Tag: review

If you have to see a movie with Natalie Portman doing the dirty, make it No Strings Attached rather than Black Swan. She enjoys the sex much better in No Strings Attached. You will enjoy her too as this movie gives you a chance to catch multiple glimpses of Natalie Portman skin. Not that I was looking.

In No Strings Attached, Portman plays the man role in a rom-com. She’s the one who is non-committal. Ashton Kutcher plays the girl role smitten from the beginning waiting for the right man to commit. They make for a refreshing rom-com couple. Ivan Reitman directs a script written by Elizabeth Meriwether, a woman, and he comes back with a solid effort than makes you forget his past couple of stinkers. It was the script that makes the movie.

I laughed throughout. I almost cried, but knew that this was where it was going to end. I wanted to see these two get together because I was rooting for love. I always root for love, but I don’t mind all the fun sex that lead them to love.

It’s deserving of a much higher ranking.

3 of 5 stars.

The King’s Speech tells the fascinating tale of Young Prince Albert who became King George VI father to Her Royal Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. He stutters which is not good for aspiring to be King. Yet, it is hinted that his stuttering is because he doesn’t want to be King. Guy Pearce even doesn’t want to be King, and he wishes that he wouldn’t become King replacing Dumbledore. So he abdicates to sleep with that harpie from the colonies. Prince Albert assumes the kingship and must be regal. Will his speech impediment hinder him?

This movie is the story of Albert trying to live up to being royalty and to meet the challenges of the changing world. It follows his relationship with the speech therapist, Lionel Logue. The Prince wants a cure. The therapist wants the Prince to be true to himself and act as kingly as possible. They clash in styles. High-low. Commoner-king. Teacher-student. Patient-doctor.

The reluctance of the Prince to take on the mantle of the heir apparent manifests in his stuttering. The pressure is great on him. He must be great and rise up to the challenges that were facing England and the world in 1930s. The weight of the world is on the stuttering fool. He will recover with the help of the speech therapist.

I liked it. I liked that it was something in the Prince to overcome: being afraid. I liked Geoffery Rush as the Prince’s speech therapist. His character didn’t care if it was the King he was helping. They were all of the same caste. I guess it takes an Australian to not be too concerned for the social station.

I also liked the fact that Helena Bonham Carter acted. You forget that she can because she’s always directed to be over the top. As Queen mother, she is the rock base for the Prince. She loves him and wants him to be as good, as great, as she believes him to be. The love helps him. Bonham Carter makes it believable. Dial her down a notch and she becomes watchable.

You know this rating is going to bite me next January, but I really dug this film while watching it. Very well told story, good acting, and clear direction. It’s been some time that I’ve doled out the max, so here it is. Because it is all true.

5 of 5 stars

Black Swan is a cautionary tale for the creative types. If you seek perfection in what you do, the rigid regimen may leave you vulnerable. You can’t really play wild because it requires you to let go and be rather than act. Of course this could be dangerous as this throws all logic out the window and you’ll go crazy. Just ask Natalie Portman.

Her character can’t be perfect to play the black swan. It tears her up inside trying to find perfection in the flawed. Then it tears her up literally in order to find that spark of inspiration to be the black swan.

This movie pretty much writes itself once you know the players. In fact, I knew even before what was going to happen once you hear about Swan Lake. Portman is the quiet, mousy type who’s talented but vulnerable. Her mother, Barbara Hershey, lords over her as only a tyrannical stage mother can. The French ballet dude lords over her too making her a new star to take the place of the aging Winona Ryder. Mila Kunis comes in as the doppleganger who could be her rival and/or her lover.

I liked that Winona represented the old guard. You have the millenium generation’s ingenue replace gen-x’s gamine. Very symbolic. And lots of this movie made use of symbolic things. Swan Lake with the white swan-black swan. Old versus new. Darkness versus light. Perfection versus intuition.

One last thing, that scene, you know that scene, was pretty hot. Filmed like a nice porno. And don’t masturbate if your moms sleeping in the same room!

3 of 5 stars

I heard that Christmas day is one of the days in which people watch a lot of movies at the theatre. Although, we caught it on the day after,True Grit (2010) was our Christmas movie. And while it wasn’t packed at all, it was more people than I expected given that a snow storm was coming and the movie was a Coen brothers film.

Ahh, Coens! Their last film was serious so this one has to be a comedy. You wouldn’t know it from the commercials that play up the fact that this is a western. And you wouldn’t know it that the last time the book was filmed, it had John Wayne in his only Oscar winning role as Rooster Cogburn, one of the protagonists. Jeff Bridges will make you forget John Wayne. But not The Dude.

The young lady playing the lead is pretty good. She would get an Oscar nomination if she wasn’t the lead but the supporting actress. She was good. Very serious as a character and whose seriousness brings out some of the hilarity of her situation.

Jeff Bridges is good too. Somewhat dudish, but only in some of his locution as he sounded more like the dude than a old-timey US Marshall.

I liked the movie for the simple fact that it was funny at times. It made watching it during my Christmas break enjoyable, and the mirth in the movie overshadowed some of the more gruesome parts of the story. It was good enough for 2 young kids to watch as well, as long as they don’t mind the dialog.

3 of 5 stars.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 opened while I was on the Hawaiian vacation and I couldn’t leave paradise for the three hours it takes for this movie to finish. And after three hours, there is still probably another 3 hours to come.

The problem with the later Harry Potter films (the Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince, and Deathly Hallows) is the novels. The books after Goblet of Fire had a lot of exposition of when, where, and why of Voldemort that needed to be explained. Reading of such is a more natural experience with the story and history of Voldemort. Unfortunately, the last few films tried to condense these stories into two and a half hour movies. Plot points were lost and sacrificed for the sake of movie telling. Threads that made sense in words didn’t when filmed, because of the missing information.

The Deathly Hallows novel gets the privilege of getting stretched out to two films so that all its information can be filmed. And this part was two and a half hours long but got through about two thirds of the book. Yet, the early part of this book was nothing but Hermione, Harry, and Ron wandering the wilderness. They were supposed to find Horcruxes, but did a terrible job at it. So did, Rowling as she just abandoned that thread to get to the ultimate battle.

I thought they could’ve gotten rid of the wilderness parts, but upon re-reading the book, it needed to be fully fleshed out so that the story can continue unabated.

These last few Harry Potter films have been slightly confusing because of all the exposition. This one isn’t, but I can’t wait for the second half.

3 of 5 stars.

Before the spooks come out, let’s put down my thoughts about Clint Eastwood’s latest cinema effort, Hereafter. Appropriately released close to Halloween, it is a movie about living with the dead that is how we, the living, approach death, dying, and the dead, and how we think about the afterlife. If we think about it at all.

I’m amazed that Eastwood played it straight. He cast no judgement against any of our beliefs be it for an afterlife or not. Even he didn’t make judgement on those who believed or didn’t believe in communicating with the dead. Straight, right? The movie states that there is something after death.

And you can talk to them. Can we? Eastwood plays it straight and let’s Damon actually communicate with the dead. Then throws us a curve and in a crucial moment, makes it seem like he didn’t. Did he? Hmm.

It was an alright movie. Not creepy. But nice to know. It’s a pragmatic film about what could happen after death.

3 of 5 stars.

The Social Network purports to describe the rise of Facebook. You’ll wonder how much is real and how much is made up in order to expedite telling the story. Then you’ll wonder at the digital technology that made one person into two — Lindsay Lohan eat your heart out.

The Social Network starts off with pure Aaron Sorkin dialogue. The banter between Mark Zuckerberg (not Michael Cera) and his soon to be ex-girlfriend would give clues to why he builds Facebook. They talk in multiple threads, and if you aren’t quick enough you’ll get lost in which they are talking about. She hates it, so do I. Eventually, I start to understand what they’re talking about, and what’s happening. It sets up the break up which as the movie unwinds is what ultimately was the impetus: LOVE and women.

He’s a social misfit. Awkward when he interacts because he’s in his own world. He can program a website, but he can’t make friends. Ironic that he created the one website wherein friending is the unit of exchange. Then the true psychopath shows up in Shawn Parker. Paranoid and fast talker he pushes to the max being a social misfit. Parties and girls. Girls and parties. Trouble follows him. I recognize these type of geeks. Driven by their own ambition but can’t really express it.

I was pretty geeked out when they did the geek stuff. I also recognized some of the old high-flying dot com days from my own days of yore.

4 of 5 stars.