Pretty much what it looks like. New movies, movies that are new to me...I'll leave it at the top and will update it as appropriate. FYI - My 5* movie rating system has 6 levels:
5 *s = WOW!
4 *s = Good
3 *s =Decent, or at least not bad enough to get 2 *s
2 *s =Bad, but not awful, or enjoyable despite its awfulness
1 * = The best part was the end, because then it was over
no *s = deep, pain-filled sigh...I will never get that [insert running time here] of my life back.
JANUARY
Cloverfield**1/2 (Free)
reviewed earlier
Atonement****
Very good movie. Well written, though I have not read the novel yet, so cannot compare the adaptation to it. Well acted - James McAvoy and Kiera Knightley were both great, Saoirse Ronan was, in my opinion, phenomenal. The movie is also gorgeous to look at (both the film and its actors). Not an easy one - I might have been sobbing at the end, but I admit nothing.
27 Dresses*** (free)
Now, I didn't have high hopes for this, but It was free, so... Surprisingly enough, I really liked it. (ok, maybe not so surprisingly - I might have a weakness for the rom-com genre). Well, most of it. It was almost physically painful at the end, when the clichés went into hyperdrive. (That running leap? Are you kidding me?) I'd give it 3 stars for the first 3/4, 2 for the last few minutes.
For mostly pulling it off, and doing so with charm and aplomb, Katherine Heigl gets 4 stars. Also 4 stars for to James Marsden for being so damned cute! As I mentioned above, he hasn't always done it for me. I really only knew him from X-Men, where he's both bland and standing next to Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, which makes for tough odds. But, add little scruff (think Cyclops in mourning) or - even better - some snark, and it becomes clear that he's actually quite sexy. I saw an interview with him recently, and now think that he's positively adorable when allowed to show some personality. Ooh, or sing. 5 stars for JM singing again, especially in adorkable drunk form.
Best line/delivery goes to Katherine Heigl as Jane:
Kevin - "What about you - you don't have any needs?"
Jane - "No, I don't. I'm Jesus."
February
Hairspray (2007)***
It was cute (in a good way), maybe a little too much so for me. I haven't seen the '88 original, but I suspect that this version has been declawed.
Jumper**1/2 (free)
Pretty much what I expected - mediocre but entertaining. My friend V. really hated Rachel Bilson, but I thought she was just normal-grade annoying. I was bothered more by Hayden Christensen, not because he was doing anything wrong, but just because I think his face is really inexpressive, which is maybe not good for an actor. And I might still holding Star Wars against him. Anyway, all that said, it was fun, albeit in an empty and surprisingly bland way. Ann Hornaday, of the Washington Post, said it best: Christensen is "tepid," Bilson is "vapid," and, "strange as it sounds, this is a movie that fails not for lack of substance, but for lack of style."
And don't bother teleporting - those plot holes are plenty big enough to walk through.
March
Penelope**3/4
It wasn't bad - it just wasn't very good. It's insubstantial, but that's not really a problem for me in a movie like this. There was something flat about it that I couldn't quite put my finger on, like it wasn't quite enough of what it needed to be.
Christina Ricci mostly does a good wide-eyed not-completely-innocent (her lack of naiveté is one of the better parts of the movie); James McAvoy is mostly charming enough, though I expected better from someone who managed to shine while wearing prosthetic faun legs. Catherine O'Hara is just not funny enough, which I suspect has more to do with the writing than with her. Not surprisingly, Peter Dinklage turns in the best performance, but he's not on screen enough to make it a better movie.
All in all, I'd say the best part was Penelope's scarf, to which I give 5 stars.
May
Iron Man****1/2
So, I didn't have super high expectations of this one. I had no prior attachment to Iron Man, but saw the trailer a while back and, for the first time in a long time, thought, "Holy shit, I am so going to see that." You know what? It fucking rocked. The plot is largely superfluous, but that doesn't automatically make an action movie (especially one based on a comic book) bad for me. There are some "big ideas" at the core of this movie - war, accountability, friendship, and a huge conversion - all of which provide just a touch of substance, and the main cast brings enough life to their characters (without them, for the most part, being "drawn") to make it work. Robert Downey, Jr. carries it - Stark is a brilliant, arrogant, alcoholic slut, and you get that. When the tin man gets a heart (not to mention a conscience), you get that too. Most of his key relationships (with Rhodes, Potts, and his robot assistant - the latter being a great bit of characterization) feel right, largely thanks to a few very well done scenes. RDJ and Terence Howard both get to subtly act their butts off a couple of times, and Gwyneth Paltrow does well. As I write this, in fact, I wonder if she may actually have been more impressive than I was initially able to see: Pepper Potts is not one of the better handled characters, yet she did not make me want to pitch things at the screen, and I mostly bought her scenes with RDJ. Obadiah Stane is really the loss here - his character just isn't given enough, though Jeff Bridges is great with what he's given, and absolutely nails a fabulous "magnificent bastard" moment. One-dimensional villainy all around is the weak point of the movie, in my opinion. I can excuse it, but the fact that some things are so well done makes it stand out more than it might in another movie of this kind. That said, there are cool visuals, decent one-liners, great snark (mostly by Stark), and things will definitely go "BOOM!" This is good, popcorn movie fun with a heart, pulled off by talented folks who make it look easy.
And it certainly doesn't hurt that both RDJ and TH are quite nice to look upon.
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian***
Forgettable fun, neither as visually nor emotionally compelling as it might have been. Except for Ben Barnes, who is quite compelling visually.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull***
Not groundbreaking, but that's not really what I went for. It was fun, Harrison Ford is still too cool to be true, and Shia LaBoeuf gets more and more interesting. Worthwhile might be stretching it, but it was a good popcorn movie, which is what these have always been about.
JUNE
The Incredible Hulk***
Enjoyable enough, but still unsatisfying. There were some great moments (how can you not love the Hulk rolling his eyes at the Abomination?), I liked the nods to the series (shout out to "The Lonely Man!"), and I cheered with everyone else when Hulk smashed. But it was mostly empty fun, which is harder to settle for so soon after Iron Man. It's one thing not to suck the action out of the Hulk with plodding backstory; it's another to ignore the lessons of recent comic book movie success stories. This was a missed opportunity: Bruce Banner is a great chance for some emotional depth to go with your destruction of property, and Norton certainly could have done more with more substantial material (as could Roth). Even Liv Tyler...who am I kidding? If she'd half-whispered "Bruce?" with her mouth hanging open one more time, I was going to have my own Hulk-out.
Not incredible, but a decent diversion.
Fight Club a qualified****
This has been on my list for years, and I finally got around to watching it a couple of days ago. It was, for the most part, as good as I'd heard. Norton, Pitt, and Bonham Carter all brought the crazy in a good way. The big twist was ruined for me years ago (and I wondered whether it would have been tipped fairly early on if I hadn't already known), but that didn't detract much. And, as someone I watched with said, "Anyone who watches it for the fights is missing the point." It is, by turns, thoughtful (and dead on) about the vapid spinelessness of consumer-driven culture, and completely full of it - I won't even get into the objections about the treatment (both in the movie and as a component of it) of the one "real" female character in a movie all about wounded masculinity, except to say that, if there's a m.anthrax manifesto, Tyler Durden's name comes up a couple of times in it.
I don't ever need to see it again - there's really only so much I can enjoy watching people's faces get bashed in - but I am glad I finally saw it. That said, I want to officially object to the end. The first 3/4 - maybe 4/5 of the movie get 4 stars. The end gets 2.
Wanted***
Meh. On the minus
side: I'm tired of computer effects standing in for story, and the
slo-mo splattering of brains does not enthrall me the way it seems to
enthrall whoever this (and many movies these days) was made for.
That said, James McAvoy looking uncharacteristically manly while
wreaking havoc did, in fact, enthrall me. Which brings us to the plus
side, where James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie are both hot, some of
the shoot-outs look pretty cool, and I got a perverse pleasure out of
hearing Morgan Freeman say "shoot this mutherf*cker."
A decent enough diversion - maybe better for you if you're a bigger fan of the squishy special effects than I am.
JULY
The Dark Knight****1/2
I saw it in IMAX 3-D on opening weekend, and thought it was mostly fantastic. It was dark, well acted (with a mostly well done story arc), troubling and a little bit heartbreaking - as any grown-up take on The Dark Knight should be. I *heart* Gary Oldman, Christian Bale was great, though I thought he'd gone a bit overboard with the Batman voice, and Maggie G. is a much more compelling love interest that Katie Holmes (though, in Katie's defense, she also had a more substantial character to work with, less of a damsel in distress…).
Heath Ledger was disturbingly good - I'd heard he was amazing in the role, thought that he couldn't possibly have been as good as everyone was saying (who wants to be the one who says the guy that just dies sucks?), and was both delighted and saddened to find that he really was that good.
That said, I thought the movie was abrupt and really heavy-handed at the end (in a more aggressive way, I suppose, than it was heavy-handed throughout). My friends insisted that a large portion of the American movie going public doesn't do subtext. I guess they're right, though I suspect that we are underestimating that general public. If not according to what they are in the habit of doing, then according to what they could do, if given the chance/forced to a little more often. Maybe that's just my idealistic educator talking.
Someone just today asked me what I made of this movie, which is what got me around to posting this. I gave them the review above, then wondered it maybe they were asking what my roommate was asking when I got home from watching it. I told her that I’d seen it, and that I thought it was, for the most part, very good. She hadn’t seen it, but had read some things, and wanted to know what I thought of it as a commentary for or against the Bush administration and their war on terror. Not having read any of these things, I assumed that she meant someone had suggested it was an analogue – Batman, like Dubya, doing what’s necessary to fight a madman – and, in that sense, an apologia (I still haven’t read much of it, but it seems like people came down on both sides).
That, I thought, was crazy talk. If anything, The Dark Knight was an object lesson in why our political leaders and our effective but morally ambiguous vigilantes shouldn’t be the same guy, right? At his most basic, Batman has high ideals and serious emotional/psychological issues. The term "superhero" has always been a problematic one for the serious versions of Batman, precisely because he is human in a way that his cohort is often not. There is the obvious not-from-space or altered (physically, at least) by a freak occurrence thing. But I think it’s important that Batman’s humanity is most evident in its brokenness: he is human, but by no means normal. He doesn't have the luxury of otherworldly moral rectitude, but neither does he have the basic kinds of human relationships and attachments that orient most of us in this world. This lack is partially due to circumstances beyond his control, but is also partially by choice, even if the choice is made out of a sense of duty.
At his most lofty, Batman is not a superhero, but a hero, in the larger than life and (therefore) tragically flawed sense. Like his classical forebears, he is always on the verge of being brought low by the very things that make him heroic: in this case, his single-minded devotion to his ideal of justice, but also of Gotham City, and his willingness to protect/redeem her (why are cities always female?) at any cost. Batman is doomed to a life of awful choices, and it is always a question whether he will choose well; whether those choices will be made blindly, hubristically, or at a great cost of suffering (both his own and others’); and whether, at the end of the day, those choices will make any difference.
Somewhere in between those two (or perhaps parallel to them?), Batman is the desperate measure called for in desperate times, with all of the questions that brings – namely where the limits are for even the most desperate measures. Regardless, I don’t really think any of those are appropriate models for the actions, or our expectations, of the leaders of the United States’ government. If “The Dark Knight” was intended as an analogue, I see it as a damning one; if it was an apology, it was the wrong kind.
If, on the other hand, it was an indictment, I’m not sure the Bush administration would be the main target, or at least not the only one. My favorite candidate? The citizens of Gotham, whose cowardice and refusal to think in any shades but black and white fuel the madmen, the lawmen, and the vigilantes, alike. I think the best scene in the movie is the boatload of respectable citizens, paralyzed in indecision until a “leader” tells them that it’s “us” or “them.” (I think the “Look, the prisoners are less easily frightened into monstrous acts than the regular folks, and now they’re going to pray!” was another unnecessary anvil.)
In conversations afterwards with friends, we've talked a lot about what both our heroes and our villains show about our worldviews - who we are, what we fear, and what we think we need. I think the fact that it sparked that conversation for us means it was a worthwhile way to spend a couple of hours, which is, I guess, what I really made of it.
NOVEMBER
Quantum of Solace***
Not bad, by any means, but something missing. The melancholy, as a friend described it, wasn't the problem; the problem was that the action sequences left little room for emotional engagement, wit, or sexy. The success of Casino Royale was that it had all of those things. Not bad, by any means, but not as enjoyable as it should have been.
Twilight**1/2
I'm just going to admit, at the beginning, that I watched it twice. I know, I know - point, laugh, get it out.
Better?
So, in my defense, I set up a big trip to see it, and two friends who wanted to come couldn't, so I agreed to see it again with them. They both read the books because of me, so it seemed wrong not to see the movie together. And, thanks to a friend who gave me movie passes for my last birthday, I only paid for it once. And also, I'm that person who gets sort of obsessed with something and watches it several times in rapid succession - it usually means that something fun in an escapist way has coincided with a high stress something or other (like a deadline). Paper in the Field? Pride and Prejudice/Bridget Jones' Diary. Qualifying exams? Underworld. I'm pretty sure I saw LotR:FotR 3 times in the theater, though I can't remember what, if anything, I was supposed to be working on. Recently, I've had a crazy time at school and am now working on a job talk, so, really, the fact that I've only seen this twice means I'm doing pretty well.
The interesting thing (to me, anyway) is that my opinion of the movie changed from the first to the second viewing. After the first viewing, even my Inner 15 Year Old wondered WTF. Not because it was bad, mind you - that I'd expected, and gleefully anticipated. I didn't think it could be bad in a way that would make me not enjoy it, because I had such low expectations. But IFYO and I were disappointed after viewing 1, because parts of it were bad in ways that I could not enjoy, and it tainted the rest of the movie (which was as craptastic - crap, but in a fantastic way - as I'd expected). Parts of it were even decent, which made the complete awfulness of other parts even worse. But, after viewing 2, I'm feeling more like I'd expected to: things to complain about, but mostly fun, in a supremely goofy way. My theory? I think the chorus of tittering teenagers at the first show multiplied the effect of the things I found objectionable. At the second viewing, there were a few collective gasps and giggles, but not the incessant, overpowering, running commentary of the first. So, while some parts are still, in my opinion, painfully bad, I found that those parts were reasonably contained when not magnified by group scorn, and didn't keep me from enjoying the rest of the craptastic goodness. (Does it help to know that I l still hope to resurrect Bad Movie Night with my friends, and absolutely adore Beastmaster?) Without the chorus of giggling and sneering, I actually enjoyed the movie a lot more overall (go figure).
After viewing one, I could not get over the the full-on mugging that Pattinson subjected me to in the first1/2 (OK, maybe 1/4, and then in just a few other scenes) of the film. That first encounter in the lab?! It was like he was playing to the cheap seats! Which would have been great, if it had been a theater production, and I'd been in the cheap seats. EXCEPT THAT I STILL THINK IT WOULD HAVE BEEN TOO MUCH! My inner 15 year old recoiled, and every overdone "OMG YOU SMELL LIKE DINNER!" face that followed (think both Edward and Jasper) made her die a little bit more inside. And the special effects...sigh. IFYO thinks The Lost Boys might have looked better, and at least it had an excuse for looking like crap. And did I mention that hungry vampire face is obviously very difficult to pull off convincingly? Again, think of both Edward and Jasper, and the spectacularly ridiculous ways in which they failed at the facial expressions. I don't know that I could do it, but I never claimed to be an actress.
That said, there were things I thought worked well, like every time the leads just talked and flirted, rather than being BIG ANGSTY, which pretty much never worked. I mostly liked non-ham Robert Pattinson, and there were things he did very well, I thought (the awkward invitation to meet his family, and the fabulous moment of trying not to laugh at Charlie's thoughts while he waits for Bella to go to the prom, for example). Kristen Stewart was mostly good, but she has GOT to breathe through her nose more often (pet peeve). And the lack of collective giggling allowed the sexual tension to work, which is good thing. I liked Alice and Rosalie a lot - the "meet the family" scene was mostly fabulous, in fact. And I loved Charlie, every time he was onscreen. LOVED!
So, all of that is to say that after viewing one, I was sad that I was going to have to sit through it again. Now, post second viewing, I'm really glad that I did. I still think the director needed to tell RP to tone down the overacting, but some of his mugging was less painful when not exacerbated by mass snickering. The dazzle was still just awful, but I think there's hope for that as well: when they're lying in the grass, and the sun breaks through the clouds, and his face goes all sparkly, the effect worked much better there than it did the first time. The first time, he looked like he had the plague. I really hope they throw some of that $70,000,000+ at the visual effects.
Anyway, glad I gave it a second look - my inner 15 year old and I both feel better anticipating the sequel now. We'll just pick our first viewing a lot more carefully.
DECEMBER
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button**** (Just under the wire, on December 30th)
This movie is well done visually and the performances are strong. That said, and despite the fact that I spent a good portion of the film in tears, something about it rang hollow. I feel like it pulled all of the right emotional strings, but something was still missing. It's good - well worth seeing, I think - but not great.
