Love Actually

Love Actually is very much a fun movie. Basically, the film explores different sorts of love between people: bonding between father and son, between siblings, pangs of love/lust between husband, wife, and the 'other woman', unrequited love, first love, thwarted love, rebounding love, and growing love between colleagues at work. Trying to trace just how every group of people followed through the movie is related to each other is also kind of fun. The funniest moments, for me, come between the *ahem* stand-ins and the widowed father and stepson.
On the DVD, check out the deleted scenes. For many movies these tend to be well-deserved cuts. I think they're much more interesting for this movie. The movie gets an A from me.

Hotel Rwanda

Hotel Rwanda is the story of Paul Rusesabagina's heroic effort to save more than 1200 refugees in the hotel he managed as Rwanda imploded in genocidal violence in 1994. Don Cheadle does a brilliant job portraying Rusesabagina, a Hutu, as he walks a thin line as he has to deal with the Rwandan army and the Hutu extremist militia Interahamwe while trying to protect the mostly Tutsi refugees (including his own wife, played by Sophie Okonedo) whose lives aren't worth a plug nickel to the Hutu militia and his hotel's, the Mille Colline, dignity.
The horror of the 3 month-long orgy of genocidal violence that left nearly a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus dead is brought home in several of the movie's sequences, particularly Rusesabagina's decision to tell his wife to jump with the kids off the hotel roof rather than suffer the machetes of the militia and the disturbing drive down the river road. The movie also highlights the nearly total inaction of the UN and western democracies as, at first, Rusesabagina optimistically hopes for rescue only to have his hopes dashed.
Hotel Rwanda has been compared to Schindler's List in its moral power as well as in the development of the principal character. While Rusesabagina always intended to save someone, his family, while Oskar Schindler mainly wanted to make a buck, both were prompted by the increasing madness around them to save as many people as they could because it was morally right to do so, even at their own risk (particularly acute in Rusesabagina's case since the Hutu militia was specifically targetting moderate Hutus as well as Tutsis). Hotel Rwanda doesn't take as close a look at the evils of the men carrying out the genocide as Schindler's List does, but then Hotel Rwanda is also 70 minutes shorter and so doesn't have the time to spend on it.

Overall, it's a powerful, disturbing, and emotional movie with excellent acting by Cheadle and Okonedo. I give the movie an A.

Scooby Doo

Bringing Scooby Doo from the cartoon to the silver screen seemed to me like a very bad idea and I fully expected it to be bad. In fact, I checked this out from the library to see if it really was as bad as everyone says it is. Well, it's bad, but I've seen worse. I was actually able to stomach this one all the way through, something I can't say for Batman and Robin (wherein AH-nold's acting is a bright spot in the movie in the role of Mr. Freeze) or Starsky and Hutch (which was just plain awkward rather than amusing).
The movie manages to capture some of the humor and feel of the original cartoons with Matthew Lillard doing a very impressive Shaggy impersonation. But much of the humor is kind of stilted and the movie breaks the convention (at least in the original cartoons) of the spooky stuff being verifiably unreal in the end. Among the funniest scenes are the true stories of what the gang has gone on to do since the acrimonious break up of the team and they ended up in the extras as deleted scenes.
I think the hands-down funniest moment is the Scrappy-Doo flashback.

Overall, I wouldn't give Scooby Doo a failing grade since it was watchable. I would, however, give it a D+ and probably hold it back for another year until it masters the material.

The Statement

The Statement stars Michael Caine as a French Nazi-collaborator responsible for turning in a bunch of Jews for execution when he was a member of a Vichy unit. He's pursued by the authorities, some shadowy group of assassins, and his own partly-suppressed guilt. The judge and military officer pursuing him have to contend with the Catholic Church that protects him as they try to bring him to justice before the assassins get him.
I found this to be a pretty interesting movie. A good diversion of a political/fugitive chase movie with a decent story and solid acting. A good solid B+.

Ladder 49

I n Ladder 49, Joaquin Phoenix stars as Jack Morrison, a firefighter trapped in a fire after the floor he's on collapses as he saves another man. As he lies injured and his comrades work to rescue him, his life as a firefighter unfolds as a series of flashbacks from his days as a rookie to 10-year veteran and family man. We see episodes of rookie hazing, his first fire, rescuing a couple of people, as well as the death of one good friend and the maiming of another.

As I was watching the movie, I couldn't help but feel how uncerebral the movie really is. While looking at the life of this firefighter, we never explore very deeply why he has followed the career path he has followed. We are just sort of shown what that path is, none the wiser about why. We hardly get into his or anybody else's heads. He mopes about the death of a friend, he clashes with his wife (woodenly played by Jacinda Barrett) but only barely since she barely shows any real strain of being married to someone who runs into buildings that other people are desperate to run out of.

There are decent performances by Phoenix and John Travolta and a few other actors, but they don't really carry the movie very far. The ending, unsurprisingly considering this comes after the 9/11 atrocity, is sort of a paean for firefighters everywhere and one of the few scenes with any significant emotional impact.

If you want to see a better movie about firefighters, even if it does revolve around a strange arson/murder plot, rent Backdraft. The action scenes are more spectacular, the texture of the movie's background is richer, and you even get into the firefighters' heads more in that movie than this one.

I will add that, fortuantely, the scene where the characters react to the 9/11 atrocity is cut and left as an extra on the DVD. The sentiments expressed in that scene are handled far more ham-handedly than in the ending of the movie. And I think the editors were well advised to steer clear of explicit references to that event.

Overall, I can't give the movie a rating higher than C+.

The Thomas Crown Affair

The Thomas Crown Affair, 1999 version, stars Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo. Smug rich guy who always wins meets and romances brash insurance investigator while working class cops bumble through the investigation of an art theft. Got tired of seeing the smug rich guy win. Wanted to take up arms in the class war to smash the machinery of capitalism.
I give the movie a D.

The Italian Job (1969)

The Italian Job stars Michael Caine. One of those movies that really is the epitome of the 1960s art and style, or at least encapsulates it. With stylish mafia, James Bond style carousing with the ladies, Cooper Minis, and a caper in Italy, it captures and distills the feel of 1960s cinema pretty well. The movie is significantly different from the 2003 remake starring Mark Wahlberg so don't watch it with any expectations of seeing the same general plot.
The 1969 version is a fun movie, overall. Caine's character, Charlie Croker, gets onto a well-planned job in Torino, Italy, involving $4 million in gold. Croker recruits the help of an imprisoned British gang boss (played by Noel Coward) for the resources to pull it off. Trouble is the mafia don't like Brits trying to pull off big jobs under their own noses in Italy.
The main point of similarity between the 1969 version and the 2003 version (which is also a fun movie to watch) is a chase involving Cooper Minis and driving them in the most unusual places (sewers, cathedral steps, on top of buildings, etc). The car chase is certainly innovative and highly entertaining.
I give the movie a B+.

Comic Book: the Movie

Comic Book: the Movie is directed by and stars Mark Hamill. This is something of a light mockumentary about how comic book fandom and the Hollywood movie industry meet. Hamill plays a comic book shop owner hired to act as an advisor for a studio making a movie based on his primary comic love: Commander Courage. They have given him a crew to document the announcement of the movie at that year's ComicCon in San Diego.
The movie is low budget but pretty fascinating. One of the more interesting aspects of it is that there are segments of the movie that are largely improv as they just walk about ComicCon, totally in character. It's a little less plain goofy than This is Spinal Tap but much of the humor is in the same vein and works quite well. I give the movie a B+.

The Passion of the Christ

Time to tackle a real controversial one: The Passion of the Christ

I'll preface this by saying that I'm an unbeliever, not very fond of religion in general, but love controversy and movies. So even though the subject matter isn't going to reach me like it will reach people who have faith, I don't see that as a prerequisite for evaluating this movie.

The Passion of course deals with the death of Jesus Christ, executed by the Romans nearly 2000 years ago. Being a passion story, it focuses on the suffering he went through including beatings, scourgings, crucifixion, and at least one stabbing. It definitely brings the subject matter home for the viewer to think about.

And I did like it. It was full of powerful emotion and some very nice visual touches. The Satan-character who floats through the crowd as Jesus hauls the cross through the streets of Jerusalem, the darkness in the garden when Jesus gets nicked by the temple guards, the flashes of sympathy you see in people's faces as they make eye contact with Mary as she witnesses her son's ordeal. All handled very nicely and with a great deal of emotional gravity. I have to hand it to Mel Gibson on the level of being able to tug at the viewer's emotions.

The movie is certainly not for the faint-hearted. I'm pretty jaded about movie violence in general. I wasn't particularly disturbed by the opening to Saving Private Ryan because I thought it was about time that we had an American-made WWII movie that didn't pull many punches on the awesome carnage inflicted by modern weaponry. I just sat back and enjoyed the ride. Well, the scourging scene in The Passion looked so realistic that I flinched, probably more than I've ever flinched at movie violence before.

As I prefaced, I'm no believer but it was hard not to identify with the characters since you become such a close witness of their experiences. One scene particularly struck me, probably because I'm a parent of small children. When Jesus first stumbles while dragging the implement of his own execution (how nice of the Romans to add such insult to injury), Mary flashes back to an event (totally artistic license, but that's fair game) in which a small-child Jesus stumbles and she runs to help him. That one really drove home to me that, regardless of why some individual is being tortured and executed, thoughout any period in history, he or she was once some mother's child. Again, it's that darn Mel Gibson hitting an emotional nerve and I was pulled right in.

Overall, I'd give the movie a strong B+. The only elements pulling it down are, I think, a little slow pacing at points and too much reliance on all of us already knowing the story. While there are flashbacks to the last couple days to help fill in gaps in knowledge and show how prophecies are being realized, I would have liked a little more insight into the motives of the forces calling for Jesus's blood to help explain why he went from being met with palms fronds one week to being crucified the next.
A fine film, worth seeing once, I doubt many people will have the endurance to view it more than once.

Mean Girls

I've seen this movie compared with Heathers with good reason. Both involve the main character and her relationship with the school's super-elite clique of backstabbing girls. Heathers takes a dark humorous, almost apocalyptic, look at the topic while Mean Girls takes a milder, more mundane approach. As a result, Heathers is more edgy and Mean Girls is a little more forgiving of the various transgressions characters make. Mean Girls also paints with a broader brush, implicating many more people in the activities and imitation of the core clique than Heathers.

That said, I laughed fairly often during Mean Girls, but not always at the main story. The supporting characters, including Tim Meadows as the principal Mr. Duvall and a supremely confident, rapping math geek named Kevin Gnapoor, are highly amusing without detracting from the main focus of the film. Some elements of the main story are predictable, but there are enough original ideas and humor sprinkled throughout the movie to keep my interest going.

I don’t think the movie is quite as uproariously funny as Heathers, but it's reasonably solid and worth the time spent watching it (checked out for free at the library, so the only cost to me was time). I'd give it a B.

Bubba Ho-tep

What would it be like to be Elvis hiding out in an old folks home, particularly when there's a horrible conspiracy going on? Bubba Ho-tep takes one tab at answering that question. I thought the pacing was kind of draggy but the interplay between Ossie Davis and Bruce Campbell as deranged (or at least partly deranged) old geezers was fantastic.
Overall, I'd give the movie a B.

Team America: World Police

I checked out Team America: World Police on DVD. I thought most of it was stupid. The satiric elements were mostly juvenile. Sure, there were several moments that got a chuckle out of me, but I can't rate the movie very highly. I think the best moments were the puppet sex (which was pretty original in its pornographic style) and Kim Jong Il singing about being lonely.
Personally, I think Parker and Stone are really only ON in their movies when it turns into a musical. I thought the only really tolerable parts of the South Park movie were the brilliant songs. The rest paled by comparison to the TV show.

But I digress. My grade for Team America is a C+.

Ned Kelly

Ned Kelly is a bio-pic about Australia's most famous outlaw starring Heath Ledger and Orlando Bloom. For a brief time in the last quarter of the 19th century, the Queen's authority was challenged by a band of 4 Irish descendents to the point that they had international news coverage and the largest bounty ever put on anybody's heads. But to the commoners of Australia, they were folk heroes (and remain so to this day).
The movie focuses on Ned's life after a brief run-in with the penal system as he tries to raise his family's fortunes. Unfortunately, in a case of police power unjustly applied, he and his brother and two friends end up on the lam. The coppers, of course, harshly lean on anyone who knows Ned and his status as folk hero is cemented.
I thought the portrayals of the characters were pretty good, although I think some scenes get played up a little too cheesily and over the top. Overall, Ledger and Bloom play their characters well, as does Geoffrey Rush, their greatest nemesis. I think the love interest is a bit superfluous as presented and they should have either done more with it or dispensed with it completely.
The extras on the DVD (including a brief bit on a version of the story starring a relatively young Mick Jagger) help explain the appeal of Ned Kelly and his place in Austrailan culture and I find that a nice touch.
Overall, I give the movie a solid B.

Kinsey

Kinsey is a bio-pic about Alfred Kinsey, controversial researcher in human sexual behavior. It focuses mostly on his adult life but with a few earlier elements that shed light on his relationship with his father and his own early repressed sexuality. The acting is top notch with Liam Neeson playing Kinsey very passionately as a dedicated if somewhat naïve scientist who has found his purpose in life, Laura Linney playing Kinsey's wife, and John Lithgow in a delightful turn as Kinsey's father.

The subject matter of the movie is very frank so if you're at all squeamish about people discussing sex casually or seeing a little nudity, then this movie isn't for you. But then again, it's the very prevalence of that squeamishness and a whole lot of ignorance about sexuality in the first half of the 20th Century that contributed to Kinsey's passion to explore human sexuality.

Anyway, I digress. The movie takes a historical figure who is both demonized and lionized in today's society and shows him in a very human light, covering both the good and the bad. And let's just say, if he actually gave his lectures on sexuality as they portray them in the movie, I can't imagine ever falling asleep in class.

I give the movie an A- because there were a few elements that I found myself wanting to learn more about, like more on his relationship with his kids.

Titus

Adapted from the play Titus Andronicus by some minor playright named Bill Shakespeare. Titus stars Anthony Hopkins as the Roman general title character. He brings hostages back from a successful campaign, ordering the eldest son of the defeated queen sacrificed. He then turns down the emperor's crown in favor of the last ruler's eldest, venal son Saturninus. The new emperor turns on loyal Titus over a spiteful demand for Titus's daughter (whom has already been betrothed to Saturninus's far nicer brother) and plots with the Goth queen Tamora (Jessica Lange) in her quest for revenge for her slain son. The body (and body part) count is high as the feud heats up until it is finally resolved over a nice dinner.
The visuals are both stark and stunning. The general décor is a sort of modern desolation. For those of you who like watching movie adaptations of Old Bill's works, it's quite entertaining and arresting. I'll give it an A- because it just isn't quite as compelling a play as some of his others (like MacBeth or Hamlet).

Velvet Goldmine

Velvet Goldmine takes a fictive look at 1970s glam rock and the sexual ambiguity of the musicians but really seems to boil down to one man's reminiscences of his own experience with the glam rock scene. Christian Bale, as Arthur Stuart, is a journalist tasked with writing a story about the onstage hoax murder of Brian Slade (played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), an event he witnessed at close quarters, on the tenth anniversary of the event. The hoax was Slade's way out of an onstage persona into which he felt cornered. The movie looks at Slade's history, his relationship with Iggy Popesque Curt Wild (played by Ewan McGregor), and, perhaps more strongly, at Stuart's own relationship with the musicians and the world they inhabited.

I thought it dragged a little about 3/4 of the way in but thought it was an otherwise decent movie. I'd give it a B-.

Into the Blue

I went to see Into the Blue based on surprisingly good reviews in the paper (and I had little else to do after a 12 hour shift on a business trip). Treasure hunting in the Caribbean goes awry when the divers discover a crashed plane loaded with cocaine. There are a few predictable moments, particularly from the brash dipstick lawyer friend (played by Scott Caan), but also plenty of unexpected turns to keep the movie from feeling like a stale action-adventure story. The film is beautifully shot and has Jessica Alba in a swimsuit... a lot.

I'm tempted to give it an A for that last part alone, but I'll take a cold shower and give it a strong B+.

40 Year Old Virgin

40 Year Old Virgin is definitely not a movie to take your kids to because of salty language, but also a hysterical film. I don't think I've laughed this loudly in a movie theater since Ghostbusters. The 40 year old virgin, played sympathetically by Steve Carell, inadvertently outs himself at a poker game with co-workers and they immediately embark on a program to get their reluctant friend laid. Very strange and funny things ensue from there including a trip to the salon for a chest waxing, a date with a woman who has a relationship with her showerhead, and a big old box of porn.

I definitely give this movie an A.

Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit

I'm a Wallace and Gromit fan from way back. Actually, I guess I'm also an Aardman fan dating back to when I saw Creature Comforts at an animation festival. Anyway, let's just say I'm a big fan.

I had been anticipating the release of this movie for years, ever since I first noticed it and bought up 50,000 shares on Hollywood Stock Exchange. I was a little worried that the slightly oddball subject of the movie might detract from it, after all, it's not often you see movies about cruelty-free lagomorph removal. But I needn't have worried.

Curse of the Were-Rabbit is delightfully funny. Special standout scenes and characters include the flying dogfight, the antics of the neighborhood rector, what Gromit does when he first gets a close-up view of the were-rabbit on a dark country road, and Wallace's decoy. Notice how I'm trying to avoid blatant spoilers here.

I think the movie actually gets off to a slow start but it's not long before it builds up steam in a properly hysterical way. There are plenty of wonderful jokes the just pop out at you in the visuals, something Nick Park proven pretty adept at in the past.

I give the movie an A-.

Why Movie Reviews?

I don't know really. I guess I just watch a lot of movies and am really opinionated. So why not hold forth on movies that I watch?