watching movies one cup at a time

This movie is a time-travel sci-fi flick based on a short story by Ray Bradbury. I’m a sucker for time-travel sci-fi. I can’t get enough of it. But there have been so many time travel stories it has gotten very cliche. And often the logic and science loosely involved in these stories barely holds together. Well, A Sound of Thunder pretty much tosses out all attempts at applying logic to time travel. Almost immediately you can start picking apart the plot holes and watch the film go veering off into the ridiculous. It’s a true exercise in “suspension of disbelief.”

The story centers around a company that offers time-travel safaris to super-rich people who want to go back in time and shoot a dinosaur. Supposedly they have lots of safety protocols to make sure they don’t alter the past, but of course that all gets jacked up and the present begins to transform as the past sends “time waves” forward that alter the world to conform to the new history that has been created by altering the past. Pretty standard stuff as far as time travel stories go. Read the rest of this entry »

If this movie is true, the Mormons were some f*cked up, bloodthirsty motherf*ckers when they first started. This movie is about the Mountain Meadow Massacre that took place about 160 years ago in Utah. A wagon train from Arkansas was traveling through Utah on their way to California and stopped to rest by a Mormon town. Well, besides cursing everything that wasn’t Mormon, Brigham Young and his associates decided that this wagon train meant to kill him and all the Mormons. So they decided to kill them first and they sent their Mormon militia to massacre over 120 innocent men, women, and children. Of course it was all “by Jehovah’s command” and whatever. Eventually one Mormon man was convicted and executed for the massacre. But the Mormon’s still deny any involvement in it to this day, as the movie points out. Its pretty shocking to watch this religious zealotry allow such horrible violence, especially against little children. It’s an evil that men allow themselves to be capable of in the name of righteousness and “separating themselves from the damned.” Any so-called religion that preaches separation and exclusion is capable of the same thing.

Bottom Line: The movie is well-acted and I suspect pretty controversial. But its well done and worth a watch.

This is my favorite zombie film, which may seem odd considering it’s not really a horror film like all the rest of the zombie genre. However, this film really packs a punch without sacrificing brilliant characters, quality dialogue, and a very clever story. It even manages to pull in some scares and gore. It’s got everything and it delivers.

Simon Pegg does a great job as the everyman/schlub Shaun who winds up rising to the task of being a responsible leader after the zombie apocalypse takes hold of England. His buddy, Ed, and a great ensemble cast all pull their weight here as a rich and quirky group thrown together who are just trying to survive. And even in the face of terror, there are some very genuine laughs here. Not forced or gimmicky, just clever humor.

Edgar Wright does a brilliant job of directing with several clever shots that exceptionally carry the story along. I was very impressed. Additionally the use of music in the film really adds a lot and is also done in a clever way.

Bottom Line: A must see.

This film falls in to the category of ridiculous action movies like the Transporter films. The shooting and stunts in this movie make the phrase “over the top” seem tame and weak. All of that can be forgiven if the movie is fun and enjoyable, and for the most part this movie delivers. But at some point while watching this you just have say “Oh come on!” at the absolute wacky lengths the film goes to in order to make Clive Owen this unstoppable, shooting machine that will ALWAYS take out the 50 armed men coming after him, no matter how impossible that may seem. The tipping point where it slides into insanity has to be toward the end (spoiler alert) where Clive Owen’s fingers are all broken but he STILL manages to shoot a guy full of bullets by putting the bullets between his fingers and shoving his hand in a fire to make them go off right at the guys chest. Seriously. There’s suspension-of-disbelief and then there’s just outright fantasy.

The acting in this film is fairly good. Paul Giamatti is especially fun to watch playing a sharp-shooting badass that is a nice change from the loser/schlubs he tends to play a lot. Even with not much to work with he makes the most of his character and delivers many subtle elements that add a lot to the character. Monica Berllucci is pretty much just there to add some sex appeal and look good while running from gunmen. And she is more than adequate for a rather adequate character. Her one real scene of depth, describing the still-born loss of her child, is the only time she is able to transcend the otherwise one-dimensional character and she pulls it off brilliantly. Clive Owen is essentially playing the exact same guy he played in Sin City. He never smiles, has a long overcoat, shoots a lot, and says very little. Sure he is great as a cold, ruthless guy-with-a-gun, but I’m starting to wonder if there is much more to him as an actor. Except for maybe Gossford Park or Closer, I really haven’t seen much from him that’s any stretch outside of his apparent comfort zone. It makes me very glad the Bond filmmakers went with the brilliant Daniel Craig to play James Bond instead of him.

Overall the movie is not bad, despite being paper-thin as far as story goes. There was something about a political conspiracy, a baby, and gun laws, but that’s all really just background noise that gives Clive Owen an excuse to kill just about everybody who comes near him in the most ridiculous way they can think of.

Bottom Line: Lives up to the title. If you want a lot of wacky gun action without any challenging plot development, this is your movie.

The commercials for this movie really hyped up the twist ending. Unfortunately when I went to see the movie I figured out the twist within the first 20 minutes and was hoping I was wrong the whole rest of the movie. But I wasn’t. It’s not that it’s that predictable, they just didn’t do a great job of hiding it. If you watch movies and know the cues and hints, it’s not hard at all. So the ending wound up being a let down when it became clear they weren’t going to flip it on me like I was hoping they would. I love seeing movies where I think I got it figured out but I was completely wrong. This is not one of them.

Having said that, this is a quality movie. Martin Scorsese doesn’t make bad movies. But this one falls in to the category of him doing something more for fun than pushing any boundaries, much like when he did Cape Fear with his other favorite actor, Robert DeNiro. It’s a classic Hitchcock homage, full of shadowy institutions and gritty, decayed scenery on a cold and miserable island. Toward the end it moves in to traumatic and heartbreaking territory as Leonardo Dicaprio’s character unravels and comes to grips with the horrors he’s experienced in his life. The flashbacks to when he was in WWII and was part of liberating Dachau are particularly gruesome and haunting. But overall it’s just a noir genre picture that happens to be done by one of the best directors out there. A pleasure to watch but ultimately not entirely satisfying.

Bottom Line: Good movie but not as clever as it could have been.

This movie is based on a video game and oh boy is that obvious. There really isn’t much of a plot. Just a series of “spooky” images tied together with some vague story about a burnt down town and missing kids. Radha Mitchell just kind of sleep walks through this. She never, ever seems phased at all by whatever demons are headed her way. Sure, she screams and all the things you’re supposed to do. But it doesn’t feel genuine. It feels bored and rote. It really does feel like watching someone play a video game. Boring when it should be scary, silly when it’s supposed to be deep. Paper thin and ultimately pointless. You’ll have a better time probably just playing the dumb video game.

I give a lot of points for originality. By 2008, most everything has been done and done to death. I get really bored by a lot of movies, especially just recycled mediocrity that we get pummeled with all the time (Ben Stiller, no more romantic comedies, I beg you). So I was happy to see that Sin City had a truckload of originality to it. I saw a film style I’d never seen before and I liked it. It wouldn’t work for everything, but it worked here.

As most people know, this film is based off of the Sin City graphic novel series by Frank Miller. If you have read the books, you are familiar with the sharp black and white (no grey, no shading) style with the very deliberate and minimal use of color. What Frank Miller does with just black and white is pretty amazing. And the stories are basically Film Noir on crack. Extreme violence, extreme language in an extreme world. Read the rest of this entry »

This film was directed by Danny Boyle who has had an already excellent run of films including Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, and Shallow Grave. Slumdog Millionaire is a bit of a departure for Boyle in that it is entirely based in India with an all Indian cast, while his other films have largely been centered around the UK. It is an interesting change of pace that does in fact pay off brilliantly. This is a cleverly done film with a solid story and believable characters.

The story is centered around an Indian man named Jamal who is accused of cheating on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, since he is a poor “slumdog” who should never have known so many of the correct answers given his class. Through the course of his interrogation, his history unfolds to reveal the hard road he’s had to get to this point, along with his conflicted older brother and Lathika, the girl from his childhood he feels eternally connected to. It is revealed how every step has left an unforgettable memory that fate has somehow chosen to use in the show to get him closer toward his ultimate goal of being reunited with Lathika.

Dev Patel as the lead character of Jamal delivers a perfect performance as the both sympathetic underdog and confident hero. And the structured storytelling that reveals just the right flashbacks at just the right time weaves a captivating story that never feels over-complicated or forced. Though there are scenes of extreme poverty and cruelty, the film never loses it’s heart or it’s hope. It’s uplifting even in the face of utter hopelessness. And the end left me very satisfied with a perfect coda.

One of the best films of 2008, definitely see this one.

Family movie. Plain and simple. No great aspirations here, just some harmless fun. People often talk about Cuba Gooding Jr.’s descent into movie mush after his Oscar win (Daddy Day Camp, Boat Trip, etc.) but he does manage a good role in a good movie. And even tho this isn’t American Gangster or As Good As It Gets (yes, he’s in both), he’s playing the lead, his character is a successful, decent guy, and the movie is light-hearted fun. I see no harm done. He never slips into any stereotypes or gets put in any overly-humiliating situations. It’s mostly just the usual “fish-out-of-water” jokes.

The movie also features one of the last performances by James Coburn before he died. And he is really good in this as usual, a terrific presence on screen and fun to watch. Someone who I was rather surprised to see was Sisqo. Remember him? He sure dropped off the face of the earth. I’m guessing some manager/agent just stuck him in here to get his “movie career” going. I don’t really buy it that he plays a dentist, but no big deal. I’ll live. Read the rest of this entry »

Dude… WTF? Seriously… WTF? This is the long-awaited follow-up to the cult hit Donnie Darko from writer and director Richard Kelly. And I get the impression he is going for the “David Lynch of the 21st Century” title for crazy-ass movies. In fact I think Mullholland Drive might have made MORE sense than this film if you can believe that.

To say this movie didn’t make any sense would be like saying the ocean is wet. I’m all for sophisticated movies that make you think, but I don’t want a movie that I have to think THAT hard about. And one gets the impression that there isn’t much point to “figuring it out” anyway. Who cares? I’ve read this is a retelling of the Book of Revelations, but again, so what? It’s still very random, very all over the place, and the character relationships are very confused. Every one of the characters seems to be on the good guys team AND the bad guys team at the same time. There are so many backstabbing plots going on that you need a team of detectives to keep it sorted. Read the rest of this entry »