Not sure what to think about this ... Sam Raimi has revealed that the villain in 2011's Spider-Man 4 will be a new villain made by combining Venom and Sandman, the bad guys from the last film.

Concept art has been revealed on YouTube:

Labels: Blogs, Movies, You Tube

Because you won't enjoy them as much after you die.

Yahoo! has put together one of those lists. I've seen 65 of their 100.

It's a source of great shame for me that I still haven't watched Lawrence Of Arabia. My buddy Otis gave it to me for Christmas five or six years ago and I still haven't watched it. Because I suck.

HT for the link: My friend, Kelley, who doesn't keep a blog but does have a Myspace page. Kelley's a huge movie buff, too ... but he and I never like the same movies.

Wait, I take that back, we both liked Training Day quite a bit. Other than that, if we agree on any given movie, it's usually because we both think it stinks.

Kelley even found some good things to say about Rob Zombie's Halloween, a movie I hated. Deep down I think he's only doing that to mess with my head. ;)

Labels: Links, Movies, Trivial Matters

I'm not reviewing this movie. I haven't seen the movie; I haven't even seen the trailer. What I'm doing here is reviewing this movie's poster ... and from what I can tell just from the poster, this is probably the greatest movie ever made.

For starters, you've got Steve Guttenberg as the star. And if anyone can carry an intense action/thriller, it's Steve Guttenberg. I can't even imagine some of my favorite intense action/thrillers, like 3 Men And A Baby and PS, Your Cat Is Dead, without Guttenberg's intense, action-packed, thrilling presence.

Then there's the name of the movie itself: Fatal Rescue. Movie studios have a sacred bond with audiences when it comes to the word fatal. Simply put, the studios only put the word fatal in a movie's title if the movie is an artistic triumph. Consider watershed efforts such as Fatal Error, Fatal Justice, Fatal Memories (With the great Shelley Long), Fatal Judgement, and Fatal Fury 2: The New Battle.

It's the same thing with the word Deadly. The studios have agreed, by the way, that they're reserving the title Deadly Fatality for the final and best movie ever to be made. (Vin Diesel is in talks to star.)

But back to the film at hand. Of course, I'm extremely intrigued by the concept of a rescue that is fatal. I can't imagine how you can both kill and rescue anyone. This movie probably involves an ingenuous plot twist. Maybe Guttenberg is rescuing someone from being alive?

The poster's final selling point is the intense focus on the faces of all the actors pictured. It isn't clear what they're looking at, but whatever it is has them gravely concerned. Just look at the way Guttenberg is channeling all of his intensity with his eyebrows and his slightly open mouth (great actors can do that). His face clearly says "I'm gravely concerned." Aren't you just dying to know what he sees?

Of course I'll be reviewing Fatal Rescue just as soon as I get a chance to go buy the deluxe, three-disc collector's edition DVD (I assume there is one). Boy, I just can't wait.

UPDATE: Scott at Good News Film Reviews looks at the trailer for Fatal Rescue.

Labels: Humor, Movies

I've geeked out on Watchmen for too long now and I'm sure my handful of readers are sick of indulging me. I'll try to make this the last post on the subject.

I got the book back out tonight and looked through it again. It's really even better than I remembered. Seeing those panels and reading those words again really brought back how much I enjoyed that book the first time I read it a few years ago.

With all this focus on Alan Moore, I hadn't thought about the art of Dave Gibbons and how important it is to the impact of the book. Flipping through the book tonight I was struck by so many things I'd forgotten, like all the symmetry in the panels of the issue that focuses on Rorschach's origins. And how good Tales of the Black Freighter is. And I'd forgotten that, in the comic, Ozymandias seems like an authority figure instead of a nerd. Matthew Goode was all wrong for the role. They may as well have cast Macaulay Culkin as to case Goode.

While watching the film I'd had this vague impression that Rorschach's origins had been toned down and cleaned up for mass consumption, but I couldn't really put my finger on what was missing. I found it tonight. It's this speech, Rorschach's summary of his world view:

"The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever, and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reasons later. Born from oblivion, bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. Existence is random. Has no pattern, save what we imagine after staring ait it for too long. No meaning, save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children, not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us."

Yeah, that Rorschach ... always clowning around. God (or whatever) bless him. As bleak as he was in the movie, the real thing is so much bleaker. Gotta love it. And I gotta give Alan Moore his propers, too. Maybe he is a putz who takes himself too seriously and rains on everyone's parade ... but Watchmen really is absorbing and intense.

Labels: Books, Movies, Watchmen

I saw Watchmen today. I think I had the worst possible reaction: I thought it was OK.

If I'd thought it was great I'd have had a good time writing the review. If I'd thought it was terrible I'd probably had even more fun writing the review. But it was neither great, nor terrible. It was only OK.

It's really hard to motivate myself to write a review for a movie that was just OK ... but I'll try to write something at some point this weekend.

Labels: Movies, Watchmen

I gotta make this one quick because I took my nighttime pill combo a little bit ago and it's gonna kick in soon, and soon I'll either stop typing or I'll be typing gibberish. I hate, hate, HATE waking up the next day, seeing something I've posted, thinking "WTF is WRONG with ME??" and frantically deleting and/or editing the post.

Anyway, just some recent stuff from the inbox and/or Google Reader...

• At my YouTube account I got a note from a kid named JC Van Luyn, asking me to check out his music and comment on it. I might have been a bit reluctant at first, but the note really charmed me:

  Hope the day/night is finding you well, just to let you know, I apologize in advance if I took your time in some way by you reading this message. Don't hesitate to press the delete button if it does....

  He goes on from there to talk about his music, etc, but ya know what? When's the last time someone solicited you to check out their website and preceded their remarks by saying that, yeah, it's quite possible you actually do have a life and something better to do?
  
  So I checked out his stuff, which consists of some interesting covers and original songs. I found one original that I particularly enjoyed ... but what really won me over was JC's cover of Outkast's "Hey Ya." I'm sure you remember that song, it was a huge hit a few years ago and even though I really liked it, the over exposure eventually ruined the song for me. Well, JC's solo acoustic arrangement brought the track back to life for me and, damn! I'm diggin' this:




• Speaking of YouTube, most of the time when I load that page it's to check for updates from The Mighty Zo, like this one:

  I been saying for months that this guy was going to move on to bigger n' better stuff. Looks like Pajamas Media is the first step.
  
  One day we'll all be saying "Remember back in the day when Zo Rachel was just another guy with a YouTube account??"




• Another semi-daily check for me is the What's New page at Snopes, where you can learn fascinating things, like the latest web scuttlebutt about the history of the French Dip Sandwich.
  
  The French Dip, of course, is a sandwich made of thinly sliced beef, served on a hard French role, and often served au jus. Au jus is a French term that is pronounced Ah JHOOOO and means "sneezed on."
  
  Probably sneezed on by that beret-wearing asshole who resented having to wait your table in the first place, you American capitalist dog vit no ah-prishy-a-SHAUN of cul-CHA vaut zo eveh.
  
  Well, no ... not all Frenchmen behave like characters in Merry Melodies cartoons from the 50's. Some of them are much worse. But, I think my point is, you can get the real scoop on the sandwich at Snopes.



• Instapundit has posted a link to a story about twenty celebs who've aged badly.
  
  I thought the story was a bit hard on some of these folks:
  

  

  
  OK, so Diamond Dave doesn't look like a rock star anymore. He kinda looks more like a shop teacher now. But what's wrong with looking like a shop teacher? What's wrong with being a shop teacher? Someone has to be held accountable when a 14 year old kid bandsaws off two or three of his favorite fingers.
  
  But then I saw this picture and yet another small part of my childhood died inside of me:
  

  

  
  How will we ever convince the younger generation that those two women are the same woman? And that Kathleen Turner used to be one of the hottest actresses in the business?
  
  But then I noticed something:
  

  

  
  They only seem weird when you stick them out there by themselves and compare them to their bygone youth. Youth is bygone for all of us, dammit, and comparing today to '85 is always a bad idea. But if you saw that couple, the two people in the third picture combo right above ... if you saw them pushing a cart together at Wal-Mart, contemplating the best kind of detergent to buy or looking through the bargain DVDs, you wouldn't think anything of it. Nice enough looking older couple, right? Maybe she works at a law-firm and can help Shop Teacher Dave save his job when that damn kid finally gets sloppy with that bandsaw.
  
  So here's to the celebrities that grow old ... if not gracefully than at least naturally. Maybe even fearlessly. Is there any other way to do it? Screw the Botox and plastic surgery. Screw running from aging. Aging beats the alternative, right? Get old and enjoy it. It seems to be working for that nice couple, the Roths; Kathleen and Dave.

Labels: Links, Movies, Music, Politics, You Tube, Zo

I'm really narrowing my scope with this. To give a crap about this item you'll have to be:

• A comic book geek in general


• A Watchmen fan in specific


• A political junkie


• A non-leftist (libertarian, conservative, whatever)

Yesterday I called Rorschach a hard right-winger. Today I found an article by Brian Doherty written for Reason Online that argues that Rorschach is really an objectivist.

Doherty sees Rorschach the same way I do, but argues that the character is more politically inclined to the Ayn Rand point of view:

Rorschach would deliver (justice) as a personal, individual judgment; breaking what bones needed to be broken with his own hands, not from a world away with indiscriminate techno-gimmicks and no sense of actual individual guilt. The opposition between Rorschach and the villain is easy to read as that of individual, true justice versus the state's collectivist version. In every single war ever waged, governments make the kind of moral judgment that Watchmen's villain does, and the movie and comic, with Rorschach's help, make us wonder whether those decisions that governments and superheroes often make really are tolerable. Rand would have been proud.

It's a good read. Go check it out.

Labels: Movies, Politics, Watchmen

The more I anticipate an upcoming movie, the more likely it is that I'll be working the 3-11 shift when it comes out, making it basically impossible for me to see the movie in it's first week of release.

That's the case with Watchmen, a movie I've looked forward to for a long time and probably won't see before the end of the week or beginning of next week.

I've read some reviews, including a couple by favorite bloggers, and based on what I know about these guys I feel certain that I'll react to the movie in much the same way that they have.

My big concern ... the thing that will make or break the movie for me, is whether or not Zack Snyder's production get the characters right.

Since I'm gonna talk about my take on the characters, be advised that there may be spoilers below.

The movie's source material, of course, is a comic book. And like most or all comics, the story involves some broad charactures of classic personality types. But since Watchmen is a comic book for grownups, the archetypes aren't the usual kind. Watchmen is about the kinds of people that comic book readers grow up to be. Scott Nehring dismisses the source material as "another leftist whine fest about how sucky the world is," and I certainly see where he's coming from, but I don't quite agree. I don't think the story itself necessarily shares the perspective of it's characters. The story is colder than that, and told more clinically, and it keeps a certain distance from these characters. None of them are really portrayed in a particularly sympathetic light. I get the impression that Alan Moore wasn't really trying to advance any given political agenda so much as simply comment on those of us who are motivated to action (or inaction) by our own world views.

Of course, everyone has a different take on the story, and your perspective is as valid as mine.


My take, based on my own perspective and my own attitudes, is that Ozymandias is the villain of the story, and one of the worst villains in all of comics, given his typically liberal world view. Ozymandias sees humanity only as a whole. Individuals and the rights of the individual never enter the picture. Consequentially, Ozymandias is willing to sacrifice human life on a large scale in order to move the world toward what he sees as a higher plain of existence. He simply sees himself as someone who knows what's best for the world. Individual people, superheroic or otherwise, are nothing more than pawns he can enlist, manipulate and/or kill in order to advance his own cause. Ozymandias sees people as a hive and himself as the beekeeper. It's a perspective he shares with people like Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is Rorschack, a characture of the extreme-right-wing point of view. Rorschack believes in one thing and one thing only: his code. In many ways he's very much like Ozymandias. Both of them deem themselves fit to determine who should live and who should die. Both of them look down on the huddled masses around them. The difference (and it's a huge one) between Rorschack and Ozymandias is that Rorschack is focused exclusively on the individual and not at all concerned about what's best for the whole. Rorschack hunts down the bad guys one at a time and kills them, dishing out his own brand of justice as it fits his code. His absolute refusal to compromise is both his Achilles heel and the source of his strength.

What makes Rorschach more sympathetic than Ozymandias is that Watchmen gives us a great deal more of Rorschach's back story. His cynicism and inability to relate to people were formed in a terrible childhood full of abuse and neglect. Whereas Ozymandias sees himself as moving toward perfection (and nearly there), Rorschach lacks even the simplest ability to assess himself and his behavior. Rorschach is who he is because he never had a choice.

The dynamic between these two characters is the heart of the story, especially with regard to Rorschach, the only character who's given any emotional resonance. If Zack Snyder screwed up that element, all the CGI and slo-mo action sequences in the world won't save the movie. And if he got it right, the movie might just be something special.

Standing above and beyond these two extremes is Dr. Manhattan, the movie's God figure. Having become omnipotent because of a science experiment gone awry (this is a comic book, after all, and comic book conceits are part of the story), Dr. Manhattan feels removed and separate from humanity. This God of the world of Watchmen possesses all knowledge; he knows when the world will end and how, and the weight of that has driven him into an almost catatonic apathy. If Watchmen is making a statement about God, it is not that God has stopped caring about humanity because of our sinfulness and selfishness. Rather, the theology of Watchmen might simply be that God doesn't care because it isn't in God's nature to care. Genuine concern about the people around us is a product of hope, and hope comes from uncertainty. Therefore, real certainty destroys hope and makes altruism utterly meaningless. Watchmen seems to be a story in praise of doubt, the great motivator.

The other characters in Watchmen are more disposable, in my view. Night Owl II and Silk Spectre II both inherited their status as superheroes and neither of them are particularly happy about their lives. Neither of them are particularly sympathetic, either. If there are two characters in the novel who really qualify as liberals who whine about how much the world sucks, it's these two. Especially the second Silk Spectre, the most poorly realized character in the story. She's a simple parody of every self-obsessed Jerry Springer guest who spends every hour obsessing over parent issues and excusing herself from honoring her commitments. Silk Spectre II isn't the villain of the piece, but she is far and away the hardest to give a damn about.

And then there's The Comedian, the anarchist of the group. The Comedian is sometimes interpreted as the right-wing opposite of Ozymandias, but in my view that's incorrect. The Comedian isn't a right winger, he's simply an opportunist and a nihilist. Whereas Rorschach and Ozymandias both adhere to specific belief systems, the Comedian adheres to nothing. The book gives him one and only one moment of genuine humanity; when confronted by Silk Spectre II about his attempted rape of the original Silk Spectre, The Comedian expresses genuine regret. It's a brief but important moment in the character's development, and it's the only thing that keeps him from becoming a totally stereotypical comic book villain. Still, even with that single moment of clarity, the Comedian never becomes a compelling character and really represents little more than a destructive force of nature that the other characters must respond to.

If the movie gets these character complexities right, it ought to be enjoyable. I'm not sure, though, that it will find the kind of audience that movies like Iron Man and The Dark Knight enjoy. Most comic books are about larger-than-life heroes and tales of daring-do. Watchmen offers comic readers something different. If you've read so many comics that you're a bit tired of heroes who are always heroic and villains who actually see themselves as evil, Watchmen is a breath of fresh air.

My hope is that the movie will provide that same paradigm shift for fans of comic book based films.

Labels: Books, Movies, Watchmen

Synopsis

Ben (Robert De Niro) is one of the thirty most powerful movie producers in Hollywood ... but he's rapidly falling off that list. His latest film infuriates test audiences and his next picture may be shut down if the star (Bruce Willis) refuses to shave his beard. Ben's personal life is in a shambles, too, as he struggles to reconcile with his ex-wife and relate to his teenage daughter.

Pros:

• Some good performances, including De Niro and especially Michael Wincott.


• A couple of mild laughs.

Cons:

• It's not very funny.


• It's occasionally outright boring.


• The movie never seems to quite find it's focus.

Generally:

2 on a scale of one to five. Wasted potential.

Extended Review:

There's an air of pretension about movie makers who make movies about the process of making movies. The end result sometimes seems contrived and disingenuous. Especially when the movie aims to mock Hollywood for it's hypocrisy, it's phoniness, and it's laser-beam focus on the bottom line. It's as though the people involved in the movie are saying "We're part of this industry, but we're somehow above it."

I think it's the same elitist attitude that allows Hollywood liberals to mock their own country.

Still, a good satire is a good satire, and who knows the movie industry better than movie industry insiders? So we see these movies so we can feel like we're "in on the joke." Especially movie geeks like me, who spend an inordinate amount of our free time obsessing about movies anyway.

Barry Levinson's What Just Happened is one more case of a big-named director and some huge stars biting the hands that feed them, and I'd imagine that everyone involved thinks they've turned out something subtle, smart and funny. But they haven't. What Just Happened never seems insightful, in fact it never even seems to want to offer insight. Worse still, it's just not very funny. A satire that's neither funny nor penetrating isn't much of a satire at all.

Not that What Just Happened is a terrible film. It has it's charms. Robert De Niro has a real affinity for dry comedy (see Levinson's Wag The Dog) and it's nice to see him get to play something other than a cop, a grizzled cop, a psycho or a psycho cop. I'd like to see him get more roles like this. Most of what does work in this movie hinges on his sympathetic, relatable performance. Other talented character actors (Stanley Tucci, John Turturro, Catherine Keener) have less to do with smaller parts and sometimes seem to be playing it a bit too low key. Comedy doesn't have to be broad or physical, but it should at least be apparent.

The highlight of the movie is Michael Wincott as a moody, drug-addled director; sort of a cross between Keith Richards and Jim Jarmusch. Wincott seems to be the only performer in the whole movie who's having any fun, and he really makes his character pop with a physical, high-tension performance. In fact, Wincott steals all of his scenes and ends up the film's MVP. This isn't the first time I've noticed that Wincott's work was the best in a film (The Crow, Dead Man, Before Night Falls), and it's a shame that he always ends up in second-tier roles. Michael Wincott is a talented actor with skills in comedy, drama, even action. It's long-past time somebody gave him a starring vehicle.

Other characters in the movie are broad parodies of real people. Bruce Willis plays himself via Christian Bale, trashing sets and threatening co-workers and pouting and preening. Sean Penn, as an artsy-fartsy Hollywood darling named Sean Penn, is just right for his role. But neither of them bring much more to the film than a certain brief novelty, and that novelty wears off long before the movie is over.

And the the best parts of the movie are the parts that seem incidental and unrelated to the plot. Satiric jabs at the trappings of modern life provide the movie's best moments. The Wincott character says about the mood stabilizers prescribed to him that they're so powerful you could "watch your own mother get gang raped in broad daylight and still appreciate the weather." De Niro and his ex-wife attend former couple's counseling with the absurd goal of becoming so happy with their divorce that they never want to get back together. After a one-night stand, a self-conscious De Niro uses Just For Men hair dye ... and he uses it everywhere.

Given the tremendous talent behind it, What Just Happened could have been a much better movie than it actually is. It's a shame that Levinson and company seem to have been more interested in turning out 104 minutes of precious navel-gazing and dialed the satire back to 0.5 instead of turning it up to eleven.

Trailer:

Labels: Movie Reviews, Movies

...because, granted, I've been thinking about Watchmen lately:

Maybe Dr. Manhattan is a monkey?

(Rimshot.)

Labels: Humor, Movies

Synopsis

Bill Maher is an atheist/agnostic. This film chronicles his travels and interviews with a number of people who adhere to various religions, and the film aims to present the subject matter humorously.

Pros:

• Maher behaves better than I thought he would for at least half of the movie.


• Several big laughs.

Cons:

• Maher behaves every bit as badly as I thought he would for half of the movie.


• The subject matter is dumbed down to get those big laughs.


• Some gratuitous nudity and language.

Generally:

3 on a scale of one to five. Keep it in context and it's not bad.

Extended Review:

Bill Maher's Religulous is a better movie than I thought it would be, which is to say that I was able to watch it without getting viscerally angry... and that I don't dislike Maher any more after watching it than I did before.

It isn't a great movie, either ... but it's actually pretty good if you take it for what it is. This isn't serious theology, nor is it a real documentary. It's a documentary only in the Michael Moore sense. The movie consists of scenes wherein Maher travels from place to place interviewing mostly earnest, simple people, and setting them up so he can make them look silly with clever editing, subtitles and (occasionally) quick rejoinders.

The danger of a movie like this is that other simple people (or young people) will see it and take it for more than it is. Maher doesn't really prove anything here beyond the strength of his own convictions. But he does so with enough humor and style to make his perspective easy to adopt. I don't think Maher would disagree with me that it's incumbent on each of us to reach our own conclusions about life, the universe and everything. It's unfortunate that he doesn't do enough to encourage his viewers to do the kind of intense thinking and soul-searching that he has apparently done himself.

For the most part, Maher spends the majority of the movie tilting at straw men. Most of the people he goes after in the movie are easy targets, and many of them really deserve his attacks. People who twist religion so that it justifies a political agenda, or so that it defends hatred, or so that it can be used to dupe people out of money. Those kinds of people are clearly vile. Beyond that, those people do a terrible disservice to the many, many kind, honest, decent religious people in the world. Maher spends his time interviewing the wackos who make up a very small minority of the world's faithful. He talks to people like Fred Phelps followers, the proprietors of the Creationism Museum, and a Jewish "Rabbi" who denies the Holocaust and aligns himself with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Clearly none of these people are fair representatives of their various faiths.

But this is, of course, a movie. And a comedy at that. So Maher had to talk to people who could generate laughs. Maher didn't talk to normal, sane religious people for his film because they'd have been boring. So that's the context, and a viewer would do well to keep that in mind. This isn't really a movie about religion. It's a movie about weirdos. This is like interviewing Michael Jackson and implying that he's a fair representation of all musicians.

Still, I have to give Maher credit for a couple of things: For one, he really went after Islam with the same zeal he had for Christianity and Judiasm. I didn't think he'd have the balls for that. And there were a few scenes wherein he seemed to go out of his way to return the kindness and courtesy he has received. One exchange in particular, involving congregants at the Truck Driver's Church (of all things), seemed mutually warm and friendly.

I enjoyed Religulous to some degree, and given my own doubts about God and religion I found myself mostly sympathetic to Maher's point of view. I was sometimes aggravated by his arrogance and his over-simplification, but I went into the film expecting Maher to get on my nerves and he didn't disappoint.

Maher hardly comes off as the smartest or most reasonable person in his own film. No, the most reasonable and interesting person in Religulous is Father George Coyne, the former Vatican Observatory director who lost his job because of his strong defense of Darwinian Evolutionary Theory. Coyne points out (rightly, I think) that religious fundamentalism of all kinds is "a plague." It doesn't matter if you're a Muslim fundamentalist, a Christian fundamentalist, whatever. Once you get so devoted to a doctrine that you stop using the Brain God gave you, you might end up doing more harm than good. Fundamentalism is the real cancer that Maher is railing against. He makes that point with a heavy hand in the closing scenes. And that's fine. But it's a shame that he's painting all religious people with one brush. Or, if you'll allow me to mix metaphors, Bill Maher is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Trailer:

Labels: Movie Reviews, Movies

Before I write anything about the Oscars I should come clean and admit that I don't really give a rip about the Oscars. So you should know that. And you should also know that there are a lot of other places you can go to read better, more thoughtful, more insightful Oscars posts than this one here. For instance:

• Rhodester, the only show-business insider in my blogroll, always has a unique perspective.


• Rey has a clip of Hugh Jackman's opening salvo.


• Bob Parks offers a few thoughts on the political nature of Sean Penn's Oscar.


• Scott Nehring sums it all up very economically.


• RC really delves in and tries to make sense of it all.


• Kevin Williamson at NRO has a couple of interesting observations about the Oscars ceremony as per Anthony Hopkins.


• There's a story at Newsbusters about about the Oscars and CBS's Harry Smith, who is apparently a giant, weepy, PC douchebag.


• Armchair Commentary breaks down the show with a best moments/worst moments thing.


• I Watch Stuff live-blogged the show with a collection of quips so funny that it (almost) made the ceremony tolerable to watch.


• The Onion found a laugh in the program's budget.

As for me, I don't have anything really worthwhile to say. I'll just stick to my usual formula; mocking things I don't understand and generally behaving regrettably.

This year I saw an all-time high of four out of five movies nominated for best picture. I didn't see Milk, I can smell a posturing PC screed a mile away and you couldn't pay me to see Milk. I did see the winning film, Slumdog Millionare, and I thought it was only OK, not even remotely the best movie of the year. Frost/Nixon, on the other hand, really was a very good film and deserved to be nominated. And I thought that The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button was a well-polished turd of a movie; lots of obviously expensive special effects but no story worth sitting through.

As far as I was concerned, the best movie of 2008 was The Reader, which I saw only recently and reviewed at this blog over the weekend. The Reader, in fact, is one of the best movies I've seen in a long while. If the Academy had any integrity the award for best picture would have gone to that challenging, thoughtful film instead of the showy, flashy, and ultimately empty Slumdog.

I knew the minute that I heard about the movie Milk that Sean Penn would win the Best Actor Oscar. Hollywood simply had to come up with a way to thumb it's nose at Prop 8. Besides, playing a gay guy is a very safe way to get an Oscar, or at least a nomination. (See Capote, Philadelphia, Brokeback Mountain, Before Night Falls, and Gods And Monsters for examples from just the past ten years.)

Of course, playing a retarded or derranged guy is almost as sure a bet to win an Oscar as playing a gay guy. The Academy sure does love those homos and wackos. Along with his Philadelphia Oscar, Tom Hanks won for Forrest Gump, and last night's winner was also nominated for playing a retarded dude in I Am Sam back in 2001 ... the same year that Russell Crowe was nominated for playing a nutball mathematician in A Beautiful Mind.

Johnny Depp has been nominated a number of times but never won an Oscar. One of these days he's going to have to commission a script called That Crazy C--ksucker and star in the film as a guy who's both gay and deranged. Maybe do it as a biopic about Larry Craig with an angle about how his homophobic self hatred drove him crazy in an airport men's room. End it with a fantasy dance number wherein Craig comes out of the closet and/or stall and denounces the GOP. The Academy will send a guy out to the shoot to give Depp the Oscar before the film is even finished.

I hope it's clear that I'm mocking the affectations and the politics of the Motion Picture Academy, here. I'm not mocking crazy guys or homos. Crazy guys and homos are just fine in my book. It's the way the Motion Picture Academy patronizes them that I find contemptible.

Or, more specifically, the way the Academy seems to expect us all to patronize them.

Kate Winslet won the Best Actress Oscar for The Reader and I think that's pretty cool. She was very good in the movie and I hope she enjoyed receiving the recognition of her peers.

And Danny Boyle won for Slumdog..., which seems kind of weird since he only co-directed that film. I didn't stay up long enough to see the whole ceremony because, as I've said, I don't care ... and I haven't really looked around the net to find out yet ... but I have to wonder what Boyle's co-director, Loveleen Tandan, thinks about all of this.

Maybe the message the Academy was trying to send was "Those scenes from Slumdog that Danny Boyle directed were top-knotch. Loveleen Tandan's scenes totally sucked, but Boyle's scenes were good enough to make up for it."

And that's all I have to say about the Oscars. I have the feeling I've already said far too much.

Labels: Movies, News, Politics

Synopsis

Polly and Seth are a yuppie couple who are on a camping trip. Before long they're kidnapped by Dennis and Lacey, a couple of criminals on the lam. Tensions between the two couples are just starting to rise when they end up trapped in a gas station, trying to survive an attack by a horrific, unknown parasite that eats people and uses them like puppets.

Pros:

• It's not stupid.


• Fun, taught, short and to-the-point. A decent little b-movie.

Cons:

• Buckets o' gore. If gore bothers you, rent something else.

Generally:

3 or maybe 3.5 on a five scale, with that scale curved to allow for the genre. This movie is good fun for horror fans.

Extended Review:


Splinter is a smart little horror movie. By that I mean that it's smart enough not to try to be smart. Too many horror movies try to justify their scares and gore with attempts at metaphor, deeper messages, subtle commentary on politics and society, etc. That's almost always a bad idea. A movie shouldn't get out of it's own depth. Splinter is a B-movie and seems damn proud to be one. It's scares and gross-outs are what they are, and as such, they work just fine. This movie is a quick, satisfying little jolt of adrenalin that pulled me in and delivered the goods. Genre fans will love it.

At the same time, Splinter is all about story, and the story is pretty good. It's not gratuitous or pointless, and it's not insultingly juvenile. Yeah, this movie does what it does within the classic b-movie template ... but it does it quite well.

And, I have to give Splinter credit for some originality. The source of the horror is a parasitic, alien force that attacks people, kills them, takes over their bodies, etc. Think The Thing and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and any basic zombie movie. What makes the parasitic monster in Splinter a little different is that the invaders in those other movies required a complete human body to use as a host. Not so in Splinter. The parasite in this movie only needs some of the body of a host. In other words, if you manage to severe the arm of an attacking infected body, you'll end up with two attackers: The body and the arm will keep coming at you. This results in a clever mix of scares, black humor and some really nerve-wracking creepiness.


The characters in Splinter are template standards. You've got your science geek who's more fascinated by the monster than scared of it. You've got your surprisingly resourceful babe (Jill Wagner from the ultra-goofy gauntlet TV game show Wipeout! ... and she's actually pretty good here). And you've got your rough-n-ready bad-guy who really wants to change his evil ways. Etc, etc. Splinter isn't trying to reinvent the wheel with regard to horror movie characters. And it doesn't need to. Putting tried-and-true genre standards up against a creepy new variation on a classic monster is justification enough for this tight, 80 minute thrill ride.

If you like horror films and want something you can enjoy without too much thought, Splinter is a safe pick. It's neither dumb nor pretentious, just a straight forward little monster movie, and entirely enjoyable on those terms.

Trailer:

Labels: Movie Reviews, Movies

Synopsis

Michael Berg is a professionally successful but personally unhappy lawyer in modern Germany. When he was 15 years old, he had a brief affair with a 36 year old woman (Hanna Schmitz) who'd liked to hear him read aloud. Later in life, Michael found out that the Hanna had once been a Nazi SS camp guard. The long-term effects of their affair and the secrets that they share are the focus of the film.

Pros:

• Kate Winslet is outstanding.


• The pacing, story, direction and performances are all top-knotch.

Cons:

• I can't think of any. I thought this film was a complete success.

Generally:

5 on a 1 to 5 scale. One of the very best movies I've seen in a long time.

Extended Review:

Very few films try to say something serious about human beings and the things that bind us to one and other. Most of the ones that do try end up failing. I suppose it's hard to sustain genuine emotional intensity in a film without stumbling into melodrama or unintentional parody.

The Reader is one of those rare films that tries to convey something meaningful and manages to actually do so without collapsing under the weight of it's own ideas. This movie walks a very fine line. Any film dedicated to this subject matter could have become unintentionally silly, falsely sentimental, self-important or just plain insulting. The Reader never stumbles. This is a fine, strong film and I recommend it enthusiastically to mature viewers who're in the mood for something demanding.

Kate Winslet has been nominated for a number of awards for her work here, and she deserves to win them. Winslet has turned in good performances in movies as divergent as Heavenly Creatures and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, but she's never been as strong as she is here. It's really a demanding role; she has to play a statutory rapist and former concentration camp guard and make it possible for an audience to feel some empathy for her character. It's remarkable that Winslet pulled it off. Finding humanity in a character like that and actually making that humanity palpable isn't the kind of thing I typically buy into. The very idea seems too uncomfortably close to a kind of moral relativism for me. It is to Kate Winslet's tremendous credit that I found her performance compelling, believable, and, yes, human.

A few thoughts on that subject; the idea of feeling empathy for a Nazi: There are people who feel understandable outrage about the idea of a film with a sympathetic central character who is a former SS guard. But I never got the impression that The Reader intended to send a message as simple and repugnant as "Nazi's are people, too." The movie never asks the viewer to shed tears for Hanna Schmitz. Instead, this movie seems to want the audience to consider important questions. Is it possible, for instance, to do something genuinely awful without even really thinking about your actions? How often do any of us stop to really examine our own moral imperatives? Most provocatively, the movie poses this question: If you possess information that might generate sympathy for someone who is clearly guilty of horrible crimes, are you morally bound to reveal that information?

I like that this movie neither attempts to offer simple answers to those questions, nor seems to posit that the questions are unanswerable.

The Reader seems to want it's audience to genuinely consider those issues, and I think it's possible that some worthwhile conversation and debate might be generated in the process. Even so, none of that is what really impresses me about this film. What impresses me about this movie is how smart and honest it is about the negative things that can play roles in the forming of our lifetime bonds. Things like forgiveness or the unwillingness to offer forgiveness. Things like desperation and anger. Things like the commitments we might make more out of shame than love.

And yet the movie finds it's way to a genuinely positive ending. The Reader is a movie about secrets, shame and guilt. But it never glamorizes those things. Instead, the movie ends with a message about the importance of avoiding a life shrouded in secret. So, yes, the end of this movie is positive, but it isn't false or sentimental. Maybe love doesn't conquer all, The Reader seems to say ... but love is the only thing that enables any of us to ever conquer anything.

Trailer

Labels: Movie Reviews, Movies

I'm an unapologetic Tarantino fan. He makes loud, stupid, bloody cartoons with no redeeming value whatsoever. I dig 'em.

The trailer for his latest, a WWII film called Inglorious Bastards, tells us that "you haven't seen war until you've seen it through the eyes of Quentin Tarantino."

I have two words in response: John Ford.

This looks like a loud, stupid, bloody cartoon ... the kind of film that appeals to our base instincts ... a series of cheap thrills wherein the bloodlust of the audience is placated with mutalated Nazi corpses.

I can't wait.

Labels: Movies, You Tube

Scott at Good News Film Reviews has been posting some excellent movie quotes lately and it's got me thinking about some of my favorites.

Here are some of the ones that have popped into my head. Some will be very easy to recognize, some are obscure, and many of them won't make any sense at all if you aren't familiar with the context. I'm not saying these are the best movie quotes of all time, I'm just saying that they've popped into my head lately. You can click the quote itself to see the source. Think of this as a little trivia quiz.

Have I done this before? Probably. Heck, I've probably even used these same quotes before. Anyway ...

• "Seriously. Last night, man, I was so drunk, I was calling Morocco, man. Calling, trying to get to the Hotel Hilton at Tangiers in Casablanca, man. That's, I mean, that's, that's pathetic, man! Is that what you wanna do with your life? Suck down Peppermint Schnapps and try to call Morocco at two in the morning?"



• We'd better get back, 'cause it'll be dark soon, and they mostly come at night. Mostly.



• "He keeps putting his testicles all over me... You know? Like octopus?"



• "'Deserve' has got nothin' to do with it."



• "I always figured when I got older, God would sorta come into my life somehow. And he didn't, and I don't blame him. If I was him I would have the same opinion of me that he does."



• "Ah yes, the past can hurt. But the way I see it, you can either run from it, or learn from it."



• "Can the imaginary training of fifteen years be put to use? Apparently not."



• "You know how I know you're gay? ... You like Coldplay."



• "The great state of Vermont will not apologize for it's cheese."



• "I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to be the center of attention. I wanted the glory, I wanted the fame. I wanted the pretty girls to come up and say, 'Hi, I see that you're good at Centipede.'"

Hope that provided somebody with some shits n' giggles.

Labels: Links, Movies, Trivial Matters

I made fun of Christian Bale the other day for his infamous tantrum. Well, the guy has publicly expressed regret and contrition. Good for him. He manned up. Everybody behaves regrettably from time to time, God knows I do, and Bale's apology is a good example for all of us.

Good job, Batman.

Labels: Links, Movies, News

Typically I don't post this kind of stuff, but this is really, really funny and extremely unsafe to play at work. EXTREME language warning. Like five-thousand F-bombs.

First, the setup: You've probably heard by now that Christian Bale apparently had a melt-down on the set of Terminator: Salvaton last summer and ended up cursing and verbally abusing the director of photography.

For that full story, click here. Audio is embedded at that link; if you want you can listen to a recording of Bale's rant. But, again, remember that the language is extreme and isn't safe to play at work ... unless you work in a crack-house or on a tuna boat.

OK, so that's the set-up, here's the inevitable payoff: Somebody chopped up the recording of the rant, added clips of the infamous Barbra Streisand on-stage rant from a year or two ago, and came up with a techno dance song that has me laughing like crazy:

Yeah, it's chidish and vulgar, but so am I. In my defense, what cracks me up is the way the remix really highlights the total absurdity of Bale's rant:

"It's f------ distracting, oooooooh good!
It's f------ distracting, oooooooh good!"

I'll hum that all day.

And for the record, although it might be a stretch, I'll give Bale the benefit of the doubt. This might be the worst he's ever behaved on the set of a film and might not be an indication of what it's like to work with him normally.

Yeah, it's a real stretch, but maybe.

Labels: Humor, Movies, News, You Tube

Synopsis

A dirt poor "slumdog" in Mumbai, India competes on his country's version of the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire TV game show. His chances of winning the jackpot are slim. His real goal is to attract the attention and win the heart of the girl he's loved since childhood. Those chances are slim, too. But sometimes "destiny" has plans of it's own.

Pros:

• Good performances from the cast of mostly unknown actors.


• Good direction from Danny Boyle. His typically showy style. Nothing wrong with that.

Cons:

• The movie never really got my attention.

Generally:

3 on a five scale. It's OK.

Extended Review:

Danny Boyle has a history of turning out very good movies that I just haven't enjoyed much. His cautionary tale, Trainspotting is visually bold, aggressive, even brilliant in some ways. But it didn't do anything for me. Boyle's take on the horror/zombie genre, 28 Days Later, didn't even phase me in the theater. I didn't appreciate 28... at all, in fact, until a reluctant second viewing on DVD. And Boyle's version of a family film, Millions, is smart, funny, winning and warm ... and yet, for whatever reason, it nearly bored me to sleep.

It's as though Danny Boyle and I don't speak the same language. He makes fine films, I realize that. I appreciate his movies in a sterile, emotionless way. For whatever reason, the real heart and soul of his films is seemingly always lost on me.

Take, for instance, his latest: Slumdog Millionare. I realize that I should have enjoyed it very much. All the elements were there: The acting was good, the story and characters were engaging and appealing, the direction was suburb. And yet, once it was over, I essentially duplicated the experience of walking out of the theater after 28 Days Later, Trainspotting and Millions. The people around me were very happy. They'd just seen a movie they'd loved. I was happy for them ... but I was bored and utterly indifferent.

Slumdog... has been marketed as a feel-good movie, and I think that's somewhat disingenuous. I'm not saying that just because the movie failed to make me feel good. I'm saying that because there is a surprising amount of violent and disturbing content in the movie. There is gun violence, a scene involving torture with a car battery, another scene involving the torture of a child, and a fair amount of knives, blood and death. None of that detracts from the story's essential love-conquers-all message. After all, love has to have some nasty things to conquer, right? But I didn't expect so much of the nastiness to be on screen, and it's the kind of thing that might ruin the movie for some people. This isn't a feel-good movie along the lines of Love, Actually. This movie is grittier than that, and it earns it's R-rating several times over.

The performances are good all around. Especially Dev Patel as the main character, the "slumdog" the movie is named for. He's sufficiently convincing as a simple, wide-eyed boy who still carries a torch for the girl he's loved since childhood. In fact, his performance is the main reason that the movie works when it does work. A lot of the story is totally implausible. Serendipity comes into play time and time again, and Patel's good-natured acceptance of the things that happen to him and around him is key to the selling of this tale.

Without getting all spoilery, I will say that the things you expect to happen going into the movie all happen in a more-or-less believable way. Will the poor boy from the wrong side of the tracks get the girl and win the money? What do you think? Boyle isn't trying to retell Rocky here, and the concept of winning just by doing your best never enters the picture. That may be part of the reason I was essentially disappointed in the film. I was hoping for some surprises. Other than the unexpected violence, there weren't any surprises to be found.

So, like I said, Slumdog Millionare is a perfectly good movie. To my knowledge, Danny Boyle hasn't really made any bad movies. And as I said earlier, he hasn't really made any movies that have really won me over, either. Slumdog continues that tradition. A lot of people have seen it and loved it. Once again, I'm happy for them.

Trailer:

Labels: Movie Reviews, Movies

Synopsis

In 1977, disgraced former President Richard Nixon sat for a series of interviewers with British TV personality David Frost. This movie tells a story about the events that lead up to those interviews and the impact that the interviews had on the lives of everyone involved.

Pros:

• Good performances from a talented cast.


• A story about people, not so much about politics.

Cons:

• Lots of talk, little action. If you aren't already interested in these people and these events, I suppose you might get bored.


• One or two of the dramatized events seem very unlikely.

Generally:

3.5 on a five scale. A good show.

Extended Review:


Having been born in 1968, I have two clear childhood memories of important events on television. One of them was Hank Aaron's record-breaking home run in the spring of 1974. The other was Richard Nixon's historic resignation of the office of the President in August of that same year.

I suppose Aaron's achievement would have played a role in shaping my life if I'd been a particularly athletic child. But I wasn't. Instead, I had an interest in things like history, drama and politics. Nixon's resignation had plenty of all three, so it's probably not surprising that the broadcast effected me very much. Throughout my childhood, and to this very day, I've always been fascinated by Nixon and Watergate. I wrote enumerable papers on the man and the scandal in high school and college, and I've watched more movies, read more books, and video-taped more TV specials related to the topic than I can remember.

Because I've studied Watergate closely over the years, I've learned that one has to approach movies like Frost/Nixon with very specific expectations. Frost/Nixon is ostensibly about the series of interviews that Nixon gave interviewer David Frost in 1977. But movies about history are usually inaccurate by degrees, and Frost/Nixon really presents a version of Richard Nixon, a version of David Frost, and a version of their famous exchanges. To really be fair to the movie, it's best to set aside what one might know (or might think one knows) about the real men and the real events and try to simply watch the film as though it were an entirely fictional work.

Of course, that's impossible. But you gotta try. You have to try to remember that this is just a story, with a beginning, middle and end ... and that the movie hopes to establish it's own morals, it's own conclusions, and it's own deeper meanings.

With that in mind, I have to say that I really enjoyed Frost/Nixon. Removed from it's historical context, this is a story about two skilled spin doctors, each trying to use their televised exchanges as a means toward his own end. Both of them are politicians of a sort, and each of them hopes to leave the experience having secured a political goal. The older of the two men wants a chance to reframe his public persona. The younger wants to establish a reputation as a smart journalist and effective interviewer. Each of them attempts to manipulate their shared situation and each also tries to manipulate the other. Essentially, Frost and Nixon are presented here as opponents, playing a kind of game of chess with words. A game that only one of them can really win.

As Nixon, Frank Langella is really very good. In fact, he presents the best screen-version of Nixon that I've seen. It's certainly better than Anthony Hopkins's manic turn in Oliver Stone's '95 film. And I think that Nixon supporters would probably feel that the movie treats Nixon fairly. The Richard Nixon in this film is clearly very smart, somewhat paranoid, and, by 1977, utterly exhausted. He hopes at the beginning of the movie to somehow restore his reputation and find a way back into the political life again. At a critical point in the movie, Nixon realizes that the life he's been tolerating since he left the White House, the life of a famous but unimportant curiosity, is really the only life he's going to have from then on. It's a moving and important moment in the film, and Langella is especially impressive in that scene.

Michael Sheen, who plays David Frost here, is very good, too. The David Frost in this movie is personally invested in this series of interviews in every way possible. He's put himself in a make-or-break situation and the pressure to deliver is enormous. Sheen is especially good in early interview segments when Frost realizes that he's utterly outmatched by the old, skilled politician. As the story comes to a head, Sheen's Frost manages to convey mingled panic and focus in a very convincing way. I found myself feeling as involved in this story from his point of view as I was from the perspective of the former President.


How historically accurate is the movie? Well, it doesn't matter. There are real lines from the real interviews interjected into the movie's recreations, but I actually found that to be a trivial distraction. I was more interested in the way the two men were at odds with each other, each trying to steer the conversation, control the pace, tone and subject matter, all the while seeming congenial. The performances were very good when it came to that, and that's really what the movie was about. Since that's what the movie was really about, looking for discrepancies in the story's recreation of the public record would be splitting hairs. As I said earlier, this movie presents a version of the Frost/Nixon interviews. And it presents it's own version very well.

There are moments along the way that might be twisted by viewers, I suppose, into some sort of half-assed metaphorical commentary on the George W. Bush Presidency, the war in Iraq, and the most recent political scandals. Some people are always going to look for that kind of meaning "between the lines." But I think it's a ridiculous stretch to find anything like that in Frost/Nixon. This movie isn't about modern events, it isn't even really about events from the 70's. This is a character study, and a good one. And that's all it is.

Speaking of the 1970's, to me Frank Langella will always be Dracula. To a number of people, Richard Nixon will always be Darth Vader. And to a lot of people, David Frost might always be remembered as the David who slew Goliath in the interviews reenacted here. But, really, that's dumbing this movie down to something less than it is. Frost/Nixon is a movie about manipulation, language, and the power of strong personalities. It is it's own unique story, regardless of the historic events that it proposes to dramatize. And purely concerning story and acting, Frost/Nixon is a success on it's own terms.

Trailer:

Labels: Movie Reviews, Movies

Synopsis

Oskar, a twelve-year-old Swedish boy, is bullied, neglected and miserable. His new neighbor, Eli, appears to be a twelve year old girl. But Eli feeds on human blood, and as she and Oskar grow closer, the boy discovers elements of his personality that he didn't know were there.

Pros:

• Genuinely freaky. It isn't often that a horror movie makes me stir uneasily in my seat.


• Outstanding performances from the two young actors in the lead roles.

Cons:

• A couple of smallish plot holes.


• A few slow passages that drag a bit.

Generally:

4 on a five scale. A smart, unsettling, extra creepy horror film. I point to movies like this when I defend the horror genre. If you like 'em smart and scary, this is a must-see.

Extended Review:

Put this one on the short list with The Exorcism of Emily Rose, The Descent, The Devil's Backbone and Signs. Wow. Let The Right One In really is that good, that scary, that smart and that inventive. This one's a keeper. This is Carrie for the modern age.

This decade has seen scads of horror films churned out by the big studios. There have been franchise gore fests and Hollywood lame-downs of decent Japanese horror films and there have been more stupid, pointless remakes than I can count ... but there have been very, very precious few genuinely good horror films.

It's no surprise, I guess, that you have to look to an independent Swedish production for the scariest and best horror film of the past year.

Let The Right One In really is what the recent Twilight proposes to be. It's a movie that examines the turbulence of adolescence through the eyes of a vampire, and finds much to be afraid of. Yes, this is a horror film, but it is not mindless escapism. I thought about things like Columbine and teen suicide while watching this film, and I was very impressed with the movie's artful approach to very real subject matter. Let The Right One In treats desperation and loneliness very seriously and the movie is very insightful with regard to those topics. I think it's a safe bet that Twilight's version of Sweet Valley Vampire High didn't get anywhere near these heights.

As the two principle youngsters in the film, Kare Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson are both outstanding. Especially Leandersson, who's performance as the vampire Eli often genuinely scared the hell out of me. Let The Right One In doesn't rely on make-up or special effects for it's scares. The terror all hinges on Leandersson's performance. I had no doubt that her character could and would kill without remorse, and this kid made me actually shudder a number of times.

As Oskar, the abused and lonely boy, Hedebrant is very good, too. In fact, it's probably fair to say that he's exceptional, since his was probably the more difficult role. For the movie to work, a viewer has to care what happens to Oskar. And this is a character with very real, very upsetting problems from the get-go. Even before he develops a relationship with a vampire, it's clear that this kid is headed for an unpleasant future. He's bullied brutally at school and doesn't have any resources to help him productively deal with that treatment. Instead, he clips newspaper stories about murders and he tortures pretend victims with his pocket knife. Oskar just oozes with detachment and suppressed rage throughout the film.

Eli's vampirism is introduced almost immediately in the film, and it's presented with a great deal of gore and blood. She isn't a sterile, Hollywood vampire who leaves two small fang-holes in her victims' necks. Eli rips out jugular veins, spewing great fountains of blood when she feeds. The violence in the film may be upsetting to many, but I found it to be an organic and necessary element of this particular story. It was the physical manifestation of what was going on in the lives of the characters. Vampirism in this movie's world isn't gothic or romantic. Like much else here, it's about violence and survival.

Director Tomas Alfredson made some interesting choices, too, that I thought fit the movie very well. His visual pallet in this film is dominated by white (block walls, tiled floors, endless snow outside) and bursts of red (a bright red sweater, a solid-red toy Indian warrior, and, of course, blood). The motif conjures up a pervasive coldess and the potential for sudden violence that establish the context of even the quiet scenes. And as with all of the better vampire tales, the blood exchange is an obvious sexual metaphor; this time a commentary on the tumult and upheaval that comes with puberty. Very few modern horror movies even bother with subtext. Alfredson was very smart, I think, to treat Let The Right One In as a straight story wherein one of the major characters happened to be a vampire.

Most people don't see horror movies because they're looking for a genuinely upsetting experience. People see horror movies to laugh, to get off on gore-porn, to see just how far the studios take the carnage this time. So people who like those movies probably won't find much to please them in this film. But if you're up for a smart and crafty treatise on the very real pains and fears of adolescence, then Let The Right One In is for you. Early in this review I listed a few very good horror films and said that this movie is in their league. But this movie didn't remind me of those films. It reminded me of movies like Kids and Alpha Dog and Undertow, and of books like William Golding's Lord Of The Flies. Like those works, Let The Right One In is really a story about adolescents in terrible danger. The closing credits found me with my thoughts racing, more than a little unsettled. If that doesn't sound like your kind of thing, maybe you enjoy Twilight instead.

Trailer:

Labels: Movie Reviews, Movies

I'm looking forward to Watchmen probably more than any other movie in 2009. The advance marketing gives me the idea that the movie will faithfully convey the comic book's themes and atmosphere, and I just can't wait to see it.

Hat tip to Scott at Good News Film Reviews for tipping me off to the new marketing website for the movie, a website that features profiles of the movie's key characters, including the masked vigilante Rorschak:

the twelve issues of Watchmen are full of fascinating, fully realized characters, and my favorite by far is Rorschach. Now that's not to say that I identify with Rorschach, just that I think the character is compelling and that he steals the story.

Rorschach is a vigilante with serious emotional issues related to his godawful childhood and his loveless way of life. This "superhero" is more Travis Bickle than Batman, and he represents as much potential danger as the criminals he hunts and kills.

What separates Rorschach from other fictional madmen like Bickle is that Rorschach sticks to an iron code of right and wrong and he won't compromise or yield. His madness is stoic, not manic... and Alan Moore developed Rorschach so well that the character's perspective is accessible and sometimes even sympathetic. For me, the real test of Zack Snyder's movie will be how well he brings Rorschach to the screen.

Labels: Books, Movies, Watchmen

Synopsis

Walter Kowalski is elderly, bitter, widowed and alone. His new neighbors, immigrants from Southeast Asia, seem like the last people he's likely to befriend. But a series of sudden, violent events leads to Walt reluctantly taking the neighbor's teenage son under his wing. As the old man and the young man get to know each other, a genuine friendship develops. Meanwhile, members of a local ethnic street gang have nefarious plans for the both of them.

Pros:

• A great performance from Eastwood.


• A tight story that never drags.


• This is a movie that's genuinely concerned with the important things in life ... things like family, courage and friendship.


• The movie addresses racism in a surprisingly honest way.

Cons:

• A couple of fairly weak performances in major roles.

Generally:

Three and a half or maybe four on a five scale. Eastwood's own resume gives this movie a lot to live up to, but on general terms it's a fine film.

Extended Review:

Clint Eastwood has implied that Gran Torino will be his final effort as an actor. If so, there are certainly worse ways that he could have ended his on-screen career. Gran Torino is a compact and efficient little story that hinges on a classic Eastwood performance and a lean script from screenwriter Nick Schenk. It won't be remembered as Eastwood's best movie, neither as an actor nor as a director, but this is a film he can be proud of.

Clint Eastwood will turn 79 this May. His character in Gran Torino (Walt Kowalski) turns 80 during the course of the movie, and for the first time on screen, Eastwood really looks his age. Walt wears his pants up around his mid-torso, lights cigarettes with a Zippo, and spends a lot of time reading on his front porch. Walt Kowalski is a grouchy old fart, and Eastwood plays it real, warts and all.

The best thing about the character is that he's not just a harmless movie-version of a grouchy old fart. For most of the movie's two hours, Walt is a very unpleasant man. So much so, in fact, that this character might alienate himself from the audience as thoroughly as he seems to have alienated himself from his family and neighbors. Walt is a racist and a sexist who constantly uses racial slurs, mocks the religious faith of his loved ones, and is generally cruel to everyone except his dog.

In fact, Kowalski's constant racist epithets might really offend the most sensitive moviegoers. Personally, I thought that the characters racism was one of the many things that made Eastwood's performance so genuine. Look, it's this simple: many (maybe most) of the old men I know are racist to one degree or another. Old white men, old black men, old men of every color and creed are pretty often cantankerous in every way possible. To have made Walter Kowalski politically correct would have been disingenuous. The old bastard just doesn't care what he says or in who's presence he says it. I know old men like that and I totally believed this character.

Best of all, this is a movie that proposes that there are things that are actually worse than racism. Imagine that! We live in a society that embraces nutty concepts like "hate crimes," the idea that some murders might be worse than others, depending on the motives involved. (Aren't all murders crimes of hate?) Gran Torino is, in at least one way, a very bold movie. It suggests that, with some people, racism might be a hundred miles wide ... but only an inch deep. No wonder the same Motion Picture Academy that piled Oscars on Crash a few years ago didn't quite know what to think of this film. Walter Kowalski is an unabashed racist, but he's not beyond redemption. That's not exactly the clean, neat, acceptable way to present a racist character, even if it is honest.


As a matter of fact, the politically incorrect dialogue in the movie is used to tremendous effect in one scene in particular: This movie is essentially the story of Walter begrudgingly becoming friends with a young Asian man in his neighborhood. Early in the film, before he develops affection for the young man, Walter constantly peppers him with racial slurs out of genuine disrespect. But as he develops regard for the young man he wants to make it clear to him that he likes him. Lacking the ability to simply say "Hey, I like ya, kid," Walt instead takes him to his local barber shop so that he can hear the way that he and the Italian barber trade ethnic jabs as a way of horsing around. Walt even attempts to instruct his young Asian friend on the proper way to "talk like a fella." The scene works for two reasons... one, it makes it clear that at this point in the story Walt's slurs toward his young Asian friend are the old man's dysfunctional way of expressing affection. It's really all he knows. And, two, that scene ends with the young man delivering the funniest punchline I've heard in any movie in a long time.

Like my all time favorite film, Eastwood's masterful Unforgiven, Gran Torino revisits the themes that have defined the actor/director's best work. Forgiveness and redemption and sacrifice are the keynotes, here. This movie's dramatic apex is sort of an alternate version of the climactic scene in Unforgiven, with selflessness substituted for revenge to tremendous effect. It isn't necessarily a realistic way for the story to end, but viewed through the prism of Eastwood's career, it's meaningful and quite moving.

Gran Torino doesn't quite reach Unforgiven's artistic heights, but it certainly doesn't fail, either. Eastwood fans will find a lot to enjoy in Gran Torino, as will fans of good movies in general.

The trailer for Gran Torino

Labels: Movie Reviews, Movies

I don't often mention "celebrity news" at this blog, I just don't care about celebrity gossip. But I had to mention this Joaquin Phoenix story because ... damn.

Man, he looks rough. He looks like he he's recently been shooting up in a culvert somewhere.

He looks like Zach Galifianakis after a three-night bender.

He looks like Jim Morrison circa 1971, minus the bathtub.

Only a few years ago Phoenix was turning in exemplary work and now he says he's done with acting, he's going to be a rapper, and his rap album is going to be produced by Diddy.

His debut performance at a Las Vegas club ended with him falling off the stage after one song. The shenanigans were taped for inclusion in a documentary ... which makes me wonder if this is some elaborate Borat-style prank. I hope so. I'd hate to think the guy has gone 'round the bend.

Labels: Movies, News, You Tube