HARRY POTTER
This series does nothing for me. I don't understand it. I don't want to understand. I've seen every Harry Potter film and I sit there completely detached. Though this one was the least detached I've felt. I didn't love it but it felt most like a stand-alone-film. I love that J K Rowling has turned billions of people into avid readers but on a purely cinematic level, the movies completely bore me. But I was happy to see the actress who brilliantly played Vera Drake a few years back, Imelda Staunton, get a big role in a big movie.
JOSHUA
An unique and interesting film about a fucked up kid with fucked up parents. Wait. That doesn't sound interesting or unique at all but I did enjoy the movie. The lead actress (Vera Farmiga) was excellent. She managed to make me care for a character who was completely depressing and unlikable. Vera Farmiga was also in the Departed and she was excellent in that as well. I'm looking forward to more films with Vera Farmiga
CAPTIVITY
This was the movie with the "offensive" billboards in LA that were taken down because they showed a woman being tortured. Whatever! I love selective censorship. Grow up, people. We either have free speech or we don't. Make up your fucking minds. Anyway, this movie is not misogynistic. Just because a movie has misogynistic characters doesn't mean the film is misogynistic. And I hate typing the word, misogynistic, because I'm not sure I'm spelling it right. But for the first half of the movie a girl is tortured and then breaks free and kills everyone. That's the story. She escapes. She kicks ass. It's inspiring. Well it would be if it wasn't a shitty film but the idea of the movie, the premise, the story, is in many ways anti-male! But no one knows that except me cause I'm the only mother-fucker in America who actually saw it. Oh well. Next.
HAIRSPRAY
I LOVED this movie. I did. I sat there with a big smile on my face. I enjoyed every moment of it. I thought it was perfectly done...and John Travolta was adorable, I wanted to hug him. So how come I haven't given it a second thought til now? Why didn't I go back and see it again since I "LOVED" it so much? I love real hairspray, always have, but it never lasts more than a few hours and so maybe this film is exactly like the product it's named after.
THE SIMPSONS
Read my review of Hairspray and apply it here. I loved the Simpsons Movie while watching it but the only thing I really remember all these months later is "Spider Pig, Spider Pig, does whatever a Spider Pig can." And also the line about Alaska and equivalency tests....I can't even recall the line now but I laughed very hard during it. FYI, I have never seen an entire Simpsons episode on TV.
THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM
I love my Jason Bourne. I so admire Matt Damon and how he's evolved into a wonderful actor/entertainer. I've loved him in everything I've seen and I really love the Bourne series. This third one was the least satisfying but I'll take it over Spiderman 3 or Pirates 3 any day! And I love Joan Allen and her understated acting in these films. I'm actually planning on returning to the Bourne Ultimatum before it leaves theatres and I'm ready for the next installment NOW.
THE INVASION
Reviled by critics and ignored by audiences, The Invasion, kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time so what the fuck do I know? I enjoyed it...ALOT. Why did no one go? Are people tired of Nicole Kidman? Daniel Craig aka James Bond is in it. Does no one care? It's about Aliens. Don't people like Aliens? I don't get it. Superbad does over 100 million and The Invasion does zero!!! It's a good thing I don't run a movie studio. Even stupid Adam Sandler movies do a 100 million these days. It's all so confusing!
SUPERBAD
30 minutes in I realize I'm actually sitting and watching a movie about three high school kids trying to score beer. I'm almost 40 years old, technically 38 but close enough. I didn't laugh, I wasn't amused but I was inspired because if a movie like this can make 100 million, anything can! On a side note, I liked all the actors very much I just didn't like the idea. I loved Knocked Up, though! Loved it! Which is why I agreed to see Superbad.
DEATH AT A FUNERAL
The worst film of the year. Just stupid shit. Stupidity happens at a funeral, that's the premise. In general, Brits are better actors than Americans; they just sound better. But stupid shit is stupid shit whether the accents are British, Russian or American.
WAR
No one I know sits thru the silly crap I sit through. This movie is silly action junk left over from the 80's and I quite enjoyed it. I remember almost nothing about it but I enjoyed it, I think. Or maybe I didn't. That sexy guy, Jason Statham (The Transpoter) is in it. I see all his action junk. He entertains me. And I want to have sex with him. I wish i could tell you something about this film but I recall almost nothing. Oh wait, there's a great scene where this Asian chick orders a salad. Seriously. A very funny, intense scene. One of the best scenes I've seen all year. If you saw the movie you know what I'm talking about.
HALLOWEEN
Rob Zombie depresses me. I walked out of The Devils Rejects. I get depressed when I see "artists" who think they are "artists" and you can tell that they think in their mind they're original but truthfully they have not an ounce of talent. Maybe it hits too close to home or something. Maybe it forces me to look at myself and ask If I'm deluded like that, and maybe I am, but, I swear, Rob Zombie has zero talent as a filmmaker. Zero. It saddens me. If he had just made a stupid Halloween movie, fine, but he tries desperately to show that he has an original voice and he simply does not. He has a tin ear for the way people talk and all his actors give horribly over-acted performances so it's his fault, not theirs. Please, Mr. Zombie, make better movies.
SHOOT 'EM UP
I'm not sure what I thought of this non-stop action film. One moment it felt original and the next moment it felt incredibly self-conscious. It kept my interest through-out but...I don't know. I suspect the filmmaker is incredibly talented. He has a great sense of comic timing and the story kept moving along but there's something hollow about the whole thing. I can't quite put my finger on it. I'm very glad I saw it. You'll see it on cable someday soon. Lemme know what you think.
3:10 TO YUMA
It's harder to discuss a movie I like than I a movie I hate. Bad movies can be dismissed but a movie that creeps up on me and gets under my skin and forces me to think, well those are the movies that are harder for me to discuss. Both times I saw it I was surprised by the plot points and perplexed by the motivations of the characters. It's a complex film disguised as a simple western. The homoeroticism in the film is undeniable; these men are obsessed with each other and the two women in film are way off to the sidelines. And the acting is super strong. Russell Crowe and Christian Bale are great, as always, but the supporting cast are even better. I would argue that the youngest actor, Logan Lerman, gives the best performance in the film. Every word out of his mouth is honest and natural yet totally intense. The kid is great! And Ben Foster as Charlie Price also gives a great performance as the "boyfriend" of Russell Crowe. And there are so many themes running around this movie: family, honor, evil, betrayal, friendship, greed, money....so much to think about. It's also about the birth of America and the railroad and land rights. I'm telling you this film is packed with stuff. Go see it. And did I mention it's totally entertaining?
THE BRAVE ONE
I love watching Jodie Foster act. I feel like she's searching for a script with commercial appeal and emotional complexity and she hasn't found it since Silence of the Lambs. I wished I could say this movie satisfied me but it didn't. It wants to be profound but it isn't. A women gets assaulted so she buys a gun and kills bad people and she struggles with her conscience and that's the movie. Foster is so much better than the material and the material is incredibly simple. There were no surprises for me. I always knew what was gonna happen; she's gonna kill him and then feel bad afterwards. I did NOT hate the film and I wouldn't even call it bad but it just feels...safe. And I guess I was hoping for something a little more shocking and a little more dangerous.
EASTERN PROMISES
After the fabulous A History of Violence (David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortenson), this feels like a big let down. I don't have the energy to go into it. I'm tired from typing all these reviews and I'm anxious to get on with my night. I was sooooooooo excited to see this and after it was over...well...it was okay. There's a major plot reveal late in the film that is completely ignored for the rest of the film. It felt very incomplete for me. It's hard to discuss this movie because A History of Violence was so damn good and I had very high hopes. Yes Viggo is naked...but even that wasn't very interesting. On a side note, there's a whole thing in the movie about Russian mafia with stars tattooed on their knees. I once blew a Russian with stars on his knees so now I know the truth about him.
RESIDENT EVIL 3
The best of the three and that ain't saying much! But I enjoyed it cause I like crappy movies!
Bye for now!
PS I did spell-check but I have no doubt there are still tons of typos but oh well. The one word blogger had no suggestions for...are you sitting down: homoeroticism. LOL
1 comment:
Yay! I was hoping you'd blog about movies again.
3:10 TO YUMA was one of the few Hollywood remakes I've seen that works and stands as a good, new work of art in its own right.
You should check out the Glen Ford original, always cited by critics as one of the best Westerns ever. It's an intensely psychological game that takes place almost entirely in the hotel room above the saloon:
http://imdb.com/title/tt0050086/
I thought ORDER OF THE PHOENIX was the second-best HARRY POTTER, after Alfonso Cuaron's PRISONER OF AZKABAN. I was underwhelmed by parts 1 & 2.
That said, I see it as a children's franchise, and I don't understand the appeal to adults. I have many friends, including potheads in their 20s and one English professor in her late 40s, who think it's the best shit since sliced bread. They watch the movies, read the books and line up for hours to buy the latest installments.
Grow up a little! I only watch the movies because I'm an abnormal adult who sees every movie, including crap, as a learning experience for filmmaking and because I love the art form. HARRY POTTER isn't good enough to make me a fanatic.
Vera Farmiga was in two Sundance movies this year: JOSHUA and NEVER FOREVER.
I thought JOSHUA was good and interesting, if not original. I feel the premise was covered by THE OMEN and the style was deliberately THE SHINING, even down to composer Bela Bartok. Nice hommage; nice to give props to a classic, but JOSHUA'S not distinct enough to become a classic itself.
I didn't see NEVER FOREVER, nor did it get any awards or buzz at Sundance. Here's what VARIETY said about it:
"A woman's self-sacrifice becomes her means of self-fulfillment in Korean filmmaker Gina Kim's emotionally intense melodrama "Never Forever." Intimate love triangle flirts with risibility in some of its story particulars, but Vera Farmiga's fearlessly committed turn as a woman caught off-guard by her own desires and Kim's highly sensitive camera turn the film into a chamber-piece of hushed eroticism and surprising narrative grip. Broader in appeal than the helmer's avant-garde features "Gina Kim's Video Diary" and "Invisible Light," the film will be welcomed into further boudoirs on the fest circuit but may struggle to connect with a wider audience."
Don't bother watching the crap-fest BREAKING AND ENTERING with Farmiga. But I am curious to see QUID PRO QUO:
http://imdb.com/title/tt0414426/
You got it right: "misogynistic."
http://m-w.com/dictionary/misogynistic
CAPTIVITY may have had misogynistic AND feminist elements. But who cares when the movie sucks?
It should have been decried for outrageous predictability and clichés!
I really loved HAIRSPRAY, too. So did America — it was a surprise hit; supposedly the biggest musical opening since GREASE.
Zac Efron is a shallow himbo and his HIGH SCHOOL MUSICALS are unwatchable. But goddamn, he's hot. I want to rim him for eternity:
http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tmz.com/media/2007/09/0905_effron_splash.jpg
BTW, I prefer John Waters' edgier, 1988 original HAIRSPRAY with Divine and Deborah Harry to the tamer musical. The musical should have at least had the wildly camped-up hairdos, but I guess that was just too inaccessable or unrealistic for the producers.
I'd be appalled that you haven't seen a full episode of the SIMPSONS, but everyone gives me shit about never watching FAMILY GUY.
BOURNE ULTIMATUM was great. I was very surprised at the sold-out audience who joined me in the theater opening weekend. The first two BOURNE openings were practically deserted when I saw them. IDENTITY only made $27 million on its opening weekend; SUPREMECY made $52 million and ULTIMATUM made $69 million.
I guess this is one of those franchises that have built up a following by DVD and word-of-mouth. It's a good series, albeit not the flashiest one offered at the multiplex, and I guess people are catching on. It's unusual for mid-sized movie franchises to grow like this.
Wow -- I thought INVASION was good, too! I guess that makes two of us. There were preposterously contrived coincidences to move the plot along, but it did suspense well.
SUPERBAD was fun and there were fewer implications by these filmmakers that being gay is humiliating. They're some of the best comic filmmakers to come around in a long time. I like all their films. I think they're so good that they don't need to step on gayness for laughs at all.
I loved DEATH AT A FUNERAL, are you crazy? A fresh ode to comic classicism.
I will watch Jason Statham or Jet Li in anything. Statham is definitely hot. But the action was run-of-the-mill and WAR's twist was just a little too far-fetched. The coroner and detectives at the original crime scene of Statham's partner's burned house would have required and gotten D.N.A. confirmation of the body's identity.
Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN sucked. The original is a pioneering masterpiece of story and suspense that follows the victim as a more dimensional protagonist. Zombie's HALLOWEEN seemed to want to make Michael Meyers the protagonist, who is a one-dimensional monster by the time the real action starts, disconnected to his victims.
Zombie's HALLOWEEN is just a storyless, shallow collection of contrived snuffs with no thrill factor. Masked man walks up to a stranger in broad lighting, stabs and kills it. Masked man walks up to a stranger in broad lighting, breaks its neck. Wash, rinse and repeat.
I was greatly surprised and disappointed because I think Rob Zombie's other movies do character, story and suspense well. I liked DEVIL'S REJECTS. Maybe it was accidentally what I like. Maybe Rob Zombie is unconscious of what he's doing.
SHOOT 'EM UP is another far-fetched plot with believability problems. The impossible gun stunts don't bother me — they're supposed to be slightly campy. But the film expects us to believe Giamatti was able to deduce Clive Owen's identity, track down the baby by assuming someone would HAVE to take it to a wet nurse or "lactating whore" and all sorts of other wild assumptions and coincidences. Not original enough to make it a good action flick; not plot-believable enough to make it a good movie.
I suspect it will be forgotten.
THE BRAVE ONE. Another preposterous, impossible to believe movie. It's a Hollywood epidemic this year. It was legal and perfectly justifiable for Jodi Foster to kill in self-defense at the convenience store. She didn't need to flee the crime scene. As smart, educated and savvy as the film portrays that character, I don't believe she would flee. I also don't believe the numerous, unrelated instances of public violence she just happens to stumble upon. Completely rigged and contrived.
BTW PANIC ROOM starring Foster was good.
I liked EASTERN PROMISES, but the way it deflates at the end without visually depicting the villain's ultimate downfall (and his reaction) is unusual for a movie. I can see why some people would feel unsatisfied. But it's a great production overall, and I have never seen a fight scene like that — totally original and exciting.
RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION. Agreed: best of the series. This isn't an outstanding series, but I do think they're the only movies ever based on a video game that actually work.
(I don't count ALIEN VS. PREDATOR because that game was based on the innovations, characters and stories of two MOVIES first!)
Good to hear you're still going to the cinema!
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