watching movies one cup at a time

It is generally acknowledged that the Batman film franchise went down in flames with the campy, horrible Batman and Robin film from 1997. Nevertheless, Batman’s power as a recognizable icon and marketable hero is still irresistible for film studios, especially in the wake of the gazillion-dollar-making Spider-man movies. So it is not surprising that a new Batman movie would get made, but clearly a new direction had to be taken.

First a little back story. Frank Miller is a legend in the comic industry. The writer and artist has released several groundbreaking and masterful graphic novels and series over the past 30 years, including some fantastic Batman stories. The most famous one is The Dark Night Returns which inspired some of the style used in the first Tim Burton Batman movie and is considered a landmark in the Batman canon. It could be argued that the popularity of The Dark Night Returns contributed significantly to the first Batman movie getting made at all. There is another great Frank Miller comic book mini-series called Batman: Year One. In that series, Miller fleshes out how Batman got started and the rocky road he took to perfect his technique. It is set against a corrupt and desperate Gotham City and the series reads like a noir detective story. Batman Begins doesn’t tell the same story as Year One. But clearly there is a connection and the idea was sparked in those pages. Read the rest of this entry »

Since The Dark Knight opens today, they are playing a lot of the previous Batman movies on cable. Batman Forever was included and I’d forgotten how stupid it was. Way stupid. It’s the second worst Batman movie after the criminally terrible Batman & Robin. Val Kilmer is a terrible Bruce Wayne/Batman, just stiff as a board and looking bored the entire time. Nicole Kidman is a disposable vamp who is just filling in the cliche, must-have love interest role. Tommy Lee Jones is over-the-top in a bad way and just annoying, a total waste of his talents. And Jim Carrey… holy crap he needs to be shot! Over-the-top doesn’t even cover it. He blew the top off, ate it, vomitted it up, and blew it off again. And it’s all 100% stupid.

Everyone always talks about the movie Breakin’. And I think Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo not only goes down as the stupidest sequel title, it is also the most played-out sequel joke of all time. I’ve got nothing against Breakin’. It was a decent movie. But Beat Street was the S**T. These 2 movies came out within a month of eachother at a time when breakdancing was huge and, along with hip-hop, it was making it’s way into mainstream culture. Breakin’ pretty much stole all the attention. But while Breakin’ was all L.A. and sunny, Beat Street was The Bronx in the winter. It was raw and it was real. Read the rest of this entry »

Adam Sandler takes a turn toward more family fare with essentially a kid’s movie here. This is the first film produced by Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions that has received a PG rating. It’s not bad but there isn’t much too it really. And the fantasy element about the bedtime stories coming true never makes it to the land of believability. It just sort of happens and then is accepted as normal almost immediately, without any attempt at explanation or even curiosity.

I found the funniest character to actually be the unexplainably big-eyed guinea pig thrown in for comic purposes, Bugsy. He’s just the right balance between weird and adorable. More could have been done with him.

For a mild, enjoyable movie, it fits the bill. No big laughs here but a few light chuckles.

A lot has been said about this movie’s use of CGI. It was made by the same people that created the Polar Express. It uses motion capture technology to digitally record an actor’s real, physical performance, and then interpret that into a computer to guide a computer generated character. So in that sense it greatly differs from films like Shrek and the Pixar films. It is much more direct attempt to mimic a “real life” depiction through computer generated animation. The people are meant to look like real people, etc. As opposed to the more “cartooney” CGI movies put out by other studios. Does it succeed? Do the digital characters look like real people? Well, it’s getting close. Read the rest of this entry »

Bruno is the next movie from Sacha Baron Cohen, the same performer that brought us Borat. Like Borat, Brüno is basically a series of outrageous situations where his character interacts with an unsuspecting public to illicit a reaction and hopefully cause a scene. This time instead of a foreign journalist, it’s a gay fashion “expert” let loose on models, hunters, soldiers, swingers, Hollywood, and heterosexuals in general. This is definitely low brow, often gross humor. But I have to admit I laughed out loud at least 3 times. He just has a way of making these ridiculous situations humorous. It’s just so crazy you have to laugh and laugh at the poor people caught in the middle trying to make sense of it. It’s crazy and crude, but it definitely has it’s moments where it connects. If you laughed at Borat, you will laugh at this.

This is supposed to be a comedy? The trailers made this film out to be a very funny, kind of slapstick comedy. But this film was not funny and was often quite dark. All the characters are pretty loathsome and while Brad Pitt acting goofy is entertaining for about a minute, it’s not enough to qualify this as a comedy. After an hour and a half I just didn’t get why we should care about any of these people or anything that was going on. It just felt like a waste of time.

This is Daniel Craig’s debut as James Bond and some had questioned the whole notion of a “blond Bond.” But Craig lives up the character and in fact kicks some major ass. In a sense this is a prequel. It depicts Bond’s first mission after becoming a 00. But in another sense I think this film is more how I envision the entire James Bond canon. I believe that “James Bond” is actually a title and not a real person in these stories. A man becomes “James Bond” after the previous one retires or is killed. Anyone with the 007 status adopts the identity. So Daniel Craig is not the original James Bond but he is the current one. And I’m talking about IN the movie, not the actor. That way James Bond is timeless and the several actors that have played him can be explained easily enough.

Having said that, Daniel Craig does a phenomenal job. He is a perfect cool, calm, and ruthless agent that is completely capable of all that’s required of the character. The film takes more inspiration from the recent Bourne movies than it does the campy, doomsday schemes of the 80s and 90s. This Bond will do a 15 minute fight sequence smashing through windows and jumping off of roofs before anything with lasers comes out. And all with the same cool and effortless expression on his face. Hardcore.

Great action, great characters, a great Bond film for a new generation.

I really enjoyed this movie. I had low expectations because I’m not a huge romantic-comedy fan (though I seem to have seen thousands somehow) but I was pleasantly surprised by an interesting story, real characters, and some great acting.

Jennifer Garner is lead here as a young woman about to be married only to have her fiance die in an accident right before the wedding. She deals with it with the help of her friends and a buddy of the fiance’s who is in town, played by Timothy Olyphant. Things get complicated when Juliette Lewis comes to town with a young child that she says was the fiance’s son whom Jennifer Garner never heard of before. But the pacing is kept light and airy, not too forced or hectic. All the characters deal with their friends death in different ways and it feels genuine and not some sappy made-for-TV movie cliche.

Jennifer Garner is great in this movie. She is perfect as the newly single character, Gray. Not extreme, not overthinking it, very natural. And her stunning beauty works well with the character.

Timothy Olyphant is also really, really good in this movie. Often he gets roles as the bad guy. And he can do bad guys exceptionally well. But he has been consistently great in everything I’ve seen him in. And in this film he does a great job of being at first the sort of rogue drifter but then really fleshing out the character as a good guy and a good person for Gray to start a romance with.

Kudos to Kevin Smith too. He rarely does movies that aren’t his own productions but this time he did a really good job in a purely supporting acting role. And his scene in the hospital was quite good. I know the character in the movie was pretty much just Kevin Smith by a different name, but he pulled it off and it flowed very naturally with the movie. I have seen far worse acting from people who don’t also have Director and Writer as their day job.

Bottom Line: If you’re looking for a good romantic-comedy-drama that isn’t wacky, gross, or over-the-top, give this a try.

This is an interesting little movie that kind of flew under the radar this year. It’s set in an underground city at some time in the future when the surface of the planet has presumably been made uninhabitable. The underground city has aged well past it’s expected use and is falling into disrepair. The ones who built the city have long passed away and so the current residents simply exist in a perpetual state of being fixed up with whatever temporary solutions are at hand. It’s a crumbling structure that is getting harder and harder to maintain. The leaders of the city are content with just keeping things as they are so they can horde the city’s limited resources for themselves. While a couple of kids figure out that there was a plan of action lost a long time ago that was intended to lead them out of the city and back to the surface.

The sets in this film are quite well done with a very rich level of detail. It reminds me very much of Terry Gilliam’s fantasy movies like Time Bandits and Baron Munchausen or Jeunet’s City of Lost Children. They do a great job of conveying the layers of layers of crumbling and quick fixes that have covered the city. Nothing is ever replaced with something new, it’s simply patched or tied together.

Overall the story was good but I felt it could have used a little more punch to it. It could have been a little more exciting and given a stronger edge of urgency. But it’s not bad and it’s a shame more people didn’t see it. Bill Murray as the corrupt and lazy mayor does an excellent job as do the two child leads, including Saoirse Ronan who was so brilliant in last year’s Atonement.