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2 Minute Movie Reviews

By Josh Brown ⋅ May 6, 2008 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

August Rush (B-)
I know. I know. This is one of those movies that you know the ending before you even watch it. And you know at some point they’re going to have a big scene will music that swells and a big slow motion run culminating with two people hugging. But this movie wasn’t bad. It was definitely better than I expected. Freddie Highmore is creepy good. It’s really weird to think that he’s already been in Finding Neverland, Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, Spiderwick Chronicles, and The Golden Compass. The kid is a stud actor and he’s only 16, although he looks 8. The kid can act and will do so for a long time if Hollywood doesn’t screw him up. The plotline/story is borderline ridiculous and it’s weird seeing Robin Williams career take on such a nasty and dark nature, but despite all of that, I did shed a tear sitting in a room by myself watching this movie. They built up the characters enough that it was plausible to get goosebumps and cry a bit when it very easily could have been sappy and overdone. In the end, it’s about what you expect, but maybe just a little bit more.

21 (B-)
I liked this movie when I came out of the theater although it didn’t blow me away. But sitting back over a month later and I can’t really tell you much about it. Which means it’s pretty forgettable in the overall context of good movies. If you ask me about it 10 years from now I would probably struggle to even remember it. Although the film is based on a true story, I’ve heard that they took some creative liberties with the movie to spice it up a bit. You could definitely tell since everybody in the movie looked like they stepped out of a GQ photoshoot. Kevin Spacey was a bit sub-par, but that might have just been the role of the character. And I’m really tired of him playing the villain in everything. I’d like to see him play the good guy for once. Jim Sturgess was decent as a lead and Kate Bosworth was more than solid as a supporting. I think Bosworth is turning into one of the more under-appreciated actresses in the biz. She can play a wide range of roles and nailed her part in this movie. In the end, 21 wasn’t bad. But it was basically 2 hours of entertainment. Nothing lasting or substantiative. But a simple film that Hollywood puffed up and that will be forgettable in the not too distant future. Although, they did start the movie with MGMT’s Time To Pretend. Major bonus points.

Lars And The Real Girl (C+)
I’m not sure if I can put into words just how creepy this movie was. This one guy (Ryan Gosling) has some social issues, borderline pyschotic/delusional issues stemming from his mother’s death. His way of coping with it was to get a girlfriend. Which would make a normal amount of sense were the girlfriend anything but a blow-up doll. Yep. You read that right. Dude gets a blow-up doll and starts pretending it’s his girlfriend. I can’t tell you how many creepy, awkward scenes happened because of that. But despite that whole “oddness” . . . the movie wasn’t that bad. It actually dealt with a wide range of emotions like grief, depressions, community, friendship, family, hope, love, etc. I found myself half way through the movie thinking to myself, “I can’t believe this is actually working”. It’s definitely weird. Don’t get me wrong. But it’s a surprisingly complex film about loss. I think it has more to say to the church than any other movie I’ve seen in a long time, maybe even since The Truman Show and Pleasantville. The movie is provocative, peculiar, disturbing and yet warm, inspiring, and encouraging. Not an easy combination to hit in your best film. Let alone one featuring a blow-up doll as a main character. And if it’ll put your mind to rest about renting this, there were no gratuitous scenes with the blow-up doll. Again, oddly enough, he treated her like a lady.

Ironman (A)
This was a freaking good movie. It’s your typical summer movie. Explosions, big fancy effects, and lots of shiny lights. I’ve heard people already start to mention Oscar-worthy. But it’s a long way from that. But it was good. They had a lot to pack in and spent an appropriate amount of time on back-story. I was moderately familiar with the comic storyline of Ironman and from what I can remember, they did a pretty good job in keeping to it, although they obviously transplanted the story into a modern context. The way they handled it does give some hope for transplanting the rest of the Marvel franchise into the present like Captain America, The Avengers, etc. Jeff Bridges, Terrance Howard and Gwyneth Paltrow were solid. And Robert Downey Jr may have saved his fledgling career with that performance. If he’s still around 15 years from now it’ll be because of his performance in Ironman. My only real complaint was that the final fight scene between Bridges and Downey was terrible anti-climatic and short. It was odd to see how a movie dealt with violence. Downey when confronted by violence against him (even though he created the weapons) was to respond with violence. So there were definitely some political undertones to the whole movie (are you listening Haliburton?) but ultimately I think the political statements failed because their solution was not a reduction in violence but rather a redirection and a different kind of violence. There were a couple of scenes in the first 30 minutes of the movie that really almost made me throw up. They weren’t even that bad as far as what you saw. It’s just that seeing such violent acts was just unsettling. Definitely worth seeing in a theater. The first movie I’ve said that about in a long time.