|
|
Tuesday, December 26th, 2006
|
|
|
46. Invincible - Moderately watchable movie about Vincent Paple, a bartender who tried out for the Philadelphia Eagles and actually made the team. It is the least surprising and most formulaic "inspirational story" movie you will ever see. There must be a class that they send these directors to in order to learn how to use the washed out look, slow motion, and the impeccably (and predictably) timed dramatic music that swells . . . but not too much. You're probably shocked (SHOCKED!) that this was made by Disney and produced by the guy who produced The Rookie and Miracle. At times it felt like a caricature of an actual movie because you could predict exactly what was going to happen next. Not worth going out of the way for, but not a bad way to spend a lazy, rainy afternoon with your father-in-law.
47. Munich - Not sure how I feel about this one, which is definitely a vote in favor of seeing it. Left me feeling conflicted for sure, which makes me think Spielberg made his point--or lack thereof. See it and think about. If nothing else, it's taut, the acting is excellent, and, not surprisingly, it's very well directed. Deliberately slow at times, perhaps too slow, but not enough to really take anything away from it.
|
|
Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
|
|
Friday, December 22nd, 2006
|
|
|
|
45. Ned Kelly - Awful movie about Australian folk hero. Cliched and poorly paced. Bad acting, cheesy music. The list goes on. This goes on the list with Ethan Hawke's Hamlet and The Avengers as movies I could not finish watching because they were so bad. Do not waste your time with this one. If you want to know the Ned Kelly story, read the excellent historical novel by Peter Carey, "The True History of the Kelly Gang."
|
|
Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
|
|
Thursday, December 21st, 2006
|
|
|
43. The Magnificent Yankee - The story of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s life. Despite being wounded and left for dead a couple of times during the Civil War, this movie focused solely on his years on the Supreme Court. I'm a law nerd and love the Court and this was the dullest movie I've ever seen. Apparently all he did while serving on the Court was go through one clerk each year and forbid them to marry. One of them did. Scandal! Except that Holmes's wife reminds him that they were young once and so he is OK with it. Cannot really believe how lame this was. Imagine a movie with no plot, and then imagine that it all takes place in one house and there are basically only two characters and they are two-dimensional and annoying. Enjoy!
44. March of the Penguins - Fascinating documentary about emperor penguins. I was constantly wondering how they got the shots of the penguins considering the conditions (winter in Antarctica, -80 F and 100 MPH winds). Nice, short, beautiful.
|
|
Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
|
|
Sunday, December 17th, 2006
|
|
|
|
42. Monkey Business - Mildly entertaining Howard Hawks comedy. A chemist is looking for a formula to restore youth and a monkey comes up with one and everyone drinks it an hilarity ensues. This would be better as a 30 minute sitcom episode, it went on too long. Don't be fooled by the DVD box that has Marilyn Monroe on the cover. She's in this, but has a tiny part and her comedic gifts are totally wasted. A lawyer gets scalped by Cary Grant. That was fun.
|
|
Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
|
|
Saturday, December 16th, 2006
|
|
|
|
41. Brokeback Mountain - It's at least as good as you've heard. Completely beautiful and simple. I teared up a bit and I don't remember the last movie that made me do that. Flat out excellent all around.
|
|
Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
|
|
Tuesday, December 12th, 2006
|
|
|
36. Thank You For Smoking - Funny as hell. Now I want to see everything Aaron Eckhart has done. I hope we were all supposed to see some of ourselves in Nick Naylor, I certainly did. Especially now that I'm a corporate defense lawyer. Katie Holmes, surprisingly, was not terrible. Everyone else was basically perfect, though William H. Macy was a little over the top. Highly, highly recommended.
37. Once in a Lifetime - Entertaining look at the old NASL soccer league, specifically the New York Cosmos. I enjoy soccer, but knew nothing about the NASL other than the case (NASL v. NFL) I read in Sports Law. The whole thing seems a bit surreal; 80,000 people attending soccer games in the U.S. in the 1970s? A friendly between Club America and FC Barcelona recently drew 70,000 in Houston, but the MLS is barely able to get 22,000 at their championship game (Congrats to the Dynamo, by the way). Nicely paced, well edited, and full of great characters. Well worth the time.
38. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room - Paints a pretty compelling picture of wrongdoing, but it's not really meant to be fair. It seems clear that they lost their way somewhere along the way, but there is something to be said for the other side as well. I personally think Lay and Skilling knew something shady was going on, but they probably figured the less they knew, the better. They were negligent in the civil sense, but I'm not sure that it rose to the level of a crime. Basically, they were smart and greedy and thought they should be able to do what they wanted. Fastow comes across as the real mastermind and also a completely amoral asshole. Whatever they did substantively, I sat through a CLE event recently that laid out a pretty compelling case that the prosecutions of Law and Skilling were procedurally flawed to a nearly unconstitutional degree. I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see the Supreme Court overturn Skilling's conviction on 6th Amendment (right to confront) grounds. The lack of due process was pretty astounding.
39. Murderball - Heard great things about this, but I'm only lukewarm on it. The story is compelling and heartwarming without being too cheesy, but the documentary was too short and seemed really, really superficial.
40. Cool Hand Luke - This was pretty good. George Kennedy's character is almost impossible to understand and is a little annoying at times but Paul Newman is, not surprisingly, a badass. Not sure that I took much away from this one, but it's worth your time.
|
|
Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
|
|
Thursday, November 30th, 2006
|
|
|
35. The Great Dictator - Stylistically and substantively dated, but definitely worth watching. It's difficult to get in the mindset that made this such a bold movie in 1940, but it's an excellent piece of film history and Chaplin's physical comedy, though not really my thing, is impressive. The plot is predictable and there's a nice little love story, but, like Napoleon Dynamite, the whole thing is basically an excuse to get you to watch the final scene, in this case a speech. The speech at the end lays it on a little thick, but I thought it was impressive that Chaplin explicitly says that all people "blacks and whites" are equal. That's radical for 1940.
At the end of one scene, Chaplin as the Hitler-like Hynkel, tears up a declaration of war and says "Peace is declared." In the movie, it's a cynical ploy to advance Hynkel's militaristic thoughts, but I think it drives home a pretty good point: war is a choice that can be rescinded that quickly if someone just declares it. It's a pretty pie-in-the-sky view of the world, but there is some truth to it. People fight ultimately because they want to fight. If they just decided not to fight, that would be the end of it. I think the fact that we still have wars and fights says something awful and probably unalterable about human nature. How's that for a happy thought to end this entry.
|
|
Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
|
|
Wednesday, November 29th, 2006
|
|
|
|
34. Syriana - No, I haven't been a slacker. I truly have not seen a movie since June. Something about the bar, the baby, and the new job. I've got Netflix now, so I'm back on track. I liked this movie. For how ambitious and intricate it was, I would have liked it to tie things together just a little more at the end, but it left me thinking a bit, so that was good. Slightly depressing is the fact that Connex-Killen is a client. OK, not really, but the other major oil companies are.
|
|
Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
|
|
|
31. Hustle & Flow - Didn't really like this. The soundtrack was OK, not great (though it did win an Oscar). Acting was pretty bad for the most part. I'm pretty sure the only reason it was considered good was because of the opening shot and scene, which were excellent. Other than that it was all really predictable. Replace "hooker with a heart of gold" with "pimp with a heart of gold" and you're pretty close to getting it. Try as I could, I never believed Djay really had much redeeming about him, I never believed he was morally conflicted about how he lived his life, but I think I was supposed to think he was. DJ Qualls was terrible. I could barely watch the scenes he was in because he was so awkward and unbelievable.
32. Somersault - Australian girl has sex with everyone and then leans difference between love and sex by falling in love with a gay man. Visually nice, but mostly cliched. No real plot to speak of.
33. Showgirls - Not sure if this counts since I saw it as part of the Sinus Show, but I hadn't seen it before, so I'm putting it here. It's as bad as you've heard, but also hilarious. One line--delivered sweetly as part of a nostaligic scene between strip club owner and former dancer--stands out: "It must be weird, not having anybody cum on you." The sheer quantity of nudity makes it somehow asexual because it is so over the top and unintentionally funny.
|
|
Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
|
|
|
|
30. Inside Man - Slick little action movie with entertaining dialogue and some subtle (and not so subtle) social commentary. You knew from the beginning the ending was going to be Usual Suspects-style cute, but I didn't figure it out until right before they told you. Agree with Mr. Brendon, Jodie foster was not good in this. She was not even slightly convincing as a total hardass with a velvet touch. Her speech was awkward and I never believed she was as confident as she was supposed to be. Denzel Washington and Clive Owen were as good as they usually are. Washington's character was pretty interesting and he really nailed the flaws, just like in Training Day. Would like to have known more about Owen's character, but I',m sure the mystery was intentional. Definitely worth seeing.
|
|
Comments: Add Your Own.
|
|
|
|
29. Good Night, and Good Luck - Probably not much needs to he said about this one that hasn't been said elsewhere. I thought it was excellent. Did they use Murrow's actual scripts for the show introductions and closings? If so, then I might literally weep for the state of TV news today. That something that intelligent, erudite, and provacative could be broadcast boggles the mind. We're supposed to be so much less uptight now, so much smarter because we've learned from the past. I just can't believe that that is true. He wasn't "clever" and he didn't have to use terrible puns or humor to make a point. He was careful and measured and succinct. Bill O'Reilly, Keith Olberman, Anderson Cooper, all of the smarmy bobbleheads we have now, could learn something from this. But they won't. I know they won't. I know movies like this make points that speak to me and seem obvious to me, but the people who watch and agree with this movie already agree with it. There is self-selection in the kind of audience for movies like this, and I so I wonder how strongly its message can really resonate, except among those who already believe what it is saying.
|
|
Comments: Add Your Own.
|
|
|
|
28. V for Vendetta - I really liked this one. Not really subtle at all, but never dull for a minute. On one hand, it shows just how far our society actually is from totalitarian rule, but on the other it hints at how one catastrophe could change that in little more than a decade.
|
|
Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
|
|
|
|
27. National Treasure - This is what I'm talking about. Gloriously unrealistic and cheesy movie about treasure hidden by the Founding Fathers. Nothing remotely believable, but the plot and clues were entertaining enough to keep my attention for a couple of hours. Fun to see all the scenes in DC and makes me kinda wish I was still moving there. Nicholas Cage, these are the movies you were made for. Embrace them.
|
|
Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
|
|
Thursday, March 16th, 2006
|
|
|
|
26. Lord of War - Pretty lame. Trying to be both The Constant Gardener and Gone in Sixty Seconds. I was hoping it would stick with the latter. A movie that is so clearly a pop corn action movie with ridiculously unrealistic scenarios and characters can't try to make a serious point about the global arms trade. It was mildly entertaining, but Nicholas Cage attempted to be restrained and serious at times and that just doesn't work. They hired you to chew the scenery, Nic, so chew some frickin' scenery already!
|
|
Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
|
|
Saturday, March 4th, 2006
|
|
|
|
25. Block Party - Completely awesome documentary about a block party Dave Chappelle threw in 2004. He invited excellent bands (Dead Prez, The Roots, Mos Def, The Fugees, etc.) to play a party in Brooklyn and had Michel Gondry film it. The music is rad and Dave is funny. The whole thing just felt really good. The best kind of diversity on display. Don't read this review without seeing it; it's too much fun to miss.
|
|
Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
|
|
Wednesday, March 1st, 2006
|
|
|
|
24. Primary - Early political documentary about the 1960 Wisconsin primary between JFK and HHH. According to my professor, it was one of the first documentaries made with mobile equipment, so the sound is pretty rough. Interesting view of how close the candidates got to people; something we just don't see anymore outside of New Hampshire and Iowa. There's not really a story, it just follows the candidates to a couple of campaign stops and then films them as returns come in on election night. Good stuff and wonderfully shot. Also, Jackie Kennedy circa 1960: fox.
|
|
Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
|
|
Friday, February 24th, 2006
|
|
|
|
23. Run Lola Run - Heard lots of great things about this but I was generally unsatisfied. The cinematography was derivative and the plot was pretty predictable after the first "episode" was over. Pacing was nice and I liked the soundtrack, but I can't see myself ever really watching this one again.
|
|
Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
|
|
Sunday, February 5th, 2006
|
|
|
|
22. The Matador - Agree with Mr. Brendon on this one: an enjoyable, quirky comedy. The pacing was a little slow at times, but not enough to make it bad. I haven't seen a movie in the theater in months, and this was well worth the price of admission. Always wondered if Pierce Brosnan was actually a smug jackass like he comes across in movies, turns out he's just a good actor. He was great in this one. I'm now a fan.
|
|
Comments: Add Your Own.
|
|
Saturday, February 4th, 2006
|
|
|
|
21. In the Mood for Love - Fantastic. A tense, subtle romance with a beautiful score and essentially perfect cinematography. I need to go back and watch 2046 (a parallel--darker--view of the main character from In the Mood for Love) again.
|
|
Comments: Add Your Own.
|
|
Thursday, February 2nd, 2006
|
|
|
19. Last Man Standing: Politics, Texas Style - Highly entertaining documentary about a single Texas state house of representatives race told against the larger backdrop of the Republican sweep of state-wide offices in the 2002 elections. The Democrat in this race, fellow UT law student Patrick Rose, narrowly defeated the terrifyingly evangelical and childish incumbent, Rick Green. One more reason to love my Modern American Political Campaign class: watching this movie was a class requirement.
20. Singin' in the Rain - Just for the hell of it, I'm liveblogging this one:
Opening Scene
Holy crap, could the announcer lady (Joan Rivers style) be any broader and more annoying? No. Could the flashback with the "funny" (see because it's ironic) narration be any less funny? No.
I'm starting to get the same terrified feeling I experienced when I saw the English Patient. About an hour into it I suddenly realized that this, whatever "this" was, was in fact the plot of the movie. We weren't leading up to anything, this wasn't just an introduction setting up an actual story. It was just some wrinkly guy telling stories about what a bastard he used to be. We're only about three minutes into Singin' in the Rain, and I've already got that feeling.
Riding in the Car
Debbie Reynolds looks hot in that hat. No, I'm not joking.
At the party
I'm pretty sure Julia Roberts and John Cusak made an entire movie based on the fake finace subplot. It was called America's Sweethearts. It was terrible. This is what happens when you base an entire movie on a minor subplot in an old movie that people only watch because it is part of some cannonical list.
Ha ha. The annoying fiance got a cake in the pie hole. Yeah, the scene in the movie was about as funny as that joke.
On the Set
Donald O'Connor's singing and dancing is funny, but only in a really disturbing way. It's everything that makes me uncomfortable with the Three Stooges combined with everything that makes me uncomfortable with Michael Jackson's later videos. I'm getting the sense that I don't hate this movie, I hate this kind of movie. It's not personal, it's general. I should probably turn it off because I'm not going to have anything nice to say about this. His dancing on the walls was cool, though it would have been better if he had been dancing on the ceiling, Lionel Richie-style.
Funny that the representation of how silent movies were made in Singin' in the Rain is basically the same as the representation of how pornos were made in Boogie Nights.
The way the production of the crappy French Revolution picture was changed from silent to talkie in mid-production really happened on the Hitchcock film Blackmail. Hopefully that will come up at trivia this week.
Dialogue Lessons
This is actually funny. The fake finance is annoying as hell, but she, unlike Heather Graham, knows how to play stupid and annoying and make it funny rather than just, well, stupid and annoying.
The guys' dancing here is really impressive. I'm 50% O'Connor. If I could dance even 1% as well as Donald O'Connor, I would die happy. Shit, the movie is growing on me.
On the Talkie Set
Nice conversation here about talking into bushes and boxes. "Well I can't make love to a bush," says the fake fiance girl. That's because it was probably against the law in your area in 1927. Yeah, I'm about as mature as a 13 year-old.
Post-screening Dinner and Dancing
Yes, nothing takes the edge off a tough night like sitting around and sharing a pint of milk. I know it was made in 1952, but was it really that taboo to show people having a single drink? Ladypuppy?
Again with the hot Debbie Reynolds. I like that lightning bolt sweater. Now I've gone from being a 13 year-old to a 70 year-old.
Very post-modern of them to have the characters improvise a musical dance number about putting on a musical dance number.
The Payoff
We've all seen this scene before, even those of us who've never seen the movie before. He's singin' in the rain. I call bullshit on his tapdancing on the wet sidewalk. I just don't think you get crisp taps like that in a 1/4 inch of standing water.
Gotta Dance
I'm with Polonius, this is too long.
The woman walking across the stage with the flowy dress is vaguely reminiscent of Grigori Kozintsev's version of Hamlet. It has a spectacular shot of the ghost of Hamlet's father standing on some rocks with a long, flowing cape behind him. The movie is in Russian with no subtitles, but it's worth watching for that scene alone. Singin' in the Rain is not worth watching for this scene alone.
Finale
The fake fiance was about as annoying as characters come, but even I don't think she deserved that kind of public humiliation.
Final verdict: Actually entertaining at some points. Probably not going to sit down an watch this one again.
|
|
Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
kittenispuppy's journal