November 2011 Movie Reviews (part 2)

HUGO.   Martin Scorsese has made a beautiful movie that takes full advantage of 3-D.  Pre-teen Hugo lives behind the walls of the 1930’s Paris train station after his father is killed in an accident.  Hugo fixes the clocks behind the scenes, steals food to survive, and evades the Station Inspector (Sacha Cohen Baron) who would put him in an orphanage.   The one thing Hugo has left from his dad is an automaton that he is trying to repair.  To work on it, he has been stealing parts from toy store owner Georges Melies (Ben Kingsley), who works in the station.  When Hugo gets caught stealing, it sets off a series of events that lead him to learning more about the automaton, and about Georges.  Why does the Georges’ god-daughter have the key to the automaton?   This is almost two movies – the first is Hugo’s adventures in the train station (and the 3-D is fabulous here) and the second involves discoveries about the early movie making years.   This might be a bit long for children, and it does include a bit of a history lesson, but I really, really liked this movie. 

THE DESCENDANTS.  The movie begins with George Clooney’s voiceover, stating that just because people live in a Hawaiian paradise, it doesn’t mean their lives are problem-free.  It seems his wife was in a boat accident and is in a coma.  He has to take care of his younger daughter, and decides to take his older teenage daughter out of boarding school to help him.  But George hasn’t been around much, and she’s a bit of a pill, for good reason.  The events around and following his wife’s accident make George take a look at his marriage, his parenting, his job…it’s more than a family crisis, it’s a personal crisis for him.  This is a thoroughly entertaining movie, quite funny at times, but also with a serious bent.  (It’s by the director that did Sideways and Election; men in crisis seems to be his genre.)  It’s a good movie, and Clooney is even better, as is the actress playing the older daughter.

MY WEEK WITH MARILYN.    This based-on-a-memoir movie revolves around Marilyn Monroe coming to London in 1956 to make a movie with and directed by Laurence Olivier.  The third assistant director Colin Clark became her friend for a week and accompanied her on a weekend around London.  I found the core story to be pretty shallow.  Of course the young man was smitten, of course Marilyn broke his heart.  But I did enjoy the details surrounding the movie-making, and some of the side bits (her acting coach, Olivier’s frustration with Marilyn’s unprofessionalism, Vivian Leigh).   Michelle Williams doesn’t really look or sound anything like Marilyn Monroe, but she does a terrific job of making you see Marilyn’s specialness, sexiness, sweetness, insecurities…

INTO THE ABYSS.  Werner Herzog’s latest documentary investigates a capital murder case that happened in Texas in 2000.  Two teenage boys, because they wanted a red hot Camero, senselessly murdered three people.  Herzog interviews the murderers (one on death row, one not), victims’ families, the police, and others.  Although he states up front he is against capital punishment, he isn’t railing against it in this movie.  He is just examining a really tragic event from all angles.  This is quite good, but sooo sad.  Like a real life DEAD MAN WALKING.

LIKE CRAZY.  This movie is about two college students who meet and fall madly in love.  Anna is an exchange student, and she is so in love with Jacob she can’t bear to go back to England for the summer, so she violates her visa conditions and stays in LA.  When she is caught and has to go home, their relationship of course will suffer the ups and downs that long distance creates.  And it will take months and months for her immigration status to be resolved.  I thought Anna especially immature, so I had trouble having sympathy for her.  And Jacob could be a jerk.  You know, like real people.  Interesting to me, sort of, but I think anyone’s interest in this movie will strongly depend on their tolerance for young love and how naive (i.e., stupid) young people can be.

THE OTHER F WORD.  Pretty amusing documentary about punk rockers (members of Rancid, Black Flag, Pennywise, etc), and how they were forced to change when they became fathers.  Most of them did not have great male role models, but are determined to be the best dads they can be for their kids.  They realize the conflict between their careers (when punk is all about doing whatever the fuck you want and fuck everyone else) and being there for their kids and raising them right.  The movie is a little long, but I enjoyed it a lot.

LE HAVRE.  French movie about a middle-aged shoeshine man who lives in Le Havre, a port town.  One day a container of illegal immigrants from Africa is opened, and a young boy escapes.  The police are hot on his tail, and Marcel, the shoeshine man, and his neighbors endeavor to help the kid.  Marcel also has a sick wife in the hospital.  Critics are saying this is a sentimental black comedy.  Wow.  I thought it was a rather dull slice of life portrait of ordinary people doing something to help a kid, nothing more.

November 2011 movie reviews (part 1)

TOWER HEIST.  Ben Stiller is the general manager of a posh Manhattan co-op, and he has no life other than providing top-notch service to the wealthy residents.  Alan Alda lives in the penthouse.  He is a financial guru who one day is arrested by the FBI (Tea Leoni) for stealing everyone’s money (a la Bernie Madoff).  This includes stealing the hotel staff’s pensions, who gave him their money to manage.  So Ben, along with some of his co-workers/friends (Casey Affleck, Matthew Broderick) decide to steal their money back from him.  Since they aren’t criminals, they recruit Ben’s childhood friend (Eddie Murphy) to help them.  Occasionally amusing, with some edge-of-the seat moments, this is a mildly entertaining heist movie (made better by Murphy), but nothing special.  Worth seeing on TV.

ORANGES AND SUNSHINE.  Margaret (Emily Watson) is a social worker in 1986 England.  She is doing group therapy with some adoptees when a woman asks her assistance in finding her roots.  The woman tells Margaret that she was shipped to a home in Australia when she was a child.  Margaret doesn’t believe this, as it would be quite illegal, but then she hears of another case of the same thing.  She starts investigating and finds that the English and Australian governments conspired to send thousands of foster and orphan children to Australia (up until 1970).  And some of these children still had living parents.  She starts a non-profit trying to reunite families.  The movie doesn’t really tell a surprising story (unfortunately) of the abuse that some of the children suffered.  But it is quite good in showing the stress of the work on Margaret, and the differing affects the emigration had on the children (especially Hugh Weaving and David Wenham).  Very good because instead of focusing on the event, it shows the effect on individuals.  Based on Margaret’s book in the subject.

BLACKTHORN.  This movie presupposes that Butch Cassidy (Sam Shepard) was not killed in Bolivia in 1908, but instead bought a horse ranch on the Bolivian frontier.  The movie opens in 1928 as the old Butch (using the name Blackthorn) decides that it is time to go back to the States and see his family.  So he goes to town to sell his belongings for the money he needs, but on his way back to the ranch he is shot at and loses his horse and everything with it.  The shooter is Eduardo, a young Spanish mining engineer, who claims that a posse is out to get him because he stole money from a mining company.  Eventually the two men team up to retrieve the stolen money and evade the posse.  Mortality is weighing on Butch’s mind, and at times he flashes back to his early days with Sundance and Etta.  This movie is just a little slow-paced for me, but other than that, I quite liked it.  We don’t see Westerns much anymore.

ANONYMOUS.  This movie takes the position that Shakespeare didn’t write his plays, the Earl of Oxford did.  He apparently is a favorite candidate among the Shakespeare-didn’t-write-his-plays crowd.  I don’t really care one way or the other who wrote the plays, but I would want a movie like this to clearly explain its position.  But I found the court politics surrounding this theory confusing, and was expected to believe plot twists that I just couldn’t buy.  The movie is kind of fun in depicting the Elizabethan era, but it’s too long, and like I said, just didn’t make enough sense.

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE.   Martha escapes from the at-first-glance bucolic commune she is living on and has her estranged sister Lucy come pick her up.  Lucy feels guilty for not having been there for Martha when their mother died, so she wants to make it up to Martha.  But Martha is very odd.  It turns out what she was escaping from was a seriously creepy cult led by John Hawkes, and she is dealing with PTSD from having lived there for two years.  The movie flashes back and forth from Martha’s experiences in the cult to her trying to cope with the real world at her sister’s house (although she never tells her sister the truth about what she has been through).  Martha is just falling apart.  Well-acted, and believable, I guess, but this isn’t my kind of movie.  I just don’t enjoy movies where the main character is suffering some kind of psychological breakdown (like Black Swan last year) and you are just waiting for something horrible to happen.

A VERY HAROLD AND KUMAR CHRISTMAS (3D).  The 76% of critics on Rotten Tomatoes who gave this a positive rating must have been high when they saw it.  I wish I had been, it might have helped.  I laughed a lot at their first movie, even though it was stupid,  but this one is horrible; I laughed maybe twice.  The plot doesn’t matter, so I won’t relay it here.   The 3D was good though, and they played it for the gimmick it is.

July & August movie reviews

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES.  Will (James Franco) is working on a cure for Alzheimer’s, and thinks he has made a breakthrough.  But the experiment goes horribly wrong when one of the lab subjects, a chimpanzee, goes berserk and has to be shot. The biomedical company refuses to pursue his research.  But as it turns out, the chimp got violent because she was pregnant, so Will takes the newborn chimp home and raises him like a child (including sign language).  And Will gives his dad (John Lithgow) the drug, proving it works.   At some point, it becomes obvious that the little chimp named Caesar is brighter than one might think – did he inherit the drug’s benefits from his mother?  When Caesar gets older, he is harder to handle and ends up in an animal “sanctuary” run by a sadist.  Stuff happens, apes run amok in San Francisco and on the Golden Gate Bridge.  For the most part, the plot makes movie sense (although one secondary character serves only to forward the plot) and the CGI effects seem better and better as the movie proceeds.  I would make this my pick for brainless “summer movie” to see.  PS – don’t leave immediately after the credits start, there is one more short scene to set up sequels.

FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS.  Dylan (Justin Timberlake) and Jamie (Mila Kunis) are high-powered professionals, but not so successful at maintaining relationships.  They meet when she brings him from LA to New York to interview for a job (she’s a corporate headhunter), and they  become friends.  And, eventually, decide to become friends with benefits (duh).  Now, there isn’t a second of this movie where you don’t know exactly where it is going.  It does what romantic comedies are supposed to do, but is self-aware that it is doing exactly that (even including a parody of a romantic comedy movie within the movie).  And even though the characters seem too perfect, they are given back stories (Patricia Clarkson is her mom, Richard Jenkins is his dad) that make this a cut above the usual romantic comedy.  The leads are very attractive and impossibly quick-witted, but the movie has tons of giggles, so I would definitely recommend this romcom.

OUR IDIOT BROTHER.  Ned (Paul Rudd) is living on an organic commune, and is as nice and innocent and honest as can be.  Selling produce at a farmer’s market, he is so kind that when a cop (in uniform!) begs him for some pot to relieve his stress, Ned eventually gives in and sells it to him.  After some months in jail, his girlfriend has found someone else, so Ned has to leave the farm and crash with family members.  Shirley Knight is his mom, and his sisters are Emily Mortimer, a granola-type wife and mother married to Steve Coogan; Elizabeth Banks, a tightly wound journalist; and Zooey Deschanel, a foul-mouthed comedian still trying to find herself.  One by one, Ned innocently does something that turns his sisters’ lives upside down.  And they all get really mad at him.  But, maybe (you think?), they will forgive him and it all will turn out OK in the end.  Sweet movie.

CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE.  Cal (Steve Carrell) is sucker-punched when his wife Emily (Julianne Moore) tells him she wants a divorce.  He had no idea she was unhappy, and is completely lost.  But he moves out of the house and tries to get on with his life.  At a bar, he meets Jacob (Ryan Gosling), a player who takes Cal under his wing to show him how to make women fall for him.  To me, it is an unbelievable premise that a young man would take a middle-aged man under his wing, but if you can ignore that, the movie is decent.  So we follow Cal trying to make his way in the dating world, while Jacob pursues Hannah (Emma Stone,) who casts a cool eye on him their first meeting.  Carrell does schlub well, I am a fan of Ryan Gosling, the movie is sometimes amusing, and various subplots are cleverly tied up, so this was a reasonably satisfying matinée choice. 

TABLOID.  Documentary.  In 1977, beauty queen Joyce McKinney met the man of her dreams in Utah.  She is crazy in love with him, but one day he disappears.  She is convinced he wouldn’t leave her on his own, so she hires a private detective to find him.  Turns out he is doing a Mormon mission in England.  Convinced that the Mormons have brainwashed him, she goes to England and kidnaps him, so she can “de-program” him.  He escapes and the story hits the news, where the London tabloids turn it into a sex slave story (missionary manacled to bed!), and go on to investigate her life and turn it upside down.  This may be one of the earliest cases of the papers taking a non-celebrity story and making it big news.  Errol Morris, the great documentarian, interviews Joyce, some of the peripheral characters, and some of the tabloid writers.  The added bonus is that we don’t know really what happened (the Mormon won’t talk), so we pay attention and try to make up our minds.  It’s fun and fascinating to watch.

COWBOYS & ALIENS.  In 1873, Daniel Craig wakes up in the desert with no memory and a mysterious metal band around his wrist.  He makes his way to a frontier town, where UFOs suddenly appear and start snatching up townsfolk.  Daniel Craig as the reluctant hero, Harrison Ford as a grumpy rancher, Paul Dano as his slimy son, Sam Rockwell as a wimpy saloon owner…they all do a good job playing the archetypes.  But I guess with a title like cowboys vs aliens I was expecting it to be more clever.  Not a horrible movie, but a month after seeing it, I can barely remember the details of the plot, so I’d have to say it didn’t work for me. 

THE GUARD.  Brendan Gleeson is a tired, cynical cop in a small Irish town. He is slightly corrupt, and not happy to get a young partner.  Even more upsetting, in to his routine comes an uptight FBI agent (Don Cheadle), who believes a ship is arriving in the harbor for a major drug deal.  Their conflict is the bulk of the movie, and Brendan’s sly way keeps the viewer guessing – as Cheadle says – is he effing smart or an effing idiot?  Well-reviewed, I admit that perhaps I didn’t find the movie that terrific because I missed 10-20% of the dialog because I found the strong accents often impenetrable.

ONE DAY.  Emma (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter (Jim Sturgess) meet at their 1988 college graduation and sort of hook up.  But he sleeps with every woman he can, and she suffers from low self-confidence, so they agree to just be friends.  The movie follows them for about 20 years, every year on July 15.    People mature (although some take longer than others), they go through ups and downs, etc.  Sometimes Emma and Dex meet on that day, sometimes they are friends, sometimes not.  Not a romantic comedy, as the ads might make you think,  it’s just life, as the two characters evolve from their early 20’s to late 30’s.  I wasn’t bored, although I did see a major plot point coming.  Sort of a harmless movie.  Not real special, though.

June movie reviews

SUPER 8.  In 1978, four young kids in a small town are making a zombie movie to enter into a film contest. During filming one night, they see and accidentally record a horrific train accident. Before they know it, the Air Force is in town and dogs (and people) start disappearing. The kids know that there’s something mysterious going on, but there seems to be a cover up going on. And the adults aren’t paying attention. This movie is getting very good reviews, but although I didn’t think it was awful, it wasn’t that great. It reminded me of a 1950’s horror movie, where the town is fighting some giant monster created by radiation or something. So it’s a good homage to those 1950’s movies, but let’s face it, most of those movies weren’t that good. Directed by JJ Abrams (Star Trek), I guess I had high expectations.

BEGINNERS. Oliver’s (Ewan McGregor) parents didn’t have a good marriage, but Oliver didn’t understand why until after his mother died, when his 75-year-old father (Christopher Plummer) came out of the closet. Despite being diagnosed with lung cancer, Dad now is intent on living his life to the fullest and being fully involved in his new gay life. The bits of the movie with him enjoying life are the best part. But most of the movie is about Oliver, who, on the other hand, is stumbling through beginning a relationship with a woman who also has parental issues. Then there’s odd stuff about his cartoonist job and painting slogans on buildings and a talking dog and gay history. I guess the theme of the movie is that people who don’t have good role models growing up have challenges developing relationships when they get older, but honestly, despite the good father and son relationship, and even though I really like Ewan McGregor, Oliver’s relationship kind of bored me.

BRIDE FLIGHT. The movie opens with Frank, a successful vineyard owner, collapsing and dying. Three older women receive news of his funeral. Then the movie flashes back to post-WWII, when a plane flies from London to New Zealand. On board are a young Frank, and three young Dutch women, all traveling to join their husbands for a new life. The movie follows the four lives, and the connections they have as they move in and out of each others’ lives. Kind of a melodrama, and a total chick flick, but the characters felt like real people, making mistakes real people make. It wasn’t so soapy that I didn’t enjoy it.

CONAN O’BRIEN CAN’T STOP. After Conan O’Brian was pushed out of the Today Tonight Show on NBC, he wasn’t allowed to go on TV for six months. So he went on a concert tour, doing a combo stand-up and music show. This documentary follows him through the development of the show and on the road with him. This movie isn’t a film of the show itself, and isn’t particularly funny. It is a look into Conan’s personality, which seems to be really driven. He’ll complain about being worked too hard, and having to meet with fans, but at every opportunity he takes on more and more work. He doesn’t really come off very well, but to be fair it was a bad time of his life and he was really angry. Somewhat interesting movie, but definitely not a must-see, unless you live for all things CoCo.

PAGE ONE. A YEAR INSIDE THE NEW YORK TIMES. This documentary follows the events at the media desk of the New York Times during a very interesting year (2010, I think). Like all newspapers, the NYT is coping with serious financial issues that threaten them because more and more people are getting their news on the Internet for free. They listen to bloggers and other Internet mavens who claim print media is dying or dead. So the media desk in a sense is reporting on themselves and those issues. They also work with WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, which is a partnership of the old and new media. During the movie someone points out how much of the news from all sources originated with stories found in the Times. There are brief snippets of journalists interviewing sources, and their process is interesting in itself. The movie is kind of all over the place, but a nice reminder of the value of newspapers, emphasizing that most of the news found on the Internet still comes from traditional media, while focusing on some interesting characters.

TROLLHUNTER. This Norwegian movie is a Blair Witch Project-like mocumentary. Three young college students are making a film, and come across what appears to be a bear poacher. However, as they track the supposed poacher into a forest, he comes running out yelling ‘troll’ and they all run for their lives. Of course at first they think he can’t be serious about the trolls. But he allows them to follow and film him tracking various trolls (there are different kinds), because he is disgruntled that the TSS (Troll Security Service) isn’t giving him time-and-a-half and other work benefits he thinks he deserves. Meanwhile, the TSS is opposed to any of this information about the trolls becoming public. So the students are threatened both by the TSS and the trolls. Will they survive? There were a couple of belly laughs, but mostly this is just mildly amusing, barely worth the price of a ticket. Thinking about it still makes me smile, though, I have to admit.

May movie reviews

 

BRIDESMAIDS. Annie (Kristin Wiig) isn’t doing well. She has lost her bakery and boyfriend, and is reduced to working as a jewelry store sales clerk and having booty calls with a selfish sleazeball (Jon Hamm). When her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) announces that she is engaged, Annie steps up to be maid of honor. But when Annie meets one of Lillian’s wealthy new friends (Rose Byrne), a very funny game of one-upmanship ensues over bridal showers, bachelorette parties, etc. Lots of crude and lewd laugh-out-loud moments, with some pretty gross stuff. There’s also a great performance by Melissa McCarthy as another of the bridesmaids. It’s not the funniest movie ever, but it’s a very good comedy (produced by Judd Apatow). Despite the title, not just a chick flick. Just funny.

 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS. Gil (Owen Wilson) and Inez (Rachel McAdams) are an engaged couple visiting Paris with her parents. He is a big-time screenwriter in Hollywood, but is writing a novel with a protagonist who lives and breathes nostalgia. Gil loves Paris, and regrets he didn’t move there when he was younger. Inez is a shallow harpy that can’t understand why he doesn’t want to live in Malibu and keep writing movies and making money. They are really not very compatible. When she meets old friends that he can’t stand, she goes out with them and he ends up walking the streets of Paris at night. And when the clock strikes midnight, he gets in a cab that takes him to 1920’s Paris, when Hemingway and Picasso and so many others were making art. Every night he goes back, meeting more and more people of the time that he idolizes. This is a lovely movie, quite funny, charming, and thoughtful about the value of nostalgia vs. people needing to live the lives they have, not fantasize about whatever. One of Woody Allen’s recent best.

 

13 ASSASSINS. As the movie opens, a samurai commits harakiri. It’s the late Shogun era in Japan, and the half-brother of the current Shogun is a murderous psychopath. The half-brother is on his way to being in line for leadership, which will be a disaster for the country. (The dead samurai was protesting against his growing power.) The current Shogun’s advisor finds a wise older samurai to carry out the secret mission of killing the half-brother. The samurai recruits other samurai and the gang makes plans to assassinate the half-brother by ambushing him in a small village. The last half of the movie is one gigantic battle of the few good guys fighting against overwhelming odds, typical of these movies (the Magnificent Seven was based on a samurai movie). I am not a huge fan of this genre (a little bloody sword fighting goes a long way with me), but this is very well done and kept me interested.

 

FAST FIVE. I haven’t seen any of the “fast” movies, but this one is getting some favorable reviews, so I thought I’d give it a try. In this one, the guys are on the run down in Brazil, and come up with an idea to do one last big score, stealing from the drug kingpin. Now, I am game for action movies, even ones that are a little ridiculous, but this one – oh my – is flat-out preposterous. For me, there has to be some character that makes sense or some kernel of truth or at least some wit in an action movie to make me want to go along for the ride. Despite attractive leads (Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, and Dwayne Johnson), this was just so over the top  that I just could not buy into it. Throw in some phony sentiment, and it really lost me.  (Maybe I should have seen THOR instead.)  That said, if you want a movie full of car crashes and car chases, this is definitely your movie.

 

EVERYTHING MUST GO. In this drama (not a comedy!), Nick (Will Farrell) is fired from his job, only to go home and find that his wife has changed the locks and thrown all his belongings onto the front lawn. Nick is an alcoholic, and he is in a downward spiral. Not wanting to lose his stuff, but not having any money to move it, he camps out on his front lawn to keep an eye on his things. He meets a neighborhood teenager, and they start working together to protect (and eventually sell) his stuff. He also meets a new neighbor (Rebecca Hall), and they become friendly. Interesting movie about a man coming to grips with the wreck that his life has become. Will Farrell does a really good job, too.

 

BILL CUNNINGHAM NEW YORK. Documentary. Bill Cunningham works for the New York Times as a photographer. He does the photography for both the street fashion and the society pages. At 80 years old, he is still riding his bicycle around the city, keeping his eye out for interesting subjects. He lives like a monk, spends all of his time doing his job (and loves what he does) and no one really knows much else about him. But this documentary shows him to be a worthy subject, because he is just a fascinating character. Although this may sound like kind of a niche film, you don’t have to have any interest in fashion to find the movie interesting because it is more about the man than his job.

 

INCENDIES. Two grown twins gather at an attorney’s office to hear the reading of their mother’s will. To their surprise, her last wishes are for her children to go back to the old country (not named, but much like Lebanon) and find the father they thought was dead and a half-brother they didn’t know existed. The son refuses, but the daughter travels to the Middle East and starts putting the pieces of her mother’s life together. The movie flashes back and forth from the daughter’s search for the truth to the mother’s experiences as a young woman. Set during a civil war and sectarian violence, the mother’s experiences were grim. Although the story is really disturbing, and the movie is at times slow, the mystery of the mother’s past did keep my interest the whole time, so I guess I would have to say it’s worth seeing. French Canadian movie, mostly subtitled.

March movie reviews

THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU.  Do you believe in predestination or free will?  Matt Damon plays the youngest U.S. Representative ever.  At the start of the movie he is running for U.S. Senator.  During the campaign, he meets a woman (Emily Blunt) and they have an immediate connection.  She disappears from his life, but eventually he finds her again.  Whereupon the Adjustment Bureau (John Slattery, Andrew Mackie) try to intervene.  Apparently they work for a higher power who has a plan for all of us, and when things don’t go according to plan, they make adjustments.  Matt was never supposed to meet Emily, and their being together will change what is “supposed” to happen.  Interesting movie about romance with a science fiction/thriller spin.  Based on a story by Phillip K. Dick (Blade Runner, Total Recall), which is a pretty good recommendation right there.

THE LINCOLN LAWYER.  Legal thriller starring Mathew McConaughey as a sleazy defense lawyer, willing to take any case.  Drug dealers included, because he is all about the money.  Thing is, he is a very smart lawyer.  He ends up defending a rich playboy (Ryan Phillippe) accused of assaulting a prostitute.  Is the guy guilty or not?  Will Matthew get him off regardless?  I saw a couple of twists coming, but there were a couple of surprises.  Also starring William H. Macy, Frances Fisher, and Marisa Tomei.  It’s not a great must-see movie, but it’s fairly clever, for the genre.  Worth a rental.

JANE EYRE.  In this Charlotte Bronte classic, Mia Wasikowska is Jane Eyre, a poor girl who escapes an abusive girls’ boarding school only to become governess at the gloomy mansion of Mr. Rochester (Michael Fassbender).  Jane is very smart and strong-willed, but life has certainly given her a bad hand.  Still, Mr. Rochester, who seems bored with life, sees something special in Jane.  But  he seems to have secrets, and she of course, must be very prim and proper, despite all the passionate undercurrents.  Very moody gothic romantic melodrama.  Well done, but this kind of overly romantic story won’t be everyone’s taste.  

PAUL.  Two English geek/nerds (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost) finally make it to Comic-Con in San Diego where they are in heaven, seeing all the exhibits and meeting their heroes.  To finish off their trip to America, they decide to tour infamous sci-fi sites around the country (i.e., Roswell, Area 51).  They rent an RV, and after a day on the road witness a horrific car accident,  It was an alien (Paul) driving a getaway car trying to escape the government, who have kept him for all the knowledge they can get from him.  After the nerds get over their shock, they try to help Paul connect with his species and escape the evil government goon (Jason Bateman) out to re-capture him.  Along the way they also meet a fundamentalist (Kirsten Wiig), who shall we say, has her ideas about the world challenged.  This flick is by the two guys that did Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead.  Clever, the movie has funny bits and lots of pop-culture references.  Not a but-guster, but amusing.  

RANGO.  Animated feature, with Johnny Depp voicing the lead character.  Rango is a pet lizard, who entertains himself by visualizing himself as an actor and putting on plays.  He finds himself alone in the Mojave Desert when his owners have a car accident.  He ends up in the town of Dirt, where water is a valuable commodity.  Rango puts his acting skills to work and becomes the sheriff.  The towncritters expect him to help, but there are scary villains, of course.  And corruption around the water supply.  Beautifully drawn, but I was really bored.  Critics are giving this high praise, maybe because it is very referential to classic movies, and especially westerns (Timothy Olyphant is the voice of The Spirit of The West), but I don’t imagine even kids liking this one.  

THE MUSIC NEVER STOPPED.   In 1986, a 30-ish man ends up in the hospital with a brain tumor.  After surgery, Gabriel has no short term memory.  In fact, he really only comes to life when he hears the 1960’s music of his youth.  His conservative WWII veteran father (JK Simmons), from whom he had been alienated since he was a rebellious teenager, must come to appreciate his son’s music (especially The Grateful Dead) in order to communicate with his son.  This movie has the feel of a Lifetime movie about it.  It’s not bad (JK is always good), but the father-son conflict and resolution felt very pat.  It was trying to grab my heartstrings, but didn’t wholly succeed.  Based on an factual Oliver Sacks story, with liberties taken.

January/February 2011 movie reviews

 

UNKNOWN.  Liam Neeson stars as a biotech professor who along with his wife (January Jones) is in Berlin for a conference.  He gets in a car accident, and after being in a coma for four days, finds that his identity has been taken by an imposter and his wife is denying she knows him.  So he has to untangle the web of what has happened to him, and figure out if he is delusional or involved in something more nefarious.  He starts by finding the cab driver who saved his life – initially she’ll refuse but ends up an ally.  He gets a lead to a former Stasi agent who can use underground channels to obtain clues.  This was an entertaining action flick with a slightly different resolution than you might expect.  Not great, but fine.  Also with Aidan Quinn and Frank Langella.

 

CEDAR RAPIDS.  Ed Helms plays a small town insurance agent who is sent to an insurance conference in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  He is very naive, and this is his first time out-of-town.  He has been warned by his boss to stay away from some bad elements (among them John C. O’Reilly), but ends up rooming with them.  And, of course, he will be corrupted by the “big-city” ways.  Things will get crazy; he’ll face temptation with women, booze, and drugs, and corruption in the insurance world.  This is a very cute movie, not as good as The Hangover, but better than Hot Tub Time Machine.  Worth seeing on cable TV at the very least.  Sigourney Weaver has a small comedic role that was good to see.

 

RABBIT HOLE.  Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart star in this family drama.  As it opens, everything seems OK on the surface with this well-to-do couple.  But in fact, the couple are just going through the motions, trying to survive after a tragedy. It’s been 8 months since their only child died, and although friends and family (including mom Dianne Wiest) try to help, the couple just can’t seem to behave like people would want them to.    They have different methods of grieving, and they aren’t connecting.  The plot may sound like a downer, and I resisted going to see this, but in fact the movie isn’t a grief-fest. It’s an observation on the emotional lives of two people who are slowly moving toward engaging in life again, and I actually found the movie life-affirming.  I liked it quite a bit. 

 

BARNEY’S VERSION.  Paul Giamatti stars as Barney, a television producer in Canada.  This is the story of his entire adult life, youth to old age, including his three marriages.  He is just an ordinary guy, drinks too much, but what makes the story interesting is his dogged pursuit of his third wife (who he meets at his second wedding to Minnie Driver).  There is also the mystery of the disappearance of a friend.  Barney can be an unpleasant fellow, but he isn’t evil, just human.   I thought Giamatti did an excellent job of aging throughout the movie – none of that “look at him in aging make-up” vibe.  Dustin Hoffman is his retired cop father, and I also liked that character.   I really liked the movie’s arc.

 

THE MECHANIC.  Remake of a Charles Bronson movie, about a professional killer.  The “mechanic” works for a mysterious corporation, and at one point takes on an apprentice, the son of one of his mentors.  Typical action movie.    I thought the first two “hits” were very clever, but somewhere in the middle of the movie I thought it just turned into a fairly predictable flick.  It stars Jason Statham, who I like quite a bit, but his presence didn’t save the movie for me.  Nothing really special.

 

THE ILLUSIONIST. Animation by the same guy that did THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE.  In French, but there is very little dialog.  Beautiful drawing, but other than that, I seemed to have missed the point.  It revolves around a middle-aged magician in the late 1950’s, who is finding it difficult to find work.  He ends up working in pubs and at birthday parties and such, and meets a young girl doing janitorial work in one of the pubs.  She decides to take off and follow him, and they end up in Edinburgh.  I thought that the young woman realized that the magician was buying gifts for her (she worked for a living after all, and he sees her admiring the items she receives from him), but I gather from reading about the movie afterword that I was supposed to believe that she thought his gifts appeared by magic.  Not getting that viewpoint, I just thought she was a taker, and didn’t get the charm of the movie and by the end was kind of bored.

  

THE WAY BACK.  The movie opens in a 1939 Soviet prison, where an obviously tortured man is being pressured to confess to espionage.  He refuses, but his wife confesses for him.  So he is sent to a prison in Siberia.  Where he realizes he will die if he doesn’t escape.  Easier said than done, since the winter environment is brutal and the surrounding communities will turn in escaped prisoners for a reward.  But with a group of other prisoners, he does escape, and crosses Russia, Mongolia, and Tibet on foot while facing thirst, starvation, exposure, etc. Some will make it and some will not.  Along the way they are joined by a young woman (Saoirse Ronan). The movie tells you at the very beginning that 3 men walked across the border to India in 1941, so the resolution isn’t a surprise. That’s a problem, as the movie just didn’t really grab me emotionally. This is a perfectly serviceable movie, but although I can’t put my finger on what is wrong, I felt it nothing to write home about.    Directed by Peter Weir, with Ed Harris and Colin Farrell as the only recognizable stars.

 

MADE IN DAGENHAM.  In mid-1960s England, Ford Motor Company employed women to sew the upholstery for their cars.  But they paid them less.  The women, after a pay cut, decide to go on strike. Not only do they have to fight Ford, they also have to deal with their Union, public opinion, and government, who all think the women should be happy to work for lower pay. But the women prevail.  This is a true story but, although it should be quite moving watching the women make history, it was just an OK movie.  Acceptable for catching on TV some day, I would say.  And probably good viewing for younger people who don’t know any women’s’ history.   But this was no NORMA RAE, that’s for sure.  Note:  I probably missed 20% of the dialog because I couldn’t understand the working-class accents.

September 2010 Movie Reviews

THE TOWN. Doug (Ben Affleck) is the brains behind a crew in a Boston blue-collar neighborhood that robs banks and armored cars. His best friend (Jeremy Renner) is a loose cannon, and during one robbery, takes a hostage (Rebecca Hall). After the robbery, Ben follows her to ensure that she can’t identify them (they were all hooded), and ends up taking quite a liking to her. He is thinking of maybe getting out of the crime business, but the money launderer of the crew (Pete Postelwaite) isn’t about to let that happen. And the FBI (Jon Hamm) is closing in on the gang. So there has to be one last big heist.  The movie doesn’t have any huge surprises (it reminded me a lot of HEAT), but it’s a very good crime-thriller with well-done action scenes and a decent amount of tension.

EASY A. Olive (Emma Stone) is an ordinary high school girl in Ojai, California. One Monday, embarassed about how she really spent her weekend, she lies to her friend about what she did, and a holier than thou classmate overhears and starts spreading the rumor on what a tramp Olive is. Instead a trying to stamp out the rumor, Olive runs with it, becoming the school slut in reputation (but not in reality). Things get out of hand in a hurry, with Olive pretending to have sex with unpopular boys so that they won’t be considered such losers. This may sound like a rather tawdry plot, but it is actually very funny and pretty smart, with references to Mark Twain, The Scarlett Letter, and John Hughes. Despite some unbelievably cool adults (Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci as her parents, Thomas Haden Church as a teacher) and a out-of-nowhere sub-plot twist, this was definitely a lot of fun.

THE TILLMAN STORY. Documentary on Pat Tillman and his family. He is the NFL player who quit football to enlist and fight terrorism, and was killed in Afghanistan by friendly fire. The movie shows a bit of his life but mostly follows the family in their attempts to find the truth about his death and bring the people involved in the cover-up to light. They were appalled by how his death was exploited as a recruiting tool, and believe Pat would have been appalled as well. Good movie. Not too much new to the story that I already knew, but the movie puts it all together well.

THE LAST EXORCIST. Not usual my type of movie, but good reviews… Anyway, this fake documentary starts out with a holy roller preacher who admits he does it because he loves being an entertainer. But he doesn’t really believe in wwhat he is doing.  When he reads of children being killed during exorcisms, he decides to show the world what a scam it is by doing one last exorcism and having a film crew show the tricks of the trade. A father believes his young girl possessed, and the farm animals ARE being butchered. So the preacher and the crew show up, and of course, things get pretty hinky pretty quick. I actually really enjoyed the first half of this movie, but the second half was the kind of creepy stuff I don’t care for, with the last tem minutes just ludicrous. If you like that kind of thing….

MAO’S LAST DANCER. Very standard bio-pic. This is about Li Cunxin, who as a child was taken from his Chinese peasant village and put in a Beijing boarding school to learn to be a ballet dancer. He becomes quite good, and in the early 80’s he was given the chance to dance for a summer in Houston. Of course, he loves the freedom he finds there (very different from the “revolutionary” ballets he is forced to dance at home), and a girlfriend, and decides he would like to stay a while longer. But the Chinese won’t extend his stay, and defecting would mean never seeing his family again. So that is hard for him. There really aren’t any surprises in this movie, but his part is played by a terrific dancer and I like ballet, and am a sucker for happy endings, so I thought it was an OK movie.

THE AMERICAN. Even though this is getting mixed reviews, it has both George Clooney and Italian scenery, so I thought I would give it a try. Jack (Clooney) is some kind of bad guy, and when the movie opens in Sweden, people are out to kill him. He does manage to escape, and ends up in Italy, where his boss is located. The boss gets him a job making a weapon, most likely for a high profile assassination. Jack is very unhappy about what happens in Sweden, and would like a new life (it seems). But change isn’t easy, especially when people are still out to get you. This is NOT an action picture. If you want to watch a movie where pretty much all that happens is George making a weapon, sleeping with a prostitute, and being real depressed, this is the movie for you. Very slow paced, with an ending that made no sense to me. And, because I find it difficult to care about what happens to Jack, not recommended.

CAIRO TIME. Juliet (Patricia Clarkson) is a New York magazine editor in Cairo to meet her husband for a vacation. But he works for the UN, and is held up in Gaza. So she tries to explore the city, but an unaccompanied woman doesn’t do so well there, so she calls one of her husband’s ex-employees (Alexander Siddig), and they explore the city together. There is slight sexual tension because they are two single people, but they really barely even flirt. And unfortunately, neither of them are particularly interesting people, which makes for a rather dull movie. If it weren’t for the interest in seeing Cairo and learning a little of the culture, it would have been a total snooze-fest.

August 2010 Movie Reviews

  GET LOW. Robert Duvall lives in the depression-era backwoods. He’s a hermit, but he comes to town when he decides he wants to arrange his funeral. Bill Murray, the local undertaker, is desperate for the work, and takes the job. The catch is that the hermit wants the funeral when he is still alive, so that everyone can come and tell stories about him. But what he really wants is for his deep dark secret – the reason he shut himself off from people – to come out before he dies. Well acted (also Sissy Spacek), but I have to say that I guessed 90% of the secret, so the movie wasn’t exactly compelling. Just a nice little movie, nothing horrible about it, just not special.

 THE OTHER GUYS. Mark Wahlberg is a NYC detective stuck at a desk because he accidentally shot someone. He is partnered with Will Farrell, who drives him crazy, because Will is a detective in accounting crimes, and Mark wants to be on the street. And it doesn’t help that Samuel Jackson and Duane The Rock Johnson are hot-shots in the department getting all the excitement and glory. But of course, this being a cop buddy movie, Will and Mark will stumble upon something, and craziness ensues. Throw in Michael Keaton as their boss (who has a second job) and Eva Mendes as Will’s hot wife. There are some things that are just flat stupid, and some things that are pretty silly. But overall, this movie has a lot of laughs, and it is worth seeing.

SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD. Michael Cera is Scott, a 22-year-old recovering from a broken heart. He transitions to a 17-year-old high school girl, which his friends give him lots of grief over. One day he is struck in love with Ramona, and starts pursuing her. But to succeed in winning her affections, he must battle her seven evil exes. This movie is part graphic novel, part action, part video game. It has great supporting characters (Kieran Culkin as his roommate is a hoot) and is very clever and original and funny (the Vegan Police!). And great visuals. It won’t be for everyone, and it was a bit too long, but I thought it was pretty inspired.

FAREWELL. In 1981, Sergei decides that the communist system is failing, and since he wants a better life for his teenage son, he takes action. He works in an agency that spies on American technology, and he starts passing off secrets on the Soviet intelligence operations to the French intelligence agency. He does this by using a complete amateur, a French engineer stationed in Moscow. The engineer is really in over his head., and the operations start putting stress on both men’s families. The French give the secrets to the Americans, and because they help dismantle the spy system that helped the Soviets keep up with the West, Sergei does help unravel the Soviet Union. But will Sergei and the engineer survive? This movie is based on fact, and was compelling. (In French mostly, with some Russian and English.)

ANIMAL KINGDOM. In this Australian crime drama, a teenage boy calls his grandmother for help when his mother dies. (His mom and grandma were alienated from each other.) He ends up staying with her. Problem is, his four uncles are serious criminals. And Grandma will do anything to protect her boys, one of whom appears to be a psychopath. And the cops are on to the boys (and not above murdering them if they can). The teenager just wants to get along and hang with his girlfriend, but he gets entwined in his family doings, there is revenge and counter-revenge, and the police are trying to get him to turn on his family. There will be twists and turns, and we shall see if family is the most important thing. Based on fact, supposedly.

AGORA. Rachel Weisz stars as Hypatia, a fourth century “philosopher” (really more of a scientist) in Alexandria, Egypt. She is a pagan at a time when the city is becoming more Christian, and the movie is as much about the evil that religion can do as it is about her. (First the pagans go after the Christians, then the Christians go after the Jews, then the Christians go after pagans.) That is the backdrop to her story, which also follows her students and a former slave. The movie has great sets, and is an interesting history lesson, but I didn’t find an emotional center. Hypatia is dedicated to science and doesn’t appear to have time for emotion. Although it’s terrific to see a woman in the lead of a movie that isn’t a romantic comedy, I wish the movie had more depth and fewer arty scenes. It’s too long and slow, unfortunately.

July 2010 Movie Reviews

  INCEPTION. Leonardo DiCaprio works for hire, invading people’s dreams to steal corporate secrets. He and his team (including Joseph Gordon Leavitt and Ellen Page) create alternate realities (with really cool visuals for us) to set up the circumstances during the dream that enables them to steal the secrets. But there are things you don’t do, like plant ideas in someone who is dreaming (inception) because they always know they didn’t come up with the idea themselves. But when Leo is offered the job of conducting an inception for the chance to go back home (he can’t go home for reasons not explained early on), he jumps on it. This is a complicated movie with dreams within dreams within dreams, and time moving at different speeds, but I didn’t find it too difficult to follow. Directed by Christopher Nolan (Dark Knight and Memento) and he delivers. In fact, I really liked this movie.

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT. Family drama being advertised as a comedy. Jules (Julianne Philips) and Nic (Annette Benning) are long time partners with two teenage children. Nick is a bit of an uptight doctor, and Jules is kind of a hippie chick. They have kind of settled into routine, and I would say the romance is mostly gone. When the daughter turns 18, her brother convinces her to contact their sperm donor dad (Mark Ruffalo). The movie follows the changing dynamics of the family as they try to see how biological dad can fit in. Although this movie has very funny moments, I would say it really is more about family dynamics, exploring how everyone has issues, we are all imperfect, and how challenging it is to be together for decades. Very good stuff.

 RESTREPO. Documentary that covers a year with a company of soldiers in Afghanistan. They are stationed in an isolated valley near the border of Pakistan, and the Captain has them building an outpost (named Restrepo after a fellow solider that died) in a veery dangerous area. They face gunfire every single day, fighting an enemy who is everywhere but rarely seen, while at the same time trying to get the local village elders to support them. (The carrot is that the US will build a road that will help the village economically.) A terrific look the life of these young kids – their goofing off, their fears, their sorrows. It’s not easy for civilians to get a feel for battle, but this movie does about as good a job as can be done (without the adrenaline rushes of real warfare). It’s really well done (by Sebastian Junger, author of the Perfect Storm, who was embedded with them for most of the year, and wrote a book about it, which I now want to read).

 SALT. Angelina Jolie is Evelyn Salt, one tough cookie CIA agent. One day a soviet defector comes into their office, and tells her and her colleagues that a sleeper agent is about to be awoken in order to kill the Soviet President and re-start the Cold War. The sleeper agent’s name is Evelyn Salt. Denying that she could be the sleeper, Salt takes off, theoretically she says to save her husband. But we wonder – maybe she really is a Soviet assassin. The CIA and counter-intelligence are after her. Meanwhile, the Soviet President comes to the US to attend a state funeral. Will he be assassinated? And so on. Of course she does things that are physically impossible and takes bruising hits with little effect, but that’s typical for action movies these days, and it doesn’t bother me. This is a roller coaster of a popcorn summer movie – very entertaining and well done for the genre.

 DESPICABLE ME. Animated feature. Steve Carrell voices Gru, an evil mastermind, complete with evil minions. But he starts be overshadowed by Vector. So Gru decides to steal the moon. But first he must steal Vector’s shrinking ray, but he can’t get in to Vector’s house. So he adopts three little girls who will sell Vector cookies, and get entry. A little action, but a lot sappy. Anyway, I suppose this would be fine for kids, but I was 5% amused and 95% bored. Pretty lame. Maybe better in 3D.