Tag: review

Defiance is about a group of Russian jews that hid out in the forest during WWII defying Hitler’s extermination scheme.

I don’t have too much to say on this movie.

Watch it because it tells some sort of historical tale of heroes doing things to make it through terrible times. Don’t watch it because it is non-descript and will leave your memory once you leave the theatre.

3 of 5 stars.

I must apologize as to how late this post on Gran Torino has been. It’s not like I didn’t know what to say, and it’s not like I forgot. I’ve just not gotten around to writing up my thoughts on this film. Yet, I’ve seen another movie since then, and my queue of movie reviews must be serviced, so here comes the Gran Torino review as seen from a few weeks back.

Clint Eastwood takes his Dirty Harry character to its end: living in the run down neighborhood surrounded by dirty foreigners. He just hates everyone. How do you know? He says it constantly. “Get off my lawn!” His catchphrase in this movie. It’s just like Grandpa Simpson.

Eastwood finally learns to like some of the dirty foreigners when he helps the Hmong family avoid a bunch of Hmong roughnecks. He watches out for the kid and the sister before he helps them finally be free of their problem.

They couldn’t act. Neither could Eastwood. It wasn’t a great movie. It was serviceable. I don’t ever want to see it again though.

2 of 5 stars.

The Spirit is a boring movie, because it does most of the storytelling via dialogue. That’s amazing considering the stylistics that Frank Miller, the director, infused on the screen. He’s trying to recapture his Sin City with a dash of 300. Of course The Spirit isn’t his comic, but the eponymous Eisner award nominee, Will Eisnter. Did Miller do well in doing the story in his style? No.

It is a fascinating movie in the worst way. How did they blow this one?

First, I could care less about The Spirit. The 30s isn’t a time that is intriguing at the moment especially in these dull economic times, but a superhero ain’t even better. Second, once again with the stilted dialogue. I read it on the page, it sounds much better in my head, and it’s not as lame as it is being said on screen. Third, who the hell is The Spirit? Gabriel Macht? I don’t even know how to spell his name. For all I know he could be the dude who played the rocketeer. Finally, too much CG green screen. Sadly, it don’t look cool anymore.

One thing about the movie though, it’s got an all star cast (the spirit aside). ScarJo, bad mofo, that latin girl, all couldn’t spark anything with their star power. ScarJo in glasses though and as a Nazi.

Don’t watch this ever.

2 of 5 stars.

I’m not really sure how to react to Doubt. Should I think that Meryl Streep’s Sister Aloysious is infallible or inflexible? Is Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Father Flynn guilty or innocent? Is Amy Adam’s Sister James ridiculously cute or hilariously naive? What was the point of all that?

I watched the movie and wondered is there a moral to this tale? Beyond the standard fare of pedophilia in the Catholic church, what was the intent of the movie? Sure Sister Aloysious could’ve been less of a stick in the mud, but is Father Flynn really guilty? It described the changes going on in the national character, and that in the face of it, you stick to your morals if you can stomach it. The story took place in the 60s, after the death of Kennedy, as civil rights took to the fore. It makes for a compelling milieu, if only I could care about it.

Sister Aloysious reminds me of the sisters at my Catholic grade school: stern and frightening in their anger. She made me laugh recognizing her character from my past.

3 of 5 stars

What’s so special about a dog? Marley & Me has the answer. Of course, all dogs in movies are special, and your dog is also special. Dogs in general are special except Cujo and that mutt of yours that shat and pissed everywhere in your house while tearing things up. Of course, that can also describe the adorable Marley.

It’s a movie of how a dog touched the lives of its owners as they grew from a couple to a family. You know how that works: meet cute, go over the good times, show the trouble with the dog, go over the bad times, the kids show up and overtake the dog, they grow up, they grow older, the dog grows older, the dog will die. Then the lights come up and the little girls behind you are sobbing their eyes out.

Dogs are special. This movie isn’t.

3 of 5 stars.

There’s a lot of fancy CG effects in The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons. There’s the site of a Brad Pitt growing younger as he ages. There’s a riveting attack on a German U-boat. There’s a wonderful, old-timey gag on lightning strikes. And there is Cate Blanchett — young and old.

There was the CG effects, and it dominated every scene of the movie to a point that I had to think about what wasn’t real and was. Then I thought about how they pulled that off. Did they put Brad Pitt’s head on a kid? A midget? Or was he completely built up as a CG model like Neo in the later Matrix films. The most intriguing CG was the your Cate Blanchett. How did they graft her face on that body so seamlessly? Or did they digitally stretch and shape her to look young and svelte?

The effects really got in the way of the story. It was a short story from F. Scott Fitzgerald, but was mainly written and adapted by the guy who did Forest Gump. It shows. Benjamin Button seemed to go from one thing to the next just as Forest did. So the story was rather meager. It was filled with love, but was so boring.

And it was long. The problem was that Brad Pitt is in his 40s and when he reached the look of his natural age, the movie was already two hours old. We followed that dude to the grave and it felt like it.

It also had an unfortunate framing device of the old Cate in the hospital dying and her daughter (Julia Ormand!!!!) reading Benjamin’s diary in New Orleans as hurricane Katrina bears down on them. You get too worried about the present to enjoy the past. I’m hoping Julia Ormand made it out of New Orleans to safety.

Just not that good and intriguing. A disappointment from Fincher (!) whose last film was very, very good.

2 of 5 stars.