watching movies one cup at a time

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.

This is Bill Maher’s documentary on religion and basically he goes around the world talking to people of all faiths about their religion and offers them some challenges. It would be impossible to say that the film is not biased, it of course reflects the atheist point of view of the filmmakers. However, everything has a bias so why not listen to someone who is at least challenging people to defend what they have placed so much value on. Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Catholics, Christians, and more get their time with Bill to discuss why THEY are the ones with the truth and everyone ELSE is f-ing nuts. I admit that I am much more in sync with Bill Maher than I am with all the religious representatives in the movie so I fully admit that by liking this movie and literally the choir he is preaching too. But the film brings up a LOT of good points and I think it really shows how there is a large over-zealous population out there that has taken a thirst for answers in an unknown universe and used it as a means to oppress and exploit both their own people and other peoples of the world. The point to me does not seem to be that God is bad but more that organized religion is often in the hands of manipulative and destructive forces that are less about spirituality and more about man-made power and gain.

There are some classic scenes in this movie like when Bill visits the “Holy Land Experience” in Florida as fat tourists watch a re-enactment of Christ’s crucifixion while sucking down a Pepsi. And when he goes to visit the Creation Museum, still under construction, that depicts man and dinosaurs hanging out together (a la Flintstones) as an accurate depiction of history according to the Bible.

Bill Maher may not be 100% right but I think his point is that no one is 100% right when it comes to “God’s plan” and to act any differently is insane. Regardless of your religious convictions, check the movie out. Anyone with a sense of humor should definitely enjoy it.

Much nas been said about Mickey Rourke’s role in this movie and his subsequent award noms and wins. And truly he does a briliant job in this movie. I believed every minute of it and it was far from over-the-top. He really put his heart and soul into this flawed character and it paid off in a rich and multi-dimensional portrayal of a man with nothing left to lose.

This wasn’t Rocky where the loveable loser goes against all odds to be the big hero. There is no glory left for Rourke’s character Randy The Ram. He is beaten, broken, and left with nothing. What meaning he can barely scrape together is empty and hollow, leaving a lonely man who just has to keep moving or completely disappear forever. He holds on to wrestling as his one lifeline to any kind of self-esteem. And when his body just can’t take any more of the weekly beatings, he keeps doing it anyway because he realizes he has absolutely nothing else to give his life any value at all. He may as well wrestle until it kills him because he literally has nothing else to live for.

While the performance were great, I gotta say the one thing I didn’t like was just the non-stop bummer this movie was. The whole subplot about Randy trying to reconcile with his grown daughter was heartbreaking. And I know it was right for the movie, but it just ends on a very hopeless note. You leave the movie feeling like you got “body-slammed.” That’s not a bad thing, but it’s not really the uplifting charge I prefer to movies I see these days. We all have enough in real life to bum us out, I don’t really need something else helping.

Overall, brilliant performances and worth seeing. But be in stable emotional state or you might lose it.

I feel like I’ve grown up with the Watchmen. I read the entire series in high school and immediately loved it. I enjoyed the rich characters, the harsh realities, the bleak outlook, and the compelling artwork. I loved how Dave Gibbons panels mirrored eachother as they moved into the next scene. And I loved how Alan Moore’s many tangled storylines all came together in the end to a satisfying, albeit horrific ending.

There has been talk of a Watchmen movie ever since the first Batman film made boatloads of cash. I was among those who thought it would be near impossible to condense such a rich and detailed story into 2 hours. So when it became clear that finally, after 20+ years, someone was actually going to make a go of it, I did get excited. And everything leading up to the release pointed to good things. The trailer was great, the costumes looked legit, it was all coming together.

So now that I’ve seen the actual movie, did it deliver? For the most part, yes, it did deliver an exceptional movie that is above and beyond just about anything else out there. But it is not without it’s flaws and I think this strikes at the heart of the contradictions between the comic book crowd and the movie-going public. Read the rest of this entry »

There is a new trend cropping up with 3D movies becoming more and more frequent. And this isn’t the crappy blue and red 3D your parents had to deal with, this is very intense and in your face 3D like you’d expect to see in a theme park in Florida. Except now it’s everywhere and more and more films are jumping on the bandwagon. I haven’t seen too many yet but this Monsters Vs. Aliens was very effective at using the 3D as part of the film and not just as a gimmicky trick. It’s huge scale environments and large-scale action scenes were very effectively done using the depth the 3D world allowed.

The story in this film is pretty simple and centers on the recently mutated “Ginormica” character. There really aren’t that many “monsters” here and only one alien. I would have liked to have seen more variety but it’s a good start to what might potentially be a series of films. And while the plot of the film didn’t have a lot of depth to it, it was more than enjoyable for the younger audience without relying on the more gross-out humor of Shrek. Like Shrek, this is a Dreamworks film and Pixar still has the high bar for it’s storytelling. But it did succeed in creating characters that the audience can root for and the movie does wrap up it’s story very well.

Overall it was enjoyable if not super-deep or having a lot of variety. Definitely worth seeing in the 3D theater before it hits DVD.

I feel like I’ve seen a lot of stories about neighborhoods that go bad, gangs harassing local kids, people fighting back, etc. It goes back to Boyz In The Hood which kind of kicked off a lot of “in the hood” type movies. Gran Torino is different with it’s focus on the Hmong people and the conflict of old and new in Detroit. But at it’s heart there are connections of the “in the hood” genre of movies. So there is just a little thread of cliche running through the story. However, Clint Eastwood is a good storyteller and this movie keeps things interesting without sinking too much into one-dimensional characters. And the ending goes in a different route than what one might expect, with very satisfying results. It’s a good movie with good characters you can get behind. And props to Eastwood for directing another interesting film. Definitely worth checking out.

When they said “reboot” they weren’t kidding. This basically flips the Star Trek mythology on it’s ears and pushes it in a whole new direction. The way they do that is thanks to the old Star Trek friend – time travel.

Star Trek has always had a pretty cozy relationship with time travel. And I always appreciated the way the Next Generation handled it in particular. After the cancellation of the most recent Star Trek television series and the less than spectacular performance of the last Star Trek movie 7 years ago, many considered the franchise to be dead. The Next Generation cast wasn’t getting any younger and the Original Series cast is dying off slowly. And without a bankable new television show, where could it go? Well time travel can solve everything.

Technically this is a sequel to the last movie, Star Trek: Nemesis. But by sending some of the characters back in time, the Original Series characters are spun off into an alternate reality. They even go as far as to say that “this is a new alternate reality” rather explicitly in the film. Basically all bets are off now because this new cast is free from the past mythology, which has now been made irrelevant.

Is this a good thing? Ultimately it’s a good thing for the franchise. The new cast is good, it’s got action, it’s got humor, it’s an enjoyable movie with some style. But I can see Star Trek purists not being into this. And my personal preference was always for the Next Generation, which was already very different from the Original Series, and is very different from this cast. However, judging this separately from the rest of Star Trek, this is a very enjoyable movie. The goal here is to win over new fans and I think this Star Trek will do that. It’s a much better fit for our current culture than the previous films and much more inviting to non-Trekkers.

If you like Sci-fi, you’ll like this movie. If you are a Star Trek fan, watch this with fresh eyes. It’s a bold step and I think it pays off.

I wasn’t expecting a whole lot from this movie but I was pleasantly surprised. It’s good movie with a genuine feel for the Star Wars fan community. The story is centered around a group of 5 hardcare Star Wars fans in 1998 who go on a cross-country road trip to break into Skywalker Ranch to watch the rough cut of Episode 1 because their friend Linus has cancer and is not expected to live long enough to see it in the theaters.

As expected, the movie is filled with Star Wars-related humor and jokes aimed at the hardcore fan. But it never panders or makes fun of the fans. It’s done with respect, and the cast pulls it off flawlessly. Plus the film has a ton of really great cameos from Billy D. Williams, Carrie Fisher, William Shatner, Kevin Smith and several brilliant characters played by Seth Rogen. You get the sense that everyone just wanted to make something fun about a subject they love and grew up with.

One interesting point is that the film is set before the prequel series came out. Many of the hardcore fans were very disappointed by those films and some argue they diminished the whole Star Wars genre, especially the first one in all of it’s Jar-Jar, little kid Darth Vader goodness. And the movie ends with the question, “Dude, what if the movie sucks?” So in a sense, 1998 may have been the last time hardcore faithful could revel in “classic” Star Wars without the stigma of Episodes 1-3.

You don’t have to be a Star Wars fan to enjoy this movie but it would definitely help. Overall it’s a good flick!

I feel like this movie got kind of brushed off. It was delayed for quite awhile before it came out and so by the time it hit theaters at the end of 2008 it was kind of an afterthought. And it didn’t help that Tom Cruise has been riding a negative publicity wave surrounding his controversial Scientology religion and tabloid fare. But despite how people may feel about Tom Cruise and Scientology, he consistently delivers a great performance in all of his movies and it would be a mistake to dismiss a quality movie like this just because of the actor’s personal life.

Directed by the extremely talented Bryan Singer, Valkyrie delivers a compelling story about a part of history we never hear about in the United States. We never hear about the German citizens who chose to rebel against Hitler in the face of tremendous pressure and risk during WWII. A friend of mine who had lived in Germany said that some felt that Germans didn’t need a “Hollywood” movie about their past. But the truth is millions more will hear about this from this movie than a small independent or a documentary. And despite being a so-called “Hollywood” movie, this film has a stellar ensemble cast doing top-notch work. And no one does a better job than Tom Cruise.

The story follows Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg who becomes involved in a plan to take down Hitler and launch a political coup to topple the Third Reich before they lead Germany and the rest of Europe into further destruction and chaos. Many join the cause in the face of oppressive and mandatory loyalty that is enforced through constant threats and coercion. It’s dangerous and risky but we all know the outcome. No spoiler alert necessary. But I never knew about this before and I think it’s important to know that not all German’s citizens, even members of Hitler’s “inner circle,” went along with Hitler.

It’s a quality movie definitely worth watching.

This movie feels more like a gritty movie about South Africa than it does about aliens. It feels closer to movies like “City of God” and “Hotel Rwanda” than your typical sci-fi.

In the film, a derelict alien ship drifts into the skies above Johannesburg. A community of aliens are found inside, not plotting a siege or looking to make friends, just sort of stuck there and abandoned. They are moved to the ghettos of the city and essentially treated as annoying refugees that need to be isolated and ignored. Meanwhile their weapons and technology are irresistible to those who want to exploit it even though humans are unable to use any of it.

We are constantly shown the ugly side of humanity and it is easy to believe that these visitors would wind up experiencing the worst we have to offer. As they say in the beginning, there was no grand first contact, no exchange of goodwill, no dramatic meeting of the worlds. Just ugliness and cruelty. It was refreshing to see a movie that did not just present another “aliens are out to take over” or “aliens are here to show us how to love” kind of sci-fi nonsense. But at the same time it presented a very hopeless and all-too-real vision of man’s capacity for horrible behavior. At the end of the film I felt almost exhausted from the tension and misery.

Still it was a very well-done film and presented an interesting story. I appreciate that the aliens and their world was treated so normally and fluid with the rest of the actors and scenery.