I may have to re-watch 2 and 3 to be sure. The villain isn't as memorable as Phillip Seymour Hoffman, but he wasn't in part 3 nearly enough.

The plot this time around is very familiar. We have seen it in several James Bond movies and in The Sum of All Fears. Someone wants to detonate a nuclear bomb, tricking the United States and Russia into declaring war on each other.

Despite the familiar plot, the movie is very enjoyable. The action set pieces are exciting, especially the sequence where Ethan Hunt has to climb up several floors outside the tallest building in the world. You really should see this movie in IMAX to get the full effect of this sequence. It was so realistic it gave me vertigo.

Another improvement in this movie is Simon Pegg. He appeared in a few scenes in the 3rd movie. This time he has almost as much screen time as Tom Cruise. More Simon Pegg always makes a movie more enjoyable.

Melancholia - 2 stars

2011-12-02T09:30:00.000-08:00

This is only the second Lars von Trier movie I have seen. The first was Antichrist, and I will never look at foxes or scissors the same way again.

This movie starts with an overture, which is kind of cool. The overture shows slow motion clips of things that will happen later in the movie, including Kirsten Dunst with lightning shooting out of her fingertips and a planet crashing into Earth. The overture goes on a little too long, but it is effective at setting the mood of the film. The operatic music is great, and every one of the scenes could be a painting.

After the overture, the movie is divided into 2 parts. The first is called "Justine" and it takes place during a wedding party. Justine (Dunst) has just married Michael (Alexander Skarsgard) and their wedding is taking place in a huge mansion / castle owned by Justine's sister and brother-in-law, Claire and John (Charlotte Gainsbourgh and Kiefer Sutherland). Justine's divorced partents (John Hurt and Charlotte Rampling) are there, and they fight the whole time. Justine is suffering from some kind of depression, and that's about it for this first section. Not a lot happens, and this hour of the movie could have easily been compressed into 15 minutes.

The second part is called "Claire", and the only characters are Justine, Claire, John, and their son Leo (Cameron Spurr). A new planet called Melancholia has been discovered, and it may be on a collision course with Earth.

The entire movie is 2 hours and 15 minutes, and I would have liked it a lot more if it had been around an hour and a half. A lot of time passes with little to nothing happening. We know from the overture that the planet will crash into Earth, so instead of wondering whether the characters will survive, we are watching to see how they will react.

After seeing movies like Armageddon and Deep Impact, it is interesting to see a disaster movie where all the action is contained to one household. I did wish that they would watch the news once in a while, to see how the rest of the world is reacting to this huge planet growing bigger in the sky.

The climax of the movie is pretty intense, but once again it would have been more effective if I wasn't getting so bored waiting for it to happen. It could have been great, but I can't recommend it. It's certainly nice to look at, though.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 - 1 star

2011-11-18T09:00:00.000-08:00

I didn't hate the first 3 Twilight movies. I wouldn't say I enjoyed them, but they were starting to grow on me. Despite the bad writing, bad acting, horrible special effects, and soap opera quality the characters were starting to grow on me a little. I was hoping this 4th movie in the series would be interesting. I was wrong.

Nothing happens in this movie. Ok, a few things happen, but it feels like they took 45 minutes of material and stretched it out to 2 hours. When the last Harry Potter book was split into 2 movies, it made sense. That book had a ton of plot and it wouldn't have worked in one movie. The Twilight producers realized they could do the same thing and make a lot more money. The problem is the book doesn't have the plot to sustain 2 movies. At least it seems that way from this first part.

Spoiler alert. If you haven't read the books and want to remain spoiler free, stop reading. I'm going to give the plot away.

In this movie, Edward and Bella get married. Then they go on their honeymoon. Bella gets pregnant and they return to Edward's house. Jacob is concerned about Bella while the rest of his tribe / pack are worried that Bella's baby will be a threat to everyone. Bella has the baby. The end.

That's about it. The wedding takes a half hour and everyone just stands around looking sullen and earnest. The bad dialogue is delivered like the actors are hung over. There is maybe 3 minutes of humor while Bella's friends and family are giving toasts. Anna Kendrick shows up for maybe 5 minutes and livens things up. Bella's dad is more entertaining in 30 seconds here than he has been in any of the previous movies.

Then they go on their honeymoon. This takes another half an hour. They consummate their marriage and his lovemaking is so violent that they bust up the room. When Edward sees bruises on Bella's arm the next morning, he decides they can't have sex again. Bella is sad.

All this time, they never cut away to anyone else. No subplot involving Jacob. Nothing about the Volturi (the royal family of vampires). In the trailer, we see the Volturi getting an invitation to Bella's wedding. What about that? They were the most interesting aspect of these movies, because they introduced some real menace and danger. Plus Michael Sheen plays the leader, and he is great in everything.

In New Moon the characters met up with the Volturi, and from what I can remember, there was talk about killing Bella because she was a threat. Are they still interested in what goes on with her? Do they know Edward and Bella got married? No mention of them in this movie, except for one scene where Bella sees them in a dream.

Hopefully Part 2 will be better, but unless you are a die hard Twilight fan, there is no reason to see this movie.

Like Crazy - 2 1/2 stars

2011-11-18T08:44:00.000-08:00

Like Crazy is about extremely long distance relationships. Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones play Jacob and Anna. They meet while going to college in Los Angeles. She leaves a note on his car letting him know that she is interested in him, and she ends the note with a disclaimer that she is not a psycho. So that is their "meet cute" moment.

Jacob is from LA, but Anna is from the UK, and she is on a student visa which means she has to go back home after the semester is over. But they have fallen in love and she doesn't want to go. She stays a couple of extra months, which violates the terms of her student visa. She finally does go home and when she tries to come back to the US to see Jacob, she is denied entry. Apparently neither of them thought it would be a good idea to look into what the consequences are of violating a visa.

So the movie consists of them trying to talk to each other on the phone and not succeeding very well. I had a hard time buying this. There is a time difference, but if they were as in love as the movie says they are, I would think they would be able to schedule times to talk to each other. The movie also has a lot of musical montages, which means they couldn't think of another way to explain what the characters were going through. Falling in love? Musical montage showing them happy together. Separated by an ocean? Musical montage showing them going about their separate lives and looking sad.

There are several times when the movie kind of jumps ahead, and it is jarring. One moment they are texting about how much they miss each other, the next moment 2 months have passed and Jacob has a new girlfriend named Sam (Jennifer Lawrence from Winter's Bone). Sometimes it seems like Jacob is keeping his relationship with Anna a secret from Sam, but other times it seems like Sam knows what is going on. The movie doesn't really explain this well.

The movie could have been great. The performances are good and this is potentially a good concept for a tragic love story. The problem is it felt like scenes were missing. It left me with way too many questions. If they were so in love, they could have tried a little harder to make it work.

We Were Here - didn't see

2011-11-18T08:42:00.000-08:00

We Were Here is a documentary about the early days of the AIDS crisis. I've heard nothing but good things about it. I'm hoping to see it soon. Until then, if you saw it let me know your thoughts in the comments section.

Happy Feet Two - didn't see

2011-11-18T08:41:00.000-08:00

I wasn't able to see Happy Feet Two (I didn't see the first one either). If you saw it, let me know what you think in the comments.

Martha Marcy May Marlene - 1 1/2 stars

2011-11-11T07:41:00.001-08:00

This movie would have made a great short film. But as a feature, it was too boring and it left me with too many questions.

At the start of the movie, we meet Marcy May (Elizabeth Olsen). She is living in some kind of commune in an isolated farm house. She sneaks away in the early morning hours and goes to a fast food restaurant. Is this a cult? Is she escaping? If so, why is she allowed to get away so easily?

She calls her sister, who has not heard from her in 2 years. She tells her sister that she was with a boyfriend and just lost track of time. She also says she got rid of her cell phone and never bothered to get a new one.

We find out that her real name is Martha. She lives with her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and brother-in-law Ted (Hugh Dancy) and tries to adjust to normal life. Through flashbacks we learn about what life was like in the commune, which was actually a cult. She has a hard time breaking some of the habits she developed with the cult. She doesn't realize that it isn't ok to go skinnydipping at the lake behind their house. She doesn't understand that she can't just walk into Lucy's bedroom and lay on the bed while Lucy and Ted have sex.

For every single thing we learn about Martha's life inside the cult, there are 5 things we don't learn. I'm fine with a movie leaving some things to our imagination and not spelling everything out, but this was just too much. We see the scene where she first meets the cult's leader, Patrick (John Hawkes), but we don't see the events leading up to it. Why was she interested in joining the cult in the first place? Did she know it was a cult? If not, what did she think went on there?

We get fragments of ideas about what they believe, but not enough. We learn that they engage in some criminal activity, but the movie doesn't show us the point in that. Do they hate wealthy home owners, or are they just trying to steal stuff?

The scenes with Martha living with Lucy and Ted are very effective. Martha admits that her mind is so messed up that she doesn't know what actually happened and what was a dream. There are a couple of scenes where she expresses her philosophy and argues with Ted and Lucy, but we don't get enough information to understand where that comes from.

I had a hard time believing that Ted and Lucy would put up with her for so long. They accept her story that she was living with a boyfriend, and they never demand more information. By the time she starts exhibiting such strange behaviour, I think they should have told her to come clean or she has to leave. They do eventually get to the point where they think Martha needs therapy, but I think it takes them way too long to get there.

I think the movie has some great ideas, but it needed a rewrite or two to actually make it entertaining. It was a chore to sit through, and I saw several walkouts at the screening I attended.

Mozart's Sister - did not see

2011-11-11T07:40:00.001-08:00

I was not able to see this movie before it was released. If you saw it, let me know your thoughts in the comments section.

Immortals - not screened

2011-11-11T07:37:00.000-08:00

Immortals is the latest movie from Tarsem Singh. It's only his 3rd movie, after The Cell (2000) and The Fall (2006). I didn't like either of those movies. While they looked incredible, they bored me to tears. The trailer to Immortals does not give me any indication that I will like it any more than his previous movies.

The movie was not screened for critics in Salt Lake, so I was not able to see it. Did you see Immortals? Let me know what you thought of it in the comments section.

J. Edgar - 3 stars

2011-11-11T07:11:00.000-08:00

The latest movie from director Clint Eastwood is about J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI from 1935 - 1972. Hoover is played by Leonardo DiCaprio, in what may be his best performance.

The movie takes place towards the end of his life as he is dictating his life story to various assistants. Through flashbacks we see the events that shaped his life. We learn about his domineering mother (Judy Dench), who he lived with until her death. We learn about his relationship with Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer), his closest companion. We also meet his faithful secretary Helen Gandy (Naomi Watts), who sticks with him his entire career despite the awkwardness of their first date when he proposed marriage.

At its heart, the movie is a tragedy. The movie suggests that Hoover was gay and homophobic. He was in love with Tolson, but would never admit it, even to himself. Tolson was also in love with Hoover, but he seemed to know and understand the nature of their relationship, and no matter how painful it was, he put up with it. Better to be in his life as a friend then not in his life at all.

The movie also shows Hoover's relationship with the presidents over the years. Each time a new president was elected, he would meet with them to let them know who he was and make sure they were in awe of his power. He also wasn't afraid to blackmail them. He would show the president a file containing some incriminating photos, always claiming something like "We were looking for communists. We never expected to see something like this. Now, how can I help you?" He tried to make it seem like it wasn't blackmail, and all he wanted to do was notify the president that this evidence was out there. He would do whatever he could to protect the secret he had uncovered, but he also reminded them that he had a copy in his private files.

The movie is a little slow moving at times, but I was never bored. I was fascinated with the character. He is an easy man to hate, but the movie also made him a real flesh and blood person, and while I wouldn't say I understood him, I at least understood where he was coming from. The old age makeup isn't entirely convincing, but the performances helped me to overlook the makeup.

Jack and Jill - 2 stars

2011-11-11T06:57:00.000-08:00

This is a terrible movie, but I have to admit that I laughed a lot.

Adam Sandler plays both Jack and his twin sister, Jill. Jill comes to stay with Jack and his family for the holidays, and Jack hates every minute she is there. Jill is in incredibly obnoxious character. In fact she is so obnoxious that it's hard to believe her as a character at all.

No human who has ever lived is this dumb and clueless. She answers her cell phone during a movie and speaks at full volume. She whispers offensive things at a dinner party that the entire table can hear. She drives a jetski in a swimming pool. The character exists so Adam Sandler can play a woman. If you have heard his comedy CDs, you will recognize the voice he is doing. It's also reminiscent of the shopping mall girl he used to play on SNL, along with David Spade and Chris Farley. Spade shows up in the movie (also playing a woman), and oh how I wished Chris Farley were still alive.

Al Pacino is in the movie, playing himself. The story is about how Sandler's character, who runs an ad agency, is trying to get Pacino to appear in a Dunkin Donuts commercial. Pacino is having some kind of nervous breakdown in the movie, and he develops a strange attraction to Jill.

The Pacino stuff is pretty funny. My favorite scene involved Pacino answering his cell phone during a play, where he is the star. Pacino does a good job in the movie, but my heart sank at the end when we see the commercial he does for Dunkin Donuts. He basically craps on his entire legacy during a 2 minute musical number where he quotes his most famous lines. For shame.

The most annoying thing in the movie for me was the twins' language. Jack and Jill speak to each other in a language only they can understand, and it's so annoying it made my teeth hurt.

So the movie is as bad as the trailer suggested, but there are laughs to be found. Oh, and like all Happy Madison productions, there is fart and poop humor in the movie too. Enjoy!

Drive - 3 1/2 stars

2011-10-19T10:37:00.000-07:00

Ryan Gosling plays Driver, and he, well, drives cars. During the day, he is a stunt driver for movies. At night, he works as a getaway driver for criminals. The opening scene shows him displaying his skills as he evades police throught the streets of Los Angeles. It is a very exciting sequence.

Then the movie slows down for a bit. Driver lives in an apartment building, and a woman (Carey Mulligan) and her young son live nearby. He gets to know them and a friendship develops. Eventually he feels protective over her. Another job he has is as a car mechanic. He works at a shop run by Bryan Cranston, who gets him work as a getaway driver.

Driver doesn't talk much. There are scenes where he doesn't say a word, and when he eventually does, it seems like a struggle for him to speak. For the first half of the movie, he seems completely harmless. Then when he is required to defend himself, we find out he is a lethal killing machine. When the violence happens, it is shocking. I can't remember a movie that made the violence so real. Something about the way it is filmed, the sound effects, and the acting that makes it seem so real.

There are a couple of gangsters in the movie played by Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman. It is really nice to see Brooks playing against type, and he creates a great villain. He is so good in this movie that I can't wait to see it again, just for his performance.

This is one of those movies that rewards patience. It isn't a fast paced action movie like The Fast and the Furious movies. There is some good action, but the movie is more of a drama. Action without well developed characters can easily get boring. Even though this movie moves slowly, it is never boring, and the small amount of action is really exciting.

Straw Dogs - 3 stars

2011-10-19T09:10:00.000-07:00

James Marsden and Kate Bosworth star as David and Amy Sumner, a young hollywood couple (he's a screenwriter, she's an actress). They move to Blackwater, Mississippi, the town where Amy grew up. Her father just died, and they are going to live in his house. The roof needs to be repaired, so they hire a crew of local handeymen, led by Amy's old high school boyfriend Charlie (Alexander Skarsgard).

At first, David enjoys experiencing the deep south for the first time. He looks at the locals almost like he is observing some exotic species. He has probably only seen small southern townsfolk in movies, so he is delighted to be there. But little by little, Charlie and his crew start harrassing David and Amy. At first they do things like blast their music too loud while David is trying to write. As the movie progresses, the harrassment gets more obvious, and David is too afraid to say or do anything about it until it is almost too late.

This is a remake of the 1971 movie directed by Sam Peckinpah, with Dustin Hoffman playing the role of David. I never saw that movie, so I can't compare this remake to the original. I thought James Marsden did a great job. Ever since he stopped playing Cyclops in the X-Men movies, he has turned in much more entertaining performances. On the other hand, I don't think I have ever enjoyed a Kate Bosworth performance. She doesn't give a horrible performance, but I have never found her characters likeable. She doesn't ruin the movie, but as an audience we need to feel some empathy for these characters, and I just didn't care what happened to Amy.

James Woods is a lot of fun to watch. He plays Coach, the former high school football coach who is also the town drunk. He has a hot young daughter, and a mentally challenged young man named Jeremy has a crush on her. Jeremy is a little bit like Lenny from Of Mice and Men, and we get the impression that he did something to someone a long time ago. Coach thinks Jeremy is dangerous, and beats up on Jeremy every chance he gets.

The climax of the movie involves a home invastion. Watching the trailers, I assumed that Charlie and his gang were psychos and the climax would be all about them trying to kill David and Amy. But the movie sets it up better than that. There is a reason Charlie and his gang are trying to break in to David and Amy's home. It involves Jeremy, Coach, and Coach's daughter. It makes it a believable scenario, and I liked that. As David and Amy try to defend themselves, things turn violent, and that entire sequence was handled very well. The violence was a lot of fun and it made the movie a very satisfying thriller.

The Debt - 3 stars

2011-09-02T09:03:00.000-07:00

In the 1960s a group of 3 Moussad agents (played by Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington, and Marton Csokas) sneak into East Berlin to capture a Nazi war criminal, the Surgeon of Birkenau (Jesper Christensen).

In the present day scenes (set in the late 1990s), the 3 agents are reunited. They are played respectively by Helen Mirren, Ciaran Hinds, and Tom Wilkinson. Mirren's daughter has just written a book about their mission, and the story of their mission has become legendary. But it seems there may be a secret about what really happened during their mission.

The movie moves back and forth between the time periods, although most of the screen time is devoted to the younger actors and the mission. There are some really good scenes of tension, including a scene where Rachel (Chastain) poses as a patient of the Surgeon of Birkenau, now a regular doctor running a practice in Berlin. The entire time he is examining her, we are wondering whether he suspects that she knows who he is.

The mission is exciting, but the older actors are much more interesting to watch. Unfortunately they don't get much screen time. But I still enjoyed the movie. It is a good thriller, and while I had some problems with the ending, I would recommend The Debt.

Attack the Block - 3 stars

2011-09-02T08:46:00.000-07:00

Set in the slums of London, this movie is about an alien invasion. The lead characters are a gang of teenagers. The aliens are these dark furry monsters with razor sharp teeth that glow an eerie green color.

The entire movie takes place over the course of one night. Their evening begins when they mug a woman as she is walking home from work. Then the aliens arrive, they kill one and they wonder what it is. They take it to their friend, a dope dealer, because "he watches discovery channel and animal planet all the time. He'll know what it is."

Then more aliens come, people start getting killed, and the fun starts. This movie is kind of a comic horror movie, rather than being a stragiht up thriller. At times I had a hard time understanding their thick accents and the slang they used, but for the most part I understood everything. There was plenty of action, but I felt the movie could have been better. I liked it enought to recommend it, but its just a mild recommendation.

The Trip - 3 stars

2011-07-22T16:54:00.001-07:00

The Trip stars Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as themselves (or exaggerated versions of themselves). The movie consists of them going on a road trip across northern England. While doing this, they stay in quaint bed and breakfasts, visit small towns and take in the nice scenery, eat in many different restaurants, and basically try to one up each other the entire time. Whether they are reciting lines from movies, doing their Michael Caine impressions or singing an Abba song, they are constantly critiquing each other as comics and actors.

Gene Siskel had a great test for the quality of a movie. He would ask if the movie was more entertaining than a documentary of the same actors sitting around having lunch. In this case, that is basically what the movie is and it works.

I don't know their history well, so I did some reading on the web. It turns out this is similar to what they did in their film Tristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story. These two have a long history of working together, and much of the movie was improvised. I assume they get along much better together in real life than they do in the movie, but they obviously work well together. Just watching the two of them play off each other is very entertaining.

I enjoyed the movie enough that it makes me want to go check out their previous work together. I am familiar with Steve Coogan, but I had no knowledge of Rob Brydon until this movie. But this is such a genius idea, to take two gifted comedic actors and just stick them in a car together. Imagine if Jack Lemmon and Walter Matheau had done something like this. How cool would that have been?

Captain America: The First Avenger - 2 1/2 stars

2011-07-22T12:08:00.000-07:00

Captain America is one of those superheroes that I never really cared much about. I can't really explain why Superman's blue tights are ok and Captain America's patriotic suit is not, but the outfit always annoyed me. Plus he doesn't have much in the way of super powers. He is really strong, and has a shield that is indestructable and works as a boomerang. That's about it.

After watching the movie, I have some idea of why so many people like the character. He embodies what we think of as American values. He is brave and selfless. When a military trainer throws a dummy grenade in the middle of a bunch of recruits, he is the one who jumps on the grenade. His first thought is to help others.

Chris Evans (in his second role as a Marvel superhero after The Human Torch in Fantastic Four) stars as Steve Rogers, a 90 pound weakling who wants nothing more than to join the army. World War II is going on, and like most of the country, he wants to do his part. He keeps trying to get into the army, and every time he is turned down. I would think he could find some other way to participate. Aren't there any branches of the armed forces where he could join? He could probably sit at a desk or something.

Anyway, he is observed by Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci), who has him recruited so he can make him into a super soldier. This takes up the first half of the movie. This is the superhero origin story. The problem is that once he becomes Captain America, it is a bit of a letdown. He spends some time touring the country trying to get people to invest in war bonds. When his tour takes him to the war front, he decides to get into the action. He learns that his best friend's platoon has been captured, so he goes in to rescue them. And he is a brave soldier, but as a superhero, it just doesn't do anything for me.

The villain is Red Skull (Hugo Weaving), and he is much better than the material. The actor is great, the look is great, but he isn't given much to do. He has plans to conquer the world, but I never feared him as a believable villain. I guess he was just too cartoony for my taste. Also, he has no relationship with Steve Rogers. It helps if the superhero has an arch nemesis. In this, they don't meet until late in the movie, and their last battle has no real impact because the characters have no relationship.

The movie isn't bad, but it's just kind of bland. The setup was good, but it lost me in the second half. And just like with all the other Marvel movies, you have to stick around after the credits to see a teaser for The Avengers, which is coming out next year.

Friends With Benefits - 2 1/2 stars

2011-07-22T11:39:00.000-07:00

This movie wants to be the Scream of romantic comedies. Remember how the characters in Scream pointed out all of the bad cliches used in horror movies, then turned around and used them anyway? In Scream, it was clever. In Friends With Benefits, it just becomes another predictable romantic comedy.

The idea of having sex without getting romantically involved isn't exactly new. Remember the Seinfeld episode where Jerry and Elaine have sex and set ground rules? Rule 1 - no calls the next day. Rule 2 - spending the night is optional.

We already had Love and Other Drugs last year, and No Strings Attached this year. The only difference here is that both characters have come out of bad relationships, and neither one wants to get romantically involved (really they just don't want to get hurt, but then who does?).

The first 15 minutes of the movie are really boring. Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis have no chemistry, and nothing funny happens. They have a 'meet cute' (as all romantic comedies must), but the movie is just tedious. Then Woody Harrelson shows up as a gay sports writer. And he is hilarious. I don't know if he is that funny, or the movie is just so bad that he looks so good by comparison, but the movie finally gets entertaining.

The problem is Harrelson isn't in the movie enough. But we get other entertaining side characters to help with the boredom. Patricia Clarkson is great as Mila Kunis's mother, and Richard Jenkins is also great as Timberlake's father. Jenna Elfman also shows up late in the movie and does a good job with limited screen time.

When the supporting characters are around, the movie isn't bad. As the movie goes along, I did start to care about the lead characters enough to enjoy the movie. It just took too much screen time to get there.

Another complaint I have is one that will make me sound like a pig - not enough nudity. This is an R-rated comedy about sex. There is a lot of sex in the movie. There should be nudity to go along with it. Every time the characters are in bed, Mila Kunis has the sheets pulled up to her neck. There is even a montage of sex scenes, and in every one, they are under the covers. Different positions, sheets very strategically arranged. There is one scene where she is actually laying on top of him without the sheets, but we only see a brief glimpse of side boob. Heaven forbid we get a glance at nipple.

I know, I know. You think I just want to see Mila Kunis naked. Well, you aren't wrong, but this script requires nudity. The sex scenes should have been more like the ones from Love and Other Drugs. If you're going to star in a movie like this, you can't be such a prude. We see more skin from Justin Timberlake than we do from Mila Kunis. So don't be fooled by the trailers and the rating. These are PG-13 sex scenes.

Anyway, the movie starts out really boring and gets better as it goes along. It is trying to point out ridiculous romatic comedy cliches, but it uses every one of them. It is so predictable that you will be able to predict the 3rd act long before it starts (hurt feelings, break up, overblown public proclamation of love, happy ending). If you really like that sort of movie, you will get what you want out of this. But I can't recommend it.

TrollHunter - 2 1/2 stars

2011-07-22T11:31:00.000-07:00

This is another one of those "found footage" movies (Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield) where it's shot with one camera, and the camera man is a character in the movie. In this case, a group of Norwegian film students are following a man they believe is illegally hunting bears. They follow him into the forest and discover that he works for the government, and he is hunting trolls.

The students find out that the Norwegian government is aware of trolls. They roam the countryside and as long as they stay in their designated areas, they are tolerated. But just like the bears in Yellowstone, if they stray into populated areas, an agent is dispatched to take care of the troll.

There is a lot of discussion about the nature of trolls. For some reason, they can smell Christians, and UV light kills them (either it turns them into stone, or they explode). There are too many times in the movie where the exposition stops the movie. There just isn't enough troll action to make it exciting.

The finale is pretty cool, though. After most of the movie has taken place at night in the forest, we get a nice long scene set out in the open in a snow covered landscape, taking place during the day. And the giant troll they have to battle at the end is pretty cool.

This is a close call, but I can't recommend the movie.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 - 3 1/2 stars

2011-07-16T04:19:00.000-07:00

I had to think about the rating for this one for a bit. Because this movie almost can't be reviewed by itself. On its own, it's almost like half a movie. Ideally you should watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1 right before you see this new movie. This way, it's like one big movie with an intermission.

The new movie begins right where the previous installment left off with a quick recap of Voldemort breaking in to Dumbledore's tomb. We get a quick view of what life in Hogwarts is like with the new headmaster, and then the action picks up at Shell Cottage. Harry has an idea of where to find another horcrux, and it involves the assistance of the goblin Griphook.

Hopefully you remember what a horcrux is - an object where one has hidden a piece of his soul. Voldemort has made 6 horcruxes and Harry, Ron, and Hermione have to find and destroy them before they can defeat Voldemort.

For Harry Potter fans, this is a very satisfying conclusion to a movie series which began a decade ago. I think non fans would also enjoy the movie, but you definitely have to have seen the previous installments to know what is going on. We have had 7 movies of setup and character development. This movie is the payoff. While the previous movie had an awful lot of the 3 characters stuck in that tent not knowing what to do, this movie is wall to wall action. The majority of the movie takes place in and around the battle of Hogwarts.

Compared to previous Harry Potter movies, this one is probably the most faithful to the book. All the important things are there, and there are some minor changes to make things more cinematic. I liked the way they changed the timing of Neville's big moment, because it helps make the climax that much bigger. I was a little disappointed with the "Not my daughter, you bitch!" scene. That is one I was really looking forward to, and I thought it wasn't set up well. It came out of nowhere, and if you blinked you might miss it.

One of the best sequences in the movie is Snape's back story. Snape has always been my favorite character, and he is played so well by Alan Rickman. In this movie, we get to learn more than we ever have about Snape, and it's really exciting to see Rickman get to play a different range of emotions.

There has never been a movie series like Harry Potter. Eight movies, all with the same major case (except Dumbledore due to the passing of Richard Harris). It's incredible how well the roles were cast. We have been able to watch these characters age before our eyes, and the actors have grown into the roles wonderfully. I mentioned Neville's big moment before. He hasn't had as much to do in the last couple of movies, and it's great to see him finally featured as much as he is here.

Oh, and the epilogue works wonderfully. I was a little nervous about how they would pull it off and whether it would look fake, but I thought it worked just fine. And all was well.

Bad Teacher - 1 star

2011-06-24T15:02:00.001-07:00

Bad Teacher is a bad movie. Very bad. It's supposed to be a comedy, but it's not funny.

It may not be fair to compare it to Bad Santa, but I'm going to anyway. Both movies are about bad people who have a job that requires someone with a certain amount of decency. When you take your child to see Santa at the mall, you would be horrified if a drunk criminal was working as Santa and yelled at your kid. You also hope that the people who teach your kids are interested in providing them with a decent education.

Billy Bob Thornton was perfect for the role in Bad Santa. Cameron Diaz is miscast as the Bad Teacher. She plays mean really well, but unlike Thornton, she isn't any fun to watch in this role.

Also, in Bad Santa, Thornton's motivations made sense. He was a thief, and found that by working as a Santa in a store, it gave him an advantage when it came time to rob the place. He wasn't necessarily mean to kids because he hated them, it was just because he could care less about doing the job well. As soon as he robbed the store, he was out of there. In Bad Teacher, there isn't any reason for Diaz to act the way she does. It doesn't make sense that she is such a horrible person.

When the movie opens, we meet Elizabeeth Halsey (Diaz). It's the last day of school at John A. Adams Middle School. It's also Miss Halsey's last day. She has only been teaching there a year, and she is about to get married to a rich man. So she is retiring, since she won't need the money any more. When her fiance dumps her for being a gold digger, she has to go back to work.

The movie doesn't really address whether she was a bad teacher the first year or not. When the principal is giving her a going away present, she certainly seems pleasant enough. But after being dumped, she is pissed off and bitter. This doesn't really make sense. She admits that the only reason she got into teaching in the first place was because of the hours and summers off. It's hard to believe that someone who hates teaching so much would get through all the college and student teaching you have to do.

Since she isn't interested in teaching, all she does in class is put a movie on while she sleeps. She's like the laziest substitute teacher you ever had, but she's your regular teacher. For whatever reason she chooses inspirational movies about school (Stand and Deliver, Lean on Me), and while the movie plays she sleeps or drinks from the little liquor bottles she keeps in her desk.

She seems to have two motivations in this movie. The first is to find and marry a rich man. The second is to get breast enhancement surgery, which will cost $10,000 that she doesn't have. This doesn't make that much sense, as she already looks like Cameron Diaz and has no trouble getting guys to like her. Except for one guy, played by Justin Timberlake. JT plays a substitute teacher who for some reason starts teaching there full time. This isn't explained, but I digress. JT's grandfather designed fancy watches, and so Elizabeth decides to go after him. She never does ask him about his finances. Just because his grandfather made watches doesn't mean he is rich. But again, I digress.

There are subplots that don't go anywhere. When she hears how much money the school benefit car wash raised, she decides to be in charge of the next one. She dresses in cutoff shorts and a skimpy top, and the car wash is a success. We see her afterwards counting her money, so we know she kept some of it for herself. But we also hear the principal say that the car wash brought in $7,000. Did she give the school $7,000 and keep more for herself? How much? Or did she tell him it raised $7,000 and just keep it all? The movie never explains. And if the car wash is so lucrative, why doesn't she just keep doing car washes? She would have her new boobs in no time.

Another idea she has is to get the students' parents to pay her for supplies and tutoring. She guarantees them an A in her class, or their money back. None of these parents stop to think that since she is the teacher, she is the one who decides their grades. But the movie never follows up on this. We see the parents give her money, and it isn't mentioned again.

None of the kids are developed as characters, and they have very little screen time. We get to know a couple of the kids a little bit. One girl is a teacher's pet. She dresses prim and proper, and her mother bakes cookies for her to bring to the teacher. She doesn't seem too bothered by Elizabeth's attitute towards her. The other kid is a shy boy who writes poetry and has a crush on a pretty girl in his class.

There are some funny actors in the cast, but they are given nothing to do. The only one who gets any laughs is Jason Segel, and he isn't given much to do either. He plays the gym teacher, and he is always hitting on Elizabeth. She keeps turning him down because he's a poor teacher, but he keeps persisting. His character seems smart, yet he isn't smart enough to recognize she's a gold digger. Or he just doesn't care.

This script is just horrible. It was written by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, who wrote the awful Year One. I pray to God that their script for Ghostbusters 3 never gets made.

The Beaver - 2 1/2 stars

2011-05-20T11:28:00.001-07:00

Mel Gibson stars as a man who runs a large toy company. He didn't start the company - he inherited it from his dad. He is also married with two boys. He has been depressed for a couple of years. It got so bad that he did nothing but sleep all the time. His wife kicks him out because she can't take it, and doesn't know what to do for him.

One day, he finds a beaver hand puppet in a dumpster. He takes it home, cleans it up and puts it on. That night, he is about to kill himself when the beaver starts talking to him. It isn't really talking to him, though. Gibson is talking to himself but in the third person. When the beaver talks, it uses a cockney accent. I have to wonder if Gibson chose that accent after working with Ray Winstone on Edge of Darkness.

This is an interesting premise. Even in the depths of depression, a person still has an inner monologue. You can recognize that your behaviour is ridiculous, even if you can't do anything about it. So the idea of him vocalizing his inner monologue through this puppet is a good one. It is so hard for him to deal with the people in his life that he has to create this separate personality to talk to them. He asks people to address the beaver instead of him, and for the most part, people go along with it. The person who refuses to is his son, played by Anton Yelchin.

There is a separate storyline involving his son writing papers for other students for money at his high school. When the head cheerleader / valedictorian asks him to write her graduation speech, he starts a relationship with her.

Back to Gibson's character. We are not entirely sure if he is creating the beaver character to deal with his problems, or if he is schizafrenic and believes the beaver is really alive. At some point, he seems to believe it, because he tells someone (well, the beaver tells someone) that he is real.

One part of the movie that didn't work for me was the toy. He invents a toy that is some kind of wood block with tools and a talking beaver, and the idea is kids can carve their own beaver out of the wood. It suddenly becomes the hottest toy in the country. And because of that, Gibson is invited to be on talk shows. Because he appears with the beaver, he becomes some kind of celebrity. I didn't buy any of that. It wasn't set up well enough, and it distracted from the more interesting parts of the story. It is also inconsistent. One minute he is a media sensation (even on magazine covers), but he never seems to run in to the press or get recognized in public. It's like the idea of him becoming a celebrity was just stuck into the script without a good rewrite. It serves no purpose.

The movie is very uneven. It gets really dark, and while I usually like dark movies, it has to have some dark humor or good human emotion or something. This movie got dark without really earning it, if that makes any sense. Mel Gibson turns in a good performance, and he makes it believable. I respect the movie for going the places it went, but it just wasn't written or directed well enough to make it work.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - 2 stars

2011-05-20T11:14:00.000-07:00

I am officially tired of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Well, I was tired of it three years ago, when the 3rd movie came out. But now it has overstayed its welcome.

The first Pirates movie was a lot of fun. It was a bit too long, but Johnny Depp created a really fun character in Jack Sparrow. Even the black hole of acting that is Orlando Bloom couldn't ruin that movie.

The first movie was such a hit that they decided rather than make a sequel, they would make two more. They would film them back to back and make a trilogy out of it. The first movie was already epic, so Disney figured they could have their own Lord of the Rings type of franchise.

This movie is what we should have got instead of parts 2 and 3. A self contained story that doesn't require you to know much (or remember much) from the previous movies. You could probably go into this movie cold without having seen any of the previous Pirates movies and you would be ok.

The problem is the movie is a bore. It starts with Jack Sparrow on trial. He of course escapes, then is captured again and brought before King George. There is some talk about the fountain of youth, and Jack seems to know the location. Then he escapes again, meets up with a previous lover (Penelope Cruz), gets kidnapped and ends up on Blackbeard's ship. Blackbeard is played by Ian McShane, but unfortunately he is given nothing to do. Blackbeard is also after the fountain of youth.

Another storyline involves Barbosa (Geoffrey Rush). Barbosa lost his leg because of Blackbeard, so he wants revenge. He knows Blackbeard is headed for the fountain of youth, so he wants to go there to kill Blackbeard.

The movie is one set piece after another. Fight scene, exposition, move to another location, fight scene, and repeat. There aren't any characters to care about. As much fun as Jack Sparrow is, he doesn't really work as a main character because we never believe he is in any danger. His motivations also don't make much sense. At first, all he wants is to stay out of jail. Then he wants to keep Penelope Cruz's character safe. Does he want the fountain of youth or not? We get the impression that he is just kind of along for the ride.

Barbosa is the most interesting character in the movie. If he were the main character, it would have been more enjoyable. Unless you are a hard core fan of this franchise, I don't recommend this installment.

Bridesmaids - 3 stars

2011-05-20T09:40:00.000-07:00

Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph star as Annie and Lillian, best friends since childhood. Wiig is in a friends with benefits relationship with a rich handsome man (John Hamm) who prefers she leave after sex, rather than spend the night. She owned a bakery that went out of business.

When Lillian gets engaged, she asks Annie to be her maid of honor. One of the bridesmaids is Helen (Rose Byrne), who wants to be Lillian's best friend. Part of the movie involves Helen trying to upstage Annie anywhere she can. Everything that Annie suggests, Helen shoots down. There is a funny sequence at the engagement party. Annie gives a toast, and Helen takes the make to make a better toast. Annie takes the mic back and gives another toast, and they keep trying to one up each other until it gets to the point they are both singing to Lillian. The sequence goes on a little long, but it's funny.

Part of the movie deals with the bridesmaids. They have a few misadventures together, including getting food poisoning while trying on dresses. The stuff with the bridesmaids is the funniest stuff in the movie. Melissa McCarthy steals every scene she is in.

When things start going wrong, Annie is eventually replaced by Helen. Annie gets kicked out of her apartment and has to live with her mother (the last film role of the late Jill Clayburgh), and her life gets worse. She also sabotages a relationship with a policeman.

You would think a movie about bridesmaids written by women would be a bad chick flick, maybe like 27 Dresses. But this is a really good movie. The characters are well written and interesting, the movie is funny, and it also isn't predictable. Well, maybe a little. Highly recommended.

Priest - 1 star

2011-05-20T09:00:00.001-07:00

Priest takes place in a kind of alternate universe. In this world, man and vampire have been at war for centuries. During the opening credits, we see battles between man and vampire dating back to what look like the crusades. At some point, the church created priests. The priests are warriors who are the only ones who can fight vampires. The priests in this movie are similar to jedi knights.

The movie begins after the last great vampire war. For protection, humans live in walled cities (except for a few people who for no reason live out in the wilderness). Most of the vampires have been killed. The ones who still live were rounded up and put into reservations. Since the church thinks vampires are no longer a threat, they have disbanded the priests. They are now pariahs of society. They are kind of like vietnam vets in the way they are treated.

The movie is set in a post apocalyptic future. The city looks like something out of Blade Runner or Highlander 2.

Paul Bettany plays a priest. His brother is one of those crazy people who choose to live on a farm outside the protection of the city walls. One day his home is attacked by vampires. He and his wife are killed (or nearly killed) and the daughter, Lucy, is kidnapped. The local sherrif asks Bettany to go find her and rescue her.

The movie is partially a remake of The Searchers. Swap vampires for Comanche and the vampire war with the civil war. He even takes the young, inexperienced sherrif along, and they argue about whether they will have to kill Lucy. The sherrif even pulls a gun on the priest, but at least he doesn't say "I hope you die!"

There is nothing in Priest to recommend. No humor, the vampires aren't scary (CGI is just not scary), and the action scenes are not good. You can skip this movie.

Thor - 3 stars

2011-05-08T12:13:00.000-07:00

I went into Thor the same way I went into Iron Man. I knew very little about the superhero, having never read the comics. From what I have read, the superhero Thor is based on the Norse mythology of Thor, God of Thunder, with some liberties taken by the writers.

Thor lives on Asgard. His father is Odin, his brother is Loki, and he has a bunch of warrior friends. When he disobeys his father and goes to fight their enemy, the Frost Giants, his father takes away his powers and banishes him to Earth. This takes up the first act of the movie.

The second act begins on Earth when he is found by scientist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), her asistant Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings), and her mentor Dr. Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard). They are afraid of him at first, but they warm up to him quickly. He has some odd mannerisms, but he adapts pretty quickly. They could have had a bit more fun with the idea of a man like him seeing modern technology (Warlock, Beastmaster 2), but they don't.

Meanwhile, Thor's hammer was also sent to Earth. It was sent a few seconds after he was, and Thor didn't see it land. But people find it, and when they are unable to pull it out of the stone it's embedded in, it becomes a local sensation. A hundred people are gathered around it trying to retrieve the hammer. They even hook it up to a truck and try to pull it free. Eventually SHIELD finds out about it, and they set up a base camp around it. When Thor learns about his hammer, he breaks into SHIELD's camp to retrieve it.

The movie is simple enough that you don't need to know the character or his history to enjoy it. It also has enough humor that it appeals to more than just the comic fan base. It isn't as good as the first Iron Man, but it is better than Iron Man 2.

Just to recap: there are now 4 movies that have taken place in this Marvel universe: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, and now Thor. In a couple of months, Captain America will be released. Each movie is introducing characters that will all team up for The Avengers, which will be released next summer. And as with the previous movies, you have to stick around after the credits for a little teaser.

Rubber - 1 star

2011-05-08T12:00:00.001-07:00

A tire comes to life and starts killing people. How does it kill people? By using its telekinetic powers to make their heads explode. Sounds like an interesting idea, doesn't it? Could make for a good grindhouse exploitation style movie. Unfortunately, it sucks. It is the most boring movie about a killer tire I have ever seen.

Writer / director Quentin Dupieux is trying really hard to be clever with this movie. The film opens with a man in a suit standing on a lonely dirt road. On the dirt road, a bunch of chairs are set up. Then a car appears and proceeds to drive over each chair. The chairs are not set up in a straight line, so the car has to swerve all over the place. When the car comes to a stop, the trunk opens and a police officer gets out. Then he walks right up to the camera and starts to address the audience. He talks about how movies always have an element that makes no sense, and as he talks, he makes less and less sense.

Then we see that he is actually addressing an audience. A group of people are standing on this dirt road. They are stand ins for us. They are going to watch the events of the movie unfold through their binoculars, and they make comments that we the actual audience are already thinking (like how boring the movie is).

Soon enough, the tire comes to life. This is fun for 5 minutes or so. First the tire learns to stand upright and move, and like a toddler learning to walk, it keeps falling over. Eventually it learns to move. Then it encounters an obstacle (an empty bottle). It discovers it has telekinetic powers by breaking the bottle so it can continue on its merry way. Then it discovers animals, blows them up, discovers humans, blows their heads off, and so on.

Meanwhile, this audience is watching the tire and getting hungry. These people came out to see a show, but for some reason they have no food and they either can't leave, or they are not willing to. They have sleeping bags, so they can sleep out there in the middle of nowhere, and get up in the morning and resume watching the show. There is a short subplot about how the people in charge try to poison and kill the audience, and I think the filmmakers are trying to make a comment on what they are doing to us with this movie, but it doesn't really work.

The movie is an interesting curiosity, but there is no reason to ever watch it.

Scream 4 - 3 stars

2011-04-15T17:10:00.000-07:00

I was very apprehensive going into this movie. I really enjoyed Scream 1 and 2, was disappointed by Scream 3, and I was afraid this one would suck. Usually when a franchise is revisited after many years (like, I don't know, Crystal Skull maybe), it is just a cash grab and it doesn't live up to the previous entries in the series.

Luckily this one doesn't suck.

Kevin Williamson wrote the first 2 Screams, and when it came time to do the third one, he was busy writing Dawson's Creek. So the producers got Ehren Kruger, one of the hot new writers at the time, to write the third one. I don't know if he was working from a story outline from Williamson or if the movie was entirely his invention, but it wasn't very good. The 4th movie was written by Williamson, and while it isn't as good as the first movie, it is definitely better than the third. I will have to re-watch the second movie to determine how this one compares.

When the first Scream came out, cell phones were pretty new. Well, at least the idea of anyone owning a cell phone was new. By the second movie, everyone had one. This time, they have incorporated facebook, iPhone apps, and live web blogs into the mix. One character is always walking around with a webcam on his head, filming for his video blog. There are also references to the horror movies that have come out in the decade since Scream 3, like the Saw franchise.

I will admit I was a little disappointed that the movie didn't do more with this stuff. They reference that today's audiences want more gruesome kills, but the kills aren't any more gruesome than what I remember from the previous 3 movies. They use web cams and streaming devices a little bit, but nothing is as cool as the sequence in the first movie where Gail plants the camera in Stu's house during the party ("Shit! 20 second delay!").

Part of the plots of Scream 2 and 3 involved Stab, the movie of the events that took place in the first Scream movie. Gail Weathers (Courtney Cox) wrote The Woodsboro Murders after the events of the first film, that was made into the movie Stab, and by Scream 3 they were making the third Stab film. Well, in Scream 4 they have made more than 4 Stab movies and at this point, the events of the first film are so unremarkable that people have iPhone apps to make their voice sound like Ghost Face.

If you aren't a fan of the previous Scream films, I don't know how much you will enjoy this one. You don't have to see (or remember well) each previous installment. The plots are simple enough that you won't really be in the dark if you didn't see Scream 3, for example. But part of the fun is revisiting characters that you like (Sidney, Dewey, and Gail) and seeing what new, clever ways Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson can come up with to torment the characters. Overall this movie succeeds.

Win Win - 3 1/2 stars

2011-04-15T16:55:00.001-07:00

Paul Giamatti stars as a small town lawyer named Mike Flaherty. His practice is not going so well, and he is having trouble providing for his family. He has a wife (Amy Ryan) and two young girls. On the side, he is a wrestling coach for the local high school. His assistant coach is played by the great Jeffrey Tambor, who does 'sour' and 'bad mood' better than anybody.

One day, he discovers a dishonest way to make some extra money for his family. He represents an old man named Leo Poplar (Burt Young) who is slipping into dimentia. Leo doesn't want to be put into a home, but he can't take care of himself anymore. Mike decides he can declare himself Leo's guardian, make an extra $1,500 a month, and put Leo in a home anyway. He won't be caught because no one can locate any of Leo's family.

Soon enough, Leo's grandson Kyle (Alex Shaffer) turns up. He needs a place to stay, so Mike lets him live with his family. Lucky for Mike, Kyle just happens to be a great wrestler. This is good because Mike's team sucks. So he gets Kyle to come join the team.

Neither the wrestling nor the stolen money are what drives the story. There are some wrestling scenes, but not enough to make this a wrestling movie. The money he gets from Leo does come up later in the movie, but it doesn't ruin his life. The movie isn't about those things. It's about these characters and how they relate to each other.

Eventually Kyle's junkie mother turns up and things get complicated. But all the characters behave the way real people do. This is not as good a movie as Thomas McCarthy's last (The Visitor), but it is a worthy follow up. This is one of the best movies so far of 2011. Basically, the filmmakers did everything right and nothing wrong.

The Conspirator - 1 1/2 stars

2011-04-15T16:32:00.001-07:00

Did you know that the night Abraham Lincoln was killed, there were other assassins out to kill other members of the government? One victim who survived was William H. Seward, the guy who purchased Alaska from the Russians.

Did you know that the conspirators met and planned at Mary Surratt's boarding house? And after the assassination, she was arrested and tried before a military tribunal? This is interesting stuff that one could make a good historical drama about. Unfortunatly, this isn't it. This is a really boring courtroom drama that looks as though it was shot for a History Channel reenactment.

The star of the movie is Fredrick Aiken (James McAvoy), a former Union soldier ready to have a career in the legal profession. After Lincoln is assassinated and Mary Surratt (Robin Wright) is arrested, he is assigned the job of defending her. The problem is, he believes she is guilty and has no desire to defend her. He seems to think that she is not entitled to a defense, which is not a good mindset for a defense attorney to adopt.

I quickly got tired of Aiken's attitute. In the scenes where he is talking to his client, he all but tells her that he thinks she is guilty, and barely asks any questions. He acts sulky. That's how I would put it.

The movie's goal seems to be to point out the parallels between this event and 9/11. The nation has just suffered a great tragedy, and someone must pay the price. It doesn't much matter whether she is really guilty or not. Her sentencing will help satisfy the country's rage. It seems to me that when you have a lynch mob, you should try to calm them down with rational discourse. Instead, the Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (Kevin Kline) wants to satisfy their blood lust.

The movie is not about whether she is guilty or innocent. Instead the focus is on the fact that she, a civilian, was tried before a military tribunal with no jury of her peers, a right which is guaranteed in the Constitution. This is an injustice which should be looked at, as should the parallels to the Patriot Act and other things post 9/11. But the movie kind of rams these ideas down our throats. I would be more forgiving if the movie were better, but the biggest problem was that it was boring.

Soul Surfer - 2 stars

2011-04-15T16:17:00.000-07:00

Soul Surfer is about Bethany Hamilton, the 13 year old Hawaiian surfer whose arm was bitten off by a shark. Specifically, the movie is about how her faith and her family help her to overcome losing her arm and become a champion surfer.

This is one of those movies where a documentary would have been so much better. This is an inspirational story, but the movie handles it so badly. It is so earnest and sentimental that I felt like I was watching an after school special or something. The filmmakers are trying so hard to appeal to a Christian audience that they don't take any risks, and the movie is rather boring.

The movie starts out introducing us to Bethany, her family, and her friends. They live a life of privilege, spending their days surfing and their nights either in their nice Hawaiian home, or at church youth group meetings. We never get an explanation as to why her parents don't have to work. I think her parents are professional surfers, but we never see what that involves. How much money does a professional surfer make anyway?

When the attack comes, it is a huge letdown. She is on a surfboard, and the camera is below the water, giving us the shark's POV. This lasts for a few seconds, then before any tension is developed, the shark pops out of the water, bites off her arm, and disappears. The whole thing lasts about 5 seconds. Now I wasn't going in expecting Jaws, but at the same time, the shark attack should be a big moment in the movie.

They rush her to the hospital, and at first she seems to be in good spirits. She doesn't let having only one arm get her down too much. I don't know if she was this cheerful in real life, but it seems a bit phony. Getting used to having one arm would be a huge adjustment, and I would expect her to be much more upset and depressed. If she was this resilient in real life, good for her.

Quickly she decides to get back in the water (at no time does anyone worry about more shark attacks - Larry Vaughn must be the mayor), but she soon gets discouraged and quits. This starts the sequence in the movie where she feels bad for herself and gets depressed. But quickly she snaps out of it, gets back on the board, and starts to win competitions.

The two best parts of the movie are near the end. The first is when she goes with her church group to Thailand after the tsunami. Here she realizes how lucky she is to have a nice home, clean water, food, money, all that stuff. The second is during the credits when they show actual footage of the real Bethany. This reminded me how much I would rather watch a documentary about her.

Hanna - 3 stars

2011-04-15T15:55:00.001-07:00

Hanna is about a girl (Saoirse Ronan) who has been raised by her father Erik Heller (Eric Bana) in a cabin in the woods of Finland. She has never met another person besides her father, but he has prepared her well for survival. She knows several languages, she can defend herself and kill with ease, and he has even given her a back story in case she is ever questioned.

Her father was some kind of CIA agent who disappeared, and as the movie progresses we find out why. For some reason that I didn't feel was fully explained, Erik gives Hanna the choice of activating a homing beacon. Once activated, another agent named Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett) will come after her and try to kill her. Even by the end of the movie, I wasn't quite sure why he would want Marissa to come after Hanna. If he wanted Marissa dead, I would think there are easier ways to go after her.

His plan seems to be a horrible one. He will leave Hanna alone in the house while assassins come to the cabin (following the homing beacon). He will be long gone, but Hanna will be captured. She will escape and the two will meet up again in Berlin at a really cool looking Grimm's fairy tale house. If the whole plan was to kill Marissa for what she did to Hanna's mother, I would think he could come up with a better way to do it. This plan requires a lot of killing and the constant threat to both of them of being re-captured or killed.

One interesting thing is how many people Hanna and her father kill. She has been trained since birth to be an assassin, so she has no problem killing. But luckily somehow she is not a psychopath. When she meets another girl her age, she becomes friends with the girl and her family.

But any agent who gets in her way (or Erik's way) is quickly killed. In movies like this, you have to assume that all the CIA agents are bad guys. But I couldn't help thinking that most of them were under the assumption that they were after some rogue agent, and their orders were justified. There is even a sequence where Erik kills a couple of cops who happen upon him when he swims ashore in Germany. As far as I can tell, they just happened to be there. It's hard to sympathize with the protagonist when he is killing cops.

Besides that, this was a really cool movie. There were some good fight scenes, and it was well choreographed. Not like most action movies that are so over edited, you can't tell what's going on. In this movie, I always had a clear sense of geography. There were some clever and fun sequences with inventive camera moves. Particularly good was the scene where Erik overpowers a bunch of guys in a train station. The entire scene seemed to play out in one long tracking shot.

The only problem with the movie is the marketing. The trailers are showing all the action scenes, and audiences are going to be surprised by how slowly this movie moves. Instead of wall to wall action, there are a lot of quiet scenes of Hanna walking, or hiding, or experiencing the outside world for the first time. The movie does move slowly in places, but I was never bored.

Rio 3D - 2 1/2 stars

2011-04-15T15:31:00.000-07:00

I went in with low expectations, and I was still disappointed. The songs are flat and lifeless. Not that the songs are the most important part of the movie, but if you are an animated movie and you are going to have musical numbers, especially if the opening credits are set to a big musical number, your songs better not suck.

Jesse Eisenberg voices Blu, a rare baby macaw who can't fly. He is captured by smugglers, put in a truck, and driven to North America. The box he is in falls off the truck somewhere in Minnesota, and a nice brainy girl (short hair and glasses) adopts him.

Cut to 15 years later. The nice girl, whose name is Linda (Leslie Mann) runs a book store (of course) and the two are best of friends. He gives her the fist bump when she offers it, and they even brush their teeth together. So adorable.

One day a scientist from Brazil shows up. Apparently Blu is the last male of his species, and luckily the scientist has a female. He would like to take Blu do Brazil so they can repopulate the species. At this point, the movie gets sad for a minute. I assume he wants her to give Blu to him, and she would remain behind, because she is conflicted about whether to give in to his request. But then suddenly she is in Brazil with Blu and the scientist. So apparently he was offering to bring her as well, which means basically a free vacation to Brazil. Why did she even have to think about this? Of course the movie doesn't mention this. Did he pay for her plane ticket and hotel?

Anyway, Jesse Eisenberg does a good job of acting like Jesse Eisenberg, meaning he is always awkward and uncomfortable, especially when he meets the female macaw, Jewel (Anne Hathaway). He is ready to make with the sexy time, but she just wants to escape from her cage. She doesn't want to be anyone's pet. Blu can't understand this, because he likes being Linda's pet.

Before they can escape, they are stolen from the lab by smugglers and chained together. They soon escape, but because Blu can't fly, Jewel can't fly either. They want to get away from each other, but first they have to find a way to break free of the chain.

It's no big surprise that they eventually fall for each other. One problem is this isn't set up very well. At no point before meeting Jewel did Blu express any interest in finding a mate. I think it would make the audience root for them to get together a little more if they had any idea that Blu actually did want to hook up with Jewel.

There was a scene where Blu and Jewel are riding together on a cart, and the animals around them start making music to try and set the mood, hoping that they will kiss. During this scene, all I could think of was how much better the music was in The Little Mermaid, since they were ripping off the 'Kiss the Girl' sequence.

I won't complain about the fact that none of the animal's voices are South American. But I will complain about how many celebrities lend their voices to this movie. I complain about this a lot, I know, but I am tired of seeing the poster, trailer, or opening credits and seeing a list of high profile actors. There was a time when the voice actors were not mentioned above the title, because they weren't celebrities. They were talented voice actors. Now, all through the movie I keep trying to figure out who is doing what voice. It gets distracting. I don't think the movie would be any less successful if less famous actors voiced the parts. Kids don't go to animated movies based on who does the voices. However, I will say I enjoyed Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords. His musical number was the only one I mildly enjoyed.

Your Highness - 1 star

2011-04-07T11:45:00.000-07:00

I think the pitch for this movie went something like this: Remember Krull and Beastmaster? Wouldn't it be funny to make a movie like that, except have Danny McBride star as the lead character? All the other characters would do a British accent except for McBride. And he could act like every other character he ever plays, meaning he swears a lot and is always horny. Oh, and we should throw in a lot of stoner humor, cause that's funny. And we could also have the characters drop the f-bomb a lot. That's funny too.

The biggest problem with this movie is it's a spoof of movies like Beastmaster, but they filmmakers don't know how to do that correctly. In a good spoof, you first have to have a solid story with good characters to root for. For more on that subject, please to be reading this explanation by David Zucker on why Airplane! worked better than Top Secret! They had a decent premise to work with.

Prince Fabious (James Franco) is the dashing hero, and his brother, Prince Thadeous (Danny McBride) is his disappointing brother. There is an evil wizard named Leezer (Justin Theroux) who has kidnapped Fabious's fiance Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel), and the princes go on a quest to rescue her.

The biggest problem is the characters are not written well. We hate Thadeous because he is a selfish dick, and his transformation into a hero is not believable. Also, the elements of the quest are not interesting. They just go from one set piece to another. One sequence has them captured by beautiful topless barbarian women, then thrown into a thunderdome where they have to fight a warrior, then a monster. Another sequence they are in a labyrinth where they have to fight a minotaur (of course).

The filmmakers think that pot references are hilarious. Once in a while they made me chuckle, but no more than that. You actually have to do something interesting besides just referencing pot to be funny. And having a character randomly add the word motherf***er to a statement is not funny.

An hour into the movie, Natalie Portman shows up. She is the most competent warrior of the bunch, yet she inexplicably falls for Thadeous. That is the least believable element in the entire movie. The biggest problem with the movie is it isn't funny enough. I checked my watch every 10 minutes.

Sucker Punch - 1 1/2 stars

2011-03-25T17:21:00.000-07:00

I think I have seen the trailer for Sucker Punch more than just about any trailer in the past year. It seems like every movie I saw in the theater had that trailer, and it got to the point where I was dreading the movie.

Besides just getting sick of seeing the same footage over and over, I was afraid that I had already seen the movie. It looked like a girl tries to kill her father or stepfather, goes to a mental institute, and imagines herself in some fantasy land. She is given a quest - to find 5 items (a map, fire, a knife, a key, and something unknown). If all the action that happens is all in her mind, how can it matter?

It turns out I was mostly right. In the opening sequence, we are introduced to Babydoll (Emily Browning). Her mom had just died, and her step dad is obviously a psycho. When he tries to rape her younger sister, Babydoll tries to shoot him. She misses, and accidentally kills her sister. So her step dad puts her in a mental institute.

In the institute, she meets several other girls with names like Rocket (Jena Malone) and Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens). The mental institute is actually a brothel, and the girls are required to dance for perspective customers. When Babydoll dances, she is transported to a fantasy realm. The first time, she is in a Japanese courtyard out of some Samurai movie. She meets a wise old man (Scott Glenn) who tells her to find those 5 items, and then she will be free. Then she goes out into the courtyard and has a pointless battle with giant robots.

After she defeats them, she returns to reality and stops dancing. This was all in her mind - the other girls just watched her dance. Is it all her imagination, or is she hallucinating, or what? There are several more sequences like this, and each time she has a mission to accomplish. The 5 items she has to collect are required in the fantasy world as well as the real world. The end goal is to escape the mental institute.

There are a couple of problems with the fantasy sequences. First, what happens there doesn't matter. In the first one, they are trying to retrieve a map. The girls are in World War I era trenches, fighting German zombie soldiers. But in the real world, while Babydoll is dancing and distracting the staff, one of the girls is to sneak into an office and steal the map. This is more interesting than the fantasy sequence. Another problem is there is no danger in the fantasy realm. No one is ever in any danger. The only time someone gets killed is when they are about to be killed in the real world - and it is obvious when that is coming.

I did like one of the fantasy sequences. The girls have to kill a baby dragon without awakening it's mother. Of course, the mother does wake up and try to kill the girls. The dragon is very cool, and the effects are great in this sequence. But just like all the other fantasy sequences, I wish the story lived up to the action we are seeing on the screen. These sequences just serve to slow down the movie. I would rather have the entire movie take place in the institute, and just stick to the girls trying to escape.

I didn't hate the movie as much as I expected, but that was only because I went in with the lowest of expectations.

The Adjustment Bureau - 2 1/2 stars

2011-03-04T09:34:00.000-08:00

The Adjustment Bureau is one of those movies with a great setup, but weak payoff. The trailer makes it look like a very interesting sci-fi movie. Matt Damon and Emily Blunt meet cute and it's love at first sight. He just lost a senate ellection, and he goes into the men's room to be alone. It just happens that she is hiding in the men's room, they meet, flirt, and then she runs out of his life.

They meet again on a bus, and he takes her number down. But the interesting thing is that that second meeting was never supposed to happen. He was supposed to spill his coffee on his coat and return to his apartment, missing that bus. The reason he made it to the bus is fate was asleep, and neglected to intercept Damon before he could board the bus.

Fate in this movie referrs to a group of men wearing suits and fedoras, looking like they just walked out of Mad Men. When Damon returns to his office, he finds everyone frozen, as if time has stopped, and these mysterious guys are modifying their memories or something like that. Damon wasn't supposed to be there yet, so they didn't expect to be interrupted by him. Their solution is to tell him the truth.

Here is the first problem with the movie. It is far too early in the story for the protagonist to learn what is going on. They don't explain exactly who they are or where they come from (aliens? angels?) but they explain that everyone is supposed to follow the plan. He deviated from the plan, so they have to adjust things. He should never tell anyone what he knows, or they will 'reset' him, which means they will basically erase his memory and he will be an entirely different person.

I think this would drive a person nuts. The curtain has been pulled back and he has seen that life is just an illusion. Like Neo in The Matrix, he now knows that there is something going on that no one else on Earth is aware of. The bureau explains to him that he was never supposed to meet Blunt's character a second time, and he better not try to find her. They are not supposed to be together, because it is not part of the plan.

This is all set up in the trailer, so I don't think I have really spoiled anything. After seeing the trailer, the only questions left are 1) why can't the two be together? 2) who and what are the powerful men in the hats? and 3) will they end up together and live happily ever after, or will the bureau succeed in keeping them apart?

The answer to question number 1 is kind of a letdown. It has to do with his and her respective carreers. Apparently if either one is too happy, they will not be as driven to succeed and will not achieve great things. I had a hard time accepting this. I guess it is possible for some people, but others will not do great things if they are alone and unhappy. Besides, once they have revealed the plan to Damon, what's to stop them from just telling him what he needs to do to succeed. If someone saw into the future and told you that you were going to be president, wouldn't that give you more confidence that you could achieve that goal? It's like the conundrum of whether you want to know how you are going to die. If you knew how, would you be able to avoid it? Would that create a paradox?

Question 2 is not explained either, although we get the idea that they have been around since the beginning of time. A senior Bureau member named Thompson (Terence Stamp) says something about how free will is no longer an option for mankind because of all the horrible things that mankind has caused throughout history.

One thing that occurred to me is do they have a bureau in every city in the world? The movie is set in New York, and there don't seem to be enough agents to control everyone's fate. The agents have powers they can use to affect our behavior. They can use their powers to make someone trip and fall, or cause a car to go through a red light and cause an accident. When they do that, how many other people's fate did they change? They don't seem to care too much about that. Is it because Damon is so much more important than everyone else?

The movie makes me think about the ripple effect, or the butterfly effect. If you go back in time and change one small thing, that has ripples that affect things in the future. Same with the plan in this movie. If they have a plan everyone is supposed to follow, causing a car accident with change the plan for a number of people. The person driving the other car now goes to the hospital and misses whatever he was going to do, the onlookers are now witnesses and have to hand around and give their statements, and so on.

Another problem I had is that despite their powers, they still can't stop Damon. They should be able to. One minute they use their powers, the next minute they watch helplessly as he gets away. It is a problem that movies often run into when people have powers. Their powers only work when the script requires them to.

The movie brings up a lot of interesting ideas, but it isn't smart enough to pay them off. It creates an intriguing setup and then becomes a chase movie. And the ending is a real letdown. I don't want to spoil it, but it kind of boils down to the Bureau saying "Ok, fine, have it your way."

If you want to watch a movie with a somewhat similar setup that really knows how to pay it off, watch Dark City.

Oscar picks

2011-02-26T16:12:00.001-08:00

I'm gonna keep this short. I'm just going to list my predictions and my picks. To see the entire list of Oscar nominees, go to www.oscars.org.

Best Actor: Colin Firth (The King's Speech) is going to win. My pick would be James Franco (127 Hours).

Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale (The Fighter) is going to win, and he is my pick.

Best Actress: Natalie Portman (Black Swan) will win, and she is also my pick.

Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo (The Fighter) will win. My pick is Jacki Weaver (Animal Kingdom).

Best Animated Movie: Toy Story 3 will win, but I would pick How to Train Your Dragon.

Best Cinematography: Roger Deakins will finally win for True Grit. He would be my choice as well.

Best Director: This will go to Tom Hooper for The King's Speech, but I really want David Fincher to win for The Social Network.

Best Documentary: I think Exit Through the Gift Shop will win, if for no other reason than everybody wants to see if Banksy will show up and do something interesting. That would also be my pick.

Best Picture: This will go to The King's Speech, but if there is any justice in the world, The Social Network will win.

The Company Men - 3 stars

2011-02-10T16:38:00.000-08:00

Ben Affleck stars as a very successful employee of a giant shipping company. He makes $120,000 a year, lives in a giant house with is wife and 2 kids, drives a porsche, has a country club membership, all that stuff. As the economy starts to tank, he is laid off. The movie examins how he and the other employees cope and try to move on with their lives.

The movie also stars Chris Cooper as a guy who can't imagine his life without the job. He has worked there his entire life and is nearing 60 years old. When he is laid off, he finds just how few companies are interested in hiring an old former executive when they could hire a young guy just out of college for a lot less money.

Tommy Lee Jones and Craig T. Nelson are the guys who founded the company, and they have several arguments about how to keep the company afloat. Nelson thinks the best way to appease the stockholders is to cut more jobs. Jones points out that if Nelson didn't take such a huge salary, they could afford to keep some workers.

The movie is a pretty good reflection of what's wrong with corporate America. At one time, the corporation made ships. Now the warehouses are closed and their profits are from stock trades. The CEO is living in a mansion and making something like 1,000 times what an average employee is making.

The only big problem I had with the movie is that Affleck is the lowest paid employee we see, and he is making 6 figures. When people are struggling to get by on less than $25,000 a year, it's hard to feel bad for a guy like Affleck's character.

Just Go With It - 1 1/2 stars

2011-02-10T16:19:00.001-08:00

There are so many things wrong with Just Go With It, but the biggest one is that it isn't very funny. The movie is basically a farce, and director Dennis Dugan has no idea how to direct a farce.

Adam Sandler stars as Danny, a plastic surgeon who wears a wedding ring in order to pick up chicks. The idea is they think he is married, he tells them how unhappy his marriage is, and they jump into bed with him. It kinda reminds me of that Chris Rock routine about how girls never call you when you're single, then once you get married, you get propositioned every Tuesday. You would think a rich plastic surgeon would have no trouble getting women, but I digress. His assistant Katherine (Jennifer Aniston) tells him often how much of a pig he is, but she does it with a smile.

One night at a party when he isn't wearing the ring, he happens to connect with a gorgeous 6th grade teacher named Palmer (Brooklyn Decker). The fact that she looks like she does and teaches 6th grade is the most believable thing in the movie. So anyway, the morning after they hook up, she discovers the wedding ring in his pocket. He can't think of what to tell her, so she leaves in a huff. The problem is, this girl is the one. Even though he has these one night stands all the time, suddenly after one night he is sure that he wants a lasting relationship with her.

What is his scheme to get her back? Does he tell her that he just got divorced? No, that would make too much sense (and we wouldn't have a movie). Instead, he tells her that he is getting divorced. She is skeptical, and wants to meet his soon-to-be ex. So he asks Katherine to pretend to be his wife. Katherine agrees, he spends thousands of dollars getting her clothes and shoes, and she meets the couple for lunch. If he were really going through a divorce, you would think that getting him and his wife together for lunch would be ugly and painful. But Palmer has no problem forcing him to do this.

When Katherine slips up and reveals that she has kids, how do they cover that? Do they tell Palmer that they are her kids from a previous marriage? No, once again, that would be too easy. They tell her that yes, we have kids together. Danny doesn't know Katherine's kids' names (even though they have worked together for years), so he has to make up their names too. This of course means that her kids have to go along with the charade as well.

Here is the biggest annoyance of the movie. The boy is fine, but the girl is the most obnoxious child actor I have ever seen. She is like 12 years old and wants to be an actress. Is there anything more annoying than stage kids? She likes using accents, and during her first meeting with Palmer, she uses a fake cockney accent that would embarrass Dick Van Dyke. This means she has to keep using the accent the rest of the movie.

Another problem with the movie? The kid tricks Danny into agreeing to take them to Hawaii. One scene they are all eating lunch, the next scene they are at the airport ready to go. Are their schedules really so free that they can drop everything and go on a week long vacation? He is a plastic surgeon, Palmer is a teacher, but no matter. The script says they go to Hawaii, so they do. At least they could have put in a line or two about clearing their schedules or something.

Adam Sandler movies are always hit and miss with me. Nothing he has ever done has measured up to Billy Madison or Happy Gilmour, and while I liked You Don't Mess With the Zohan and Grown Ups, I hated Big Daddy, Mr. Deeds, The Waterboy, and pretty much everything else (I am only counting the Happy Madison productions, so Funny People and Punch Drunk Love don't count). This movie tries for big laughs and very few of them work. Overall, it's an embarassment.

The Rite - 2 stars

2011-02-10T10:45:00.001-08:00

I went to see The Rite hoping that it would present something new and interesting about exorcism. It doesn't. At all. There have been several exorcism movies recently, like The Exorcism of Emily Rose and The Last Exorcism. When I saw the trailer for The Rite, I thought this would be the one that got it right. It has Anthony Hopkins. It looks like it had a good sized bugdet. Exorcism is always good for a scare, right?

The movie is about Michael Kovak (Colin O'Donoghue). Michael lives and works in a funeral home with his father (Rutger Hauer). Not sure I could embalm a corpse in the basement, walk upstairs to the kitchen and sit down for dinner, but that is normal life for him. He decides to enter the seminary and become a priest. Cut to 4 years later. He is about to graduate and decides he doesn't want to be a priest. When he tries to resign, the Father Superior (Toby Jones) tells him that if he drops out, his scholarship will roll over to a student loan, and he will owe more than $100,000. That's how they get ya!

For some reason, the Father Superior decides that Michael should go to Rome and study to be an exorcist. There he attends exorcism class taught by Father Xavier (Ciaran Hinds). Here the movie really misses an opportunity. They could have given us some really good details about exorcism. Real or made up, I don't care. But the classes are skimmed over. We get maybe 2 short scenes in the class, and they give us very little information about exorcisms. Very disappointing.

Michael goes to Father Xavier and tells him he is skeptical. Apparently he is the only skeptical one in the class, because he is the only student Xavier sends to study with Father Lucas (Anthony Hopkins). Yes, we are at least 30 minutes into the movie before Hopkins appears on screen. Up to this point, the movie has been horribly dull. Hopkins does what he can to liven things up a little. He may be trying to exorcise demons, but he does it with a sense of humor.

Besides a few laughs with Hopkins, the only other interesting part of the movie is when Father Lucas himself is posessed (not a spoiler if you've seen the trailer). Hopkins plays creepy very well, and the movie gets a little scary when he is at his most menacing. But even posessed Hopkins gets boring fast because the movie doesn't give him anything interesting to do. The most intense thing he does is slap a little girl and yell at her. The rest of the time, he has creepy makeup and talks in a weird voice. That's about it.

Overall, a very boring and disappointing movie. Not scary at all.

Sundance wrap up

2011-02-08T17:46:00.000-08:00

Here, in one place, is a list of all the movies I saw at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. I didn't give them star ratings, but for the purposes of this list, I'm assigning each movie a letter grade. The list is organized best to worst.

Incendies A
Kaboom B+
Tyrannosaur B+
Perfect Sense B
Sound of My Voice B
Terri B-
The Woman B-
The Last Mountain B-
The Devil's Double C+
Uncle Kent C+
Happy, Happy C
Margin Call C
Abraxas C
The Troll Hunter C-
The Lie C-
Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same C-
The Flaw D+
Granito D
The Son of No One D-
Vampire D-
The Oregonian F
Lord Byron F *
Magic Trip F *

* I walked out of both Lord Byron and Magic Trip. It's possible they get better after the first 20 minutes, but I doubt it.

Last few days at Sundance

2011-02-03T17:16:00.000-08:00

Since I got so lazy keeping up with my Sundance journal, I'm just going to list the rest of the movies I saw. Do you really care which movies I saw on which day anyway?

Tyrannosaur - the first movie directed by Paddy Considine, it stars Peter Mullan as a bitter old man with a really bad temper. His name is Joseph. He gets into fights because he can't keep his mouth shut, and when he gets really pissed off, he has to hit or kick something, even if it's his own dog. He befriends a battered woman named Hannah (Olivia Colman). This isn't a feel good movie, but it is a very interesting character study. A very good performance by Mullan. There are some shocking moments of violence in this movie.

Margin Call - set at a fictional investment firm, this movie is about the first day of the 2008 financial crisis. Late one evening, a financial analyst (Zachary Quinto) discovers that the shit is about to hit the fan. He tells his supervisor (Paul Bettany), who calls his supervisor (Kevin Spacey), who calls in others (Demi Moore, Jeremy Irons) and at 2 in the morning, these people are all deciding how to handle the crisis that is about to hit.

The plan involves trying to sell all of their worthless stock before everyone else figures out what is going on, which will happen the next morning around 11am. The movie would be better if it started off with some kind of narration, or a primer explaining the terminology. I have read enough (and seen enough documentaries) to have some idea of what led to the crisis, and I was still confused by the terminology used. The movie takes a good 45 minutes to get to the good stuff, which is the president of the company realizing how bad things are about to get. The first half of the movie consists of the same conversation over and over while people look at computer screens and ask if it is accurate. Overall a disappointing movie.

Perfect Sense - Ewan McGregor is a chef in Glasgow. Eva Green is an epidemiologist (google it, kiddies). They meet and fall in love at the same time as a strange disease is being reported all over the globe. People are suddenly overcome with emotions, then they lose their sense of smell. What could be causing this? Eventually it affects everyone. Next they lose their sense of taste, and after that, well, I won't ruin it.

McGregor and Green have really good chemistry together, and they are always good. They do a great job making you care about these characters, and it puts you right in the middle of this frightening situation where the world might be ending.

Fun fact: the actor who plays McGregor's boss is Denis Lawson, who is not only McGregor's uncle in real life, but he played Wedge in the Star Wars trilogy.

Incendies - this is my favorite movie from Sundance. It starts off in Canada where a pair of twins are at the reading for their late mother's will. They are handed two envelopes. One they are to deliver to their father (who they thought was dead), and the other is to be delivered to their brother (who they never knew existed). They go to the Middle East to investigate their mother's past, which they never knew anything about.

At the same time, the movie treats us to flashbacks of their mother as a young woman. She lived through many horrors during a civil war between Christians and Palenstinians. There are definitely some horrific things in this movie, and the end has some pretty good revelations that made the audience gasp audibly many times. The movie is also nominated for the best foreign language Academy Award.

The Lie - Joshua Leonard and Jess Weixler star as a young married couple with a baby. He isn't happy at his job, and one day he tells a ridiculous lie to get a couple of days off work. As the lie gets around, he has to hide stuff from his wife, and the question becomes when will she find out, and how will she react. Not a bad little movie, but nothing special.

Sound of My Voice - this is about a married couple who plan to infiltrate a strange cult so they can make a documentary exposing the leader. As they get drawn into the cult, one of them may be starting to believe while the other remains skeptical. Is the leader a time traveler from the future, come back to save a select group of people, or is she a con artist? The movie is surprisingly well written by newcomer Brit Marling, who co-produced and starred in the movie, as well as another Sundance movie called Another Earth (which I didn't see). A good, solid suspenseful movie.

The Woman - this movie was co-written by Jack Ketchum. If you are familiar with his work, you know what to expect. A man is out hunting, and he comes across a wild woman in the forest. She seems like she is right out of Quest for Fire. Is she part of a tribe, or was she raised by wolves? We never find out, but the man kidnaps her and takes her home to his family. He chains her up in the cellar with the plan of civilizing her.

This family man is the psychotic one, as we see the way he treats his family. They don't seem to question him too much, especially the son who has no problem torturing the woman on his own. The movie is very shocking but not too graphic - most of the worst stuff happens off screen. But this movie outraged people to the point where at the first public screening, a man had to be escorted out by security for yelling at the filmmakers during the Q&A. I liked it, but I would only recommend it to horror fans.

Tuesday and Wednesday at Sundance

2011-01-27T08:04:00.001-08:00

I did not make it up to Park City on Tuesday due to the snow. I got about halfway up Parley's Canyon before deciding to turn around and head for home. The roads were so bad that I couldn't go more than 30 mph up the canyon.

On Wednesday I started off with Lord Byron. I only made it 45 minutes in before I had to walk out. It was just horrible. The worst thing I had seen at Sundance up to that point. There was no story, one scene had nothing to do with the previous scene, and it seemed like there was no script. It was probably improvised, and the actors were not good enough improvisers to pull it off.

Next movie was Granito, a documentary about the 1982 genocide in Guatemala. It's heart was in the right place, but it managed to make the subject pretty dull. The filmmaker kept making it more about her than about the subject or the victims. It was also a bit scattered. A good editor may have been able to make a more coherent and effective movie out of it.

Next up was The Flaw, a documentary about the financial collapse of 1998. Rather than assigning blame, it explored the housing bubble and it compared the collapse to the crash of 1929, showing how many similarities there were. This movie is no where near as good as Inside Job or Capitalism: A Love Story.

Next up I saw a movie called Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same - craziest title ever! Three lesbian aliens come to Earth to save their planet. It was unique and funny. The movie was in black and white and had some really cheap special effects, like something from an Ed Wood movie. But that added to the charm. Not an essential movie to see, but a pleasant diversion.

The last movie I saw was The Oregonian. This is the craziest thing I have ever seen. There is no plot. A girl was just in a car crash. She gets out of the car, covered with blood, and starts walking through the woods. I will not try to explain what happens after that. I think she is either having a nightmare or she is dead and in hell. Because she starts having strange encounters that make no sense. The movie is not exactly a horror movie, but it is scary and unsettling. It's like an experimental student film.

Monday at Sundance

2011-01-25T08:18:00.000-08:00

First movie of the day was The Son of No One, a corrupt police drama. Channing Tatum stars as a cop who killed a couple of junkies when he was a kid. At least one of the killings was in self defense, but he has felt guilty about it for years. He didn't tell the police what happened. The only people who knew were his two friends. The cops pretty much knew he did it, but didn't care because they could care less about a couple of dead junkies.

The local paper starts printing stories about the murders and asking why they haven't been solved. For some reason, his captain starts harassing him about the murders. This movie sucks. It is slow and boring, and the characters' motivations make no sense.

Next movie was Vampire. It takes guts to make a vampire movie and title it "Vampire". This is the strangest vampire movie I have ever seen. It has an intriguing premise. A vampire named Simon meets girls on a suicide chat room. He tells them he wants to kill himself too, and they meet with the intent to commit suicide together. He drains their blood and drinks it. The first 15 minutes or so are pretty good as they set up this story.

Then the movie takes a bunch of left turns. He goes to a party with a bunch of vampire-loving people. They dress up in capes and watch vampire movies. One of them figures out that Simon is a vampire, takes him for a ride in a car, kidnaps a woman, then kills and rapes her. This is where people started walking out of the screening. Simon sits there doing nothing. He is obviously repulsed by this, but he does nothing to stop it. Not sure how we are supposed to feel about Simon.

There is also a subplot about a cop who right away wants to be best friends with Simon for no reason, then introduces Simon to his sister who immediately likes him. We never get any idea that Simon likes her, but she starts coming over to his house, cooking for him, and helping care for his catatonic mother.

Weird movie. I have never seen so many walkouts. Every 10 minutes or so more people would walk out, and by the end only about 10% of the audience remained.

My last movie was The Troll Hunter. From Norway, this is one of those "found footage" movies, like Cloverfield or Paranormal Activity. Three college students follow a strange guy into the mountains of Norway and discover that giant trolls actually exist. The guy works for the government keeping trolls a secret and killing them when they leave their territory.

The movie is kind of fun and interesting for an hour or so. Then it gets kind of tedious. I almost recommend it, but not quite.

Sundance, Saturday and Sunday

2011-01-24T09:04:00.001-08:00

Saturday morning my first movie was Uncle Kent, the new movie from Joe Swanberg. Like all of his movies, it was very low budget, unwritten-sounding dialogue, and lots of sex and nudity. Actually, not as much sex and nudity as his other movies, but still quite a bit.

The story was about a guy named Kent. Kent is a single guy living in LA, and he meets a girl from New York over chatroulette. He invites her to come out and stay with him for the weekend. She accepts, even though she has a boyfriend. Obviously he likes her and is hoping something will happen between them. Something does, but not what we expect. They find a girl on craigslist that is advertising for a threesome.

I liked the movie, but like all of Swanberg's movies, it really could have used a re-write and some editing. There are parts with very interesting discussions, but also parts where nothing happens and we are just watching Kent sitting around doing nothing. I'm not sure who I could recommend it to.

Uncle Kent was proceeded by a short called Ex-sex, which was very good.

The next movie I saw was Happy, Happy. This Norwegian movie claims to be a comedy, but I didn't laugh much. It was more of a drama. It's about an unhappy housewife. Her husband won't pay attention to her, and she starts having an affair with the neighbor next door. The only thing unique about the movie was the setting. Other than that, this type of story has been done before, and done much better.

The strange thing about the movie was the musical interludes. Remember the scenes in There's Something About Mary where the guitarist and drummer would appear and sing a song randomly? Kind of like that, there are interludes where we see a vocal quartet singing. It makes no sense and the movie is not the kind of comedy that can pull off those kind of absurd interludes.

Next I saw The Last Mountain, a documentary about coal and mountaintop coal removal, a destructive process that was outlawed until the Bush administration made it legal. It was very good and it pissed me off, like all of these political documentaries do, because it shows once again how laws are written by corporations.

The last movie of the day was Abraxas, a movie about a Japanese monk who used to be a punk rock guitarist. He decides he wants to play again, so he gets a band together and performs outside at the monastery. It was very interesting and unique, but also very tedious. Not recommended.

On Sunday I started off with Terri, a movie about an overweight high school kid. He lives with his uncle (The Office's Creed Bratton) who is usually heavily medicated, he goes to school in his pajamas, and he has no friends. So it's a feel good.

Things get entertaining when he is talking to the vice principal (John C. Reilly), but there are quite a few boring scenes where he is off by himself doing things like setting mouse traps. Late in the movie it starts to get really interesting when he starts making a couple of friends. A really cute girl in his class starts to get interested in him because he is nice to her, and eventually he invites her over to his house to hang out. His other friend comes over and the three of them start drinking and taking his uncle's pills, then things really get interesting.

Yet another movie that I liked, but it isn't easy to sit through and most audiences probably won't enjoy it.

Next I went to check out A Machine to See With at the New Frontier. This is no movie. You register, they take your cell phone number, and 15 minutes later you get a call. For the next 70 or 80 minutes you are walking around town following instructions from a pre-recorded voice. The basic idea is you are planning to rob a bank. It was a fun experience, but the end was kind of a letdown. Although, the end really depends on how many other people are currently participating, and how they behave. It's a very interesting idea and I'd love to see the company behind it take the idea further.

The rest of the afternoon was spent at the Eccles Theater trying to cover Red State. The Westboro Baptist Church was in town to picket Kevin Smith's latest movie, and he invited his fans to show up and protest against the protest. There were some very funny signs out.

I covered the red carpet and managed to interview the actors from the movie, including Stephen Root and Melissa Leo. I will post some video once I get a chance to do a little editing.

I wasn't able to see Red State. There is no press screening, and there are only 2 public screenings, which made it the hottest ticket at the festival. There was a lot of hype about how he was going to auction off the rights to the movie right there in the theater after the screening, but he ended up deciding to release it himself. He will take the movie on a tour then release it himself in October.

The last movie I saw on Sunday was The Devil's Double. It's partly based on the true story of Latif Yahia who was chosen to be a double for Uday Hussein. Dominic Cooper plays both Latif and Uday, and this is the best work I have ever seen from him. He plays both parts so differently that I forgot it was the same actor.

There is some really tough stuff in the movie. I have read about Uday Hussein and some of the horrible things he did, like kidnapping random girls off the street, raping them, then dumping their bodies. We see a bit of that in the movie. We also see torture, disembowelment, shootings, all that gory stuff.

The movie uses the true story as a base, then it invents some stuff. I don't know how much is true, but at some point Latif decides to try to escape Iraq. I had some problems with the movie but it was worth seeing for Dominic Cooper's performance.

Friday at Sundance

2011-01-22T11:41:00.000-08:00

On Friday I only managed to take in 1 1/4 movies. I will explain.

I got up to Park City in time to see Kaboom, the new film from Gregg Araki (The Doom Generation, Mysterious Skin). It ended up being a great first movie.

The story is about Smith, a bi-sexual college student. His best friend is a lesbian named Stella. He is attracted to his straight roommate, Thor. For the first while, it seems like it is just a movie about these characters. And they are very enjoyable characters.

Then things start to get wierd. The girl Stella is seeing seems to have magical sexual powers. These creepy guys wearing animal masks start lurking around. A red haired girl asks Smith for help, slips a flash drive in his pocket, then seems to be killed by the animal masked men. Was it a dream, a hallucination, or did it really happen?

The movie was a lot of fun, but I haven't decided how I feel about the end. It starts ramping up the crazyness, and the audience I saw it with was laughing the entire last 5 minutes. The end comes so abruptly that it's like a punchline. In a lesser movie, the ending would ruin it for me. But I liked it enough that I think it just adds to the fun.

After Kaboom I decided to see Magic Trip, which is a documentary about author Ken Kesey's 1964 trip across America. It was doing absolutely nothing for me and bored me to tears, so I left after 20 minutes or so.

I had to leave the festival early for a family thing, so that was it. Saturday I plan to stay in Park City all day and see as many films as I can.

Sundance Day 1

2011-01-20T20:38:00.001-08:00

Day one at Sundance. This afternoon Robert Redford, Keri Putnam (Executive Director) and John Cooper (Director) held their annual press conference to kick off the festival. Here is one short video from the press conference. Excuse my shaky cam style. I was sometimes trying to film with one hand.

Update: I also went to New Frontier to check out the exhibits. I took a few pictures but they didn't come out. It was too dark.

In years past the New Frontier has been on Main Street, but this year it is being held at the Miner's Hospital. Not as good a venue. Instead of having everything on one level in a big open space, everything is crammed into 3 buildings. The main building is very cramped and darkly lit. As you are walking through it is hard to tell what is an exhibit and what is an employees only type area.

The exhibits are pretty interesting, but I was disappointed with the Three's Company: The Drama setup. It is just a room where footage from the first season of Three's Company plays. The dialogue has been re-recorded by James Franco and his friends. They try to make it a drama rather than a sitcom.

Country Strong - 1 1/2 stars

2011-01-09T11:35:00.000-08:00

This movie is a lot like last year's Crazy Heart - if Crazy Heart really sucked!

At the beginning of the movie we meet Beau Hutton (Garrett Hedlund from Tron: Legacy). Beau is a country / western singer. We know this not only because we see him on stage performing, but because he always wears jeans, western shirts, cowboy hats, and he drives a beat up Ford pickup. During the day he works as an orderly at a rehab facility.

One of the patients is a country superstar named Kelly Canter (Gwyneth Paltrow). Kelly likes Beau to play and sing for her, and she helps write his songs. Her husband/manager James (Tim McGraw) shows up and takes her out of rehab, even though she is not ready to leave.

The next night, James sees Beau perform at a club and asks him to come on the road and open for Kelly. Here is where I checked out of the movie, because Beau says no. Anyone who loves performing wants 2 things: to perform for as many people as possible, and to make a living doing it. But Beau says no. He likes performing for people, and he doesn't care where. He's perfectly happy to keep playing in local bars.

Of course he changes his mind and does join them on the road, or else we wouldn't have a movie. But if we didn't have a movie, I wouldn't really mind. In fact, I would prefer it. This movie is so badly written, the only fun I had was watching Kelly get drunk and try to perform. She is so bad she has to be helped off stage while the curtain comes down and the band continues to play.

The dialogue is horrible. There is a scene where Kelly asks Beau "you think I'm crazy, don't you?" He should answer that no, she isn't crazy, just an alcoholic. But what he says is "love and fame just don't mix." What the hell does that mean? It does go along with the message of the movie, which seems to be being a star is bad, it's better to remain unknown. The end of the movie (spoiler alert) is Beau performing in a small club on a ranch somewhere. He has passed on the opportunity to record, tour, be a star and make lots of money.

The movie tries really hard to be dramatic. I think they expect people to cry. But during what should be the saddest moment in the movie, I was just chuckling. The movie just doesn't work.

Wednesday, 12/22 and Saturday, 12/25

2010-12-21T23:38:00.000-08:00

Because of Christmas, the studios are releasing some movies early (Wednesday), and some movies on Christmas day. For once, no movies are opening on Friday.

True Grit - 3 1/2 stars (opening Wednesday)

I have never seen the original with John Wayne, but I understand that this movie is a closer adaptation of the book than the 1969 version was.

Hailee Steinfeld plays Mattie Ross, a young girl who's father is killed by Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). When Mattie realizes that the local law enforcement is not going to pursue Chaney, she decides to hire a marshal herself to bring Chaney to justice. The marshal she hires is Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges). Rooster seems to live in the back of a saloon, is drunk most of the time, and wears an eye patch.

This movie was written and directed by the Coen brothers, and it isn't as quirky as their movies usually are. Two of the things the Coens are great with is dialogue and casting. Both are excellent as usual in this movie. A great scene early on involves Mattie negotiating with a stable owner to get the money for her father's horses. It's not necessarily a funny scene, but it plays so well that I was laughing about how much I was enjoying it.

I do have a couple of minor complaints. One is that Bridges delivers his dialogue with such a gruff voice that sometimes it's difficult to understand him. Another complaint is the ending. The movie builds to what should be a climactic showdown (or two), but I felt a little let down. After the last of the bad guys were dispatched, I was thinking "that's it?"

Those are minor complaints in an otherwise great movie. Go see it, even if you aren't a fan of westerns.

Little Fockers - 2 stars (opening Wednesday)

The first movie was a great comedy. The second was funny, not as good as the first, but still enjoyable. This third movie in the series is just bad. I don't think I laughed at all the first hour. Late in the movie I started to enjoy it a little, but that was only because I have had 2 previous movies to invest in these characters, and I did care about what happened to them.

The worst scene is in the trailer. It involves Greg (Gaylord) Focker (Ben Stiller) trying to cut the turkey at dinner. He slips, cuts his hand, and sprays blood all over everyone at the table. That just isn't funny. At all.

A big problem in the movie is Dustin Hoffman. Originally Hoffman wasn't going to be in the movie. The studio refused to meet his salary, so the script was written without Bernie Focker. After they finished filming, they were under budget enough that they could suddenly afford Hoffman. So they re-shot several scenes and incorporated them into the movie. It's obvious in the movie where they changed it. Hoffman has very few scenes on screen with the other actors. Usually he is on the phone with someone, and you can tell how the original movie was the character talking to someone about Bernie, and now they are talking to him.

One thing I did like in the movie was the way Greg finally learned to stand up to Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro). The first two movies, Greg was scared to death of him. In this movie, when Jack tries to interrogate him, he just says "you know what, Jack? I'm tired, I'm not playing this game, I'm going to bed." He finally learns to stop letting Jack control him.

I can't recommend the movie to anyone, but I'm sure fans of the first two movies will want to see it.

Gulliver's Travels - 2 1/2 stars (opens Christmas day)

When we first meet Gulliver (Jack Black), he is working in the mail room of a big newspaper. He has a crush on an editor (Amanda Peet) but he is too shy to ask her out. One night when they are both working late, he walks into her office. When she asks what he wants, he chickens out and says that he is interested in writing travel pieces for the paper. Because this happens all the time in major newspapers (who have a huge travel budget even in this age of dying newspapers), she immediately hires him and sends him on a trip to the Bermuda Triangle.

When he ends up on the island of Liliput, the tiny people there think he is a scary monster. But once he saves their king's life by putting out a fire using the boy scout method, he is suddenly their hero.

There are some very funny lines in this movie. The citizens of Liliput no nothing about movies or rock music, and because Gulliver is played by Jack Black (who is also a producer of the movie), he stages performances of The Empire Strikes Back and Titanic, and he even gets the little people to dress up as Kiss and perform for him. He also creates his own version of Guitar Hero.

Overall this is a dumb movie. The jokes are juvenile and kids will like it more than adults. It did make me laugh in spots and it doesn't totally suck, but I don't ever need to see this movie again.

The King's Speech - 3 stars (opens Christmas day)

Colin Firth stars as King George VI of Britain. The King has a stutter, and it wouldn't do for the people of the empire (at that time, a quarter of the world's population) to hear their ruler stuttering. So he hires a speech therapist named Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush). Lionel's methods are unusual, and one thing that rubs the king the wrong way is his insistence that "in this office, we are equals." This just isn't done. George is a king and Lionel is a peasant.

Their scenes together are the best parts of the movie. Geoffrey Rush is always good, and as he argues with King George (or Bertie as he calls him), they start to become friends. At one point in the movie, Bertie confides that Lionel is his only real friend.

The title refers to the speech that King George gives as Britain is preparing to go to war with Germany in 1939. The speech is the climax of the movie, and it is a genuine moment of triumph when he delivers the speech without stuttering too much (that isn't a spoiler; it should be obvious how the movie will end, plus the trailer gives away the whole movie).

I enjoyed the movie, but it isn't best picture material (as many Oscar bloggers are insisting). It is a bit stuffy, and it will appeal more to people who are interested in the royal monarchy.

I Love You Phillip Morris - 3 stars (opens Christmas day)

This movie is like Catch Me If You Can, but with lots more gay sex.

Jim Carrey plays Steven Russell, a man who one day decides to come out of the closet, leave his family and his job as a policeman, and starts committing all kinds of fraud to fund a lavish lifestyle. Over the course of the movie he claims to be a lawyer, gets a job as a CFO of a medical company, escapes from prison many times, and meets and falls in love with Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor).

I enjoyed the movie, and the most incredible thing is that it's a true story. I can't believe how ingenious he was at escaping from prison, and I can't believe that his schemes actually worked.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 - 3 stars

2010-11-25T19:37:00.000-08:00

The 7th Harry Potter book was my favorite to read. The six that proceeded it were all basically setup for the events in the last book. The problem is there are a lot of boring parts of the 7th book, and they're all in the first half. And this movie is the first half of the book. By the time the movie ends, I really wanted to see the second part.

After six movies, this is the first one to drastically alter the formula. Every movie before this started at the beginning of the school year at Hogwarts. The movie covered one school year, and at the end there would be a big climax. This time, Harry, Ron, and Hermione don't go back for their final year at Hogwarts. The reason is they are going to look for the remaining horcruxes (items that hold pieces of Voldemort's soul).

Early on in the movie, the ministry is taken over by Voldemort's people, and the wizarding world becomes a fascist police state. The ministry is obsessed with getting rid of wizards who are not pure bloods (the wizarding Master Race). Harry, Ron, and Hermione have to go on the run, and they spend the entire movie hiding from the ministry.

One thing I didn't like in the movie was how much time they spend in the tent. There is a long section where the three have no idea how to proceed. They don't know where to look for the horcruxes, so they just sit around moping. This could have been shortened in the movie. If they had done that, they would have had more time to include a couple of other things from the book that were cut out.

One other complaint I have is with the dialogue. Except for a few jokes here and there, the characters only say things that advance the plot. Once in a while I wish the characters would talk about what just happened. For example, Snape becomes headmaster of Hogwarts. In the book, they talk about this when they read it in the paper. It's kind of a big deal. But in the movie, Harry hears it announced over the radio and doesn't say a word about it.

I really liked the music in this movie. This is probably my favorite HP score since Prisoner of Azkaban (the last movie scored by John Williams). The score really helps make this movie feel epic. I also liked the animated sequence that explains the history of the Deathly Hallows.

Overall I liked the movie. It's one of the better ones in the series. It just feels incomplete without the finale of the second film. July 15th can't get here fast enough.

Fair Game - 2 1/2 stars

2010-11-25T19:28:00.000-08:00

This is the story of Valerie Plame Wilson, the CIA agent who was outed by the Bush administration during the Iraq war. Most of the movie is pretty interesting. It starts out showing all the undercover work she was doing in other countries. As the administration starts asking the CIA to look into WMDs in Iraq, she starts investigating. She gets an Iraqi born American woman to travel back to Iraq in order to get information from her brother about Saddam Hussein's WMD program. Her husband, Joe Wilson, the former ambassador to Niger, goes to Niger to investigate the rumor of Niger selling yellow cake uranium to Iraq.

As the movie progresses, we see Scooter Libby questioning the CIA. As they tell him that there is no way Iraq could have WMDs, Scooter interrogates them about the possibility that they are wrong. Then comes the point where Bush announces to the country that Iraq is working on acquiring WMDs and war is inevitable. One minute the CIA is saying that they are sure Iraq has no WMDs, the next minute Bush is twisting their findings around and presenting false information as fact.

After the war starts, Joe Wilson writes an op-ed piece in the newspaper explaining the truth of the matter. In order to discredit him, the white house leaks the fact that Valerie is an undercover CIA agent. This ruins her career, and leads to the death of many of her operatives in Iraq.

The movie is very interesting when it is focusing on these facts. The problem is as the movie goes on, it starts focusing more and more on the Wilson's marriage and the strain that this is putting on them. If they had focused more on the facts of what happened, it would have been a better movie. I especially wanted more information on her operatives out in the field that were killed because of the white house's treasonous actions.

Catching up

2010-11-24T23:17:00.000-08:00

Unstoppable - 3 stars

This is a movie about a runaway train. Supposedly based on actual events (as opposed to based on a true story), a train carrying explosive chemicals is unmanned and traveling at 70 miles per hour. If they don't stop it in time, it will derail and wipe out an entire city. Denzel Washington and Chris Pine are a couple of engineers who try to stop the train.

I liked the fact that it wasn't a terrorist plot. There wasn't any crazy Dennis Hopper character who was doing this to collect a bunch of money. It was just simple human error. For the first 20 minutes or so of the movie, everyone thinks the train is simply coasting at 5-10 mph. When they find out the train is under power, everyone starts to realize what a dangerous situation it is.

This is the type of movie that Tony Scott can direct in his sleep. It is a simple action movie. No more, no less. His crazy camera style helps the movie because seeing a train over and over can get rather boring. Scott does a great job of using different shots to keep the visuals interesting.

The one aspect I could have done without was the back story. Pine and Washington each have family issues they are dealing with, and the back story is crammed in there just to try and make the characters more interesting. It feels rather unnecessary. It would be enough to know that Pine is new on the job and Washington is nearing retirement. The main plot is interesting enough.

The Next Three Days - 3 stars

Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks are a happily married couple with a 6 year old son, and they are leading a pretty normal life. One day while eating breakfast, the police barge in with a warrant for her arrest. She is accused of killing her boss, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Once her husband realizes that she is never getting out of prison, he decides to break her out of jail.

The first thing to be aware of is that the movie is almost 2 1/2 hours long. The trailers make it look like an action movie. It isn't. It's a a slow-moving drama. The movie was written and directed by Paul Haggis (Crash, In the Valley of Elah) whose movies move at a leisurely pace. That isn't a bad thing, but a lot of people will be surprised by how long the movie takes to get to the prison break.

This doesn't feel like a typical action movie where the hero commits minor crimes when he needs to without breaking a sweat. In this movie, when Crowe is doing illegal stuff for the first time, you really feel the tension. There is one sequence where he is testing a bumper key (kind of a skeleton key) inside the prison, and he is almost caught. That sequence got my adrenaline going as much as any action movie this year, because the movie had done such a good job of setting up the character and the event.

Most of the movie is set up. Crowe spends a lot of time learning how to escape from prison, how to break into a car, how to get fake IDs, all that stuff (it turns out most of that is available on youtube). When the prison break sequence starts, it is very exciting. And this is the type of movie where anything is possible. We don't know whether they will make it or not. We don't even know whether she is really innocent or not.

Burlesque - 2 1/2 stars

I liked it a lot better when it was called Showgirls.

Ali (Christina Aguilera) is a small town girl from Iowa. She arrives in LA fresh off the bus with hopes of a life in show biz. She finds a burlesque club run by Tess (Cher), and manages to work her way up from waitress to backup dancer and eventually (spoiler alert) she becomes the star of the show. Yeah, never seen that movie before.

I actually liked the movie more than I thought I would, which really means it wasn't as painful as I expected it to be. This is Cher's first movie in years and I forgot what a good actress she is. She was entertaining, but not nearly as entertaining as Stanley Tucci, who plays the gay stagehand / costume guy. Aguilera did a good job, especially considering that this was her first movie, although her character got less interesting as she became more successful at the club.

The movie wasn't made for me, and I'm not a fan of the style of music. Although Cher did sing a number late in the second act that was a pretty good song.

I could nit pick a lot of things about the movie that don't work, if I wanted to. Ali isn't singing into a mic, so there is no way the club patrons could hear her sing over the band. The stage is sometimes tiny, other times big enough for a huge production number and lots of backup dancers. I think I'll just stop there.

Faster - 3 stars

Dwayne Johnson makes his return to action movies after doing several crappy Disney movies for kids (he's going to have to make some great movies before I will forgive him for Race to Witch Mountain).

This is a very simple premise. As the movie opens, Driver (Johnson) is getting out of jail. His brother was killed and he is hunting down the people that killed him. That's it. To make the movie interesting, we get Billy Bob Thornton playing the cop who is chasing him. Thornton gets to play a complex cop, as he is a heroin addict. There is also a hit man who is after Driver. This hit man just kills people as a hobby. For his day job, he is some kind of billionaire software developer.

The movie is basically an exploitation movie with the gratuitous stuff taken out (no nudity, not much violence). It takes itself a little too seriously, but it was still enjoyable. One thing that makes it interesting is that some of the people who killed Driver's brother have changed their lives, and in some cases they have families. It reminds me of Vivica Fox's character from Kill Bill. When The Bride tracks her down, she finds a housewife with a young daughter. In this movie, when Driver finds the people who killed his brother and learns they have young kids at home, it kind of takes the fun out of revenge.

Love and Other Drugs - 3 stars

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Jamie Randall, a salesman who is lucky enough to work for Phizer right about the time Viagara comes out. Anne Hathaway plays Maggie Murdock, a woman suffering from Parkinson's disease. What a wacky couple these two make!

The movie is a romance, but it's better than the average chick flick. That basically means the characters are well developed, their motivations are believable, and there is a pretty good story here. Maggie doesn't want a serious relationship because of her disease. She only wants casual sex. At first, Jake is happy to oblige. Once he starts falling in love with her, she freaks out and tries to push him away. Then right around the time that she falls in love with him, he starts having doubts.

The movie is a comedy as well as a drama. The fun stuff involves Jamie going in to doctors offices and trying to get them to sell Phizer's drugs. Whether Prozac or Zoloft work better for depression isn't his concern. He just wants them to sell his product instead of the competition's. This is depressing as well as funny, because it's probably the way the drug company actually works. Next time your doctor prescribes a medicine, you have to wonder if it's because it is the best choice, or because he is friendly with the salesman.

Oh, and there is some nudity in this movie. In most Hollywood movies, when a couple is laying in bed after sex, the girl has the sheets pulled up to her chin. Not in this movie.

My biggest complain about the movie is the ending. Not to give too much away, but the climax has Jamie in his car, chasing down a bus that Maggie is on, ready to profess his love for her and try to win her back. Could have done without that ending.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - 1 1/2 stars

This is the third movie in the Millennium trilogy. The first movie, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, was great. Good action, good story, and a couple of really interesting characters, especially Lisbeth Salander. Lisbeth has a very troubled past (abuse, mental institutions), she is a computer hacker, antisocial, has a photographic memory, has piercings and wears her hair in crazy styles.

The second movie, The Girl Who Played With Fire, was not as good as the first. It didn't suck, but it had a disappointing climax. This third movie is just boring. Lisbeth spends the first half of the movie in the hospital, recovering from the events of the previous movie. The second half of the movie, she is on trial. I don't remember her having hardly any dialogue in the entire movie. She just sits there looking pissed off.

127 Hours - 4 stars

This is the story of Aron Ralston, the hiker who was hiking in the middle on nowhere and got his arm pinned by a boulder. After 5 days, he cut off his own arm to survive. He didn't tell anyone where he was going, but he was such a confident outdoorsman that he figured he could deal with any situation that might arise.

Director Danny Boyle (28 Days Later..., Sunshine, Slumdog Millionaire) does a great job of keeping the movie interesting. Most of the movie consists of Ralston (James Franco) in one spot, trapped by that boulder. There are flashbacks and scenes of him imagining himself somewhere else, but we keep returning to that spot. It's amazing that he was able to make that work as a feature length movie.

When the moment of truth arrives, most people will have to cover their eyes. It took Ralston close to an hour to cut off his arm with a dull, cheap pocket knife. The movie does it in under 5 minutes. It is hard to watch, especially the part when he is clipping the nerve, but by that point you are so invested in the character and you want him to get out of that canyon so much that the amputation is a great moment of triumph. It's also a credit to the director that even though we know how the story turns out, it is such a thrilling climax. It's really a movie that you won't be able to forget.

Friday, November 19

2010-11-20T00:13:00.001-08:00

Jaimee Alkinani joined us on 94.9 today. In this clip, we joke about the non-story that is the Harry Potter nude scene. We talk about the movie itself (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1) aka The Empire Strikes Back of the Harry Potter saga, we talk about 127 Hours, Marcus wonders when Despicable Me comes out on DVD, and Jaimee talks about her weight loss.

November 12, 2010 radio spot

2010-11-17T21:52:00.000-08:00

In this clip Marcus and I talk about Inside Job, Morning Glory, and Unstoppable. Also when discussing A Christmas Carol on DVD, I call it stop motion animation (it's motion capture, duh).

Morning Glory - 2 1/2 stars

2010-11-10T21:40:00.000-08:00

Rachel McAdams plays Becky, an aspiring TV producer. When we first meet her, she is working at a small morning show in New Jersey. She is expecting to be promoted to executive producer, but instead she is laid off due to budget cuts. She starts looking for a job and gets an interview at Daybreak, the morning show on IBS. Seriously. In this movie, NBC, ABC, and CBS are real networks, but the fictional network Daybreak is on is called IBS.

Becky is so full of energy that she thinks she blew the interview. In fact, she really shouldn't get the job because she basically admits defeat and walks out. She could at least finish the interview and try to save face, but she walks out. Surprisingly, she gets the call that she has the job. And since this is a movie, the phone conversation goes like this:

Jerry Barnes - "Do you think you could do this job?"

Becky - "Yes, absolutely."

Barnes - "Ok. You're hired. You start Monday."

Becky - "Thank you."

[hangs up]

I don't think anyone has ever been offered a job with that short of a conversation. The person hiring her would have a few more things to say and questions to ask. At the very least, there should be some discussion about what time she should be there.

But anyway, the show is horrible. Becky is going to turn it around, and her first day there she fires the male host Paul McVee (Ty Burrell). This movie is so all over the place tone-wise that McVee has several weird sexual fetishes. The first time Becky meets him, he asks how she feels about having her feet photographed.

Her plan to revitalize the show is to bring in Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford), a well respected newsman who hates morning shows. He is a serious old school newsman, and has nothing but disdain for morning shows that are all about puff pieces, celebrities, and cooking segments. But he is forced to do the show because of the terms of his contract.

Ford spends the whole movie being grumpy. It is funny for a while, but eventually it gets old. He does have one scene where he breaks down a little and tells Becky what will happen to her if she spends her whole life focusing on work.

The dynamic between Becky and Mike is the focus of the movie. Even though she knows what she is getting in to with him, she is still upset and surprised that he won't come around and do lame morning pieces. If she would have an adult conversation with him, they would probably be able to come to a compromise. She could explain that they are in danger of being canceled, and if he will do a few lame shows, she will let him do some serious news stories. But neither one is that smart, and that conversation never takes place.

Near the end, Becky has the chance to take a very good job at Good Morning America (her goal since she was a kid), and I won't spoil what happens, but I really disagreed with her decision. A smart person would take a good opportunity (for a lot more money), but this is a feel good movie where we need to pay off the relationship between the characters.

Oh, and there are way too many musical montages in this movie.

Due Date - 2 1/2 stars

2010-11-10T21:22:00.000-08:00

If I had never seen a trailer for this movie, I'm sure I would have liked it a lot better. But unfortunately there were two different trailers, and they were played in front of every movie I saw over the last few months. Not to mention the TV spots that played on Comedy Central all the time. Most of the funny parts were in the trailers.

The story is pretty simple. Robert Downey Jr. is an architect and he is in Atlanta for work. His wife is in LA and she is going to give birth to their first child in a week. He is flying home to be with her, and gets kicked off the plane. He left his wallet on the plane, so he can't rent a car. He is on the no fly list, so he can't fly.

Luckily he met a really strange guy played by Zach Galafinakis (who is the reason he got kicked off the plane in the first place). He rents a car and offers to drive him to LA. It's hard not to compare this to Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. You have a normal guy and a buffoon as his traveling companion.

We wouldn't have much of a movie if they got to LA with no trouble. Galafinakis is an idiot, so he doesn't realize that renting the car will max out his credit card, and he doesn't consider the consequences when he spends all his cash on pot. Downey's wife wires them some money, but she has to put it in the other guy's name (since Downey's ID is on the plane), and Galifanakis forgets that the last name he gives is just his stage name, but his real last name is on his ID.

It's hard to write a movie like this and keep it realistic. There are a bunch of solutions that never occur to Downey because we wouldn't have a movie. His wife could wire him money - I'm pretty sure Western Union has an option where if the recipient doesn't have ID, they can ask several test questions to verify his identity. He could take a bus or a train, but this is never discussed. The movie spans 5 days, and the first day, the plane should have landed in LA. Someone in LA could pick up his stuff and fly out to where he is. We learn late in the movie that his wallet isn't actually on the plane, but until he learns this, he could consider the idea.

A few other things that bugged me: Downey is supposed to be a smart guy, but as soon as he is kicked off the plane, we see him trying to steal a rental car? Really? He actually thinks he can steal a rental car from the airport and just drive it home? He shouldn't be that desperate yet, but we don't see him consider any other options or ask anyone for help. There is a scene where they drive off a freeway overpass. Everyone in the car would be killed, but of course they only have minor injuries. And Galafinakis's character is just too stupid. Anyone as dumb as he is would never be let out. They tried so hard to make his character crazy that they made him a cartoon character. In Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, John Candy made his character an annoying buffoon, but he also was a real character that we felt empathy for. Not so much in this case.

Megamind - 3 stars

2010-11-10T21:17:00.000-08:00

Just like Despicable Me, this movie is about a super villain. Megamind is born on another planet, and his parents put him in a ship and send him to Earth just before their planet is consumed by a black hole. On the way to Earth, he runs into another ship with another baby. While the other baby lands in a mansion, Megamind lands in a prison for the criminally gifted. He goes to school with the other alien, who has super powers and is admired by all the other kids. Megamind is shunned, and he realizes he might as well be a villain. Nice little message about how we are all products of our environments.

Megamind's goal in life is to defeat his nemesis, Metro Man. When he finally does, he discovers that life is very boring without his enemy. He decides to try and create a new super hero to fight. In the mean time, he has a crush on Metro Man's girlfriend, a TV reporter.

The movie is very funny, and a nice twist on the typical super hero story.

Nowhere Boy - 2 1/2 stars

2010-11-10T21:02:00.000-08:00

This is the story of John Lennon. We see him as a teenager, being raised by his aunt and uncle. He hasn't seen his mom since he was very young, but he doesn't know why he isn't living with her (didn't he ever think of asking his aunt?). Early in the movie, his friend shows him where his mother lives - just around the corner, it seems. So he gets reacquainted with his mother, and she turns him on to rock and roll. We also see he is a bit of a troublemaker, skipping school and stealing records with a friend.

The first half hour or so really bored me. There isn't much story or plot to speak of. We are just watching Lennon be a troubled youngster. At some point, his mother teaches him to play the banjo. Then he decides he wants to be a rock star and he gets a band together. We see him meet Paul McCartney and George Harrison. Here the movie gets interesting. We see him try to get the band to write originals rather than playing cover songs. But the movie kind of skims over the details.

I think the bigger of a John Lennon fan you are, the more you will enjoy the movie.

Conviction - 3 stars

2010-10-29T00:05:00.000-07:00

This is the true story of Betty Anne Waters (Hilary Swank). Her brother Kenny (Sam Rockwell) was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, so in order to free him, she gets her GED, then her college diploma, then passes the bar exam and becomes a lawyer.

Through flashbacks, we see how horrible their childhood was. Their mom had like 8 kids by 5 different guys, and she was such a bad mother that they were taken away and raised in foster homes. Betty Anne and Kenny were very close growing up, so it is no surprise that getting Kenny out of jail would be the most important thing in her life.

One complaint I had was that the movie jumped ahead in time too often. One minute she is planning to get her GED, the next minute she is already in law school. No time is spent showing how hard it was to get her GED and bachelor's degree while raising kids and working.

She has to catch a few lucky breaks and get some help from other lawyers, but what she accomplished was pretty incredible. It is very much a feel good movie, but it works.

Paranormal Activity 2 - 2 1/2 stars

2010-10-28T23:59:00.001-07:00

Not as good as the first one, but still worth seeing if you really liked the first movie.

This may be a little bit of a spoiler, but this is a prequel to the first Paranormal Activity. The people being haunted this time is a husband and wife with a teenage daughter and an infant son. The surprise is that the mom's sister is Katie Sloat, the victim from the first movie. By the end, they will transfer the demon to Katie, setting up the events of the first movie.

I thought the first movie did a much better job of ratcheting up the tension. This movie has too many sequences where nothing happens for the first half hour, then suddenly all hell breaks loose. The baby is levitating out of his crib much too early, and that almost made me laugh when I saw it.

I like a movie that does a good job of creating a sense of dread, but it's not that hard to make the audience jump. Just have a quiet scene, then suddenly a loud bang. That happens too often in this movie. Good job, you made me jump. Congratulations, scary movie.

The Tillman Story - 3 stars

2010-10-28T23:51:00.000-07:00

This is a documentary about Pat Tillman, the football player who left the NFL and joined the Army. He was killed in Afghanistan by friendly fire, but the administration lied about his death. They made up a story about how he sacrificed himself to save his platoon, and then he was used as a propaganda tool for the war.

One small problem with the movie is that if you know the story going in, there isn't a lot to learn. We know he was killed by friendly fire, and we know multiple people deliberately lied about it. We never find out for sure how far up the chain it went, but at the end we see Donald Rumsfeld and a couple generals called before congress to testify. The congressmen are the weakest cross-examiners ever, and all Rumsfeld and the others have to do is say "I don't recall."

Never Let Me Go - 2 1/2 stars

2010-10-28T23:42:00.001-07:00

This movie had a lot of potential. Set in England in the 70s or 80s (not sure offhand), it is about a group of kids at a boarding school. They seem like normal kids, and for the first while of the movie, you would think it is just a drama about these normal kids. But it turns out they are clones. Their purpose in life is to reach adulthood and donate their organs to their "originals". Some are able to donate as many as 3 times before they die.

There are 3 main characters - Kathy (Carey Mulligan), Ruth (Keira Knightley), and Tommy (Andrew Garfield). As kids, Kathy has a crush on Tommy. But as they grow older, Ruth and Tommy fall in love. If the movie didn't have the clone aspect, it would still work as a movie about these three people. But as the movie progresses, and the characters begin donating, they know their life is about to end and it becomes about that process.

The biggest problem I had with the movie is that it maintains a level of melodrama the whole time. Even when nothing dramatic is happening, the music is so overly dramatic that I became numb to it. So when a character finally does die, I felt nothing. This could easily have been a real tearjerker, but I didn't connect emotionally at all with the characters.

The Human Centipede - 3 stars

2010-10-28T23:36:00.000-07:00

A crazy German doctor kidnaps 3 people, surgically attaches them together, and creates a human centipede. How is it no one has thought of this before?

The movie works the way Hostel works. It is a good horror movie. There is a long sequence where one girl escapes from her bed and is trying to get out of the house. We don't know where the crazy doctor is, but we know at any moment he will pop up and stop her. The idea of what the victims go through is horrifying enough. Surgically attached ass-to-mouth, with pieces of their knees removed, kept in a cage or walked around the yard like a dog being trained, just crazy psychotic stuff.

I don't event want to get in to how they eat (person A first eats the food) ...

Red - 2 1/2 stars

2010-10-28T23:34:00.000-07:00

This movie should have been more fun than it was. It was almost good enough to recommend, but not quite. The tone was too inconsistent. If it was a little shorter and had a few more laughs, it would have been ok.

John Malkovich stole the movie, as he usually does. The scene at the end where he is running down the street with a bomb strapped to his chest was hilarious.

Jackass 3-D - 3 stars

2010-10-28T23:30:00.000-07:00

I get a kick out of the Jackass movies. Very few movies make me laugh so hard while at the same time looking away and gagging. It's the same kind of fun I had watching Observe & Report or Borat.

I love the stunts and pranks, but I don't like the bodily fluids so much. Anything involving shit, sweat, or semen is just sick and wrong. Although the pee cam was pretty funny.

My favorite sequence was the bit with the midget fight in the bar. Priceless.

10/8/10 and 10/1/10

2010-10-08T22:11:00.000-07:00

The Social Network - 4 stars

My favorite movie of the year so far. It has the best dialogue I've heard in a movie in several years. I love hearing smart people say really witty things. Some of my favorite lines in the movie:

"I'm six foot five, 220 pounds, and there are two of me."

"Ann, punch me in the face. Continue."

"Wait, I'm just checking your figures. 1,000 + 18,000 = 19,000. Ok, I got the same thing."

And I love when he refers to the Winkelvii.

Jessie Eisenberg is always good, but this is the best work he has ever done. Same with Andrew Garfield. He will make a good Spider Man. And if you want to see his previous best work, check out Boy A.

Let Me In - 3 stars

In some areas, this is better than the Swedish original (Let the Right One In). They don't waste time with the adults hanging out in that restaurant like in the original. And even though I have no problem with subtitles, it is always nicer to watch a movie in your native language.

But this version shows too much. Sometimes less is more. There is a scene where the vampire girl is pretending to be hurt, and a guy stops to help her. They show way too much. We see her jump on him, bite his neck, throw him to the ground, and jump around him. Bad CGI and it took me out of the movie for a few minutes. They should have cut away as soon as she struck. Also, the swimming pool scene at the end of the movie was done much better in the original.

I think Chloe Moretz is very good, but the girl in the original (Lina Leandersson) creeped me out a little more.

Buried - 3 stars

Ryan Reynolds plays a contractor working in Iraq. As the movie opens, he wakes up in a coffin buried underground. He has a lighter and a cell phone. He calls for help, but he doesn't know where he is. People who are claustrophobic may have a hard time sitting through this because the entire movie takes place in the coffin. There are no scenes outside. For 90 minutes he calls different people for help, and the kidnappers call him, and it works really well. It's like a good twilight zone episode.

Secretariat - 2 stars

Diane Lane stars as a housewife and stay-at-home mom who becomes the most famous woman in horse racing in history. Her dad dies and leaves her his farm and horses. She is lucky enough to be the owner of Secretariat who goes on to win the triple crown.

There are a number of problems with this movie. It starts off really boring. We first see the funeral of her mother, and even though we don't know the characters yet, the movie overplays the melodrama. It hits you over the head with sad music and close ups of characters consoling each other. This goes on for a good 15 minutes.

Another problem is it's not really an underdog story, which is what good sports movies should be. She owns this horse that is really fast, and that's it. She is already rich, so it's not like she will be destitute if her horse doesn't win.

I did like the horse racing footage. I don't care about horse racing, but it was exciting. The problem is there are 3 climactic races at the end of the movie. After the first one, I was ready for the movie to be over. But there are still 2 races to go!

It's Kind of a Funny Story - 3 stars

This is about a 16 year old kid who is depressed and suicidal, so he checks himself in to a mental hospital. The teenage wing is under construction, so he has to go stay with the adults. Some of them are really messed up. While there he befriends a middle aged guy played by Zach Galifianakis, who is very good. He was funny in The Hangover, but here it's nice to see him playing a real character, and playing it straight.

He also meets a cute girl his own age played by Emma Roberts. She is the only girl there his age, so how lucky is he that she is also hot, and likes him. The movie is a drama, not a comedy, and while it's no One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, it is worth seeing.

Catching up

2010-09-20T20:02:00.000-07:00

The Town - 3 stars

This is the second movie Ben Affleck has directed. It's not quite as good as Gone Baby Gone but it's still very well done. The acting is great. Jeremy Renner is so good, I never thought of his character from The Hurt Locker. I wasn't familiar with Jon Hamm before, but he was so good in this that I want to start watching Mad Men. Chris Cooper is one of my favorite actors, and I was bummed that he only had one scene in this, but as always he hit it out of the park. Pete Postlethwaite has never been better.

One complaint I had was that Affleck's character was too careless when he first met her. When she tells him about the robbery, he tips his hand that he had something to do with it. He asks too many specific questions about what she knows and what she told the FBI. If he was a normal guy, he would be more concerned with how she was coping. I thought he was so obvious that it should have occurred to her that he might have had something to do with it.

This is one of those movies where the protagonist is a criminal, but we root for him because he is the protagonist. They make it too easy by having him be the "good" bad guy. He may be a bank robber, but he doesn't like to hurt innocent people. He says he's never killed anyone. By making his friend Jim (Renner) such a psycho, it makes Affleck so much more likable by contrast. It would have been more interesting if he was a bit more of a typical criminal. Then it wouldn't have been as easy for the audience to root for him. Also, he says he has never killed anyone, yet he does a lot of shooting at police with a machine gun. This is one of those Hollywood movies where no innocent bystanders are hit by a stray bullet, and no cops are killed by gunfire. The bullets just hit the police cars so the cops take cover.

Easy A - 3 stars

Emma Stone is excellent in this. She was good in Superbad and Zombieland, but this is the movie that makes her a star. Not only is she gorgeous, but she is also hilarious. I also loved Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci as her parents. I could watch an entire movie starring them. They practically stole the movie.

My only problem with the movie is the end. I don't quite get how what she does really fixes anything for her. Just because she tells her story in a webcast that everybody watches, it's not like it's going to make everything go away. If anything, people at school will stare at her more. It just feels a little to much like the typical big Hollywood ending where some huge declaration has to happen in front of a lot of people.

Machete - 3 1/2 stars

This is exactly what Piranha and The Expendables should have been - funny. Both of those movies were too serious and had no sense of irony. They were throwbacks to a certain kind of movie, and you can't treat that kind of material as if you're making a serious drama. Machete had the right amount of blood and boobs. The audience I saw it with broke into cheers several times, and it was one of the funnest screenings I have been to in a long time.

My only complaint is it goes on a little too long. It could have been trimmed just a bit. And the ending somehow felt anti-climactic. The finale was a huge fight between Machete's army and the redneck border patrol people. It just wasn't as big and fun as the movie needed for the finale. Even the moment when Machete puts the huge machine gun on his motorcycle and flies through the air wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be when I saw it in the trailer. And the final fight between Machete and Steven Seagal was overly edited. Way too many cuts. When I see two characters fight, I really want to see more than 2 seconds at a time per shot.

The American - 2 1/2 stars

This one was a hard call. I enjoyed it, but I never want to see it again. And there were too many questions unanswered.

First of all, it's being sold totally wrong. You watch the trailer and assume that there will be some action and intrigue. Instead we are watching a character study. There is very little story here. I don't mind some unanswered questions in a movie. Most Hollywood movies tend to over explain everything, and I like it when a movie doesn't talk down to its audience. But in this case, I really wanted to know whether the woman at the beginning was in on it or not. I like to think she wasn't. He was so paranoid that he shot her without worrying about whether she was innocent or not. But how much did he like her? Did he love her as much as the woman later in the movie? The one he is prepared to run away with?

I really liked the performance by Paolo Bonacelli as Father Benedetto. He has such a great face. I wish there was more time devoted to his character. The scene where he invites Clooney to dinner ends way too soon. They don't even get into a conversation before the scene ends. Which is another problem I had with the movie. Everyone speaks in movie-speak. There are no conversations in the movie. Just lines delivered. Lines that don't reveal anything. When the dinner scene at Father Benedetto's place ends, I wondered what did they talk about for the rest of the meal? Nothing of substance is said. Same with the female assassin he makes the gun for. Very little interesting dialogue.

I had problems with the ending of the movie (spoiler warning). Did his boss hire her to kill him? If so, then what a waste of time and money. She could have killed him when they went to that river to test the gun. If she needed the gun for another job, then at what point did the boss decide Clooney needed to be killed? At what point did Clooney figure out she was going to try and kill him? He must have been pretty certain to rig the gun the way he did. And why was his boss there in the town? Just to see that the job was done? Does he do that often? It would seem like the whole point of hiring an assassin to kill someone is so that you don't have to be anywhere near the crime.

I don't mind some things left unanswered, but it just seemed like too much in this movie.

Going the Distance - 3 1/2 stars

Once again, another movie that looks like a typical chick flick but is actually a very good movie. And very funny. Drew Barrymore has never made me laugh like she does in this movie. Justin Long is usually funny, though.

Most movies involving a romance have to have some kind of obstacle for the couple to overcome. A long distance relationship is a good idea, and is also made believable. In this movie, they talk about how expensive a plane ticket is, and that's why they don't see each other more. In a lesser movie, they would fly back and forth with no mention of the cost of a ticket.

I also liked that it was R rated. They took pretty good advantage of the R rating as far as the language goes. The phone sex scene was pretty funny and realistic. The movie didn't wimp out like, I don't know, American Pie 2 (very lame phone sex scene). They didn't take advantage as far as nudity goes, though. Even though Drew Barrymore bared all in Playboy years ago, she refused to go nude in this movie. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I wanted to see her naked, (well, I'm not just saying that) but it would have made sense in a few scenes. The sex and shower scenes were carefully choreographed and filmed to hide her naughty bits. Justin Long did go nude, but it was kind of ridiculous. He is in a spray tanning both, and even though he is in the room alone, he covers himself with his hands. Which does lead to a funny scene later when he has to explain why he has a hand print on his ass. But that's one of those things that takes me out of a movie. If a character is hiding their nakedness from no one but the camera, it just reminds us that there is a camera there.

My biggest complaint is that the obvious answer is he should quit his job and move to San Francisco to be with her. We do see him calling around, trying to find a similar job to the one he has in New York. But no real discussion of him changing careers. We know she went to college to be a reporter, and that is a good career (the decline of newspapers notwithstanding). But no explanation of how good his job is. He says he doesn't like it, and we know he doesn't make tons of money. She has the better career and he shouldn't expect her to abandon everything she has worked for to be a waitress.

The Last Exorcism - 2 stars

If it weren't for the last 5 minutes, I would have gone 3 stars. The style isn't original anymore. From The Blair Witch Project to Cloverfield to Paranormal Activity, the idea of making a movie look like it was found footage shot by someone with a video camera has been done. But that doesn't mean people shouldn't still use it if they have a good story to tell. In this case, Patrick Fabian is very good as Cotton Marcus. He has performed many exorcisms, and he now wants to expose them for the fraud that they are. He explains that they are basically a placebo. People think they are possessed, they think they need an exorcism, he performs that exorcism, and they think they are healed.

He takes a camera crew with him so they can witness the exorcism. He also shows all his tricks to the crew. This is a fun scene. During the exorcism, the movie keeps cutting back to him at his van showing how he makes the smoke come out of the cross, or how he uses his rings to shock the girl. Then it seems like she is really possessed, and he is freaked out. Is she faking, or has he for the first time encountered a real possession?

The reason the movie fails is the ending. I don't know what a fitting ending would have been, but this reminded me way too much of Hot Fuzz. You remember the scene where the entire town is wearing robes and conducting some sort of secret ceremony? The audience I saw this with was laughing during the finale, which is never a good sign for a horror movie.

Takers - 2 1/2 stars

I liked this movie more than I thought I would, but I still can't quite recommend it. Hayden Christensen still can't act, and the filmmakers apparently didn't get the message that it's no longer cool to have characters walk away from an explosion. Especially if they are walking in slow motion.

Get Low - 3 stars

Who hasn't been curious to know what people would say about them at their own funeral? It's a morbid thought, but it is interesting to think about. Who would talk, and what would they say? In this movie, Robert Duvall plays a hermit who really wants to know the answer. He decides to hire a funeral director (Bill Murray) to give him a funeral party. It's just like a funeral, but he will be there alive to witness it.

Duvall has never given a bad performance, and this is enjoyable as usual. One complaint I had was that the entire movie, we know Duvall has a secret. When we finally find out what it was, it isn't anywhere near as horrible as we think it is. Well, it is horrible, but we are led to believe that he did something horrible. He may have been the cause in a way, but he didn't hurt anybody. He tried to stop it. His character has been in hell for so many years that I assumed he had killed a child or something.

Waking Sleeping Beauty - 1 1/2 stars

This is a documentary about Disney. Specifically about the era of 1987 - 1995 when Disney started making good animated movies that made a lot of money. Movies like The Little Mermaid, Aladin, The Lion King. The movie talks a lot about the rivalry between Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg.

It was fun watching this movie and remembering those movies. I remember when The Little Mermaid came out, I was in junior high. I was at the point where I was not into cartoons anymore. But people were saying I should go see The Little Mermaid. It was better than a cartoon. I ended up seeing it and liking it. Same with Beauty and the Beast, then Aladin, then The Lion King. It seemed like each movie was a big event movie, and you might as well see it so you would know what everyone was talking about.

The movie explains how the animation studio was losing money and almost shut down. Then they managed to turn the ship around with The Little Mermaid and everything was gravy. One problem with the movie though is it doesn't really expose any dirty secrets. Everything in the movie is pretty much either common knowledge or easy to find on wikipedia. I didn't think it exposed anything shocking. At the end of the credits, I understood why. The last title card said "Distributed by Disney." Of course. To get the real, whole story it would have to be independent of Disney. The film makers weren't going to make the company look too bad.

And the story ends in 1994 or 1995. No mention of how the movies started going downhill (Mulan, Hurcules, Pocohantas, or Tarzan), how they focus on horrible live action movies now, and the only good stuff that comes out of Disney these days is by Pixar. No recap of what happened over the last 15 years and where the people ended up. I especially wanted to hear about Katzenberg founding Dreamworks and how Dreamworks animation competes with Disney, or about Eisner firing Roy Disney. Overall, the movie kind of bored me.

Restrepo - 2 1/2 stars

This is a documentary shot in the toughest part of Afghanistan. The filmmakers spent a year with soldiers at the most dangerous outpost there, and this movie really gives you a good sense of what life is like for them. There is no story to this movie, it's just observing daily life at the outpost. It's a noble film, but I don't recommend it.

Animal Kingdom - 4 stars

One of the best movies of the year, and my favorite movie from this year's Sundance Film Festival. Jacki Weaver is going to get the Oscar for best supporting actress next year for her chilling portrayal of the matriarch of an Australian crime family. Like a mother bear protecting her cubs, we can tell she would kill anyone without hesitation to protect her sons.

There is one kill near the end of this movie that was really haunting. Most of the time, when a character is killed in a movie, it doesn't get to me that much. It's part of the story, and it's dramatic. But this one is just gut wrenching. You realize it's going to happen before it happens, and the whole time I was just squirming in my seat. A great movie.

Soul Kitchen - 2 1/2 stars

This movie started off well. It's about a Greek restaurant owner living in Hamburg, Germany. He has a girlfriend who is off to Beijing, so they talk on the phone and attempt to have Skype sex. He hires a crazy chef who has no use for customers who don't appreciate his fancy cooking. He has a brother who is on work release from prison, needs a job, and has a gambling problem.

The movie is very enjoyable for the first hour or so. But then it gets unrealistic and becomes almost slapstick. It starts with the scene at the cemetery. His girlfriend is attending her grandmother's funeral with another guy, and he loses it. He screams "No!" at the top of his lungs, charges them, and ends up knocking the coffin into the grave. Of course the coffin opens and grandma's arm falls out. Then his brother shows an incredible lack of sense and manages to lose the restaurant. Then he comes up with a lame scheme to get the restaurant back.

If the movie had kept the same tone throughout, I would have liked it a lot more.

I'm Still Here - 1 1/2 stars

This movie should have come out a year ago, back when everybody was talking about Joaquin Phoenix and his meltdown. It's really pretty boring. If the whole thing was really faked, it should have resulted in a better movie. Sacha Baron Cohen and Larry Charles should have given Casey Affleck some pointers.

The best part of the movie is when they show Phoenix's appearance on Letterman, and you can see that on youtube for free.

Kisses - 3 stars

A nice little movie about an Irish boy and girl who run away from home for a day. They have some adventures in the big city and at one point narrowly avoid being kidnapped or worse. Most of the movie is lighthearted and fun, but it gets dark when we learn about the girl and her uncle. The kids are good natural performers and the movie is a fun adventure, but I wouldn't recommend it for kids.

The Switch - 3 1/2 stars

2010-08-19T23:04:00.000-07:00

I didn't expect to like this movie much going in. It sounds like a pretty wacky premise: Wally (Jason Bateman) and Kassie (Jennifer Aniston) are best friends, but we can tell he likes her. He just made a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in the friend zone. Kassie decides she wants to have a baby, so she finds a donor and plans her insemination. On the night of the deed, Wally accidentally drops the cup in the sink and the seed goes down the drain. Thinking quickly, he replaces it with his own. Oh, and he is so drunk that he doesn't remember it the next day.

Kassie moves away, and we cut to 7 years later. She moves back and Wally meets her (and his) son. Bit by bit Wally starts to notice how much the kid acts like him. He also develops a really good relationship with the kid. Eventually he figures out what happened, and his dilemma is whether to tell Kassie or not. If he does, she will probably hate him and he will never see the kid again. If he doesn't, he can be in the kid's life but he will never be more than Uncle Wally. Of course he should just pursue Kassie, marry her, then tell her down the road that he is really the father. Or not.

In a lesser movie (a typical chick flick), this wouldn't work. The character's actions wouldn't be believable. But it works in this movie. The writing is better than average and Bateman does a really good job with it. For one thing, it is believable that he would be to chicken to tell Kassie how he really feels about her. His character is very well established as neurotic and insecure.

One thing I didn't like was the movie had the typical confession scene. Any time a character has a secret, he will end up telling the other person in the most public and embarrassing setting possible. Remember The Proposal? Sandra Bullock decides to come clean during the wedding and tell all the assembled guests that their relationship is a sham. She couldn't have done it right before?

Even the public confession scene works because Bateman pulls it off so well, and it makes sense that he would confess when he does. He tries to tell her a few times, but he doesn't get the chance, and something happens that kind of forces his hand.

Jeff Goldblum is entertaining as always as Bateman's co-worker. Juliette Lewis is also very funny as Kassie's best friend. But the standout performance is the kid Sebastian (Thomas Robinson). He is adorable, and I found myself really rooting for Wally and Kassie to end up together. Not so much for them, but because I wanted Sebastian to be happy and have Wally as his dad.

Usually I'm pretty cynical and this isn't my typical movie, but the movie is that good.

Playground - 3 stars

2010-08-19T22:57:00.000-07:00

Playground sure means well. It's about a very serious topic - the child sex trade. Do you know what the number one destination is for underage prostitution? Think it's Thailand or some place like that? Wrong, it's the United States.

This movie presents a lot of troubling information. We learn an awful lot about the victims and perpetrators of child sexual abuse. The movie focuses on one particular girl named Michelle. Michelle has had an incredibly difficult life, and she disappeared for a long time. The filmmakers set out to find her. Eventually they do, and she tells us in a very matter of fact way about the horrors she experienced. We hear from other victims, and we even hear from a couple of former pimps.

One injustice the movie brings up is the fact that girls from other countries brought here are treated as victims. Girls from America who go through the same things are criminalized.

The problem with the movie is it's too unfocused. It tries to cover too much ground, and it really started to feel like it was repeating itself. I always try to separate the documentary from the subject. Obviously this is important information, but the movie is not put together very well. But I'm still going 3 stars because it isn't boring and I learned a lot.

But this movie will really make you mad and depressed.

Wild Grass - 2 stars

2010-08-19T22:52:00.000-07:00

This is a weird French movie. It's original but rather boring.

A woman is out shopping for shoes, and her purse is stolen. Later, an older man finds her wallet abandoned in a parking lot. He thinks about returning it to her, and we hear his entire inner monologue. He keeps playing out these different scenarios in his mind of what it would be like if he called her up. He goes through her wallet, discovers things about her, and starts getting very interested.

He finally turns the wallet in at the police station. They call the lady and when she picks it up, she asks who returns it. She would like his name and number, so she can thank him. When she calls him and says thanks, he asks if that's it, doesn't she want to meet? She says no, and he gets pissed. Then he starts stalking her. He leaves messages on her answering machine every night, he leaves notes for her in her mailbox, and he even slashes her tires at one point.

She tells the cops, they ask him to leave her alone, and he does. But then something funny happens. She starts to get interested in him, and she starts calling him.

From there some unexpected things happen. I really liked the performance by Andre Dussollier as Georges Pallet. He has a great voice and a great way of delivering his lines. The story kept me interested because I was curious to see what happened next, but at the same time it bored me too. Interesting stuff happened, but the characters did not react the way normal people did. It somehow took the impact out of everything.

And what the hell is up with the ending? Strangest, most random last line I've ever heard in a movie.

Life During Wartime - 3 stars

2010-08-19T22:41:00.000-07:00

Todd Solondz makes very interesting and original movies about unhappy people. His movies are never uplifting but there is a kind of black humor to them. I found myself laughing out loud several times here, but usually I was saying WTF at the same time.

This is a sequel to Happiness (1998), but with all different actors. Which is a pretty interesting idea. I wonder if he tried to get the same cast together, how many would have come back? Maybe he figured better to have all different actors rather than some of the same and some different.

This was not as uncomfortable as Happiness was. There is some talk about pedophilia, but the conversations are not as bad as they were the first time around.

The kid toucher from Happiness (now played by Ciaran Hinds) just got out of jail. His young son thinks he is dead, because his mom (Allison Janney) didn't want to tell him the truth. She is dating a nice guy who falls for her way too quickly. Joy is married to a crazy, creepy guy and she keeps seeing the ghost of her former boyfriend (Paul Rubens). Late in the movie she goes to stay with her sister (Ally Sheedy).

It seems every Todd Solondz movie has a young kid who asks way too many questions, and seems very mature for his age. In Storytelling, the kid hates the family maid so much he convinces his dad to fire her. In Happiness, the kid asks his dad all kinds of sexual questions. In this movie, the kid is preparing for his Bar Mitzvah. At one point, his mom tells him in too graphic detail how excited she got when her new boyfriend touched her.

This is a good movie, but definitely not a feel good movie.

Eat Pray Love - 1 1/2 stars

2010-08-14T12:39:00.001-07:00

Julia Roberts plays Liz, a woman who is just not happy. When we meet her, she is in Bali doing research for a magazine article she is going to write. She meets an old palm reader who tells her that she will have 2 marriages, one short and the other long, she will soon lose all of her money, and she will come back again and teach him English.

Six months later, she is in New York. She is married to a nice guy played by Billy Crudup. She seems happy until she hears him say that he wants to go back to school and get his Master's degree. Suddenly she doesn't want to be married to him anymore. Now, maybe she hasn't been happy for a long time. Maybe they shouldn't have gotten married in the first place. But the movie makes her look like a total bitch. She wants out of the marriage just because her husband wants to go back to college? Oh, and the scene where she prays is terribly hammy. Praying in movies is never done well, and it really made me cringe in this movie.

She tells her friend (Viola Davis) that she longs to travel. She has a box she keeps under her bed, and in the box she keeps travel brochures of all the places she wants to visit. Sounds nice, except 6 months ago she was in freaking Bali! Most of us have never been to Bali. She gets to travel for her job, yet she is complaining like someone who works for minimum wage and has never left the continental US.

She starts seeing a young actor (James Franco), and she isn't happy with him either. The movie doesn't give us any insight into what the problems are. We don't really see them having an honest conversation about their relationship. She just decides that in order to be happy and get balance in her life, she needs to travel the world. Her plan is 4 months in Italy, 4 months in India, and 4 months in Bali.

We also see her telling her friend about how she has been in and out of relationships since she was a teenager. She has never had time to discover herself. How about take some time off from dating? It's not that hard. Someone asks you out, you say no. Just be single for a while.

There is no discussion about how she is going to pay for her trip. She gets divorced and we get the impression that her husband is getting at least half of everything she owned (she was the bread winner of that family). So how in the world can she afford to not work for a year and travel the world? This should have been addressed, but this is one of those movies made by rich people who can't comprehend an existence where you don't always have enough money for everything. It reminds me of that Jennifer Lopez movie where she works as a dog walker and lives in a million dollar condo.

She goes to Rome and moves into a place run by a fussy little Italian lady. There is a funny sequence where she shows Liz how to heat the water on the stove and pour the water into the bath tub. With less than an inch of water, Liz says "There isn't enough water." The woman responds "Everything that is important gets clean." Funny, but they never reference that again in the movie. I wondered if Liz ever figured out how to fill the tub properly. Every night she is going home and not able to take a real bath?

There isn't a good sense of time in the movie. I thought we were on her first or second day in Rome when she revealed she had been there two weeks. She suddenly discovers how good Italian food is, and she starts eating like she is in heaven. This was shot badly. For one thing, we get numerous close ups of Roberts shoving spaghetti into her huge mouth. I kept having to cover my eyes. Has anyone else noticed that there is something really wrong with her lips? Too much collagen, too many face lifts, something.

She makes friends while she is in Rome. She does this quite easily. You get the impression that she could live the rest of her life in Rome and be happy. At one point she tells her Danish friend that she shouldn't worry about a few extra pounds and she should just eat whatever she wants. Yeah, isn't it nice to hear a skinny actress say that? Of course by the end of her trip she is as skinny as she was at the start. On her last day there, she has an American Thanksgiving dinner with her friends and their family. The movie was boring up to this point, but the dinner just stops the movie dead.

The next segment of the movie finds her in India. She goes to work and live in an ashram. I guess she had enough of the touristy stuff in Italy and now she wants to work on the spiritual stuff. While she is there, she meets a Texan played by Richard Jenkins. Here the movie gets interesting for a bit, because Jenkins is so good. At first he only speaks to her in bumper sticker lingo, and he refers to Liz as Groceries (because he notices how much she likes to eat).

There is a scene where he tells Liz about his past and why he is there. This is probably the best performance I have seen Jenkins give, and after The Visitor, that is saying something.

Then she goes to Bali to study with that palm reader she met at the beginning. Here, she meets a Brazilian played by Javier Bardem. The scene where his son leaves to go back to college is maybe the best thing I have seen Bardem do.

Overall, the movie bored me to tears. There was at most 45 minutes of interesting story, good acting, and characters I cared about (mostly thanks to Jenkins and Bardem). The problem is the movie is 133 minutes.

The Expendables - 2 stars

2010-08-14T11:22:00.001-07:00

What a missed opportunity. When Sylvester Stallone announced he was doing another Rocky movie several years ago, everybody groaned. Rocky V was bad enough, we don't need another one. I figured he hadn't had a box office hit in so long (anyone remember Driven or Get Carter), he was desperate to get out of movie jail. Thankfully he delivered Rocky Balboa, the best Rocky movie since the first one (maybe not as much fun as Rocky IV, but still).

Then he said he was doing another Rambo movie. Ok Sly, don't get carried away. Well, Rambo ended up being really good too. One reason I liked it was he wasn't afraid to do a hard R-rated violent action movie. Hollywood doesn't seem to make as many adult oriented action movies anymore. Everything is PG-13 (shame on you, Die Hard franchise). So to see Rambo shooting the evil Burmese army to fleshy pieces was very liberating.

Then he announces The Expendables. I'm pretty sure I remember hearing he was going to assemble a great cast of action favorites from the 80s. Well, the movie is kind of a throwback to 80s Cannon films, but the cast? Let's take a look.

First, the Expendables are a mercenary team. Since they are the good guys, they only take jobs where they kill bad guys. So, mercenaries with a heart of gold. They are played by:

Stallone - obviously. The goatee reminds me a little of Get Carter, which just makes me remember how much better the Michael Caine original was.

Dolph Lundgren - good choice. This is what I was hoping for. Nice to see Lundgren get a high profile movie again. It's been a while since Masters of the Universe or Universal Soldier.

Jet Li - wait, what? I like Jet Li, but he doesn't remind me of 80s action movies. I never heard of him until Lethal Weapon 4 (1998). So I guess Stallone is going for action heroes of yesterday and today or something.

Jason Statham - I don't like Statham, but I must be in the minority, because people keep going to see Transporter and Crank movies.

Randy Couture - who?

Terry Crews - again, who?

Not as impressed by the cast as I thought I'd be. Mickey Rourke is also in the movie, but he isn't one of The Expendables. Apparently he used to be. Now he just hangs around his garage/bar/tattoo parlor and paints guitars while he gently weeps.

The bad guys are Eric Roberts and Steve Austin. Roberts is appropriately hammy and Austin is huge and seems like he would survive a shotgun blast to the chest. And as for the Bruce Willis / Arnold Schwarzenegger cameo? It shouldn't have been in the trailer. It would have been a nice little surprise. But Schwarzenegger is in the movie for like 2 minutes. Willis for 3 minutes. And the scene is pretty pointless. Willis is the guy who hires them for a job. Schwarzenegger is a rival mercenary who also wants the job. But as soon as he shows up, he says "I'm too busy anyway. Give this job to my friend here." Then why did you show up in the first place? Just so the crowd would say "ooh, it's Arnold!" Although that does make me look forward to the day when Arnold quits politics and goes back to making movies.

The problem with such a big ensemble is there are too many characters to get to know. Stallone gets plenty of screen time but we learn nothing about his back story, except he and Rourke fought lots of battles together back in the good old days. Statham is the only one given any kind of side story. He has a girlfriend who has left him for another guy. There are two scenes about this side plot, and they stop the movie cold. I didn't care at all. Just get back to the main story.

The movie opens with The Expendables going to rescue hostages from Somali pirates. Which isn't that exciting. Right before the shooting starts, Statham's cell phone goes off (this is in the trailer). It's supposed to be funny, but it's just awkward. They kill the pirates and rescue the hostages, with Lundgren using a gun so big that it rips them in half. Then Lundgren decides that for fun, he is going to hang one of the pirates. This is where Stallone and crew draw the line. Blowing them to pieces is ok, but hanging them is going too far. I guess it's because they are disarmed and maybe it's against their code to kill an unarmed enemy, but this causes them to fire Lundgren from the team. I wonder if Lundgren will show up later as their enemy?

Then there is a half hour of nothing. Just scenes of them saying badly written dialogue. I was really getting bored. This isn't what Stallone promised us. This is no fun.

Finally we get some action again. The big job is to go to an island nation somewhere in Latin America and kill the evil dictator there. Stallone and Statham go to check it out. There, they meet the required lady in distress. She is their contact, and they will have to leave in a hurry, leaving her behind. The scene where they get away is pretty freaking awesome. They have this plane, see, and it has guns in the front, and drops gasoline from the rear, and ...

Stallone and Statham decide the job is too dangerous and they aren't going to take it. But Sly can't stop thinking about that woman they left behind, and he decides he needs to go rescue her. And this leads to the type of scene I hate. Sly is going back, but he's going back by himself because it's too dangerous to involve the others. So what does he do? That's right, he goes and tells them. "Guys, I'm going back, but I'm going alone." My response would be "Then why are you here? Why haven't you gone yet?" But of course this is just so the guys can say we're going with you.

The final 20 minutes of the movie have some very cool action. It is almost worth the price of admission. Terry Crews has a very cool (and loud) gun, and there is a great sequence of him shooting soldiers in this hallway, and we see it from a distance. That was a cool bit.

The music is way over dramatic throughout the movie. There is a part where they are planting charges all over the general's palace. The entire time, the music is swelling and the audience I saw it with started to chuckle. It went on too long.

Overall, the movie is a disappointment. The escape with the plane and the final battle are the only cool things in the movie. The rest is pretty boring.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World - 3 1/2 stars

2010-08-14T11:13:00.000-07:00

This movie is from Edgar Wright, and if you've seen Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, or Hot Fuzz, you have some idea what to expect. The movie is full of pop culture references.

The movie is basically set up like a video game. The hero, Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) likes this girl. In order to date her, he will have to defeat her 7 evil exes. Kind of like a video game where you have to defeat a boss at the end of each level.

The rules of physics do not apply in this movie. Each time he fights an evil ex, suddenly everyone can fly and has powers. The funniest part is when he defeats an enemy, they vanish and leave coins behind.

Some random things I liked in the movie:

The Universal logo in 8-bit Nintendo graphics and sound.
Brandon Routh's vegan powers, how he loses them, and what happens then (the Vegan Police!).
When Routh punches a girl, he punches the highlights out of her hair.
Everything Kieran Culkin says.
The Seinfeld bit.
Alison Pill (the drummer of Pilgrim's band, and one of his exes).

My only complaint about the movie is it's too long. I was ready for it to be over with about 20 minutes to go. They did a good job of making each battle with an ex different, but by the time he got to the final one, I was about done.

Holy Rollers - 3 stars

2010-08-14T11:04:00.000-07:00

Jesse Eisenberg plays a youth from an Orthodox Jewish community. He is very devout in his faith, set to marry a pretty local girl (a marriage arranged by their fathers), and he hopes to be a Rabbi one day. His family doesn't have much money (their stove only works half the time), and he is helping the family by working with his father.

One day his friend offers him a job carrying medicine. He flies into New York with the medicine, and he is told it will help people. His friend says if customs or police start asking questions, "just act Jewish." I guess the police never think to suspect people in Hasidic Jewish attire of smuggling.

It turns out what he is carrying is not medicine but Ecstasy. As religious as he is, this doesn't seem to bother him too much, and he keeps doing it. He even starts recruiting other Jewish people to carry the drugs for them, with the explanation that they are carrying medicine that will help people.

The movie doesn't focus too much on the dangerous side of the drug trade. The drama in the movie comes from Eisenberg's relationship with his father. His father figures out pretty early that he is up to no good, and the journey he goes through by the end of the movie is pretty heartbreaking.

It isn't a great movie, but it is enjoyable. Eisenberg is a good actor and he carries the movie easily.

Solitary Man - 3 1/2 stars

2010-07-11T16:53:00.000-07:00

Michael Douglas plays a pretty despicable guy, but since he's Michael Douglas, we still root for him. For a while, anyway.

He used to be a very successful businessman. He owned car dealerships all over New York City and he was even on the cover of Forbes magazine. We never get the details of exactly what happened, but he engaged in some illegal scam, got busted, and his reputation was ruined. He was also married to Susan Sarandon before he started cheating on her with every hot, young girl who would say yes to him.

Now he is trying to re-start his business. He is also dating Mary Louise Parker. His downward spiral starts when he accompanies her daughter to her college interview. As the movie progresses, he is having trouble paying his rent and he is ruining every relationship in his life because he can't stop sleeping around.

As bad as his character is, the other characters are pretty refreshing. Susan Sarandon knows what a scumbag he is, but she is still there for him when he needs someone. Jenna Fischer plays his daughter, and she does a great job standing up to him. You can tell how hard it is for her to cut off his access to his grandson. Danny Devito also gives a nice understated performance as a friend from college. There is a nice scene near the end where Douglas tells Devito that he doesn't know how to be a good friend to anybody.

Jessie Eisenberg has a few scenes as a college kid who gives Douglas a tour of the college. They form a friendship and Douglas gives him advice about girls. I would have liked a bit more with the two of them. Eisenberg is shy, doesn't have a girlfriend, and Douglas is going to help him out with that. But by the end of the movie, he has also screwed that relationship up.

I think this is the best work Michael Douglas has done since Wonder Boys, and it's nice to see Douglas and Devito together in a movie again.

4 weeks, 13 mini reviews

2010-07-09T18:07:00.000-07:00

Why haven't I posted in several weeks? I'll get back to you on that. Here are my thoughts on the movies that came out since my last post.

Despicable Me - 3 stars

Funny. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. Would you believe me if I said I liked it more than Toy Story 3?

Predators - 2 1/2 stars

I almost went 3 stars, but I didn't like it quite enough to recommend it. It's not bad, it has some good action and good Predator killings. But at the end, I was underwhelmed. And it really didn't need the little twist at the end.

Ondine - 3 1/2 stars

A sweet little movie. Colin Farrell is a fisherman in Ireland, and he catches a woman in his nets. She doesn't remember her name or where she is from. He takes her out fishing with him, and when she sings, he catches fish. He and his daughter begin to suspect that she may be a mermaid or some other magical creature (a selkie).

The performances were really good here. Just like with In Bruges, I like seeing him act in his Irish accent, instead of pulling off an American one. The only problem is the third act of the movie. It changes drastically in tone, and while I don't think it was a bad way for the story to go, I just didn't like the movie as much when it became a thriller.

Winter's Bone - 4 stars

Loved this movie. Really chilling. Set in the Ozark mountains, Jennifer Lawrence plays Ree Dolly. Ree is 17 and is raising her younger brother and younger sister. She also takes care of her mom, who is practically comatose all day long. Her father cooks meth, he was out on bail, and they haven't heard from him in weeks. One day the sheriff shows up and tells Ree that her dad put their house and land up for his bond. If he doesn't turn up for court, they will lose the house.

The movie consists of Ree going around to various houses and asking about her dad. It seems like everyone in the area is involved in the drug trade, and everyone tells her to stop snooping. The people she talks to are scary. They could care less about Ree and her siblings, but you get the impression that everybody knows something. Despite all the threats, she keeps investigating and, well, I won't say any more. Go see it.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse - 2 1/2 stars

Each Twilight movie is better than the previous one, which really means more tolerable than the last one. There were things I liked in the movie, but I can't recommend any movie where the characters have the same conversation over and over and over and over ...

I'm sick of Edward, but Jacob keeps the movie interesting. The actors do the best they can with some really bad dialogue, and the relationships are starting to grow on me just a little. The scene with the three of them in the tent is pretty good drama.

Grown Ups - 3 stars

Much better than I thought it would be. The trailers didn't look very funny to me, but for once, they put the worst jokes in the trailer rather than the best jokes. The funniest stuff was when the actors were just sitting around giving each other a bad time. The chemistry these actors have in real life is up there on the screen, and it's easy to forgive the dumb stuff in the movie.

Except a few things. For one, why do the adults pee in the water at the water park? No set up, no explanation. Any adult who pees in a public pool should not be allowed out in public.

Also, what water park would ever have a zip line like the one in this movie? One has to hold on to the handle and fly over concrete, 30 feet up, before they're over water. The first time a kid rode the zip line, they would let go early, fall to the cement, and break both their legs. The place would be sued. It's hard to get into a scene when it would never take place in the real world (when the rest of the movie is supposed to, I mean).

Trash Humpers - 0 stars

This is the worst thing I have ever seen. I was only able to watch 40 minutes then I had to turn it off. I think Harmony Korine is doing some kind of experiment with this movie, like he is trying to see how long audiences will put up with it. I'm not even going to try to explain the movie. Just make sure you never see it.

Mother and Child - 3 stars

Annette Benning plays a woman who got pregnant as a teenager and gave the child up for adoption. Now, she is single and caring for her elderly mother. She has all kinds of emotional issues. When a co-worker (Jimmy Smits) takes an interest in her, she bites his head off any time he tries to talk to her. The most interesting thing about her behavior is that she knows how messed up she is. Right after yelling at Smits, she berates herself for being so stupid.

Meanwhile, the child she gave up for adoption is played by Naomi Watts, who is climbing the corporate ladder by sleeping with her boss. Currently, that boss is Samuel L. Jackson. I can't remember ever seeing Jackson get a love scene, so good for him, I guess.

Another sub plot follows a couple (Kerry Washington and David Ramsey) who can't have kids of their own, so they are looking to adopt. I liked the characters and I liked the movie. Well, not all the characters are likable, but they are interesting. The movie is kind of depressing at times, because of all the self destructive things some of them do.

Knight and Day - 3 stars

I don't care how crazy Tom Cruise is in real life. I like him as an actor, and it's been a long time since he has played a character like this. He is having a lot of fun playing Ethan Hunt mixed with some other crazy character I can't think of at the moment.

By the end of the movie, once we understand what has happened, it doesn't really hold up well. For one thing, I think he killed a lot of good guys throughout the course of the movie. But if you don't think about stuff like that or how unrealistic it is, you should enjoy it.

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work - 3 stars

Joan Rivers is insecure and obsessed with making money. Shocking! But seriously, this documentary is pretty interesting. A nice bit of behind the scenes of showbiz. It doesn't make me like her or hate her any more than I did before, but you have to respect how hard she works. Although if she didn't live such a glamorous lifestyle, she wouldn't have to work so hard. The secret to happiness: live below your means.

Jonah Hex - 1 1/2 stars

Boring. Megan Fox - why was she even in this movie? Her character adds nothing to the story. John Malkovich - I can't remember the last time he gave such a lazy performance.

Toy Story 3 - 3 stars

That's right, only 3 stars. Sorry, I don't get all the love for this movie or the franchise. It's good for what it is. If I had kids, I would much rather take them to see this than most other kid-friendly movies Hollywood puts out. But I have a hard time getting into animated movies. The movie made me chuckle, but I rarely laughed out loud. And no, I did not cry at all. Didn't bring a tear to my eye in the slightest.

That being said, if you loved the first 2, you will love this one. It was well made. Liked it, didn't love it.

Please Give - 2 1/2 stars

Not bad, could have been better. Oliver Platt and Catherine Keener buy antiques from the family of the recently deceased, mark them up 500% and sell them at their store. They also live next door to a 90 year old lady, and they can't wait for her to die so they can take her apartment. They have a daughter who is so spoiled that she can't believe her mom won't buy her a $200 pair of pants.

Get Him to the Greek - 2 1/2 stars

2010-06-16T21:18:00.000-07:00

This movie had a lot of potential. It started out really funny, and for a while they are just throwing out jokes left and right. Not every one works, but enough work that I was laughing constantly.

Then the movie gets weird, and then the movie gets serious. And it doesn't work anymore. Too much sentimentality just doesn't make this kind of movie better. It kills the momentum.

Jonah Hill and Russell Brand are both best as supporting characters, but Jonah Hill is the lead in the movie. He actually does a decent job of playing the straight man, but I think the movie would have worked better with a better actor that we can relate to. He plays Aaron, a guy working at a record company run by P. Diddy. Diddy is really enjoying playing the asshole, and he gets some laughs, but his scenes should have been trimmed just a bit.

Aaron's job is to pick up rock star Aldous Snow (Brand) and take him from London to the Greek Theater in LA in time to play a big concert. Snow is a typical rock star - all he wants to do is drink, do drugs, and get laid, and he doesn't really care if they make it to LA in time. Meanwhile Aaron's live-in girlfriend Daphne (Elisabeth Moss) works round the clock shifts at the hospital. She is offered a good job at a hospital in Seattle, and when she suggests they movie there, she and Aaron fight and split up.

There are some great cameos in the movie, including Rick Schroder, Lars Ulrich, and Tom Felton. Colm Meaney plays Aldous's dad, and he is always good. Aziz Ansari is very funny, but he is only in the first 10 minutes of the movie. I think the movie should have been about 15 minutes shorter, and they should have lost the stuff regarding Aldous's emotional issues (he is lonely and depressed, and that's why he acts the way he acts). If the movie had stuck with the funny, it would have been worth recommending.

Friday, June 11, 2010

2010-06-13T23:40:00.000-07:00

RUSH: Beyond the Lighted Stage - 4 stars

Full disclosure: Rush is one of my favorite bands of all time, and I play in a Rush tribute band. That being said, this is a great movie. This documentary has everything one would want to know about Rush. Even if you don't like Rush, you will find something to like in this story about three guys who wrote and recorded the music they wanted to record, and stayed true to their own musical vision (despite the interference of too many keyboards in the '80s).

The A-Team - 3 1/2 stars

I never watched the show, so I don't know how faithful the movie is to the show. But the movie was a lot of fun. The action was great and there was a lot of humor.

The Karate Kid - 2 1/2 stars

Not bad, but it should be called The Kung-Fu Kid. It also doesn't need to be 2 1/2 hours long. It is not quite as good as the original, but there is some good kung-fu fighting in it.

Splice - 3 stars

2010-06-05T15:11:00.000-07:00

Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley are research scientists. They are splicing DNA together to try and come up with new species. They're doing this to try and find new hormones to fight diseases.

One day, they create something really strange. I'm not going to tell you if it is part human. I'm not going to say whether it gets smart, and starts killing people. I'm also not going to tell you if it gets horny ...

If you like creepy horror movies, you may like this. It's more unnerving than it is scary. I enjoyed it, but I don't think I would watch it again.

Killers - 1 star

2010-06-05T15:00:00.000-07:00

No wonder Lionsgate didn't want any critics to see this before it came out. It is so bad that I can't believe anyone wrote the dialogue and expected an audience to take it seriously.

Ashton Kutcher is a CIA assassin. He meets Katherine Heigl in Nice. He is on a job, she is on vacation with her parents, played by Tom Selleck and the great Catherine O'Hara. They meet, go out on a date, then the movie cuts to three years later. They are married, and he has quit being an assassin. He never did tell her he was an assassin, probably because he read the script and there wouldn't be a movie if he had.

The plot kicks into action when people show up trying to kill Kutcher. Of course his wife it there, and yes there is a scene where has asks her to go get his gun, and she carries it like it's a dead animal and she is afraid to touch it. Even though her dad shoots skeet in his backyard, she apparently has never handled a gun before.

I actually laughed at the movie, but that was because I saw it with friends, and we talked over it the whole time, MST3K style. There is no way to take it seriously. Kutcher and Heigl are horrible in it. The only one who actually gives a good performance is Catherine O'Hara, and it's because she knows how bad the movie is, and she is having fun with it. Tom Selleck gets some laughs too.

When the end comes and we find out who was trying to kill him and why, it is about the dumbest reveal I have ever seen. It's at this moment that I realized the filmmakers were trying to make their own version of a crappy Roger Corman b-movie.

It really sucks.

Harry Brown - 2 1/2 stars

2010-06-05T14:42:00.000-07:00

Michael Caine plays Harry Brown. His daughter died long ago, and his wife dies early in the movie. So he is all alone. His only friend is Leonard, played by David Bradley, Filch from the Harry Potter movies. Leonard and Harry meet at the local pub and play chess regularly.

The apartment complex where they live is run by a violent gang. When the gang kills Leonard, Harry goes all Charles Bronson and starts killing them off.

Michael Caine is always good. I don't think he has ever given a bad performance. Unfortunately the movie lets him down. One thing I didn't like was the look of it. It was kind of dark. Even when scenes take place in broad daylight, it had a dark look to it. The movie also didn't have any humor. I always say that it doesn't matter what kind of a movie it is, it needs to have a little humor.

I also didn't like the end. This isn't the kind of movie that needs a surprise reveal at the end. I'm OK with a character turning out to be a relative of one of the gang members. I can buy that that character doesn't want his relative to be killed, even though he knows the kid deserves it. But I don't buy it when that character is suddenly a ruthless killer himself.

Overall, the movie is dark and depressing. I can't really recommend it.

The Square - 3 1/2 stars

2010-05-31T09:48:00.000-07:00

Raymond and Carla are having an affair. They are both married, but neither one is really happy in their marriage. One day, Carla comes home to find her husband with a bag full of money. He doesn't notice her come in, and she secretly watches him hide it.

The next time she is with Ray, she tells him about the money. She wants him to go to her house and steal it. He says no, we would never get away with it. Her husband would figure it out. The only way to get away with it, he says, is to burn the house down so her husband thinks the money burned up.

There is the perfect plan. They hire a guy to burn the house after Carla grabs the money, and from there, everything that can go wrong does go wrong. Ray is the worst guy to commit a crime. The first time he meets the arsonist, the guy tells Ray to "wipe that guilty look off your face." Complicating the matters is the fact that Ray is also taking kickbacks at his construction job. It's hard to keep the lies straight when you are trying to get away with several things at once.

There isn't a lot of humor in this movie, but one thing I thought was funny was the way their dogs became so close. Ray and Carla each bring their dogs with them sometimes, so the dogs become friends. So when Carla's dog gets out of their yard, he runs to the river, swims across the river, and ends up at Ray's door.

The movie reminds me of Blood Simple or A Simple Plan. A very good directorial debut from Nash Edgerton, who before this was one of the top stuntmen in Australia.

The Secret in their Eyes - 4 stars

2010-05-28T15:06:00.001-07:00

Probably my favorite movie of the year so far. This movie won the Oscar for best foreign language movie this year. The movie is from Argentina and it is subtitled.

The movie is about a retired criminal court worker named Benjamin Esposito (Ricardo Darin) who is writing a novel about a 25 year old rape and murder case that still haunts him. The movie flashes back and forth between present day and when he first started investigating the case. His assistant Pablo Sandoval (Guillermo Francella) spends most of his time in his favorite bar, getting drunk, getting into fights, and getting kicked out by his wife. He is really good in this movie.

Benjamin is in love with his supervisor, but she is engaged to someone else. Their relationship is the heart of this movie.

If this were a typical movie, we would learn who killed the girl at the end, or we would learn who was behind it all or something like that. In this movie, we learn who did it before the halfway point. There is a surprise at the end, but it is no twist ending. It makes sense considering what we know about the characters.

This is the movie I recommend you see over the Memorial Day weekend.