Once Upon A Forest (1993) Review

William Hanna and Joseph Barbera are not known for pathos. That's why it's so surprising that they produced this wholly depressing animated film. This whole film is something I would expect from Don Bluth. Not the creators of The Jetsons, Scooby Doo, The Flintstones and Tom And Jerry.

Once upon a Forest tells the tale of small woodland creatures whose world becomes in danger due to man. Following a deadly gas leak a hedgehog named Russell, a mouse named Abigail and a mole named Edgar travel to another forest in order to find a certain plant to save her before their badger friend dies. Their entire families were most likely killed by the gas but we don't know for sure. The young badger girl's family is most certainly killed (we see their bodies) save for her uncle who has his own horrible experiences with man. Along their journey they escape from a frightening looking owl, backhoes and bulldozers referred to as "yellow dragons", and save a young bird from certain death. It's just one bad event after another.

The film sort of has a happy ending. I must put large emphasis on the "sort of". Even though the badger girl is saved her family is still dead. There is no feeling of hope throughout the picture and it leads to quite an unpleasant experience for the audience especially children. The color of the film is dark and gray. One gets the same feeling from it that one would get if driving from sunshine into an oncoming thunderstorm.

There are no real optimistic moments in the film to combat the gloomy scenes. When Disney made The Lion King they had juxtaposition and balance so that people could appreciate the lightness by showing a darker side of the movie.  Even in Bambi when the title character is faced with an extreme tragedy he is able to rise above it. In Once Upon a Forest the characters are faced with a major tragedy and the possibility of more tragedy. Not a good way to structure a family film.

I'm not put off by the "go-green" type of message in the film like I am with Ferngully: The Last Rainforest. What I am put off by is the complete lack of cheerfulness in the film. Never have I felt more depressed about an animated film in my life.

★

Enemy at the Gates (2001) Review

This is a very unusual American film about WWII. There are no Americans. This is because Enemy at the Gates takes place in Stalingrad. Among the explosions and shooting there is a much closer battle that emerges between two snipers, one Russian and one German. Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, Enemy at the Gates tells the mostly true story of Vassili Zaitsev (Jude Law), a shepherd boy from the Urals of Russia, who after proving his marksmanship to a political officer named Danilov (Joseph Fiennes) and Nikita Khrushchev (Bob Hoskins who looks remarkably like the real thing), is promoted to sniper division. There he becomes a legend of the battle of Stalingrad (thanks largely due to Danilov's skill at public relations) taking down one German officer at a time. This gets the attention of the Nazis who bring in their best sniper. Major Konïg (Ed Harris) has never failed to kill a target and, as Vissili says at one point in the film, is a better marksman.

This is a highly suspenseful film that creates that classic cat-and-mouse relationship between the hero and the villain. It isn't about the battle around them so people looking for big explosions are probably going to want to shut off the movie after the first ten minutes. The best scenes are the ones in which each one knows that the other is there but doesn't quite have a clear shot. This is largely accomplished by the production design. It was done by Wolf Kroeger, who is a production designer who understands the subtleties necessary in war films.

Earlier I mentioned that this was only mostly based on a true story is because of a rather Hollywood like love triangle that exists between Danilov, Zaitsev and a Russian Jew named Tania Chernova (Rachel Weisz). I don't think that love triangle existed but I'm willing to let it go because the truth is Rachel Weisz is a very nice to look at. Besides, it's a lot more believable than the love triangle in another World War II movie released the same year.

I wonder who decided that all of the Russian characters shouldn't have Russian accents. Apparently the Allies consisted of two main countries because the only accents I heard were English and American (thanks for the effort Mr. Harris). Even Annaud's frequent collaborator Ron Perlman, who is not English, has an English accent while he plays a sniper who's supposed to help Vassili kill the bad guy.

★★★

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) Review

Zero Stars

This is an absolutely dishonorable depressing piece of trash. It's nothing but ninety minutes of teenagers being stabbed, strangled, impaled, mutilated and butchered. It's literally about the killing.

Thirteen people die throughout that ninety minutes. If you do the math that's one person every seven minutes. The majority of them are women. There was a time during the era of horror films where the camera sympathized with the damsel in distress. Even though Evelyn Ankers was attacked by the monster we want her to survive. Now we see the killing through the eyes of the culprit. The filmmakers force us to "enjoy" this. What's most disturbing to me is that this is called entertainment. Violence is not the issue but if it's mindless violence it's just that. Mindless.

The film is directed by Joseph Zito who is and has never been anything but an exploitation director. In the last sixteen years he has only directed two films and hasn't done anything since 2003. I really hope he is never able to return to the director's chair.

Normally I try to look for something good. There is nothing good in this picture. One man's garbage is still garbage.

What’s Wrong With 3D?

I hate to have this be a rant but 3D sucks as a way of looking at movies. Even with the best systems possible the picture is diluted and washed down. Many of the effort is spent extending the foreground and so the background becomes so terribly out of focus that the audience becomes light headed and dizzy. Most of the 3D movies out there now are action pictures and none of them are filmed in 3D. They are just transferred to 3D and so a lot of that fast action is lost because your eyes can't adjust properly. 2D is crisper, cleaner and doesn't charge an extra three dollars for admission. No wonder Avatar is the highest grossing picture.

Thor (2011) Review

Here's an interesting combination. Comic books, mythology, and Kenneth Branagh, the director of films like Henry V, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Hamlet. Seems a bit unlikely doesn't it?

Before we get into my real review I would like to analyse that "unlikely" reality. Comic books already have been compared with mythology by smarter people than I so I'm not going to try to add anything to that. However the works of William Shakespeare have always seemed to, at least by me, have lot in common with mythology. In his plays there is pathos, comedy, revenge, murder etc. All these things can easily be seen in many issues of Batman as well as in the stories of ancient Greece or Norse religions. Branagh has shown several times that he has the ability to direct films with those themes of ancient mythology. So, when we take the above paragraph into account we see that maybe he was the best choice for the helm.

The basic plot of the film is as follows. Thor (Christopher Hemsworth), son of Odin (Anthony Hopkins) and future king of Asgard, disobeys his father and attacks creatures known as Frost Giants. See, a few thousand years earlier Odin did battle with these creatures for the protection of the human race. The giants were banished from Asgard for eternity. The only way into Asgard is past a character known simply as The Gatekeeper but somehow some of the giants made it past him. Thor and his warriors convince The Gatekeeper to let them travel to destroy the Frost Giants. When Odin learns of Thor's arrogance and rash decision he takes his power and banishes him to live among humans until which time as he is found worthy enough to regain his immortality and powers. Thor is befriended by a young scientist named Jane Foster (Natalie Portman). The hero must learn how to blend in with these humans. All the while his villainous brother Loki becomes the acting king of Asgard.

One of my favorite things about the film was the performance by Hemsworth as the title character. He was a lot of fun to watch and the way he played off the other actors was great. He reminds me a lot of Heath Ledger who, as most people are aware, is one of my favorite actors. The way that he approaches the character is as it should be. Like a fish out of water. A much larger and arrogant Crocodile Dundee. Maybe it's because they are all Australian. Who knows?

The actual film begins with Thor landing on Earth. Then we travel back in time to see how he got there and after about an hour of screen time we return to where we started. I think it should have simply shown all the earlier events on Asgard and then gone to Earth. By then the audience is already enjoying the film.

Before I forget keep an eye out for the Stan Lee cameo. He's driving a truck used to try to remove Thor's hammer from a stone.

★★

Little Sparrows (2010) Review

Usually I am not a big fan of films about terminal illness. More often than not the illness is used as a way to bring about an emotional reaction from the audience that should come about naturally. It's a cheap shot and it insults the intelligence of the viewer. Among the films that do this are Beaches, A Walk to Remember and The Cure. There are films where the emotion comes out of the story and performances. Among those are Lorenzo's Oil, The Pride of the Yankees and Philadelphia. I think we can add Little Sparrows to the latter list.

In the midst of an Australian summer we meet three sisters. Nina (Nina Deasley) is a widow with two young children, Anna (Melanie Munt) is an unhappily married actress whose husband is a filmmaker and Christine (Arielle Gray) is a med student who has yet to come completely to terms with her sexuality. When their mother, Susan's (Nicola Bartlett) breast cancer returns, the family is faced with choices and uncertainty.
The film is set up by writer-director Yu-Hsiu Camille Chen as a documentary. The camera wobbles as though there is a camera man pretending to not be in the room and the film features cutaways where we see the women talking directly to the camera. A sort of confession. What helps this illusion of reality is the performances. All of the performers in the film are incredibly natural. Their roles seem to come out of somewhere so rarely seen in film today with the exception of some.

We spend approximately twenty minutes on each daughter's story. First we get some background on their lives (complete with the "interviews") and then get some sort of conflict (for example Anna's husband leaves her after it is revealed that she was having an affair) and then there is a scene in a hospital room where the girls have a heart to heart with their mother. The hospital room is where the real emotion comes out. The girls slowly break down into tears while their mother confesses something or describes how much she loves them. At the end of each daughter's story there is a scene at a cemetery where the audience is reminded of the final scene in Carrie sans the hand reaching out of the grave. What I mean is an ethereal, delicate feeling. Almost as though we are in the girls head while she dreams.

The film does not end with Susan's death. Sorry for those hoping it would. It avoids that cliché and instead ends with her getting a tattoo of three sparrows. One each to represent her daughters. Even the entire feel of the film is not one of despair. The first thing that Susan says after telling her husband James about the return of her cancer is, "I don't want any hysterics".

I think the world has a great new director and I'm very interested to see where her career goes from here.

★★★★

Fast Five (2011) Review

Here's a good, fun action picture that doesn't have to be in 3D for me to enjoy it.

As the fifth film in the Fast and The Furious series Fast Five (try saying that five times fast) reunites Vin Deisel and Paul Walker in the roles they played ten years earlier. Former cop Brian O'Conner (Walker) partners with ex-con Dom Toretto (Diesel) on the opposite side of the law. Since Brian and Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster) broke Dom out of custody, they've blown across many borders to elude authorities. Now backed into a corner in Rio de Janeiro, they must pull one last job in order to gain their freedom. As they assemble their elite team of top racers, the unlikely allies know their only shot of getting out for good means confronting the corrupt businessman who wants them dead. But he's not the only one on their tail. Hard-nosed (and big bicepped) federal agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) never misses his target. When he is assigned to track down Dom and Brian, he and his strike team launch an all-out assault to capture them. But as his men tear through Brazil, Hobbs learns he can't separate the good guys from the bad. Now, he must rely on his instincts to corner his prey before someone else runs them down first.

Basically when you have a picture like this all you are supposed to do is sit down and suspend your disbelief for an hour and a half. That's what I did with this film. I knew what I was watching when I got my ticket. It was a relentless loud cars, pretty girls and massive destruction (I think this movie may take the record away from Blues Brothers for most car-crashes in a single film). The story could've used some thought as well as the dialogue but I'm willing to let that go since this movie is meant to be nothing more than Saturday afternoon entertainment.

It seems as though there was a competition between Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel as to who could get the bigger muscles. Although both of them are already known for their physical strength Johnson won that competion.

The film amounts to a video-game with the stunt players and drivers doing things that are incredibly impossible. The stunts in the film are fantastic. The stunt team (which comprises of about thirty people) are sure to get SAG nominations for their work.

At one point in the film two members of the team want to keep people out of a bathroom. What do they do? They blow up the pipes and send used food all over the bathroom. It's not funny. In fact if I hadn't been enjoying the picture at that point I'd have walked out. Additionally I don't find sexual statements made about women in films funny or tasteful. It's a knee-jerk reaction I have. Every critic has one.

★★★

The Green Hornet (2011) Review

★★★

Like many on this planet I was skeptical of a comic book movie starring Seth Rogen. My initial reaction was one of confusion. Will this be a spoof? Does this mean that Rogen will now be in dumb action pictures instead of dumb comedies?  When I say dumb I mean George of The Jungle dumb. Fortunately, and much to my surprise, I enjoyed this picture.

The Green Hornet was originally conceived as a juvenile adventure series on the radio in the 1930's. Then it became two separate movie serials in the 1940's as well a comic book and a network television program in the 1960's. Although some of the treatments of the character has been different over the years, most of them remain the same.

Britt Reid (Rogen) is a slacker. He only has one goal in life and that's to be the life of the party every day. After the death of his father Britt takes over the family business. The family business is a newspaper. Britt is assisted by his secretary Lenore (Cameron Diaz) and his chauffeur/mechanic/barista/martial arts expert Kato (Jay Chow) and becomes inspired to be a superhero but a different kind of superhero. He'll be a superhero that everyone thinks is a villain. Along with Kato he begins to take down L.A.'s Underworld. Enter the bad guy who goes by the hard to pronounce name of Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz). He believes that The Green Hornet is muscling in on his territory. 

In most comic book films you have the hero who can do anything while the sidekick is there to make the hero look better. In this film those roles are reversed. Britt is an idiot. There's no kind way to say that. Kato is the genius who designs the weapons, does the fighting and makes the coffee. Britt takes all the credit. This was a nice flip on the hero/sidekick relationship.

The movie was a great mixture of action and that sarcastic, quick-witted humor of Seth Rogen's that so many have come to love. Christoph Waltz shows his talent at playing "cuddly" villians. Even though he is doing terrible things to other human beings he is incredibly entertaining to watch. I was most intrigued by the performance given by Jay Chow. He brought a calm serenity to Kato. The character is not a stereotype but a fully realized individual that the audience cares about. There's a fight scene between Britt and Kato that fluctuates between serious and comical. Comical whenever Britt gets hit and serious when Kato is injured. This is because we want Kato to receive justice for things that Britt has said and done.

At one point we see Chudnofsky's crew putting the word out on The Green Hornet. It's shown in split-screen. One person tells someone and then we get a new frame of them telling someone else while the first person continues on to spread the news. This happens over and over again until you are so unsure of which frame to watch that you just ignore what's happening altogether. Sure it was a quick way to show a lot happening and how much of a reach the bad guy has but fifteen frames on one screen is overkill.

Jane Eyre (2011) Review

Based upon the 1847 novel by Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre tells the story of an orphan girl by the name of Jane Eyre (Mia Wasikowska from last year's billion dollar hit Alice in Wonderland) who after years of abuse at an all-girl school travels to Thornfield House where she is employed as a governess (that's a fancy word for a nanny) by the dark, abrupt, almost sinister Mr. Rochester (Michael Fassbender). Jane and her employer soon become friends and she finds herself falling in love with him, much to the chagrin of herself and the head housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax (Judi Dench). As time passes Jane learns that Mr. Rochester is harboring a very dark secret. Don't worry, I won't give away any spoilers suffice it to say that he isn't a vampire.

You know your movie is in trouble when the biggest criticism from me is the lead actress. Mia Wasikowska is not a particularly talented actress. In this film she is flat, lifeless and just plain boring. She is only "going through the motions" and delivers the lines as though she is reading them directly off cue cards. For the first two-thirds of the film she does no emoting whatsoever. Then in the last act of the film she does nothing but emote. By then I want to say "Frankly, my dear I don't give a damn". Her casting in the film has "studio" written all over it. She was the lead in a majorly successful film last year so it seems only natural that she would continue to be cast in lead roles despite not having enough talent to carry an entire film. There is an actress who also appears in the film by the name of Tamzin Merchant who would have been a far better choice for the title character.

Fear not fellow cinephiles. I did not hate everything about the film. As a matter of fact with the exception of the above paragraph I quite enjoyed the rest of the film. The performances by Michael Fassbender (who reminds me of a younger Daniel Day-Lewis) and Judi Dench are fantastic. Although could you expect any less from Judi Dench? Everything you need to know about both of their characters is subtly shown in their first scenes. For example Mr. Rochester is shown wearing a black hat and black coat with black trousers while riding a black horse with a black dog in tow. Those color choices, obviously no accident, automatically give us a feeling of foreboding and mystery around the character that we are intrigued by.

The cinematography, art direction, production design and costumes all fit together like the pieces of a gothic period puzzle. The film is sure to receive Oscar nominations in one or more of those categories. Cinematographer Adriano Goldman, whose work I must admit I am not familiar with, creates a bleak canvas of near-winter in the film, not just with exterior scenes, but the interior as well. One gets the feeling that it is colder inside the buildings then outside.

Overall, if asked by a friend, I'd recommend it but prepare to be unmoved and unaffected by Wasikowska's wooden acting.

★★1/2

Love and Other Drugs (2010) Review

Jake Gyllenhall and Anne Hathaway reunite for one of the most predictable movies of last year. Love and Other Drugs tells the tale of a charming pharmaceutical rep, named Jaime (Gyllenhaal), who meets a free-spirited painter named Maggie (Hathaway). He falls for her and the two begin a no-strings attached love affair (although that's only after she exposes herself to a doctor who's pretending Jaime is an intern). The only problem with that friends-with-benefits arrangement? Jaime wants to have a deeper relationship but Maggie doesn't. Why? Because she suffers from Early-onset Alzheimer's and does not want Jaime to take care of her.

There isn't much I can say about this movie. It's as though the director (Edward Swick) and writers (Charles Randolph, Edward Zwick, Marshall Herskovitz) think the audience has failed to see a romantic comedy/drama before. The movie is so predictable and formulaic that I sat there the whole time saying "Here comes the fight between Maggie and Jaime, now they're going to make up, Ah now they break up for good, Big surprise he does something selfless that she will realize she loves him for. Now they stay together." Guess what? All that happened. This is precisely why I can't exactly recommend this movie. If you seen one movie in this genre you've seen them all.

With every review I write I try to look for something good in the movie. Sometimes this is impossible. I looked for something good in this film and did in fact find it. The best thing about the movie is the performances, in particular by Anne Hathaway who never fails to give a gracious and unique performance. I'm glad that both of them were at least nominated for Golden Globes although I wish they had gotten Oscar nominations as well. If for nothing else than the fact that, although saddled with a clichéd eye-roller of a screenplay, they keep the film from being boring. That speaks volumes about their talent.

One more thing I have to mention. The film is rated R for strong sexual content, nudity, pervasive language, and some drug material. The nudity is largely one-sided (Gyllenhaal shows less skin than Hathaway). That's not necessary. The filmmakers don't need to show Anne Hathaway taking off her clothes. Yes, she is a very pretty girl but the only reason to show what they had her show was to get a higher box-office gross. I don't need to watch that in order to enjoy her films.

★★1/2

Conversation(s) With Other Women (2005) Review

★★★1/2

There are several good, small, dialogue driven movies but they are so difficult to find among the schlock that is out there. There is also so few directors who can handle such a movie. Among the ones that come to mind: Sidney Lumet, Richard Linklater, Joel and Ethan Coen. Judging by the way he handles this film, Hans Canosa can be added to that list.

When a man (Aaron Eckhart) and a woman (Helena Bonham Carter) flirt with each other at a wedding reception the tension between the two could be cut with a knife. They go up to the same hotel room where, during a night of passion and discussing their significant others, we discover that they are not as much of strangers as we once thought.

The entire film is edited in split-screen and rather than doing fast cuts we see different angles of the same scene. This is an original and interesting way to approach the film. Don't let the whole multiple things going on in the same picture thing frighten you away. There is a single frame version. Even if you do watch the split-screen, you could close your eyes and fully understand what is going on in the movie because there is so much well-written dialogue.

I'm going to risk offending some of her die-hard fans but I don't like Helena Bonham Carter in her Tim Burton movies or in her roles in the Harry Potter films. I much prefer her in roles like this one. Her films where she plays calm non-eccentrics are so much better than the loud, obnoxious ones we see so often.

Folks, you need to watch at least one of the two versions of the film. Preferably both of them.

Schindler’s List (1993) Review

During his review for Shining Through, Gene Siskel said that "It doesn't work to make a film about World War II in general and the Nazis in particular. A movie without some real bite on those subjects can really come across as trivial". I believe Schindler's List has that bite that Gene was talking about.

It tells the true story of Oscar Schindler (Liam Neeson), a German businessman who owns a factory. He witnesses the horrifying events of the Holocaust and the toll it takes on the Jewish people. Eventually, he creates a list of over 1100 Jews whom he saves from certain death. He bribes, schemes and cons members of the Nazi party to get Jews into his factory. Because the factory is a protected war industry a job there may guarantee longer life. At first all that Schindler cares about is making money. He's not exactly a good man. He's a womanizer, he's selfish, he drinks. But he did an extraordinarily good thing. This movie is absolutely incredible.

The director of the film (Steven Spielberg) always either is able to reduce an audience to tears or at the very least get some type of emotional reaction from the audience. Never have I seen a movie that leaves me more at a loss for words. Never have I seen a movie that moves me this profoundly and deeply. Spielberg never talks down to the audience. With this film he completely respects the audience's intelligence and maturity. With this film he says, "I don't blame people for the horrors of the past. This was something we can't allow to happen again"

I was extremely impressed by all the performances. In particular Ralph Fiennes as the real-life Nazi commander Amon Goeth. He's frightening and, in my opinion, deserved the Oscar over Tommy Lee Jones

The musical score, as composed by John Williams, is performed by world renown violinist Itszhak Perlman. This decision creates a haunting and highly memorable score and fits so perfectly with the black and white camera work.

I wouldn't let the violence of the movie dissuade parents from showing their children the film. Although the movie is extremely violent there is a purpose for it and it's a very important film.

★★★★

Rio (2011) Review

Here we are more than four months into 2011 and overall the films so far this year have been disappointing. Fortunately we appear to have broken out of that rut with Rio.

Blu (voice of Jesse Eisenberg) is one of the last two remaining Blue Cockatoos in the world. He lives with his bookstore owning best friend Linda (voice of Leslie Mann) in Minnesota. He has a good life but is unable to fly. One day a doctor of Ornithology comes to the bookstore and convinces Blu and Linda to go to Rio De Janeiro to meet the other Blue Cockatoo and save the species. Her name is Jewel and she is voiced by the always charming Anne Hathaway. Jewel wants freedom. Unfortunately for her she is chained to Blu after bird smugglers steal them from an aviary. Then they escape and go on an adventure where they meet a toucan named Rafeal (George Lopez), a bulldog named Luiz (Tracy Morgan) and a pair of song and dance birds (Jaime Foxx and Will. I. Am.)

The only criticism I have for the movie is the use of slow motion in one scene. I'm tired of seeing that in every animated movie these days. It's a cliché and it doesn't add anything special for me.

I am most surprised by the fact that, although they normally irritate me, George Lopez and Tracy Morgan are great in this movie. I found myself enjoying the movie much more when Lopez' character came on. Both of them are kept in check enough that they don't take over the screen. As I said I adore Anne Hathaway. Every one of her films I enjoy enough to watch more than once. Well, except maybe Bride Wars.

The movie is charming and bright and colorful and fun. Even the human villains are more bungling idiots than a real serious threat. It wouldn't fit this movie for them to die so instead each one of them is embarrassed beyond belief.

This is the best movie I have seen this year.

★★★★

Scream 4 (2011) Review

Scream 4 or as the posters spell it, Scre4m, is the third sequel in the blockbuster franchise by the second master of suspense Wes Craven. It follows the rules of sequels that says if the third movie sucks then the fourth won't be as bad but still will not be up to par with the original.

It's been ten years since the events in Scream 3 and Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) has finally been able to put her life back together with the help of a bestselling book. She returns to the town of Woodsboro, a place she hasn't been to since the first movie. There she, once again, meets up with Ghostface.

Fifteen years ago director Craven and writer Kevin Williamson were able to somehow capture lightning in a bottle. Everything about the original film worked. It was a great combination of horror and satire. Now the series has its own clichés.

Like I said earlier this movie is better than Scream 3 but that's like saying Rocky V is better than Rocky Balboa. Not much of an accomplishment. This movie follows a formula. First a phone call, then a threat, then a surprise, then a killing. The whole movie is largely nothing more than a series of setups and slashings, setups and slashings, setups and, well you see where I am going with this.

The major problem with the movie is that Kevin Williamson doesn't seem sure about which characters to focus on. Instead of giving new characters the spotlight he chooses to sort of write the three main ones into a storyline that doesn't really need them that badly.

Remember The Lord of The Rings: The Return of The King? The one with six endings. This movie had six openings with each one being revealed to be nothing more than the opening for the fictional Stab movies. First Stab 6, then it's revealed that the people watching Stab 6 are actually in Stab 7.

I must say that watching the movie wasn't even half as enjoyable as listening to the audience I was watching it with.

★★

127 Hours (2010) Review

127 Hours is 5 days. That's how long Aron Ralston (James Franco) is trapped between a rock and a hard place. Literally. Based upon a true story, 127 Hours is about a young engineer who, when hiking in the desert, gets his arm stuck between a large boulder and a canyon wall. The boulder is too big to move and has wedged his hand just perfectly. The next hour and a half of the movie takes place in that canyon. Aron never actually gives up trying to escape but has no qualms about the fact that he is probably going to die. No one knows where he is because Aron broke the number one rule about hiking alone. Always let someone know where you are going.

Director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire) is famous for doing weird things with the camera. At first he begins the film with wide shots and is able to show a carefree feeling. Then by filming the last two-thirds of the movie in extreme close-up he creates a sense of claustrophobia. We feel stuck in that tiny canyon along with Aron.

Over the last couple of years James Franco has consistently given believable performances. 127 Hours is his best yet. So few actors are able to carry an entire movie all by themselves.

However I must confess that I do have some criticisms with the picture. There are far too many flashbacks that Aron goes through with no real explanation or purpose for them. I would much rather have spent time seeing Aron try to get out and talking to a hand-held camera where he creates a sort of manifesto. Those moments are by far the most compelling and the flashbacks slow the film down.

Aron manages to escape but in order to do so he must do something that the audience sees as unthinkable. There is no way around that outcome or reaction from the audience.

★★★

Sidney Lumet

One of the last great directors, Sidney Lumet died last Saturday. He was 86. I feel that he was worthy of a blog post as one of my own personal favorite directors and a huge influence on me and a major reason why I want to be a director.

There really isn't much that can be said about him that hasn't already been said by anyone else but I'm going to make an attempt.

With a career spanning half a century and such films as Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, 12 Angry Men and Before The Devil Knows You're Dead few directors were always so respectful of an audience's intelligence. He was so wide-ranged that he could not be put into any category.

Much like Robert Altman and Alfred Hitchcock he is in a special class of directors who never received an Academy Award despite being nominated several times and being highly respected in the film industry and around the world. Fortunately his films and his genius will continue to live on in other filmmakers and his films will continue to be talked about and revered for years and years. You mark my words.

The 13th Warrior (1999) Review

Why can't Hollywood ever seem to get Michael Crichton's material right? Jurassic Park was the one time it was done satisfactorily. After that all of it has been bad. This is just another example.

Arab courtier Ahmad Ibn Fadlan (Antonio Banderas) is sent to the barbaric north as an emissary, because he fell in love with the wrong woman. In AD 922, this usually meant goodbye forever. Shortly after the party ran into exploring Vikings and befriended them, a young boy reaches the camp to call the warriors home: The Wendol, creatures of the Mist, have started attacking their homeland, killing and eating everyone in their way. The oracle forces a thirteenth warrior to accompany the Vikings, but this must not be a man from the north. Ahmad Ibn Fadlan, who quickly is nicknamed Eban, is chosen. At first Eban does not feel comfortable with the strange, smelly men of the north, but when he finds out that the Wendol are only men, he bravely fights alongside the Vikings in a battle that probably can't be won.

The movie has far too many inconsistencies to overlook. At one point one of the Vikings gives Eban a long sword. He says he can't lift it, so what does the Viking say? Grow stronger. Ahmad doesn't grow stronger but instead he has the sword changed to a curved blade. All of a sudden he is a master at swordfighting simply because he changed the sword. Another issue is how easy it becomes to kill the Wendol when it is discovered that they are not super bear-human hybrids but are only cannabilistic cavemen. How does Ahmad communicate with the Vikings? They speak a different language that he manages to learn in one night around the campfire.

The movie is full of excruciatingly violent deaths (decapitations, dismemberments, arrows into the skull etc.). The story seems to take a backseat to those deaths, many of them are difficult to see because of the poor cinematography.

I don't know what movie director John McTiernan (Die Hard) was trying to make. It tries to transcend between horror and action but doesn't have the balance to walk that line.

★1/2

The Gingerdead Man (2005)

I know what you are thinking. Why would the creator of the best review blog on the planet, who has incredibly high standards, waste a portion of his life watching a movie called The Gingerdead Man? Well, I’m going to tell you. It’s the same reason I watched The Mangler and Monkey Shines. Some movies are so bad they are entertaining. If for nothing other than give you the material to make some good jokes. I picked this up with the hope that I would have a fun-filled evening laughing at stupidity and meaninglessness disguised as a movie. Let’s just say I didn’t.

The movie is about an evil Gingerbread man who comes to life with the soul of a convicted killer (Gary Busey). He wreaks havoc on the girl who sent him to the electric chair with her testimony. Did I mention that his name is Millard Findlemeyer? Clever.

The movie wasn’t even worth making fun of. It was a profoundly pointless experience that I wish I never had. It wasn’t funny or even slightly humorous and it certainly wasn’t scary (although I didn’t think it would be)

To prove how bored I was I’m going to tell you a little bit of a story. My uncle has a bedroom just on the other side of the room where I was watching the movie. His room is complete with a flat-screen TV and DVR satellite. We actually became more interested in trying to figure out what it was that he was watching without going in there.

Clocking in at just south of seventy minutes this story of a cookie monster is too short to be a feature film.

It’s as though they had a movie and then unmade it. I wish they had completely unmade it and let the cookie crumble.

I refuse to assign this trash a star rating of any kind.

On Golden Pond (1981) Review

Anyone who knows me well, or even anyone who looks at one of the pictures in my office, knows that my favorite actress is Katharine Hepburn. She may have not always been in great movies but she was always, as she wrote in her biography, adorable in all of them. On Golden Pond is a great movie where she is perfect.

Based upon the stage play by Ernest Thompson (who also wrote the screenplay) takes place one summer on a lake that is, of course, called Golden Pond. Norman (Henry Fonda) and Ethel Thayer (Hepburn) are an aging couple who own a cottage on the lake that they visit every summer. Together they have one daughter, Chelsea (Played by Henry Fonda's real life daughter Jane Fonda), who decides that she needs to visit for Norman's eightieth birthday. She brings along her boyfriend Bill (Dabney Coleman) and his son Billy (Doug McKeon) and then travels to Europe with Bill. They leave Billy to spend the summer with Ethel and Norman.
The entire film centers on the various relationships that the other characters have with Norman. Ethel loves him and Chelsea feels neglected by him.

As I said above Katharine Hepburn is perfect in this but I also need to mention the incomparable performance given by Henry Fonda. On the surface Norman is a humorous old man but there is a visible tragedy beneath that humor that Fonda balances in a way that is extremely subtle but nonetheless moving.

I think it's everyone's secret wish to be like Norman and Ethel. People want to find someone to grow old with and still be in love. That's why this film is so readable and touching.

Definitely worth watching more than once.

★★★★

Waterloo Bridge (1940) Review

On the eve of World War II, British officer Roy Cronin (Robert Taylor) revisits Waterloo Bridge in London. He recalls the man he was during World War I and the young ballerina named Myra (Vivien Leigh) who he met fell in love with during an air raid. That love will be the one of the wars unspoken casualties. Heartbroken after Roy is reportedly killed in action Myra turns to prostitution to make her way. The report however is false and Roy later returns from a POW camp eager to begin life anew with his beloved, but Myra's shattered spirit may no longer hold any room for happiness.

This is one of the better movies of the 1940s. The material is handled perfectly despite the possibility of it deteriorating into a bad soap opera and it isn't dumbed down for the audience. Never are we explicitly told what Myra is doing for money but we still know what happens. I don't think that if we were told it would not have the same emotional impact.

Vivien Leigh is, I admit, one of my favorite actresses so you probably won't ever see me write that she gave a bad performance. This performance is no exception. In the hands of a lesser actress there might be the need for dialogue to explain Myra's pain. Leigh shows it in her facial expressions that say far more than any words possibly could.

The other end of that emotional spectrum is Robert Taylor who delivers the best performance of his career. His everlasting hope and optimism for love keeps the film from dragging.

So often, dramas of this type try to force an emotional reaction from it's audience. Here it simply happens naturally

★★★1/2

Rango (2011) Review

An overall entertaining and visually stunning film Rango tells the story of, well, Rango.  Voiced by Johnny Depp, Rango is a chameleon who is inadvertently lost in what appears to be the Nevada desert. He comes to the town of Mud which is filled with little furry or scaly critters experiencing an unprecedented drought. Rango, who besides being an outsider and a college student's lost pet (and therefore hardly able to survive in the harsh unforgiving terrain), is a pathological liar. Rango becomes the sheriff of Mud after he accidentally kills a bird of prey and sets out with a posse to find who is stealing the water (which turns out to be humans).

The movie is filled to the brim with western homages which might be a miss for younger children or even only occasional movie-goers (including a character patterned after Clint Eastwood who incidentally is called "The Spirit of The West").  The animation is  fantastic but the jokes just fall flat. I don't say that no one would laugh but, much like Coraline two years ago, that excellent animation is wasted on the occasionally boring story and one-note jokes. Even the voices of Ned Beatty and Bill Nighy (who is one of the high points) can't help those problems.

The movie is financed by Nickelodeon Films and although not up to the standards set by the Pixar or even the Dreamworks films the movie would be good for ten or twelve year-olds and is far better and filled less with childish humor than The Spongebob Squarepants Movie.

★★★

The Adjustment Bureau (2011) Review

Here’s a movie that makes an attempt to be original and entertaining without being laden with major special effects and characters that you can’t relate to. Inception anyone?  Don’t worry this isn’t another review about Christopher Nolan’s “masterpiece”. As mentioned in the title, I’m going to talk about the 2011 action-thriller that stars Matt Damon and Emily Blunt.
 On the brink of winning a seat in the U.S. Senate, ambitious politician David Norris (Damon) meets beautiful contemporary ballet dancer Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt)-a woman like none he's ever known. But just as he realizes he's falling for her, mysterious men conspire to keep the two apart. David learns he is up against the agents of Fate itself-the men of The Adjustment Bureau-who will do everything in their considerable power to prevent David and Elise from being together. In the face of overwhelming odds, he must either let her go and accept a predetermined path...or risk everything to defy fate and be with her.

The movie is based upon a short story called “Adjustment Team” by Philip K. Dick (who also wrote Blade Runner, Total Recall) and is written and directed sharply by George Nolfi.

I must say I enjoyed this movie. I thought it was as original as it was entertaining and I found myself really rooting for the main characters even though the villains appear to be from heaven. Besides who doesn’t want to look at Emily Blunt?

The best character is an adjuster named Thompson aka “The Hammer”. He’s played by Terrence Stamp in one of his best roles in a very long time. He is the main adjuster sent in to break up the romance between David and Elise and of all the performances his was the most riveting

One thing that did bother me was the opening. It’s so abrupt that for a moment I thought a reel might have been missing.

So, like I said I enjoyed seeing it at least once. I probably wouldn’t pay to see it in the theatre again but I’ll
definitely look for it when it comes out on DVD.

 

★★1/2

The Fighter (2010) Review

This is a mixed review because I had mixed feelings on the movie. I really liked the good things and really was offput by the bad things.

The movie is another one of those Oscar-bait films about boxing and unfortunately keeps to a formula. Mark Wahlberg plays real-life welterweight boxer Micky Ward. His Rocky-like road to the championship is shepherded by his crack addicted half brother Dicky Eckland (Christian Bale) and his domineering mother Alice (Melissa Leo), who believes it's better to keep everything in the family. Because of his crack addiction Dickey is unreliable and Alice cares more about Dicky than she does Mickey. A decision at a boxing match leads Mickey to realize that his career is being stalled and even undermined by the two, who only seem to care about themselves. This stance is further fostered by Micky's new bartender girlfriend, Charlene Fleming (Amy Adams).  As Micky tries boxing life without Dicky and Alice, much to their anger, he has to figure out where they fit into his life, especially as they do not get along with Charlene, or if they even fit in at all.

There is one great thing in this movie and that's Christian Bale because, despite being the most flamboyant character, he is the most real. I didn't care about Micky or Alice or Charlene. There is a moment near the end where it looks like a sober Dicky seems to be going back to the crackhouse that occupied most of his time. I sighed in relief when he didn't do that. That tells me that Bale managed to create an emotional impact without forcing the audience to feel for him.

One problem is the accents. Sometimes they have them and sometimes they don't (especially Wahlberg). But I'm willing to overlook that. What I can't overlook is that I didn't feel any sense of urgency or that anything was at stake if Micky didn't win the championship. I find it difficult to believe that Charlene, who says she loves Micky and when watching Micky get the hell beat out of him, doesn't seem to be all that bothered by it.

Otherwise the movie is good enough to watch more than once

★★★

The Motion Picture Production Code

The Motion Picture Production Code, or MPCC, was the set of industry guidelines that governed the vast majority of American films released by major studios from 1938-1960. Basically it was a way to monitor the content in films and make sure that they were appropriate for all audiences. Under the code filmmakers could not show certain things...In 1968 the code was officially dropped in favor of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) code that we have today, where a film is rated based on it's content...In some ways I miss the MPPC.  I am conflicted on it because I hate the idea of censorship, which was exactly what it was, and yet I dislike the basic carelessness that is used by filmmakers today. They show the violence and sex because they can but it's not to drive the story or advance the importance of the character's struggles. It's to sell more tickets. Filmmaking should be about the art. Not the grosses. That's why the studio system fell apart because all they cared about was making the money. 


The best thing about the production code was that it forced filmmakers to be creative and subtle if they wanted to communicate something in their movie that they weren't allowed to actually show (whether it be sex or violence or something else.)  A perfect example was the 1934 film The Black Cat. In the film Bela Lugosi's character brutally skins Boris Karloff's character alive. We don't see the actual act. We know what is happening but it's all in silhouette. The ending result is far more terrifying than if it had been shown, like we would get in any movie done by Eli Roth.


Sometimes it is needed for the story. Can you imagine Schindler's List without the violence? You would not see the same brutality of the villains and you would not care if Schindler saved so many Jews if you didn't believe that their life was in danger and you may not have gotten to have the cathartic ending.  How about if the love scenes in The English Patient had been restricted to the morning after? Would you have felt the passion between Katherine and Almasy? When Geoffrey loses it near the end there is a sympathy that you feel for him and so what he does is understandable to the audience. Without those scenes you wouldn't have felt that.


I guess what I am saying is that the Production Code had it's good and bad things but sometimes I wish it was still around.

Top Ten of 2010

Here is my as of yet not annual (I will have to do Top Ten of 2011 before it becomes annual) Top Ten Films of 2010

10 Tangled

9 Shrek Forever After

8 The Social Network

7 Waking Sleeping Beauty

6 The Fighter

5 The Wolfman

4 Black Swan

3 Toy Story 3

2 True Grit

1 The King's Speech

Black Swan (2010) Review

Nina (Natalie Portman) is a ballerina in the New York City ballet company whose life, like all those in her profession, is completely consumed with dance. She lives with her obsessive and controlling former ballerina mother Erica (Barbara Hershey). When artistic director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) decides to replace prima ballerina Beth MacIntyre (Winona Ryder) for the opening production of their new season, Swan Lake. Nina is his first choice for the coveted role of the Swan Queen. But Nina has competition: a new dancer named Lily (Mila Kunis). Leroy's vision for Swan Lake requires a dancer who can play both the White Swan with innocence and grace, and the Black Swan, who represents guile and sensuality. Nina fits the White Swan role perfectly while Lily is the personification of the Black Swan. As the two young dancers expand their rivalry into a twisted friendship, Nina begins to get more in touch with her dark side and slowly descends into madness as she becomes the Black Swan.

This movie was fantastic. It had excellent cinematography, acting, direction, score, costumes, etc. I think it's fantastic what director Darren Aronofsky and Natalie Portman have done but I hated watching it.

Don't misunderstand what I'm saying. It's just that this movie has provided for a very uncomfortable movie going experience for me that I haven't had in quite some time.  The story is not meant to give one that happy-let's-go-hug-a-bunny feeling that we get from the Disney/Pixar films. It's a visceral look at obsession and the dark places performers go when they completely become their roles. It's meant to make you uncomfortable and get under your skin. In that respect it succeeds.

My favorite performance of the year goes to someone that I normally am not a big fan of. Without any hesitation I predict Portman will win Best Actress and deservedly so.

I love the musical score in the film so much so that I went out after the movie and tried to buy the soundtrack but alas I could not find it.  Composer Clint Mansell takes from Tchaikovsky's original ballet music and turns it on it's head by playing it backwards and slightly distorted.

As a critic I have nothing but admiration for the film's craftsmanship but as an audience member my stomach was in knots.

★★★★

Humility In The Film Industry

There have been times where one person in the film industry is truly inspired by someone else and rather than gloating and being smug and self-congratulatory (George Clooney winning an oscar he did not deserve) they pay tribute to that person who inspires them...Here are just a few examples of that

A tearful Ving Rhames calls an awestruck Jack Lemmon onto the stage and gives his (Ving's) much-deserved award away to his idol.

This was just about a week and a half after the death of Heath Ledger. The always eloquent and selfless Daniel Day-Lewis pays tribute to Ledger.

Take a look at the other nominees reactions when they find out they didn't win

RIP Kenneth Mars 1936-2011

Kenneth Mars, a farcical character actor perhaps best known for playing the police inspector with a creaky prosthetic arm in Mel Brooks’ 1974 classic Young Frankenstein, died Saturday of pancreatic cancer at his home in Granada Hills, Calif. He was 74.

With a flair for German-type accents, Mars also appeared as the insane Nazi playwright who creates Springtime for Hitler in Brooks’ The Producers (1968) and as a Yugoslavian shyster in Peter Bogdanovich’s What’s Up, Doc? (1972).

Mars has regular roles on TV as ranch owner Otto Mannkusser on the Fox series Malcolm in the Middle, as W.D. “Bud” Prize on Norman Lear’s Fernwood Tonight and its offshoot, America Tonight, in the late 1970s and as Paula Prentiss and Richard Benjamin’s fireman neighbor in He & She, a 1967-68 CBS series.

The Chicago native cultivated a robust career as a voice actor during his 40-plus years in show business, working on such projects as The Jetsons, The FIintstones Kids, The Little Mermaid, We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story and Life With Louie. He was Grandpa Longneck in many installments of The Land Before Time series that ran on film, video and TV.

In a take-off on Lionel Atwill’s local police Inspector Krogh character with a mechanical wooden arm in 1939’s Son of Frankenstein, Mars’ Inspector Kemp in Young Frankenstein sports an eye patch and monocle over the same eye, a disjointed wooden arm that moves in all manner of ways and an accent so thick even his own countrymen can’t understand him.

Mars also appeared in the Woody Allen films Radio Days (1987) and Shadows and Fog (1991), and in another dramatic turn, opposite Shirley MacLaine in 1971’s Desperate Characters.

Truly another great has passed and now has been added to the list of late Mel Brooks alumni including Madeline Kahn, Harvey Korman, Dom Deluise and Marty Feldman.

Test audiences...

I want to talk briefly about something that is used in the film industry frequently and that is the use of the test audience.  What happens is studios and filmmakers take random people off the street and give them a free ticket to an upcoming, but unreleased, movie. The audience views the movie and then tells psychiatrists what they thought on little cards. More often than not it is not used the way it should be. Below are some examples.

1. During a preview of The Little Mermaid a child dropped a popcorn box while the song, "Part of Your World" played and became restless with needing to clean it up. Jeffrey Katzenberg took that as a sign that the song was boring and decided the song should be taken out. He relented though after a second screening of adults who enjoyed the song. Can you imagine the movie without the song?
2. The original play version of Little Shop of Horrors contains a sad ending. Everyone dies and the plant takes over the world. Test audiences hated Frank Oz for including it in the film version and so the filmmakers rewrote the ending and filmed it as the happy ending we get now. Oz regrets doing that.
3. Okay this one is fiction but I will include it as an example of how stupid the average audience member can be. In an episode of The Simpsons, Mel Gibson (who voices himself) directs and stars in a remake of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. Everyone in Springfield loves it except Homer, who says it wasn't action-filled or violent enough to be a Gibson movie. Gibson takes his criticism as the only real one and changes the movie to suit Homer.

Sometimes test audiences help. Mel Brooks said he wanted to cut the now iconic 'walk this way' line from Young Frankenstein. He thought it was a cheap joke and didn't belong in the movie but allowed it to stay in for a test screening. The audience laughed harder at that five seconds than at any other point in the movie.

I guess what I am trying to say is every audience is different. Recently I saw my sister in a stage version of The Diary of Anne Frank. My sister told me that one of the cast members was upset because they didn't get many laughs.  Apparently an earlier audience laughed quite a bit. The audience I was in felt unsure if it was appropriate to laugh given the serious subject matter but they were far from bored by it.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) Review

A good chunk of the reviews recently have been of movies that I hate.  It's easier to write a review of a bad movie than it is to write a review for the good one. Adjectives such as "awful", "terrible", "unbearable" are easy to write but I'm certain that all that negativity shortens my life by ten minutes every time I use those words. I suppose I think of it as my revenge for those movies taking away a portion of my life that I can't get back. Here's a review for a movie that I liked.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit takes place in 1947 Los Angeles where toons and humans live and breathe in the same world. The main character is, you guessed it, a cartoon rabbit named Roger who is framed for murder. Roger enlists the help of an alcoholic private eye named Eddie Valiant, played by Bob Hoskins (in quite a performance), to clear his name and protect his wife Jessica Rabbit (She's not bad just drawn that way). Eddie hates toons ever since a toon dropped a piano on his brother, killing him.

The man who wants to see Roger hang is Judge Doom (Christopher Lloyd) who seems more like a gangster than an elected official. Doom has invented a way to kill toons called "The Dip" made up of turpentine, acetone, and benzine (essentially oil, paint thinner, and film dissolver) and any toon that comes in contact with it melts instantly. The Judge employs a group of weasels as his henchman to help him hunt down Roger for the murder of Marvin Acme (I would have placed my bets on Wile E. Coyote what with all those faulty products Acme sold him).

Eventually the good guys win and without giving anything away Eddie gets justice for his brother's murder.

In 1964 Mary Poppins was the first feature-length movie to mix live-action and animation. The goal for this film was to go above and beyond Dick Van Dyke dancing with penguins (who actually appear in this). The special effects team and animators succeed at this and it still hasn't been surpassed. There is such a great detail to the movie that the same light that falls on human characters falls on the cartoon characters as well. The cartoon characters interact seamlessly with real objects like plates, chairs, boxes, guns, handcuffs....The list goes on and on

More than just spectacular special effects and animation the movie also has great, entertaining characters in a great, entertaining story. Maybe it's the fact that I get caught up in the story and I have no problem believing that toons are real.

Kids and adults should love this movie. Kids will like the cartoon characters cameos (Everyone from Dumbo to Woody the Woodpecker) and adults will love the noir mystery and the humor

There now wasn't that a lot more pleasent than some of my recent reviews?

★★★★

The Hottie And The Nottie (2008) Review

 Every fiber of my being told me to not watch it but I wanted to see if it's as bad as I heard it was.  It's worse...Sometimes I'll watch a movie just to see how much worse it can get.  I don't see how much worse it could get then the shallow, pretentious, sickening thing I just witnessed.

The movie is about...You know what? I'm just going to cut and paste the "plot" from IMDB...I don't agree with it but here it is:

"Nate moves to L.A. to track down Cristabel, the woman he's been in love with since childhood, only to discover that his plan to woo her only has one hurdle to overcome: what to do with June, Cristabel's ever-present, not-so-hot best friend? What's even more complicating is Nate's growing feelings for June, whose true beauty starts to emerge"

See what I mean? It's deplorable that anyone would green light this trash...Cristabel is played by the outlandishly stupid Paris Hilton. Her first scene references something out of 10 where she is running on a beach, in slow motion, in a scantily clad outfit.  There are many things that Paris Hilton is, some of them I won't say because I'm too much of a gentlemen, but actress is not one of them and, while I'm at it, the word "movie" seems to be just as inapt when referring to this as saying she is an actress.

The characters are so obsessed with outer looks that they even have mathematical formula to prove that the “hotness of one girl is directly proportional to the ugliness of her best friend”.  I fear for the young kids who will undoubtedly see this...It makes an attempt (and I use that term loosely) to say that beauty is on the inside. Nate falls for June but only after she has plastic surgery.  It makes me absolutely sick at how the character of June is treated by everyone else in the movie. Supposedly humiliating ugly people is funny.

I write this review as a public service.  Let me save ninety minutes of your life.

Now if you'll excuse me I am going to go shower to try and get clean after this.

Zero Stars

Trading Mom (1994) Review

This movie is along the same plot of North (Except that they don't trade mom AND dad they just trade mom) and will also receive a great hateful review.

Three kids are sick of their mother. She works too much and nags them constantly so...they say a magic incantation to make her disappear and then go to an underground slave trade where they shop for a new mother. Sissy Spacek plays the real mother and the outdoorsy mom and the french sophisticated mother and a clown mom. That's right, she plays all the parts and none of the performances are very good

Not only does the performances suck the kids are whiny and supposedly learn their lesson. Guess what? I don't buy it. Any kid who would be willing to trade their parents deserve to not have any.  Maybe that's a little caustic on my part.  I didn't buy the lesson in North and you know something Tia Brelis? I don't buy it from your movie either.

½ ★

Oscar Predictions

The Oscars are on Sunday February 27th 2011...Here are my predictions which are colored in red

BEST PICTURE:
127 Hours
The King's Speech
Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
Winter's Bone

BEST DIRECTOR:
Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan
Joel and Ethan Coen for True Grit
David Fincher for The Social Network
Tom Hooper for The King's Speech
David O. Russell for The Fighter

BEST ACTOR:
Javier Bardem for Biutiful
Jeff Bridges for True Grit
Jesse Eisenberg for The Social Network
Colin Firth for The King's Speech
James Franco for 127 Hours

BEST ACTRESS:
Annette Bening for The Kids Are All Right
Nicole Kidman for Rabbit Hole
Jennifer Lawrence for Winter Bone
Natalie Portman for Black Swan
Michelle Williams for Blue Valentine

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Christian Bale for The Fighter
John Hawkes for Winter's Bone
Jeremy Renner for The Town
Mark Ruffalo for The Kid's Are All Right
Geoffrey Rush for The King's Speech

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
Amy Adams for The Fighter
Helena Bonham Carter for The King's Speech
Melissa Leo for The Fighter
Hailee Steinfeld for True Grit
Jacki Weaver for Animal Kingdom

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:
Another Year
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King's Speech

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:
127 Hours
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter's Bone\

BEST FORIEGN LANGUAGE FILM
Biutiful
Dogtooth
In A Better World
Incendiaries
Outside The Law

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
How To Drain Your Dragon
Toy Story 3
The Illusionist

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Inception
True Grit
The King's Speech
The Social Network
Black Swan

BEST EDITING

127 Hours
Black Swan

The Fighter
The King's Speech
The Social Network

BEST ART DIRECTION
Alice In Wonderland
Inception
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I
The King's Speech
True Grit

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Alice In Wonderland
I Am Love
The King's Speech
The Tempest
True Grit

BEST MAKEUP
Barney's Version
The Way Back
The Wolfman

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE:
127 Hours
How To Train Your Dragon
Inception
The King's Speech
The Social Network

BEST ORIGINAL SONG:
If I Rise from 127 Hours
Coming Home from Country Strong
I See The Light from Tangled
We Belong Together from Toy Story 3

BEST SOUND MIXING:
Inception
True Grit
Salt
The Social Network
The King's Speech

BEST SOUND EDITING:
Inception
Toy Story 3
TRON: Legacy
True Grit
Unstoppable

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS:
Alice In Wonderland
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I
Hereafter
Inception
Iron Man 2

BEST DOCUMENTARY:
Exit Through The Gift Shop
GasLand
Inside Job
Restrepo
Waste Land

BEST DOCUMENTARY-SHORT SUBJECT:
Killing In The Name Of
Poster Girl
Strangers No More
Sun Come Up
The Warriors of Quigang

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM:
Day & Night
The Gruffalo
Let's Pollute
The Lost Thing
Madagascar, A Journey Diary

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM:
The Confession
The Crush
God of Love
Na Wewe
Wish143

I predict that The King's Speech will be the big winner with 5 Awards followed by True Grit with 4 awards..The most acting will be for The Fighter

Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

Boy meets girl...Boy meets plant...Plant eats people.  That's the setup for one of the most enjoyable movies of the last twenty years.

Based upon the Off-Broadway musical created by Howard Ashman, who also wrote the screenplay and lyrics, which was inspired by the cult classic directed by Roger Corman of the same name, the movie tells the story of clumsy flower shop employee Seymour Krelborn (Rick Moranis) who's in love with his coworker Audrey (Ellen Greene) but lacks the confidence to tell her because after all she has a Elvis-like boyfriend, Orin Scrivello, DDS (Steve Martin) who's also a sadist. One day, during a total eclipse of the sun, Seymour comes across a strange plant. He names it Audrey II and puts it in the store window.  The plant attracts customers, reporters, and people trying to make money off it but there's just one problem. The plant can only eat human flesh.

The movie is ripe with camp and crazy supporting characters, including a WEIRRRD radio dj and a masochist who likes visiting the dentist.  It never takes itself too seriously and so it manages to entertain. Director Frank Oz has managed to capture the brillance of the stageplay.

The puppet of Audrey II was designed and created by Lyle Conway and is really one of the high points of the movie and features the voice of motown singer Levi Stubbs.

The biggest difference from the stage production and this wholly entertaining film is the ending where, SPOILER ALERT!!!, the plant is defeated and Audrey and Seymour go somewhere that's green. In the play both SPOILER ALERT!!! of the lovers are swallowed by the plant and Audrey II multiplies and his species take over the world. It was changed because test audiences didn't like it but the ending here works well

★★★1/2

Oscars...

At the request of my sister I'm going to do something a bit different and post a blog about the oscars

I'm going to talk about my predictions for this year and what I think of the actual nominees and categories but it won't be so much a review of the movies
Why is there so much prestige for some categories rather than others? Best Actor is always a higher honor than Best Supporting Actor or even Best Actress...You can only give a loud (not in terms of volume but in terms of what transformation the individual made) performance unless you have a more stoic anchor that might be provided by a supporting person (Would Geoffrey Rush be able to do what he did for "Shine" without Lynn Redgrave?).  I've played that quiet part on stage many times and it so often gets no notice...

Since last year Best Picture has been extended to ten slots from five...It's great that the academy is willing to give animated films and foriegn films a better chance at winning but, let's face it. The major contenders are still only two or three films anyway. For example this year I'm going to say it's between True Grit, The King's Speech and The Social Network with a high possibility of going to The King's Speech. Best Picture has always been the most prestigious award given but there are many movies that just plain don't deserve it (Crash over Brokeback Mountain? Are you kidding me?)

Maybe someday I'll win an oscar

Inception (2010) Review

Maybe I should have tried to go in without expectations because that's fair but I couldn't help it.  I don't see the greatness of this movie.  I don't even see the goodness of it. It's an extremely dim-witted movie that tries to disguise itself as intellectual profundity. As Forrest Gump said, "Stupid is as stupid does".
Dom Cobb (Leonardo Dicaprio) is able to use his unique skills to his advantage - he can enter people's minds through their dreams and thereby learn their secrets. He is a thief for hire but Japanese businessman Mr. Saito (Ken Watanabe) has a somewhat different proposition for him. He wants Cobb to enter the mind of Robert Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy), who is about to inherit his father's massive business empire, to plant a simple notion: to break-up his father's conglomerate and sell it off. In return, Saito will make it possible for Cobb to freely return to the US where he is currently wanted by the police. Cobb accepts and assembles his team (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Brady etc.) with a plan to plant the idea deep in Fisher's mind by generating a series of dreams within dreams so that he eventually thinks he came up with the idea himself. As the intended deception grows ever more complex so does Cobb's own feelings of guilt which projects itself in all the dreams he is involved in.

The first hour of the movie is the slowest where director Christopher Nolan seems to have spent all his energy on loud noises and visual overloads (all of which you can see in the trailer) rather than getting the audience to care about the characters or the predicament which is to follow.  At the film's climax I didn't care whether anyone made it out of the dreams (aka levels) or not.  At a certain point Ellen Page's character (I don't even remember the character's name and am far too lazy to look it up) is trying to convince Dicaprio to not go after Watanabe who is stuck in limbo (That's where you go when you die in a "level" that low) and I found it difficult to believe that all of a sudden she is caring or motherly towards someone she sort of maybe knows.

One thing really, really, really bothered me the entire film and that was the laziness of Hans Zimmer in his scoring of the movie.  It's as if he took music rejected for "The Dark Knight" and placed it in "Inception".

Nolan, if you were trying to make an intelligent pile of drek, you only partially succeeded.

★1/2

The African Queen (1951) Review

Stanley Kubrick once said, "A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings."  That's what The African Queen is like. Music

This exsquisite piece of art stars Humphrey Bogart (in his only oscar-winning role) and Katharine Hepburn

The film begins in the summer of 1914. News reaches a small African village that it's motherland (Germany) is at war. The Rev. Samuel Sayer and his sister Rose (Hepburn) have become enemy aliens. Eventually the good reverend dies and the village is destroyed by German troops. Charlie Allnut (Bogart) comes to the village and taking pity on Rose agrees to take her down the river battling rapids, Germans hiding in a fort, bloodthirsty parasites and an endless swamp of weeds which seems to go nowhere in order to destroy a large German gunship using makeshift torpedoes. Despite fierce rows and moral antagonism between the bossy devout abstentionist and the free-spirited libertine drunk loner, the two grow closer to each other as their quest drags on.

Most of the dialogue is between Charlie and Rose and takes place on, of course, The African Queen. No easy task for director John Huston who is able to keep the audience interested in these two consistently throughout the film. Their blooming love never feels rushed or contrived. Hepburn and Bogart deserve much of that credit as well being able to hold the film for as long as they are without any other person to react with. Even James Stewart had more people to talk to in "Rear Window"

I definately suggest watching this one and please don't take it for granted.

★★★★

Obsessed (2009) Review

Save yourself the aggravation and don't view this tripe. It hardly functions as anything but boring and clichéd. The story has been seen so many times before. From Play "Misty For Me" to "Fatal Attraction" the crazy female stalker has, let's face it, been done to death and has always been far more superior. Jesus even "Malicous" was better

The screenplay feels more like a first draft of a x-rated movie then a good Hollywood script with characters screaming lines such as "I'm gonna wipe the floor with her skinny ass" and since the screenplay is so flawed the acting suffers as well (Not to mention that Beyonce can't act her way out of an empty room). The performances seem to be right out of a high school play filled with cheerleaders and jocks whom don't have any real talent but are only doing the play so that they might have enough extracurricular activities to get into Harvard.

This movie just plain pissed me off...Not because I was involved emotionally but because here you have all this money to spend and it is wasted on a cheap MTV-style knockoff of something that has been seen before

I don't recommend it for anyone

True Grit (2010) Review

This is not the 1969 classic starring John Wayne. Much like the Tim Burton version of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory was with Roald Dahl's children's classic it is an adaptation of the book by Charles Portis.

Everyone in the film is at the top of their game. There is not a single bad performance in the film.

Jeff Bridges shines as Rooster Cogburn. In the original we could tell it was Wayne. Here, we see nothing of Bridges.

For it being Hallie Steinfield's first film she is phenomenal and has just as much screen presence as Bridges.

After he got away from the Bourne films Matt Damon has consistently impressed me. His performance in this film is no exception playing the exact 180 of Rooster Cogburn and the residential knucklehead seen in every Coen Brother's film.

Josh Brolin, despite only appearing in about ten minutes of the film, gives a great interpretation of the film's villain. More of a wet dog than an immediately noticeable threat but is just as willing to kill Mattie Ross as he is anyone else

The cinematography is, in many ways, exquisite. There is one shot in particular where Cogburn, trying to show his skills at shooting throws a biscuit in the air and fires. The angle chosen is a highly interesting one The film is rich in humor and smart dialogue. Exactly what one would expect from a Coen Brothers film.

Try to remember that the original will always be there. This film does not change that but it only adds to the original which when you think about it...Isn't that special

I recommend it

Freddy Got Fingered (2001) Review

This movie is quite possibly the worst, most disgusting, vomit-inducing film I have ever seen. Although from the title I should have known what to expect.

It is nothing but ninety minutes of Tom Green doing things that even the devil himself would go, "dude". The garbage begins six minutes in where we see his character, Gord Brody, leap out of a vehicle to rub a horse's genitals. Bad right? It gets worse. Later he shoots his father (Rip Torn) with elephant semen.

Among the other sick things is a scene where Gord's best friend breaks his leg so Gord decides to do the only thing he can think of. He licks his friend's protruding bone. Then while visiting his friend in the hospital he decides to deliver a baby. The baby appears to be dead so Gord resuscitates it by swinging it around his head by the umbilical cord. As to why his friend is put in the maternity ward of the hospital we will never know. Just like we will never know the day that this becomes even remotely funny.

I don't exactly have a problem with gross-out humor but this movie is just punchlines...There is no setup so it's not funny. Just gross.

The film is far too vulgar for anyone seventeen and under and far too stupid for anyone eighteen or older and right now it is only a milestone of how low the American audience has sunk.

Usually I measure a movie by how many times I look at my watch when I'm watching it. This movie holds the record. I didn't laugh once while watching it.

The Rainmaker (1956) Review

Like a fine wine some movies get better with age while others get better the more wine you drink...The Rainmaker is one of the former.

It tells the story of Lizzie Curry (Katharine Hepburn) who is on the verge of becoming a hopeless old maid. Her wit and intelligence and skills as a homemaker can't make up for the fact that she's just plain plain! Even the town sheriff, File (Wendell Corey), for whom she harbors a secret yern, won't take a chance --- until the town suffers a drought and into the lives of Lizzie and her brothers (Lloyd Bridges, Earl Holliman) and father (Cameron Prud'Homme) comes one Bill Starbuck, aka Bill Smith, aka Bill Harley, aka Tornado Johnson (All of whom is played by Burt Lancaster)...He promises to bring rain to the small town but he might be nothing more than a con man preying on poor farm people desperate for a little water.

Although the screen adaptation of "The Rainmaker" remains firmly stage bound, once the film's fine cast involves viewers with the characters' complex emotions, the obviously fake sets are rarely noticed again. The painted skies, over-lit interiors, and western back-lots would under cut the film's veracity with a lesser cast. However, the leads are sterling, and, only a short time into the film, the small dreams of a lonely woman, who is just beyond her marrying years, engage the audience to such an extent that distractions from pedestrian direction, an often overly dramatic music score, and sound-stage exteriors will fade away.

It's a wonderfully colorful film about believing that the impossible is possible and that it is never too late for someone to find true love

This film is a must for fans of Katharine Hepburn, who once again manages to have the audience in the palm of her hand.

I recommend it