Valhalla Rising (2009)
VERDICT:
6/10 Mute-ilations
If Erik the Red had a nightmare…
Valhalla Rising is about a Viking warrior who has been forced into a life of slavery by his captors and survives by killing other Viking warriors in what can only be described as a Nordic version of The Thunderdome. Then he eventually breaks free, butchers the dudes that have been leashing him up all these years, finds an unlikely traveling companion in a little Viking boy and teams up with a group of Crusaders who are off in search of The Holy Land. Time sails by, their ship reaches land, they all come to the conclusion that their new companion may very well have led them straight to Hell on Earth, and so they try to make lemonade out of the situation by heading out in search of whatever it is they’re searching for.
I don’t know what triggered the sudden interest as of late, but no one was interested in this when it was briefly out in one independent theater in New York. But then all of a sudden it goes up on Netflix Instant and it seems like everyone around the blogosphere immediately bumped this to the top of their queue without skipping a beat. Maybe it was the cool title, maybe it was one of the few new releases on Netflix Instant that wasn’t the latest Gerard Butler rom-com train wreck, but whatever the reason, it’s cool as hell to see folks jump on this little bandwagon that could.
But as for me, the two things that peaked my interest way back when this first came out were the involvement of Nicolas Winding Refn and Mads Mikkelsen. The Viking thing? Not so much, but I’ll go with it. If you haven’t heard of the guy, Refn is the director behind one of the nicer surprises I’ve stumbled upon this last year, a charming little ditty that the whole family will love called Bronson. It was my first introduction to everyone’s favorite new badass, Tom Hardy, it was a biopic quite unlike anything I’d seen before, and it’s damn hard to forget a name like Nicolas Winding Refn. Still need to see his Pusher trilogy (also featuring Mads Mikkelsen), but all good things in due time.
Anyway, whereas Bronson was an insanely visceral, in-your-face movie with visuals and camerawork that nicely complemented its batshit crazy star of the show, Refn’s taken a very different approach to Valhalla Rising, and I dig that. Nice to find directors who mix things up.
My buddy Castor recently described this movie as “strangely hypnotic“, and I wish I had gotten around to reviewing this before him because that right there is a dead-on description. Yes, this movie is brutally violent, it left my jaw on the floor at times and it’s graphic in a way that can only be achieved with blades and blunt objects, but calling this an “action movie” would be a pretty misleading recommendation. If anything, it’s an experience, it’s like Refn had a dream about this movie, woke up and scribbled down everything he could remember, then book a flight to Scotland and rolled tape. It’s a slow, strange journey that doesn’t explain a whole lot and paints a picture that’s surprisingly tough to follow, but it’s also damn hard to look away.
To say that this movie is gorgeous is not doing it justice, to say that Scotland isn’t gorgeous would be like comparing the Hanging Gardens to the New Jersey Turnpike, and Refn makes the most out of what’s around him. God, you just can’t describe landscapes like these, but they seem otherworldly and it’s largely due in part to this aspect of the movie that everything else seems so dreamlike and terrifying. It’s far more of a meditation than it is an adrenaline rush and the super slow pacing won’t make you think otherwise.
There’s very little dialogue, conversations take ages to get through as though everyone has suddenly been transported into an M. Night Shamalamadingdong movie, and the start of the second Act almost put me to sleep. Like I said, not exactly an “action” movie. But by the same token, it’s intentionally slow and there wasn’t one moment where I wanted it to just hurry up already because the pacing plays an integral part to the mood Refn creates. It’s not for everyone and I can see this boring more folks than kicking them in the face, although it’s still worth a watch if only for the visuals.
And then there’s Mads Mikkelsen as our silent warrior with the most uninspired name in the land, One-Eye (’cause of that whole cyclops thing he’s rockin’). The only thing I or anyone else probably know Mads from is his turn as yet another hardcore dude with a wonky eye, Le Chiffre, but he kicked ass then and he kicks ass now. He doesn’t have a single line of dialogue, he only has one expression at his disposal since he doesn’t even hint at answering any questions folks ask him, yet somehow he pulls it off like a boss. I’m sure it helps when your first name is fucking Mads, but he’s just got one of those naturally intimidating faces that speaks volumes and the complete lack of dialogue actually made his character stand out that much more. People talk too much anyway, about time we got a killing machine who knows the power of shutting one’s piehole.
Everyone else is fine, you might even recognize a few faces that you can’t put names to, but everyone bows down to Mads.
So usually when I think of action movies with Vikings (a thought that rarely comes to mind), all I can think of is Uwe Boll for some reason, and that’s never a good thing. But at the end of the day, even though Valhalla Rising is a huge step forward for such a sub-genre, I couldn’t help but think to myself, “What was that all about?” And even after mulling it over for couple hours now, the best I’ve got is that it is what it is. As much as this – along with that snoozefest of a second Act – are the reasons that keeps it from being a 7, it’s its own little monster that’s clearly marching to the beat of its own drum, and while I appreciate that in a big way, the tempo could have been upped and the sound could have been clearer. All the same, it’s a movie worth checking out for those with strong stomachs and a hankering for something different.
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)
My middle school years in a nutshell.
Austin Powers is about a swingin’ British spy who freezes his body in ’67 and gets thawed out in ’97 when his archnemesis (who also froze himself) threatens to destroy the Earth with a hijacked nuclear warhead. So he teams up with the minxy daughter of his former right-hand woman, learns the hard way that the world has changed a lot over the course of 30 years, and sets out to save the world while managing to escape from one overly elaborate and easily escapable situation after another.
Jesus H. Murphy, folks. I was 11 or 12 when my dad first took me to see this in theaters, and while I probably didn’t get half the jokes or even remotely understand why the hell Pops kept laughing whenever that Swedish penis pump showed up, it was a big moment in my formative years. It wasn’t until way later when I started to get into James Bond and had a loose grasp on the crazy shit those hippies did back in the ’60s that I could fully appreciate it beyond blasting audio clips of “DO I MAKE YOU HORNY, BABY!” during computer class, but who am I kidding, that was gold. Totally worth detention.
So if someone asked you to come up with a parody of James Bond, Austin probably isn’t the first image that would come to mind, but when you consider the ’60s, when you consider all the gals Bond got in the sack, when you consider how ridiculously convenient all his gadgets were, the impression’s actually pretty dead-on. It’s those British teeth, the mane of chest hair, the shameless lack of an OFF switch whenever there’s a woman in the room, the fembot-destroying dance moves, that velvet suit comboed with a male symbol necklace – Austin is just a perfect send-up of a time and a character that were the epitome of cool back in their prime but ended being pretty ridiculous in retrospect.
But I gotta say, Dr. Evil might have him beat when it comes to sheer laugh count. The bizarro bastard child of SNL creator Lorne Michaels and recurring Bond villain, Blofeld, Dr. Evil completes the package that Austin lays up. His idiotic, flaw-riddled plots to take over the world for a $1 Million ransom by giving the impression that Prince Charles had an affair behind Diana’s back, his mission to destroy Austin Powers by slowly dropping him into a pool of genetically mutated sea bass amongst other strokes of genius, it’s exactly the kind of dumbass schemes all of Bond’s villains cooked up and it’s funny every time.
And I don’t care how many times I see him try to do the macarena, that shit will always crack me up.
Although the most bittersweet aspect of this whole thing is the genius behind it all, Mike Meyers. This was an instant hit for good reason, but little did we know that it would lead to The Cat in the Hat, The Guru, all 26 entries of the Shrek series and the cash cow of a franchise he milked out of this movie, and after revisiting this recently, it’s almost sad to see how funny Mike Myers used to be. It’s really hard to believe how the guy’s essentially become a parody of himself and how far he’s fallen from his days as Wayne Campbell and Phillip, but he’s a freakin’ rip here in his dual roles, he wrote an effing brilliant script, and I don’t know what happened.
Well, at least we’ll always have the original Austin and Dr. Evil to remind us of the good old days. Also nice to see an up-and-coming Will Ferrell also get a choice death-defying scene as Dr. Evil’s henchman, Mustafa; Rober Wagner was a nice choice for Dr. Evil’s number two, Number Two; Elizabeth Hurley does her thing as Austin’s main squeeze, Ms. Kensington; a relatively unknown Seth Green lucked out by nabbing the role of Dr. Evil’s son, Scott Evil, who actually knows how to kill a guy far more effectively than his old man; Tom Arnold gets a great bit role that justifies his existence as a “celebrity”; and that whole Alotta Fagina bit was classic.
Bonus points for cameos from the Soup Nazi and Babu Bhatt.
With the exception of Fat Bastard, I feel like The Spy Who Shagged Me and Goldmember ultimately did a bang-up job of helping people forget what a fucking hilarious movie this is. But unfortunately, after more or less memorizing the movie front-to-back in my early teens, I could still see every last punchline coming from a mile away even after giving myself the breadth of a decade or so to forget everything by the next time I watched it. I didn’t end up laughing a whole lot and I probably would have given this a 6 or a 7 if I was judging it by last week’s viewing, but if you’re not in the same boat as me, if you’ve never seen this before or if you haven’t seen it since it was in theaters, it’s a total 8. Nevertheless, I will always laugh when Austin walks into the bathroom and asks the blind attendant: “You didn’t happen to see…anything at all?”
So good and just a damn funny movie that’s a lot smarter than I think folks give it credit for.
Chinatown (1974)
VERDICT:
9/10 Nosey People
No wonder people think of this as the holy grail of film noir.
Chinatown is about a former cop-turned-private eye in 1930s L.A. who finds his reputation on the line and a lawsuit on his hands after being set up by a dame posing as the wife of an unpopular engineer for the Department of Water and Power. As he looks into who played him for a fool and why, he gets involved with the actual wife of the said engineer and starts to unravel a high-ranking power scheme filled with murder, lies and deceit that could leave him with a bullet in the brain if he keeps on digging.
The first time I watched this was for a film class back in college, and like a dumbass, I thought I could give this movie my full attention while simultaneously keeping tabs on the Halo match my roommates were playing on the other TV. After seeing it again recently and managing to barely follow along without anything whatsoever to distract me, I don’t know whether to get tested for ADD or just watch this another five times until I’ve got it all straight. Out of sheer laziness, I think I’ll gonna go with the latter and continue to spend that Ritalin money on Pixy Stix.
Now, by and large, this movie seems to be considered a thing of legend in Hollywood circles, especially when it comes to the screenwriters in the room who wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice a goat in the hopes of being able to pen something like this on their first go. But the good thing about all this praise is that it’s actually deserved on every front and it ends up being one of those movies that’s so damn refined it may very well make you feel like an idiot.
So Robert Towne’s had a number of high points in his career as the writer behind Heaven Can Wait, The Last Detail and a handful of others that oughta’ make you remember the name, but when you hold them all up to this, you might as well be comparing chalk and cheese. It’s an old school film noir that’s as smart as it is complex, it’s entirely unforgiving to the casual moviegoer and the only way you’re gonna get anything out of it is if you don’t miss a word. And I dig that, because as confusing as it can get, it’s equally rewarding and it doesn’t leave you dumbfounded, it makes you want to get it.
The weird thing about it, at least in my case, is that I’m not all too crazy about stories that have organizations as their villains. I guess I’m just thinking about the evil pharmaceutical companies that were behind everything in The Fugitive and The Constant Gardener, but the reason Towne makes the whole Water and Power thing work amidst the backdrop of a California drought is the way he keeps unraveling it and spins his story in a very character-focused direction that you never see coming. There’s still your fair share of legal corruption that only gets harder and harder to comprehend with each new double-crossing of the Cali public, but the real heart of darkness comes in a much different and more universally jaw-dropping form that would be damn hard to miss even if you get lost in the details. In short: crazy stuff.
Look, the dialogue is great, the characters are great, and the story is both an ugly and captivating riff about the futility of justice in a society controlled by the criminals, but the biggest strength is that it’s just masterfully put together. We’re only as much in the loop as our detective of the hour is, and with each new clue he figures out, the more we want to see him pursue it to the end and follow the breadcrumbs so we can finally be out of the dark on everything that’s going on.
Nor does it hurt that Roman Polanski (who also gave himself a great little role here) does a hell of a job moving it along and making it look good. Very similar in structure to The Ghost Writer (shows how much I know about both film noir and Polanski) and that right there is a good thing. And if it weren’t for him we would have gotten stuck with a way different ending, and that would have sucked royally. Really though, I have no idea how he got away with that finale, but it kinda makes the movie.
And then there’s Jack Nicholson who’s a total badass (as usual) as private eye J.J. Gittes. Dude is just a smooth operator who doesn’t mince words and doesn’t hide his head in the sand in the wake of being publicly humiliated, but the coolest thing about him is that he’s as sharp as every other aspect of the script that created him, his bag of tricks are bottomless and it’s awesome to watch him when he’s up against the ropes. It’s not on par with R.P. McMurphy or anything, but even the worst Nicholson role is one hell of a role by any standard, especially when it’s young Nicholson.
Faye Dunaway is also great as the Water and Power guy’s real wife/Gittes’ employer of sorts/the girl with all the answers, Evelyn Mulwray. Gal’s a complicated woman and something to watch her dynamic with Gittes from beginning to end. Also loved John Huston as her father/husband’s business partner, Noah Cross. Can’t exactly say anything about Cross without giving anything away, but what a chilling performance.
If you’re looking for mindless escapism, you have hit a dead end with Chinatown. If you’re interested in seeing what all the fuss is about, you won’t be disappointed as long as you keep your ears open. It’s a challenging movie alright, one of those things you could watch a hundred times, write a doctorate on and still feel like you’re not doing it justice, and that’s not only a testament to the efforts of everyone that was involved in making this, but also to the way it serves as a beacon of sorts for movies that have faith in their audience as intelligent moviegoing folk. If I had a greater knowledge of the genre and if had seen it a hundred times, I might know what the hell I was talking about, but for my first legitimate sit-down, there’s still a whole effing lot to appreciate. It’s Hollywood heavyweights making an (ultimately) very un-Hollywood movie, that’s exactly what I like most about it and that’s exactly what makes it a classic.
If The Godfather: Part II hadn’t come out the same year, I’m thinking this would have ran away with far more Oscars that it did. And if it were up to me, it totally would have, but that’s a discussion for another review…
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)
VERDICT:
7/10 Tough Cookies
As a spotlight for Noomi Rapace, it’s awesome. As an adaptation of an outrageously addicting novel, it’s almost there.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is about a disgraced journalist who finds his reputation tarred and feathered after losing a high-profile legal battle that’s left his livelihood on the brink of ruin. Then clear out of the blue, he’s given the opportunity to investigate the unsolved murder of a business tycoon’s niece despite having no prior experience as a criminal investigator let alone having never watched a single episode of CSI: Stockholm. Being that he’s got some major time to kill until he has to start serving his prison sentence for losing that trial and all, he takes the job and finds an unexpected right-hand woman in the form of a hacker who dresses like Marilyn Manson on a good day and is all about making payback the biggest bitch on the block.
So it wasn’t until last Summer that I finally caved and followed in the majority of mankind’s footsteps by reading the copy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that I pulled out of a grab bag during Christmas ’09. Expectations were low after all my uncles put me on blast for getting stuck with what they fingered as undoubtedly the girliest book anyone could have ended up with, but then I hit page ten and I realized that I had just gotten myself invested in the literary equivalent of crack cocaine. It wasn’t enough to get me to pick up the sequel, but after coming off of a book that was a borderline chore to get through (albeit a great book) it was easy to get hooked and it was a wild read to boot.
Anyway, my point is that this movie had a lot to live up to and I think I’ve been kinda jaded by that fact as a result. For the most part, this movie does the book justice, especially if you’re going in blind. But as much as I tried not to, I couldn’t help but focus on all the elements that the adapted script skimped on even though everything for the most part was pretty spot-on. So with that being said, I’ll do my best to not make this a “book vs. movie” review, but let’s just start with the good stuff.
For a movie that clocks in at 152 minutes, this baby moves. It’s never boring, it’s over before you know what hit ya’ and it doesn’t shy away from the hairier elements that make this bad boy a pretty hard R. A definite perk for the folks out there who equate subtitles with “reading blows”, and director Niels Arden Oplev does a great job of transitioning between his two leads so that it feels more like a single plot line instead of separate stories waiting to come together. Big step up from the book in that regard and you’ll forget pretty damn quickly that the subtitles are even there.
And then there’s Noomi Rapace as our gumshoe with a jones for computers and fucking up 90% of the guys she meets since they all happen to be rapists or thugs, Lisbeth Salander. A magnetic character in the novel, Rapace brings a whole new level of Sarah Connor-style toughness to Salander that totally steals the show from the moment we meet her and almost makes you wonder why there’s another protagonist at all. In a nutshell, the whole movie is about the most evil effing woman-haters around who take pride in dominating their “inferiors” in some truly degenerate ways, so it’s double awesome to see scrawny little Salander as both the muscle and the co-brains of the operation.
She is a badass, she is an independent woman of the highest order, she would make me poop myself if we made eye contact in real life. Also dug the addition of Salander flashbacking to her days when she played with fire as a lead-in to the next movie. Well played, Mr. Oplev and your trusty team of writers whose names I can’t pronounce.
But she’s also the double-edged sword of this movie. It’s called The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and while the main story doesn’t even directly involve her on the outset, it ends up being all about the girl with the dragon tattoo. And while she’s the biggest thing that makes this movie stand out and I’m sure that last sentence doesn’t make a lick of sense if you’re unfamiliar with the movie or book, our actual main character Michael Blomkvist ends up taking a backseat in every way. It wouldn’t suck so much if Blomkvist hadn’t been a really solid character in the book and if Michael Nyqvist hadn’t done a good job playing him, but the character ultimately gets boiled down as a means to an end and that’s disappointing.
His alternately platonic/romantic relationship with Salander along with the two or three other women he’s knocking boots with are either tied up neatly or ignored completely, the legal battle he loses at the beginning which in turn plays a major part in why he takes the murder case is hardly mentioned at the start and is ultimately resolved over the course of two minutes, and that’s just a couple aspects of his character that are left out in a screenwriting move that can only be described as weak. Like I said, this probably won’t matter if you haven’t read the book, but I liked Blomkvist, I thought he was just as strong a character as Salander in the novel and that a great deal of what made her so memorable went right back to their dynamic together. Now, he’s just kind of…there, and he deserves better than that.
Ugh, just a bummer, but aside from Blomkvist, the meat of the main story is still all there and the constant highlights of this hardcore whodunit should be more than enough to make any viewer forget about the small stuff. Just high-octane mystery-solvin’ with Goth chicks and sado-Nazis, and that’s always a fight worth watching.
So whether you’ve read the book or not, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is still a wild freakin’ ride any way you cut it and I really was this close to giving it an 8. God, if I hadn’t read the book I could see myself giving this as much as a 9 and only now am I starting to realizing that all these complaints of mine are probably reading off awfully nitpicky, and I hate being nitpicky. It’s about damn time I got around to seeing this and it’s nice to see that Rapace does in fact live up to all the hype and then some even if The Academy was too stupid not to nominate her for anything last year.
RIP Peter Yates
Man, another sad day for movie buffs. Folks, January 9th, 2010 marks the day we lost Peter Yates at the age of 81. Without Yates, the world would never have known Breaking Away, Bullitt, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, and without Krull, we would never know what a glaive was. Those are just a handful of highlights from one hell of a directing career that made life for all of us fans that much more badass and helped to mark a time when movies were actually cool. So rest in peace, Peter, you will be sorely missed and your life’s work will continue to be awesome.
The Top Ten of 2010
So. 2010. Interesting year.
First quarter was pretty weak. Second quarter was a little better. The Summer was generally horrendous. The last couple months were a significant improvement. Great year for documentaries though.
A downgrade from ’09, but a good year all the same. With that being said, here’s my brief take on the best of the best of the best of the best of the best of the best of the best of the best and so on. (Click on the titles for the full reviews).
10. 127 Hours
How Danny Boyle managed to make this story of a boy and his rock one of the most exciting movies of the year is just further testament to how hard Danny Boyle rocks. So does James Franco.
9. Inception
Rotating hallway. ‘Nough said.
8. Blue Valentine
As bittersweet as they come and a total powerhouse to boot. He won’t get it, but Gosling totally deserves Best Actor.
7. Restrepo
Embedded journalism at its finest and it’s just harrowing like you wouldn’t believe. Might be the most important movie of the year.
6. The Social Network
Best script of the year, best score of the year, best trailer of the year. Ended up being infinitely better than it had any right to be.
5. Black Swan
It’s Darren Aronofsky. That alone is enough to put any movie on my Top Ten. And Portman’s got that Oscar in the bag.
4. Winter’s Bone
Achieves so freakin’ much on so freakin’ little. The most tough-as-nails movie of the year, some unreal performances from folks who deserve to be household names, and easily one of the best scripts I’ve come across in a while.
3. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
A movie after my own heart. Best time I had in a theater all year (aside from The Room, of course).
2. The Tillman Story
Reminded me why I go to the movies, reminded me of the power of movies, made me want to punch Donald Rumsfeld in the fucking mouth. Required viewing for anyone who’s never heard of Pat Tillman or thinks they know the story.
1. Inside Job
The most important movie of the year by a long shot. Deserves to be part of High School and college curriculums across the globe, it’ll make you want to scream, and it’s just impossible to walk away from this and not be furious. Like I said, a great year for docs, but this one took the cake.
THE HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Never Let Me Go
Characters may have been somewhat polarizing, but it’s so damn good to have Romanek back behind the camera. Gorgeous movie, even better than the book.
Mugabe and the White African
Infuriating and gut-wrenching documentary that no one saw and got zero publicity. It’s on Netflix Instant, it’s absolutely phenomenal, it deserves to be seen even if the title does nothing to peak your interest.
Toy Story 3
Not as good as Up, still need to revisit the first two movies to see where this falls in the trilogy, but who am I kidding, I bawled like a fiend during the last five minutes of this movie. Pixar cannot be stopped.
I Love You Phillip Morris
Funniest movie of the year and the best Jim Carrey’s been since Dumb & Dumber. Too bad that no one saw it.
All in all, went and saw 58 new movies this year and I’ve still got a review for Somewhere coming this week . Not too shabby, huh? How I’ve maintained a semblance of a social life is truly a feat of the highest order. Anywho, that’s the score, and just for shits and giggles, here’s what I thought of the rest of ’em.
THE Eights:
– Waking Sleeping Beauty
– Waiting for “Superman”
– TRON: Legacy
– The Town
– MacGruber
– Let Me In
– How to Train Your Dragon
– Hot Tub Time Machine
– Get Him to the Greek
– Easy A
– Catfish
THE Sevens:
– Winnebago Man
– True Grit
– The King’s Speech
– The Killer Inside Me
– The Kids Are All Right
– Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
– Get Low
– Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould
– The Fighter
– Exit Through the Gift Shop
– Cyrus
– The Crazies
– Casino Jack and the United States of Money
– The A-Team
THE Sixes:
– Shutter Island
– Morning Glory
– I Am Love
– Green Zone
– Date Night
THE Fives:
– Iron Man 2
– Despicable Me
THE Fours:
– Splice
– The Karate Kid
– Eat Pray Love
– Death at a Funeral
– Buried
THE Threes:
– Sex and the City 2
– Robin Hood
– Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
– Kick-Ass
– Greenberg
THE Twos:
– Resident Evil: Afterlife
– Alice in Wonderland
THE ONES I MISSED BUT WILL GET AROUND TO IN DUE TIME:
– Rabbit Hole
– Piranha 3D
– Monsters
– Inside Job
– Enter the Void
– Another Year
– The American
Alright, gang. Let’s see those lists!
And the stupidest nomination of the 2010 Golden Globes is…
ALICE IN WONDERLAND FOR BEST COMEDY!
How this got nominated over Get Him to the Greek, I Love You Phillip Morris and Toy Story 3 is beyond me, but then again, this is the Golden Globes we’re talkin’ ’bout, Willis. Textbook dumbassery. Solid voting any way you cut it, folks.
RESULTS:
– Alice in Wonderland for Best Comedy: 11 votes
– The Tourist for Best Comedy: 6 votes
– Love and Other Drugs being nominated for anything: 6 votes
– Angelina Jolie for The Tourist– Best Actress in a Comedy: 5 votes
– Burlesque for Best Musical: 4 votes
– Halle Berry for Frankie and Alice – Best Actress: 1 vote (did anyone even see this?)
– Johnny Depp for The Tourist – Best Actor in a Comedy: 1 vote
– Red for Best Comedy: 0 votes (at least it is a comedy)
– Johnny Depp for Alice in Wonderland – Best Actor in a Comedy: 0 votes
– Other: 1 vote for “HFPA are hacks and I give not a rat’s tuckus who and what they nominate!” (well said, good sir)
GOD, that was an awful movie.
Well that’s a nice way to kick off the new decade…
So it looks like the most excellent folks over at Total Film decided to nominated my site as one of the Best Review Blogs of 2010 amongst some other sites of which I’m a big ol’ fan, and it also looks like they’re encouraging all the nominees to get out there and spread the word. Anywho, very cool to be nominated in the first place, but if any of you awesome dudes and dudettes out there are fans of Cut The Crap, you’d be doing me a huge solid by hitting up the link below and throwing me a vote of love. If I see you at a bar, I’m buying you a beer, if I see you on the street, you just earned yourself a high-ten (or a high-thirty if there’s someone else around). With that being said, thanks in advance and continue to rule!
http://www.totalfilm.com/features/the-2011-total-film-movie-blog-awards/page:6
The Kids Are All Right (2010)
VERDICT:
7/10 Modern Families
Borders on overdramatic and has a plotline we’ve seen before, but it’s still a clan worth gettin’ to know.
The Kids Are All Right is about two lesbian moms who find themselves adding an addition of sorts to their test-tube family when their two kids get in contact with the sperm donor that helped in creating them and eventually begin treating him as one of the pack. The more they all hang out, the more they get to like him, but then things start getting a little too close for comfort and they start to wonder whether it was actually the best idea to embrace a guy whose only connection to them is the quick hundo he made by wanking into a cup.
Then again, it’s the 21st Century, yo. Families be actin’ crazy.
With that being said (and oh so profoundly, I might add), this is a pretty inspired premise that makes for a pretty progressive and pertinent spin on the usual nuclear family dynamic. Now that same-sex couples, surrogate parents and men who give birth have graduated from a public perception of “Burn the witch!” to secondhand news, this seems like one of those scripts that’s been waiting to happen, one that might have been edgy as hell back in a time where Ellen Degeneres was blacklisted from TV, and I think that’s pretty darn cool. We’re growing up, us Americans.
Anywho, writer/director Lisa Cholodenko has her high points and low points in regards to the script. The best thing she’s got going is her characters and they truly are the bomb. The moms, the kids and the donor all play wonderfully off each other and I love how totally unique they are. They’ve all got their own major shortcomings, they all react very differently to the same conflicts, they develop wonderfully and not a one of them feels unnecessary. Also really dug how I could faintly pick up on their disquiet with one another within the first five minutes and how it all slowly comes to the surface once they start speaking their mind for once. Felt very natural. Man, it’s freakin’ tough to create five different characters and make them feel like individuals instead of plot devices, but Cholodenko really made me buy it.
So the characters are a go, but then there’s the dialogue, and that’s kinda hit-or-miss. The weird thing is that even after seeing it less than 12 hours ago, the only lines I can remember are the ones that annoyed me. Overall, the dialogue’s pretty solid and the cast does a bang-up job delivering it, but then we get this testy dialogue between the donor and the uptight mom:
The Donor: “I was just making observations.”
The Uptight Mom: “Well, I need your observations like a need a D in my A.”
…only she ain’t using initials.
Probably sounded good on paper but ended up being one of those “Who says that?” moments in practice. It’s that same acting-cool-but-sounding-stupid attitude that drove me nuts during Kick-Ass and there are one or two other times where it happens here. Granted, this kinda stuff makes up a relatively minor of dialogue, but that comeback sure ain’t hard to forget.
And, shit, is this an uncomfortable movie to sit through. Even though this story’s got a pretty original spin going for it, the plot is still pretty predictable and relishes in going down the most nails-on-a-chalkboard path at times. It’s just jam-packed with one confrontational, passive-aggressive and/or in-you-face scene after another and I was surprised by how much it kept making me cringe. I guess that’s a testament to how well the cast and Cholodenko connects the audience to the characters, but I could barely look at the screen at times it was so awkward. More of a double-edged sword than anything.
Although as much as I can throw credit to Cholodenko for the characters she created, this is a freakin’ stellar cast.
As for the best of the bunch, I think I gotta go with Julianne Moore as the free-spirited stay-at-home mom, Jules. For the record, Julianne Moore can do no wrong and which each new role I see her in, the more that fact is confirmed. She’s a got a very likable character, one who’s pretty easy to sympathize with to a certain extent and she’s a lot more fun than her spouse. Hippies are always more fun than doctors.
But nearly edging her out is Mark Ruffalo as the sperm donor, Paul. Never been sold on Ruffalo even though it seems like everyone else can’t get enough of him, but he’s awesome here and it’s great watching him as the catalyst that brings his newfound family’s issues to a head. Definitely has the best character arc of the five in terms of his role when he’s first introduced and his role when it’s all said and done. Between this and You Can Count on Me, I think I’m offically on the Ruffalo bandwagon. Still can’t exactly see him as Bruce Banner, but whatever, here’s to hoping he’ll prove me wrong.
The great Annette Bening delivers as usual as the strict workaholic mom, Nic. Character is far less likable than the others and is a wino to boot, but she’s got the most moving scene in the movie and she ultimately redeems her tightass ways. But that is one hell of a lesbian haircut she’s got goin’ on. Not the best look, girl.
And then there’s Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson as the kids who are all right, Joni and Laser (bitchin’ name) respectively. Never seen Hutcherson before, but he holds his own, and Wasikowska really didn’t get the fair shake she deserved as Alice because she’s surprisingly legit. No idea where she came from, but the girl’s got chops and I’m looking forward to seeing her again.
It seems like there are a good deal of folks out there who are pretty enthusiastic about this here motion picture, and while The Kids Are All Right definitely has its strengths in some areas, the drama was just too thick for my blood. All the same, the cast and the characters really are great, I’m a big fan of the premise, and it was definitely better than I thought it was gonna be even if my parents and my good buddy Fred were left pretty underwhelmed, and those are opinions I swear by.
Casino Jack and the United States of Money (2010)
VERDICT:
7/10 Indian Givers
It’s like Enron but with politics and it’s just as infuriating.
Casino Jack and the United States of Money is a documentary about one Jack Abramoff – a College Republican-turned-D.C. lobbyist who used his smooth-talkin’ ways and political influence to swindle the shit out of anyone gullible enough to trust him with their money. As it sometimes goes with folks whose astronomical greed manages to outshine a complete misunderstanding of right and wrong, Jack’s con man ways eventually landed him in The Big House for four years and, oh, how his Right-Wing buddies in office did fall.
So up until a week ago, I’d never even heard of Jack Abramoff. I vaguely remembered that image of him walking out of a courtroom like a Soviet spy with his matching fedora and trench coat getup, but other than that, dude could have barked in my face and I still wouldn’t have known who I was chasing after. I don’t know whether that’s just my being completely oblivious to current events during my High School and college years or if I should applaud FOX News for doing a bang-up job of pretending that it never happened, but it’s a shame that his name isn’t synonymous with “Abramoff-Gate” ’cause he sure screwed over a lot a whole lot of innocent people. Big time.
But it always helps to sign up for a movie about a guy who I didn’t even know existed when director Alex Gibney is the one giving me the low-down. The dude seems to be churning out documentaries at the same pace The Beatles released albums and whether it’s D.C. lobbyists, Gonzo journalists or torture practices in Afghanistan, the dude seems to have quite a range of topics at his disposal, too. The point is, this could have been a doc about the life and times of Big Bird and I would have seen it, he’s just that consistently good and he knows how to make a seriously compelling, well-researched movie.
And so we have Jack Abramoff, and while he’s the cornerstone of our story, he’s really only part of the problem. More than anything, he’s the poster boy for an ethically warped system that continually turned a blind eye thanks to the almighty dollar. As much as it’s his fault for being so morally jaded to the point where right and wrong ceased to be separate, ultimately, he was the scapegoat for government corruption that climbed way higher that anyone wanted to believe or cared to admit, he was the one who had to pay even though everyone else had a hand in the cookie jar.
But the most interesting thing about it all isn’t so much Abramoff’s crimes, but rather his transformation. Here’s a guy who was a born with a silver tongue and made his way to the Chair of College Republicans not because he was in it for a quick buck, but because he was entirely passionate about returning government control to the Right and getting others on the bandwagon. It wasn’t a malicious ambition by any means, nor did he practice it as such, he was just a guy who knew what people wanted to hear and used that to climb up the political ladder. Then he climbed higher, gained a reputation as the guy who could get things done, started raising questionable funds in questionable ways, and the rest is history.
There are some great testimonies here from people who knew Abramoff, tried to stop Abramoff or ended up getting shafted by Abramoff, but it’s really something else to hear from the one guy who worked under Abramoff and eventually served as a whistleblower of sorts. He talks about the outrageous expenses, the lavish business trips, how no one batted an eye because crime became the norm and how he was this close to ignoring his better judgment so that he could follow suit. Simply amazing what a man can become when it comes to money.
The saddest thing about it, more so than the national economies he destroyed, the Native American tribes he slowly forced into bankruptcy through the backdoor and the unfathomable profit he made off it all, it’s almost not even his fault. Yes, the depths he sank to are flat-out appalling, but if there was a cap on how much money could be raised for political foundations, if there were regulations that could prevented this kind of shit from ever becoming a concern, if there were politicians who lived up to the spirit of Mr. Smith, who could stand up and say “This is wrong” without taking a pay cut under the table, who would just do their effing job as advocates for the people, this documentary wouldn’t exist and Abramoff’s would still be producing Dolph Lundgren movies (even though that was all a scheme, too). Even worse is that the system hasn’t changed and the only ones who’ve learned a thing are the ones who got burned.
Although as good as this movie is, it’s not for everyone. What peaked my interest to begin with was Gibney’s involvement since I only turn on CNN once every four years and my knowledge of D.C.’s inner-workings along with anything that has to do with campaign fundraising continues to round out at nada, and as a result, all this ends up being a lot to take in. It might bore some while fascinating others, and that has nothing to do with how this doc is put together, it just goes back to the subject material. Lots of political jargon, lots of white collar corruption that you can tell is effed up even if it sounds like Greek when not spelled out in layman’s terms, but whether it’s music to your ears or like listening to Charlie Brown’s teachers ramble on for two hours, you’ll still get the gist of what’s going on and that karma is gonna be a bitch for the chumps behind it all.
All the same, Casino Jack and the United States of Money is a well-made and important movie if only because of the way it showcases how straight-up corrupt Abramoff and his pals were, how they were able to get away with it, and how the avenues they took to achieve their schemes are still open for business. Hopefully it will make your head spin and appall the hell out of you, but either way, at least you’ll know who Abramoff is when the topic comes up at your next cocktail party (like I have any idea where you’d have a Jack Abramoff conversation) and you’ll be able to chime right in with, “Fuck that guy!” Same goes for Tom DeLay, regardless of how good he can salsa. Gibney’s not trying to harpoon the guy because his record speaks for itself and he’s only a piece of the puzzle, but it’s just great to see movies that don’t let criminals off the hook when all the courts can muster up is a slap on the wrist compared to the lives that were ruined and the power that was abused.
Five years in jail? Weak. But he did have to work at pizzeria for six months after he got out. Awesome punishment!
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