Archive for the ‘Movie Reviews’ Category

Incredibles– While this was by far the best looking animation from Pixar yet (well, I didn’t see Finding Nemo), the plot wasn’t very entertaining. The characters seemed a bit shallow. Superheros have never much done it for me. I didn’t mind watching it, and Joanna liked it a lot.

Closer– A somewhat strange movie with Natalie Portman. Natalie Portman as a strip dancer. I thought it was an entertaining look at human relationships– awfully accurate in some strange hyperbolic fashion. After the credits pronounced it was adapted from a play, things made even more sense. Overall, both Joanna and I liked it.

Green Butlers– A very queer Danish movie that I tried hard not to like. It wasn’t horrible, but I’m not sure I’d recommend it. Entertaining in a very dark way. I wonder if I would have liked it better if I understood Danish. Joanna liked it.

Spartan– I hate David Mamet. I don’t know why, but I really do. This was by far the best Mamet I’ve ever seen, probably because it was written for the screen, not the stage. It was still full of that utterly moronic Mametish dialogue, which means that everything has to be repeated four times. Joanna liked it, but then she’s the one who wanted to rent it. It at least kept me watching. I give it a nice solid C.

Holy Land– A strange little movie about a Israeli Yeshiva student who falls in love with a Russian prostitute. Joanna and I both enjoyed it. While I’ve never been to Israel, it painted an intriguing and probably somewhat accurate portrayal of how strange a place it is. It’s got nudity and sex and guns.

Lemony Snicket– I hate Jim Carrey, but he seems to be in everything these days. After hearing an interview with the author on What do you Know, I had high hopes for this movie. It wasn’t entirely dissapointing, but I didn’t think it was exceptional either. It had amazing visuals, great scenery, and a charming feel to it. But I felt like it lacked soul in some way.

Primer– This movie could have been good if it weren’t bad. They tried so hard to make the dialogue fit a mood that it became almost incomprehensible. Still, it showed promise up until about the last 15 minutes when the plot self-destructs into nonsense that probably managed to fool some viewers (such as my wife) into thinking it was deep, meaningful, complex, and mind-boggling when it was actually just stupid.

Dirty Filthy Love– While far from charming, this was a funny movie about an OCD/Turret’s guy. Joanna and I both enjoyed it, but we don’t know that you would. The scenes with the OCD support group probably made it worth watching on their own.

Saved– An entertaining movie about a fundamentalist Christian high school. We both liked it.

The Last Shot– An FBI agent produces a movie to catch gangsters. It wasn’t a bad movie, but the interview with the real-life agent on This American Life was far more entertaining.

Brief Movie update.

Sideways: I give it an A-. It’s astounding that there’s still an occasional movie nominated for an academy award that’s worth watching. (Or that there’s anything at Blockbuster worth watching for that matter.) It gets points for dissing Merlot. More points for being different yet watchable at the same time. I’m starting to rather appreciate Paul Giamatti. I spent most of the movie unable to figure out why Thomas Haden Church looked familiar, and then Joanna said, “Did you know that this guy was on Wings?” Right. The mechanic. Overall, I didn’t think it was extraordinary, but I did think it was good and enjoyable. My only serious complaint is that I still have no idea why it’s called Sideways.

Coffee and Cigarettes: B. This film consists of a series of disconnected scenes, filmed in black and white, where the only common thread is coffee and cigarettes. It even has Tom Waits! It’s funny, in a strange sort of way, hardly unpleasant, and is most definitely different. I think that Ben would probably enjoy it.

I Heart Huckabees: B+. Loved both by existential wannabes (who take it seriously), and those of us who’ve had enough of existential wannabes, and laugh at it. Genuinely funny.

The Matchmaker: B-/C+. The DVD was so badly scratched that we couldn’t watch the ending, but I doubt it contained any surprises. Set in Ireland, so subtitles help. Hardly a wonderful premise, but it was at least well executed.

I’ve been trying to write about movies I’ve watched lately. Mostly as much for myself as anyone, because movies are so often very transient with me. I don’t provide a lot of detail, for several reasons. One of them is that I like to know as little about a movie as possible before I watch it. The trouble is that if you don’t know ANYTHING about a movie, it’s terribly easy to walk into a horrible one. Even then, it’s only a wasted couple of hours. So, if you want to know about a movie, I’d suggest IMDB.

Lately, we’ve been watching stuff available from Blockbuster since Netflix annoyed me. I’m really going to exhaust the store before long and have to return to Netflix.

The last movie we watched was Bandits. I found it entertaining, and would put it near the top of the list of movies in it’s category. That category is “Comedic films with Bank Robbers as the protagonist.” Not as good as either Small Time Crooks or The Jade Scorpion, but that’s because I really like Woody Allen.

Before that, we watched Cannonball Run just because I felt like it. I don’t think there’s anything I need to say about it.

Scotland, PA is Macbeth set in a fast food joint. We liked it.

Now just for some older movies I like, but want to list in one place.

Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain is one the best movies ever.

Box of Moonlight gets points for being shot in East Tennessee, having John Turturro in addition to being an excellent all around movie. I recently watched it for the third time so that Joanna could see it too. She loved it as well.

Bodies Rest & Motion is lumped together in my mind with Kicking and Screaming because I saw them both on IFC, and they both feature Eric Stoltz. Kicking and Screaming is about the summer after you graduate from college and Bodies Rest & Motion has a similar feel.

The Tao of Steve is a wonderfully put together film about male/female relationships from a male point of view, though the movie as a whole is probably equally appealing to men and women. Joanna and I both really liked it.

Legend of 1900 takes place on a cruise ship, is totally non-offensive to anyone, and hard not to like.

My mother would like New Waterford Girl. It’s a nice twist on a common theme.

Runaway Train is seriously overrrated. Convicts, a girl, a runaway train, death. Woo…hoo. I think Joanna liked it.

Ghost World is probably Steve Buscemi’s best performance. I’ve seen it twice, Joanna and I both really liked it.

Y Tu Mama Tambien is delightful, though certainly not realistic. If you’re bothered by subtitles or sex, don’t watch it.

Okay, that’s probably enough for now.

Out of Order was apparently a Showtime TV series that didn’t make it. The pilot was released on DVD disguised as a movie. Eric Stoltz, who has apparently been in everything, starred. He was also in a couple of my favourite movies– Bodies, Rest & Motion as well as Kicking & Screaming. This in spite of the fact that I don’t much like him. In any case, Out of Order the movie, er pilot, er DVD is quite good. There were apparently a few episodes as well, but they don’t appear to be available as of yet. I really enjoyed it– it’s the sort of movie I would like to rent all the time but of which they don’t seem to make too many.

Radio is a fairly well-done example of that grand tradition of PG feel-good family movies.

Pieces of April was better than I thought it would be, although I didn’t have many expectations, renting it only because Magnetic Fields did the soundtrack. It wasn’t wonderful, but I’d give it a solid B+.

Napoleon Dynamite managed to be the weirdest movie I’ve ever seen without being remotely deep or complicated. It’s just there. And proud of it.

We watched all of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Decalogue. Intense, well done, cinematically fascinating for having been shot on video. I don’t know that I can recommend them. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that all together it’s 10 hours long, and any one of them will give you enough to think about for a week.

Dopamine wasn’t bad, but wasn’t great either.

Master and Commander was a grandiose and pathetic waste of money.

The Five Obstructions is definitely one of those films that went out on a limb which broke causing the film to die with a rather uninteresting thud.

Time for more movie reviews.

We actually WENT OUT to the theater this week…TWICE. Berck’s mom gave us some money with instructions to go do movie and a dinner. I discovered, when checking the movie times in the paper, that the dollar theater just down the street becomes the fifty cent theater on Tuesdays. It just so happened to be Tuesday, so we decided to do a practice run and went to see The Terminal. The movie was better than the theater. Berck broke his vow of never going to the dollar theater again, and his nose was punished as a result. (“It smells bad in here.”)

Terminal is a delightful movie. Not a great film, by any means, but quite entertaining. Everyone should see it. It was fun seeing it in a theater full of teenage rednecks, who laughed at EVERYTHING, or else pointed out the obvious audibly to whoever blind might be in the audience. (Tom Hanks glances at the restrooms, and someone whispers, “He has to go to the bathroom!”) All in all a safe film bet.

We went on our real date to the real theater last night (it’s across the street from the dollar theater) and paid real cash for Garden State. This was a wonderful movie that I think the only person in my family who would enjoy it is Ben. Everyone else who reads this and doesn’t share my bloodlines should go out and watch it at once. Or wait till it hits the dollar theater and take a clothespin. Natalie Portman actually acts in it, instead of just looking pretty, which delighted me but disappointed Berck. He wanted more ripped clothing and knee-high boots.

We’ve been wading our way through The Decalogue, a series of one-hour films made for Polish television in the late eighties. They were directed by the guy who did Trois Couleurs. They don’t follow the Ten Commandments exactly, but each one is about a different inhabitant of a Warsaw apartment complex and the circumstances that lead them to sin. They’re very well done but also very depressing. We’ve finished “Seven.” Three more to go.