Gentlemen Broncos - 2 stars
This is probably the dumbest movie I have ever seen, but I laughed a lot. I remember the first time I saw Napoleon Dynamite, I hated it. I think I laughed once. But over the years, it has grown on me. Now whenever I come across it on HBO, I watch it for a while. So who knows. Maybe Gentlemen Broncos will grow on me. But I doubt it.
One problem is the lead actor: Michael Angarano. I hated him in Sky High, I hated him in Forbidden Kingdom, and I hated him in this. He is a very boring actor. Another problem was too many gross-out gags (vomit and shit).
As ridiculous as Napoleon Dynamite was, it was believable. But in this movie, Benjamin (Angarano) writes a science fiction story so bad that a retarded 5th grader could have written a better story. This movie wants us to believe that everyone from his friends to a famous and successful novelist (played by Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords) think it's brilliant.
I did laugh, so some of the jokes worked. But I just can't respect this movie.
A Christmas Carol - 2 1/2 stars
Why do we need another version of A Christmas Carol? And why is Robert Zemeckis so in love with computer animation? Please go back to making live-action movies again, Zemeckis.
On the one hand, the movie is very faithful to the original novel. The dialogue is taken directly from the novel and isn't dumbed down at all. But then there are scenes where Scrooge rides a rocket into the atmosphere or shrinks to the size of a mouse and is chased thru pipes. Just because you can do things in an animated movie that you can't in a live action movie doesn't mean you should.
It doesn't suck, but it is kind of boring.
The Men Who Stare at Goats - 2 1/2 stars
Another disappointing movie. All the best parts are in the trailer. The movie ultimately doesn't amount to anything. And people need to stop saying that Jeff Bridges is in "Lebowski mode". If you think that his performance in this is anything like his Lebowski performance, you need to go back and re-watch The Big Lebowski. Just because he is playing a hippie ...
The Fourth Kind - 3 stars
This is a tough one. On the one hand, it scared the crap out of me. Putting the actual footage and the recreated footage side by side is an interesting and original idea. But on the other hand, once I learned that it's not based on a true story at all, I felt ripped off. The movie shouldn't say that it's based on a real case and that we're watching actual footage if it's all a lie. Or maybe it should. I don't know. It made for a better experience when I was watching the movie.
Ong Bok 2 - didn't see
Motherhood - didn't see
The Box - didn't see
Coco Before Chanel - didn't see
Friday, November 6, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Friday, 10/23
New movies opening today:
Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant - 2 1/2 stars
This didn't totally suck (ha!), but it wasn't very good either. These two high school students go to a freak show circus (bearded lady, snake boy, ect.) and they meet a vampire there. The vampire is played by John C. Reilly. The vampire has a big, colorful spider. This is convenient. One of the boys is into spiders, the other is into vampires. The spider-loving kid steals the vampire's spider, which ends up biting his friend. The kid goes back to the vampire to apologize and ask for the antidote. The vampire says ok, I'll give you the antidote if you will become half vampire and be my assistant.
Reilly is a good vampire, but there are also bad vampires. Before the movie ends, there will be a fight between the good guys and bad guys. This movie is based on books aimed at 12-year old boys, and that's the audience for this. It's ripping off a bunch of other fantasy stories. In some parts, it seems like it's trying to make fun of vampire movies. Other times, it takes itself way too seriously. They leave the ending wide open for another movie, and if they never make part 2, I will not be disappointed.
A Serious Man - 2 1/2 stars
I had high hopes for this. I love most everything the Coen Brothers have done. Raising Arizona, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men, those are my favorites. This is better than Intolerable Cruelty, but not by much.
You will recognize a lot of the Coen Brothers' sense of humor. It made me chuckle, but not laugh out loud. Which is ok. Sometimes I prefer the low-key humor. I dug the movie for the first half hour or so. But at some point, I felt like there was no narrative. There is no point to the story. And they didn't use Richard Kind very well. He was given almost nothing to do.
I have heard people say this is one of the Coen Brothers' best movies. I have also heard people say that The Big Lebowski is not funny, so what do they know?
Amelia - 1 1/2 stars
Now this was a missed opportunity. I don't know much about Amelia Earhart except that she was a pilot and disappeared while trying to fly around the world. They could have made a really interesting movie about her life story. Instead they focus on her marriage and, well, that's about it. We get a couple of her historic flights in the movie, but we don't learn much. I would have much rather sat through a documentary about her.
Oh, and this was not a good performance by Hilary Swank. I didn't like the way she said her dialogue and she smiled way too much. There were far too many shots of her and Richard Gere with these big cheesy grins on their faces. Ugh.
Astro Boy - didn't see
Adventures of Power - didn't see
Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant - 2 1/2 stars
This didn't totally suck (ha!), but it wasn't very good either. These two high school students go to a freak show circus (bearded lady, snake boy, ect.) and they meet a vampire there. The vampire is played by John C. Reilly. The vampire has a big, colorful spider. This is convenient. One of the boys is into spiders, the other is into vampires. The spider-loving kid steals the vampire's spider, which ends up biting his friend. The kid goes back to the vampire to apologize and ask for the antidote. The vampire says ok, I'll give you the antidote if you will become half vampire and be my assistant.
Reilly is a good vampire, but there are also bad vampires. Before the movie ends, there will be a fight between the good guys and bad guys. This movie is based on books aimed at 12-year old boys, and that's the audience for this. It's ripping off a bunch of other fantasy stories. In some parts, it seems like it's trying to make fun of vampire movies. Other times, it takes itself way too seriously. They leave the ending wide open for another movie, and if they never make part 2, I will not be disappointed.
A Serious Man - 2 1/2 stars
I had high hopes for this. I love most everything the Coen Brothers have done. Raising Arizona, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men, those are my favorites. This is better than Intolerable Cruelty, but not by much.
You will recognize a lot of the Coen Brothers' sense of humor. It made me chuckle, but not laugh out loud. Which is ok. Sometimes I prefer the low-key humor. I dug the movie for the first half hour or so. But at some point, I felt like there was no narrative. There is no point to the story. And they didn't use Richard Kind very well. He was given almost nothing to do.
I have heard people say this is one of the Coen Brothers' best movies. I have also heard people say that The Big Lebowski is not funny, so what do they know?
Amelia - 1 1/2 stars
Now this was a missed opportunity. I don't know much about Amelia Earhart except that she was a pilot and disappeared while trying to fly around the world. They could have made a really interesting movie about her life story. Instead they focus on her marriage and, well, that's about it. We get a couple of her historic flights in the movie, but we don't learn much. I would have much rather sat through a documentary about her.
Oh, and this was not a good performance by Hilary Swank. I didn't like the way she said her dialogue and she smiled way too much. There were far too many shots of her and Richard Gere with these big cheesy grins on their faces. Ugh.
Astro Boy - didn't see
Adventures of Power - didn't see
Monday, October 5, 2009
Catching up
Movies that opened in SLC the last couple of Fridays:
Zombieland - 3 1/2 stars
The best comedy about zombies I've seen since Shaun of the Dead. Ok, there aren't that many funny zombie movies. But it was really good. I laughed out loud many times, and I think I even applauded a couple of times.
This has been a great year for funny horror movies. Drag Me To Hell, Jennifer's Body, and now Zombieland.
The Invention of Lying - 2 1/2 stars
I'm surprised this wasn't better. Co-written and co-directed by Ricky Gervais, it should be 10 times better than it is.
It takes place in a world where nobody can lie. They don't even get the concept, because no one ever says anything that isn't true. They don't even have fictional movies. All the movies are documentaries.
Gervais plays Mark Bellison, a writer of boring documentaries. He becomes the first (and only) person to tell a lie in history. Once he discovers this power, he creates god. Apparently religion doesn't exist in this world, so when he says there is a man in the sky and you go to heaven when you die, people are blown away by the idea.
One problem I had is this: just because you can't lie doesn't mean you have to say every single thing that comes to mind. People say the most hurtful things without pausing to consider how the other person will feel. You would think that they would still have a little decency and wouldn't want to hurt people's feeling so often, but no.
Also, even though Mark has been living in this world his whole life, he acts surprised and hurt every time someone says something cruel to him. You would think he would be used to it, but he acts surprised when his secretary tells him she hated every minute of working for him, or his date tells him she is dreading the date. I know why Gervais took this route. It's because you need reaction shots in comedy. Someone says something funny, good. But then you cut to someone's reaction of the funny think, and it's hilarious. I once heard a director say "don't forget your reaction shots." So even though it doesn't make sense for Mark to be surprised, he has to look shocked for the comedy to work.
And it does work. I don't want to give the impression that the movie isn't funny. It is. I laughed a lot during the first half hour or so. But at some point, the movie quits trying to be funny and wants to be serious. Even though I never liked Jennifer Garner's character at all, Mark is in love with her. It's not much of a spoiler to tell you that eventually they end up together. This is that kind of movie. But I didn't want him to end up with her. She isn't a good person, and if he had any self respect, he wouldn't pursue her.
There are some great cameos. My favorite is when Stephen Merchant and Shaun Williamson (Barry from EastEnders) show up. If you don't know who they are, you need to put Extras on your Netflix queue right now!
Anyway, The Invention of Lying is funny enough to see if you like Ricky Gervais, but if you aren't a fan of his, I wouldn't start there. Watch Extras or Ghost Town instead.
Whip It - 3 stars
Ellen Page plays Bliss Cavendar. Bliss is in high school and her mom wants her to be a beauty queen. Bliss doesn't want to be one, but she has no idea what she wants to do, so she goes along with it. One day, she learns about roller derby and she is immediately hooked. She tries out for the team and makes it, but of course she doesn't ask her parents' permission. Instead, she sneaks out for practice and events. By the end of the movie, her parents will have found out about it, she will fight with her best friend, she will have had her first boyfriend, and (spoiler alert) her parents will end up at 'the big game' at the end of the movie. Of course by this point they will be all supportive.
This is yet another version of Girls Just Want To Have Fun / Dirty Dancing. But I don't mind a formula movie if the movie is entertaining enough. Also, they make the characters and their actions believable enough that I didn't see the formula playing out on the screen. Nobody ever says or does something just because it's in the script. I believed all the characters and I was able to relate to them.
This is Drew Barrymore's first effort as a director and she did a great job. She even managed to make the roller derby matches easy to follow. I hope she keeps directing.
Surrogates - 1 star
This really sucked. It's a good idea, especially when we live in an age where people can spend their entire social lives online using avatars. You have no idea whether the person you are chatting with online is a hot 18 year old girl, or a creepy old guy. In Surrogates, we see that is a reality in their world. A hot chick is flirting with a guy at a club, and after she is killed, the police discover her operator is a creepy old fat guy.
But pretty much everyone else in the movie is who they claim to be (except for the main bad guy). Wouldn't more people choose to have surrogates that, I don't know, don't look exactly like them?
The movie is full of bad dialogue and bad acting. The idea is great, but they have no idea what to do with it. Instead of being an interesting science fiction story, it is just a by-the-numbers action movie. And the big 'twist' is obvious from the start.
Big Fan - 2 1/2 stars
I saw this at Sundance earlier this year. It's an interesting character study and there are some great bits of dark humor. But the movie really drags, especially in the second half. I just didn't enjoy it much, and I remember wanting the movie to end an hour in.
The Baader-Meinhoff Complex - 3 stars
This is about a terrorist organization in Germany in the 60s and 70s. It did a good job of showing how the group came together and introducing the main characters. There are some great action sequences. But there were times when the movie felt like it was missing some scenes. The movie was 150 minutes and according to imdb.com, the TV version is 180 minutes. I would like to see that version. Maybe then it wouldn't feel so choppy.
There is also quite a bit of nudity. I don't know if I have ever seen a movie that opens with a scene at a nude beach. Good times!
It Might Get Loud - 2 stars
I was disappointed with this movie. As a guitarist myself, I was very intrigued to see what would happen when Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White got together to talk, and to jam. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't spend enough time with them. A big portion of the movie is devoted to each guitarist individually. We see them going to the places where they wrote and recorded songs, we see footage of them performing, we learn their life stories. This is not a bad thing, but it's not what I wanted out of the movie. I wish the back stories had been taken care of in the first half hour so the rest of the movie could have been the three together.
I really wanted to learn more about technique. Jimmy Page was a pioneer of hard rock. He was also a session player, so I'd imagine he knows music theory and he can read sheet music. The Edge is not technically proficient, but he is a genius with guitar effects. And Jack White is an anomaly. He would rather play a slightly out of tune guitar from K-Mart than a Strat or Gibson. He is something of a purist.
That stuff, I already knew. I wanted to learn more. We don't get much more. The Edge plays his guitar without effects, then turns the effects on to show how much of his sound is the effects. Great, but how about demonstrating what each effect does? How about having his tech help explain how his rig is hooked up? What is the signal chain from guitar to amp?
One of my favorite parts is when The Edge is showing the other guys how to play a certain song. He shows them a chord and calls it a C. Jimmy Page says something like "are you sure that's a C?" I wanted a lot more of that. I want to know what each guitarist knows that the others don't. I want to see how their very different styles and background would clash and mesh with each other. As someone who knows music theory, and knows what it's like to try to explain it to guitarists who are self taught, I wanted to see Page lose a little patience with the other two.
The pacing was bad. It would cut from Page to Edge to Page to White way too often. Just when we were seeing something interesting, it would suddenly cut to another guy.
This movie should have been so much better. I think I would only recommend it to people who are huge fans of one (or all) of the three. And I wish they had picked different guitarists. How about Steve Vai? Eddie Van Halen? Joe Satriani? Steve Morse?
Capitolism - A Love Story - 3 1/2 stars
As usual, an entertaining Michael Moore documentary. I don't know enough about the subject to know how much he says is true, but I do know there is a problem in this country. The top 1% own like 95% of the wealth. There is no middle class anymore. Only the rich, the poor, and the really poor. Even though this isn't a 4 star movie, I think everyone should see it. People need to get really mad at their elected officials. Somehow we need congress to start working for us again instead of working for corporations.
There are a lot of interesting things this movie points out. Dead Peasant insurance, where a company takes out an insurance policy on employees, and makes the company the beneficiary. I didn't know that Reagan's top advisor was an executive from Merry Lynch. Explains why he was so into trickle down economics.
The opening of the movie is brilliant. It's a history lesson on the fall of the Roman empire. But juxtaposed with the footage of the Romans (not sure what movie the footage is taken from), their senate and the Caesars is footage of American politicians. It's no big surprise that there are parallels between where our country is going and why the Roman empire fell, but it's fascinating to see it depicted that way in the movie.
Moore shows how great everything (supposedly) was in the 50s. Then Reagan came along, and he was basically a spokesman for corporations. Moore argues that American is now a "plutonomy" (plutocracy). We see some amazing footage of FDR proposing a second Bill of Rights. We see a state representative so upset by crooked home loans that she says when the bank forecloses on your home, you should refuse to leave.
There are so many good things in this movie. Everyone should go see it and get angry.
Bright Star - 3 stars
I didn't expect to like this at all. I was pleasantly surprised. Its about the 19th century poet John Keats and his relationship with Fanny Brawne. We know it's going to end badly, since he died at the age of 25.
My favorite parts of the movie were the fights between Fanny and Charles Brown, Keats' best friend and writing partner. Brown doesn't want Keats distracted by a girl, so he is always trying to get her to leave them alone. The dialogue is so well written, it is a pleasure to hear the way they insult each other.
The first half was surprisingly funny, but the second half dragged for me. I still enjoyed it enough to recommend it. The funny thing is, it's PG, and it's directed by Jane Campion. Usually her movies have a bit of full-frontal nudity in them (The Piano, Holy Smoke, In the Cut).
Zombieland - 3 1/2 stars
The best comedy about zombies I've seen since Shaun of the Dead. Ok, there aren't that many funny zombie movies. But it was really good. I laughed out loud many times, and I think I even applauded a couple of times.
This has been a great year for funny horror movies. Drag Me To Hell, Jennifer's Body, and now Zombieland.
The Invention of Lying - 2 1/2 stars
I'm surprised this wasn't better. Co-written and co-directed by Ricky Gervais, it should be 10 times better than it is.
It takes place in a world where nobody can lie. They don't even get the concept, because no one ever says anything that isn't true. They don't even have fictional movies. All the movies are documentaries.
Gervais plays Mark Bellison, a writer of boring documentaries. He becomes the first (and only) person to tell a lie in history. Once he discovers this power, he creates god. Apparently religion doesn't exist in this world, so when he says there is a man in the sky and you go to heaven when you die, people are blown away by the idea.
One problem I had is this: just because you can't lie doesn't mean you have to say every single thing that comes to mind. People say the most hurtful things without pausing to consider how the other person will feel. You would think that they would still have a little decency and wouldn't want to hurt people's feeling so often, but no.
Also, even though Mark has been living in this world his whole life, he acts surprised and hurt every time someone says something cruel to him. You would think he would be used to it, but he acts surprised when his secretary tells him she hated every minute of working for him, or his date tells him she is dreading the date. I know why Gervais took this route. It's because you need reaction shots in comedy. Someone says something funny, good. But then you cut to someone's reaction of the funny think, and it's hilarious. I once heard a director say "don't forget your reaction shots." So even though it doesn't make sense for Mark to be surprised, he has to look shocked for the comedy to work.
And it does work. I don't want to give the impression that the movie isn't funny. It is. I laughed a lot during the first half hour or so. But at some point, the movie quits trying to be funny and wants to be serious. Even though I never liked Jennifer Garner's character at all, Mark is in love with her. It's not much of a spoiler to tell you that eventually they end up together. This is that kind of movie. But I didn't want him to end up with her. She isn't a good person, and if he had any self respect, he wouldn't pursue her.
There are some great cameos. My favorite is when Stephen Merchant and Shaun Williamson (Barry from EastEnders) show up. If you don't know who they are, you need to put Extras on your Netflix queue right now!
Anyway, The Invention of Lying is funny enough to see if you like Ricky Gervais, but if you aren't a fan of his, I wouldn't start there. Watch Extras or Ghost Town instead.
Whip It - 3 stars
Ellen Page plays Bliss Cavendar. Bliss is in high school and her mom wants her to be a beauty queen. Bliss doesn't want to be one, but she has no idea what she wants to do, so she goes along with it. One day, she learns about roller derby and she is immediately hooked. She tries out for the team and makes it, but of course she doesn't ask her parents' permission. Instead, she sneaks out for practice and events. By the end of the movie, her parents will have found out about it, she will fight with her best friend, she will have had her first boyfriend, and (spoiler alert) her parents will end up at 'the big game' at the end of the movie. Of course by this point they will be all supportive.
This is yet another version of Girls Just Want To Have Fun / Dirty Dancing. But I don't mind a formula movie if the movie is entertaining enough. Also, they make the characters and their actions believable enough that I didn't see the formula playing out on the screen. Nobody ever says or does something just because it's in the script. I believed all the characters and I was able to relate to them.
This is Drew Barrymore's first effort as a director and she did a great job. She even managed to make the roller derby matches easy to follow. I hope she keeps directing.
Surrogates - 1 star
This really sucked. It's a good idea, especially when we live in an age where people can spend their entire social lives online using avatars. You have no idea whether the person you are chatting with online is a hot 18 year old girl, or a creepy old guy. In Surrogates, we see that is a reality in their world. A hot chick is flirting with a guy at a club, and after she is killed, the police discover her operator is a creepy old fat guy.
But pretty much everyone else in the movie is who they claim to be (except for the main bad guy). Wouldn't more people choose to have surrogates that, I don't know, don't look exactly like them?
The movie is full of bad dialogue and bad acting. The idea is great, but they have no idea what to do with it. Instead of being an interesting science fiction story, it is just a by-the-numbers action movie. And the big 'twist' is obvious from the start.
Big Fan - 2 1/2 stars
I saw this at Sundance earlier this year. It's an interesting character study and there are some great bits of dark humor. But the movie really drags, especially in the second half. I just didn't enjoy it much, and I remember wanting the movie to end an hour in.
The Baader-Meinhoff Complex - 3 stars
This is about a terrorist organization in Germany in the 60s and 70s. It did a good job of showing how the group came together and introducing the main characters. There are some great action sequences. But there were times when the movie felt like it was missing some scenes. The movie was 150 minutes and according to imdb.com, the TV version is 180 minutes. I would like to see that version. Maybe then it wouldn't feel so choppy.
There is also quite a bit of nudity. I don't know if I have ever seen a movie that opens with a scene at a nude beach. Good times!
It Might Get Loud - 2 stars
I was disappointed with this movie. As a guitarist myself, I was very intrigued to see what would happen when Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White got together to talk, and to jam. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't spend enough time with them. A big portion of the movie is devoted to each guitarist individually. We see them going to the places where they wrote and recorded songs, we see footage of them performing, we learn their life stories. This is not a bad thing, but it's not what I wanted out of the movie. I wish the back stories had been taken care of in the first half hour so the rest of the movie could have been the three together.
I really wanted to learn more about technique. Jimmy Page was a pioneer of hard rock. He was also a session player, so I'd imagine he knows music theory and he can read sheet music. The Edge is not technically proficient, but he is a genius with guitar effects. And Jack White is an anomaly. He would rather play a slightly out of tune guitar from K-Mart than a Strat or Gibson. He is something of a purist.
That stuff, I already knew. I wanted to learn more. We don't get much more. The Edge plays his guitar without effects, then turns the effects on to show how much of his sound is the effects. Great, but how about demonstrating what each effect does? How about having his tech help explain how his rig is hooked up? What is the signal chain from guitar to amp?
One of my favorite parts is when The Edge is showing the other guys how to play a certain song. He shows them a chord and calls it a C. Jimmy Page says something like "are you sure that's a C?" I wanted a lot more of that. I want to know what each guitarist knows that the others don't. I want to see how their very different styles and background would clash and mesh with each other. As someone who knows music theory, and knows what it's like to try to explain it to guitarists who are self taught, I wanted to see Page lose a little patience with the other two.
The pacing was bad. It would cut from Page to Edge to Page to White way too often. Just when we were seeing something interesting, it would suddenly cut to another guy.
This movie should have been so much better. I think I would only recommend it to people who are huge fans of one (or all) of the three. And I wish they had picked different guitarists. How about Steve Vai? Eddie Van Halen? Joe Satriani? Steve Morse?
Capitolism - A Love Story - 3 1/2 stars
As usual, an entertaining Michael Moore documentary. I don't know enough about the subject to know how much he says is true, but I do know there is a problem in this country. The top 1% own like 95% of the wealth. There is no middle class anymore. Only the rich, the poor, and the really poor. Even though this isn't a 4 star movie, I think everyone should see it. People need to get really mad at their elected officials. Somehow we need congress to start working for us again instead of working for corporations.
There are a lot of interesting things this movie points out. Dead Peasant insurance, where a company takes out an insurance policy on employees, and makes the company the beneficiary. I didn't know that Reagan's top advisor was an executive from Merry Lynch. Explains why he was so into trickle down economics.
The opening of the movie is brilliant. It's a history lesson on the fall of the Roman empire. But juxtaposed with the footage of the Romans (not sure what movie the footage is taken from), their senate and the Caesars is footage of American politicians. It's no big surprise that there are parallels between where our country is going and why the Roman empire fell, but it's fascinating to see it depicted that way in the movie.
Moore shows how great everything (supposedly) was in the 50s. Then Reagan came along, and he was basically a spokesman for corporations. Moore argues that American is now a "plutonomy" (plutocracy). We see some amazing footage of FDR proposing a second Bill of Rights. We see a state representative so upset by crooked home loans that she says when the bank forecloses on your home, you should refuse to leave.
There are so many good things in this movie. Everyone should go see it and get angry.
Bright Star - 3 stars
I didn't expect to like this at all. I was pleasantly surprised. Its about the 19th century poet John Keats and his relationship with Fanny Brawne. We know it's going to end badly, since he died at the age of 25.
My favorite parts of the movie were the fights between Fanny and Charles Brown, Keats' best friend and writing partner. Brown doesn't want Keats distracted by a girl, so he is always trying to get her to leave them alone. The dialogue is so well written, it is a pleasure to hear the way they insult each other.
The first half was surprisingly funny, but the second half dragged for me. I still enjoyed it enough to recommend it. The funny thing is, it's PG, and it's directed by Jane Campion. Usually her movies have a bit of full-frontal nudity in them (The Piano, Holy Smoke, In the Cut).
Sunday, September 20, 2009
The Informant! - 3 stars
If they ever give out an award for casting, this movie would win in a landslide. This is probably the most interesting cast I have ever seen. As the movie went on, it became part of the fun of the movie to spot another cameo. Here are the people who show up in The Informant!:
Tom Wilson (Biff from Back to the Future)
Scott Bakula (Quantum Leap)
Joel McHale (host of The Soup on E!)
Bob Zany (www.bobzany.com, bay-bee!)
Clancy Brown (The Shawshank Redemption)
Tony Hale (Arrested Development)
Patton Oswalt (comedian, actor, self-proclaimed geek)
Paul F. Tompkins (comedian, actor)
The Smothers Brothers (you should know who they are ...)
Frank Welker (voice actor, 600 credits including the voice of Megatron)
I didn't mention Matt Damon, cause you know, that's no surprise. But he is good in this, as always. Oh, how is the movie?
Well, I can't remember the last time I saw a movie that started out this badly and ended up so great. I was bored for the first 20 minutes or so. Damon plays Mark Whitacre, an executive at an agricultural business. They are losing money because there is a virus that is killing their lysine production. Whitacre says there is a mole in their company, working for a Japanese competitor, and they want $10 million to stop the virus. They bring the FBI in to investigate, and Whitacre tells him that there is major price fixing going on at their company. Customers world wide are being ripped off because his company regularly meets with competitors to keep the prices going up.
The movie starts to get entertaining here. They ask Whitacre to wear a wire and help videotape the secret meetings. Whitacre must be the dumbest whistle blower in the history of corporate America, because he thinks he will still get to keep his job after all this blows over.
The third act kicks off when Whitacre casually reveals that he may have been doing some illegal activities on his own, and he asks the FBI if "hypothetically, would that be bad?" From this point on, it was non-stop laughs. It was confusing, but that doesn't matter. I still don't quite understand everything he did (one of those scams involving a Nigerian prince), but by the end I was loving it.
If the entire movie had been as good as the last act, I probably would have given it 4 stars. But it started out so slowly I couldn't go over 3. So I recommend it, just remember to be patient and get through the first half hour.
Tom Wilson (Biff from Back to the Future)
Scott Bakula (Quantum Leap)
Joel McHale (host of The Soup on E!)
Bob Zany (www.bobzany.com, bay-bee!)
Clancy Brown (The Shawshank Redemption)
Tony Hale (Arrested Development)
Patton Oswalt (comedian, actor, self-proclaimed geek)
Paul F. Tompkins (comedian, actor)
The Smothers Brothers (you should know who they are ...)
Frank Welker (voice actor, 600 credits including the voice of Megatron)
I didn't mention Matt Damon, cause you know, that's no surprise. But he is good in this, as always. Oh, how is the movie?
Well, I can't remember the last time I saw a movie that started out this badly and ended up so great. I was bored for the first 20 minutes or so. Damon plays Mark Whitacre, an executive at an agricultural business. They are losing money because there is a virus that is killing their lysine production. Whitacre says there is a mole in their company, working for a Japanese competitor, and they want $10 million to stop the virus. They bring the FBI in to investigate, and Whitacre tells him that there is major price fixing going on at their company. Customers world wide are being ripped off because his company regularly meets with competitors to keep the prices going up.
The movie starts to get entertaining here. They ask Whitacre to wear a wire and help videotape the secret meetings. Whitacre must be the dumbest whistle blower in the history of corporate America, because he thinks he will still get to keep his job after all this blows over.
The third act kicks off when Whitacre casually reveals that he may have been doing some illegal activities on his own, and he asks the FBI if "hypothetically, would that be bad?" From this point on, it was non-stop laughs. It was confusing, but that doesn't matter. I still don't quite understand everything he did (one of those scams involving a Nigerian prince), but by the end I was loving it.
If the entire movie had been as good as the last act, I probably would have given it 4 stars. But it started out so slowly I couldn't go over 3. So I recommend it, just remember to be patient and get through the first half hour.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Friday, 9/18/09
Eight movies opening in Salt Lake today, and I have only been able to see 3 of them. It was a busy week, what can I say.
I didn't see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, The Informant!, Love Happens, Afghan Star, or My One and Only.
Jennifer's Body - 3 stars
This was a lot of fun. Imagine if Sam Raimi was more interested in cool teen speak and pop culture references than the Three Stooges when he made the Evil Dead movies.
For the first 10 minutes, I thought this was going to be a horror movie. Then a club catches fire. Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried are outside having a conversation while people run out of the club screaming and covered in flames. I thought, WTF??? Very surreal. Then the next day at school, J.K. Simmons shows up as a teacher with a hook for a hand. That's when I realized that this was a comedy.
From that point on, I loved it. I laughed a lot. Just like in Juno, Diablo Cody's dialogue is very self aware, trying really hard to be hip, and sometimes makes almost no sense. Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried are very hot in this. My biggest complaint is that there is no nudity. This is the type of movie that should have had some nudity. But I guess neither actress was willing to go there. So we just get a lot of teasing.
Oh, and you will never listen to 867-5309 the same way again.
Lorna's Silence - 2 1/2 stars
Lorna is an Albanian girl living in Belgium. She lives with a guy named Claudy. They don't sleep in the same bed, so we assume they are just friends. Claudy is very needy. He is trying to quit drugs, and he wants her to lock him in the apartment when she goes out so he won't be tempted to go look for drugs.
It turns out they are married, but it is a sham. She is friends with some scam artist, and they arranged for her to marry him so she could get Belgian citizenship (Claudy is a Belgian). They have a plan in mind to get him out of the way so she can marry a Russian mobster in order to help him get Belgian citizenship. With me so far?
The movie feels disjointed. One minute, Lorna can barely tolerate Claudy. The next, she is willing to sleep with him just to keep him from using drugs. One character is on screen in a scene, the next scene he is dead. It feels like there are scenes missing.
Lorna is in love with a guy named Sokol. She and Sokol plan to open up a snack bar with the money they make from these scams. Her plans are complicated when she gets pregnant. The pregnancy segment also feels like scenes are missing. She wants to get an abortion, abruptly changes her mind and decides to keep the baby, then she is back in the doctor's office being told she is not pregnant. I was confused.
The movie is very interesting. The lack of a musical score made it feel more real, and I loved the way most of the dialogue was done in two shots. Typical Hollywood movies cut back and forth between the characters, but this movie usually stayed on the two people who were talking with no cuts.
Arta Dobroshi did a great job. And unlike Megan Fox or Amanda Seyfried, she doesn't have a 'no nudity' clause in her contract. Seriously, when Megan Fox is skinny dipping and the camera carefully avoids showing her naughty bits, it took me out of the movie. It made me think about the fact that Megan Fox refuses to do nudity. But the sex scene in Lorna's Silence, and the lack of careful camera cuts, made it feel more real. Gotta love those Europeans.
I would have liked the movie more if it didn't feel like it was missing scenes. There were several times I had to rewind the DVD to make sure I didn't miss something. Maybe that's a good thing that the filmmakers are not afraid to let some action happen off camera, but I was confused at times. I can only mildly recommend the movie.
Cold Souls - 2 1/2 stars
Paul Giamatti stars as Paul Giamatti, an actor. He is doing a play and he is not happy. He doesn't know what is bothering him, but he can barely function. He hears about soul storage and decides to check it out. There is a clinic that will remove your soul and store it for you. The idea is your soul is weighing you down, and you will be happier without it.
There is a sub plot about Russians who are involved in soul trafficking. They pay Russian people to donate their soul, then turn around and sell them to Americans. When Paul Giamatti wants his soul back, the doctor at the clinic (the always dependable David Strathairn) talks him into trying out a Russian soul.
The Russians decide to try getting American souls to sell to the Russians. But they figure it's easier to steal American souls than to try and buy them. They take Paul Giamatti's soul and when he finds out his soul is missing, he goes to Russia to get it back.
This movie reminded me of Being John Malkovich or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but it isn't as good as those. I feel like they could have done a lot more with the story. It's not a bad movie, just kind of flat. But if you like Paul Giamatti, he is as good in this as he ever is.
I didn't see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, The Informant!, Love Happens, Afghan Star, or My One and Only.
Jennifer's Body - 3 stars
This was a lot of fun. Imagine if Sam Raimi was more interested in cool teen speak and pop culture references than the Three Stooges when he made the Evil Dead movies.
For the first 10 minutes, I thought this was going to be a horror movie. Then a club catches fire. Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried are outside having a conversation while people run out of the club screaming and covered in flames. I thought, WTF??? Very surreal. Then the next day at school, J.K. Simmons shows up as a teacher with a hook for a hand. That's when I realized that this was a comedy.
From that point on, I loved it. I laughed a lot. Just like in Juno, Diablo Cody's dialogue is very self aware, trying really hard to be hip, and sometimes makes almost no sense. Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried are very hot in this. My biggest complaint is that there is no nudity. This is the type of movie that should have had some nudity. But I guess neither actress was willing to go there. So we just get a lot of teasing.
Oh, and you will never listen to 867-5309 the same way again.
Lorna's Silence - 2 1/2 stars
Lorna is an Albanian girl living in Belgium. She lives with a guy named Claudy. They don't sleep in the same bed, so we assume they are just friends. Claudy is very needy. He is trying to quit drugs, and he wants her to lock him in the apartment when she goes out so he won't be tempted to go look for drugs.
It turns out they are married, but it is a sham. She is friends with some scam artist, and they arranged for her to marry him so she could get Belgian citizenship (Claudy is a Belgian). They have a plan in mind to get him out of the way so she can marry a Russian mobster in order to help him get Belgian citizenship. With me so far?
The movie feels disjointed. One minute, Lorna can barely tolerate Claudy. The next, she is willing to sleep with him just to keep him from using drugs. One character is on screen in a scene, the next scene he is dead. It feels like there are scenes missing.
Lorna is in love with a guy named Sokol. She and Sokol plan to open up a snack bar with the money they make from these scams. Her plans are complicated when she gets pregnant. The pregnancy segment also feels like scenes are missing. She wants to get an abortion, abruptly changes her mind and decides to keep the baby, then she is back in the doctor's office being told she is not pregnant. I was confused.
The movie is very interesting. The lack of a musical score made it feel more real, and I loved the way most of the dialogue was done in two shots. Typical Hollywood movies cut back and forth between the characters, but this movie usually stayed on the two people who were talking with no cuts.
Arta Dobroshi did a great job. And unlike Megan Fox or Amanda Seyfried, she doesn't have a 'no nudity' clause in her contract. Seriously, when Megan Fox is skinny dipping and the camera carefully avoids showing her naughty bits, it took me out of the movie. It made me think about the fact that Megan Fox refuses to do nudity. But the sex scene in Lorna's Silence, and the lack of careful camera cuts, made it feel more real. Gotta love those Europeans.
I would have liked the movie more if it didn't feel like it was missing scenes. There were several times I had to rewind the DVD to make sure I didn't miss something. Maybe that's a good thing that the filmmakers are not afraid to let some action happen off camera, but I was confused at times. I can only mildly recommend the movie.
Cold Souls - 2 1/2 stars
Paul Giamatti stars as Paul Giamatti, an actor. He is doing a play and he is not happy. He doesn't know what is bothering him, but he can barely function. He hears about soul storage and decides to check it out. There is a clinic that will remove your soul and store it for you. The idea is your soul is weighing you down, and you will be happier without it.
There is a sub plot about Russians who are involved in soul trafficking. They pay Russian people to donate their soul, then turn around and sell them to Americans. When Paul Giamatti wants his soul back, the doctor at the clinic (the always dependable David Strathairn) talks him into trying out a Russian soul.
The Russians decide to try getting American souls to sell to the Russians. But they figure it's easier to steal American souls than to try and buy them. They take Paul Giamatti's soul and when he finds out his soul is missing, he goes to Russia to get it back.
This movie reminded me of Being John Malkovich or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but it isn't as good as those. I feel like they could have done a lot more with the story. It's not a bad movie, just kind of flat. But if you like Paul Giamatti, he is as good in this as he ever is.
Global Film Initiative
The Global Film Initiative's Global Lens film series - ten award-winning narrative, feature films from Argentina, Brazil, China, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Morocco and Mozambique –will screen for the third year running with Salt Lake Film Society. Go to www.saltlakefilmsociety.com for more information.
This is very cool. How often do you get the chance to see a movie from Indonesia or Morocco? A few of the movies I have seen are:
POSSIBLE LIVES (LAS VIDAS POSIBLES), dir. Sandra Gugliotta, Argentina
An Argentinian woman's husband has gone missing. He is a geologist and he goes to a village in remote Patagonia all the time to work. But this time, he hasn't come back. So she goes looking for him. When she arrives at the village, she sees a man who looks like her husband. But he doesn't recognize her. Is it really her husband, or is she crazy?
I'm fine with a movie that makes me connect the dots and doesn't explain everything, but this was a little much. By the end of the movie, she has had sex with this guy, but she never so much as says "are you my husband?" There is a dead body and the police think it's her husband, but she says no, it's not him. Is it really him, and she is in denial? Nothing is explained.
The film moves really slowly. There was no dialogue until almost 10 minutes in. But I'm still glad I saw it. The location is incredible. It almost made me want to travel to the most remote parts of Argentina. A very unusual movie.
A movie from most glorious country of Kazakhstan! The movie opens with a woman giving birth in some remote village. When she has the boy, he is dark skinned (she and her husband Ivan are blond). People assume that she had an affair with Ivan's dark-skinned friend Asan but she maintains that the baby is Ivan's.
15 years later Ivan's son is a troublemaker. He almost gets kicked out of school, and he steals horses from local bandits. The bandits want to cut off the boy's hand for the crime, but they settle for beating the boy and his father.
Ivan and Asan beat their wives on a regular basis. According to Asan, you have to remind women what their place is. But Ivan's wife gives it right back. The funniest bits in the movie are when Ivan is chasing his wife, threatening to beat her, only for her to grab a frying pan and start chasing after him.
At one point in the movie Ivan's in-laws show up. They aren't shy about telling his wife that she married the wrong guy. Ivan gets into a fight with his brother-in-law, loses, sulks for a while, then takes off. He goes to see his dad, who tells him the story of their ancestors. Then he goes home.
That's ... pretty much the movie. Oh, there are also these interludes where a man on a horse talks to the woman of the sea. These interludes are acted out with puppets against a white background. Interesting choice. I can't recommend the movie, but once again, it looks great. Now I have to visit Kazakhstan too.
WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD, dir. Faouzi Bensaïdi, Morocco
This is the most fun of the three movies. A female police officer named Kenza makes money by loaning her cell phone to her neighbors. One of her friends is a prostitute. One of her clients is a hit man. He calls to talk to the prostitute, ends up talking to Kenza for a while, and they basically fall in love over the phone. He wants to meet her in person, and she resists.
There are a few scenes of the hit man killing people, and these are inventive. My favorite is when he kills a guy in a public bathroom. Before killing him, he turns on all the automatic sinks and activates the automatic flushers to mask the sound of the murder.
There are some interesting stylistic choices. There is on-screen narration, and sometimes it is literally taken from the script (Police Station - Interior / Day). There are musical dance sequences where the characters break the 4th wall by looking directly at the audience. And the camerawork is interesting. This movie tries really hard to be hip. It succeeds in being original, but once again, kind of boring. And unlike the others, this movie does not make me want to travel to Morocco.
-----------------------------
So there you go, three of the movies I saw as part of the Global Film Initiative's Global Lens film series. If you want to see something different for a change, take a chance and check out a movie from Iran or Macedonia. I'm going to try and see a few more of these movies, and when I do I will post reviews of those films.
This is very cool. How often do you get the chance to see a movie from Indonesia or Morocco? A few of the movies I have seen are:
POSSIBLE LIVES (LAS VIDAS POSIBLES), dir. Sandra Gugliotta, Argentina
An Argentinian woman's husband has gone missing. He is a geologist and he goes to a village in remote Patagonia all the time to work. But this time, he hasn't come back. So she goes looking for him. When she arrives at the village, she sees a man who looks like her husband. But he doesn't recognize her. Is it really her husband, or is she crazy?
I'm fine with a movie that makes me connect the dots and doesn't explain everything, but this was a little much. By the end of the movie, she has had sex with this guy, but she never so much as says "are you my husband?" There is a dead body and the police think it's her husband, but she says no, it's not him. Is it really him, and she is in denial? Nothing is explained.
The film moves really slowly. There was no dialogue until almost 10 minutes in. But I'm still glad I saw it. The location is incredible. It almost made me want to travel to the most remote parts of Argentina. A very unusual movie.
A movie from most glorious country of Kazakhstan! The movie opens with a woman giving birth in some remote village. When she has the boy, he is dark skinned (she and her husband Ivan are blond). People assume that she had an affair with Ivan's dark-skinned friend Asan but she maintains that the baby is Ivan's.
15 years later Ivan's son is a troublemaker. He almost gets kicked out of school, and he steals horses from local bandits. The bandits want to cut off the boy's hand for the crime, but they settle for beating the boy and his father.
Ivan and Asan beat their wives on a regular basis. According to Asan, you have to remind women what their place is. But Ivan's wife gives it right back. The funniest bits in the movie are when Ivan is chasing his wife, threatening to beat her, only for her to grab a frying pan and start chasing after him.
At one point in the movie Ivan's in-laws show up. They aren't shy about telling his wife that she married the wrong guy. Ivan gets into a fight with his brother-in-law, loses, sulks for a while, then takes off. He goes to see his dad, who tells him the story of their ancestors. Then he goes home.
That's ... pretty much the movie. Oh, there are also these interludes where a man on a horse talks to the woman of the sea. These interludes are acted out with puppets against a white background. Interesting choice. I can't recommend the movie, but once again, it looks great. Now I have to visit Kazakhstan too.
WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD, dir. Faouzi Bensaïdi, Morocco
This is the most fun of the three movies. A female police officer named Kenza makes money by loaning her cell phone to her neighbors. One of her friends is a prostitute. One of her clients is a hit man. He calls to talk to the prostitute, ends up talking to Kenza for a while, and they basically fall in love over the phone. He wants to meet her in person, and she resists.
There are a few scenes of the hit man killing people, and these are inventive. My favorite is when he kills a guy in a public bathroom. Before killing him, he turns on all the automatic sinks and activates the automatic flushers to mask the sound of the murder.
There are some interesting stylistic choices. There is on-screen narration, and sometimes it is literally taken from the script (Police Station - Interior / Day). There are musical dance sequences where the characters break the 4th wall by looking directly at the audience. And the camerawork is interesting. This movie tries really hard to be hip. It succeeds in being original, but once again, kind of boring. And unlike the others, this movie does not make me want to travel to Morocco.
-----------------------------
So there you go, three of the movies I saw as part of the Global Film Initiative's Global Lens film series. If you want to see something different for a change, take a chance and check out a movie from Iran or Macedonia. I'm going to try and see a few more of these movies, and when I do I will post reviews of those films.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Friday, 9/11/09
Three movies not screened for critics: Whiteout, Sorority Row, and I Can Do Bad All By Myself.
Broken Hill - 1 star
A movie about a kid in Australia who dreams of being a conductor. But guess what? His dad doesn't approve. His dad wants him to stay put and help work on the farm. This is an outline of a movie. Someone forgot to go in and write the thing. Very corny, cliched, and predictable.
9 - didn't see
This is based on a short film, 9 by Shane Acker, which is available on youtube. I recommend you watch the short film (its only about 10 minutes long) before you decide whether to see the new movie.
Adoration - 1 1/2 stars
I'm ok with a movie that makes me pay attention and put the pieces together. I'm ok with a story told out of sequence, as long as it makes sense at the end. But this movie just didn't work.
A kid reads a story to his class. The story is about how his father set his mother up to be a suicide bomber. The bomb didn't go off, or he wouldn't be here today. But wait - the story isn't true. It's an assignment by his teacher. She asks him to read the story as if it were true, as a drama project. But for some reason, he decides to not tell anyone the story isn't true, and it ends up on the internet. There are many scenes of him in a video chatroom watching people debate his story.
His parents really died in a car accident, and he was raised by his uncle. His drama teacher has some kind of connection to his late father, and his grandpa was a racist. There, I just saved you 100 minutes.
Tetro - 2 stars
Tetro is the son of a famous composer. He hates his family and moves to Argentina to get away from them. One day, his younger brother shows up at his door. See, he promised his brother he would come back for him one day, and he never did. His brother wants to reconnect with him, but Tetro wants nothing to do with him.
Tetro is a writer who never publishes anything. He also never finishes anything. When his brother reads a story Tetro wrote, he complains that it doesn't have an ending. Tetro replies that it doesn't need an ending.
Francis Ford Coppola is done making movies like The Godfather, Dracula, or The Rainmaker. Now, he is making small, personal films. That's a noble ambition, but he should still try to make them watchable. Tetro is not a bad movie, but it moves very slow. It felt every bit of its two hour running time.
The movie does look great. It is in black and white, except for the flashbacks, which are in color.
Broken Hill - 1 star
A movie about a kid in Australia who dreams of being a conductor. But guess what? His dad doesn't approve. His dad wants him to stay put and help work on the farm. This is an outline of a movie. Someone forgot to go in and write the thing. Very corny, cliched, and predictable.
9 - didn't see
This is based on a short film, 9 by Shane Acker, which is available on youtube. I recommend you watch the short film (its only about 10 minutes long) before you decide whether to see the new movie.
Adoration - 1 1/2 stars
I'm ok with a movie that makes me pay attention and put the pieces together. I'm ok with a story told out of sequence, as long as it makes sense at the end. But this movie just didn't work.
A kid reads a story to his class. The story is about how his father set his mother up to be a suicide bomber. The bomb didn't go off, or he wouldn't be here today. But wait - the story isn't true. It's an assignment by his teacher. She asks him to read the story as if it were true, as a drama project. But for some reason, he decides to not tell anyone the story isn't true, and it ends up on the internet. There are many scenes of him in a video chatroom watching people debate his story.
His parents really died in a car accident, and he was raised by his uncle. His drama teacher has some kind of connection to his late father, and his grandpa was a racist. There, I just saved you 100 minutes.
Tetro - 2 stars
Tetro is the son of a famous composer. He hates his family and moves to Argentina to get away from them. One day, his younger brother shows up at his door. See, he promised his brother he would come back for him one day, and he never did. His brother wants to reconnect with him, but Tetro wants nothing to do with him.
Tetro is a writer who never publishes anything. He also never finishes anything. When his brother reads a story Tetro wrote, he complains that it doesn't have an ending. Tetro replies that it doesn't need an ending.
Francis Ford Coppola is done making movies like The Godfather, Dracula, or The Rainmaker. Now, he is making small, personal films. That's a noble ambition, but he should still try to make them watchable. Tetro is not a bad movie, but it moves very slow. It felt every bit of its two hour running time.
The movie does look great. It is in black and white, except for the flashbacks, which are in color.
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