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Archive for April, 2008

Cloverfield, a surreptitiously subversive, stylistically clever little gem of an entertainment disguised, under its deadpan-neutral title, as a dumb Gen-YouTube monster movie, makes the convincingly chilling argument that the world will end — or, at least, Manhattan will crumble — with a bang and a whimper. The bang part, as millions who have seen the trailer already know, is supplied by the…thing…that arises on an otherwise peaceful May night to wreak destruction on New York City: He (She? It?) swats at skyscrapers and smashes NYC landmarks, abetted by tentacled mini-monsters that lunge directly at humans like voracious paparazzi. And when the military arrives to fight back, let’s just say the troops opt for the all-out surge approach. The movie is not for the weak of stomach – not from excessive gore – but from the “blair witch” concept of filming using a single hand-held camera. Once you get over the initial shock of the cinematography it is about 84 minutes of interesting action. The movie ends with you figuring that probably even the hero and heroine wind up dying; however, my guess is that since it had a decent box office showing that either they will be rescued or at least the video they were filming when son or daughter of whatever the monster was decides to take revenge on Manhattan after it’s rebuilt decades later. With the caveat of the unsettling cinematography, there are certainly worse things you could do with an hour and 20 minutes.

Based on the Steven Gould novel, Jumper follows a young man from a broken home who discovers that he has the ability to teleport. In his quest for the man he believes is responsible for the death of his mother, the kid draws the attention of the National Security Agency and another kid with the same abilities. It’s an interesting premise teleporting without any kind of machine to do it. It’s an ok movie for a matinee if you can stand Hayden Christensen who still can’t act.

Charlie Wilson’s War is a movie adaptation of the true story about Democratic Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson, who conspired with a rogue CIA operative named Gust Avrakotos to launch an operation to help the Afghan mujahideen following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The film is adapted from George Crile’s 2003 book Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History. Urged on by his staunchly anti-communist friend and romantic interest, Joanne Herring, Wilson helps lead the effort to provide United States aid to the mujahideen. In the process, the film also reveals Wilson as a Congressman whose disdain for the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan is supplemented by his gregarious social life of women and partying. U.S. support for the mujahideen ultimately evolved into a policy known as the Reagan Doctrine, under which the U.S. assisted the mujahideen and other anti-communist resistance movements around the world. Controversial at the time, some now credit the policy with contributing to the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union and global communism, bringing about the end of the Cold War. This was an interesting cast. Tom Hanks provided one of his better performances as of late except for his hideous attempt at a Texas accent. Julia Roberts, also with a bad Texas accent, actually looked pretty good and it seemed that her lips had been deflated a bit giving her a normal mouth appearance. She was well cast in her part and is at least deserving of a nomination for something. Phillip Seymour Hoffman gave a brilliant performace, again demonstrating that even trolls can act. He is certainly one of the few actors that could play Shrek without makeup. I think he is underestimated as an actor even if you can’t stand his looks. I think Tom Hanks is looking for a good part. I personally feel he hasn’t done anything of merit since Perdition. Ladykillers was a bust, obviously a tax write off. He was a bumbling buffoon in The Da Vinci Code. Of course that movie was equally sluggish. If they were going to make a movie of a Dan Brown book, they should have chosen Angels and Demons. It had many more puzzles to solve, a lot more action, and significantly more killing. Anyway, this movie personified what our Congress is all about and should make you appreciate how much money is saved when they are in gridlock. It also makes you appreciate that in that every once in a while when one of our congressional bozos actually has something worthwhile, that maybe some good can actually come from it. This was a good movie. Entertaining. However, it is not the fodder that should feed Oscar nominations (with the exception of Hoffman). Don’t miss this one on the big screen.

Charlie Wilson’s War is a movie adaptation of the true story about Democratic Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson, who conspired with a rogue CIA operative named Gust Avrakotos to launch an operation to help the Afghan mujahideen following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The film is adapted from George Crile’s 2003 book Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History. Urged on by his staunchly anti-communist friend and romantic interest, Joanne Herring, Wilson helps lead the effort to provide United States aid to the mujahideen. In the process, the film also reveals Wilson as a Congressman whose disdain for the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan is supplemented by his gregarious social life of women and partying. U.S. support for the mujahideen ultimately evolved into a policy known as the Reagan Doctrine, under which the U.S. assisted the mujahideen and other anti-communist resistance movements around the world. Controversial at the time, some now credit the policy with contributing to the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union and global communism, bringing about the end of the Cold War. This was an interesting cast. Tom Hanks provided one of his better performances as of late except for his hideous attempt at a Texas accent. Julia Roberts, also with a bad Texas accent, actually looked pretty good and it seemed that her lips had been deflated a bit giving her a normal mouth appearance. She was well cast in her part and is at least deserving of a nomination for something. Phillip Seymour Hoffman gave a brilliant performace, again demonstrating that even trolls can act. He is certainly one of the few actors that could play Shrek without makeup. I think he is underestimated as an actor even if you can’t stand his looks. I think Tom Hanks is looking for a good part. I personally feel he hasn’t done anything of merit since Perdition. Ladykillers was a bust, obviously a tax write off. He was a bumbling buffoon in The Da Vinci Code. Of course that movie was equally sluggish. If they were going to make a movie of a Dan Brown book, they should have chosen Angels and Demons. It had many more puzzles to solve, a lot more action, and significantly more killing. Anyway, this movie personified what our Congress is all about and should make you appreciate how much money is saved when they are in gridlock. It also makes you appreciate that in that every once in a while when one of our congressional bozos actually has something worthwhile, that maybe some good can actually come from it. This was a good movie. Entertaining. However, it is not the fodder that should feed Oscar nominations (with the exception of Hoffman). Don’t miss this one on the big screen.

Atonement is a novel by British writer Ian McEwan. It is widely regarded as one of McEwan’s best works and was shortlisted for the 2001 Booker Prize for fiction, an award he had already won for his previous novel Amsterdam. In addition, Time magazine named it the best fiction novel of the year and included it in its All-TIME 100 Greatest Novels, and The Observer cites it as one of the 100 best novels written. A synopsis of the novel can be found in the Wikipedia so I will not pursue that here. The movie is an acceptable adaptation of the novel. You hate the right characters and love the right ones. I am not a fan of James McAvoy and his performance is much better here than in The Last King of Scotland. He also has a better haircut. Unfortunately Briony, in my opinion, never gets her just deserts for what she did, the fact that she has had to lead a long life and to live with what she did to two other lives gives a bit of satisfaction. Her feeble attempt to give those she wronged some happiness through the fiction in her novel cannot repay the damage a jealous, stupid, spiteful, arrogant, and holier-than-th0u sibling did. A bit of a period piece. Takes considerable time to develop the plot, but does move relatively well and the flashbacks, flashforwards, and fiction vs reality snipets demostrate considerable expertise in direction. Decent cinematography.

The Predator scout ship from the first AVP movie crash lands in a Colorado town after being taken over by the Pred-Alien that was spawned at the end of the first movie. The Aliens on board escape while all Predators are killed. A Predator from the Predator home world becomes aware of the crash and embarks alone on a mission to destroy all the Aliens. Meanwhile the townspeople are helplessly caught in the middle of the face-off between these two alien races. The situation escalates, leading to the military dropping a nuclear bomb on the town, killing all humans and presumably all aliens. The few human survivors, who made a narrow escape in a helicopter, deliver a captured Predator weapon to the military. I find it interesting that they release this movie on Christmas Day. What was more surprising, the theater was packed for the first matinee (11:45 am). And it wasn’t all children. It was the opportunity of a lifetime for the Alien creatures – an endless supply of humans. Even children and infants weren’t spared in this one. Unfortunately there weren’t enough Predators and the proliferation of Aliens exceeded that of rabbits. There wasn’t a “big momma” in this one. However, there were enough mid-size models running around to make this one a real chest popfest. Not a super plot but you wouldn’t go to this movie expecting one. Actually there hasn’t been a version of this to top the original 1979 Alien. However, it was 84 minutes of gory mindless entertainment and was a good stress releiver to all the holiday stuff. My guess is that Alien and Predator will have a long and prosperous existence much like Freddy and Jason.

It’s a simple exercise. Make a list of all the things you want to do in your life, big experiences, noble goals, altruistic urges. From peering into the Grand Canyon to learning a foreign language to dating a cheerleader. This is what you will squeeze in before you “kick the bucket.” Needless to say, that list will change, maybe take on a certain urgency, if you learn you have a terminal illness. What’s the old adage? “Nothing focuses the mind like the knowledge of impending death.” That’s the premise of Rob Reiner’s engaging but well-worn comedy The Bucket List. Pair up a healthcare mogul and a working-class mechanic in a hospital room, tell them they have months to live and let them work out a list together. The rich guy will pay for it. The mechanic-philosopher will fill in the blanks, provide “meaning.” Jack Nicholson devours the scenery as hospital magnate Edward Cole. Morgan Freeman is Carter Chambers, a guy who has had a real life, just not a lot of fun in it. They are two cancer patients thrown together who decide to make their last months memorable, at least to themselves. Theirs is a reluctant partnership. They have little in common. The rich guy is a loner, a bon vivant, a jerk who intentionally gets people’s names wrong just to put them in their place. The mechanic is a kindly Jeopardy! fanatic, a reader, with a wife and grown children who love him. One has sacrificed family for a lifestyle and gathering wealth; the other has given up himself for his family. This movie is formularic. Of course, if one of the participants wasn’t as rich as Cresus the movie wouldn’t work. However, if you overanalyze, then you will miss the point. The movie has its moments of schmaltz but that’s what makes you feel so good in the end. I class this move with “The Ultimate Gift” and “August Rush.” Unrealistic but with a moral lesson that is very important if you don’t try to over psychoanalyze the movie or expect it to be really realistic. “The Bucket List” got mixed reviews and overall got ok reviews by critics and mostly about 8/10 by viewers. I highly recommend this movie if you promise to look at it as a type of life lesson you can come away with. I think the main point is that you shouldn’t let your life get so busy that you can’t find a little joy every now and then. Well worth the price of admission, even if you have to pay full price.

Only Stephen Sondheim would craft a musical about a serial killer, the infamous Sweeney Todd, Demon Barber of Fleet Street. And only Tim Burton would be capable of turning it into a fantastic movie. It has been the fodder for other movie producers and directors, but now Tim Burton has set the gold standard. You will have to forgive me for using the one of the most intricate reviews written on this movie. Sans politics, Sweeney Todd should take away Best Director, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress hands down. However, we all know how crooked the Oscar committee can be. According to Michael Scragow of the Baltimore Sun: “The eyes have it in Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and they belong to Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. Burton’s ineluctably involving version of the Stephen Sondheim musical about the homicidal hair-trimmer of the title (Depp) – and the meat-pie-maker Mrs. Lovett (Carter) who comes up with the idea of using corpses as ingredients – plays each crucial action off the otherworldly orbs of his stars. The impact is hypnotic. The director and his screenwriter, John Logan, lop off the celebrated prologue and start right with Todd and the male ingenue Anthony Hope (Jamie Campbell Bower), sailing into a visually and morally murky 19th-century London that Hope finds an Olympus and Todd a cesspit where his life went awry. Anyone except conventional thrill-seekers – and Sondheim purists – should be hooked by the way Burton irradiates his performers’ expressions while bathing them in a Hadean light. Without digital animation, they do what Beowulf couldn’t: They bring superhuman intensity to the fallible creatures in a gory fable. They act the songs rather than belt them out. It’s both unsettling and ticklish, as if they’re whispering foul versions of sweet nothings in your ear. Todd sings of his former life as barber Benjamin Barker, sent to prison on trumped-up charges by a crooked judge (Alan Rickman) who wants to corrupt Barker’s beautiful, virtuous wife. But the gaudy flashback episodes of Barker’s fall register as less real than the shadow-of-the-gallows present. Burton, cinematographer Dariusz Wolski and production designer Dante Ferretti sustain a gray-brown and off-white color scheme. Until Burton unstops the story’s gushers of blood, the fracturing and fuzzing of scenes as seen in warped windows and cracked mirrors provide all the visual zing this movie needs. Depp brings Todd a spectral intensity from the outset. And when he clicks with Bonham Carter’s Mrs. Lovett as a potential mate (if not, from his point of view, a lovemate), an aberrant electricity leaps out between them. I saw the original production with Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury; though Lansbury gave a mythic black-comic performance, I never bought their quasi-marital partnership as the story’s life-blood and cement. Casting the vital, brooding Depp, and the voluptuously funny Bonham Carter brings the film an emotional texture akin to bristling fur. Bonham Carter delivers the key performance in the movie: She plays Mrs. Lovett not merely as a comic grotesque, but as a romantic grotesque, too, and that makes all the difference. Lovett’s competition with the memory of Todd’s wife is stronger here than in any other production that I’ve seen. And her dream of living “By the Sea” has an off-kilter poignancy, partly because Burton and Wolski shoot this fantasy as if through Lovett’s antique tinted glasses. The amorous aura that Bonham Carter generates for the both of them makes the irony of the central horror all the more lethal. Depp’s eyes overflow with romantic agony while he dispatches one unlucky customer after another, waiting for the judge to take his seat; Burton spells out the gap between Todd’s self-justification and his atrocities in spattered blood that rivals the climactic gore-fest in Kurosawa’s classic samurai film Sanjuro. The cannibalistic black comedy of Mrs. Lovett’s surging meat-pie business keeps the comedy percolating, too. So does Sacha Baron Cohen’s preening peacock of a barber, Pirelli. And when it comes to heartache, we get Edward Sanders as Tobias, singing “Not While I’m Around” with a full heart and innate decorum that bring tears to our eyes as well as Mrs. Lovett’s. Of course, she’s crying partly because she reckons she has to murder him. Burton, Depp and Bonham Carter turn Sweeney Todd into the damndest thing: a warped dream of domestic bliss that leaves you horrified and inconsolable. It’s the opposite number to Burton’s near-great family drama Big Fish. The big fish here are puffed-up public figures or insane romantics, and they end up sliced and diced.” The only caveat I can add to this is “it ain’t no Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.” If you are unfamiliar with Sondheim, then you will immediately be offended by music that seems dissonant. His musical scores are intricate and finely tuned, but not for the timid ear. You have to listen carefully to the lyrics as they are often full of content. Look for lingering themes to reoccur with different words. I find his music grating to the ear and can tell you that must master the performance of his music must have a very good ear and perfect pitch. You will not be able to take away any real “hummable” tunes and in fact most will not be memorable. Probably the most lyrical piece in the whole compendium is “Joanna,” which does recur a couple of times. This movie also shows quite explicitly the overlooked versatility of Johnny Depp. I guess he just doesn’t click with the Hollywood set because he is not associated with scandalous behavior like most of the other bohemians. Personally, I would have preferred a bit less darkness, a little less CGI scenery and might have kept Depp away from the Edward Scissorhands hairdo. Carter could have used a little less makeup under the eyes. But all in all, it has Tim Burton’s paw prints all over it and this truly was his finest 117 minutes. A must see, but not for the timid when the blood starts spurting. I am sure that parodies will soon appear on YouTube that rival “Cats in the Kettle” …. “Judge in the Pie” comes to mind. This movie could turn you into a vegetarian.

“For die-hard fans of the Fab Four — and anyone who was touched by the magic of the ’60s — the film is a strange, nostalgic, suitably outrageous ode to a very real revolution in consciousness.” – William Arnold, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

This is a very interesting and entertaining movie that is worth the experience just for the musical arrangements of 33 Beatles’ songs. As one who was coming of age in that era – with the draft, Viet Nam, and student rebellion and protest – this is a nostalgic journey back through time. In fact that essentially sums up the basic story line. A 20 something blue collar Brit comes to America to locate his Father who had had an affair with his Mother leaving her with a child in the oven. Unfortunately Pop is a Janitor at Princeton. While there he runs into a “Richie Rich” type and they establish a friendship that results in our Brit attending the typical dysfunctional upper class Thanksgiving dinner where he meets the sister. Of course our college boy has no ambition and as a result goes on an extended road trip to the Village in NYC taking along his new found friend. The sister soon follows, a love relationship ensues, she becomes politically active, brother gets drafted, and our illegal alien Brit is an artistic pacifist.

It’s a loosely bound plot. More a menagerie of music videos than story lines. Very well done and the arrangements are by far more superior than the originals – from a musical standpoint. This ain’t rock and roll, it is a compendium of functional lyrics set to real music – probably more suited now to those who grew up in that era and are becoming more placid and traditional.

Although this is a 2 hour and 11 minute movie, it actually goes too fast. It is definitely worth the price of admission just to hear the arrangement of “Let it Be” and the accompanying video clips.

A great stroll down memory lane and actually a pretty good overview of the attitude and mores of late 60’s and early 70’s.

This lengthy movie is base on a true story. A very good overview has been published in Men’s Journal online and I will give you excerpts here to review the storyline: “

Fifteen years after an enigmatic 24-year-old walked Into the Wild, the site of his death has become a shrine. As Hollywood weighs in with a portrait of the young man as a saintlike visionary, has the truth been lost? Inside the strange life and tragic death of “Alexander Supertramp.” –Matthew Power

“Fifteen years have passed: 15 howling Alaska winters and 15 brief frenzied summers, and the ancient bus on the Stampede Trail still rusts in the wilderness, almost exactly as Chris McCandless left it. Twenty-two miles from the nearest road, shaded out by alder and black spruce on a moraine rise above a creek, the green and white WWII-vintage International Harvester looks surreally out of place, like an artifact from a vanished civilization. The bus doesn’t at first seem a likely time capsule of American mythology, a shrine to which people from around the world make pilgrimages and leave tributes in memory of a young man whom they see as a fallen hero. It doesn’t look to be the sort of place that would inspire a best-selling book, much less a major motion picture. But that’s exactly what it is. Fireweed and wild potato grow up in the wheel wells. On the side of the bus fairbanks 142 is still legible in paint that has been bleached and scoured by the seasons. A few bullet holes have starred the windows; whether they were fired out of anger or boredom is unclear. Other than that, the people who have made the trek out here, out of respect or superstition, have left the site largely untouched. The vertebrae of the young moose McCandless shot lie scattered. The bones, and a smattering of feathers, add to the spooky aura of a charnel ground. Inside, near an old oil-barrel stove, McCandless’s jeans are neatly folded on a shelf, knees patched with scraps of an old army blanket, seat patched with duct tape. And the bed is still there too, springs and stuffing bursting from the stained mattress, as if a wild animal’s been at it. The same bed where they found his body. It was a haunting tale, capturing the imagination of the country. September 1992, deep in the bush of the Alaskan interior northeast of Mount McKinley, in an abandoned bus on a disused mining trail, the decomposed body of a man was found by a moose hunter. The remains weighed only 67 pounds, and he had apparently died of starvation. He carried no identification, but a few rolls of undeveloped film and a cryptic journal chronicled a horrifying descent into sickness and slow death after 112 days alone in the wilderness. When the man’s identity was established, the puzzle only deepened. His name was Chris McCandless, a 24-year-old honors graduate from Emory University, star athlete, and beloved brother and son from a wealthy but dysfunctional East Coast family. With a head full of Jack London and Thoreau, McCandless rechristened himself “Alexander Supertramp,” cut all ties with his family, gave his trust fund to charity, and embarked on a two-year odyssey that brought him to Alaska, that mystic repository of American notions of wilderness, a blank spot on the map where he could test the limits of his wits and endurance. Setting off with little more than a .22 caliber rifle and a 10-pound bag of rice, McCandless hoped to find his true self by renouncing society and living off the land. But, as Craig Medred would note in the Anchorage Daily News, “the Alaska wilderness is a good place to test yourself. The Alaska wilderness is a bad place to find yourself.” No one ever saw McCandless alive again. Fifteen years later his story continues to resonate as a quintessentially American tale, and its hero has assumed near mythic status, blurring the lines between living memory and the creation of a legend. When writer Jon Krakauer first heard McCandless’s story, he later told a reporter, “the hair on my neck rose.” Krakauer’s profound empathy for his subject and obsessive research yielded Into the Wild, a heartbreaking portrait that has sold more than 2 million copies and become the authoritative version of the McCandless story, around which all discussions are framed. In Krakauer’s telling, McCandless represents the human urge to push the limits of experience, to live a life untouched by the trappings of culture and civilization. Now that portrait has been taken up by the ultimate mythologizer: Hollywood. This film was written and directed by Sean Penn and filmed on location in the many places McCandless traveled. Woven through with the timeless themes of self-invention, risk, and our complex relationship to the natural world, the enigma of Chris McCandless is once again being debated, more vociferously than ever. Was his death a Shakespearean tragedy or a pitch-black comedy of errors? What impact has the tale and its renown had on our perception of Alaska? And perhaps most tantalizingly: Did Krakauer, and now Penn, get key parts of the story wrong? ” This is a short summary compared to the 2 hour and 38 minute film. It was a haunting movie – even when you already knew the outcome. It was a sad movie because of the outcome. This is another one of those movies that makes you think. I came away conflicted. I appreciated that this young millenial student rejected his calling to be narcissistic and unproductive and struck out to find the meaning of life. Dramatized in the end is the true essence of reality in that we cannot successfully get through this world alone. We may reject the world but we should not reject human relationships. Many questions could be raised about why he didn’t look for an alternative way to cross the river and get back to society after he had survived the worst of the Alaskan Winter. Why did he not get more prepared in wilderness survival? Did he become mentally unbalanced as a result of the isolation from people or was he really potentially schizophrenic? Did he really not want to go back to civilization after he had accomplished his goal and simply gave up? One could attempt to psychoanalyze for decades but we will never have the real answer. What are the great lessons learned here? Part of happiness in living comes from the interpersonal relationships with other human organisms. Some solitude is often necessary so that we can listen to that still small voice by whatever name you want to call it. And, there can be joy in life without “stuff.” The bottom line is one must know their limits and everything must be done in moderation. See the movie. I would suspect it will speak to you. Maybe not the same way it did to me or to anyone else for that matter. I do think it speaks to us at whatever place we are in our journey of life. And like anything else, too many movies like this can be hazardous to your mental health. We all need a little slap-stick humor, vampire horror, gratuitous violence, and film noir drama from time to time.