January 2011
83 posts
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Movie Review
DOGTOOTH
This fantastically bizarre Greek film was just nominated for a Foreign Language Oscar last week. It’s fascinating, smart, dark, hilarious, eerie, weird. A man and wife have three adult children who’ve never left the house. Ever. Not only that, the parents, seemingly to avoid their children becoming corrupted, have raised them to not even suspect there’s an outside...
WatchJanuary 30, 2011
Rebooting Reboots
Hollywood has learned a new word for “remake”: REBOOT! It’s starting to happen quite a bit, mainly (for the time being) with superhero films.
2003 gave us Ang Lee’s not very good Hulk. Then 2008 “rebooted” it with The Incredible Hulk. A mere five years.
Sam Raimi gave us Spiderman (2002), the better Spiderman 2 (2004), and the horrendous Spiderman 3...
WatchJanuary 29th, 2011
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Movie Review
GET HIM TO THE GREEK
The thing I enjoy about this fun little comedy (from the makers of the also-fun Forgetting Sarah Marshall) is that the filmmakers don’t think their audience is fucking stupid. That’s rare for a studio comedy. I mean, there’s sex and naughty language and drugs and body parts, just like any comedy. But here, most of the situations that involve those...
WatchSundance!
Morons
Let me tell you something that really bugs the shit out of me when it comes to people who don’t believe in evolution. It’s not the ignorant oversimplification of saying “Where’s the missing link’s fossil?” (there’s scores of fossils, over eons. If scientists find 100, deniers would ask ‘where’s the 101st’? Also, they seem to imagine a...
WatchJanuary 28, 2011
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Movie Review
BARNEY’S VERSION
I didn’t know much about this film, other than it’s based on a book and Paul Giamatti just won a Best Actor Golden Globe for his performance. He plays a Jewish-Canadian schlub, Barney, who’s looking back on his life. Married three times, suspected of murder once. He drinks and smokes and is almost unlikable. But Giamatti excels at playing these types...
WatchJanuary 27, 2011
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Movie Review
SOMEWHERE
I was a big fan of Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. I liked the simple exploration of it, the sparseness. I am not of fan of this, her latest feature, starring Stephen Dorff as a bored celebrity. I suppose this film is, like Lost in Translation, a simple exploration of ennui. But in the former, that ennui was compounded more interestingly in jetlag-fueled insomnia and...
WatchPerfectly captures the intensity and emotion of the original.
WatchJanuary 26, 2011
Just heard it...
Thunder. The first thunder-snow I can recall. BRING IT!!!!
3 tags
Movie Review
THE COMPANY MEN
There’s not much to this film about different generations of men dealing with layoffs. It is a very “now” story. But that’s about all it is. Anyone who’s followed any of the news in the last two years knows all about layoffs, the frustration of older employees becoming un-hireable, the wealth of the few controlling the futures of the rest. ...
WatchJanuary 25, 2011
DVD Tuesday
Another week with lots of titles, so we’ll again forgo the box art in the interest of space.
CLIENT 9: THE RISE AND FALL OF ELIOT SPITZER - Yet another documentary from an already great year.
ENTER THE VOID - Been hearing a lot of trippy shit for months and months about this Gaspar Noé film. Color me intrigued.
BROADCAST NEWS - A new Criterion release of what may be my favorite James L....
OSCAR!
The nominations for the 83rd Academy Awards were just announced. As you’d expect, I’ll break down my thoughts and picks as we get closer to the awards, but allow me to share a few initial reactions.
CHEERS: John Hawkes (Winter’s Bone) supporting nomination, Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) supporting nomination, Trent Reznor (The Social Network) score nomination.
JEERS: No Ryan...
WatchJanuary 24, 2011
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Double Feature Movie Review
KILLER’S KISS
Director Stanley Kubrick’s second feature film. His first, Fear and Desire (1953), he hated and all but pulled from circulation (it’s still hard to find today, though I did find a bootleg copy streaming on Google Video). This noir-ish little film is a complete mess. It’s agonizingly slow (an accomplishment for a 67-minute feature). The paper-thin plot...
WatchJanuary 23, 2011
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Movie Review
VALENTINE’S DAY
So why not follow up the Valentine’s Day version of action films with The Expendables’ version of rom-coms? I mean, everyone who’s ever been in a romantic comedy is present for classic rom-com director Garry Marshall, how bad can it be? Fortunately, not as bad as its action counterpart. But that’s about all that can be said. Marshall does his...
WatchJanuary 22, 2011
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Movie Review
THE EXPENDABLES
What could possibly go wrong with this film? Directed by Sly. Written by Sly and someone named David Callaham, who I can only assume is a high school freshman so embittered by puberty that he tried to write the kick-assingest screenplay ever. Add every possible action film star, including Sly (who appears to have a permanent case of the mumps) and a former Governor of...
WatchJanuary 21, 2011
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Movie Review
THE RIGHT STUFF
Indicating. It’s a bad note to get as an actor. When you’re indicating, you’re not playing the emotion, you’re just showing it. You’re not actually “happy”, you’re indicating happy by forcing a laugh and tilting your head back. It comes off as fake, insincere. It’s also something you can do in a script. Witness...
WatchJanuary 20, 2011
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Movie Review
ANIMAL KINGDOM
The poster says this Aussie hit’s a “Crime Story”. It’s not. Not in the way you’d expect, from a De Palma or Mann or even Scorsese crime drama. This is the movie after the crime drama has played out, and the surprising thing is that it’s not so much a drama as it is a psychological horror film. And it’s fantastic.
The movie opens...
WatchJanuary 19, 2011
WatchJanuary 18, 2011
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Movie Review
TOUCH OF EVIL
And at last I have seen Orson Welles’ final Hollywood film as director, and what is widely considered the last great noir film. There’s quite a bit of history surrounding this film, what with the studio re-shoots and three different released versions. I watched the most recent version, which was re-edited per the 58-page memo Welles had sent to Universal after seeing...
Movie Review
TOUCH OF EVIL
And at last I have seen Orson Welles’ final Hollywood film as director, and what is widely considered the last great noir film. There’s quite a bit of history surrounding this film, what with the studio re-shoots and three different released versions. I watched the most recent version, which was re-edited per the 58-page memo Welles had sent to Universal after seeing...
DVD Tuesday
ANIMAL KINGDOM - Huge Aussie hit crime drama, with several awards (and a Globe nod) for Jacki Weaver. I plan on watching/reviewing it tomorrow.
FREAKONOMICS - Another one of the many docs released this year. Haven’t seen it yet, but it’s next on the queue.
JACK GOES BOATING - The well-acted but slightly too minimal directorial debut of Philip Seymour Hoffman, based on the...
WatchJanuary 17, 2011
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Movie Review
CONVICTION
It’s not just that this script is, to put it simply, not good; the early parts of the film jump around in time for no good reason other than to set-up the brother/sister relationship in the most Hallmark Hall-of-Famey way, the rest of the film’s scenes exist merely to tug at heartstrings or too-simply add information and/or “conflict”. No, it’s that the...
WatchJanuary 16, 2011
WatchJanuary 15, 2011
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Movie Review
4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, AND 2 DAYS
This riveting film from Romanian director Cristian Mungiu won the Palme D’Or in 2007. It’s a simple story, wherein two female college roommates try to procure an illegal abortion in the last days of Communist Romania. But while that’s the most serious subject of the film, it’s not especially the focus. The film opens subtly and...
So what about you?
Here’s a pet peeve of mine from movies. “So what about you?” Specifically when this line opens a scene. It’ll usually be a scene where two people are getting to know each other. A date or forced pairing in some action movie event. And they’ll meet (“Hi, how are you. Shall we go in and get a table?”), and then the scene will cut, it’ll jump...
So what about you?
Here’s a pet peeve of mine from movies. “So what about you?” Specifically when this line opens a scene. It’ll usually be a scene where two people are getting to know each other. A date or forced pairing in some action movie event. And they’ll meet (“Hi, how are you. Shall we go in and get a table?”), and then the scene will cut, it’ll jump...
WatchJanuary 14, 2011
Vimeo Channel: 30 Second Series
So, as it’s starting to grow, I’ve started an actual Vimeo Channel for my 30 Second Series. That way you can subscribe to it, and it’ll notify you every time a new video is added (though I’m sure you, dear readers, come to my blog every single day. Right? RIGHT?!).
Here’s the URL: http://vimeo.com/channels/30secondseries
Tell your friends.