Prom Night

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. Who in Hollywood greenlights these kind of projects? There wasn't a single moment of innovative or creative thought in this entire script. Entirely formulaic, and not a bit scary or intense at all...

Maybe I should dedicate myself to writing a completely predictable horror film script, cram in every cliched trick in the genre, and sell it to some desperate studio for big bucks. I literally could have written this script in a day. Just awful...

Shame on you, Stringer Bell...

The Invisible

Well, this movie made no sense really. There is meant to be (I think) some lesson about the connection between life and death and unfinished business, etc.  But the point is muddled here. The main character is beaten within an inch of his life and goes into some purgatory state where he can see everyone but is essentially invisible to the living. His physical body is hidden and left for dead, and he strives to somehow convince those responsible for his near-death to have a moral epiphany and right their wrongs. 

Again, it makes no sense and it essentially felt like a long episode of The Ghost Whisperer. Yeah, that bad...

Charlie Bartlett

While technically in a supporting role, Robert Downey Jr. is the clear star of Charlie Bartlett.  It seems like everything he has done in the last few years has turned to gold.  I liked Anton Yelchin as the protagonist, but the plot seemed a bit too reminiscent of other 'fish out of water' type movies. Nothing in the film really stood out as original or creative. The top-notch cast in the film probably drives it, making it exponentially more watchable. Half the cast of Degrassi was in it as well in bit parts. Very cool...I love Degrassi.

The Spiderwick Chronicles

Pretty inventive flick, and not exactly warm and fuzzy for the kids! Even some of the 'good' creatures really have pretty dark aspects to them. Overall, this is no Harry Potter, but entertaining nonetheless.

The Other Boleyn Girl

Pretty bleak story about Henry VIII and his alleged trysts with both Anne and Mary Boleyn. In this age of ultrasound and finding out your child's gender months before birth, the anticipation back then was enormous, and the birth of a child could be either joyous or tremendously disappointing, particularly if you are the King waiting for a male heir that never arrives. I've never watched The Tudors on Showtime, but from what I'm told it is a much raunchier take on the same general characters...

In the Land of Women

Sappy and a bit too self-aware for me. Same producer as The Big Chill, but that's where the comparisons end...

The Sasquatch Gang

This flick has the same kind of weird vibe and dialogue as Napoleon Dynamite. It's got that time-warp feel, where everyone seems to be living in the present, but without the benefit of modern technology for the most part. Fun movie though...

The Savages

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The Golden Compass

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Mr. Woodcock

What the hell happened to Billy Bob Thornton? At one point in time, he made edgy, funny movies with good directors and decent co-stars. Now, he makes dreck like Mr. Woodcock and this. I suppose the more movies I watch as a human being, the more I realize that a formulaic movie will always be just good enough to bring in a minimal number of viewers and not piss off most of those who watch said film. I like to think I have slightly more refined taste in film, and although I will watch basically anything, I won't hesitate to call shit for what it is. This movie is shit.

Pineapple Express

Who doesn't love a good stoner action/comedy film? I know I do, but I guess I can't honestly speak for everyone in the world. Every few years, there needs to be a decent

The Condemned

Any movie produced by the WWE should be completely avoided. I really need to stop getting movies from Netflix just because they're out on Blu-ray...

Harsh Times

Kind of a weird flick. Not really sure what to make of it. Christian Bale is an ex-military back in L.A., trying to get a job in law enforcement after seemingly killing tons of people in Iraq or Afghanistan or something to that effect. The character teeters on the edge of full-blown psychosis the entire movie, and it feels slightly directionless.

Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

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Seul contre tous

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The Recruiter

HBO Documentary about an Army recruitment post in Louisiana.

Cidade Baixa

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The Dark Knight

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China's Stolen Children

Documentary about the booming illegal market for buying children in China and a harsh criticism of the PRC's One-Child policy.

Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madam of Crystal

Documentary about Heidi Fleiss trying to start a whorehouse only for females in Nevada.

Gin gwai (The Eye)

Pretty good horror film from Hong Kong. The American remake was apparently a piece of shit. This is not unexpected. Remakes of Asian horror flicks like the Grudge and the Ring were initially pretty good, but now too many rip offs are mass produced, inevitably lowering the quality. When in doubt, always watch the original...

Zodiac

For some reason I was avoiding watching this movie, despite the great reviews it had received. Once I finally got around to it on the old Netflix queue, I am very glad I took the time to watch it all the way through. David Fincher is a great storyteller, and the twists and turns of the case of the Zodiac killer are riveting in this narrative. Great performances from all the main actors as well...

Vanishing Point

Kick ass movie!

The Sand Pebbles

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El Orfanato

Great, great film...

Never in my life have I seen a movie that mixed horror and drama so seamlessly. Wow, what an ending. Beautifully written, with absolutely no plot holes or loose ends. Up there with The Sixth Sense as far as dropping a huge bomb on the viewer...

The Brave One

Didn't buy it at all...way too many coincidences have to be contrived to make the general premise of this film work. It was touted as a "vigilante film turned on its head", but it pretty much put me to sleep. Too bad, because it had a decent cast and director...

Bobby

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The Art of Failure: Chuck Connelly Not for Sale

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The Chumscrubber

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Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj

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School for Scoundrels

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Hard Times at Douglass High: A No Child Left Behind Report Card

Another film in the HBO documentary series, this time a stark and fairly critical look at what Bush's education plan has done to screw inner-city schools even more. Like an episode of the Wire: Season 4, this film is set in the Baltimore ghetto at a historically black high school.

Ganja Queen

Documentary about an Australian woman imprisoned in Indonesia for allegedly smuggling drugs into the country. Interesting film, but really sheds little light on what actually happened. It hints at all sorts of corruption and deceit revolving around Schapelle Corby's trial, but in the end everything seems even less clear than at the beginning. Scattershot attempt to make sense of it all, but it falls short on the narrative front.

Bullitt

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Cidade dos Homens

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Wanted

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Persepolis

In my corner of the world, this biographical cartoon about the Iranian Revolution and its aftermath got loads of hype. I wasn't that blown away by it, but at the same time it was really well done with beautiful animation. Probably deserving of the Oscar nomination, even though it didn't win. I admit I switched the dubbing over to English 10 minutes in because I was getting tired of reading subtitles and trying to half understand the French. I normally don't do that, but because it was a cartoon I don't think very much was lost...

Night at the Museum

I avoided this movie for ages, and I'm not quite sure why. Despite that fact that I missed the first 15 minutes, I saw all the meaty parts I think, and was highly entertained. Original idea and creative story. Kids must have loved it...

Final Draft

While I'm sure JVDB wants to shed the persona of Dawson very badly, it felt to me that this film was kind of picking up where the Creek left off. When we last left the DC crew, Pacey and Joey were living in NYC being romantic and creative and shit, Jen had died of some rare disease, and Dawson had made the leap to L.A. to become a successful movie maker, now with a hit show about his Norman Rockwell-ish childhood back east...

Now, in Final Draft, Dawson (albeit under a different name) has become a struggling screenwriter, living in some factory-warehouse loft space in what looks to be Allentown or Gary or someplace cold (in fact, this movie is Canadian, so the nameless place is probably Hamilton or Ottawa or something like that). He is mooching off his actor friend, who himself is desperate for a big role to jumpstart his career. Hollywood eats its own, right? Only the young survive...
Anyway, Dawson locks himself in his dump of a loft, and slowly goes insane writing a screenplay about a vengeful ghost of a circus clown. To be honest, I like Pacey's turn as a Hemingway wannabe in Americano much better. At least JVDB is getting work though...

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired

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Americano

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10,000 B.C.

Sometimes I think that sweet CGI will overcome any plot or story problems that a movie may have. Occasionally, that is the case, but usually not. 10,000 B.C. epitomizes this phenomena. It has decent visual effects, but the story feels like it was written by a middle-schooler. So, there is this tribe of savage people living in some sort of snowy, mountain-top tundra land. For generations, they never leave the area until a bunch of their people get kidnapped by 'four-legged demons'. Then, the tribe's manly men follow the kidnappers, manage to easily cross the mountains, and all of a sudden are in the jungle getting attacked by huge birds, then just as quickly they stroll into the desert and meet African tribesman. Then they get to the pyramids...where there somehow are woolly mammoths. I guess that explains the miracle of how the Egyptians did it.
The ending was ripped straight out of Conan the Barbarian (Crom help me, I mentioned such a classic in the same breadth as this piece of crap).
Bottom line, CGI did nothing to redeem the slipshod research and dull pacing of this snoozer. Even watching it on Blu-Ray wasn't enough to make me feel like it wasn't a huge waste of time.

Premonition

Alright, not going to waste a lot of time talking about this movie. Another feeble attempt at playing with time and events, it's like a really weak attempt at copying the general premise of Memento. The only problem is the resolution is muddled and unconvincing, and at the end you get this sort of "whatever" feeling. Good thing I watched this on Showtime and didn't rent it. It did generate some debate between me and my wife about what exactly was happening and when, but even that was half-hearted because the movie was so blah...

Be Kind Rewind

Wow, I was so disenchanted with this film I nearly forgot to add it to the blog. Needless to say, when I first saw the trailers for this sometime last year, I was excited. The concept was fresh and unique: two guys work in a video store, accidentally erase all the store's tapes, then decide to refilm their own versions of many of the movies. Good actors that I generally like, especially Mos Def, and Michel Gondry at the helm (just like Stuff White People like says, all white people love Gondry flicks, myself included).

That said, this was terribly disappointing. The parts that I thought would be funny either weren't or were just too short, and the whole thing turned into a feel-good, save-our-inner-city type of message. I wasn't feeling it, and so I definitely wouldn't recommend it. Plus it has that hypocrite, Chavez-lover Danny Glover in it. I can barely stand to even look at the guy now.

Super High Me

Decent comedy/documentary by a stand-up comic who loves to smoke weed. He spoofs Super Size Me by first abstaining from pot for 30 days, then smoking constantly for the next 30. He does some perfunctory things to test the difference, like taking the SAT during both periods, getting regular medical tests, testing psychic ability, determining sperm count, etc. The pic is a bit disjointed (haha, unintentional pun), not quite a marijuana advocacy movie, but certainly not objective either. It was based on a joke Benson made about "how cool would it be to make a film like that McDonald's guy did but with weed...", and then that's what he did.

There was a bit of a look into the lives and neuroses of stand-up comics. Overall they do seem like a pretty miserable bunch. There was also very interesting info on the number of dispensaries that have popped up in California since 2005, and the whole State vs. Federal law struggle as the DEA constantly swoops in to bust these places despite their legal right to do business.

Resolved

Documentary about high school debating that really gets into the borderline absurd way the "art" has developed in the United States. This style of "debating" doesn't resemble anything close to what a lay person would envision it as. It is speed reading at its best, and while those who advocate for it as the ultimate in intellectual warfare, it seemed so absolutely insane to me that I thought the first five minutes of the film, where you get to see some of the best high schoolers in action, was a joke. The story was put together extremely well, and is riveting as it follows two principal groups of debaters through two years of travel and tournaments, anxiety and drama. Highly recommended.

Jumper

Highly disappointing because the concept is very cool, and the possibilities that go along with teleportation are very intriguing. That said, this movie was flawed on so many levels. First of all, why is every big blockbuster these days only about 90 minutes long? Am I alone in thinking movies should be 2 hours? Secondly, Jumper glossed over a lot of back story and left me confused about the main characters powers. What were the limitations? For example, could he have donned a space suit and gone to the moon or something? Anyway...I felt like I was re-watching some of the crappiest scenes from the updated Star Wars trilogy, with Christensen and Sam Jackson, plus Rachel Bilson is a Natalie Portman lookalike. I liked that the beginning of the movie was set in Ann Arbor, but it really could have been any nondescript town. The plot seemed thin, and the movie felt like a setup for sequels...which I hate. Any decent movie in whatever genre should be able to stand alone as a work, and not rely on what may or may not come in the future. For all its big budget special effects and glamor, Jumper was forgettable at best...

Shortbus

Weird, arty film. A little too much male frontal for me, and kind of a draggy, unstable plot. Didn't make a hell of a lot of sense, but then again I don't suppose it was meant to. I fell asleep half a dozen times watching it, and for good reason. Oh yeah, it was a Canadian film...set in NYC. Probably filmed in Toronto. Gotta love it.

Georgia Rule

For all the big names that were in this movie, including director Garry Marshall, the story was pretty piss-poor. And we don't even get the convenient "moral wrap-up" at the ending. Lindsay Lohan is a horrible actress, but I suppose she was sort of in her element playing a slutty teenager. I felt bad for Jane Fonda...when she finally decides to unretire and make another film, she is handed this pile of shit. The only thing memorable about this was that it was set in Idaho. Not too many films can say that... maybe Napoleon Dynamite.

Bottom line: barely watchable, even on cable.

Semi-Pro

Not as bad as everyone said it was. Low expectations, and sometimes you get a surprise...

Varsity Blues

Oh, Dawson, where for art thou, Dawson? This flick may have be the pinnacle of James Van Der Beek's film career, and a good one it was. Saw this on TNT...even though I'm not a big repeat film watcher, I've probably seen it at least three times. It's kind of fun to watch movies again a decade later to see which actors are still around and which have faded into obscurity. Varsity Blues is full of both. Feels like an episode of Friday Night Lights without all the melancholy music and dramatic pauses.

Lars and the Real Girl

A cynic will call this movie sentimental and cheesy, and the eternal optimist will call it heroic. I found it entertaining, let's leave it at that. A different kind of idea for a film, and a fresh perspective on human compassion.

Untraceable

While the plot was definitely formulaic, there were some creative and unique aspects to this film. Didn't deserve the complete thrashing it got from the critics. A poor man's Silence of the Lambs if you will.

Shrek the Third

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Bachelor Party

"Gentlemen, start your boners..."

Rambo

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Aliens vs Predator - Requiem

A lot of this movie appears to have been shot in the dark to compensate for the shitty plot and mediocre special effects. 

Recount

HBO original about the theft of the 2000 U.S. Presidential election.

The Kingdom

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The Bridge

Documentary about people who committed suicide in 2004 by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

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The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio

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Iron Man

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The King of Kong

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Forgetting Sarah Marshall

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Halloween

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American Gangster

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Cloverfield

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Omen IV: The Awakening

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Hitman

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The Painted Veil

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Funny Games

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Beowulf

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Darkon

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Starter for 10

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In the Valley of Elah

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The Host (Gwoemul)

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Tropa De Elite

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I Think I Love My Wife

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The Good Shepherd

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30 Days of Night

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Fracture

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Why Did I Get Married?

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La Vie en Rose

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The Hills Have Eyes 2

Boring. Not scary. Kind of gross, but not in a scary way.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

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Idiocracy

Idiocracy

Employee of the Month

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Perfect Stranger

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Grindhouse: Planet Terror/Death Proof

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3:10 to Yuma

They just don't make enough good cowboy flicks anymore. This one was entertaining, and well-written for my money. Kept me entertained, lots of good shootouts, sweet costumes, weapons... made me want to go shoot guns... which I did the next day!

The Last Mimzy

Cute kid's movie about the purity of children being the salvation of man. Scifi-ish, but a tad confusing. Not sure how an 8 y.o. gets a grasp on it, but overall not too bad. Dwight from The Office is in it too...

Vacancy

Dull. Predictable. But the director's name is Nimrod!

Saw IV

Terrible, confusing, Saw IV relies on mixing characters and plot twists from the previous three films to make sense. Of course, I had forgotten each film promptly after watching, so I really couldn't remember who the hell was whom. And of course the end sets up yet another Saw. This series may be interminable. Clocking in at a merciful 1:35, it was bloody and relied on the 'genius' of all the inventive traps. Basically, invent the traps and try to fill in the convoluted plot afterwards. 

Rescue Dawn

US Navy pilot escapes Vietcong prison camp in Laos...

I've seen better.

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There Will Be Blood

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I'll go over this and the other Oscar nominees once the awards have been given out.

Live Free or Die Hard

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Half Nelson

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Succubus: Hell Bent

A blissfully crappy horror movie, but not really a horror movie...more like a campy, goofy B-movie meant more for laughs than anything else. I can't say I was even disappointed in this, because the title alone indicates how low-brow it will ultimately be. I sat through it non-stop, chuckling at its crappiness and wondering how much these actors actually got paid to make it, and how far the careers of guys like Lorenzo Lamas and Gary Busey have fallen to force them to be in it (damn, I miss 'Renegade'). Busey is the 'star' of the film, despite the fact that he appears for all of 5 minutes towards the end. 

Can't complain about it...wouldn't rent it, but if it came on TV on a Sunday afternoon or whatever, you may want to just allow yourself to watch it....if you had nothing better to do!

The Blair Witch Project

Almost forgot I had re-watched this film. This is big for me, because there are very few movies that I will watch more than once. The Blair Witch Project, however, holds some nostalgia for me, and is one film that I really believe was groundbreaking on a few levels.

I first saw it right when it came out, in the summer of 1999. I was back in the country for a brief vacation, so I had missed nearly all the hype surrounding the film's release. I was in Maine visiting relatives, and my cousin suggested we go see it. I agreed, and since she was 14 at the time, we did the old switcharoo to sneak her into an R-rated flick (they were actually checking ticket stubs. which was weird).

Knowing absolutely nothing about the film, I was pretty impressed. I may have actually believed it was a real 'documentary' up until a certain point in the movie. Overall, I thought handheld camera style and erratic editing was very effective (this was before all the reality shows and whatnot, so it was quite original at the time...) and scary as hell. Using the unknown to evoke fear was brilliant, and really packed a punch.

Psychologically, I was freaked out. My family lived in a remote house out in the woods, and coming home after seeing that flick, I had a hell of a time falling asleep! I was so taken with the movie, that when I got back down to Caracas, I raved about it to all my friends down there. It came to theaters in Venezuela a few months later, and I dragged everyone to see it, insisting they would be blown away. To my chagrin, most of my friends thought it sucked and were unimpressed. In hindsight, I think all the hype and buildup about the movie prepared people for the final product. I first saw it with no preconceived notions, had no idea what it was about or what the plot entailed. Perhaps if I had waited like my friends did, then maybe I would have had the same reaction. 

Anyway, seeing it again was a nice trip back in time. My wife actually watched the last half with me, and she hates scary films. The freaky parts were still freaky, and I think she may have actually liked it. You have to give credit to a modern horror flick that has no monster, no blood or gore, no contrived 'scary' situations like being chased by a ghost through a cellar or something...just the filmmakers fucking with your head.

Stay Alive

Another 'horror' movie that evokes zero horror, except perhaps the horror that someone actually bothered to make it or the horror that I wasted 1 hour 40 minutes watching it.

Set in New Orleans, the plot revolves around a sinister video game where if your character dies, you will die in exactly the same way. I'm pretty sure this isn't the first time this convention has been utilized (see Emilio Estevez part of this movie). In any case, the film is highly ineffective. I suppose one could give credit for using a fairly non-conventional setting,( i.e. New Orleans instead of random big city suburbs), as well as blending in some gothic, voodoo, creole themes, however at the end of the day, the movie does nothing to impact my actions in daily life. If it were effective, I would ostensibly want to stop playing video games for awhile, just like I stopped camping in the woods for a loooong time after I first saw this. Instead, I am once again angered at having been duped into watching something just because it was on Showtime HD. Damn LCD television has really clouded my judgment...

War

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Yakuza vs. Triad gang war in San Francisco, lots of predictable plot twists and not nearly as much fighting as you would think for a Jet Li film. Lame, kind of reminded me of a low-budget 80's action flick, but with bigger explosions and fancier cars.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

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The Year of the Yao

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The Lookout

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The Holiday

Crap

The Science of Sleep

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The Number 23

I'm not really sure what to think about this film. It was a bit absurd, and the final "explanation" of the whole plot towards the end of the movie takes way too long. In the end, it is never very clear why 23 is actually such a powerful number...just a lot of coincidental occurrences and some creative number crunching.

Without spoiling the entire plot, it is way too implausible that Jim Carrey's character actually forgets an entire segment of his life, or even more implausible is how his wife of 13 years never questions this big gap in his history. I thought this would be a scary, creepy or suspenseful film. It's none of those. Just a bit irritating and highly disappointing.  At least it wasn't too long. Also, maybe it's the fact that I have watched three movies today and am a bit weary (I am ill with some stomach ailment). Regardless, I don't think I would have liked the film even if I were feeling 100% and it wasn't nearly midnight...

Notes on a Scandal

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Lonesome Jim

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Huo Yuan Jia (Fearless)

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Atonement

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Brick

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Clerks II

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Eastern Promises

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Resident Evil: Extinction

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We Are Marshall

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Lucky Number Slevin

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National Treasure: Book of Secrets

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Bridge to Terabithia

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Duane Hopwood

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Ratatouille

It is pretty amazing what has been done with animation since I was a kid. First of all, back then (the early 80s or so) kids were lucky if a new animated film came out every 3 years or so. Now there are loads every year, so many that there is an entire Oscar category for animation. That also means that there are a lot of shit cartoons put out. However, Ratatouille is not one of them. Excellent animation, cute story. The computer-generated rats are so lifelike that they actually made me shudder at times, as I often do when I see those gross tails. 

It was thus necessary to suspend disbelief when thinking about a rat becoming a 5-star chef in Paris, albeit surreptitiously. All in all, highly enjoyable and a must see. 

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No Country For Old Men

The first theater movie I have taken in this year, and I was not disappointed. Having wanted to see this film for at least 3 months now, I was psyched that I got to see while it was still out. Needless to say, I was blown away. Javier Bardem is terrifying as a murderer with arguably one of the oddest moral codes seen on screen in awhile. Josh Brolin also delivers as the fortuitous blue collar Texan who finds $2 million out in the West Texas scrub brush.

I guess you could say I'm a film buff, and I know my movie trivia fairly well, but I'm certainly not a fanatical fan of one director or actor or genre. I watch a lot of movies, I pick up on directors and whatnot, but I wouldn't last very long in one of those snobby conversations about how brilliant the Coen Bros are and how the plot nuances in Fargo clearly continue into their latter day work, blah, blah, blah...
That said, I have to say No Country for Old Men is my favorite Coen Bros offering since Lebowski. It certainly felt like one of their films as far as quirkiness and moments of dark humor go, but at other times it was something completely different than I have seen from them. Better storytelling, better plot flow, and really just an intensity that was present from the onset.

While I haven't seen too many of the other probable Oscar candidate flicks yet, it would take something extraordinary to knock this one off as my favorite thus far...

The Queen

The Royal Family doesn't really fascinate me that much, and I grew weary of Princess Di stuff long ago, but despite that, The Queen was a nice movie. It is easy to see why Helen Mirren won the Oscar for her performance. Completely convincing as Queen Elizabeth II. The story revolves around the aforementioned Royals during the week following Diana's death in 1997 (I remember it well; I was at Burning Man), and how the Queen deals with the public anguish over the event and the ensuing backlash at her apparent cold reaction. It is a very intimate and fresh perspective on the Royal Family's tenuous relationship with Diana (and with one another). I remember reviews of the film when it first came out described it as more of a TV movie than a theatrical release. That would perhaps be a fair assessment if not for Mirren's performance.

On a personal note, the same actor that plays the Queen's personal aide (Roger Allam - he looks a hell of a lot like Christopher Hitchens) also plays a crucial role in The Wind That Shakes the Barley. I will try and point out these small things I notice, not because I think I am being especially perceptive, but just to try and draw threads that can extend through my movie-watching. Hopefully I can make more connections.

The Hitcher

So far, so good...2 days in, 2 movies watched.

When you think of "scary" movies, or "horror" movies, what should realistic expectations be? There are so many of these put out these days, that the line sometimes becomes crossed from just thriller into horror. In my mind, there are various subcategories within the genre. First, the gory horror flick, like Hostel or Saw. Not necessarily scary frightening, just kind of disturbing and demented. Next are thriller types that are more psychological scary, like The Ring or anything in that Japanese horror category. These, to me, really stick with you and are much more haunting (if done correctly...there have been loads of crappy rip-offs of this genre as well). Then there are movies that try to be scary/thrilling/gory/suspenseful, but are too manic and end up being none of the above. The Hitcher falls into this category. Creepy roadside serial killer chases down two teens on Spring Break. Wow this sounds familiar...oh yeah, it's a remake of a 1986 version of the flick, duh.

Nevertheless, the suspense is never suspenseful. The plot is dull and as a viewer you just can't really commit to it. Even when it tries to go gory by basically drawing and quartering (truck stop-style) one of the main characters, it falls flat. Thank god it clocked in at under 90 minutes, making the pain minimal. I hate when horror moves aren't scary. I hate it worse when they aren't scary and suck on top of it. Not one of Sean Bean's best choices, but to his credit he was semi-convincing as a serial killer, just not really that scary. Sorry Boromir...

The Wind That Shakes the Barley

I am going to be absolutely diligent this year about this blog. I think the main mistake I made last year was approaching it as a way to review movies, instead of a way to actually chronicle how many films I saw. The result was I have no idea how many movies I saw in 2007 because I gave up on keeping track after not even a month. Then I made a lame attempt to try and compensate with those last few '07 posts, but that was really like shooting fish in a barrel. I easily saw over 100 movies last year if not more, only a fraction of which made it onto the blog. So, now I will write at least something about every movie I see. The posts may be long or short depending on how inspired I am to write about them. I will include all films, be they DVD/Blu-Ray, theater or cable. I will even throw in films I have already seen, just to keep the count straight.

Ok, so The Wind That Shakes the Barley was the first movie of the year on January 1st, 2008. Set in 1920, it tells of the Irish struggle for independence against Britain, which was desperately trying to keep the Empire together. From my history classes, the Brits were probably embroiled in the Boer Wars in South Africa around that same time, and were also dealing with Egypt and India to boot. Therefore, keeping Ireland in line was probably of utmost importance to the Crown, lest it risk losing the loyalties of its other imperial conquests.

Told from the Irish perspective, the film chronicles how two brothers struggle for Irish independence, but ultimately fall on different sides of the conflict when one accepts an truce with Britain while the other continues his armed resistance. Good film, visually pleasing to me at least with all the green Irish landscapes. The accents are a bit tough at times, especially when the actors occasionally venture into Gaelic (although this certainly adds an extra level of authenticity to the film). Overall, I really enjoyed it, but it probably won't appeal to a wide audience due its theme and art house feel. The cast is all Irish, with the only recognizable actor being Cillian Murphy of Batman Begins fame.