Friday, 8/7/09

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra - not screened for critics
screw you, Paramount. Transformers 2 sucked. Get over it.

Julie & Julia - didn't see
sorry, I had a conflict that night.

A Perfect Getaway - 3 1/2 stars
This movie was a hell of a lot of fun. Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich play a newlywed couple who go to Hawaii for their honeymoon. They plan to hike in to this hidden beach that's only accessible by foot or kayak. As they hike in, they will come across two different couples. One is played by Timothy Olyphant and Kiele Sanchez. She is hot and has no problem skinnydipping, and he is a former Navy SEAL or special forces or something. The other couple is played by Chris Hemsworth and Marley Shelton. They are kind of creepy people.

Zahn and Jovovich learn that the day before, a newlywed couple was murdered in Honolulu, and a man and woman are suspected. So most of the movie is them wondering whether the killers are Olyphant and Sanchez, or Hemsworth and Shelton.

You may figure out who the killer is early on, but that doesn't matter. The movie is a lot of fun. Olyphant and Zahn are very funny together. Zahn's character is a screen writer, and Olyphant is always giving him ideas for movies, or telling him how much he knows about screenwriting.

When the third act kicks in (once we know who the killers are), it becomes a different kind of movie. A lot of thrillers are letdowns, and this is not one of those. There are some chase scenes and a few moments of brutal violence. I enjoyed it and I think you will too.

The Cove - 4 stars
The best documentary I have seen this year, and one of the best movies of the year. In a hidden cove in Japan, thousands of dolphins are captured every year. A few are sold off to SeaWorld-type places around the world, and the rest are slaughtered. The local fishermen make a lot of money from this and they don't want the rest of the world to know it. They go to extreme lengths to make sure no outsiders see the slaughter.

Richard O'Barry and his team are determined to get in there and get footage of the killing. The steps they take to pull this off are as exciting as in any caper movie. They even compare their team to an Ocean's 11 team.

Richard O'Barry has spent his life trying to atone for what he did to dolphins. See, he is the one who trained the dolphins who played Flipper in the '60s TV show. He says because of the success of that show, people all over the world want to see dolphins do tricks and that has lead to the industry of dolphins in captivity. O'Barry has a history of trying to free dolphins from all sorts of environments. When someone asks him how many times he has been arrested, his answer is "This year?"

No matter how you feel about dolphins, from the casual observer to the most fanatical animal rights champion, it's impossible not to be moved by this movie. And it's a really exciting caper movie as well.

O'Horten - 1 1/2 stars
Odd Horten a 67 year old train engineer in Oslo, Norway. He is about to retire. The movie follows him around as he gets locked out of his own retirement party, almost gets arrested wandering around the runway at the airport, goes for a skinny dip, visits his sick mother in an old folks home, and lets a guy drive him around with his eyes closed. It is weird, original, and kind of boring. There wasn't much story here, and it didn't do anything for me.

Burma VJ: Reporting From a Closed Country - 3 stars
This is one of those documentaries where the subject is so important, you wish the movie were better. In 2007, thousands of monks protested against the government in Burma (Myanmar). As the monks took to the streets, hundreds of thousands of citizens joined them. This movie shows actual footage of the protests. The footage was shot secretly and then smuggled out of the country, because the government won't allow reporters in.

As you watch the protests get stronger and stronger, you wonder how in the world could it have failed? How could the government have fought against this many people who seemed so unafraid? Well, if you know your history, you know that nothing has changed in Burma. This movie does not have a happy ending. But it is important to know what is going on in other countries. The footage is captivating and it really makes you glad to live in America.