Tag: review

Atonement is the Pulp Fiction for the Masterpiece Theatre set. No it’s not violent, but it tells its story in a non-linear fashion.

Set in England some years before WWII, we start with a young writer finishing her first play inviting the stable boy to the play. Her crush on him will be important as it leads her to do malicious and damaging things. He and her sister are really in love. Of course, we know it’s doomed. She sees them at the fountain only part of a scene. She misinterprets it. Then we go back to see the reality of the scene. The audience knows more than the characters and at each turn, the audience feels like shouting out to stop the madness. “That’s not what happened.” He gives the sister the wrong letter. She reads its and again misinterprets it leading to major trouble. Skip a few years to the war and he’s trying to get home. The sister is now estranged from her family and is a nurse in London. She too becomes a nurse, but still writing. The writing of her autobiography goes on. She taps it out on the typewriter.

While somewhat pretentious (it yearns for an Oscar), I liked the fact that I had to think and concentrate on some of the story. While not outright great, it was a good watch.

3 of 5 stars.

Walk Hard: Dewey CoxOriginally, I would not have wanted to watch this flick. They posted the first ten minutes of it online. I watched it and came away bored. How can we think this mock biopic is any good when the last spoof movies, Date Movie and Epic Movie, have killed the genre? Can the current golden boy of comedy, Judd Apatow, continue his run of comic films? The answer is no and no. So, I wonder why I went to see the movie anyway.Dewey Cox is ably played by Reilly. He makes the perfect clueless singer. The movie's one sheet of him spoofing the iconic Jim Morrison portrait is the best thing from this movie. The songs are fun also.Walk Hard follows the conventions of the biopic. The early struggles of the young Dewey Cox trying to live up to his dead brother's image and to be a better man than his dad thinks he is. The film moves onto the early career success with a naïve Dewey Cox meeting the King in the film's funniest moment. Rock'N'Roll always included sex and drugs, and it is in finding the drugs to go with the music does the film become a little more funny. Dewey meets The Beatles in India. Jack Black as Paul, Paul Rudd as John, Justin Long as George Harrison, and Jason Shwartzman as Ringo are hilarious. The second best cameo of the film. Jenna Fischer enters the scene after Dewey Cox delivers a cocaine fueled, hardcore version of Walk Hard and promptly adds the sex to the mix. She plays the June Carter Cash role to give Dewey the soulmate he's meant to have. The film then portrays the middling, pathetic side of his fame and it veers off into a bad, boring movie.I've always though Apatow's movies are 30 minutes too long. He seems to want to put a lot in the films he does. Surprisingly, this film ran about 90 minutes. It still felt too long.2 of 5 stars.

Juno

While waiting away the holidays, what’s better than to catch a movie?

So I bought a ticket and caught this by myself. Except the theatre was full. The PG-13 rating meant that this was guaranteed to be an audience of highschool and college kids. The rough outlines of the ad campaign makes it a hipper than thou movie, and you couldn’t have more of the hip crowd in this theatre. And it was packed.

So the movie’s plot is the standard fare of teenage pregnancy. Girl is pregnant unexpectedly. Girl thinks abortion. Girl decides to go through with pregnancy. Girl decides for adoption of the child. Girl gives birth. Girl goes through with a life changing experience while the father is stone stupid.

That girl was Ellen Page who rightfully steal the show. Although she was too cute. She’s so hip she finds the Melvins as losers. She was like “punk’s not dead!” when I am a punk rocker!! She was like “I pity you and your 90s grunge!” when I am a punk rocker!! She was funny. The dialogue gets a lot of praise, but it’s too cute and showy to be more than a female Tarantino attack.

The best line though: “Sonic Youth is nothing but noise!” Hear! Hear!

Overall, good movie. Indie feel by way of the calculating studios. I expected something more.

Last scene was the best. You’ll be hearing that song played by alt rockers from hear to eternity.

3 of 5 stars.

I Am Legend is the tale of the last man on earth. That man is Will Smith.

The best parts of this film were the quiet, abandoned, alone scenes of Will Smith in the empty streets of New York. The weakest were the shoe-horning in flashbacks that tried to put pain to Will Smith’s loss. I liked the foreboding and could’ve used less of the past.

The final thirty minutes devolve into standard action fare. It could’ve been better.

Creepy and fun.

4 of 5 stars.

Up until this weekend, I have only seen two Coen brothers films in the theatre, Fargo and The Ladykillers. Now make it a third. No Country For Old Men has been getting tons of praise by critics. It was in the running for the Palme d’Or at Cannes. The buzz coming from there this summer was that this is a return to Coens as master filmmakers after their less than appreciated The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty, their last two films.

Based off a Cormac McCarthy novel, No Country For Old Men, is a chase film. Josh Brolin is the hunted, a hunter who stumbles upon the aftermath of a drug deal gone bad and stumbles upon a nice tidy sum of cash. Javier Bardem is after Brolin. Like the Terminator or Jason, nothing stops him from finishing a task he’s started unless that something is a toss of coin an idea of his that fate governs us all. Tommy Lee Johns is after the both of them to recover the loot, to stop the monster, and to save the unworthy.

As with most Coen films, it’ll take me a while to figure out if I appreciated the film. I don’t think I got the gist of the film in this one sitting. Except for Blood Simple and Hudsucker Proxy, my favorites, I watched the Coen films and marvel at their droll artistry. I get that. Yet, they always leave me thinking, “there’s something more there.” After seeing this, I felt like I had watched Fargo again, and it was all a big, “Hunh?!”

There is evil in the world. You can’t stop it. It is fate that will bring it to you. These times are not for those who still have the old notions of good and bad. You may adjust, but do you want to.

3 of 5 stars.

Blade Runner has many different prints out there one for tv, the original theatrical release, the 1991 so-called “director’s cut,” and now the 2007 so-called “director’s cut” or Final Cut.

Caught this at the new Landmark theatres in downtown Bmore. It’s a digital theatre chain specializing in digital projection. It’s just like your projection style home theatre system but with a 60 ft screen.

Blade Runner is a classic. What more can be said? It’s slow pace drives you loopy, but that’s what’s cool about it. Considering all the movies that descended from this one, it’s amazing how slow the pace is. No frenetic here.

4 of 5 stars.