The Rest of the Films I Saw This Year Pt. 2

As I try to recall at least some of the movies I watched this year, I have realized exactly how many movies I watch...that is WAY too many. I realize that I may not even get to half of the 2007 total, but there really is no way to know. I'll be more diligent in '08 (I think)...

11. The Hillz - Not the crappy 'reality' show but an actual (very crappy) movie about rich white kids who start killing each other for shits and giggles. Oh yeah, this appears to be Paris Hilton's non-porno acting debut, which alone tells you about the overall quality of the film.
12. Alpha Dog - white trash Cali drug dealer teens kidnap brother of dude who owes them money and took a shit on their living room floor. Maybe it was based on a true story?
13. This Film Has Not Yet Been Rated - interesting and harsh critique of the MPAA ratings system. Shows how subjective and unfair it is, and as an added bonus shows all the best sex scenes from the last 25 years or so of movies...
14. Shooter - Marky Mark is a former military sniper; Danny Glover tries to pin assassination on him; Marky Mark goes John Rambo...
15. Superbad - teen sex, drinking romp which wasn't nearly as funny as everyone said it would be but was entertaining nevertheless
16. Knocked Up - same director and cast (almost) as last film, but the jokes seem a bit fresher and the plot more original. Rare combination of chick flick mixed with juvenile gross-out humor that seems to work
17. The Prestige/The Illusionist - Same movie with different actors. I hate when they do this, like when Deep Impact and Armageddon came out the same summer. Can't Hollywood at least wait a year or so to rip off each other's ideas? Oh yeah, and the Prestige was actually an excellent flick with a unique plot. I would say this even if I had seen the Illusionist first, because that movie was just drab.
18. Spider Man 3 - I always think I will like these Spidey films, and I never end up being wowed. This one was the same way...I forgot it as soon as I left the theater. The PS3 game was much cooler.
19. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - Not my favorite of the series, but then again this was probably my least favorite of all the books as well. Nothing will compare to Cuaron's Azkaban, because that one just broke the mold stylistically. Phoenix felt a bit cartoonish again...
20. Hostel 2 - I hate horror movies that aren't scary. Gore doesn't equal scariness in my book. Just makes me cringe but not in fright, just disgust. This movie lacked any suspense at all...was just plain stupid.

The Rest of the Films I Saw this Year

Since I have taken about 10 months off from posting, I will attempt to remember all the movies I have seen this year, which will be all but impossible, but I'll try to fill them in. Here's the deal; normally I have only HBO, so I don't watch that many movies since they tend to cycle the same ones over and over. However, for the last 3 months I got a special cable promo package that gives me all movie channels for almost free (Cinemax, Showtime, Starz, TMC, etc). Thus I have been Tivoing and watching a lot of movies lately. Many have been crap, many classics (trying to watch the whole Dirty Harry series), and loads of random documentaries among others. So, I will now just list them, and give a one sentence review. Which wont allow for much analysis or substance. Mostly just a record to look back upon in 20 years and wonder why the fuck I wasn't reading more books...

1. All In - shitty, shitty movie about poker that should have at least had nudity
2. Quinceanera- 15 year old Mexicana lives in L.A., gets pregnant without having sex
3. The Puffy Chair - some loser road trips from NY to Atlanta to give dad a La-Z-Boy
4. Gone Baby Gone - Mystic River ripoff, exaggerated Boston accents, twist ending that fooled no one
5. Into the Wild - excellent, sad, emotional, wanderlusty flick with great Eddie Vedder soundtrack
6. Michael Clayton - confusing but good take on corporate greed and lawyers kind of like a much better "Civil Action" but with Clooney instead of Travolta (thank god)
7. Highlander - Asskickery at its best; the original that includes Queen soundtrack
8. Highlander: The Final Dimension - Mario Van Peebles cheesy but kind of scary as bad guy; should have ended series here as title kind of indicates
9. Highlander: The Source - Oh Jesus this was so bad; not only was it awful, but it undermines a lot of the key principles that made the Highlander series so great in the first place like the fact they can never have kids (there can only be one, duh!); I saw this on the Sci-Fi channel if that gives you any indication of how crap it was.
10. Primeval - Lincoln Burroughs goes to Africa with Orlando Jones and the hot chick from 'The Net' (TV series, not movie) to capture killer crocodile...take all cliched elements from Anaconda, Jaws, and any slew of horror flicks, then take out anything remotely scary or suspenseful, add some corrupt, murderous African officials, and Voila!

I think I'll take these 10 at a time

Volver

When it comes to Almodovar films, film enthusiasts are fairly polarized: they either love them or hate them. Initially, I must say I fell into the latter category, trying to suffer through the confusion of films like Kika and Carne Tremula. Granted, I saw these films before I knew any Spanish, and probably missed a lot of nuance as well as cultural aspects that don't really come through in subtitles. Lately, though, I have immensely enjoyed the last few films Almodovar has made, including Hable Con Ella and La Mala Educacion. This trend continues with Volver, a subtle story based around the lives of two sisters and the puzzling return of their mother, who was thought to be dead. Penelope Cruz is excellent, wholly deserving of the Oscar nomination she received, as the mother of a teenage daughter who is struggling to make ends meet in modern-day Madrid (although most of the film takes place in La Mancha, the place where Don Quixote mistakes giant windmills for monsters).

My description of the plot is way over-simplified, but the payoff for following the plot of this film is great, so I won't give anymore away. Almodovar keeps you guessing throughout the film, and you never really know what is reality and what is not...that's the fun of it. The story itself is touching, and deals with broken families, relationships between mothers and daughters , etc, etc.

Cruz probably gets a bad rap due to her questionable body of work in Hollywood (Vanilla Sky, Sahara, that shitpile with Matt Damon and some horses...), but she really is an excellent actress, albeit when speaking her native tongue. Which is normal..how many Hollywood actresses ever try and make films in other countries? Hell, most can't even pull off a decent British accent, much less speak a foreign language believably. So, that's my two cents on her...she should stick with Spanish films, they suit her much better

Pulse

My expectations were low for this horror flick, and as much as I really wanted to be scared, the film didn't do it for me. This is sort of like the movie 'White Noise' with Michael Keaton a few years back, with technology being the driving force behind ghosts trying to enter the realm of the living. In this case, the audience never really gets an explanation for why these spirits have come to try and take over the souls of the living. All we know is that a college-aged computer geek hacked into someone else's system and unwittingly released these cyber-spirits. The chick from Veronica Mars is in this film as well as bunch of other no-namers that I vaguely recall seeing in other teen-genre films in the last few years.

I won't say Pulse is disappointing, but I can't really recommend it either. The concept is interesting, but the plot is muddled, and ultimately the director resorts to some pretty cliched horror movie tricks to finish off...

1.5 out of 5 Stars

Firewall

O, Harrison Ford, what has thy career become? This movie is just plain tired and boring. I feel like I have seen bits and pieces of this film before, namely Trapped with Charlize Theron and Fear with Mark Wahlberg way back when. Briefly, Ford is a computer security expert for a bank in Seattle. He's got the huge house overlooking Puget Sound (just like in Fear), and is targeted by techie thief Paul Bettany to help him steal $100 million from the bank. Bettany coerces Ford's cooperation by kidnapping his family and framing Ford to look like the culprit not only in the robbery, but in a few murders as well. Anyway, the kidnapping is just like Trapped and Fear, the setting is similar to both as well, and the resolution of the story involves genius heroics by Ford, a la Air Force One or any of the Jack Ryan films he did. Tired, tired, tired...

Oh yeah, another plot element they rip off: Bettany wants to steal the $100 million dollars by skimming 10k from each of the bank's wealthies 10,000 customers. Almost sounds like the Office Space plan to use a computer program to steal fractions of cents and redirect them all to one account to generate millions...

Thank god I saw this on HBO, not even wasting a Netflix mailing on it. Even having it in hi-def did nothing to make up for the truly shit quality of this turkey. What the hell has happened to Harrison Ford? Granted, he has never been the best actor on the planet, but normally at his age, actors will begin to take smaller roles in more *serious* films instead of starring vehicles in crap, big-budget productions. I can't remember the last movie I saw with him that even remotely amused or entertained me. Of course I never saw that buddy cop flick with Josh Hartnett...Hollywood Homicide was it? I'm sure that one was awesome...

1 out of 5 Stars

Eragon

I won't waste a whole lot of time on this, basically because it so bad. Having read both of Christopher Paolini's books in the Inheritance series, Eragon and Eldest, I had high hopes for this film because the novels are so well-crafted. Yes, it does borrow many traditional elements from the fantasy genre, and many probably pass these books off as LotR ripoffs, but if you can get beyond that they are great stories...

The film, however, is a stinking pile of shit. It was obviously thrown together, and so many details from the books are glossed over or completely omitted. Yes, condensing a complex story full of characters is par for the course, but Peter Jackson proved that you can make good movies faithful to the books that satisfy even the most hard-core fans. Eragon the movie is not even 1hr 45 minutes, and all the corners cut really make the film disjointed. Even the decent special effects can't save it, and the dragon with Rachel Weisz's voice is plain irritating.

Remember when special effects absolutely blew us away and could compensate for a weak plot? I'll never forget how awe-inspired I was by the liquid morphing in Terminator 2 or the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park...
Now, we as a viewing audience want it all...effects must be accompanied by a decent story, otherwise you'll just have a corny, computerized movie, a modern-day version of the sci-fi B movie of the 70s. I blame it on the Star Wars prequels (I caught a few minutes of the Phantom Menace on HBO the other day and was painfully reminded of this reality).

So, read the Eragon books, and if you must see the movie, wait until they show it on the Sci-Fi channel or something...shouldn't be long before it gets there...

1.5 out of 5 Stars

Blood Diamond

For some reason I wasn't dying to see this film, despite the positive reviews and Oscar buzz this generated early on in its release. Thus, I was pleasantly surprised by this pic, a fairly straight-forward look at the bloody and brutal violence that beset West Africa in the late 1990s. Set in Sierra Leone, Leonardo DiCaprio is a South African arms dealer who catches wind of an enormous pink diamond rumored to have been found in a diamond mine run by ruthless rebels and populated by slaves. Worth millions, DiCaprio sets forth to manipulate everyone around him to get his hands on the diamond in order to secure his own future and get the hell out of Africa once and for all.

The plot is decent, and the performances by DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou are great (both received Oscar nods this morning). While the journey in the film is essentially DiCaprio's character coming full circle to embrace Africa and hopefully do the right thing, the story sheds light on how poor nations rich in natural resources can disentegrate into such brutal inhumane warfare so quickly. Whether it be diamonds in Angola and Sierra Leone or oil in Nigeria, we see how global commerce in commodities can rip societies apart to benefit the needs of Western consumers. Having read a lot about Sierra Leone and the tactics used by rebels and government alike during this era, I was happy to see this brought to light in a big Hollywood pic. Parallels to the current situation in Darfur, Sudan right now are clear (genocidal violence aimed at innocent men, women and children without the diamond angle).

DiCaprio's odd stab at a South African accent isn't even as annoying as I thought it would be...he seems to pull it off, and his character is completely believable. Well worth a watch...

3.5 out of 5 Stars

Children of Men

Good but not great film. The basic premise is that mankind is infertile, and we are essentially on our last generation...hence, society has turned chaotic and is basically cannibalizing itself through terrorism, state oppression, etc. While some have called this film the Blade Runner of the 21st Century, this is misleading. This is not some sci-fi portrayal of an unrecognizable future, but more of a "What if?" that seems totally plausible under the given circumstances. The most memorable scene is seven-minute stretch where a single camera follows the protagonists through a setting of urban warfare in a refugee camp on the British coast. Unbroken with no edits, it is a masterful piece of filmmaking. Clive Owen is very good and Michael Caine is excellent as usual. A thought-provoking but not awe-inspiring film.

3 out of 5 Stars

Who Killed the Electric Car?

Fascinating doc about how the most promising car technology in decades was derailed by a combination of big business, government and a variety of other factors. While I'm sure there are detractors who will say this is a lopsided portrayal of a complicated issue, this film actually made me angry while I watched it. The public notion about electric automobiles or any alternative to the internal combustion engine for that matter is that it will never work, not practical for daily use, etc. The argument laid out in this movie proves that such a car can (and does) exist. Who wouldn't want a car that doesnt require gas, can be plugged in at home, and get upwards of 100 miles per charge? The arguments against the technology are clearly meant to protect those who profit from burning fossil fuels...a must see for anyone who wishes to reduce their daily impact on the environment...

4 out of 5 Stars

Lady in the Water

Well, since I waited until this came out on DVD, I had already read many of the horrid reviews this received, but I decided to keep an open mind. Yes, M Night Shyamalan set the bar absurdly high for himself with The Sixth Sense, and yes, many of his subsequent films sucked hard (namely Unbreakable and Signs). However, I thought The Village was quite clever and despite having anticipated Night's inevitable 'twist' at the end, I was surprised and, more importantly, entertained by it.

Now comes LitW, which is based on a children's book the director wrote for his own kids. Not to say that Night isn't extraordinarily creative and a gifted storyteller, but the plot for this film is just lame. It's a fantasy world that has lots of mythological elements and attempts to weave an engrossing world that kids could get lost in. What comes out in the film, however, is a muddled story full of plot holes and unexplained details that get glossed over. The main character, Cleveland (Paul Giamatti), is visited by a water nymph (Ron Howard's daughter) from a place called the Blue World. The nymph's purpose is to deliver some message to some person that never really is completely clear, while at the same time being chased by some weird dog made out of grass. The setting is an apartment complex somewhere in Pennsylvania (all his movies are set here I think), and as the plot moves forward it becomes apparent that many of the residents of the building are integral and interconnected elements in this nymph's quest.

Anyway, the story builds to a climax, where I was expecting the obligatory 'twist'....except it never comes. The story ends as the fantasy tale comes to its resolution which leaves the viewer with...not much. Confusion, boredom, not a lot of satisfaction. What made me laugh was a statement from Night in one of the DVD's extras. He talks about how epic this story was (that he invented) and how his goal is for it to become a classic tale that parents tell their kids. Fat chance. Number one, it's too scary for little kids. Number two, it's too convoluted for young kids to follow. Number three, it's just plain dull. Little Red Riding Hood this is not...instead we have a snooze of a movie that doesn't even deliver the traditional last minute zing of his other films. If you still want to watch it, maybe wait till they show it on basic cable or something. Don't bother with the DVD.

2 out of 5 stars

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

Directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones, this is a stripped-down tale of a hard-scrabble cowboy rancher (Jones) who becomes close friends with a Mexican drifter named Melquiades. When Mel is murdered by an overzealous Border Patrol agent (Barry Pepper), Jones becomes obsessed with first of all finding out who did it, then trying to exert his own brand of Texas justice.

The "Three Burials" refers to the fact that Mel is repeatedly interred and exhumed throughout the movie, and the film is thus set up and the story told according to the three burials. Lots of stuff going on in this film. The story is told in a fairly non-linear fashion, in a sort of Memento-style yet not quite as manic. It makes it a bit difficult to follow at times, and the ending is kind of anti-climactic. Nevertheless, Jones is good (even though he always seems to play the same character no matter what movie he's in), his Spanish is very impressive and Pepper is excellent. Also a nice performance from Dwight Yoakam. I like the bare bones feel of the movie, and the panoramic shots of the Mexican desert give it an old-school western feel as well. One last element of the film is that there are some pretty funny moments, which was quite unexpected. I didn't peg this as having any potential for comedy when I plucked it out of my Netflix queue.

Overall, 3 out of 5 stars.

Movies in 2007

For years I always intend to keep a list of all the movies I see in a given year. I usually get through January and then abandon it, laziness prevailing yet again. For 2007, I'll try and keep it online, listing each movie and making some commentary on it. For now, I'll include movies I see either 1) at the theater, 2) on DVD, or 3) on TV (HBO, OnDemand, etc.). I probably won't include movies I have already seen in the past ( for example sitting and watching The Bourne Identity for the billionth time).

To start out, I won't try and do the full movie review thing. I won't get into too many plot rehashes, won't try to over-analyze imagery, symbolism, character development, etc. Maybe down the road once I get comfy. Anyway, it's likely that no one will actually read this blog for months, unless I actively start trying to promote it. So hopefully by the time anyone sees it, I will have developed some sort of logical system that is not horribly boring. So here goes nothing...