Inglorious Basterds

Goddamn it's nice to see Tarantino back in form. This movie was a helluva a lot of fun. It's also good to see a performance that received so much hype before I saw it, but still impressed me. Christoph Waltz probably should be billed as the lead. He dominates the film. Brad Pitt is having a lot of fun here too. The story is more of a piecemeal of scenes that have been expanded in key moments of the story. Much of the action of the story takes place off screen or is simply presumed to have happened. There are a number of scene of incredible intensity and tension. The climax was particularly vivid and exciting. My only qualm is that while there are some great performances (Pitt, Waltz, Til Schweiger) there are some real clunkers in here too. Particularly the women. But this is such a fun ride that's hardly an issue.

The Men Who Stare at Goats

Completing my recent disappointing films of Ewan McGregor festival. This is about the Army's allegedly true adventures with New Age mysticism and telekinetic powers. More accurately it's about a talky reporter, McGregor, covering the history of the group as he joins one of it's veterans, George Clooney, on a nebulous "mission" in the opening days of the current Iraq war. McGregor's narration is pervasive, banal and oppressive. It dominates the film, leaving little room for the story to unfold without it being literally explained to us. His journey and even the connection to the present day story seemed unimportant to the film. Any magic in this picture is contained in the flashbacks to the origins of this program. Those scenes are George Clooney, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey using their considerable talent to overcome this over-written mess. The humor is off throughout, but in those moments it shines through. As a midwester aw-shucks kid, McGregor seems completley miscast. He's too old, too handsome and too British. His accent doesn't really hold water. It seemed like the only reason he was cast was because of the films many references to the "Jedi" (the program's own name for it's soldiers). I thought the first of these winks to the camera was a little funny, but repeated exposure beat that out of me. The final act finds Spacey running a 2.0 version of the program with a braindead Daniels and washed out Clooney crashing the party. This is where the film suddenly dives into issues like Guantanmo type torture and American renditioning. It's an abrupt turn from the earlier attempted lightness of the movie. It's an interesting premised, gone horribly awry. I did think Spacey, Clooney and Daniels were all fun to watch, however.

The Ghost Writer

A purported "thriller" about Ewan McGregor who is tasked as the ghost writer on former British Prime Minister Pierce Brosnan's memoirs. He takes over the job for a man who was mysteriously killed. As he starts the job a controversy envelops Brosnan's character as he is accused of okaying the abduction of British citizens for CIA renditions. McGregor gets involved with Brosnan's wife and starts to wonder if is simple job is more complicated that it seems. The ultimate "conspiracy" is that Brosnan's wife is actually a CIA mole. It takes the movie about an hour and a half to suggest that maybe the British PM was a CIA mole, which is too long to get there. Until that point it's a lot of "mystery" but nothing we really understand. And when the reveal comes that the wife is the actual CIA connection I was left wondring, "So what?" Brosnan and Tom Wilkinson are both good, but not in major roles. McGregor seems like a cypher throughout. And there were simply no tense scenes. Information is repeated three, even four times. McGregor characters is never named and it's painfully obvious that they thought this was a clever idea. I will say that the final shot of the film was masterfully done. McGregor walks off screen with the manuscript in his hand and is run over by a car - offscreen. The pages of the manuscript float down the road as the bystanders react to the accident. Other than that it was a bleak, slow, dull movie.

Millions

A sweet little fable that comes out of the gate really strong, but kinda unravels trying to keep the sense of wonder alive. It's about a young boy who finds a bag of stolen money. He and his brother struggle with the sudden wealth. Their mother is dead and the young brother has visions of saints, urging him to give the money away in a saintly manner. Danny Boyle's electric style really keeps the story moving. But as the movie goes along there are just too many complications. The father gets into a relationship. The robber comes for the money. The pound is being discontinued for the Euro. And the movie bounces between this kind of fable and a disjointed thriller. I found the ending to be too much and frankly a little confusing. Still, overall it was fun to watch and really slickly produced.

The Informant!

This is a odd and interesting movie. It probably works best as a comedy, but the tone reminded me a lot of "Fargo." Dark comedy where you laugh at the characters, but never so much that you disconnect from the story. Matt Damon is an Archer Daniels Midland executive who turns into an FBI informant, blowing the whistle about a global price-fixing scheme. His moments as a bumbling secret agent are definitely the best part of the film. Scott Bakula is a great straight man foil to his increasing idiosyncratic actions. Eventually, however, the film shifts. We find out that Damon's character has been embezzling from the company. And the depths of his deception slowly unravel everything he's done and eventually take him down. This part of the movie wasn't as compelling to me, in part because it didn't seem to have the same drive as the first act. But it's where Damon's performance really turns into something that's less comic and more intense. And his relationship with Bakula also becomes a lot more intriguing. But there were a number of scenes in the row where we just saw him continuing to lie and while it may have been true to the real story, it felt repetitive here.

Kurt Cobain: About a Son

A muddled disaster of a documentary that could have been quite interesting. The film utilized apparently hours of recorded conversations with Kurt and someone writing a book about him (the film never explains who it is and I don't care enough to look it up). It's shocking and refreshing to hear his voice again after all these years, especially not singing. And although the conversations are wide ranging and intimate, there is little here that is really new or interesting. That might, in part, point to the conclusion that maybe Cobain wasn't that interesting. He seems self-absorbed and pretentious here. This technique could have worked, however, if the materials were given to the right direction. It made me think of "This is Elvis' which the King narrated from beyond the grave. That film mixed the audio with footage of Elvis. But here, the director chooses to show us hours of b-roll footage of what could be a really bad tourism video for the Pacific Northwest. Occaisionally the images have some relation to what Kurt is talking about, but often they don't. More irritating is that Kurt's voice over often goes away for long musical interludes... but none of it is Nirvana music. It's a slow, unengaging film about a very interesting subject. Boo.

Alice in Wonderland

This was definitely worth the extra for the IMAX 3D experience. There is a lot of eye-candy here, and it's all done really well. Unlike "Avatar" where it felt like I was just supposed to suck my thumb and look at pretty pictures, in this film all the special effects create a world that make the story work. Johnny Depp is having a lot of fun chewing scenery here and Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Hathaway are both really good. I don't know the "Alice" story well enough to understand how they bastardized it, but I thought this story worked. I think the film works in 2D as well.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Cyrstal Skull

What a depressing movie. Such a great franchise allowed to become a dull, limp, pretentious snooze-fest. Harrison Ford looks like he's sleep walking and I don't know who decided they should model the action after "The Da Vinci Code" instead of... Oh... I don't know... maybe... "Raiders of the Lost Fucking Ark"! That was a terrible choise. Indy is now a brainy know-it-all. Shia LeBeuf is an unwelcome intruder, but how they allowed him to be named "Mutt" is beyond me. Even the action scenes, which are few and far between, felt lame and uninspired. Lots of fistfights, mostly. There's one extended car chase that is probably the main set piece, but it looks like it was shot entirely in front of a green screen. And the story, such as it is, doesn't hold a drop of water. This is just a gigantic disaster.

The Boondock Saints

This movie has always been kind of a specter. Something I've heard so much about, but never actually seen. It's almost an afterthought to "Overnight", a great about the douchebag director. The film itself is a total amateur hour. The leads are just not strong enough to carry a movie. There are a number of smaller parts that are clearly part of Troy Duffy's posse. They are uniformly bad performances. And the only real actor in the film, Willem Dafoe, is allowed to unravel before the cameras. Duffy seems to have no way to help actors through scenes. There are numerous faux-Tarantino scenes that are just painful to see. The story is also confusing and convulted. After a prologue that's probably 40 minutes long, it becomes a story about two brothers who accidentially stumble into the role of vigilante kilers of the Russian mob. They aren't really motivated to do this, but they jump in. There are some nicely orchestrated pieces of violence and mayhem (although in those moments the music was notably bad). But they aren't so specatular that they make up for the rest of the dreck.

Observe and Report

This is a hateful, horrible, ugly, unfunny movie. Seth Rogen is stupendously bad as a one note charicature or a bi-polar misfit. It's stunning that this is a movie that could be compared quite unfavorably to "Paul Blart". Rogen is also a mall security guard and he also dreams of becoming a police officer. But instead of being held off the force because of his weight, Rogen is a violent mental health problem. There's a "gag" where he date rapes a girl. There are multiple fights with graphic violence. And there's an extensive foot chase involving a nude man. It's not funny for even a second. The director seems to be going for a Wes Anderson/Farrelly Bros. mash-up, but he's unable to pull off Anderson's style of the Farrelly's tone. It's one of those movies that actually makes you angry that it got made.

Capitalism: A Love Story

Michael Moore's latest diatribe... errr, film. It's about the economic meltdown, although it veers into a lot of strange diversions. It's synopsis tells us that democracy is better than capitalism, but after two hours I still was confused by what he thought the difference was. The saddest thing for me, is that this is a once vibrant filmmaker who now seems content to simply stitch together a few thematically linked newsstories and present them like a warmed-over "60 Minutes". The style and flair that was evident in "Bowling for Columbine" and "Farenheit 9/11" is gone. The energy is missing in this film, as it was in "Sicko." I can't say this wasn't interesting material, but it was presently so flatly it left me feeling empty.

Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. the New York Knicks

A documentary about the rivalry between the New York Knicks and the Indiana Pacers in the mid-90's. All I can say is John Starks and Reggie Miller is no Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. I couldn't help but compare it to that film, which had so much going on. This is a well made film, but it's about such a low-rent rivalry. Sure there was intensity, but as a fan of that era of the NBA it's remarkable how much they strayed away from what was really going on in the game. Only in the middle do they hint at the fact that for two seasons it was a window for someone other than Jordan (who had retired) to win a championship. But then it treats the Easter Conference Finals as if that were the championship. The last third of the movie is almost entirely made up of game recaps of the two remarkable playoff series the teams had in '94 and '95. There's some interesting moments there, but every great moment is telegraphed by fourteen talking heads. The filmmakers even make a gimmick out of the fact that all the talking heads use the same words to describe the action. Like that makes it more interesting? No that makes it a cliche. This was a missed opportunity to talk about a really interesting moment in the NBA's history.

The Brothers Warner

A documentary about the actual Warner Bros. who founded the studio. The film is directed by the granddaughter of Harry Warner who is painted as the "soul" of the studio. The one who injected morality into the films they produced. The first half is a largely congratulatory dissertation of the formation and rise of the studio. There are interesting tidbits of trivia, but it's not all that gripping of a story. And the slant of the film is so obvious. The latter part of the movie talks about the schism between Harry and the other brothers and Jack, who ultimately took over the studio. The underhanded way that he bought the place from out for under them is an incredible story of greed and narcissim, even by Hollywood standards. And their grudge which followed them even until death is an epic tale. But while this is very interesting it comes too late in the movie and well after the director has shown her obvious bias towards her grandfather as the "white knight" of the studio. But it did have some interesting historical pieces.

Crazy Love

A very spare documentary about one of the strangest love stories of all time. A man falls in love with a girl in the sixties. Only catch... he's already married. And he lies to her about it, then lies to her about getting a divorce. Then when she dumps him for good, he hires goons who pour acid on her face - blinding her. He goes to prison (and is involved in the Attica uprising) and eventually gets out of jail and... MARRIES HER. And a few years into that marriage he's dragged back into court for allegedly threatening a woman he's having an affair with. But she stands by him. It's very rudimentary filmmaking. A few old pictures and lots of talking heads. But the characters are fascinating. It's probably forty minutes into the movie before the acid attack is brought up. Up until then it's a standard, albeit weird relationship, but even that part of the film is engaging. I was completely absorbed by this movie. A remarkable story told with great craftsmanship.

Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals

I'm not sure this technically counts as a film. It's a 90 minute documentary on television. But I wanted to see it and Liev Schreiber narrates it. Oh, that's right... Liev Schreiber narrates EVERY documentary. It's an interesting picture. Magic and Larry both seem to open up about the dynamic of their relationship. Truth be told, I didn't realize how complex it was on a personal level. That stuff was really interesting. There are several moments where the film delves into the actual games they played. Particularly gripping was a sequence about the first time they met in the Finals of the NBA. However, more often than not I found that they would start talking about something like that, which was interesting, to repeat so generic statement about their relationship. They also glossed over the Red Auerbach/Larry Bird rule section, which I think is a big part of the story. And while they referenced the Black & White part of the rivalry, that also felt like they didn't go as deep as they could have. Still, these are minor grumbles about a comprehensive and compelling documentary. Sequences about their meeting in the NCAA Final and Magic's announcement of testing HIV Positive were, for example, extremely well-done.

Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

This feels like a movie that started as a soundtrack and built out from there. Michael Cera and Kat Dennings are both really charming actors and they have chemistry here, but the script fell flat. It seemed like there as an arbitrary decision to make this a "Into the Night" type movie that took place in one night. And because of that they felt like they had to spread the "story" out. There are a number of flip-flops where they go from liking one another to not liking one another. It's a cute movie when they're flirting. When they're fighting it's awkward and slow. And the tertiary characters had nothing to do. Boring.

The Damned United

Michael Sheen is the most underrated actor working today. He is so damn good. And I think Peter Morgan is brilliant. This is a movie about fucking soccer. Soccer? Yeah, but it was riveting. Well, not riveting, but damn good. Sheen plays Brian Claugh, apparently one of the greatest managers in the history of English Club Football. The story criss-crosses time between two periods. The main storyline is about when he took over Leeds United, his main rival. It was an ill fit that lasted only 44 days. But that story is intercut with flashbacks to his rise from Division 2 to the national champs. There's an awesome scene where he has to apologize to his best friend and partner. There are a lot of great scenes. There are some plot moves that were underwritten, I thought. But perhaps they're just storylines that are more familiar to fans of the sport. It was a really fun watch.