Tag: review

The Artist has already picked up several Golden Globe nominations and will probably pick up more for the Oscars. You wouldn’t think a silent, black and white movie, in 4:3 aspect would garner this much accolades. You would be wrong. Just watch and try to hate it. You can’t. The packed house at The Charles the afternoon I saw it applauded in the end. It captivates. You won’t have another experience like it in the theatres for ages.

So why did I not warm up to it during the early parts of it? Was it the conceit was very twee? Was it that it felt too cute by half? Was it that I was analyzing it too much for its cinematic references? For its technical feats? For its historic accuracy? For its reasoning for being? For why I wasn’t smitten with it? No idea why I reacted funnily in its early going, but when they referenced Citizen Kane, I perked up and began to enjoy the movie. Then I was wholly charmed once I recognized Bernard Hermann’s score for Vertigo that underscored the rush to love at the end. The music put a big, big smile on my face, and it may have pushed the movie to being the best I’ve seen this year (as short as it has been).

The Artist is about George Valentin, a suave actor in swashbuckling silent films. It is 1927 and talkies are on their way, but Valentin doesn’t want to star in talkies. The audience came to see him rather than hear him. In promoting his latest film, he bumps into Peppy Miller. She gets captured in photos by the paparazzi. She enjoys it so much she auditions for a minor role in a movie. Her career is in bloom. She’s on the way to becoming a star of the early talkies. He’s on his way to becoming a forgotten, forlorn actor. His career fades and brings him to dispair. Only Peppy stands in his way of faded glory.

I’m a big fan of classic cinema, and The Artist was all about the old movies. I saw in the film many other classic movies. There was Singing in the Rain and Citizen Kane. There was L’Illusionniste (I know it’s recent, but I had the same French feeling) and Vertigo. The dog was straight out of the Thin Man series. It doesn’t necessarily harken back to silent movie’s like Hugo did, but it recalls classic early cinema.

Being a silent film, the actors had to mug it. Whereas Jean Dujardin plays the main character as a ham, Bérénice Bejo is sweet and sincere as the woman who falls for The Artist. I can’t express how smitten I was with her. She’s absolutely enchanting to look at in this film. She enhances the watching experience.

I think I can watch this film again.

4 of 5 stars.

I find my reaction to Young Adult similar to how I felt about Bad Teacher, but without the extreme revulsion. I was puzzled by the main character. I couldn’t like her. She was a nasty person, yet I still don’t know if I liked the movie or not.

Young Adult stars Charlize Theron at her most ugliest. Her character was described as a “psycho, prom queen bitch,” which is an appropriate appellation for her. It succinctly describes her personality. She’s believes her life to be stuck in neutral — divorced, work life as an author coming to a sad end. She needs to live, and she chooses to try and relive her past by going back home to small town Minnesota and steal her old boyfriend back. He has a new baby, but that doesn’t stop her. While in town, she bumps into an old classmate played by Patton Oswalt, who was horribly scarred in a bad beating during high school. They make a pair as she finds a person who is as damaged as she is. Eventually, the week at home unravels in a big embarrassing scene. She confronts her ex, and he pities her. She runs to her friend for comfort and finds that she should embrace her bitchiness.

I’m not sure if I should be happy or not that she goes back to being big city girl. She broke the grip of nostalgia, but embraced being bad. She is a psycho prom queen bitch.

Theron makes for the perfect psycho, prom queen, bitch. She can do haughty, that look in her eyes and her ice queen beauty, equates to crazy. Oswalt is his usual alternative, hipster, cool guy, geek guy self. Patrick Wilson as the former boyfriend makes due as a slightly clueless, hickish dude, who loves his wife, but doesn’t know what he got himself into with his former flame.

The film was a Jason Reitman film from a Cody Diablo script. I couldn’t tell. It missed the glib hiptserism of their previous collaboration, Juno.

I can’t say I liked the movie, but I can say I didn’t hate it.

3 of 5 stars

As I came home from watching Hugo, I had come up with a nice way of getting into the review. But now, in the light of day, I can’t remember the hook. That’s unfortunate as I think it was gonna be a good intro that would’ve made me set up this review well and forced me to write with a better, even tone.

Hugo is about a young orphan living in one of the train stations of Paris, spending the day dodging Jean Girard, and winding the multitude of clocks of the station. He’s the son of a tinkerer who had found a windup doll in the museum which he planned to fix before his death. Hugo takes it upon himself to finish his father’s work by attempting to fix the mechanical doll. The tasks leads him to steal gears and springs from the toy shop in the station the proprietor of which carries the biggest surprise of the movie.

For the early part of the film, I was slightly bored. Hugo’s story was slow in unravelling and slightly uninteresting. It was another story about poor orphan looking for a sign his father loved him. Why am I watching this?

Hugo does finish the mechanical doll. He winds it up and lets it write the message he thought his father had left him, but instead of the trite fatherly pablum, the mechanical doll draws something whimsical, a scene by George Melies signed by Melies. This changes the movie to being about something more magical, movies.

And here’s where I remember what I was gonna write for the intro. In my former life, I had studied film and with it an introduction to then history of film. We got to see Melies, Lloyd, and Buster Keaton. Their films are as important to the history of film as they were integral to this movie especially Melies. His Voyage to the Moon is amazing and that said it made Hugo slightly worth it.

Melies makes this film for me. As he tells his tale of his life, the movie broadens up to being a tribute to a master storyteller. The tale of Hugo is the tale of finding something to fix. Hugo didn’t have to fix the mechanical doll. He had to fix history so that it remembers Melies. He had to fix Melies so that he remembers the magic. Movies are magic.

3 of 5 stars

Notes on the film: I miss the sound of the projector. Ben Kingsley in a good movie? Who would’ve thought?! Sacha Baron Cohen throwing out another one of his insane characters. I thought he should’ve been Inspector Clouseau. I was reminded of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. For French people, they speak with a British accent.

As I watched J. Edgar, I wondered what hack directed this film. The tone seemed all wrong — it felt campy. Leonardo was bombastic. The makeup looked horrendous. What hack would do this on a biopic?

Clint Eastwood. Wow. I couldn’t believe it.

It’s another strange effort by Eastwood.

He makes the old people look like Charles Foster Kane. He let Leonardo chew some scenery.

2 of 5 stars.

In the middle of watching the morning showing of In Time at the local cinerama, the bulb on the projector went out. We sat and waited for them to replace the bulb. It took 15 minutes. That and the two hours of the movie I won’t get back. It brings me closer to death.

The story is about a future world wherein you don’t age after you are 25, but you only have 1 year of life left. You gain more time by working. There are the rich in time who have years and decades and there are the 99% who live day to day, hour to hour, and minute to minute. Justin Timberlake lives moment to moment. His mom is the hot Olivia Wilde. Because of her, he becomes the Time Robin Hood. He gives time from the rich to the poor. Amanda Seyfried was a bored rich girl who fell in with Justin. They become Bonnie and Clyde of the Seconds. They’ll give you the time of day.

Does that sound exciting? It does to a bit, but after a while it got boring. The idea of the time clock was intriguing the time heists not so much. They should’ve stuck with the time idea. What do you do to gain another second of life? The difference between time poor and time rich? Explore these ideas. Don’t fall back into the cliché of good bad. It feels fake.

I wish I could get back that 2 hours and 15 minutes.

2 of 5 stars.

All you need to know about The Three Musketeers (2011) is that Milla Jovovich stars as Mlle de Winter. She’s the muse to Paul WS Anderson as she has starred in lots of his movies mostly Resident Evil. You could’ve told me that this was directed by Pitof or even Kurt Wimmer of Ultraviolet infamy as the movie progressed it had that campy feel of the worst of the worst films of this past decade. Yet, it didn’t sink towards Uwe Boll infamy because it was campy enough to entertain, and that’s all we want from a movie — entertainment.

The movie had structural similarities to the Dumas book. Besides Milady de Winter, you had the cardinal, the 3 musketeers, the Buckingham and d’Artagnan. De Winter schemes with the Cardinal. The 3 musketeers befriend d’Artagnan. Those are the similarities. The rest of the plot could’ve, but could not be from the book. Sky ships! De Winter as a ninja?! The fat guy? Was this in the book?

Yet it was all fun. Pure entertainment. Like a resident evil, but better as things weren’t as hokie. Campy but never dumb. Stupid but never retarded. Almost, almost straight from the mind of Dumas, but twisted into a steam punk novel. Ridiculous, but entertaining.

So the changes got me thinking about the original novel. I bet you the original serializations were treated as campy fun as well. Pure entertainment. Now we have to wait for the next installment.

3 of 5 stars