watching movies one cup at a time

Visually this is an amazing looking film. I love it when the frame itself is used as a stylized element, making it a really immersive experience. If you took that away and had a more mediocre director, this movie would just have been a boring Gladiator-like retread. But Zack Snyder pulled it off. It’s a visually rich and exciting movie.

The story follows a group of soldiers in Sparta who have to defend their city/state from invading Persians. Double-dealings have cut off the whole of the army from fighting, so it’s up to 300 soldiers to fight hundreds of thousands headed their way. Fortunately they figure out that if they take their stand at a narrow canyon passageway, they will strategically be able to fight off the hordes. I found it kind of ridiculous that these guys were basically only wearing underwear and capes. I’m sure it’s somewhat historically accurate, but still, they look like Superman B.C. And though they have big shields, they do seem very wide open to something stabby.

But this movie was a fun ride. Very entertaining and quite a site to experience. Maybe they’ll make a sequel called “301″

(500) Days of Summer is a story about a guy named Tom falling in love with a girl named Summer and the entire course of their relationship over a year and a half. But what makes it an interesting and engaging story is a combination of the original way the story unfolds combined with empathetic characters that feel very genuine. This is a love story I can see happening around me in real life. It’s not a fantasy, a happily-ever-after, or overly-dramatic. In fact it’s pretty simple and uncomplicated, as life often can be. And it’s uncomplicated-ness is it’s charm.

The clever story technique employed here involves taking each day of their relationship and jumping around the numbered days 1-500 to piece together how their relationship began, unfolded, and eventually fell apart. The natural highs and lows, the awkward moments, the painful conflicts, the expectations and realities. There is a brilliant sequence where Tom, riding high on a positive post-breakup experience with Summer, gets invited to her place for a roof-top party and we are shown how his high-hopes for the evening play out next to the all too crushing reality. It’s a scene most people can relate to and reinforces the sense in the film that life is rarely one beautiful scene after another. It’s messy, unplanned, and unpredictable, but that is also it’s source of hope. An unexpected turn, a chance encounter, a moment of intimacy can come seemingly out-of-the-blue and change our entire perspective.

The acting is great here as well. I’m a big Joseph Gordon-Levitt fan and he does his usual brilliant job here. There is a classic dance sequence in the middle of the film that beautifully articulates the feeling of the euphoria the character has, and JGL pulls it off effortlessly. Zoey Deschanel is a perfect fit for her character, however, I often feel like she is just playing herself. I suspect that Summer is really just Zoey with scripted dialogue. Nevertheless, I believe these characters and I believe this relationship. These feel like real people, not two-dimensional caricatures.

(500) Days of Summer is warm, endearing and clever film that rises above a lot of other “relationshop” flicks, even the cool, hipster indie ones. I enjoyed it from beginning to end. Go see it.

This movie was part of Disney’s last golden age of animation that was kicked off by The Little Mermaid. And I feel this movie is actually the best one of that bunch. The songs are very catchy and the action is moved along at a brisk pace. Robin Williams does his usual manic comedy as the genie and it was funny the first time, not so much the 100th time but still good.

Here’s a question tho. Why do so many Disney movies have stories where the mom is dead or dying or just non-existent? There are a lot of Disney flicks where the mom is MIA; Cinderella, Snow White, Bambi, Beauty & The Beast, Little Mermaid, Aladdin, etc. It’s weird. Some might say “Well it’s a fairy tale, they are just sticking to the story” but if they can make up a frickin’ talking crab in Little Mermaid, they could come up with a mom character. Even if she is barely there like in Sleeping Beauty and The Lion King.

Aladdin is a fun movie tho and definitely worth seeing. As the age of hand-drawn animation is coming to a silent close, I definitely remember that this was very innovative at the time. And the story still holds up.

This is generally considered to be the best Alien film in the four part series. And I must agree it is the most fun to watch. Each film is very different in tone and style. The first Alien movie was much more of a classic haunted house story where this movie clearly borrows from the action movie genre. This is really James Cameron’s vision as he came up with the story idea, wrote the screenplay and directed the film. There is a lot of connection to similar war movies with soldiers under siege. And following this movie, there were many more sci-fi stories involving soldiers in space, both in film and on television.

The story follows Ripley after her escape from the Nostromo. She’s been in space for 57 years and returns to an unfamiliar Earth and a shell of her former life. Colonists has populated the planet from the first film and discovered the alien creatures. Ripley and a team of marines go to investigate the colony’s communication breakdown under the direction of the Weyland-Yutani corporation (“the Company”). Of course all hell breaks loose and it becomes clear that the Company wants the alien for it’s bio-weapons division. Ripley barely escapes alive along with colony child-survivor Newt, the last marine Hicks, and the android Bishop. The colony explodes in a nuclear meltdown and presumably it takes all the aliens with it. The movie ends on a happy note as a mother-daughter bonded Ripley and Newt go to peaceful cryo-sleep on their way back to Earth. Read the rest of this entry »

One 50 thousand dollar chinchilla fur coat is all it took to take down the Harlem heroin kingpin. American Gangster is based on the true story of Frank Lucas, the Harlem gangster who cut deals directly with heroin makers in Southeast Asia to make loads of money in the U.S. while maintaining a low profile. What I found most interesting about the character of Frank Lucas is that he was not a flashy “Superfly” bufoonish kind of African-American gangster that you see all too often in movies. He was calm, cool, behind-the-scenes, and respectable. Yet he was a cold-blooded killer, a smart businessman, and a fierce leader. A man to be taken seriously.

Denzel Washington plays Frank Lucas magnificently well in another stunning performance from one of the best actors working today. Denzel does not often play bad guys in his movies. It’s rare. And this is a very different character from the loud and shady street hustler Denzel won the Oscar for playing in Training Day. Yet Frank Lucas is far more sinister and capable of much more destruction. This is a character who is ice cold, can shoot a person as easily as we would light a match, can strike a deal with the Italian Mafia as smoothly as we would be ordering a sandwich. And Denzel is so cool, so calm, so serious, he exudes intimidation at the same time as respect. What he says without saying anything carries just as much weight. Read the rest of this entry »

An Oscar-contender and Golden Globe winner, this film stars Keira Knightley and James MacAvoy as doomed lovers caught up in tragic circumstances. I’m usually not too into dramas, especially heavy dramas. But I found this film to be very well told and interesting.

The scenes of France were visually fantastic. I especially enjoyed the long single camera shot on the beach where the soldiers are waiting to evacuate. It evoked the chaos of the situation but injected a serene beauty and sorrow as well. The English countryside never looked better as well. It’s not the cliche rainy, muddy fields I’m used to seeing in these movies.

The ending was very unexpected and very satisfying. It has a twist that really put the whole movie into a much more interesting light. Though of course it’s very sad, how the story is presented is very compelling. The characters are multi-dimensional and capable of evolving, which is refreshing. Saoirse Ronan plays the young Briony and she does a fantastic job for such a young but pivotal character. Her facial expressions were perfect and not overdone but communicating a lot.

Bottom Line: Definitely see Atonement but be-warned it’s a weepy-drama. It is not a Hollywood happy ending, which is a good thing in this case.

Tina Fey is awesome. She may not be the best actress in the universe but what she is capable of, she does extremely well. Baby Mama is the story of Fey’s character, Kate, who decides that after years of being a career-centered woman she now wants to make room for a family. Unfortunately she finds many road blocks in making that happen and decides to go the surrogate route. Amy Poehler becomes the surrogate and eventually winds up living with Kate. From there we get a lot of “The Odd Couple” type of jokes but it never gets stupid or overly-cliche. And eventually both characters make changes for the better.

It is an interesting view of contemporary family life. The nuclear family has eroded to the point of extinction as modern life keeps changing and more possibilities become available to people. And in the end, as long as there is a loving, secure environment, it shouldn’t matter if a family has 2 moms, 2 dads, just 1 parent or any combination. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are given some chances to stretch and show some real emotion and I believed it. They pulled it off. Read the rest of this entry »

This movie was quite a phenomenon when it came out in 1989. I remember actually waiting in a line that stretched down the block on opening day. People ate it up. The timing was just right for this movie and Tim Burton did a great job of capturing a dark, brooding Batman that had become popular largely due to Frank Miller’s milestone graphic novel, The Dark Knight Returns.

This movie kicked off a string of big budget hero movies that hadn’t been seen since Superman IV stank up the theaters. But with each film you got the sense they were trying to outdo the previous one by getting more “big stars” and more characters crammed in. Until you had the unholy Batman and Robin piece of garbage with 3 villians, 3 heros, Arnold freakin’ Schwarzeneger… too much. But back when this was the only kid on the block, it was impressive. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

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 »