Tuesday Movie Review

It's Complicated
Starring: Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin, John Krasinski
Directed by Nancy Meyers

Writer/director Nancy Meyers made a film a few years ago that, for good reason, didn't do too well and the box office. It was called What Women Want, a romantic comedy where Mel Gibson's character could read the minds of women. It was bad. Since then she's seemed to have found the right formula for fairly good rom-coms, Something's Gotta Give with Jack and Diane, The Holiday and now It's Complicated. What I like about all three of these movies is that they are just there...they don't treat the viewer like a complete moron that needs everything laid out for them. They all have good scenes with believable characters, a little romance and a little fun mixed at the right proportions. What makes It's Complicated so enjoyable are the stars involved. Meryl Streep, without putting on an accent or losing any children, is fantastic. Seemingly playing herself, her role isn't a big stretch, but the fun she has on screen really comes through to the viewer. I loved her! Alec Baldwin is his normal, reliable self, finding the essence of the character's shortcomings and making them very watchable. Steve Martin hasn't been this good in a long time. He's always fun to watch, but his "crazy-guy" antics are far behind him. He plays his role with a quiet charm, even when his character gets high at a party. I really enjoyed this film and I have a feeling more people will relate to it than not.

GRADE: B+

Tuesday Movie Reviews

Avatar
Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi
Directed by James Cameron

I waited to see this. I refused to believe the hype. Over two BILLION dollars at the box office...insane. It was, um, okay, I guess. Here's my problem with James Cameron. He can make a big budget movie like no other. Special effects, sounds, action sequences are all his bread and butter. What he can't seem to do is understand characters and actors. His biggest success in my opinion has always been the first two Terminator films. All we needed to know was that this huge cyborg was trying to kill someone, and then trying to protect someone. Nice and simple, looked great and was a lot of fun. In Avatar, the main message seems to be take care of your planet 'cause it's the only one you got. Ok, cool, I get it. Stop shoving it down my throat. (Is it any surprise that Cameron decided to release his movie on DVD and BluRay on Earth Day?!?!?). Avatar looks great, no doubt. The digital effects are fantastic. The blue guys move around with human-like ease. But story, James. Keep it simple and fun like you used to. If he had, Avatar would have won every award on the planet. By the way, one nuke on Pandora and the movie would have been an hour shorter. And "Unobtanium"??? Who thought of that?? Ridiculous!

GRADE: B-

Crazy Heart
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Robert Duvall, Colin Farrell
Directed by Scott Cooper

James Cameron take note; this is how you write! Although we've seen this story before, and it becomes quite predictable, a meaty script like this in the hands of good actors is what it's all about. Jeff Bridges plays 'Bad' Blake, a man who used to sell a lot of records and sell out concerts who now plays at bowling alleys to fund his next bottle of whiskey. He's had a good life, but at 67, it's starting to slide quickly downhill. He meets his muse in Maggie Gyllenhaal's character and begins to try and change. But old habits are hard to break, until you reach rock bottom. Bridges is his usual great self (nobody plays horribly drunk and hungover like him) and deserved his first Academy Award for his role. But I found myself falling deeply for Maggie Gyllenhaal! I always liked her as an actress, but she really shines in this simple yet important role. Robert Duvall is nice to see as well, especially since the movie will remind you of one of Duvall's best performances in Tender Mercies from the early 80's. What I couldn't buy was Colin Farrell as the hot-shot young Country star. Colin, you gotta do something with those eyebrows! But his role was small and it didn't deter the enjoyment I had viewing this film.

GRADE: A

The Lovely Bones
Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Stanley Tucci, Susan Sarandon
Directed by Peter Jackson

There are two reasons to see this film - Saoirse Ronan and Stanley Tucci. Ronan was about 15 years old when she made this movie but commanded each and every scene she was in. I first saw her in Houdini's Death Defying Acts a couple of years ago and thought to myself "she's gonna be big". She is quite a good little actress and her piercing blue eyes are hard to look away from. Stanley Tucci is just perfect as the creepy murderer, making sure to add little quirks of character to lend to his believability. He's the image of that guy all our parents told us to stay away from, the older man handing out candy to young kids. He gave me chills. Now the bad - are we supposed to believe that disturbed spirits in between worlds are dancing and singing and painting the sky all different colours? Although the effects looked really good, I was turned off by the utter joy of a murdered girl. As dark as this movie was at times, it should have been even darker. I'm told the book is very disturbing, but the little fantasy world took away from that big time. Also, Mark Wahlberg stinks! The only thing I ever liked him in was Boogie Nights. Otherwise he can't act a lick! I even thought he was terrible in The Departed, although many disagree with me. He is so stiff in this movie, displaying emotion a couple of times, but not when needed. I have no idea why he was cast in this role when so many others could have played it so much better.

GRADE: C

I'm on the Internet!!!

So a little while back I got a link through Facebook to join a group that was trying to make a feature film on pocket change. This had to have been nearly two years ago. I joined the group, read a little about what they were trying to accomplish and thought nothing of it again. Flashforward over a year later. Some dude comes into the Blockbuster I run and starts talking about his film being presented at a cinema downtown. He tells us its called At Home By Myself With You. He says he got the funding from the film by asking ordinary people for their pocket change. Turns out it's the same guy who's Facebook group I joined all that time ago! Weird. So I go to his website (pocketchangefilm.com) and read a bit on how long it took to raise just $40,000. Still, really neat! A few weeks ago, the director, Kris Booth called my boss to find out if he could put a couple of posters in the window of my store since he's a local filmmaker and his movie was being released on DVD soon. I called up Kris yesterday, he came to the store, and now we have two posters for the film displayed in our windows. We only got one copy of the movie, but I agreed with him that this kind of stuff should be celebrated. The really cool thing is...his movie is going to Cannes!!! So cool!!!
Anyway, while he was at the store he took a little video and posted it on his website. So now I'm famous! I'm on the Internet, and it has nothing to do with porn!!
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Refreshing Apologies

So I haven't been around in a week or so, but during that time I learned that J.D. Shapiro publicly apologized for his involvement in writing the script for Battlefield Earth, recently voted as the worst movie of the decade at the last Razzie Awards ceremony. Good for him. If you haven't read his speech, it's quite funny.

Soon after, one of the screenwriters for Monster House, Dan Harmon, apologized for his involvement in that movie. Now, I haven't had the pleasure (dis-pleasure?) to have seen either one of these films. I feel like I should though, just to see how bad they really are. The comments from these two screenwriters got me thinking about other recent movies that sucked so much that everybody involved should apologize for their involvement. Some are listed below....

All About Steve - This film became well known when Sandra Bullock "won" the Razzie Award for Worst Actress this last year, making her the very first person to win a Razzie and an Academy Award in the same year! It's bad...it's really really bad! It was unclear to me if Sandra's character was supposed to be mentally challenged or not. It wouldn't make a difference because the script was totally offensive to women, men, babies and all other living creatures. Terrible all around and not even worth the time I'm taking to write about it!

World's Greatest Dad - So here's the set-up: a father of a horribly rude, shit of a kid decides to make it look like his son's accidental death by asphyxiating himself while masturbating was just a simple suicide. The kid becomes an icon at a school that didn't even know his name and the father gets all the attention he desires as a result. WOW!! Comedy at it's finest. I sat with my mouth agape as I watched, wondering how a movie like this could be made. Then I realized it was written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait and all my questions were answered. This guy is nuts!! He made one interesting movie in the early 90's called Shakes The Clown (tagline: "The Citizen Kane of alcoholic clown movies"...funny), but he hasn't done ANYTHING of worth since then. Never, EVER watch his newest creation!

The Box - Richard Kelly wrote Donnie Darko, a very interesting movie that asked more questions than it answered but was enjoyable none-the-less...and has become a cult classic. He then went on to write Southland Tales, which was total garbage! He saved his worst stuff for last year's The Box. He took what could have been an interesting story about moral dilemmas and introduced aliens, ALIENS, for absolutely no apparent reason at all. Even though the first half of the movie wasn't great (with some terrible performances by Cameron Diaz and James Marsden) everything went straight downhill and hit rock bottom when martians were introduced to the plot. Horrible waste of time that made no sense!

...and let me just state once again...the TV show Glee is CRAP! I understand that I may be in the minority here, and that many people I respect like the show, but I can't get over how unbelievably bad it is. It's the worst of The Breakfast Club, Fame and The Mini-Pops all rolled into one. I HATE the way they ruin fairly enjoyable songs. No doubt they can sing, absolutely, but why must they do that to good songs?? I am also quite sick of Jane Lynch! She took a very funny character from The 40 Year Old Virgin and has duplicated it a thousand times since, becoming more and more mundane as time goes by. Stop the madness, Jane! It's tired and unfunny now.
Anyway, I'm allowed my opinions as are you, the reader, and I won't hold your love for Glee against you if you don't hold my pure hatred of it against me. Love everyone, be free and all that shite!

Tuesday Movie Review

Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call - New Orleans
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, Xzibit
Directed by Werner Herzog

Nicolas Cage is a fine actor. I like him in just about everything he does because you can see he fully commits to his character. People often find that the result turns out "weird" or "over-the-top". I disagree, mostly. Unfortunately, when he is given terrible writing, as in this film, his performance does seem highly exaggerated. This movie is a "re-telling" of a film from 1992 starring Harvey Keitel. In that movie, Keitel was so over-the-top that it ruined the interesting set up. Werner Herzog has seemingly not learned anything from that. All of the characters, except the one played by Xzibit, are so unbelievably corny and high strung that one can't ignore it. It takes everything out of a film that, in the hands of another director, could have been worthwhile viewing. I've never seen a Werner Herzog film that wasn't a documentary, but people tell me he's a genius. I didn't see it with this film. He would hold shots way too long, especially when it came to iguanas(!), and it took all the pacing out of the scene. Cage, although very interesting in his physicality, just went a little overboard for my taste. Critics raved about the film, for the most part, but I just don't see the value in it.

GRADE: D

The Wave (Die Welle)
Starring: Jurgen Vogel, Frederick Lau, Max Riemelt, Jennifer Ulrich
Directed by Dennis Gansel

This film from Germany is a fictionalized account of actual events in a California high school way back in 1967. The students are in a class that teaches them about an autocratic society. What better place to discuss this than Germany?!? The teacher, played admirably by Vogel, is very popular in the school and his class fills up quite quickly. His unconventional way of teaching the kids the downfalls of an autocratic society begin to backfire when the kids involved seem to think it's cool. Everybody dresses the same, they're all for one cause, nobody judges anybody else. They're having fun with it...but too much fun. The story leads directly to a predictable conclusion that you can see coming from the first fifteen minutes, but it's quite a ride getting there. Every kid, and I mean EVERY kid, is totally believable. These were kids I went to high school with...exploring sex, drugs, alcohol, rebellion. Although the story is somewhat simplistic, the viewer is never cheated out of what's going on in their lives. Good viewing that makes me want to learn more about the actual experiment.

GRADE: B