2 Minute Movie Reviews.
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.
2 Minute Movie Reviews.
Gone Baby Gone (C+)
I like the idea of this movie in hindsight but not sure I actually like the movie itself. It gets a C+ on pure acting skillz and plot alone. I don’t necessarily like dramas when it comes to movies. I could exist on a steady diet of romantic comedies and be fine. So a movie usually goes down a whole grade by default of it being in the “drama” category. I just don’t like suspense and being on the edge of my seat. While I don’t know that this movie was necessarily suspenseful, it was a drama and so I dropped it right off the bat. Casey Affleck is turning out to be a stud. Who knew from what we saw in the Ocean trilogy? He was very good in this. But I think he was great in the film below. Gone Baby Gone was essentially 4 short stories the way the film was broken up. Which didn’t suit my fancy either. The ending sucked and was so predictable that it was overly predictable. Like it wasn’t the cool, witty predictable. But the “roll your eyes” predictable. The girlfriend was an idiot. Especially at the end. So fake and no where near normal.
Bee Movie (C-)
This wasn’t good. Not even for an animated movie. The plot was what you’d expect. But it was choppy, they skipped all over the place, and it was just stupid. I love Seinfeld and expected him to at least make up for the apparent problems due to the genre. It didn’t happen. No Nemo. No Toy Story. Just bad story. I suppose the only redeeming quality and the reason it’s not an F is that the moral of the story was actually half way decent and I wouldn’t mind showing it to my kid and not feeling bad about it. Basically the world is integrated and we all play our parts, whether large or small. And we can’t treat the world like it’s our own colony for our own needs and ends. Blah blah blah. Bad movie.
The Assassination of Jesse James (B-)
This movie was really long. Like over 2 and half hours long. And it was all really slow. No gun fights. No big chase scenes. No epic fighting. It was a cowboy movie without the things you’d find in a cowboy movie which made it extremely slow and methodical to watch. Again, I like the idea of the movie. It just didn’t blow me away while watching it. It reminded me almost of JFK or some other serious/indie Schindler’s List type movie. It was very serious and “artsy”. The camera work was fantastic. And Casey Afleck was stellar and Brad Pitt was . . . well Brad Pitt. The film was very human. In that you felt the wide range of emotions that almost everyone was experiencing. Whether it was Bob (Afleck), Jesse James, or Jesse’s brother . . . you felt the entire range of emotions that each character was experiencing and going through. Honestly, I was expecting a cheap, typical cowboy movie. But it was a pretty serious look at relationships and power and struggle and humanity. And of course betrayal. All in all, and especially in hindsight and in theory, I really liked the movie. But while watching it I did get a bit bored and tired. So it was good in the technical sense of what a good film is supposed to be, but maybe it missed out on the “entertainment” point of the movie. So I’m really somewhere in the middle on this one. Anybody else see it? Have the same reaction or different?
Enchanted (C-)
Really, really bad. If they would have just tried to be what they were . . . a sappy, romantic movie . . . it could have worked. Instead they spent the first hour of the movie just being ridiculously over the top and waited until the last 20 minutes to try and be sappy and romantic. That would have worked for them. Instead they tried to be something they weren’t. This was an Anna pick by the way.
2 Minute Movie Reviews.
Death At A Funeral (A-)
The first half of this movie was bland at best. Kind of funny. Kind of boring. But it felt like nothing really happened. Then it hit a point about half way through the movie where it got uncontrollably funny. I typically watch movies when Anna goes to bed early and on the nights that I can’t sleep. So I usually pull up my laptop and plug in some headphones and watch it in bed. Well about 1:00 in the morning I busted out laughing so hard that it woke Anna and Jack both up and freaked them both out. I didn’t stop laughing for 10 minutes. I got up and went to the other room and kept laughing. Now it may be because I was delirious. Or it may be because this had the rare combination of subtle and outlandish humor packed side by side. This for the most part was a “British comedy”. Peter Dinklage who you normally see in pretty “straight” roles was so over the top hilarious that it caught me off guard. I also like Alan Tudyk and he was pretty funny as well. All in all, this was a really good movie. If you can make it through the first 45 minutes, I think you might like it to.
Purple State of Mind (A-)
Craig Detweiler got in touch with me about doing a possible podcast to promote his new movie. So before we interviewed them for the podcast, Anna and I sat down to watch the film. Honestly not knowing what to expect. The film is a documentary which basically chronicles the friendship of a Craig (professor at Fuller and filmmaker) and author John Marks (producer on 60 minutes, editor for US News & Word Reports). Craig is a christian and John Marks an atheist. They were roommates in college, which was Craig’s first year in the faith and John’s last. So they tell the story of their friendship and their conversations back and forth about faith and God. John pushes back against the christian belief in God pretty hard and makes some very intelligent, great points. Craig shares about his relationship with God has helped him sort through stuff and make sense of the world. I’m really not doing justice to their conversations with that short overview. But the basic idea is that too often we exist at the polar edges of the spectrum instead of relying on the humanity that we all share. Not that we lose our particular distinctions and differences, but that we are able to appreciate and value our differences and provide enough space at the table for everybody. You can check out the website here to order a DVD or to set up a screening as well as watch the trailer. We met them the day after and Anna and I did a podcast with them that should be coming out soon.
Into The Wild (C+)
I think I like the idea of this movie more than I actually liked the movie itself. Right off the bat, I don’t think Emile Hirsch was the person for the part. Which may not make much sense considering I think he did a great job of acting. He just didn’t fit. He did a great job of acting but he just wasn’t believable in the role. No matter how hard he tried. Plus the movie just felt choppy. I know it’s the way they told the story with switching between past and present. But it just felt all over the place. Part of that is due to the style of the book and the story within. But it just didn’t transition very well into a movie. The movie wasn’t bad it’s just that it felt like it lacked something. I do appreciate the “point” of the film. Here was this guy who just wanted adventure and to live in Alaska off the land so bad that it was pretty much his whole consuming point to life. So much so that he missed out on the beauty that was around him in the people he met. For him to come to the awareness that people are the only reason to even have happiness at the end was a bittersweet ending. Perhaps I would have liked it more had I not had such high hopes for it.
3:10 To Yuma (B-)
Not really sure what I think about this movie. It was cool seeing Russell Crowe in a “bad guy” role. And I’m pretty sure I have some sort of man-crush on Christian Bale (I just saw where he’ll be playing John Connor in Terminator 4). The movie wasn’t average and I don’t know that it was necessarily good which I guess makes it above average. I really like a good western movie. And while this wasn’t necessarily it . . . I did wet my appetite for a few months. The ending worked very well for me. It had this redemptive quality to it while not being entirely cheesy. I appreciate the fact that they didn’t rely on cheesy effects to make this movie something more than what it was. All in all . . . I give it an “above average” on the old trusty, ambivalent, sliding scale that is my movie ratings.
2 Minute Movie Reviews.
King of Kong (A+)
King of Kong – Freaking best documentary ever! This movie was so incredibly good. Which considering it’s a documentary about two nerds battling for the all time score on Donkey Kong, says a whole lot. I couldn’t recommend this movie more. It’s basically the story of two guys battling for the all time high score in Donkey Kong. The trailer says it all about the characters and the politics involved in trying to get to the score. This reminded me so much of middle school. And some of my friends who were at the edge of “society”. This is just a classic documentary about a “classic” game. One of the main characters is so sympathetic and sweet that you almost cry along with him. The other is a real arse who you wouldn’t mind dousing his eyes with hot sauce (he’s a hot sauce mogul). Definitely worth checking out.
Margot At The Wedding (D-)
This very well could be the worst movie I’ve seen in a long, long time. It’s by Noah Baumbach which I love from The Life Aquatic and hate from The Squid and the Whale. Outside of Jack Black rocking a serious role surprisingly well and a mustache that looks stellar . . . there isn’t much saving grace in this movie. I guess the acting is good. It’s just that the story sucked. Nicole Kidman was half-way convincing. And the supporting characters did ok. It was just a really, really bad story in my opinion. I know it’s “believable”. But it felt like Noah was trying too hard to make it “believable”. Maybe I don’t get his movies because of my Hallmark card home and upbringing, but this was very much like The Squid and the Whale for me in that it just didn’t move anywhere or say anything.
Rocket Science (B)
This was a quaint movie. I can’t say it was what I expected. But it was very solid. It’s the story of a kid who wants to be on the debate team but has a studder and can’t get over it. Of course there is a girl involved and she tries to get him to overcome it. She uses him. Transfers schools and competes against him in the finals. You know the story right? The movie was shot incredibly well. The way movies are supposed to be filmed. And the soundtrack was stellar. If I made a movie, I’d want to film it and use music just like this movie. The story was ok. And didn’t end anywhere near where it could have ended, but I guess that’s what you get with “indie” films who have great soundtracks and cinematagraphy.
Semi-Pro (D+)
I have a tradition. Or habit. One that is quickly turning into a bad habit. And that is that I go and see every Will Ferrell movie that comes out on opening night. I have for everything. Except Kicking & Screaming. There have been some duds lately (Talladega Nights) and some surprises (Blades of Glory). Semi-Pro was the worst yet. It was horrible. There were funny parts as always but you probably saw them in the trailer. I sat there in the theater (by myself) and almost fell asleep. I would have walked out except I was killing time before a meeting and had nowhere else to go in the area. It was almost like they forgot about Will Ferrell half way through the movie and decided to try and make a “serious” story out of something that was supposed to be funny. Usually when this is done, there is still comedy involved and it’s borderline heart-warming. This was just painful as they tried to tie up the story and make it work. Painfully boring.
2 Minute Movie Reviews.
Juno (A-)
I liked this movie. I didn’t love it. To be fair though, I only have 2 complaints. Juno’s voice and dry wit got on my nerves after an hour. There was a 10 minute window in the middle of the movie that I kind of wanted to claw her eyes out. But I still found her to be extremely likable despite her voice. Ellen Page reminded me of Janeane Garofalo. My other complaint was that they didn’t give Michael Cera near enough time to work his magic. That dude is freaking hilarious and all we got was a cursory glance every now and then. Jason Bateman kind of creeped me out. And Jennifer Garner isn’t attractive as a suburban yuppie stay at home wife. But other than those glowing critiques, I like the movie a whole lot. It was cute. Charming. Unique. And honest. And the soundtrack is pretty sweet. And I don’t want to go all music snob on anyone here but Anna can vouch that I was listening to Kimya & The Moldy Peaches about 6 years ago. Back in the days of Napster (pre-Kaaza and Limewire) if that tells you anything.
Once (C)
The soundtrack is amazing. The movie didn’t do it for me. I know that’s going to get me killed by all the indie, movie/music lovers. But it just didn’t work for me. To be fair, I watched this movie with my parents while in Alabama over Christmas. Probably not the most conducive audience to watch it in. But I think I’d feel the same no matter what. It just felt slow to me. And while I loved the music. I just felt like I was watching like 20 music videos in a row. Which isn’t my thing. No matter how good the music is. But this is coming from a guy who pretty much altogether loathes concerts. The plot was kind of sappy and not believable as well. Again . . . I love The Frames (listen to Lay Me Down now). Love the soundtrack. Just didn’t love the movie.
The Golden Compass (A+)
A lot of people didn’t like this movie. Better yet, a lot of people didn’t even see this movie. Thanks a lot paranoid suburban moms and Christian isolationists! I felt like it was a really good story with really good acting. It was supposed to be a children’s movie (I think) but it felt like an adult movie to me. Way more mature and complex than Narnia (although I like the Narnia stuff better). It was so good that I actually went out and bought the first book when I got out of the theater. Fortunately, or unfortunately as it were, the book is not anywhere near as good as the movie. And they are drastically different in tone and content. So for once, I actually think the movie was better than the book. But I’m not a committed fan of the franchise so I should just remain silent. The movie was good. Entertaining, dark, complex, and adventurous. Not bad for a children’s franchise.
Cloverfield (A)
Despite me hyping this movie in ridiculous ways and despite there being no LOST tie-ins what so ever (that we know of currently), J.J. Abrams’ Cloverfield was really good. It had a rolling slow start (15-20 minutes) and then the action didn’t stop until the closing credits. It wasn’t really scary. But just intense action. I was nervous that the monster was going to come off hokey. But it was actually pretty freaking scary. My only complaint is that I have a splitting headache even as I write this from the hand held cams. Think of Blair Witch in downtown New York with a big monster destroying the city that just won’t go down. Even when it gets carpet bombed by B-52 bombers. That monster took a lickin and kept on tickin. Amen? Anyway . . . it’s good. I still think there is some sort of LOST connection at some point. I’ll keep you posted.