30 June - "There are no second chances here. This is the last chance house"

Double Jeopardy (1999)

dir. Bruce Beresford (Black Robe, 1991)

CAST

Tommy Lee Jones (Small Soldiers, 1998)
Ashley Judd (Flypaper, 2011)
Jay Brazeau (Watchmen, 2009)
Bruce Greenwood (Star Trek into Darkness, 2013)
John Maclaren (The Day After Tomorrow, 2004)
Annabeth Gish (Beautiful Girls, 1996)
Michael Gaston (Hackers, 1995)
Gillian Barber (Jumanji, 1995)
Daniel Lapaine (The 10th Kingdom (TV mini-series), 2000)
Roger R. Cross (The Day the Earth Stood Still, 2008)
Keegan Connor Tracy (White Noise, 2005)
Dave Hager (Lincoln, 2012)
Spencer Treat Clark (Gladiator, 2000)

Although the essential premise, that having been framed and convicted for the murder of her husband Ashley Judd as Elizabeth Parsons can now hunt down and execute her two-timing, death-faking husband without fear of legal repercussion, is inherently flawed (they could still charge her with a multitude of other offenses), the idea is still a fun one to explore. Double Jeopardy may be near the top of the list as far as my favorite movies go. Of course, that it is basically a female-driven version The Fugitive doesn't hurt, replete with Tommy Lee Jones' Travis Layman being essentially the same as his Lt. Samuel Gerard.

Ashley Judd lends her own flair, however, and adds herself to the delightful group of leading ladies who can reasonably pull of the character of a mom-who-kicks-ass. Tommy Lee Jones, in turn, complements but doesn't overshadow, and is totally comfortable in his familiar space of a crotchety official who gradually begins to believe in the mission of his adversary.

Also, when Parsons surprises her incognito husband at a bachelor auction: delightful!

29 June - "The bat's stubborn refusal to expire is driving us insane"

Batman Forever (1995)

dir. Joel Schumacher (Twelve, 2010)

CAST
Val Kilmer (Heat, 1995)
Tommy Lee Jones (Double Jeopardy, 1999)
Jim Carrey (Peggy Sue Got Married, 1986)
Nicole Kidman (The Golden Compass, 2007)
Drew Barrymore (Poison Ivy, 1992)
Chris O'Donnell (The Three Musketeers, 1993)
Rene Auberjonois (The Patriot, 2000)
Joe Grifasi (13 Going on 30, 2004)
Pat Hingle (Hang 'em High, 1968)
Kimberly Scott (Love and Other Drugs, 2010)
Debi Mazar (Collateral, 2004)
Michael Gough (Sleepy Hollow, 1999)
Jon Favreau (Iron Man 2, 2010)


Some will say that there's little to be gained in watching the '90s Batman franchise films, especially once Michael Keaton cut out of the picture, and while Batman Forever lacks the Tim Burtonyness of the earlier two films, it's still a delightful colorscape which balances the gloom and dourness of the perpetually distopian Gotham City with the neon light show of its villains, Tommy Lee Jones as Harvey Two-Face and Jim Carrey as The Riddler (also known as every Jim Carrey character from the '90s).

27 May - "Always count your bullets, senoritas"

Bandidas (2006)

dir. Joachim Rønning, Espen Sandberg

CAST
Penelope Cruz (All the Pretty Horses, 2000)
Salma Hayek (Desperado, 1995)
Steve Zahn (That Thing You Do! 1996)
Dwight Yoakam (Wedding Crashers, 2005)
Sam Shepard (Black Hawk Down, 2001)
Gary Carlos Cervantes (Scarface, 1983)
Joseph D. Reitman (Lady in the Water, 2006)
Daya Fernandez (Minority Report, 2002)

Bandidas is a comedy about two oversexualized Mexican women, one who is from a wealthy family and knows about archery and horseback riding and etiquette (Hayak), and one who is from a poor family and is rough-and-tumble (Cruz). At first they hate each other because Hayak is snooty and Cruz is ill-mannered, but when a land-baron has both of their fathers murdered, they team up and become friends instead. Steve Zahn plays a nerdy detective and although the ladies engage in a rivalry for his attention, he ends up with a white woman from the good ol' U.S.A. instead. This was an amusing movie, but it was also racist and sexist and it's important to acknowledge that sometimes we find ourselves amused for all of the wrong reasons.

1 April - "That wasn't one of my first instincts "

Law Abiding Citizen (2009)

dir. F. Gary Gray

CAST
Jamie Foxx - Toys (1992)
Garard Butler - The Ugly Truth (2009)
Colm Meaney - The Commitments (1991)
Bruce McGill - Elizabethtown (2005)
Leslie Bibb - Iron Man 2 (2010)
Michael Irby - Flightplan (2005)
Gregory Itzin - Adaptation. (2002)
Regina Hall - Danika (2006)
Christian Stolte - Stranger Than Fiction (2006)
Annie Corley - The Cider House Rules (1999)
Richard Portnow - Kindergarten Cop (1990)
Viola Davis - The Help (2011)
Michael Kelly - Did You Hear About the Morgans? (2009)
Dan Bittner - Adventureland (2009)
Brooke Stacy Mills - Hairspray (1988)
Brian Anthony Wilson - The Happening (2008)

I didn't like this movie at all. I don't even have anything good to say about it. It's about a guy who's wife and daughter are murdered, but through legal whateverness one of the guys who did it gets a light sentence because he cooperated with the rest of the investigation. The Gerard Butler character is so pissed off that he goes totally batshit crazy and orchestrates a complicated scheme to get back at the justice system. What I particularly dislike about this movie is not even the ambiguous morality, its the lack of a clear division between anti-hero and antagonist. My friend Cora clearly was in the anti-hero camp. She said that the point of the movie was to figure out how Gerard Butler was achieving these heinous murder-plots. I thought that was horrible to watch because most of the people that Butler's character killed were only tangentially related to the incident which pissed him off so much in the first place. He wasn't fighting for anything, and that made him a bad protagonist to root for. On the other hand, he makes a fatal error in the end and blows up, making Jamie Foxx the "winner" of the story and Butler the "loser." But even in that perspective I don't think any clear statement about the evils of either the justice system or the evils of vigilantism was made. And the grrrwehatecorruptlawyers trope induced in my the repulsive horror of what those ideas mean to people who really believe in them. Batman is pretty cool, but in the real world I don't condone vigilantes.You can't just go around killing people. Do I even have to say that?

The absence of a conflict resolution (was there even a conflict to begin with?) made me feel like I had only seen half of a movie. This wasn't a story, it was just a bunch of stuff that happens. I've seen movies about dudes with misdirected anger before, but Gerard Butler lacked the compelling interior logic of a character like Hannibal Lector. I say, if you're going to make an anti-hero, go all the way. It works for Dexter. But if you're going to waffle in-between you aren't going to accomplish anything meaningful.

26 Feb - "When I became a man, I put away childish things"

Hackers (1995)

dir. Iain Softley (K-PAX, 2001)

CAST
Jonny Lee Miller (Mansfield Park, 1999)
Angelina Jolie (Mojave Moon, 1996)
Jesse Bradford (Romeo + Juliet, 1996)
Matthew Lillard (Scream, 1996)
Laurence Mason (True Romance, 1996)
Renoly Santiago (Con Air, 1997)
Fisher Stevens (Short Circuit, 1986)
Alberta Watson (The Prince and Me, 2004)
Peter Y. Kim (Sex and the City, 2008)
Lorraine Bracco (Goodfellas, 1990)
Wendell Pierce (It Could Happen to You, 1994)
Michael Gaston (Double Jeopardy, 1999)

When my brother and I first saw The Matrix, he explained to me it's mass appeal. He said it was about computer nerds who were also super cool and totally badass. They have martial arts skills and guns and somehow all that doesn't interfere with the hours and hours they must spend coding and hacking and whatever. Hackers is the same deal. By any standard of reality, these guys ought to be mega-nerds, but instead thet're all sub-culturey and cool. This is even more obnoxious because while Angelina can pull off a convincing cyber-punk, the male lead looked like a high-school geek, and so I was definitely not buying the sexual tension. In conclusion, Hackers: indicative of the mid-90s decline in the quality of teenager movies.

12 Feb - "I've tried to live my life without breaking a single rule"

Les Miserables (1998)

dir. Bille August

CAST
Kathleen Byron (Emma, 1996)
Claire Danes (Romeo + Juliet, 1996)
Lennie James (Lost in Space, 1998)
Toby Jones (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (voice), 2002)
Hans Matheson (Sherlock Holmes, 2009)
Liam Neeson (Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (voice), 2010)
Frank O'Sullivan (The Wind that Shakes the Barley, 2006)
Geoffrey Rush (The Warrior's Way, 2010)
Uma Thurman (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, 1990)
Zdenek Vencl (The Beautician and the Beast, 1997)

I never read the book, I never saw the play, so I was pretty excited to see how the plot unfolded! It's great when somehow I manage to get through my life without having the ending spoiled, especially for a story that's so prevalent in pop culture.

One of the first things I thought was that the character of Jaubert was a lot like Lt. Gerard from The Fugitive. That is, both had an inflexible interpretation of the law and little regard for the spirit of justice. Jaubert knows that Jean Valjean is a good person and yet he pursues him even until his death. On the other hand, I might also suggest that Jaubert's definition of a criminal was equally inflexible, the idea that a good person can do a bad thing, or the opposite, is inconceivable to him, even as Jean Valjean proves himself again and again. Lt. Gerard is the same. Even though in his heart he knows that Richard Kimble is innocent, the letter of the law demands that Kimble be captured again. The idea that Kimble might slip through the cracks and manage to live a benign, unremarkable life is intolerable. The thought of it haunts Gerard.

Therefore it was this relationship that was most remarkable to me. Even though there were others that could be remarked upon. The love story was just fluffy, though.

16 Dec - "Nobody likes a finger pointed at them"

Middle Men (2009)

dir. George Gallo

CAST
Luke Wilson (Scream 2, 1997)
Giovanni Ribisi (SubUrbia, 1996)
James Caan (Elf, 2003)
Jacinda Barrett (Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, 2004)
Kevin Pollak (Wayne's World 2, 1993)
Laura Ramsey (She's the Man, 2006)
Terry Crews (Terminator Salvation, 2009)
Rade Serbedzija (The Saint, 1997)
Kelsey Grammer (Anastasia (voice), 1997)
Robert Forster (Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, 2003)
John Ashton (Beverly Hills Cop, 1984)
Jason Antoon (Minority Report, 2002)
Martin Kove (The Karate Kid, 1984)
Claudia Jordan (S1m0ne, 2002)

I never really like this kind of movie, so I don't know why I keep coming to them. I guess because other folks are into it and I always respect the opinions of others and those of random articles I read on the internet. I'm just not that interested by bureaucratic drama, and that makes the AHA! moment at the end sort of anticlimatic, because I'm not that excited by Luke Wilson writing the wrong date on a document and wheedling his way out of criminal charges. That's not very heroic, in my mind.

Since it's been almost a whole month since I actually watched this movie (sorry about being ridiculously behind on my posting again) I'm gonna leave it at that. Upcoming reviews: Home Alone, War Horse, and the LOTR trilogy!

2 Dec - "you can give up, let yourself go, or grit your teeth and hang on like stupid people do"

Biutiful (2010)

dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu


CAST
Javier Bardem (Collateral, 2004)

I watched this the other night with a fella I've been seeing briefly but I'm not certain at all it was the best choice for a date night (I have a bad track record with picking movies to watch with guys I'm interested in). It was too sad in all sorts of ways. It's about this guy who's got cancer in a bad way and his family is all messed up and he's trying to make it right and there's some human trafficking going on as well. I think it was trying to get at this relationship between Beauty and Ugliness and Love and Hate and sometimes you really really hate someone but at the same time you love that person and it sort of tears you up inside.

I guess it has something to do with that idea that every person you love is going to break your heart someday.

I don't mean to wax sentimental, but due to the circumstances I didn't have the opportunity to be emotional when the feelings hit me the first time around. There's a lot of little details to reflect on in this one.

18 Nov - "Not everybody can afford security"

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (2009)

dir. Daniel Alfredson

CAST
Michael Nyqvist (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 2009)
Noomi Rapace (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 2009)
Lena Endre
Georgi Staykov

November 18th, I think sometime around midnight, brought me to the conclusion of the Millennium trilogy. The third installment commences after Lisbeth has been arrested for the attempted murder of her father and it is a race against time to see if the truth will prevail over corruption and iniquity.

Consequently, the film is dominated by the trial and plays out much like an episode of Law and Order, with the male protagonist Blomqvist trying to prove the veracity of Lisbeth's allegations against her father, her guardian, and psychiatrist even as Lisbeth refuses to testify in her own defense.

That's a curious point and one of the notable complexities of this character. It's almost as if she's daring the court to find her guilty, by refusing to defend herself and dressing like a caricature of a punk. You might also say that she refuses to legitimate the proceedings with her participation, and those who conspired against her rigged the evidence from the start. Why give them the satisfaction of watching you struggle in the trap they have laid?

30 Oct - "You can't use the front door now"

Kick-Ass (2010)

dir. Matthew Vaughn (Stardust, 2007)

CAST
Randall Batinkoff (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 1992)
Xander Berkeley (Terminator 2: Judgement Day, 1991)
Nicolas Cage (Leaving Las Vegas, 1995)
Clark Duke (Superbad, 2007)
Craig Ferguson (Saving Grace, 2000)
Jason Flemyng (From Hell, 2001)
Dexter Fletcher (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, 1998)
Tamer Hassan (Eastern Promises, 2007)
Aaron Johnson (Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, 2008)
Corey Johnson (Saving Private Ryan, 1998)
Adrian Martinez (Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, 2007)
Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Role Models, 2008)
Chloë Grace Moretz (Bolt (voice), 2008)
Evan Peters (Sleepover, 2004)
Kenneth Simmons (My Super Ex-Girlfriend, 2006)
Mark Strong (Robin Hood, 2010)

This was a fun and entertaining movie, I'm surprised that it wasn't more popular. At least as popular as Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which I haven't seen yet, but I hear about it all the time and I've only heard this movie in passing coversation like once, I think. The best part is that, in the sense that it's an origin story, this movie is only slightly more plausible than something like Batman or Spiderman. They don't have superpowers, but by virtue of getting the shit kicked out of him, the portagonist has metal-reinforced bones and damaged nerve endings that...allow him to take a beating with slightly more fortitude than the average bear. By the end we see the critical balance reestablished, with the creation of a more powerful force of good we also see a concurrent rise in the force of evil. Like all of our other favorite supervillains, we see the polarizing forces of good and evil repelling, even with resistance, each other like magnets.

It wouldn't surprise me if the screenwriter had referenced Joseph Campbell. Nobody really wants to become that which is overtly and inherently despicable, and yet these characters arise from the ethos and by forces out of their hands are ostracized into dark and lonely places. I'm getting too philosophical now. My point is that this movie fits an archetype, but it's a good archetype.

Nicolas Cage is in it, and he's a polarizing actor, but I've defended him before and I'll do it again because I like Nicolas Cage and I think I get what he does. It's a role that's well suited to him.

I perused a few reviews of this movies, and while overall I think it recieved a positive reaction, several negative reviews focused on how appalling it was to watch Hit-Girl, played by an 11-year old actress, behave with so much callous violence, and profanity, and also recieve a vicious beating from a grown man. On the other hand, I'm certain that they would not be so alarmed if the character was an 11 year old boy.

This review by Prairie Miller cites Kick-Ass as a shocking display of child exploitation. Part of this character has to do with shock value, I'm sure, and also the slightly comedic incongrutiy that Hit-Girl is a much tougher cookie than the older and masculine Kick-Ass. But more importantly I this this is the only female superhero character I've ever seen that does NOT represent exploitation. Even though she unleashes a lot of bloodshed, she's happy, she's healthy, she has an odd, but loving parent, she's strong and not sexualized - can we say that of any other heroine? Certainly not Elektra, definitely not Catwoman. Praire Miller says that depicting children being beaten in fictional scenarios is unacceptable and potentially disturbing to children in violent homes. But violence happens in the world, and this character isn't victimized, she is an agent of her own storyline. She accepts violence with dignity and retaliates from a postion of strength. That's awesome, not just for children, but even grown up children like me.

I know it's supposed to be a funny movie, and so it was, but I just wanted to talk about it this way instead.

12 Oct - "What money I have is about eleven years old"

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997)

dir. Clint Eastwood

CAST
John Cusack (Must Love Dogs, 2005)
Kevin Spacey (The Ref, 1994)
Irma P. Hall (Patch Adams, 1998)
Jude Law (Gattaca, 1997)
Paul Hipp (Face/Off, 1997)
Kim Hunter (Planet of the Apes, 1968)
Geoffrey Lewis (Maverick, 1994)
Leon Rippy (The Patriot, 2000)
Bob Gunton (Glory, 1989)
J. Patrick McCormack (Wag the Dog, 1997)
Rhoda Griffis (Road Trip, 2000)
Michael Rosenbaum (Sorority Boys, 2002)
Ted Manson (Elizabethtown, 2005)
Ann Cusack (A League of Their Own, 1992)
James Gandolfini (True Romance, 1993)

As a northern in the South, I empathize with John Cusak in this movie, because I feel like we're both working on uphill battles. The glory, of course, is that in the end the status quo hasn't changed a bit, because it never does here.

Everybody says exactly what they don't mean.

The movie is about a murder. Kevin Spacey's character, whose one of those elite Southern mansion types who walks around with Ugga, the UGA school mascot, shoots his young lover, played by Jude Law trying his best at a real low Southern accent. Over the course of the trial, Spacey's homosexuality is revealed, but the grand revelation, which should have ruptured the community, doesn't ruffle any feathers because everybody already knew he was gay, so they just shuffle side to side and bury their heads a little deeper in the sand.

They all know what they say they don't know.

Adding a little flavor to the mystery are the colorful side characters including my favorite, the Lady Chablis, a transvestite showgirl, and a voodoo priestess. All the glitz and distractions only remind you that Cusak isn't meant to solve the mystery, because in this place the party never stops and everyone just keeps smiling and smiling as the world around them crumbles. Savannah reminds me of decay and ruined lost cities like those in Mexico. One day tourists will be walking around those Southern mansions and wondering what kind of people lived in places like these.

The movie seems to jump mostly between various parties and courtroom scenes. Even as Cusak is trying to solve the mystery he has to respect social custom and play nice. Another difference between Northerners and Southerners: Northerners get about the business at hand while Southerners are always playing at niceties, but at least when a Northerner gets around to being nice you can be sure that it's genuine. I watched this movie a week ago so I'm not sure what else I wanted to talk about but I liked it. I think I might try to read the book.

10 Oct - "I also got an appetite for greater things"

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

dir. Andrew Dominik

CAST
Casey Affleck (Good Will Hunting, 1997)
Brad Pitt (Tree of Life, 2011)
Sam Rockwell (Moon, 2009)
Paul Schneider (Lars and the Real Girl, 2007)

This wasn't quite what I expected! First of all, there was no outlaw-ing, except for one train heist at the beginning. This was clearly about the last days of Jesse James's life. Second, it was less about Jesse James than it was about his buddies, especially Robert Ford, obviously (why on earth was I so surprised about all this?) Ford's character was painfully awkward. He started out a total dork who idolized the James gang, and slowly transitioned into a really sucky adult who was still irritatingly self involved and although he still loved James, he hated him for being the larger-than-life character that Ford himself could never be. I guess the main plot of the movie is that degradation of hero-worship. But through it all, Ford still acts like a petulant teenager, angry that the world doesn't stop to present him with his heart's desire. And in the end, when he makes his desperate grab for fame - he's vilified, and you feel a little bad, but mostly deserves it, because he sucks.

Brad Pitt did a good job playing James as he must have been - a dark and moody man toeing the line of craziness. There's one scene where he's holding two snakes up for Ford to look at, and he says "I name them like my enemies" and then he cuts their heads off and keeps holding them, watching them continue to writhe around. There is no glorifying this character. He's a lousy murderer descending into madness. But he also plays with his children, loves his wife, and in the end, willingly steps up to his own death. It reminded me of a passage from Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, which I keep lying around, about the death of Magua, who was the villain;

"As the weapon passed slowly into his heart he even smiled, as if in joy at having found death less dreadful than he had anticipated, and fell heavily on his face, at the feet of the unyielding form of Uncas."

Not that Jesse James was stabbed, but I still thought of it.

Last point: Sam Rockwell was awesome, he always is :)

3 Oct - "What kind of stupid did you eat for breakfast?"

Girl Fight (TV) (2011)

dir. Stephen Gyllenhaal

CAST
Anne Heche (Wag the Dog, 1997)
Jodelle Ferland (Eclipse, 2010)
Dawn Chubai (Eclipse, 2010)
Keith MacKechnie (Christmas Vacation, 1989)
Keely Purvis (X2, 2003)
James Tupper (Joe Dirt, 2001)
Lanette Ware (Music and Lyrics, 2007)

Lifetime movies are more annoying to make blog posts on because they don't have posters or DVD covers that I can easily put at the top of my post. This one is also very new and so there aren't any funny quotes on the internet and I forgot to write one down while I was watching so i had to think really hard and remember one. Like the last Lifetime movie I watched, I think the original source material wasn't really rich enough for an engaging story arc. It was more linear than anything else.

The thing is that this uncool girl becomes buddies with the coolest girls in school, and so drops her old nerdy friend who has glasses and a hat. Unfortunately, the cool girls find out about some ungenerous things the protagonist posted on Facebook and so they lure her to a house and beat the crap out of her for half and hour, and film the whole thing so they can post it on Youtube. Of course, the bloodied girl rats out those bitches right off and her parents get the video and press charges. There's an extended kerfuffle about whether the girl will testify against her assaulters, but I don't really see why that was necessary. It's on video! That's pretty much open and shut. They aren't going to get away with it. There's also some harumphing about what the sentence will be. The mother is in favor of life sentences but they end up getting like a year of probation, each. I think somewhere in the middle would have been more reasonable. I mean, that's some pretty sadistic tendencies they've demonstrated, a terrifying absence of empathy, kind of socio-pathic. They should have gotten some time to cool off, maybe a year? But I guess it's cool, because they'll never get good jobs now.

25 Sept - It's so important to be popular

The Bling Ring (TV movie) (2011)

dir. Michael Lembeck (The Santa Clause 2, 2002)

CAST
Austin Butler
Yin Chang
Jennifer Grey (Red Dawn, 1984)
Tom Irwin (The Haunting, 1999)
Scott Klace (The Pursuit of Happyness, 2006)
Spencer Locke (Spanglish, 2004)
Wendy Makkena
Renee Olstead (13 Going on 30, 2004)
Blake Robbins
Sebastian Sozzi (Choke, 2008)
Shawn Smith (Down in the Valley, 2005)


It seems like I'm watching all my movies with my buddy Cora these days. On Monday she invited me over for wine and a Lifetime channel movie. This is based on a true story, I guess. It's about some teenagers who go on a crime spree robbing celebrity's houses. There is one guy in the gang, pictured, he has social anxiety and the Asian girl is either in love with him or is crazy. He meets a girl and she totally flips.

So the way they frame it up is that these kids are social outsiders, but by becoming criminals they suddenly feel accepted, popular, important. It's sort of like saying that society is responsible, for idolizing these celebrities to the point where normalcy is insufficient, or worse, extraordinary is the new normal and the whole universe is filled with nobodies.

Aside from that tepid analysis, this was just a hammy Lifetime movie. We've already decided to watch next week's movie, too. It's called Girl Fight.

4 Sept - "everything that eats meat likes dead buffalo"

Appaloosa (2008)
dir. Ed Harris

CAST
Jeremy Irons (The Mission, 1986)
Timothy V. Murphy (National Treasure: Book of Secrets, 2007)
Luce Rains (3:10 to Yuma, 2007)
Boyd Kestner (G.I. Jane, 1997)
Ed Harris (The Truman Show, 1998)
Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises, 2007)
James Gammon (Major League II, 1994)
Timothy Spall (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, 2010)
Renée Zellweger (Empire Records, 1995)
Ariadna Gil (Pan's Labyrinth, 2006)
Rex Linn (Cutthroat Island, 1995)
Lance Henriksen (Dead Man, 1995)
Charlene Adams (Cowboys & Aliens, 2011)
Maria Bethke (Terminator Salvation, 2009)

This was an odd western, and most westerns are sort of odd. My first reaction was that maybe the whole murder and bringing the lawless rancher to justice was a red herring, and maybe the movie was REALLY just about Renée Zellweger's character acting sorta slutty. But of course that doesn't explain everything. So then I thought maybe, in the tradition of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, this was a buddy movie, about the tacit and unshakeable friendship between Ed Harris's character and Viggo Mortensen's character. When Renée comes onto him, Viggo says, "We aren't with each other, we're both with Cole."

Jeremy Irons, who played the villain, was an underdeveloped character, especially considering that Irons is the elite of acting quality. Come to think of it - Jeremy Irons character in this movie was an awful lot like Daniel Day-Lewis's character in There Will Be Blood, they even looked kind of alike if you don't see them side by side.

This movie was more along the lines I expected from Cowboys & Aliens. It was also a better performance than I expected out of Renee Zellweger, who is almost always irritating. However, she pulled off a desperate and worn-out widow quite well. Maybe someone should cast her in A Streetcar Named Desire.

22 August - "The way out is through love, and you are just horny and lonely"

Twelve (2010)

dir. Joel Schumacher (St. Elmo's Fire, 1985)

CAST

50 Cent

Ellen Barkin (Drop Dead Gorgeous, 1999)

Gregg Bello (G.I. Jane, 1997)

Chace Crawford

Rory Culkin (Signs, 2002)

Zoe Kravitz (It's Kind of a Funny Story, 2010)

Thomas McDonell (The Forbidden Kingdom, 2008)

Erik Per Sullivan (The Cider House Rules, 1999)

Emma Roberts (Aquamarine, 2006)

Charlie Saxton (The Happening, 2008)

Kiefer Sutherland (voice) (Stand By Me, 1986)

Everything about this movie was like reading the diary of an angsty, self-indulgent teenager. I'll bet it's on the favorites list of many a depressed 15 year old, and I bet at least one of them has written a poem about it.

Like a lot of the really crappy movies I've seen, I can tell that at one point there was a lot of potential in this script. Some of the narration by Kiefer Sutherland was honestly insightful. I think the major downfall was the tedious angst pouring out of the main character.

I am a huge fan of movies with the Grand Hotel theme-but they're hard to pull off well. In this movie, very few of the characters received the depth of treatment they deserved. The main problem was the main character, played by Chace Crawford --who is so conventionally handsome that I'm having trouble stomaching this poster I'm looking at. This guy has a shit backstory, his mom and so he's really dark and doesn't talk about feelings and is the dreamiest drug dealer (???) on the mean streets of whereverthehellthisis. Losing moms is way sad, don't get me wrong, but I don't think it justifies a whole movie of the protagonist acting like a tool. I much preferred the bitchy prom queen character, who has one brief moment of self awareness and vulnerability when she confesses to a guy that she doesn't really like the person that she is but nevertheless dies thinking about how nobody will ever stop talking about how cool her death was and how much they'll wish they were there to see it. Insight like that is wicked, it makes good movies.

Depression very rarely makes a good movie. That's because in the real world nobody gets to wear their hearts on their sleeve. Steve Carell can play a depressed guy pretty well (Little Miss Sunshine, Dan in Real Life), and that's because pulls off the necessary degree of black humor. He plays depressed guys who are nonetheless coping and that makes them admirable characters, characters we feel good about watching. This White Mike character sucked because he wasn't coping, he was wallowing-and that's when I said this movie was self-indulgent, because wallowing is self-indulgent. Watching it didn't make make me feel better about anything. It made me angry, not sympathetic.

The next movie I watched is really good, way better than this crap, I promise.

13 Aug - "It's like when people see Jesus in a pancake or something"

Devil (2010)
dir. John Erick Dowdle

CAST

Chris Messina (You've Got Mail, 1998)

Logan Marshall-Green

Jenny O'Hara (Matchstick Men, 2003)

Bojana Novakovic

Bokeem Woodbine

Geoffrey Arend (Super Troopers, 2001)

Jacob Vargas (Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion, 1997)

Matt Craven (Timeline, 2003)

Joshua Peace (Lars and the Real Girl, 2007)

So, Dowdle, who I've never heard of, was the director of this movie, but M. Night Shyamalan did the story. Poor M. Night, I think he's having trouble getting directing gigs since all of his movies made so little money. Personally, I think he's a fine director, it's his stories that are too heavy-handed with the symbolism. Devil certainly has the key characteristics of a Shyamalan film, beside the fact that M. Night himself is not in the picture. First off it is set in Philadelphia, home to both M. Night Shyamalan and myself. Secondly, it's got that final act revelation that really clearly spells out how everything else in the movie is interconnected, because you wouldn't want anyone walking away after the first viewing with any misunderstanding, and that's what kills me. Signs, The Village, even The Sixth Sense had these pandering endings where they flash back to all the relevant bits and hit you over the head with this grand revelation and I'd much rather than the filmmaker give me a little credit as a thoughtful human being and let me put the pieces together on my own. That's the difference between a great film, one that demands review and reinterpretation, and a dumbass one that makes fools feel clever. It's a soft pitch, M. Night, and that's why you weren't drafted into the big leagues.

Apart from that, though, Devil was a pleasurable psychological thriller that kept you guessing for a good long while.

25 July - "When an ugly chick dies...it's no big deal"

Flypaper (2011)
dir. Rob Minkoff (The Lion King, 1994)

CAST

Patrick Dempsey (Outbreak, 1995)

Ashley Judd (Heat, 1995)

Mekhi Phifer (Dawn of the Dead, 2004)

Jeffrey Tambor (There's Something About Mary, 1998)

Octavia Spencer (Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous, 2005)

Curtis Armstrong (Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, 2004)

Tim Blake Nelson (O Brother, Where Art Thou?, 2000)

John Ventimiglia (Party Girl, 1995)

Adrian Martinez (Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, 2007)

I'm almost not sick anymore! a couple days ago (more by the time I finish and publish this) I watched Flypaper On Demand with my mom. It was fun with a cute twist at the end, I liked it better than Ocean's Eleven, but I hated that movie (you know how sometimes a movie seems smart but clearly it is not? This is true for mostly everything).

I'm also super-stressed by some...unpleasantness..which makes a thinky and/or feely movie an undesirable option because all of my feelings are melting into anxiety and unhappiness and all of my thinkings are devolving into self esteem issues. Plus my sinuses are clogged up. It's been a rough week :(

Sorry to get self-indulgent there.

I never heard of this movie before I read the synopsis on the TV. It seemed okay and it was so indeed. Patrick Dempsey's character was schizophrenic or something, and Ashley Judd was the "strait man." Basically two robberies occur simultaneously in the same bank, and as the criminals squabble over how to get into the vault and what to do with the hostages, Patrick Dempsey races about using his super-observation skills to figure who murdered the guy who died in the first gunfight, and why. There are more than 2 bank robberies going on here!

The only thing I'm unclear on is whether or not Dempsey was in on it the whole time.

24 July - "Oh-llo?"

Megamind (2010)

dir. Tom McGrath (Madagascar, 2005)

voices

Will Ferrell (Stranger Than Fiction, 2006)

Brad Pitt (Burn After Reading, 2008)

Tina Fey (Ponyo (voice), 2008)

Jonah Hill (Strange Wilderness, 2008)

David Cross (Small Soldiers, 1998)

Ben Stiller (The Royal Tenenbaums, 2001)

J.K. Simmons (Burn After Reading, 2008)

A couple things come to mind when I'm thinking about how to start this one. The first is that I really just don't care for these chintzy computer-animated movies with the bright colors and the vomitingly (I made that an adverb) predictable ending and the complete and utter lack of charm.

I guess it was like, six or eight months ago when a fella asked me if I wanted to see this with him. I like it when someone asking me out has already picked the movie (or whatever the plan is, since a friend of mine told me that movie as a first date is bullshit because you're supposed to be engaging with each other) - but if we are going to see a movie I like it when the guy has already chosen one because it seems lazy otherwise. As if, hey I want to hang out with you, can you organize an interesting and fun evening? No, I say, if you want my company so bad, you gotta do the legwork.

Anyway, so my normal M.O. is to agree to whatever movie my prospective suitors suggest, because at that point I'm more interested in the person than the movie (a surprising confession, I know. This is why I ended up seeing Superman Returns TWICE in the theaters! But I still think the worst date movie I ever sat through was Enchanted, which ended up being quite pleasant when I watched it later on DVD with some girlfriends, so yeah, I think the company you've got during a movie is important)

I am having a hard time getting to the point. The point is that even though it usually doesn't matter to me what movie a guy picks, and even though I hate picking date movies, and even though I really liked this guy and wanted to go out with him, I was still like, Hells no, I don't wanna see Megamind, I will call you back in 20 minutes with a revised itinerary. We ended up seeing It's Kind of a Funny Story instead; it was a rather arid week for cinema in Athens, but I thought it was a reasonably good choice. It didn't work out, though, c'est la vie.

So I watched it because I wanted to watch something On Demand with my lil bro, we also saw Tangled (upcoming!) and we may resort to Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2. It was fun with him because we laughed at the funny jokes, but, honestly, this movie was artless, it wasn't cute at all, it was pandering and easy and heavy-heavy and clumsy, like someone who's trying too hard to be your new best friend and I just wanted to be alone after the whole confrontation.

My brain is all over the place right now. Still sick in bed, by the by.

5 June - "You don't live with me. You live with the remains of dead people."

Heat (1995)
dir. Michael Mann (The Last of the Mohicans, 1992)

CAST

Al Pacino (Donnie Brasco, 1997)

Robert de Niro (Stone, 2010)

Kevin Gage (The 'burbs, 1989)

Diane Venora (Romeo + Juliet, 1996)

Natalie Portman (Black Swan, 2010)

Jon Voight (Holes, 2003)

Tom Sizemore (True Romance, 1993)

Mykelti Williamson (The Final Destination, 2009)

Ted Levine (Memoirs of a Geisha, 2005)

William Fichtner (Crash, 2004)

Val Kilmer (True Romance, 1993)

Ashley Judd (Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, 1992)

Hank Azaria (Love and Other Drugs, 2010)

Danny Trejo (From Dusk Till Dawn, 1996)

Martin Ferreo (Jurassic Park, 1993)

Jeremy Piven (Old School, 2003)

Wes Studi (Avatar, 2009)

Tone Loc (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, 1994)

The only kind of movie I watch less often than crime drama is courtroom drama (With the exclusion of My Cousin Vinny, which I watch at every opportunity and enjoy EVERY TIME). That's a funny pattern, because I LIKE crime dramas, just not quite as much as my usual fare of adventure, science fiction, and period drama. This movie is mostly about Robert de Niro, who sets up his crew to take one last big score, and Al Pacino, a work-obsessed detective (aren't they all?) in hot pursuit. It's one of those movies in which the tracker and the tracked discover they have more in common with each other than they originally thought. That doesn't change the nature of their relationship, though.

I think Michael Mann is a wonderful director. I appreciated especially, in this case, the depth of understanding that I got from the relatively minor roles of the supporting actresses, the wives and girlfriends of the criminals, and the detective's wife and stepdaughter. I had trouble, at first, determining the purpose of Al Pacino's suicidal stepdaughter, played by Natalie Portman. Maybe it seemed a little superfluous. Upon reflection, I decided that the take home message was about the futility of life, whether you make it by crime or by retribution, without anyone to share it with.

That seems a bit chintzy for a movie with so many gunshots in it. But really it wasn't as corny as that. The point is that Al Pacino's character was totally submersed in crimes and victims and criminals, but for all that he sacrificed to try and do something right, he was unable to prevent the victimization of someone in his own family. He chose de Niro over his wife and stepdaughter.

de Niro makes the same sacrifice. He has the opportunity to escape with his girl, but he chooses to make one last revenge hit before the airport, and so he abandons her, choosing the endless cat and mouse game with Pacino instead.

Ashley Judd and Val Kilmer have the sweetest romance. Their marriage is failing and you think she's been flipped by the cops, but at the last moment she signals to him to keep going, to leave her behind. It's a final act of sacrifice, but it's for love, not pride.

There's a blog I like to read that focuses on horror movies, i'm into survival (which inspires me to think of a better name for my little movie blog here, with its handful of readers). The most recent entry was about the second sequel to The Exorcist and specifically about the difficulty of establishing friendship between characters. That was something they were trying to do in this movie, and not entirely successfully. De Niro and Pacino had coffee in one scene, they lamented about their love lives and respectively admitted that "This is what I am best at. It's the only thing I know how to do." Perhaps this rapport could have been better established. To myself, I was drawing comparisons to Tommy Lee Jones' detective character and his relationships with pursued criminals Ashley Judd and Harrison Ford in Double Jeopardy and The Fugitive. Of course, in those Judd and Ford's character were both innocent. Even so, I enjoyed the relationship much better.