Funny.
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Archive for the 'Movies' Category
Looks nice, but not OMG WOW.
So, as a movie-going public we’re used to being insulted by portrayls of the internet in film. From the ridiculous world of The Net and its talking chat icons to Hackers and its Mac-based “hacking” (a film who’s only virtue is early Angelina Jolie action), the internet has just never been given respect in the movies. It’s not like I expect the boring realism of online use to be translated to screen, but in this day and age where the vast majority of us use the web daily, the Internet being depicted in the trailer for “Untracebale” is just horrible.
I mean, come on Hollywood. Sure, this movie has the gorgeous Diane Lane (see her in hidden gem Hollywoodland), but the Internet it portrays (along with the manic typing nobody has ever done to put in a URL) is just ridiculous in 2008.
Juno: Great comic writing and not too “look at me, I’m quirky” acting (Wes Anderson, I’m looking at you and your suck movies). Not many have noted it but Allison Janey gets to bring the humor you didn’t get to see too often from the West Wing to her character. I hope Ellen Page, the star, gets more roles. Recommended.
UPDATE: I would also note that if conservatives approached the issue of abortion like Juno and Knocked Up have, they’d do a better job convincing people against abortion. But at the heart of both films is the choice of the main characters not to have an abortion. The choice.
I Am Legend: I enjoyed this as well, very reminiscient of a more sci-fi oriented Castaway. Love the integration of Bob Marley with the plot. The ending was a little too convenient, but still a nicely put together film. Recommended.
Just finished watching it for the ten billionth time on Christmas Eve, and I don’t know how anybody could argue that it isn’t one of the most liberal movies ever. Take for instance this scene where George explains to Mr. Potter why the perennially inefficient building and loan serves such a grand purpose in Bedford Falls:
George: Just a minute, just a minute. Now, hold on, Mr. Potter. You’re right when you say my father was no business man. I know that. Why he ever started this cheap, penny-ante Building and Loan, I’ll never know. But neither you nor anybody else can say anything against his character, because his whole life was……Why, in the twenty-five years since he and Uncle Billy started this thing, he never once thought of himself. Isn’t that right, Uncle Billy? He didn’t save enough money to send Harry to school, let alone me. But he did help a few people get out of your slums, Mr. Potter. And what’s wrong with that? Why…here, you’re all businessmen here. Doesn’t it make them better citizens? Doesn’t it make them better customers? You, you said, what’d you say just a minute ago? They had to wait and save their money before they even ought to think of a decent home. Wait! Wait for what? Until their children grow up and leave them? Until they’re so old and broken-down that they….do you know how long it takes a working man to save five thousand dollars? Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you’re talking about…they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn’t think so. People were human beings to him, but to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they’re cattle. Well, in my book he died a much richer man than you’ll ever be!
Potter: I’m not interested in your book. I’m talking about the Building & Loan.
George: I know very well what you’re talking about. You’re talking about something you can’t get your fingers on, and it’s galling you. That’s what you’re talking about, I know. (to the Board members) Well, I’ve said too much. I….you’re the Board here. You do what you want with this thing. Just one thing more, though. This town needs this measly one-horse institution if only to have some place where people can come without crawling to Potter. Come on, Uncle Billy!
A good movie, but by no means a great movie. So much of it felt like setup, and based on the box office receipts there probably won’t be any sequels. I liked the concepts and ideas the movie hinted at, enough that I bought the book, but this movie was not up to the level of other recent fantasy films like The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.
(And by the way, can we quit trying to discern the political messages in these movies and the books and enjoy them for what they are? Plus, we all know the Harry Potter series is clearly an indoctrination into communism anyway. What is Dumbledore if not a stand-in for Karl Marx? Sheesh.)
Rating: 3/5
ALSO: I still don’t like any of the Lord Of The Rings movies and never will. Look, we’re… walking… and walking… and here’s an elf and a giant battle and… we’re walking. Christ, what a scam.
Two things, for starters:
1. American Gangster is the best movie of 2007.
2. Denzel Washington is the best actor of this generation.
2a. Russell Crowe is no slouch either.
It seems that there’s something about fall and really good crime movies. Last year there was the superb Departed, and this year brings American Gangster. I loved everything about this movie: the plot, the pacing, the acting, the action, it was a quick moving epic film that once again shows that all the good stories haven’t been told and that people will come to the theater for something that isn’t just dreck.
One of the best things about this movie was its look. I was not alive in New York City in the late ’60s and early ’70s, but I’ve got to feel that this movie is what Harlem looked like in that era. Many period pieces make their world a little too clean, a little too perfect - this one (like The Departed and Boston) does it just right. There are moments of violence in the movie that transcend the standard issue “mob” film and ring true as very real, very human violence. The two leads - Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe - fully inhabit their characters. This isn’t movie stars sleepwalking through a paycheck, but rather an actor becoming someone else on the silver screen.
I really liked the hell out of this movie.
Rating: 4.5/5
I confess: I like (some) romantic comedies. In no particular order I enjoyed: Sleepless in Seattle, While You Were Sleeping, IQ, Serendipity, and You’ve Got Mail. Yeah, it’s Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan heavy. They are the king and queen of the genre. But this past weekend I saw trailers for two romantic comedies you couldn’t bribe me to watch (not true, I have a price but I’m making a point). One was about Katherine Heigl (Knocked Up) being a bridesmaid 27 times and not finding the right guy. The other was Hilary Swank opening letters from her dead boyfriend/husband and following their instructions to get her life back together.
Yuck.
I understand that the romantic comedy genre is one designed from the ground up as an appeal to female moviegoers, but I felt like those films I listed as ones I enjoyed had something for the guy in them. You had the interaction between John Cusack and his best friend Jeremy Piven in Serendipity, or you had the silly WWII-As-Romance-Movie sequence from Sleepless in Seattle. But these two movies, and a host of others I’ve glimpsed in the last couple of years look like they were written for women. They’re Lifetime/Bridget Jones movies.
Doesn’t that seem limiting? 90% of the time a woman drags her gentleman to these movies, but would it hurt to throw the guy a bone so he says “Hey, that wasn’t so bad, surely you’ll come with me to Action Death Kill 7 : The Revenge with me now that I didn’t fall asleep during Romancing The Romance starring Hugh Grant?”
These movies seem to have over narrowcasted themselves. Either that or they just need more Meg Ryan.
It is rare in the last 15 years that I’ve seen a movie that doesn’t treat you like you’re a drooling dummy. As my past movie reviews have made clear, I love a popcorn movie more than the average guy. But I can appreciate one that is also written for a high school graduate.
The worst example of this was the otherwise good Bond movie, Casino Royale, during the card game sequence where one character explained to the other how the game was progressing and operating. Even if you don’t know how to play the card game (like me), the sequence would have been a lot better without the guy saying “OK, JAMES BOND NEEDS A JACK OR A KING TO WIN, OR HE LOSES THE WHOLE THING, OK, CUE THE DRAMATIC TENSION”.
I liked Michael Clayton a lot, and it could have done with a little trimming, but the sophistication of the writing and plot makes up for that: 4/5
No. Really. Really. I kid you not.
Leonardo DiCaprio and George Clooney are to star in a film loosely based on the rise and fall of presidential hopeful Howard Dean. The Warner Bros production will be based on a stage-play written by Beau Willimon, a former assistant on the Dean campaign.
Entitled Farragut North, after a Washington Metro station in the heart of the lobbyist district, the film sounds like darker version of Joe Roth’s Primary Colours. It tells the tale of a youthful communications guru working for a principled but unorthodox politician who finds himself undone by a slick and corrupt Washington establishment. Currently in rehearsal, Willimon’s stage-play is set to open on Broadway in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election. Mike Nichols is directing.
…
DiCaprio and Clooney will produce the film as well as starring. It is believed that DiCaprio will play the young communications chief while Clooney stars as the Dean surrogate.
The DeLorean is back.
James Espey, VP of the DeLorean Motor Company, said work will begin on the first car in the third quarter, and delivery of that vehicle will be in the first quarter of 2008 at a price of $57,500. The good news is, it will still look like a DeLorean, with a stainless steel body, gull wing doors and squared-off front end.
I don’t write about health care a whole lot because it’s one of those things where I think the niggling details are boring and the solution to our problems - universal healthcare - to be so blindingly obvious that I think that the “debate” is about as invalid as the “debate” about global warming and evolution. That said, you should see Sicko. I’ve had the crushing hand of the health care industry affect a very close family member more than once, so much of the stories rang true as well as the disparity in how we deal with the issue here in America versus the rest of the world. I’m not sure we can yet have a revolution on the issue, because even many Democrats are (as usual) overly cautious at an issue that is essentially a slam dunk. So, anyhow. See the movie, it’s pretty good.
Rating: 4/5
I know I’m supposed to be high minded and not like Michael Bay’s movies, but God help me I enjoy the hell out of them (except for Pearl Harbor). The action is over the top, there are ten explosions per minute, and almost always the best solution to resolve the plot is military hardware. But then, Transformers is a movie about giant robots based on a cartoon designed to sell toys in the 1980s. This isn’t high art, but its a hell of a theme park ride. Shia Labeouf is unexpectedly entertaining in his lead role, and Megan Fox vaults right up into the hottie top ten thanks to this movie.
Rating: 3.5/5
I recently saw both of these movies on the same day, and surprisingly liked them both. Live Free Or Die Hard is ridiculous action. That is, none of it is believable, and if you accept that going in you’ll have a heck of a fun time. Bruce Willis spends the entire movie Bruce Willising around, which means that he cracks wise and gets 10 million bullets shot at him that all miss somehow. The stuff with computers is ridiculous - apparently hacking into FBI computers and pulling up NSA schematics is as easy as doing a Google search for Jessica Alba pictures. But it’s fun. Stupid summer fun, and the kind of action movie I enjoy when I feel like an action flick.
It also has Maggie Q, who played the similar role of “badass chick” in Mission Impossible 3 and I think she ought to be cast as the lead in an action movie sometime soon. There aren’t enough cool action movies, and certainly not any with plausible yet attractive female leads. Get on that, Hollywood.
Live Free or Die Hard: 3.5 /5
Ratatouille is the best Pixar film in a while, and shows once again that the magic is not in making a 3D computer animated movie but in making a movie with A GOOD STORY. Disney abandoned 2D apparently thinking that today’s kids are too sophisticated for it, but its because they produced absolute swill like Lilo & Stitch instead of magnificent stuff like Lion King, Aladdin, and Beauty & The Beast. Ratatiouille is the good stuff - great voices, characters you care about, and humor that doesn’t stick out like a too-hip thumb like in Shrek 3. It’s a classic, and a rebound from Cars, which I found very disappointing.
As far as Pixar films go, I think I would have to say I rank them in order as: The Incredibles (which I thought should have been nominated as Best Picture - not animated, just overall best picture), Toy Story, Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, Monsters Inc., A Bugs Life, Cars.
Ratatouille: 4/5
I enjoyed this movie. It basically worked as advertised - a light summer romp with comic book themes and stuff blowing up. 
It’s a little odd in that it takes the Fantastic Four a good while to knock it into their heads that saving the world is job #1, but they get there. I do like how they played up the “celebrity” aspect of the FF as compared to the dual lives of a lot of other superheroes (they don’t have secret identities and are headquartered right in middle of New York).
And of course there’s Jessica Alba. Jessica Alba on a giant movie screen - every lad in America should have that prize. The funny thing is that there’s more nudity of Jessica Alba (implied, but still, nude) in this PG rated film than in her role as a stripper in Sin City which was rated R. I do get a little creeped out at the romance between her and Ioan Gruffudd (Mr. Fantastic) because he looks more like her dad than the love of her life. But fear not, Jessica Alba wears glasses for a quick bit in this movie and all is well.
The movie could have been a bit longer, frankly, and the third act feels rushed. Solid popcorn fun.
Rating: 3/5
Come on Nike. First we get the shoes. Then we get the hoverboard. Then things get heavy… doc. (via)
It looks pretty cool. Thank God, no nipples.
Crazy Grand Theft Auto mod using Back To The Future. Woah, this is heavy Doc. (I am a huge BTTF fan)
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This looks like a funny movie. Oh, and it has teh Jessica Alba in it.
Denzel Washington as a bad-ass. Russell Crowe as the cop on his trail in the 1970s.
By far the funniest and best movie I’ve seen in a loooong time. Great plot, laughs, acting, etc. It’s also surprisingly sweet in a manly way (or maybe I’m just getting soft in this, the last year of my twenties). 4.5/5
