Tisa

#9 - The Hangover

For a brief moment, I considered bumping The Hangover from the list. Then I decided to watch a few minutes of this a couple nights ago. I ended up watching the whole thing. And it held up really well.

There were plenty of funny moments that were still funny ("What is this? A snakeskin?"). There were funny moments that I had forgotten about ("I didn't know they gave out rings at the Holocaust."). There were funny moments that I don't think I noticed the first time around ("I'll hit an old man in public!").

Haley once stated that Bradley Cooper's character Phil reminded him of me, and I take that as a compliment. It's because of his attitude as he's trying to leave school for his weekend. "It’s the weekend, Budnick, I do not know you. You do not exist." And soon after, "Shut and drive before one of these nerds ask me another question."

And then there's Phil's outgoing message on his cell. If I didn't also use my cell for students and their parents, I would definitely change it to this: "Hey. This is Phil. Leave me a message. Or don't. But do me a favor. Don't text me. It's gay." Though I would probably change the name... But still, don't text me.

One thing I give the makers of this movie, especially the writers, credit for is telling the story they way they did. It's told from the next day as the characters are trying to put things together. And yes, I know that's the whole point. But your typical mainstream comedy would have just told the story through the night. After all, that's the most outrageous stuff. But we're only teased with that. And it worked for me.

Comedy is subjective, so I know it's easy to disagree. And I saw The Hangover before expectations are too high. That said, I invite you to read Nolan's counter argument, and I invite him to click on the "WRONG!" button on my new reaction meter down just above the comment link.

Kumi

#10 - The Road

I started reading The Road several months back. In an attempt to make the future apocalypse more chaotic, author Cormac McCarthy does away with several conventions of grammar. For example, there is rarely any punctuation beyond periods, and never quotation marks. Things like that always feel like a gimmick to me, so it took me some time to get into it (in addition to my Reader's Block).

Once I made it to about the halfway point, I breezed through the rest of the book in a few hours. It's a deeply emotional book about these two characters. I feel like the ending for the father (who is unnamed) reaches the most logical and satisfying conclusion that it can. I'm not as convinced about the ending for the son (also unnamed), but it's really the father's story.

While watching the movie, I was forced to compare it with the book. I thought it was as faithful as it really could be, with one exception. Minor spoiler here: I felt that in the book, the material on the beach was the most emotional. This was especially true of the scene when they shoot off the flare gun like a firework. Most of this was cut from the movie.

After watching previews, I was worried that they were going to use the flashbacks too often. While they did show more than the book, I thought this was an improvement over the book. They certainly didn't show too much.

Viggo Mortensen was the best choice for the father. The father needs to show sadness, but hope when talking to his son. He did a great job in juggling those responsibilities.

There are some amazing shots in this movie when they show the desolate landscapes. I sometimes had to stop for a moment to remind myself that it doesn't really exist anywhere, so this has to be a special effect, either a CGI or matte painting. I've read a few people state that it's the most realistic vision of an apocalyptic future seen in movies. I don't know about that, as the circumstances of the despair (which aren't explained here) make a difference. But it does seem like a realistic possible future.

2009 - Honorable Mention

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans

This movie is simply nuts. When I wrote about Taking Woodstock and Extract, I mentioned that movie makers all seem to show drug trips the same way. They all use wavy camera trick. I wanted a movie that showed something different. Bad Lieutenant shows it differently.

I haven't seen the original Bad Lieutenant with Harvey Keitel, but from what I understand this uses little more than the title.

I'm convinced that Nicolas Cage isn't a great actor. He's a good actor, but he's insane. The guy picks bizarre movies. He named his child Kal-El. While that's the most awesome thing ever, it's still nucking futs. He married Lisa Marie Presley, and she only marries complete nut jobs.

But when the role calls for someone to be absolutely insane, Cage nails it. My favorite role of his was in Adaptation, where he played twins. But the part was rather insane. In Bad Lieutenant, very few people could have played Lieutenant Terrence McDonagh. The actor had to be fearless - they couldn't be afraid to go over the top and then keep going further. Well, fearless or insane.

This is such a bizarre movie. And I mean that in the best possible way. You will have no idea where its going, and you might not even be sure where you've been. But in the end it still makes sense. Sort of. Enough, at least, to enjoy it. I was sad that I couldn't find room for it in my top 10, but it deserves honorable mention for the year 2009.

Crazy Heart and Broken Embraces

Crazy Heart is getting a lot of buzz because of Jeff Bridges in his performance as a washed up country star named Bad Blake. In the movies I've seen this year, I can't think of any lead actor roles that dominated a film as much as this, so I'll be surprised if he doesn't win.

When I wrote about Me and Orson Welles, I mentioned that a couple of the performances were great, but I had no other roles from them to compare. With Bridges, he was Flynn, the creator of Tron. He was the Starman. He was recently Obadiah Stane in Iron Man. Most importantly, he IS The Dude. Looking at his resume, he has been quite diverse, and he has been nominated many times. He should win this one.

So how's the movie? It's pretty good. It reminded me of The Wrestler in some ways, as Bad Blake is at a similar point in his career as Randy "The Ram" was in his. I'm not a country music fan by any stretch, but the music, all performed by Bridges, is fun. I felt like the movie lost a bit of steam near the end, but as an alcoholic, it needed to follow one of two paths with the character. it definitely wasn't enough to ruin it, though. I recommend checking it out once it finally arrives at a more convenient theater.

On the other hand here's a movie I'm not as wild about. I'm going to admit right up front the awful truth about Broken Embraces. I didn't get it.

It's not that I didn't understand the plot (or that I couldn't figure out that you had to read the subtitles in order to understand the foreign words they were saying).

I didn't understand why anyone was doing what they were doing. I understand that there was a theme with things being in pieces, and that's why the movie is told that way. But I don't understand what it has to do with whatever the point of the movie is.

The inner teenager inside me wants to go ahead and dismiss the whole movie. I didn't understand it, so I have to just say it's hella gay and hecka boring. There are many good reasons why I'm not a movie critic, and this movie just shows me one of them. I'm just missing the whole point.


SO - this ends my Movie-a-Day entries. I saw 45 movies in the theaters in 2009, and I had a blast hitting that mark. Over the past month, I wrote about 34 of them. For those who are not so mathematically inclined, that leaves 11. Tomorrow I'll start counting down. I have a number 11 choice that I liked too much to leave off, so I'm giving it a runner up award. I'll write about that and number 10 tomorrow. Just a reminder that these aren't the BEST movies of 2009- these were my favorites. The best would probably include Precious, The Hurt Locker, and the Fantastic Mr. Fox. But I liked these more.

Red Cliff

Last night I had to make a horrible decision. It was Sophie's Choice in my home. Since I haven't seen that movie, I have to assume that someone named Sophie had to decide which great movie to bump off of her top ten list. I had to bump Red Cliff.

Red Cliff gets a unique and different complaint. It's not long enough. That isn't exactly true. It's just that this movie was released in Asia in two parts, each two and a half hours long. We Americans received one movie. The two parts were edited down into a single two and a half hour movie. Clearly, they were listening to idiots like me who complain that movies are too long. I'm hoping that a DVD release will restore the 148 minute version back to 280.

If you haven't heard of Red Cliff, it's a Chinese history/war movie. It shows the beginning of the Three Kingdoms period, a time when China was between the Han and Jin dynasties. It was directed by John Woo and broke the Chinese box office record.

The closest movie I can compare it with is Mongol. If you saw it and liked it, you might just give Red Cliff a chance. And if you haven't, I'd pop that one into your Netflix queue and take a look.

There are parts of the movie that are a bit tough to follow, and that's ultimately why I knocked it out of the top ten. I wonder how much that has to do with the editing and how much has to do with my lack of cultural understanding.

Still, the battle scenes are amazing to watch. They are visual masterpieces. One of the main characters is the military strategist, so they spend a little time with military formations such as the butterfly and turtle. They are really cool to watch unfold and it becomes clear why they are so named.

I don't teach any Chinese history, and I'm certainly no expert. I can't speak at all of the historical accuracy of Red Cliff other than what I have found with a quick google search. But it doesn't matter. It's a good movie, and I hope some of you who haven't heard of it (or Mongol) will go check it out.

A Single Man

I don't feel like I have a lot to say about A Single Man. Is it good? Yes, I guess.

It's a "theater" movie for me. This means that if I had waited to watch it on DVD, I might not have finished it. It has a slow, deliberate pace. It's not that this is a bad thing. I like stories that take their time to develop character.

Also, many movies are quite rewarding if you can make it though them. For example, Gone With the Wind is excruciatingly long. It's a great movie, but it's a movie that I prefer to have seen than to see. Back in 2006, I put the Woody Allen movie Match Play at number 8 in my top 10. If I had been watching at home, I surely would have stopped. But since I was in the theater, I got to the last act, where everything finally pays off.

A Single Man is a movie that deals with depression, broken hearts, and suicide. It isn't an easy movie to watch because of these things. Colin Firth is very good. But overall, it just didn't speak to me.

Sherlock Holmes

I don't have any real previous feelings toward the character of Sherlock Holmes. I think my biggest exposure to him was in Steven Spielberg's Young Sherlock Holmes, but it has been quite a long time since I've seen that. I seem to remember reading a Stephen King short story about Holmes, but I don't remember which collection that was in or whether I liked it or not.

The biggest complaint I've heard about the new Sherlock Holmes is that it turns Holmes into an action hero. I'm going to mildly disagree with even that notion. Allow me first to acknowledge that yes, there is probably more action than Doyle meant Holmes to have. But I liked the "thinking" part of his fighting.

If you haven't seen it yet, this paragraph might be a mild spoiler, but not for story. As Holmes fights, he thinks through each move he is going to make. You "hear" his analysis of each punch, kick, or block before he makes it. The idea reads as very cheesy. It felt a bit like something the Terminator would do. Think about the scene in Terminator 2 when Arnold is analyzing how to take out the police force without killing any of them.

But you know what? I bought it. It worked for me. Surprisingly enough, I liked this use of slow motion. But it also worked to make Holmes a thinker all the way through, which is necessary for him. The rest of the action didn't take up too much of the movie, I thought. I don't think I would be willing to defend it too much beyond that, however. If one were to argue that it amounted to dumbing down the movie to make it more accessible to mass audiences, I would agree. Do we want to dumb down a Holmes movie?

The plot wasn't anything too brilliant, but it was good enough. The best reason to watch is the interaction between Holmes (Robert Downey, Jr.) and Watson (Jude Law). They worked well together, and the best scenes were the ones when they were bickering.

Also, I enjoyed all scenes when Holmes is one step ahead of everyone else. He notices these minor details (a bit of chalk on the lapel, meaning someone is a professor) and plans out the entire scene before he says a word. I was thinking about this in one scene when Holmes then states that he has a question. I immediately thought that it was out of character, and that he wouldn't need to ask a question in this scene. It turned out the be a rhetorical question showing again that he was several steps ahead of everyone.

It was these little things that showed me that the people making the movie understood the character. They knew what was important about Holmes. So if they want to update him a bit with some action? I was OK with it. Lancey Kisses said it this way: "Was it amazing, fantastic, and groundbreaking? No. However, it was thoroughly entertaining and a lot of fun, which is what I think it was going for in the first place."

My question is - will kids who go see it want to read Sherlock Holmes, and if they do, is it similar enough so that they like it? I'll be curious to see how many kids even went to see it (I saw a couple Facebook posts, but not too many). If we had a real library at school, I'd be curious if anyone would search for Holmes books.

The Princess and the Frog

The Princess and the Frog is Disney's return to 2D animation. It looks great and its fun. I hope it was successful enough to prompt Disney to return to what it does best.

The makers deserve a lot of credit for going with something different from simply the Frog Prince fairy tale. Instead, they have loosely adapted the novel The Frog Princess by E. D. Baker. I assume this is because it would have taken quite a bit to stretch the small story into a full length film.

A lot of publicity went toward their decision to make the lead character black. It worked because it worked in the story. Though this is obviously not the first time a Disney lead female wasn't white. How about Aladdin, Pocahontas, and Mulan?

Setting the story in New Orleans gave the movie a natural match in voodoo. It gave us our villain, Dr. Facilier (Dr. Easy?), the Shadow Man. Whenever he's shoing off his magic evilness, they surround him with neon images. Not only is he about as scary as most other Disney villains, but it's easy to picture him in a Disneyland ride.

The best decision was to set the film in New Orleans. It's a fantastic city, and The Princess and the Frog puts it on full display. The food, the buildings, the party, and the mighty Mississippi are here (though of course, it's a kids movie, so not so much of the party). Again, it works nicely with the story.

But the best reason to pick New Orleans is the music. Each song has a New Orleans feel, whether its Swing, Dixieland, or Gospel. The music was always fun. Now I'll let you decide if the next part is a positive or a negative. There weren't really any songs that stuck in my head after watching. None of the songs were what Stephen King calls an "Ear Worm." While I liked the music while watching the movie, I wasn't humming any of them when I left.

Me and Orson Welles

Me and Orson Welles was a bit of a surprise for me. It's not the type of movie that I would ever really see, but I've been to many movies out of my "comfort zone" this year. It got some pretty good reviews, so I went for it.

My main reservation was Zac Efron. Since I'm not well versed in the High School Musical movies, I'd never heard of him. But he looks like a tool. He wasn't too bad in this movie. He has moments when he looks like he's out of his element, but his character was supposed to be that way. So he was probably a good choice for the role. We'll have to see in later roles how good he is.

The strongest performance, and the reason to see this, is Christian McKay as Orson Welles. Welles is portrayed as a prick. From what I understand about him, it's an accurate portrayal. The scenes with McKay are the strongest and best in the movie. Since he hasn't really been in anything else, is he a good actor, or just a good Orson Welles? Again, we'll have to see in later roles how good he is.

If you don't see Me and Orson Welles, you won't miss anything too groundbreaking. And right now, there are probably a few other movies more interesting to see. If it were a slower time of year for movies, this would be a recommendation to go see it. I think it will surely be worth a rental for Christian McKay's Welles. And if you've seen a few other movies this season and want something different, check it out.

Avatar

The first part will be very general, then I'll give a spoiler warning before I get specific.

First the obvious. Avatar is a beautiful movie. I saw it in 2D. Once the crowds go down a bit, I might back and watch in 3D, as I've heard it might actually be worth it and not just distracting.

But I wonder if seeing in 2D allowed me to pay more attention to the plot and characters. I wasn't impressed. I found the story to be very predictable. Since there are many scenes in which you are just supposed to look at the scenery for several seconds, there are many scenes which allow you to stop and think. I guessed at what the upcoming plot would be. My guess was pretty much the whole movie.

I was disappointed by this because I thought I was predicting the first half of the movie, not the whole thing. In reviews, I avoided specifics. I read only the headlines or just the first few lines. One of those was Harry Knowles from Aintitcool.com. Right at the beginning of his review, he states that he loves the movie "because of the story."

I like the website because it does (or once did) give a good heads up about what's coming up in movie news. But Knowles isn't the brightest guy. His writings are grammatical nightmares, yet he has been accepted as a "writer." I know the stuff I write is garbage, but no one is taking me seriously. With Avatar, the story is good enough. It isn't bad, but it isn't great. It's good enough. To love it because of the story? Eh, that's somebody who is trying not to say "I like the pretty pictures" but is afraid to do so.

And I don't understand why. It's a technological masterpiece. But the story is slow, and not for the right reasons. Usually story takes its time to allow ideas to develop or, more importantly, to allow characters to develop. Avatar is almost devoid of characters, so this didn't happen. James Cameron could have cut 45 minutes or an hour out of this movie. It would have cost less. It would have more screenings in theaters. Everyone who has seen it still would have. It would have made more money.

Should you go see it? Yes. See it in the theaters. It won't have anywhere near the same impact on your small V or even your big TV. See it in 3D (I think).

And now, spoilers.

These aren't big spoilers, but since some of you are still planning to watch in the next week, this might give away a couple things.

Characters, characters, characters. It's a bad thing when the most interesting character is CGI. It says a lot about the technology of the movie. But making the humans interesting should be easy.

The human characters were as flat as the 2D in which I watched it. The two "villians," if that's the right word, were a corporate guy (Parker Selfridge, played by Giovanni Ribisi)and a military guy Colonel Miles Quaritch, played by Stephen Lang). Wow. How creative. And guess what? The corporate guy acts - wait for it - out of greed! Weren't expecting that twist, were you? And the military guy wants power.

Here's another way they could have saved some money. They could have simply put an action figure of a guy in a suit on the screen. Pull his string and have him say "I want money! Let's do things for money!" Then simply put an action figure of a guy in a military uniform on the screen. Pull his string and have him say "I want to blow up things! Let's take over everything!" You wouldn't tell the difference.

And then there's Jake Sully, played by Sam Worthington. There was such an opportunity with this character to make him interesting. There could have been some real character development if anyone had cared enough to try.

Sully is in a wheelchair. I think that's about as far as anyone went with him. But the plot requires Sully to go through a transformation. He needs to go from being a military follow orders type of guy to someone who completely turns around and fights against his own people.

There were three reasons for him to turn. The first is that he falls in love with Neytiri. I think the movie makes this part clear, and chooses to focus almost completely on this part. But there's more to it that could have (and I believe should have) been developed more).

The second is that he is a paraplegic. In his Avatar, he gets to walk and to run. When he first enters his Avatar, we see this as he goes off running. his excitement is so great that he doesn't follow orders for those couple minutes (which should have been a foreshadowing of things to come). Later on, Colonel Quaritch offers him a procedure to fix his legs if he follows orders. This should have turned into another layer of the moral quandary, but it isn't developed.

The third reason for turning is the most important. But it isn't really mentioned. He should have turned and sided with the Na'vi because it's right. Sully is a military guy. Military guys don't get to question whether things are right or wrong. They get to follow orders. He was dedicated enough to have become a paraplegic, we must presume in battle somewhere. For a military guy to go against orders and do what's right is a big deal. It wasn't here.

The turn for Michelle Rodriguez's character was even more sudden. She suddenly decided that she "didn't sign up for this." And pulls away. That moment was very out of place.

Honestly, what hurt my viewing the most is that I kept waiting for something great to happen. It didn't. I guess I wasn't as impressed with flying mountains as everyone else. It's a cool concept, but I didn't need to stare at them as long. Flying on a dragon type thing was cool for a few seconds, but not for as long as we had to watch it. So the movie is like 90% CGI. Wall-E was 99% CGI (pretty much everything but the Hello Dolly! shots), but it also had more character and heart.

I've only found a small handful of people who agree with me (here is Peter David, who stated some of what I said but much better than I ever could), so I'm probably totally wrong. I'm guessing that when Avatar makes it from the big screen in 3D to your TV in 2D, a lot more people are going to agree with me. And that makes me a bigger visionary than James Cameron.