Movies By Month: March 2012, part 2

Nightmares in Red, White & Blue:  2009 documentary by Andrew Monument about the history of the American horror film.  It’s a good general refresher about the genre, nice to hear from Romero and Carpenter, but nothing to write home about.  A good place to start if you’d like to hit the horror highlights.

Monsters:  2010 British sci-fi movie written, shot and directed by Gareth Edwards, and starring Whitney Able and Scoot McNairy.  Yes.  Scoot.  Areas of northern Mexico have been quarantined by the U.S. military because aliens crash-landed there, you know the drill.   A slightly unkempt, slightly dashing photojournalist has been tasked with getting his boss’s daughter through the area and home to marry her boring fiancé.  Think Jurassic Park redux, kind of.  I must say, this + The African Queen + Apocalypse Now = no riverboat travel for me, thanks all the same.  It’s matter-of-fact, good pacing, the music is nice and low key, and the ending is unexpected and kind of perfect.  It’s a feel-good monster movie without being too touchy-feely-feel-good.  Very “real.”   Definitely see it.

Catching Hell:  OK, technically this is a 2011 episode of the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary series, but I’m counting it as a movie.   On October 14, 2003, Game 6 of the National League Championship Series, a Cubs fan named Steve Bartman attempted to catch a pop foul and, depending on which version you believe, RUINED EVERYTHING FOREVER.  This poor guy.  A single flubbed play does not make or break the ball game.  Just ask Bill Buckner (who, p.s., was given way too much screen time in this movie).  Other fans at the game tried to start fights with Bartman, threw beer on him, the poor SOB had to be disguised and driven home by Wrigley Field security.  Rod “Totally In Jail Now” Blagojevich was quoted as saying, “If he commits a crime, he won’t get a pardon from this governor.”  Now Bartman is the “JD Salinger of Cubs fans,” he’s gone underground.  It’s a pretty solid sports documentary that highlights one of the many reasons people hate Cubs fans – we’re like Yankees fans without all the winning.

Casino Jack & The United States of Money:  2010 documentary by Alex Gibney.  Man, people suck.  Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist, Tom DeLay and Ralph Reed in particular, totally suck.  It’s a fascinating documentary about the modern conservative movement, how lobbying works, and how corrupt the system of political influence is.  It’s also fairly depressing when you realize that the scandals never cease.  See it, just be prepared to feel jaded and cynical by the end.

Hanna:  2011 thriller directed by Joe Wright and starring Eric Bana, Saoirse Ronan, and Cate Blanchett.  Since she was a baby, Hanna and her former-CIA-operative father have been hiding out in the hinterlands, preparing.  Blanchett is the operative’s former handler who wants him dead.  Once Hanna is prepared, she sets off on her mysterious mission and just starts ruling the shit out of the entire intelligence community.  I thought some of the flashy camera shots were unnecessary, but that’s really my only quibble with it.  Ronan and Blanchett are fantastic, and excellent adversaries.

The Rules of Attraction:  2002 dark satirical comedy based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis, directed by Roger Avary and starring Shannyn Sossamon, James van der Beek, and Ian Somerhalder.   A bunch of apathetic college students all have unrequited crushes on each other and are assholes.  I tried to watch this soon after it came out but never got through it.  Now I remember why.  Not only is everyone annoying, they also keep retelling scenes from a different character’s perspective by, like, rewinding and starting the scene all over again.  It’s intolerable.

The Interrupters:  2011 documentary by Steve James, about a branch of the Chicago community organization CeaseFire that sends former gang enforcers out into the neighborhoods to prevent violence.  HOLY FUCKING SHIT.  See this movie.  Go watch it right now.   Right now!  Is my enthusiastic endorsement not enough for you?  Then watch the trailer.

Beyond Hatred:  2005 French documentary directed by Olivier Meyrou, about the trial of young skinheads accused of killing a gay man.  It’s heart wrenching, and hella confusing.  His family is interviewed throughout the trial, and these scenes are powerful and moving.  But then there’s the writing of the family’s public statement, and the squabbling over the exact wording to use, and talk of liberte, egalite, fraternite, and the trial that made no sense to me because I don’t understand French law.  How many people were on trial?  What exactly were they being accused of?  Is that a lawyer for the defense or the prosecution?  Can you really still smoke like everywhere in France?

So, unless you feel comfortable spending a lot of time researching the French legal system, I would maybe skip it.

Resident Evil Afterlife:  2010 sci-fi action movie directed by Paul W.S. Anderson and starring Milla Jovovich and Ali Larter.  Sigh.  I understand that my love of the first Resident Evil movie is baffling, and that none of the movies that followed were worth watching.  And yet, I keep coming back.  It’s terrible.  Not as terrible as the second, not as “good” as the third, but no.  Do not.

Chronicle:  2012 found footage sci-fi movie directed by Josh Trank, starring Dane DeHaan, Michael B. Jordan, and Alex Russel.  Andrew Detmer’s life is pretty much in the shitter:  his mom is dying, his dad is an abusive alcoholic, and he’s invisible to his classmates except for when they’re beating him up.  Then he starts hanging out with his cousin and one of the popular guys, then they find some weird giant crystal thing, then they notice that they’ve developed telekinetic powers.  It all starts out great, they’re having a good time, pulling harmless pranks by using their minds to move things. . . but what do you think happens when you give a depressed, misanthropic teenage boy unlimited psychic ability?  Can you say Carrie?  It was decent, not amazing.

Beautiful Boy vs. We Need To Talk About Kevin

I recently ended up watching two movies about the aftermath of a school shooting through the eyes of the shooter’s parents.  Uh, grim.  And since the subject matter was roughly similar and I had strong feelings about both movies, I decided to do a slightly longer write-up of each, back to back.

Danger, Will Robinson!  Spoilers abound in these lengthier reviews.  So if you want just the yes/no, here you have it:  Definitely skip Beautiful Boy.  We Need to Talk About Kevin is really good but also soul-reaping, kinda like a Cormac McCarthy novel.  If you’re going to watch it, do so early on a sunny day when you can go outside afterwards and play with kittens and think about rainbows and magic instead of the futility of the human endeavor.

Beautiful Boy:  2010 drama directed by Shawn Ku and starring Michael Sheen and Maria Bello.  Bill (Sheen) and Kate (Bello) are a nice suburban couple on the verge of divorce.  They are planning a last-ditch-effort family vacation when their son Sam (Kyle Gallner) goes on a shooting spree at his university, killing 17 people and himself.  So the movie is ostensibly about how they deal with the aftermath of the tragedy.  

                  Everything was so predictable.  Their actions and reactions are so utterly, just, DUH.  First Bill is going to approach the situation like a Problem To Be Fixed, now Kate will call him on it, now Kate will hover over her nephew like he’s a weird son-substitute, now Kate’s sister-in-law will overreact about Kate hovering, now a total stranger will make a flippant comment not knowing that Bill is the shooter’s dad, now Bill and Kate will drink and have make-up sex, now some new information will cause them to fight and forget their brief reconciliation, now Bill will finally come to terms and Kate will rescue him.

                  There were so many opportunities to dig deeper.  The one area they really could have expanded on was the reactions of other people.  Honestly?  Everyone is super understanding?  They’re never personally confronted by the other parents or the media in a real way.  That, too, would have been expected, but also might have had the potential to be interesting.  

Example:  Kate befriends a young writer who you immediately know is a skeezball.  It would have been so much better for the story if he had turned out to be an agenda-less, platonic friend who actually cared about her, rather than a pseudo romantic interest pumping her for information so he can exploit her grief for fodder for his shitty novel.  But the second he just happens to run into her at the grocery store, you know exactly what’s coming.   There are no surprises, ever, from any character.

I give it credit for trying, but it’s one of the most rote, formulaic, emotionally stupid movies I have ever seen.  I am a devoted Michael Sheen fan.  I very much appreciate an actor who is willing to do a movie like Underworld: Rise of the Lycans directly on the heels of Frost/Nixon.  So he gets a pass.  But after this BS, I’m putting Maria Bello in the Shitty Movie Litmus Test category with Charlotte Gainsbourg and Malcolm McDowell.  Is one of them in it?  Then it’s probably terrible.

We Need To Talk About Kevin:  2011 drama directed by Lynne Ramsay and starring Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, and Ezra Miller.  It’s based on a book of the same name by Lionel Shriver, which I haven’t read.  And don’t plan to.  ‘Cause damn. 

The story flips back and forth between the current life of Eva (Swinton) and flashbacks of the events leading up to the school shooting committed by her son, Kevin.  Present Eva is an ostracized, nervous loner who is shakily attempting to rebuild her life.  As she slowly makes progress in finding a job and fixing up her small new house, she is occasionally accosted by a rude stranger or supposedly friendly coworker and the wounds rip open freshly.

Interspersed with all the present pain are the flashbacks in chronological order, beginning when she first gets pregnant.  She and her husband, Franklin (Reilly), share a quiet evening, roaming the streets, carefree.  Then she’s a hesitant mother-to-be.  Then she’s an anxious mother of a toddler who doesn’t respond to her, and then of a churlish young boy who seems to inexplicably, spitefully act against her.  And you can see the wheels turning behind her eyes as the years advance:  is he autistic, or just developing slowly?  Why does he respond to my husband and not to me?  Does he hate me?  How could he hate me?  Am I a bad mother?  Am I a bad mother?  Is my son a monster?  Am I a bad mother?

I found this far more realistic than Beautiful Boy, even given the nearly garish, rich color schemes in her flashbacks and the almost comically over-the-top manner in which he kills his classmates.  It has a dreamy, Gregory Crewdson feel to it, but that somehow made more sense to me.  It captures the surrealistic qualities of grief that I think few movies do. 

I didn’t really understand the ending.  Is it a penance?  A strange act of contrition to please her son?  Because if she had just gone along with him, had not been his antagonist, maybe he wouldn’t have done this?  Perhaps the point is for the viewer to wonder.  I don’t believe there is such a thing as closure after death.  So maybe it’s just an example of how she’s coping, a bizarre attempt to exert some control over her life.

It’s a beautiful, crushing movie that I kind of recommend you see.

Movies By Month: March 2012, part 1

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21 Hours at Munich:  1976 drama directed by William A. Graham and starring William Holden, Shirley Knight, and Franco Nero.  A rather lame retelling of the events of September 4, 1972, when a Palestinian militant group took members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage during the Summer Games in Munich.  It seemed like the filmmakers tried to take a stab at showing some of the political difficulties facing the West German police, the human side of the militants, and the planning errors that led to tragedy at the end of the day.  But they weren’t really able to pull it off.  It’s about a real international crisis, fraught with potentially disastrous implications for the volatile Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and it’s all taking place in GERMANY for F’s sake!  It shouldn’t drag!  Fraught!  And the acting is a mixed bag.  Why doesn’t Holden have an accent?

Some movies keep you in suspense even if you know what’s going to happen—this isn’t one of them.  Watch One Day in September instead.

The Roommate:  2011 thriller directed by Christian E. Christiansen and starring Leighton Meester and Minka Kelly.  Actors from various CW television shows, the Twilight films and Billy Zane unite for what is essentially a shot-by-shot remake of Single White Female: girl gets roommate, roommate becomes obsessed with girl, tries to become girl, obsession becomes deadly.  Watch SWF instead.  But I must give Meester snaps for doing almost as freaky-excellent a job as Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Wild Hunt:  2009 Canadian horror/drama directed by Alexandre Franchi and starring Mark A. Krupa, Ricky Mabe, and Tiio Horn.  Erik has a father with Alzheimer’s, an older brother who is super into the LARPing lifestyle and shirking his familial responsibilities, and a girlfriend whose interest in him is waning.  When Evelyn starts following Erik’s brother to the LARP events, he gets suspicious that something shady is going on and hightails it to the land of elves and Vikings and shamans to win her back. 

I really didn’t like it at first.  It was weirdly funny enough to keep me interested, so I kept with it and holy CRAP I’m so glad I did.  I didn’t think this Evelyn chick was worth the hassle.  I will admit to yelling at the screen something like:  “She cheated on you with a dude who thinks he’s a wizard named Murtagh.  With a LARPER, man.  Grow a pair.”  But against my sage advice he goes there and is forced to enter the game as a player, and ends up disrupting the plans of Murtagh’s crew by stealing the fair Evelyn away.  Shit gets real when the lines between game and reality blur.  The ending was very The Departed.  Totally see it.

Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey:  2011 documentary directed by Constance Marks and narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, about Kevin Clash, the puppeteer behind Elmo.  Um, it’s adorable.  I had no idea he’s been involved in so many other projects besides Sesame Street.  He played the obnoxious Baby Sinclair in the TV show Dinosaurs (try not to hold that against him), Splinter in the first live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, and did muppeteering work on Labyrinth, Follow That Bird, and several Muppets movies.  Anyway.  I’m not really an Elmo person; I was far more partial to characters like Snuffy.  C’mon: a huge furry elephant with an Eeyore-like disposition and giant eyelashes?  Of course I liked him.

But I still liked this a lot.  He seems like a really solid dude, it was nice hearing his history and learning more about the early days of the Henson crew.  Definitely worth seeing.

The Guard:  2011 Irish black comedy directed by John Michael McDonagh and starring Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle.  Gleeson is an unconventional, hilariously un-PC Irish policeman who finds himself working with Cheadle’s buttoned-up FBI agent to bring down a drug smuggling ring.  I’d rather not say more.  It’s darkly silly, engaging, uncomfortable at times, and I highly recommend it.  It may not be for everyone, but if you liked In Bruges or Brendan Gleeson generally, then see it.

An American Haunting:  2005 horror film directed by Courtney Solomon and starring Donald Sutherland, Sissy Spacek, James D’Arcy, and Rachel Hurd-Wood.  It’s based on the Bell Witch ghost story, and holy crap is it pedestrian.  It’s boring, not the least bit scary, and up until the end seemed very much like a Disney version of a horror film.  Except Pinocchio was scarier than this nonsense.  The swooping ghost-POV camera shots were discombobulating, and sadly that was the only part of the movie that caused a reaction from me.  The ending is really inconsistent with the almost wholesome tone of the rest of the film, which I guess may have been what Solomon was going for?  But it comes off like a last-ditch effort to elicit scares and ends up just grossing you out.

Oh Jesus, not FEATHERS!

If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front:  2011 documentary directed by Marshall Curry.  It tells the history of the eco-activist group Earth Liberation Front, and the trials of several of its members.  If you set a fire as a political statement, is it arson or terrorism?  Should the ELF members on trial be shown leniency, given that they went out of their way to ensure no one was physically harmed by their actions?  Do the ends justify the means?  And what were the ends they were aiming for?  How realistic were those goals?  Have things actually improved, or did they set the environmentalism movement back?  It’s a really intriguing documentary, very well done, and regardless of where you fall on the green spectrum I think it’s worth watching.

The Mist:  2007 sci-fi horror film directed by Frank Darabont and starring Thomas Jane, Andre Braugher, Marcia Gay Harden, Toby Jones, and like 5 people from The Walking Dead.   A heavy fog rolls into town the morning after a nasty thunderstorm, and several townspeople take shelter in a grocery store when they realize the mist is somehow killing people.  OK, I know.  At first I was all “Oooooh mist . . . scary.”  But it does get pretty scary once the source of the mist’s killing power is revealed.  The acting is fairly solid all around.  Harden is hilarious as the uber-Christian soothsayer who attempts to convince her fellow refugees that God’s Judgment is at hand.  I wanted her to be less crazy in the beginning, and let it ramp up more slowly, but it’s still a solid performance.  It’s not at all what I expected, half an hour too long, and the ending is brutal.  I say give it a shot if you like Walking Dead, or the bleak no-light-at-tunnel’s-end kind of horror movies.

Incident at Oglala:  1992 documentary directed by Michael Apted, about the trial of three members of the American Indian Movement for the death of two FBI agents at the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975.  The story is fascinating, but it’s a scattershot mess of a movie.  The introduction is jumbled and clunky, the viewer is seldom reminded who the subjects being interviewed are, and even when that information is briefly provided it’s not often put into context.  Who are these people, and what role did they play in the incident?  I found it pretty disappointing.  I expected much more given the solid subject matter.

Serenity:  2005 feature-length continuation of the space-western television series Firefly, directed by Joss Whedon and starring Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Jewel Staite, the whole gang.  Both the series and the movie follow a ragtag group of smugglers trying to get by on the fringes of space society in the year 2517.  I don’t want to give anything more away.  If you like Joss Whedon, then watch the series (start with episode 2, not the pilot) and Serenity, and revel in the Whedonius.  I resisted this for a long time because I never could get into Angel and Dollhouse looked just awful and it’s a space western.  I’m glad I finally came to my senses.

 

Movies By Month: February 2012

Prisoner of Paradise:  2003 Canadian documentary directed by Malcolm Clarke and Stuart Sender.  Beautifully narrated by Ian Holm, it tells the story of Kurt Gerron, a Jewish movie director who was imprisoned at the Theresienstadt concentration camp and forced to make a Nazi propaganda film extolling the virtues of camp life.  Damn.  It was interesting, but didn’t really grab me.  I think perhaps I’ve seen too many World War II documentaries?  Is that possible?  When you know so much about a subject that even new details don’t much capture your attention?

The Good German:  2006 historical drama directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, and Dopey Maguire.  Postwar Berlin, Clooney is a war correspondent, Maguire is his skeezy valet, and Blanchett is the Jewish prostitute/former Gal Friday/Nazi wife that they’re trying to get out of the restricted zone to freedom.  But of course she’s not playing it straight with anyone, that’s the trouble with dames.

I liked this more the first time I saw it, when it was called The Third Man and didn’t involve Maguire (how I loathe him).  It’s overwrought, completely lacking in subtlety—and maybe that’s what Soderbergh is going for, with a new spin on the noir?  Doesn’t matter, it’s not effective.  It’s also at least an hour too long.  Skip it.  Not even a Clooney in uniform makes it worth your time.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy:  2011 spy thriller directed by Tomas Alfredson and starring just freaking everyone awesome.  Tom Hardy, Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch, Gary Oldman, Toby Jones, Mark Strong, Ciaran Hinds, John Hurt, Stephen Graham godDAMN such a good cast.  OK, yes, the plot:  London, 1970s, the British secret service is looking for a Russian mole in their midst.  I don’t want to say anything else lest I spoil it, and you ARE going to see this movie.  The acting is stellar all around, the pace is exciting but not so fast you can’t keep up, and the ending is pretty much perfect.  I’d heard that it was hard to follow if you hadn’t read the book or seen the BBC miniseries, but as long as you’re paying attention it’s not difficult at all.  I wanted to watch it again immediately after it was over.

And something that won’t make sense until you see it, and you ARE going to see this movie:  I love that you never really see Smilie’s wife – his blind spot.

Nightwatch:  1997 horror/thriller directed by Ole Bornedal and starring Ewan McGregor, Patricia Arquette, Josh Brolin, Nick Nolte, and Lauren Graham.  Wow, how prototypically ‘90s is that cast?  McGregor plays a law student who takes what he thinks will be a cake job as a night watchman at the city morgue.  Totally easy, he can study all night and try to ignore all the strange noises and creepy nooks and crannies of the freaking MORGUE, right?  Unfortunately for him there’s a serial killer on the loose, bodies are piling up, and strange things start happening.  Dramatic pause for effect!  Is his best friend the killer?  Is he losing his mind?  Is someone playing games with him? 

It’s a pretty decent thriller.  I wasn’t too surprised by the twist, but it was sufficiently nail-biting.

Panic Room:  2002 thriller directed by David Fincher and starring Jodie Foster, Kristen Stewart (yes that Stewart, of the sparkly vampire movies), Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto, and Dwight Yoakam.  Foster and Stewart are a mother and daughter who just moved in to a fancy apartment on the Upper West Side.  Too bad so sad for them:  the deceased former owner left some treasure behind, and the snotty grandson wants to get to it before the Estate Tax does.  When they realize their home is being invaded they lock themselves in the panic room, which is unfortunately where the aforementioned treasure is hidden.

                Certainly not my favorite Fincher.  It was decent, but not great.  Mr. Yoakam is outstanding (SO underrated as an actor), and everyone else does a fine job.  If you’re on a Fincher kick or really have a thing for Jared Leto in corn rows, then give it a whirl.  Otherwise maybe skip it.

In the Loop:  2009 political satire directed by Armando Iannucci and starring James Gandolfini, Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander, Anna Chlumsky (moment of silence for My Girl), and a ton of other people I kind of recognize but not really.  The U.K. and U.S. are on the verge of invading the Middle East – shock!  Feuding factions of government officials on both sides attempt to start or prevent this new impending war.  It’s freaking hilarious.  There’s so much cursing.  And really inventive cursing, particularly on the part of the two Scots, one of whom is played by Capaldi.  Example:  “Don't get sarcastic with me, son. We burned this tight-arsed city to the ground in 1814. And I'm all for doing it again, starting with you, you frat fuck. You get sarcastic with me again and I will stuff so much cotton wool down your fucking throat it'll come out your arse like the tail on a Playboy bunny.”  Gandolfini is also really good, which totally surprised me.  I highly recommend.

Ballets Russe:  2005 documentary about the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, directed by Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller.  Another day, another documentary about dancing, am I right?  I enjoyed the interviews with the now-elderly dancers, who range from adorable to adorable/batshit crazy.  It was fine.  If you like the ballet and have some time on your hands, then why not.

Drive:  2011 thriller-ish drama directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and starring Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Albert Brooks, Ron Perlman, and Bryan Cranston.  Ryan Gosling plays an unnamed stunt driver/getaway car driver/mechanic who befriends a young woman and her son who live in his apartment building.  When the woman’s husband gets out of jail and needs some help paying off a protection debt, Unknown Driver decides to help him out, which leads to complications in the lives of everyone in his small universe.

This is a pretty weak summation of the plot, I admit.  Honestly, the less you know about it, the better.  At first I thought it was just going to be a better version of The Transporter.  But after the initial excitement of the opening scene, the pace becomes slow and methodical, building to an amazing climax.  It’s just so damn good.  To riff on one of my favorite quotes from High Fidelity, it’s dark, violent, and the soundtrack kicks fucking ass.  Put your doubts about The Gosling aside, and see it as soon as possible.

The Crow: Wicked Prayer:   2005 horror film directed by Lance Mungia.  Yes.  I watched this movie.  But how could I not, given this line-up:  Tara Reid, Edward Furlong, Dennis Hopper, Macy Gray, and post-Angel, pre-Bones David Boreanaz?!?  There’s no need to explain how bad it was.  It was truly, truly awful.  I was just constantly giggling the entire time, marveling at the existence of it.  I will say, I watched the original again awhile back and it’s still deliciously ‘90s Goth. 

Mimic:  1997 sci fi horror film directed by Guillermo del Toro and starring Mira Sorvino, Jeremy Northam, and Josh Brolin.  When cockroaches spread a deadly disease in New York City, entomologist Susan Tyler develops and releases a new breed of bug designed to kill them.  Turns out this Judas Breed of superbug reproduces and evolves rapidly, becoming giant and able to mimic the form of humans.  So the squad of scientists has to figure out a way to kill them before they spread throughout the world!  It was so-so.  The buggy-sciencey stuff was interesting, but it wasn’t scary.  Not enough there to keep my attention.

Movies By Month: January 2012, part 2

Bad Teacher:  2011 comedy directed by Jake Kasdan and starring Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake, Jason Segal, and Lucy Punch.  It doesn’t really matter what the movie is about, honestly.  She’s a bad teacher.  And this is a bad movie.  Punch and Timberlake do a fine job, as does Diaz I guess, but it wasn’t funny or interesting or even watchable.  I spent most of the movie trying to figure out if Diaz had work done right before shooting began, because her cheeks looked really weird. 

Encounters at the End of the World:  2007 Herzog documentary about people who live in Antarctica.  I’m sorry, I just can’t.  The footage was pretty spectacular, and the rare moments when Werner shuts the hell up are beautiful and interesting.  But they are rare, indeed.  I tried muting it unless he was interviewing someone, but that was too much work so I stopped watching after an hour.  I will continue to try, Mr. Herzog.  Maybe you could help me out by giving that voice box a rest.

The Black Power Mixtape ’67-’75:  2011 documentary about the Black Power Movement directed by Garan Hugo Olsson.  The movie combines found footage from a Swedish television crew with contemporary commentary by folks like Erykah Badu, Talib Kweli, Angela Davis, and Kathleen Cleaver.  It’s excellent, especially if you’re interested in this period of American history.  The footage is really interesting, since one rarely sees new footage from this era.  And I liked that interspersed with the commentary about its historical significance are personal histories, what it was like to live in this time.  Oh, and the music by Questlove is great.  It’s just all really good.  See it.

Paul:  2011 sci-fi comedy directed by Greg Mottola and starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Seth Rogen, and Kristen Wiig.  Pegg and Frost are British enthusiasts of all things nerdy, making their way across the U.S. to visit their favorite extra terrestrial-related sights.  They run into a CGI alien named Paul (who of course is the alien from the Roswell landing) and they try to help him escape the government goons who are tracking him down.  It was fine.  If I didn’t have such a love for Pegg and Frost I might even have liked it.  But this is pretty weak sauce, guys.  It had cute and funny moments, but my expectations were not met.  If you’re interested in the Pegg/Frost oeuvre, then watch Shawn of the Dead or Hot Fuzz or Spaced.  I wouldn’t bother with the rest. 

p.s. Jason Bateman, I didn’t buy you as the bad guy for a second.  Try harder next time.

Hollywoodland:  2006 drama about the death of George Reeves, directed by Allen Coulter and starring Adrien Brody, Ben Affleck, Diane Lane, and Bob Hoskins.  Brody plays a private detective, who naturally is down on his luck and drinks a bit too much and has an inappropriate involvement with his female assistant, because this movie could not be more predictable.  Anyway.  So this P.I. decides to launch an investigation into the apparent suicide of George Reeves, who you may remember from Adventures of Superman.  He quickly uncovers Reeves’s affair with a powerful studio head’s wife, a quickie marriage to a money-grubbing moll, and a strained relationship with his mother.

Much like Mad Men, I found myself more interested in the costumes and sets than the storyline.  It seemed to have potential at the outset, but the ending lacked teeth.  It’s just OK.  If you’re interested in Old Hollywood cover-ups, watch the documentary Girl 29 instead.

Just LOOK at that set design!!

We Need To Talk About Kevin:  2011 drama directed by Lynne Ramsay and starring Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, and Ezra Miller.  Full review to follow in an upcoming post.

Good Neighbors:  2010 Canadian thriller directed by Jacob Tierney and starring Scott Speedman, Jay Baruchel, and Emily Hampshire.  Louise (Hampshire) is a reclusive waitress, Spencer (Speedman) is her snarky, paraplegic downstairs neighbor, and Victor (Baruchel) is the new guy in the building, an eager and often annoying elementary school teacher who just wants to make friends.  When their neighborhood becomes the hunting ground for a serial killer, their shared curiosity in the case has some interesting consequences.

I immediately knew who the killer was.  It’s so obvious as to almost be insulting.  So I kept with it mostly because have I mentioned in the last ten minutes that I love Scott Speedman?  Because I DO.  I didn’t really think it would improve and then holy crap!  Not at all the direction I thought it was going to take.  The last 20 minutes or so got WAY interesting.  I ended up liking it quite a bit, but that could be my Scott-colored glasses.

Hugo:  2011 adventure drama directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Asa Butterfield, Ben Kingsley, Chloe Grace Moretz, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Helen McCrory.  Hugo Cabret is a young orphan boy secretly living in the Gare Montparnasse railroad station in 1930s Paris. He makes friends with an earnest young girl, who is precocious in the way that children with perfect childhoods are in movies.  They embark on a great adventure filled with mystery and clock-making and movie history and mechanical toys and cute dogs and old bookstores.  *Le dreamy sigh*  So yes, duh, of course I liked it.  I watched the 2D version, as my bitter hatred of the current 3D trend would not permit viewing it in that most loathed format.  And it was perfectly fine and enjoyable without simulated crap flying at my face.

The Cove:  2009 documentary directed by Louie Psihoyos and starring dolphin activist Ric O’Barry and his band of merry misfits.  The film follows O’Barry as he tries to shut down dolphin hunting operations in Taiji, Japan.  He’s thwarted at every turn by the local government, who is bent on keeping their primary industry intact.  Nevermind that dolphin meat contains freakishly high levels of mercury and is usually sold disguised as other fish products, and the inhumane methods used to kill the animals.  So O’Barry and the filmmakers assemble a crack team of marine biologists, professional free divers, and specialty film crews to break into restricted areas and use crazy high tech gadgets to finally document the dolphin hunt process in Taiji and inform the world.

I would like to defy the stereotype and say that even though I am female, I do not have a deep-seated twee obsession with this slippery mammal.  And I was concerned it would be yet another uber-liberal documentary that wouldn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.  Also, I eat meat.  I eat cute little furry animals.  I try not to eat meat every day, and I try to purchase meat that is raised and killed humanely, but I do eat it.  I didn’t want another Michael Pollan situation on my hands where I was afraid to drink water for 2 weeks.  But I caved.  It won for Best Documentary at the Oscars and people kept telling me to see it and Netflix kept taunting me with it.  Had I known it was going to be like a spy movie, I totally would have watched it sooner!

Judge Dredd:  1995 sci fi train wreck directed by Danny Cannon and starring Sylvester Stallone, Armande Assante, Diane Lane, and Rob Schneider.  It’s the future, cops are now also judges who can inflict collateral damage and kill offenders at their own discretion, Stallone is framed by his former partner, Rob Schneider is annoying bla bla bla.  Honestly, I confused this with Demolition Man, which is probably just as terrible but at least has Wesley Snipes.  It was lame.  Sigh . . . could my love for terrible action movies be waning?

To Kill A King:  2003 English historical drama directed by Mike Barker and starring Tim Roth, Dougray Scott, Olivia Williams, and Rupert Everett.  The film explores the relationship between Oliver Cromwell and Thomas Fairfax in the wake of the English Civil War (was there really only one?).  The Parliamentarians want the people to have a voice in government, the Royalists believe that King Charles I is ordained by God and can do pretty much whatever he wants.   And here come the Puritans!  Everett is deliciously bitchy as King Charles, and Roth is excellent as the pious, judgey Cromwell, the man who robbed England of pie and Christmas. 

                  I have no idea how accurate the historical details are, which is probably why I enjoyed it so much.  Instead of focusing on glaring costume mistakes I was able to just watch the movie.  Like a normal person.  I also liked that I never fully sympathized with all of the beliefs or decisions of either Cromwell or Fairfax, so it was difficult to choose a side, which I think made it more interesting.