Archive for the ‘Movie Reviews’ Category

Check out this fantastic review of Michael Moore’s Sicko.

We recently watched Fall which turned out to be an Eric Schaeffer movie, the same guy who wrote and directed Mind the Gap, which I’ve previously reviewed. (I really did mentioned it in there, somewhere… says mysql.) We really liked Fall. Or, hrm… I liked Fall. “Joanna, did you like Fall?” I ask. “Yeah, I liked it very much,” she says. So, like I said, we liked Fall. A contributing factor is certainly that Amanda de Cadenet is astonishingly sexy. Probably the accent. (Which isn’t French.) Or maybe just that she’s supposed to be the sexiest girl in the world, I start to buy into it after awhile. I could call it a romantic comedy, but that wouldn’t be right. It’s probably closer to a sex drama. It’s not rated, Joanna thinks because the sex would have given it an NC-17 rating. I don’t think so, because the sex isn’t graphic, though the dialogue is certainly explicit. (For some reason my spell check doesn’t like extra letters, and insists that I should be typing “dialog” instead.) Anyway we liked Fall enough, that I got If Lucy Fell. Or maybe I got If Lucy Fell because it’s Scarlet Johansson’s third movie. She’s 12, and looks just like she does now, only little. We liked it as well, but Fall was definitely a much better movie. I’m not sure whether to try more Eric Schaeffer movies or not. He always writes himself as a cool dude the chicks all want, but he just looks dopey.

Let’s see, there’s Empire Records, which was awesome. Silly, but awesome.

Some movies that sucked:

The Prestige
Babel
The Book of Life: 2000 Seen By…
Brick
Slacker
Funny Ha Ha

Other movies.. I liked Casino Royale but was somewhat disappointed in it. I expected it to be totally unfaithful to the book, and thus be more a typical Bond movie. The sort of Bond movie I like. But, no, it was just enough faithful to the book that the movie isn’t much of a Bond movie at all, but it wasn’t faithful enough to the book to make the plot worth while. But, still, I have a hard time saying anything really bad about it. Except that he didn’t drive the car long enough to justify its destruction, but at least they destroyed it which is more than we can say for the Z3. There were no gadgets. And Daniel Craig, while he does a decent job of portraying Bond as written, isn’t the Bond that’s in my head.

Borat was very entertaining, though I really could have done without the naked wrestling scene. Really, I think we all could have done without it. Otherwise, as funny as it promises to be.

12:01 came out about the same time as one of my favorites, Groundhog Day, and has a similar thing going on, but they’re very different movies. I enjoyed this one a lot, even if it does seem a bit dated now.

If you’re into dystopia, V for Vendetta is well worth watching. It was well done, actually managed to keep in suspense, and it has Natalie Portman. Even if she does shave her head.

Mr. Jealousy entertained us as well, but it falls well short of Noah Baumbach’s other work. Worth watching, but only if you’ve already exhausted his other two movies.

After watching Thumbsucker I asked Joanna how she’d rate it. “Ben would like it,” she responded. And I agree, Ben would like it. It’s entertaining and suitably serious without being depressing. It will probably appeal more to a younger audience as ostensibly about a teenage search for truth. Much of the movie tends to focus on age, investigating at what sort of activities are appropriate for a given age and position: all the characters tend to violate our preconceived notion of “normal” parameters. A-.

Happy Endings is worth watching simply because its style is unique. It too is entertaining, and takes an almost comedic look at situations which any other movie would overbearingly treat as hopelessly dramatic. B.

Mona Lisa Smile wasn’t as aimless and hollywoody as I suspected it would be, but it hardly stood out as a great movie. I got it mostly because, well, my queue was empty and I like Julia Roberts. Plus I teased Jonah that it would have lesbian sex scenes, and she insisted that there was no way. No lesbian sex scenes, but the subject was certainly addressed, the movie being about an all girls school. Jonah said simply, “Well, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.” C+.

Same Time Next Year, from 1978, is a bit older than our average Netflix selection, but is well worth watching. It’s adapted from a play, and very much feels like a play. It was quite well made, and despite being about adultery, Jonah enjoyed it as well. I picked it because I was on something of an Alan Alda kick. The premise (a couple meets once a year for 25 years to carry on an affair despite both of them being happily married to other people) certainly has potential and the movie did a reasonable job of telling an entertaining tale of two lives and the changes they go through. B+

I liked Same Time Next Year despite the fact that it showed two people undergoing continuous, dramatic exterior evolution, but still seemed to hold true to my basic understanding of human behavior: After a certain relatively young age, say 16 years or so, people are incapable of a substantial change in basic behavior. Something’s Gotta Give both challenges and simultaneously affirms that idea. Jack Nicholson is suitably entertaining as usual. Furthermore his character made me wish I could be a crazy old dude whose behavior could be simply discounted due to age. B+.

No Direction Home is a two-disc documentary about Bob Dylan. I watched the first disc, and while I didn’t dislike it, I found it less than informative about who Bob Dylan really is. I haven’t rented the second disc yet, but also haven’t decided I’m not going to rent it. C.

I added Proof to our queue because Jonah told me to. I suspect she told me to simply because she thinks Gwenyth Paltrow is hot. It wasn’t a bad movie, but lacked a worthwhile premise or plot. The characters weren’t boring, but lacked suitable intruigue and seemed to be over-acted in order to make up for the lack of a decent script. C.

I’ve gone and done it now… watched two good indie movies in a row. Considering that the ratio of bad:good indie movies is about 10:1, I’ve got 20 bad ones in store. And I don’t think I can take it:)

Junebug is hardly one of those movies that I’d tell anyone, “You really should watch this movie,” not because it was bad, but because it’s not the sort of movie I tell people to watch. It’s about a small-town southern family and is an honest portrait. The movie quietly points out how funny these people are without making fun of them while simultaneously showing us their flaws without making us think that life sucks. I don’t always agree with Roger Ebert, but I think he’s right on about this movie. I’d give it an A-, but there was one fake southern accent, so it gets downgraded to a B+. Considering that most movies are full of fake accents, it was refreshing to see a bunch that weren’t. The one fake accent was good enough that Joanna insisted it was real. She finally agreed it was fake after discovering the actress was from Colorado. I’m not sure why I’m better at spotting fake southern accents than Jonah is, perhaps because I’ve spent a much larger portion of my life in the South. And she’s the one who thinks it’s acceptable to say, “I’m fixin’ to leave.”

For a period of time, I felt compelled to offer movie reviews. Mostly because Nathan acted interested. I stopped mostly because it started to have a shopping list-like quality about it. And who wants to read shopping lists? (Well, if you miss the movie reviews, leave a comment and maybe I’ll bring ’em back.) In any case, we just watched Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human which is definitely one of the better indie movies out there. It’s an absolutely hilarious nature show style documentary on human relationships. We both really enjoyed it– you probably will too. It’s worlds better than Woody Allen’s Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex, and it pays homage to (steals from?) the same.

Course, you probably also have to have Netflix, as I doubt it can be found at Blockbuster or the like.

And, obviously, if you’re inexplicably deluded and think sex doesn’t belong in cinema, you probably shouldn’t watch a movie about the mating habits of humans. But you’d laugh at it if you did.