What was the last movie you saw at the theaters?

Love Happens

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Sometimes one must be sacrificed.

My god Movie Watcher whatever possessed you?

That movie had the most boring trailer I have ever seen.

If the trailer is no good, the movie has to be crap as they often put more effort to be entertaining into the trailer than into the movie.

Really what made you do it?

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Louise Vale first woman to play Jane Eyre in the flickers.

i saw a bollywood movie "blue"

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SPAM Signature Removed!

my mom made me go because she thinks District 9 was stupid, and that i owed her

Well she owes YOU now. Big time!

The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)



This film is pure Soderbergh, but it does remind me a bit of that other Steven, Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can. It's a superficial resemblance, but I think people who like the one film may like this one. However, even though Brenda and I laughed periodically, this is one of those films where I could see certain people say it wasn't funny or a comedy at all. These are basically the same people who believe that Dr. Strangelove is not a comedy, but no, this film is all rather modest, but it sets up a situation and keeps building upon it. To go into the plot of the film just makes it seem like it isn't a comedy, so I'm going to try to not do that too much, but here's what the film says up front, even before the snazzy '60s styled titles and music: there's a cute bit that says that even though the film is based on true characters and their story, that they combined some of the characters and made things smoother, plotwise... "So There!"



Like I said, I don't really want to get into the details, since I don't recall it in the news and I haven't read the book, but one major plus I will discuss about this flick is the terrific cast. The way that Damon's Mark Whitacre constantly "narrates" over the utter inconsequential BS which he tells everyone in the flick is quite brilliant, but the thing about this film is that it has an incredible cast. Damon's wife is played by Melanie Lynskey (Kate Winslet's significant other in Heavenly Creatures), his major FBI associate is Scott Bakula with a bad haircut, Damon's mom is Candy Clark, the main attorney for Damon's company is Biff from Back to the Future (Thomas F. Wilson), Patton Oswalt plays a government prosecutor, Tom Smothers plays the CEO of ADM, Dick Smothers is a federal judge, and Clancy Brown is one of ADM's major lawyers.



The thing which seems to separate The Informant! from most movies is the quasi-narration by Whitacre (with one of the most-hilarious mustaches ever) . He thinks things whenever he's walking anywhere or talking to somebody. Now, since he's thinking these things in his head and we hear them, that's what his "real" life seems to be about. The BS he says to everybody we see him talk to is all there, but we rarely hear the results. However, the entire concept of the movie is based on this inner monologue which gradually reveals the truth of the character. Over and above that, Whitacre seems to be so into all the gibberish he's saying about butterflies and polar bears, that it totally sells his "other" story to those he talks with, and as anyone who has seen the flick realizes, Whitacre is a blabbermouth, a pathological liar and a few other things too. GOTCHA!

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
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On Saturday I took Friday Next to the cinema for the very first time! He's 2, three in a couple of months and we went to a special screening of Thomas the Tank Engine (Hero of the Rails). It was clearly designed for toddlers; obviously, since it was Thomas, but also the film was only an hour long, started on time with only two adverts (for Thomas-related products) and they left some of the floor lights on so it wasn't too dark. Despite the screen being full of toddlers, there wasn't too much noise and running about, and since everybody was there with a toddler, nobody minded. Friday was very good, sat still in his seat and watched the film the whole time without talking or having to go out. Since it was a treat I bought us some popcorn (which he later said was 'too crunchy', although I note that didn't stop him from eating it...). The film itself was not brilliant, even Friday wasn't that impressed, but I've seen worse kids films and it was only an hour. Afterwards he didn't want to go home! So altogether we had a nice time and hopefully this is the first of many happy cinema trips together

maybe seeing Whip It tomorrow

"Whatever works" the latest Woody Allen flick- this was outstanding! hillarious

"Cheri"- not bad but Michelle wasn't entirely convincing, although she did take on a brave role


Dave
On Screen

A Serious Man
2009 - The Coen Brothers

Joel and Ethan Coen meet Yiddish parable in this bizarre and engrossing cinematic exercise. Michael Stuhlbarg stars as Larry Gopnik, an untenured physics professor in the Minnesota suburbs circa the late 1960s. He has a wife and two children, a son who is about to be Bar Mitzvahed and an older teenage daughter. His unemployed brother, Arthur (Richard Kind), also lives with them in their modest single-level home, mysteriously working on a notebook-long mathematical proof but mostly just hogging up all the bathroom time and draining his sebaceous cyst. Larry Gopnik is Jewish leading a relatively secular life, but while not a strict observer of his faith he does his best to be a good and moral man. Little does he realize he is about to be tested with personal obstacles befitting of a modern day Job, the Old Testament fella who suffers terribly to the point of asking 'why me?' and forced to question if there is a Divine purpose to his pain. I won't detail the minor and major annoyance that begin to mount for poor Larry, but you'll definitely feel for the poor schmuck.

Joel & Ethan followed their multiple Oscar-winning triumph of No Country for Old Men with the movie-star laden espionage farce Burn After Reading, but there are no Clooneys or Pitts in A Serious Man: Richard Kind and Adam Arkin are the two most recognizable faces in this cast. Stuhlbarg is a New York stage actor virtually unknown to mass audiences, and he is the perfect foil for the tragedies that befall the hapless Gopnik. It could just as easily have been a Coen stock company member like John Turturro in the lead (his wife, Katherine Borowitz, does have a small role), but going the unknown route works perfectly for the material. Michael Lerner, Oscar-nominated for his work in Barton Fink, is the only familiar Coen Brother face, and he has only a brief, single-scene, dialogue-free cameo. Oh, and Steve Park as well, who played the duplicitous Mike Yanagita in Fargo, but he too only has a single scene (though he gets a couple of the movie's very best lines).

Joel and Ethan are excellent storytellers, especially visually. There are a few dream sequences in A Serious Man, though nothing as elaborate or surreal as say the bits in The Big Lebowski, and overall they play it straight without the kinds of flourishes and montage that often highlight their work. The beautiful ordinariness of 1967 suburbia is captured in small detail but at the same time abstracted, and they along with longtime collaborative cinematographer Roger Deakins have fun with the motifs without slipping into parody. Another behind-the-scenes regular Carter Burwell lends a very subtle but effective score, aided a bit by The Jefferson Airplane. Not visually but in terms of tone I suppose A Serious Man is probably closest to their oft-neglected bizarro-Noir The Man Who Wasn't There...with maybe just a muted dash of The Hudsucker Proxy here and there. But as much as it is identifiable as a "Coen Brothers Movie" in many ways, it's also unique in their filmography.

Like the parable that opens the film (a subtitled period piece in Yiddish) and the tale of the dentist and the goyim's teeth one of the three Rabbi's relays to Larry during the course of the film, there is an open-ended unanswerable quality to the narrative that will likely anger many a viewer. For anyone who didn't much care for Moss's offscreen death or wanted to know where Chigurh limped off to in No Country, that's kid's stuff compared to the dark approaching whirlwind you're left with here. But for those willing to go with it, I implore you to take the advice uttered by one character in the movie: "Please, accept the mystery."


GRADE: A-



Where the Wild Things Are
2009 - Spike Jonze

When I first heard the phrase "movie adaptation" attached to the beloved Maurice Sendak classic picture book Where the Wild Things Are, I instantly recoiled and my heart sunk. When I learned subsequently that it was being "adapted" by Spike Jonze, the music video genius turned feature relayer of Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich and Adaptation) my anger and apprehension turned to joyous anticipation. When the first images and trailer were released, that feeling increased tenfold. That Jonze and company were able to bring such a beautiful and completely odd vision to life is simply magical.

For anybody who doesn't know the source material, it is exceedingly simple: Max is a young boy whose rambunctious playing, "making mischief", in the house becomes disruptive, so he is sent to his room without supper. Once there in the darkness he transports himself to another world full of gigantic multi-colored beasts who, in all his wild ferociousness, accept him as their king. They dance and play making a wild rumpus until Max finally gets homesick and returns to the real world to find his dinner waiting for him, still hot. That's it. There are a total of about nine or ten sentences as the story is mostly wordless, just a boy's vivid imagination come to life in Sendak's distinct style. As such, an "adaptation" into a feature-length project would require all kinds of elongating of narrative and wholesale invention beyond the brief text. I have been just plain sickened by previous attempts at this, especially the abrasive live-action Cat in the Hat (2003) starring Mike Myers that had no real connection to or understanding of the Dr. Seuss classic and the dumbed-down Jumanji (1995) with Robin Williams where all of Chris Van Allsburg's etched genius was replaced by routine CGI spectacle and a Saturday morning cartoon plot. I didn't expect Spike Jonze would fall into the same trap, but you never know.

Instead what Spike and co-screenwriter Dave Eggers have done is to extrapolate the spirit of Sendak and the vitality and often even darkness of a young boy's imagination, but made something almost wholly their own at the same time. Visually there are the basic cues from the small book, Max's wolf pajamas, the boat, the basic shape and size of the Wild Things themselves. But they go so far beyond all of that as well. There is an odd kind of reality infused to the surreal that is difficult to put into words but is marvelous on the big screen.

The first twenty minutes or so of the movie show Max (Max Records) in the "real" world, but it is a very impressionistic presentation that somehow tells you just about all you need to know about the boy in a few scenes and with little dialogue. Max has an older sister, a teenager, and when a playful snowball fight with her friends turns suddenly and momentarily scary in the way roughhousing often does, he turns his anger toward her room. When his mother (Catherine Keener) arrives home, they clean up the mess and in just a couple scenes you understand their whole relationship. We see a brief bit of Max in school, where some of his imaginative innocence is encroached upon by that old bugaboo knowledge. Later when Mom is trying to entertain her boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo) and she has no time to come upstairs and see Max's new fort, he dons the iconic white wolf costume and defiantly acts out, resulting in his running from her into the night and hiding in the lightly wooded area of his neighborhood. There he finds a boat...and it's off to the island of Wild Things.

The achingly gorgeous world he finds, filmed in the wiles and desert of southern Australia and then abstracted inventively, also has a layer of "reality" to it that is a magical mix with the enormous creatures and the palace-like forts they build together. It is fantastic and otherworldly, but not in the same way The Wizard of Oz or The Neverending Story are. There is a kind of underlying truth even when the narrative is at the heights of its fabricated fairyland. The Wild Things themselves are amazing designs, towering high above Max like plush mountains that can bounce and tumble like teddy bears on crack or maybe if David Lynch had directed The Muppet Movie, but with subtly expressive faces (layered and performed by GCI technicians). They are imposing and at first even frightening, but once Max (and the audience) gets to know each one and their personality, they are a melancholy band of misfits. Beyond the terrific creature design, they are given their personality largely by the great actors who give them their voices. Leading the way is James Gandolfini, and with him are Chris Cooper, Forrest Whitaker, Catherine O'Hara, Paul Dano and Lauren Ambrose - though Gandolfini may be the only one who is especially and instantly recognizable. The voices add a somber quality that works wonders in juxtaposition to the furry beasts.

The movie Where the Wild Things Are has some adroit meditations on the loneliness, confusion, friendships and imagination of childhood, happily all relayed in a unique cinematic illusion that doesn't ever talk down to its audience and has the courage to be dark and weird and sad and earnest in a way that most movies for "children" fail to be. It's quite an achievement, and really MUST be seen on the big screen for full effect.


GRADE: A

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

zombieland - and it was easily the funniest movie i've seen since the hangover.

i'll probably go see it again

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Wonderful reviews, Holden!

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Awesome Holden , very excited for both of 'em.

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I recently went to see The Brinks Job for the first time, at the Brattle Theatre, which is in my general area, thinking that there'd be considerably more action and much more happening in The Brinks Job than there was. It was a good try, but it was way too slow, imho.

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"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men." -- Samuel Adams (1722-1803)

The movie that I have watched last time is Amistad. This is probably the 4th time I have tried to study the film. This 1997 movie of Steven Spielberg is a celluloid translation of the real story of 1839 slave mutiny on the ship named Amistad. Spielberg has successfully depicted the legal battle and battles within the mind of the characters too, which have favorably concluded to high up the cause of some hapless dark people.
I hold all praise for the neatly written script by David Fraanzoni. Especially the argument-and-counter argument at the court has the most desired sharpness and reliability. Anthony Hopkins is at his zenith and Morgan Freeman appears as the obvious and irreplaceable one.
In this more-than-two-hours-and-a-half movie Spielberg has used three languages: English, Spanish and Mende.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

A gypsy cavalcade of Gilliamness that definitely doesn’t disappoint. The many leads and supports curl nicely into this bundle of frayed imagination, which bounces along with trademark dark-tinted wonderment.

There are some familiar visual treats and treatises here, from the dreamer as dupe to the cardboard artifice of theatrical troupes. CGI has to do a touch too much heavy lifting at points in the ‘imaginarium’, but does manage to create genuinely dream-like moments at times, all of which contrast nicely with the ragbag crew peddling its wares on the streets of London and the like.

I’m not sure what my reservations are, but the whole thing didn’t quite hold together for me, or feel like the creation of a totally classic story. Which is strange, because it is a novel spin on the Malthusian bet, and it’s delivered with lots of elan and intrigue. I think perhaps time/money restraints show through in the odd ‘imperfect’ take, despite the cast knocking spots off each other as things progress. Plummer is marvellously plummy, Garfield is excellent as the greasepaint monkey, Lily Cole is a model nigh-amateur, and everyone from Waits to the heavyweights keep the fantasy-realism on track. It’s got laughs, tragic farce, and a strong thread drawing you through the middle of it. I guess it’s just a huge ask to make a dream completely real.

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Rocky Horror Picture Show

Went with some friends at my local single-screen, it was a blast! My first time not counting home viewing so I had to leap-frog across the stage with a few other people...

Law Abiding Citizen

Surrogates

Michael Jackson's This Is It

5 out of 5

Extraordinary look at a pop genius and perfectionist at work. He truly was the King of Pop. The crowd I was watching the movie with were waving their arms, singing along, laughing, cheering for Michael, and dancing in their seats.

However, the movie gives you this overwhelming sense of loss and sadness, too, that Michael Jackson did not live to make this concert. You see him smiling out of joy at the end of some rehearsals (especially that small grin he makes at the end of the They Don't Care About Us number, which will make you smile, and tear up maybe just a bit). You also see him argue with his musical conductors (out of love) about the arrangements of the music. You see him leaping, falling to the ground with his feet in the air, complaining about his ear piece feeling like a fist being jammed into his ear, and telling his director, Kenny Ortega, that he loves him. You hear him making a prayer for the earth, and his brothers and parents by name (a scene that moved me).

Michael was an amazing person that the world chose to turn on, humiliate, and make fun of. They're not making fun of you now, Michael. Rest in peace. And, yes, I love you, too!