4 stars Although it was released last year, Let Me In is the first great movie I've seen in 2011. I believe I rented Let the Right One In, the Swedish version of John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel, but I must've not really watched it because I didn't remember it at all. I am going to watch it again tonight, but this isn't going to be a comparison review.
I don't like vampire movies. I don't like vampires. They're not terribly appealing to me. They're not sexy or cool, it just seems like a tortuous life of immortality and murder. And you can't eat food, and you can't see the sun, and you can't change. That doesn't sound good to me. We've had so many of these lately, it's been a glutton of fanged teeth, but Let Me In transcends the genre and is one of the best vampires movies I've ever seen.
Let Me In is about two 12 year-olds, Owen and Abby. Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee from The Road) is a weak kid living with his single mom, Abby (Chloe Moretz from Kick-Ass) has just moved in next door with her dad. Everyday three bullies take Owen to pieces at school and they won't let up. He's a lonely kid and so much of the first third of the movie is about being a lonely kid and it gets it just right. There is a lot of sitting around and thinking and having your secret places and starting to make an inventory of your favorite things like Now and Laters and Ms. Pac-Man. The movie is set in 1983 and the only real thing that screams that out is the surprisingly good 80s soundtrack with songs from Freur and Culture Club. My goodness did I feel for Owen, and although I was thankfully never picked on like he was, I empathized with him so much.
So when he and Abby start their friendship, I forgot about the horror genre and vampires and felt so much for these two lonely kids who each need a friend. There is an undertone of the two liking each other as boys and girls will do, but I think they're just happy to have someone to spend time with. We do gradually learn that Abby is a vampire. She needs blood to live and her father (the great Richard Jenkins from The Visitor) goes out every night and kills someone so that she can have it. It's his duty and in this small town of Los Alamos, New Mexico, people start to notice. Btw, the two young actors are extraordinary. Kodi Smit-McPhee is actually Australian but you'd never know it. And Chloe Moretz is some sort of prodigy, she's so good in the movies I've seen her in. She's in Scorsese's next one, and I hope she can transition into adult roles when the time comes. She is a monster young actress.
I don't want to give anymore away because of so much of the pleasure of the movie is discovering things as they go along, but one of the reasons I liked it so much is because of its point of view of vampire life. It's sad and not the least bit glamorous. They have no money, Abby is stuck in a 12 year-old's body and can't be taken seriously by adults and can't get a job. She can't have relationships with people, and when she's been without blood, her stomach clenches in excruciating pain like someone with a chronic disease. It's a lonely life. She doesn't have vampire friends. The Cullens don't call her up to play baseball. She has to move often so they won't get caught. As for her relationship with her father, I found it fascinating and the layers that are revealed in the later parts of the film really blew me away. Characters have relationships in film after film, but this one between Abby and her dad, it is unique.
Owen becomes so fond of Abby that this "aspect" of her doesn't make him turn away. Their bond is powerful and stuck in my head long after the movie was over. I can't think of a movie in recent memory that sucked me back into adolescence as strong as this one did. Matt Reeves directed the terrible Cloverfield but he also created a TV show I embarrassingly own the first season of, Felicity, and somehow he was the right person to write and direct a genre piece that is much more interested in characters and relationships than blood and gore. In fact, I wonder if the hardcore horror fans are going to be disappointed. It's as much a horror film as Donnie Darko. The movie also looks great. Beautifully lit, dark and moody, and the world of this small New Mexico town is so insular and complete. It is a little slow in the beginning, but things really pay off at the end. A truly great movie (Stephen King's favorite horror movie of the past 10 years) and you should see it. Out on Blu-ray and DVD this Tuesday.
Watched this Week: The Good: Love and Other Drugs, The Fighter, Secretariat, Picture Me, Unstoppable, Tyson, When We Were Kings, Rocky I-III, Rocky Balboa, Play it to the Bone, Reversal of Fortune, Panic Room The Bad: Nowhere Boy The Ugly: None
Trips to the Theater: None
Actors of the Week: John Malkovich, Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway Directors of the Week: Barbet Schroeder, David O. Russell
Trailers/Clips of the Week: Scream 4. Not a bad trailer.
3 ½ stars Ed Zwick directs a lot of action dramas (Glory, The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond) but in '86 he directed About Last Night... about a couple (Demi Moore and Rob Lowe) who meet and try to stay together in Chicago. This is not a sequel and has no literal relation to that movie, but the feelings and the point of view on relationships are very similar. That's not a bad thing, in fact it's refreshing that this isn't a standard rom-com. It actually wants to be something deeper.
Jake Gyllenhaal is Jamie Randall, a drug rep for Pfizer peddling Zoloft to hospitals, and in a doctor's office one day he meets Maggie played by Anne Hathaway. They don't necessarily meet cute but they fight cute and through some persistence Jamie gets Maggie to go out with him. Neither want a real relationship, and unlike many rom-coms, they spend the first third of the movie not getting to know one another. They mostly have sex. Both actors are very naked a lot of the time, but it isn't trashy Basic Instinct stuff. It's sweet and funny and one would imagine if you are sleeping with someone that you would be naked some of the time. Jamie is a bit of a womanizer pre-Maggie but he, against her wishes, starts to fall for her.
She is reluctant and reluctant about anyone because she has stage 1 Parkinsons and is very aware of what a turnoff and hindrance that would be to any kind of relationship. It's a big part of the movie and I liked that. Could you date someone who will one day be sick? It's a real question. Honestly I felt things were a bit clunky early on before things started to get real between the two characters. When they both decide to give this relationship a go, the movie starts to fire on all cylinders. There's a great scene where Maggie asks Jamie to say 4 things he likes about himself. He dodges and dodges and he just doesn't know. It's an honest about how a lot of guys feel about themselves. There's another when they both attend a Parkinsons meeting (a sort of AA where people tell their stories) and a husband tells Jamie to simply bail because she will eventually stop being the woman he loves and will be someone he has to nurse. It isn't Revolutionary Road, but it is nice and honest about this relationship and how they push each other away and what they really want from one another.
Anne Hathaway is just great in the movie. She's a megawatt movie star who can really act, and like Julia Roberts, she does seem like someone you could meet in real life. Which probably will keep her as a movie star as the too glamorous or too exotic don't last long. Also, so many actresses seem uptight and stiff onscreen. They're too busy posing instead of behaving like actually people. Hathaway is light and relaxed and completely someone you'd want to spend the rest of your life with. She isn't glossed up and airbrushed like a Reese Witherspoon movie. Gyllenhaal is one of my favorite actors and he is funny and charming and ripped to shreds. He gets as naked if not more. They have tremendous chemistry, and the basis of any good romantic movie is do you want to see these people together and I just wanted more and more scenes with the two of them.
Unfortunately the movie does have subplots and they are pretty bad. The movie is set in the mid 90s (we know this because the movie begins with Two Princes from The Spin Doctors which is one of the worst songs in history) and Viagra is unleashed upon the world. Jamie starts to sell a lot but this doesn't really connect to the love story nor does the movie have anything to say about the phenomenon. Also bad is Jamie's fat hairy younger brother who moves in with him. He's sort of a Apatow movie reject who is improvising a lot of things that are supposed to be funny but everytime he showed up I was waiting for him to leave. The pharmaceutical topic also ultimately doesn't amount to much, and it turns out to just be Jamie's job. I just wanted the movie to be more Jamie and Maggie and thankfully the last half of the movie is almost solely about them.
It's so difficult to find a good romantic movie. They are so bad these days and I still think TV is better at it anyway. It's nice to experience a relationship over a season of episodes rather than cramming it into 2 hours. Despite the flaws, I liked Love and Other Drugs more and more as it went on, and I really like these 2 actors. They were great in Brokeback Mountain as a very different couple, and they are great here as a couple I genuinely enjoyed spending time with.
3 stars With a bad trailer and my lukewarm feelings toward Mark Wahlberg (many of his films really should be spit out) I wasn't excited about The Fighter. Despite there not being all that many of them, boxing films are a bit tired. I guess it's because the stories aren't all that new. Underdog, loyal girl (or loyal coach), the big fight at the end. And Boston films are getting pretty tired too. Every year we get a handful of movies about white people who forgot to learn the letter "r".
However, added to the mix this time, and what completely wins over the movie for me, is Christian Bale's performance as older brother Dicky Edlund. Utterly convincing, this English actor transforms himself into a Boston native. Dicky was a great fighter himself, but crack burned all of that away. Years later, years past his prime, he is training his younger brother Micky Ward (Wahlberg). Well, he trains him whenever he's not in a crack house with his Vietnamese friends re-enacting his fight against Sugar Ray Leonard.
Micky is a solid, nice guy. He works hard, he's loyal to his family, and he's getting old. Of course he wants a shot at being a real contender, and of course he happens to meet the perfect girl Charlene (Amy Adams, who I'm starting to get a serious crush on) who gives him the encouragement he needs to get to his dream. Adams is pretty great in a semi-departure. Semi because she is a tough Boston bartender who punches one of Micky's sisters repeatedly in the face, and she hilariously complains about there not being enough sex in a foreign film Micky takes her to. Semi also because she ultimately becomes her kind self, so supportive and loving toward her guy, Adams really is an absolute sweetheart to her core and it can't help but come out in every role she plays. Wahlberg is fine, and it is strange and nice seeing him play such a vulnerable character, but I think Ebert is right in saying that Micky Ward ultimately isn't that interesting a guy. His domineering mother played by the fine actress Melissa Leo a lot more memorable as the head of this family. And he has to compete with this chorus of 7 sisters with their chain smoking and sailor mouths and terrible hairsprayed hair (I am never dating a girl from Boston). The movie is set in the early 90s and it is gross. Micky a lot of the time is the deer caught in the headlights of the crazy characters around him and although it's his story, he isn't the strongest character in the movie.
Director David O. Russell (Three Kings) makes a comeback after the disappointing I Heart Huckabees and creates strong visuals, along with making some great choices regarding editing and music. Most importantly, he injects the movie with such life and energy that even during the more melodramatic scenes, this all seems to be really happening to these people. It isn't a safe family sports movie. It's a lot of the time a nasty film about a raw family. And really, the great performance is from Christian Bale who isn't playing a dark psychological portrayal of addiction, he's playing this real guy who is brimming with energy every moment in this film. He is wild and loud but somehow still likable and charismatic even when he's 3 hours late for the flight to Vegas or when he's locked up in prison after getting high and punching a police officer. I could go on and try to describe what he does, but it's the whole thing you gotta see. He is completely unrecognizable from the hair loss to every movement and mannerism. Forget Batman, Bale is so much more alive here as a crack addict from Lowell, Mass.
I wouldn't say rush to the theater, but if you are looking for a good movie to see right now, this would be one of them. I was invested, I wanted to find out what happened, and I wanted to see more and more of Amy Adams and Christian Bale show their stuff. Wahlberg took the better part of 5 years trying to get this made with several directors (including Aronofsky and Brad Pitt as Dicky). He finally got to do it, and I tip my hat to his perseverance. I forgive you for Max Payne, but I will never forgive you for Shooter.
Classic People talk a lot about Empire, but my favorite of all 6 is the first, Star Wars. I don't call it A New Hope, I don't call it episode 4, it's Star Wars. It's the original. It's the one I taped off channel 2, on BETA, and I watched it from ages 6-16 that way. It's the one movie my sister has memorized from front to back, and any movie that has any special effects, my parents always refer to them as Star Wars.
I actually wanted to take a critical look at all the movies because I don't think I ever did. On one hand, it's kind of like analyzing a Big Mac. It's always been there in the world and it always will be. It's embedded in the culture and you can't think of a world of movies without thinking of Star Wars. On the other hand, let's give it a try.
As a kid, my favorite was Jedi which is the first movie I consciously remember seeing in a theater. As an adult, Star Wars is my favorite. It's the most pure, it's the most adventurous. I kind of like that it's not about the deep mythology of the Star Wars universe, it's a simple adventure story about a farm boy who has to rescue a princess and then joins a band of rebels fighting an evil empire. And within that framework it's just a colossal amount of fun. That opening shot is astounding even now with the little rebel ship flying away from camera, and then the underside of that enormous white Star Destroyer that fills the screen and keeps and going and going and the music is rising and I always feel chills. The Storm Troopers blast their way through some rebel soldiers (the last time in all the films when the Storm Troopers are actually scary) and Darth Vader emerges through the smoke and chokes that guy. "Commander tear the ship apart until you've found those plans, and bring me the passengers, I want them alive!"
The movie does take a serious dip in energy as R2 and C3PO's leisurely journey through Tatooine isn't as charming or exotic as it might've been in 1977. I forgot how long it takes for Luke to actually show up. "But I was going to go Tosche station to pick up some power converters!" That image of Luke watching those two suns set still hits home. This guy should not be a moisture farmer, he should be on a space ship going at lightspeed, and this for me is the heart of the whole series. It's Luke's journey that we go on. Han Solo is a cool guy, but Luke is the one I identify with.
What I noticed most this time around is how well edited the film is. The prequels might have more digital environments and creatures and expensive CGI, but I find that those things fade. Special effects always depreciate over time but the sequences in Star Wars are at their core so well constructed that they hold their excitement. Take that scene when Luke and Han are in Storm Trooper outfits and they're trying to save the Princess. It turns into just a shootout between them and some guards, but the way the scene is put together along with John Williams' score, I mean, I still get pumped. Another one is when Luke and Leia have to swing across that chasm, but they have to hold off and shoot the Storm Troopers that are firing on them from above. Just a great scene. However, the best edited sequence, the grand champion is when they have escaped the Death Star and 4 TIE fighters take on the Millenium Falcon and Luke and Han are at gun turrets trying to shoot them down. That scene is perfectly put together. Lucas started as an editor and man does it show. Cutting from the cockpit, to the guns, to the ships, it is stunning. And this is long before digital editing. Someone had to actually splice the film and put the cuts together with scotch tape.
Harrison Ford is Han Solo and I forgot how funny he is in the movie. "Uh, everything's under control, situation normal." Even little moments like when he screams at Chewie to get behind him and when he kicks the Wookie into the garbage shoot. "Get in there!". He is so good at being a real person in this unreal world. He's speaking to Greedo the green alien who has a gun on him and he's just inconvenienced and annoyed. Also I really noticed how good Carrie Fisher is as Leia. She's such a great, strong character, very rare for the time. She's not at all a princess, but a lot of the time a superior to both leading men. She's a sharp and smart leader of this rebellion and at no point is she unconvincing. The fact they chose such a witty and intelligent person as opposed to just some hot girl to play her was just a masterstroke. I can't believe she was 19 at the time.
For me though, the sequence I watch over and over and over again is the final 12 minute battle when 30 X-Wings take on that Death Star. It is really unlike any battle sequence in any film. You can't copy it, it's so specific to that movie. Flying down a long trench to launch a proton torpedo into a 2 meter exhaust port. I love it! The best part, the BEST PART of it is the interaction between all of the pilots. Red 10 standing by, Red 3 standing by. "Stay on target, stay on target!" And all of the cross talk and trying to evade TIE fighters and the gun towers shooting big green lasers, I'm in geek heaven. That is another exceptionally edited sequence. I'm surprised the prequels are so badly edited and not half as exciting as this. When those guys die, you feel it. You feel how desperate it's getting and Luke has no chance, but then the Millenium Falcon comes in at the last moment and Vader is knocked out of the trench and you're all clear kid, now let's blow this thing and go home. WHOOO!!
There are so many other thing to talk about but this review is already pretty long. But I should mention things like John Williams' score, one of the best scores in movie history, the wonderful design choices and how I always laugh when I hear that song that's played in the Cantina. Particularly worth praising is Ben Burtt's landmark sound design for this film. Seriously, has a movie ever sounded as cool as Star Wars? I might write reviews of the other films, but I kind of fell in love with this first one all over again. It is a triumph, a watershed, and simply one of the funnest movies of all time. The whole series is out on Blu-ray September 27th.
Watched this Week: The Good: Battle Royale, Red, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, The Phantom Menace, Revenge of the Sith The Bad: Takers, Buried The Ugly: Attack of the Clones
Trips to the Theater: The Green Hornet
Actors of the Week: Jay Chou, Takeshi Kitano, Mark Hamill Directors of the Week: Michel Gondry, George Lucas
Trailers/Clips of the Week: The Green Hornet Kato Featurette
3 ½ stars Battle Royale was released in Japan 11 years ago in 2000 but has still yet to secure a U.S. distributor. Not even a home video distributor. I happened to find a UK version at my DVD place last weekend and here we go.
Battle Royale is absolutely insane. 40 Japanese high school students are somehow drafted in a national lottery without their knowledge, they are brought unconscious to a remote island, and it's truly a battle royale. They each are given small survival packs, individual weapons, and they are told which areas of the island at particular times will be safe and/or dangerous. 3 days, the last person living wins. I mean, how did anyone get to make this movie? It is apparently based on a popular book, but this is unbelievable. And the kids might be in high school but they look they're in junior high. Little teens with crossbows and 9mms and big sharp knives that they stab into each other.
The movie isn't at all trying to have restraint. It is hard R, with violent gun hits and throats bursting out blood. This is Tarantino's favorite film of the last 20 years and he obviously took a lot of inspiration from this to Kill Bill. The actress who played Go Go, the schoolgirl with the ball and chain, actually appears in the movie in a memorable role.
Most of the issues between the teens are teen issues. Some girl is jealous that the guy she likes, likes another girl so bang bang you're dead. Cliques take on other cliques and girlfriends betray boyfriends to save themselves. Mean Girls is baby food compared to this. This is nuts. Surprisingly, it all works. Somehow the themes and the style and the story all cook well together. In high school everything feels heightened and life and death and imagine if you were allowed to act on all your hormonal impulses. Mostly violent impulses in this movie, but there are some sexual ones as well.
You just have to see it to believe it, if in fact you want to. The one major adult character is played by Takeshi Kitano, the Clint Eastwood of Japan who is very good as the guy running the show. He isn't slick at all, he's mostly in a track suit eating cookies and announcing who got killed since the morning (there is a running count to keep us informed). The movie isn't as deep as it wants to be and some of the acting is a bit much, but considering the level of difficulty here, I was very impressed. One thing to mention is that it is not comedic. It's not tongue in cheek. It's very, very serious. Not necessarily a fun movie, but it is powerful.
Welcome to the Rileys 3 stars Welcome to the Rileys is chocked full of bad cliches and I accept and embrace them all. Gandolfini is a small business owner from Indianapolis who goes down to New Orleans for a sales conference. His wife is an agoraphobe and a bit frigid and a few years back their daughter died in a car crash. His wife (the wonderful Melissa Leo from The Fighter) is so detached that she actually has purchased a tombstone for them and has placed it next to their daughter's. Doug Riley 1959 - . Doug doesn't take it well. In New Orleans he wanders into a dank strip bar for no reason he can think of and there's Bella Swan asking him if he wants a lap dance in the champagne room. He does not and just wants to talk and through some circumstances he ends up staying at her crappy place. Not to sleep with her but he feels some need to take care of her. He fixes her toilet, he buys her bed sheets, and he tells his wife that he's going to stay down there for a while. She is so taken aback that she finally leaves home and drives down to meet him.
If this all sounds like a churchy Kirk Cameron special it certainly could've been. However, as labored as this storyline is, this is the best version of it I can imagine. It avoids a lot of bad melodrama and becomes a story about these three characters and how they get to know one another. And yes they do try to save the stripper. Gandolfini is great and completely un-Tony Soprano, but Kristen Stewart really shows herself as a real actress in a tough role. There are too many strippers/prostitutes in films but as this 22 maybe 16 year-old girl, she plays every note right. She is terribly compelling to watch and don't worry Twilight fans, she keeps most of her clothes on during the movie. Welcome to the Rileys was directed by Ridley Scott's son Jake Scott and you would never know it other than they have the same last name. He has talent though and I liked this, his first movie.
Takers2 stars I can't recommend it. Takers is the hip hop music video heist movie that every rapper wants to make. Every scene, someone's wearing a tie, someone's drinking scotch, someone's smoking a cigar. What is good is that the movie is high energy and despite the B to C level cast, they are likable guys and not bad to spend time with. The worst is this guy Michael Ealy from Barbershop who is one of the most boring actors around, the best actually is T.I. who has a lot of screen presence. The movie though is so down the line. It wants to be the gangsta version of Heat but it steals too much from other heist movies. The big centerpiece is a ripoff of The Italian Job and they don't bother hiding that. They actually reference it in the movie. Also by the end, I liked the crew less and less as they kill innocent civilians and don't seem to care. The heist genre has been tired for years but something like The Town uses the pieces to tell a deeper story. This is definitely not deep and not entertaining enough.
Buried2 ½ stars On one level, Buried works. It's one guy in a coffin, claustrophobic, torturous and one of those what would you do in this situation movies. On another level, I can't help thinking of 127 Hrs which is based on a true story, is not a one gimmick movie, and is very rich drama. This movie is a gimmick from start to finish that is meant to jerk us around more than move us. Ryan Reynolds is fine as the guy stuck in this coffin, but you have to ask yourself if you want to be stuck in any coffin for any movie. I was in there sucking down by own breath while the sand was coming in and it didn't really scare or thrill me, it just kind of irritated me. Why are we put through so much for an exercise in clever filmmaking? It's not worth it to me.
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest2 ½ stars Looking back, I kind of wish I just saw the first one. Lisbeth Salander is beat down, healing up through the first half of this film and that's not the way I want to see her. She's stuck in that hospital room too long as this trial against her starts in motion. And sadly the movie is mostly about the trial and although it is pretty awesome seeing her with a dog collar and spike hair in a courtroom as a F you to the legal system, the movie becomes a lot about lawyers and witnesses and testimony about things we've seen before. I'm not sure where the books went, but the movies take a rather pedestrian journey into her past, and I wonder if I wanted to know about her past? Isn't she more interesting as a mysterious Swedish bi-sexual hacker rather than the daughter of some bad guy who did bad things to her mother? If you've seen the first 2 maybe you won't be able to resist the last one, but actually not liking it makes me all the more excited to see Fincher's version next Christmas.
RED 3 starsSurprisingly ok. Low hopes for this one but a winning cast won me over. Bruce Willis is one of my favorite movie stars, he's certainly lasted longer than most, and there are good supporting players like Malkovich and the woman everyone wants their wife to look like in her 60s, Helen Mirren. I really love seeing her in movies. She's the classiest of class acts and evidently based her character on Martha Stewart. Also she can fire an automatic weapon as good as anyone. In a evening gown no less. The real standout is Mary-Louise Parker who most people would know from Weeds but I know mostly from her run on The West Wing. Her character's so full of energy and life and I'd rather the movie stayed with her romance with Bruce more than the fights and the CIA conspiracies which aren't very exciting. It's better as a comedy than an action movie. I'm not saying rush out and rent this, but for what it is, it's not bad.
3 ½ stars Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg co-wrote Pineapple Express and The Green Hornet and the two movies are a lot alike. Okay weed is switched out for fighting crime but still. The movie is more interested in bromance than romance, there is Seth Rogen playing a guy who can't get his life together suddenly thrown into crime and gangs and fighting bad guys, and there is a lot of seriously great low tech action. Low tech in that there seems to be very little CGI, most of it involves old school practical guns and punches and cars crashing into things, and a lot of it is meant to be funny and it is.
I don't know how much of a critical analysis I can make of the movie. Sometimes movies are just gut reactions. I liked it and had a good time. Director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) as always brings great visual and editing touches, in particular Kato has 2 scenes where he takes on multiple guys in slow motion that are just killer. And ideas like driving a car that's cut in half and Kato going into stealth mode with enemies' weapons being highlighted in red, that's gotta be Gondry. You can feel his touch in all of the big action sequences and combining this French guy who did bizarro Bjork videos with a comic book movie was a great idea. The movie's not as out there as I thought it would be, but from reading interviews, he himself didn't want it to be.
The movie altogether is more comedy tone than action and I liked that. It's not the end of the world and these guys aren't necessarily that beneficial to LA, but it's fun putting on masks and riding around and shooting missles out of the Black Beauty which is a car I would choose over the Batmobile any day. That thing is sick and the movie makes the most out of it. There is a camouflage mode, there are clever door guns and a flame thrower and it's all awesome. There is also an evil villain Chudnofsky played by Inglourious Basterds' Christoph Waltz and like Pineapple, the bad guy is underwritten isn't very interesting. Cameron Diaz is likable enough, but her character isn't that important to the proceedings and sadly I think Rogen isn't that special as Britt Reid The Green Hornet. He's fine, but the real star is Hong Kong pop star Jay Chou as Kato.
Like the TV show (which I haven't seen much of) Kato is the real hero. He builds all of the weapons, he created that car, and he can Kung Fu your ass to death. I saw Jay Chou in this car racing/drifting movie Initial D and apparently he's a huge star in Hong Kong and he deserves to be. He has a lot of charm, a lot of screen presence, and thankfully he doesn't play it too seriously. Like the movie, he's allowed to be silly. Despite language barriers, Rogen and him surprisingly have good chemistry and they get to have fun scenes where they just talk and hangout. More fun is a scene where they fight each other and Kato's kick launches Britt into a tiny window. If you want to go, go. It's one of those movies where the amount of which you want to see it will determine how much you will like it. For me, by the time Britt mans up and starts tearing through bad guys at the end, I knew I was just having a good time at the movies. And in always preferable 2D.
Watched this Week: The Good: Exit Through the Gift Shop, Welcome to the Rileys, Animal Kingdom, Killer Instinct, Public Enemy No. 1, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, The Rock, 4 Futurama movies - Bender's Big Score, The Beast with a Billion Backs, Bender's Game, Into the Wild Green Yonder The Bad: Jack Goes Boating, Stone The Ugly: Shanghai
Trips to the Theater: None
Actors of the Week: Vincent Cassel, Warren Oates, James Gandolfini Directors of the Week: Banksy, Sam Peckinpah
Trailers/Clips of the Week: Star Wars: Blu-ray Announcement Trailer. An announcement more important to me than any iPhone.
Exit Through the Gift Shop3 ½ stars After several recommendations from friends, I finally saw Exit Through the Gift Shop, a documentary about street art and its primary subject Thierry Guetta. Thierry is a French immigrant, was a clothing store owner in LA, and he had a particular obsession with his video camera. He's one of those guys that has to film everything. But Thierry really filmed everything. No moment is not worth documenting. How annoying would it be to know this guy. Eventually Thierry spends some time with his cousin whose handle is Space Invader as he pastes up mosaics of characters inspired by the Atari video game Space Invaders in cities around the world. Through Space Invader, Thierry meets more street artists, first Shepard Fairey who posts an image of Andre the Giant labeled with "Obey" everywhere and then Banksy, probably the most famous of street artists who is also the director of this film.
A lot of the movie does involve Thierry's footage of street artists creating and putting up their work under fear of arrest. There is a lot of good tension as the artists and Thierry himself go up high on platforms and billboards in the middle of the night trying to dodge the police. The street artists believe that Thierry is going to make a documentary on street art and I thought that was where the movie was going, but unexpectedly, and wonderfully, the movie takes an insane left turn that I will not reveal. The turn actually is revealed quite gradually and the movie goes down a path that is too good to have been made up.
I will say that as an artist myself, the movie probably hit me deeper than most. A lot is said about the quality of art vs. the popularity of art and what matters more and does the difference even matter. I think beyond the weird, ultimately aggravating French guy and his spycam footage, the question about art is the strongest thing the movie has to talk about. Is art itself in the eye of the beholder (I liked the movie that means it's a good movie) or is there more value in knowledgable criticism (which I believe there is). Looking at Banksy's work that is shown in the film, I find it to be stimulating and inspiring but then again, I'm someone who loves Warhol and certain modern art while others just scoff and don't get it. Am I right or is the majority or is neither? Does being right or wrong have anything to do with it?
As stories go, it is a wild, unexpected ride, and like Ctfish, it seems like documentaries are where a lot of exciting cinema is taking place these days. There has been some speculation about the legitimacy of both documentaries but unless the filmmaker comes out and admits it (like Casey Affleck did with I'm Still Here) I choose to believe it all. It makes the movies much more enjoyable to watch. Skepticism and hyper criticism doesn't help the enjoyment of art. Then again, does the movie argue for that? No matter what, it will make you think and that is always a good thing.
Shanghai 1 ½ stars Shanghai has yet to be released theatrically in the US after premiering in China last summer and there's a reason why. Shanghai is a mess. A stale, old fashioned historical romance epic that is not romantic nor epic. John Cusack plays an American spy during WWII and Shanghai is the last major Chinese city not to be captured by the Japanese. It's a hub where Germans, French, Japanese, Chinese, and Americans congregate "peacefully" and that sounds like it would be an interesting place to set a movie. However, the movie itself not the least bit interesting. Cusack's friend (played by Watchmen's Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is murdered and much of the movie involves the investigation of this murder. The main problems are 1. We don't know anything about Cusack's friend or their relationship so who cares. 2. Cusack's character is so not there onscreen. He's a generic American spy who has details about him like posing as a reporter with Nazi sympathies, but Paul Soames is a boring guy. I think he's supposed to be a Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca type character but Cusack is wrong for that role.
Actually right for her role is Gong Li who at 45 is still a beauty. She is the wife of a Triad crime lord (an underwhelming Chow Yun Fat) and there is of course tension between her bad marriage and her new romance with the American. Ken Watanabe shows up as a Japanese General and the great Rinko Kikuchi is completely wasted in a nothing role as a Japanese girl who was supposed to leave Shanghai with Cusack's friend. So many great actors, so much of a bad time. Also I'm finding it more and more difficult to watch movies where Asian born actors are forced to speak English that is unsuited to them. It seems like such a chore for them to get out these elaborate sentences that their characters would probably never say. It's a chore for us too.
There is some attempt at commentary about the time period, but it's all lost in lousy dialogue and a clunky plot. They should've spent less time building sets and more time on that script. This is a large failure for the The Weinstein Company who was once Miramax and who literally can't buy a hit. Swedish Director Mikael Hafstrom directed an okay movie in 1408 (also with Cusack) but he is way out of his league here. Really a terrible movie.
Stone 2 stars Things started off better than I expected with the first meeting between Norton and De Niro. Norton is a convict named Stone looking to get paroled after serving 8 years of a 10-15 year sentence while De Niro is his parole officer. At some point De Niro bursts out in anger with a tight tirade that puts Stone in his place. If he wants to get out, he has to go through De Niro. "I'm that door. You'll go through me." Then as the trailer shows, we meet Norton's attractive wife Milla Jovovich who intends to seduce the parole officer in order to help get Stone out. The movie could've been and maybe should've stayed as a melodrama about a man asking his wife to seduce another man and the conflict that comes out of that. De Niro's character is an older man who has let life pass him by. He is the opposite of inspirational and is slowly dying in his country home. But about halfway through the movie tries to become something else when Stone has a spiritual epiphany in prison after he witnesses the murder of a fellow inmate. Stone starts to change and starts care less about getting out and more about listening to whatever God wants him to do and this annoys De Niro to no end as he is a semi-devout church goer who himself has never experienced anything like that.
Still, this storyline and the seduction storyline don't mesh well and I really didn't care about either. Later when De Niro starts to get paranoid that he is being stalked by Stone the air completely goes out of the balloon. Norton is effective as this Detroit thug with cornrows but the character doesn't seem to rise above our expectations of him. De Niro's performance is somewhat forgettable and Milla Jovovich's character is underwritten and uninteresting. This is only the second drama I've seen her in after He Got Game, and I haven't seen any of her slew of B-grade action movies other than the first Resident Evil. She holds her own okay, but her breathy nasal voice is a problem. Skip it, don't rent it, I'm surprised it made it to the theater.
Mesrine Part 1: Killer Instinct 3 ½ stars French actor Vincent Cassel is absolutely electric as infamous bank robber Jacques Mesrine (pronounced mey-reen), who was France's answer to John Dillinger, only he was alive in the 70s not the 30s. Mesrine was a small time gangster and then a big time national star. Part 1: Killer Instinct covers his early years in the 60s when Mesrine met his first wife in Spain (the crazy gorgeous Elena Anaya), tries briefly to go clean, and then its off to the criminal races. The movie is strange in that breezes by his life events so quickly. He marries his wife, and the next scene cuts to them having a baby. Within 5 minutes he has lost his straight job and is back with his old gangster buddies. The movie is not meditative, it tumbles forward with forceful energy and before we know it Jacques has divorced his wife, married a new one and is forced to flee to Quebec after things get too hot in France.
It is indeed an odd biopic that is much more concerned with action than in psychological motivations and that's fine by me. A trip to Arizona feels like a clip in a highlight reel and so much of the movie feels this way. This turns out to be a good thing as biopics in general can be ponderous and pretentious and every life moment is made to feel too significant. This movie has so much life to cover, including an awful stint in a maximum security prison, that under 2 hours the movie feels just right. By the time Part 1 was over at 12:30am last night, I was ready for Part 2.
Part 2: Public Enemy No. 1 3 stars Public Enemy No. 1 jumps to the 70s. Jacques is back in France, holding up banks in broad daylight. One thing to note is how unplanned and unprofessional the robberies are. He goes in with maybe one guy, they point their pistols, they run out and start shooting at cops. Mesrine is a guy that benefited more from luck and bravado than any sort of skill. His celebrity starts to grow in France and he in turn starts to become pompous, spewing out rhetoric against fascism and the judicial system and anything else that pops into his head. Unfortunately, this second film is not as good as the first and if Killer Instinct was a set up, Public Enemy No. 1 is a letdown as a payoff. Jacques just gets more fat, more stupid, and inevitably cannot walk away from the life and he will be punished for it. With any good international film, it's a pleasure to meet so many great actors and actresses you would normally not see. Standouts include Ludvine Sagnier as Mesrine's last wife and Anaya who I've seen in a few Almodovar films. Also strong is Gerard Depardieu as Mesrine's first big boss.
Above everything is Cassel as Mesrine. Masculine, charming as hell, and not afraid to show Jacques's terrible qualities. In one scene he puts a gun in his wife's mouth in front of his children. Yikes. You might know Cassel from Ocean's Twelve, Eastern Promises, and Black Swan currently in theaters. He is a great actor, better in his native language, and he happens to be married to Monica Bellucci so screw him. Haha. It's a landmark performance that won him the Cesar (the French equivalent of the Oscar) as Best Actor 2 years ago.
I don't believe I had ever seen a good, contemporary French gangster film and Killer Instinct is it. Public Enemy No. 1 is not as good but how can you watch one without finishing the other. Killer Instinct should be on its way to DVD soon (I rented the Canadian Blu-ray from a place I go to) and I hope you rent it. It is indeed the French Scarface.
The Social Network 3 ½ stars I know you were all desperate to read a third review of The Social Network (yeah right), but given my ambiguity when I first saw it back in October, I wanted to express my feelings now in January having watched it a few more times in the comforts of my home. I bumped it up a 1/2 star as I think I have gotten over what I wanted the movie to be (a character study of Mark Zuckerberg and his relationship with Eduardo Saverin), and have accepted it as what it wants to be (an almost non-fiction telling of the events surrounding the creation of Facebook). It is still emotional, but it is much more about information. That's why the structure is founded on two depositions and not on arguments and personal conflicts. We hear the events unfold in testimony and like Rashida Jones's character says, it can be clouded by emotion and the rest of it is lies. I think a lot of it is what we think of the events that happened. What is most important to us.
What it was for me when I first saw it was Eduardo Saverin's story. Looking at it again, he didn't see what Mark had created. He didn't get it. He shouldn't have been looking for ad buys in New York and should've moved out to California and should not have been CFO. Friendship was betrayed, but would there be any complaints if Zuckerberg had created the cure for some deadly disease and not just the most important social network in the world? Is the creation of something this special worth the lack of humanity? Sean Parker is a grating a-hole, but most of what he says turns out to be right (although his cummupence is delicious). Would Mark have been better off simply dating a nice girl from Boston University as opposed to fulfilling his life's destiny and ambition creating something that will be remembered for a very long time? I think the movie and Fincher make a case that friendship and being a kind human is not always the most important thing. That there are in fact things in life that need to be pursued despite that collateral damage. And knowing Fincher's own diamond precision focus in filmmaking, I get it now.
I think I wanted the movie to just be on Eduardo's side and be about his feelings and how wronged he was and a lot of it is. It's not a movie about outsiders though, it's about the creation of something very special, this internet beast we all use. 25% of internet traffic is Facebook. I mean that is unbelievable. And so what if Mark Zuckerberg's a jerk who is borderline Asperger's who screwed over one friend. It's important to me as I'm a Christian and character is what matters, but to most, isn't creating something this significant ultimately more meaningful than being a nice guy?
Watching it again, this new layer revealed itself and I get why everyone has so much praise for it. I'm very surprised at myself at how skewed my own point of view/perception was during those first two viewings and like Eduardo, I didn't get it. But I'm very glad I watched it again, and then again, and then again. Not to mention the technical achievements, that beautiful score, and Sorkin's script which I still find not as funny as I would like it to be, and yet utterly masterful in laying out everything that happened with brevity and lightning speed. How easy would it have been to get lost in the proceedings? I never was once and that is great screenwriting. Out on Blu-ray Tuesday and I'm buying it. Seriously, have I thought and wrote about one film more in the past year? Yeesh.
*Dustin Moskovitz, Mark's programming roommate is played by Joseph Mazzello, who was the annoying kid from Jurassic Park.
The oddest inclusions are Tangled and Robin Hood. Also Knight and Day has no business being on anyone's Top 20. But I always admire Tarantino for simply not caring about his lists being respectable or cool to other people. It's his personal list, and stuff you if you have any problems with it.
Watched this Week: The Good: Ctfish, Barton Fink, Postcards from the Edge, more of The Social Network and over 3 hours of special features on the DVD The Bad: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, Never Let Me Go, Shampoo The Ugly: Elvis and Anabelle (this terrible indie with Blake Lively and Max Minghella. Boo!)
Trips to the Theater: None
Actors of the Week: John Turturro, John Goodman, Carrie Fisher Directors of the Week: Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman
Trailers/Clips of the Week: Your Highness Red Band Trailer. From the director of All the Real Girls, Snow Angels, and Undertow. ...also Pineapple Express.
Catfish 4 stars Had I seen it before I wrote my end of the year post, it would’ve been #11. Catfish is an extraordinary documentary, absolutely spellbinding from start to finish. I had heard a few rumblings and had seen the trailer but for whatever reason I did not see it in the theater. I’m sad I didn’t. Catfish follows Yaniv Schulman (Nev) who is a photographer in New York. His brother Ariel (Rel) and their friend Henry Joost are filmmakers. Nev gets a photograph published and an 8 year-old child prodigy named Abby does a painting of that photograph and sends it to Nev. They become Facebook friends and Nev starts to get to know Abby’s mother Angela, Abby’s attractive older sister Megan, and a series of other friends and family through Facebook posts, photos, and texting. The family lives in a small town in Michigan. Nev mostly photographs dancers, Megan herself is a dancer, and they really begin to fall for one another. We hear their phone calls, see some of their emails, and get to witness the beginnings of their relationship.
I will not dare give anything else away and maybe I’ve given away too much already. Movies are rarely this addictively absorbing and it reminds me how much of a rush great films can be. I was completely hooked all the way through, and it may be a documentary, but there are scenes as tense and intense as any thriller. Freaking scary if you ask me. And the discoveries made in Michigan are unpredictable. They are deep and resonant and terribly poignant. It may be the strongest film I saw this year with regards to its thematic material. It has so many strong things to say about life and expectations and what we may do to connect with people. Please rent it right now. Don’t be deterred by its strange title. I cannot recommend it any higher.
Never Let Me Go 2 ½ stars A bit of a disappointment. With such a great cast of actors and director Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo), I was hoping for more. Never Let Me Go is about three young donors Kathy (Carey Mulligan), Ruth (Keira Knightley), and Tommy (Andrew Garfield). They are donors as they are raised in an English boarding school Hailsham where their sole purpose is to grow up and one day donate vital organs to whoever may need them. They are people, but they are not. They remain at their schools, and they have little to no contact with the outside world. Unfortunately this reminded me a lot of Michael Bay’s movie The Island which came out a few years ago (not a bad one actually). Although in that movie the donors were not aware of the reason for their existence and that was the mystery of the movie. Here is it is made clear to anyone who attends Hailsham.
The movie starts in the late 60s and despite the time jumps in the story, the movie feels like it remains in that time period. The world is idyllic, postcard-esque, and quite boring. Which I guess is the point, but all throughout I kept asking myself why doesn’t one of them attempt to escape? Why are they not curious about the world? Why are they so resigned to their lives or lack of lives? I wonder if it is because they are so English and any aggressiveness would be in bad taste, but the movie doesn’t give a proper answer. Instead, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy dutifully follow their pre-destined paths and the movie mostly becomes about a love triangle as both Ruth and Kathy want to be with Tommy.
Is the movie attempting to be thoughtful science fiction? If so, it falls short of really stimulating the conversations in intends to generate. Automatically we know this is wrong. These aren’t organs, these are people, and what is happening to them is extremely cruel. They are born into prison, and they will die whenever someone decides to take whatever they need. Yet this question is far in the background in this film and the characters’ collective lack of passion about it kills the story. This reality is accepted by everyone so easily. I believe this was done so that the movie can focus on its thematic concept of brief lives and how we all have short lives and what in fact do we do with our lives. Unfortunately I am the one who wrote that last sentence and the movie doesn’t necessarily bring up emotions about that idea.
Is the movie a romantic tragedy? If so, it falls short as I felt Tommy was a dull dummy and why does the smart and empathetic Kathy pine for him for 3 decades? The best scene in the movie involves a confession from Ruth (Knightley continues to be a fantastic actress) but its timing in the story is off, which makes the ending much less powerful than it should be. Carey Mulligan is a very good actress but she spends more than half the movie in tears and beyond her sad expressions, there really isn’t much to her character. Again, why aren’t these people more curious? When they do take a trip to a restaurant for the first time in their lives, they see it as an awkward experience and not something to be treasured. Why bother having freedom if they don’t even seem to want it? No one in this movie seems to want to live life.
Overall, the film falls short in both areas and honestly if it didn’t have three actors who I really like, I don’t think I would’ve enjoyed it much at all. Mark Romanek has made some stunning music videos but here the camera work is often humdrum and forgettable. The movie does feel a little like it has been dipped in period film gold and that’s not a good thing. I feel more distant from these movies when things are so obviously designed to be old fashioned. I am intrigued to read the book which is a favorite among many despite its generic title. A bit of a disappointment indeed.
Twelve 1 ½ starsDo you care about spoiled New York rich kids who take drugs? I don’t either. There have been a few films made about this subject lately, some based on Bret Eaton Ellis books, but I don’t care. How are movies about drugs and sex and 17 year-olds so crushingly boring? I don’t relate to their world and I am not the least bit interested in it. 50 Cent plays a drug dealer, some other WB/CW actors and actresses walk around being scummy and slutty. One standout is Emily Meade who had a memorable guest appearance on Boardwalk Empire as a prostitute who gets cut down the middle of her face. She is a breath of fresh air in this otherwise dreary exhale of cigarette smoke. Sorry Joel Schumacher, it hasn’t been working lately.
I always imagine this list will be fun to write, but then I just get mad again. You forget the bad movies, but the really terrible ones stay with you.
1. She’s Out of My League Two frat boys banged their fists on a keyboard for a couple of hours and decided to punish the world with this POS. A 13 year-old's horrible wet dream. Honestly one of the most awful movies I have ever seen with one of the most annoying characters I have ever experienced. Actor Kyle Bornheimer who plays Dylan should spend a couple of nights in prison he's so bad in this movie. F---ing horrible.(Review)
2. Percy Jackson and The Olympians: The Lightning Thief Silliness x infinity. When that black guy revealed himself as a half goat that was it. No movie could possibly survive that scene. (Review)
3. Leap Year I love Amy Adams, I hate, hate, hated Leap year. The very definition of a bad romantic comedy. Girlfriends around the world should apologize to their boyfriends. Whoever wrote that dual proposal scene should be ashamed. (Review)
4. Cop Out You know how junior high kids get their first video camera and start to make their own movies? That's exactly what this is, only starring Bruce Willis. Comedies are supposed to be funny right? (Review)
5. Date Night Two of the best comedic actors around put in this mess. The worst episode of either 30 Rock or The Office is 10x better than Date Night. I continue to hate director Shawn Levy (The Pink Panther remake, The Night at the Museums). Michael Bay is Scorsese compared to this guy. Next year he brings us Real Steel about wrestling robots. Whoo!(Review)
6. Law Abiding Citizen Stooooooopid. Any movie where a woman picks up her cell phone and the cell phone shoots a bullet through her head is bad.(Review)
7. Repo Men To quote myself, "Wow this was bad." (Review)
8. The Last Airbender If only it was the last Shyamalan movie. Dialogue has rarely been so unbearable. (Review)
9. Everybody’s Fine I am not fine. This is the movie they show you on the plane and you'd rather stare at the back of the headrest in front of you. A Lifetime original movie starring Robert De Niro. I think it's the worst movie of his career. Even worse than Rocky and Bullwinkle. (Review)
10. Salt Its supreme mediocrity puts it on this list. A lazy ass, piss poor copy of Jason Bourne. A karate fight ensues to prevent someone from pushing a button that may start a nuclear war. I'm serious. If you rented this, you got what you deserved. (Review)
Dishonorable Mentions: Dear John, Leaves of Grass, Frozen, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Most Overrated: Easy A We're Too Old: Knight and Day Worst Scores: David Byrne and Craig Armstrong for Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, James Newton Howard for Salt Worst Posters: When in Rome, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World Worst Trailers: The Green Lantern, No Strings Attached, Cowboys and Aliens, Stone Worst Movies of 2009 Worst Movies of the Decade
Watched this Week: The Good: Miller's Crossing, The Social Network, The Town, Dave Chappelle's Block Party, The Big Lebowski, more Futurama The Bad: Dinner for Schmucks, Twelve, The American The Ugly: None Trips to the Theater: Tron: Legacy (in 3D. Boo!) Actors of the Week: Andrew Garfield, Jeremy Renner, Rebecca Hall, Gabriel Byrne, Jon Polito Directors of the Week: David Fincher, The Coen Brothers
4 stars Although it was released last year, Let Me In is the first great movie I've seen in 2011. I believe I rented Let the Right One In, the Swedish version of John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel, but I must've not really watched it because I didn't remember it at all. I am going to watch it again tonight, but this isn't going to be a comparison review.
