A few more reviews

I don't always manage to see every movie that comes out each week. Over the weekend I caught up on a few movies that have come out over the last month or so:

She's Out Of My League - 3 stars

I've seen this kind of movie before, but usually the roles are reversed. Guys are usually portrayed as confident and it's the girl who is unsure of herself and thinks she is unattractive (usually these girls are played by smoking hot actresses like Amy Adams). This time, it's the guy who has no self esteem. The guy is played by Jay Baruchel. When he starts going out with Molly (Alice Eve, the hot, naked Australian chick from Crossing Over), his friends can't believe it. "Why is she with you? She's a 10 and you're a 5." Every unattractive guy likes to think he can hook up with a really hot chick like that, but it rarely happens.

I had the same problem with this movie as I do with all those chick flicks, where we are supposed to believe a girl that looks like Katherine Heigl can't get a guy. Baruchel isn't really a 5. He keeps saying he is 'out of shape'. If he looked like Jonah Hill, I would have believed him. He is tall and skinny. Maybe skinny isn't as good as muscular, but it's a lot better than fat.

Oh, and it's also funny how every girl in the movie is as good looking as Alice Eve is, but since the script says she is the hottest girl around, she is the one that turns heads, while nobody notices her sister or business partner.

I still liked the movie a lot. There were some really funny things that happened. My favorite scene is where his friend helps him, well, shave his balls. Yeah, that happens. Another great scene is when he meets her parents for the first time. Hilarious.

I have to point out another thing I didn't like. In every romantic comedy, there seems to be a big secret or plot device that is on the poster, and it's the tag line of the movie. And all those movies follow the same formula, so that means at about the 90 minute mark, one character has to find out the other character has been keeping something from him/her, get mad and never want to see the other person again. Then the next 15 minutes or so is the person being depressed, and by the end they are happy and together again (usually this finale involves a character proclaiming their love in front of a lot of people, or chasing someone down in an airport).

Well, in this movie's case, the tag line is "how can a 10 fall for a 5?" This is a recurring theme in the movie, and it comes to a head when Baruchel's character can't help but blow up at Molly - "how can you like me? I'm a 5, you're a 10, and there can't be more than a 2 point differential in a relationship?" When this fight happened, I didn't believe it at all. By this point, they were happy together and this shouldn't have been such an issue. He may have joked about it with her, but he wouldn't have actually been mad at her. Especially when they were in their underwear and about to have sex for the first time. I didn't believe this scene at all, and this is the point where I got mad at the movie. Why does every romantic comedy have to follow this formula? The movie was going along great up until this point.

Anyway, I recommend the movie.

North Face - 3 stars

Set in 1936, this is about 4 mountain climbers (2 German, 2 Austrian) who attempt to climb the most dangerous rock face in the Alps - the Eiger. This is one of the few movies where some characters are Nazis, but that isn't really central to the plot. We identify with the protagonists and forget their nationality. Most of these characters have no love for Hitler, they just happen to be German citizens in the 1930s.

The mountain climbing stuff is really intense. I have no idea how they can do it. Not only are they climbing a vertical cliff where they have to hammer pitons into the rock and use rope to survive, but they have to spend the night part way up the mountain. No room to pitch a tent. They just get in their sleeping bags, and tie ropes around themselves to keep from rolling off the mountain. Just imagine if you woke up and forgot where you were at first, only to come to and realize you were inches away from a 1,000 foot drop.

I have a big question about this movie though. There is a train that runs thru the mountain. Every so many meters, there is a tunnel branching off the main tunnel the train runs thru, and these tunnels open to the Eiger's face. At one point, the climbers get stuck and the people on the ground take the train into the tunnel, go to the end of one of these branching tunnels, and they are close enough to talk to the climbers.

Didn't the climbers know about this? It seems their girlfriend is the only one who figures out that they may be able to rescue them thru this tunnel. You would think the climbers would know about these tunnels. They know how dangerous the climb will be. You would think they would have backup plans in case they ran into trouble ("If we get stuck in this area, we just make our way over to this opening here, and we can get into the tunnel and take the train back.").

Oh well. The movie was pretty exciting. They deal with harsh weather and as they get frostbite, they look really bad. They did a great job with the makeup. Their faces got so bad that I couldn't tell which character was which.

The movie also makes me really want to take a vacation to Germany. Specifically, I want to visit the village that is right at the base of the Eiger mountain.

A Prophet - 2 1/2 stars

This movie has a 90 on Metacritic and a 97% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It swept the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. But I didn't like it that much. I'm very much in the minority.

It's 2 and a half hours long, and it feels like it. It's about a guy named Malik El Djebena who goes to prison for 6 years. While inside, he is ordered by Cesar (Niels Arestrup) to kill a guy. This guy is going to testify against somebody, and Cesar is like the Godfather in prison. You do what he says, or you die.

So Malik does what Cesar orders him to do. He becomes a member of the gang and eventually becomes Cesar's most trusted adviser/servant. He also manages to get his own drug running business going inside and outside the prison.

There's some good stuff in this movie. I really liked Arestrup's performance as Cesar. But there is also a lot going on that is kind of confusing. It's one of those movies that makes you go to imdb.com to read about what happened in this scene or that scene. It is definitely an exciting and original movie, but I can't really recommend it to most people. There is not a lot of humor and I found it difficult to relate to the characters. It kind of bored me. Sorry. Just like Waltz With Bashir, I don't see what the big deal is.

Hubble 3D - 4 stars

This doesn't really count, since it wasn't screened for critics and it's only playing at the Clark Planetarium. It's a great 40 minute documentary about the last mission to repair the Hubble space telescope. The shuttle launches in it are great and the movie does a good job of putting you inside the mindset of the astronauts. You feel their excitement at what they are doing, and as you learn how difficult their mission is, you feel their stress. At one point an astronaut compares his job to doing brain surgery while wearing oven mitts.

There is a great sequence towards the end where we see some great shots of distant galaxies. The camera moves closer and it gives you the feeling like you are flying thru space. It's really incredible. Highly recommended.