Starring: Andre Dussolier, Sabin Azema

Written by: Alex Revail, Laurent Herbiet

Directed by: Alain Resnais

Whatever this film was trying to do, it failed.

Wild Grass is the story of a woman who loses her wallet (Azema) and the man who finds it (Dussolier). He turns it into the police, but not until he’s routed through the contents and fallen in love/become obsessed with the owner. When she calls to thank him, the obsession doubles and he begins to stalk her.

We are meant to feel sympathy for him, even though he is obviously twisted (there are hints at some even more shady things in his past, but nothing is ever clarified) we are also meant to feel sympathy with her when she ends up falling for her stalker even though she is obviously, well, the kind of girl who would fall for her stalker. We are meant to feel sympathy for a host of characters that we really have no reason to feel sympathy for, or even remotely like. The only nice people in the film are fleeting characters, police officers and random employees, but unfortunately this movie isn’t about them. This movie is about the truly questionable people that they come into contact with.

Maybe the point was to show us how flawed people are. But the thing is we already knew that. We’ve all seen news stories where some teacher starts dating a twelve-year-old student and they profess they are in love. The real goal of this film should have been to make us feel for the characters, to see why such disturbed people can find happiness with each other. But there is very little effort there. Even the style of narration (half fairytale, half journalistic analysis) does all it can to distance us from the characters and examine them like ants in a colony.  Not a great way to gain insight into their motivations.

It’s a shame because the film looks amazing and is acted beautifully. In fact, if the subtitles hadn’t been on and I’d been allowed to make up my own story I probably would have enjoyed the film a lot more (except for the ending, that wouldn’t have worked in any language) unfortunately, the sub titles were on and the characters motivations are there for us to scrutinize and judge and, for me, dismiss. I just didn’t like anyone in the movie and didn’t care how their stories turned out. No amount of beautiful camera work can save that.

Grade: C-.

Okay,  in the next couple days I should get Salt up.  Followed closely by I am love.

Cheers all.

Sef.

Starring: Michael Douglas, Susan Sarandon, Jenna Fischer, Danny DeVito.

Written by: Brian Koppelman

Directed by: Brian Koppelman, David Levien

Okay, this one’s going to be quick because I’ve been ill recently but haven’t been able to take time off work so when I get home, it’s liquids and bed.

So the long and the short of it is…

For the first fifteen minutes of Solitary Man I was trying to figure out why such an awesome seeming movie with such an amazing cast had been buried with barely any promotion whatsoever. For the rest of the film’s running time it proceeded to show me why.  This story (about an aging Lothario coming to terms with his own mortality) is filled with scenes that think they are very clever. There’s just a smugness to the whole thing, like the filmmakers thought they were imparting some important lessons on us and they thought we’d go “ahhh” at the end as opposed to scratching our heads and/or rolling out eyes as we watch scenes we’re pretty sure we’ve watched a hundred times before.

The only bright spot is a best friend character played by Danny DeVito. He’s a genuinely interesting person and one that they should have kept on-screen more. Unfortunately his part is at most ten percent of the film, the rest is just an overly preachy and formulaic meandering through the usual aging womanizer cliches. This film is a waste of talented people’s time. Yours too.

Grade: D+.

Okay, next up should be Wild Grass followed by I am love and Salt.

Goodnight all.

Sef.

Starring: Joey King, Selena Gomez

Written by: Laurie Craig, Nick Pustay

Directed by: Elizabeth Allen

Ramona and Beezus is by no means a great movie but it’s a lot better than it needed to be and is significantly better than the majority of the live action kids movies that have been released so far this year.

Though the movie is called Ramona and Beezus the film is actually about Ramona (Joey King). She’s a third grader with an over active imagination and tomboy inklings. She’s got two folks that love her, a big sister (whom she cursed with the name Beezus since she couldn’t pronounce Beatrice as a baby) who tolerates her and an aunt who has the innate ability to bat clean up whenever the parents need a hand with their children. Things all seem pretty great for Ramona until her father loses his job, turning the family’s stable life upside down.

The movie is essentially just a series of scenes of Ramona doing silly things, usually involving her big sister Beezus (Gomez). But the scenes are, for the most part, cute and some of them are surprisingly well written. There is very little build in the movie but oddly I appreciated that. Mostly because the majority of kids movies tend to build to the “all is lost” moment when everything goes wrong for the characters and I just really hate watching kids being put through hell. This movie has its down moments but they are mixed in with the good, kind of like life. True, many of the scenes may make you roll your eyes a bit but the characters sell it, even when the story starts laying on the cheese.

I really can’t think of much else to say on this one. The film is so low pressure and easy-going that it doesn’t really demand a scene by scene analysis. All I’ll say to end off is, if you’ve got kids (or neices/nephews, or you’ve been saddled with your friend’s seven-year old cuz mom hasn’t gone clubbing in years) and you need a film to entertain them for the afternoon, here’s one they’ll probably love and you’ll probably like. And given the options out there for kids movies that’s a victory unto itself.

Grade: B.

Next up is the Michael Douglas mid life crisis flick A solitary man followed by Wild Grass.

Cheers.

Sef.

Starring: Julianne Moore, Annette Bening, Mark Ruffalo

Written by: Lisa Cholodenko, Stuart Blumberg

Directed by: Lisa Cholodenko

I loved the characters more than I loved the actual movie, but sometimes that’ll do.

The kids are all right tells the story of a lesbian couple who have conceived two children through the aid of a sperm donor. When the oldest turns eighteen, legally becoming an adult, she contacts the donor through the hospital in order to find out who their biological father is. What they discover is exactly what any child of a sperm donor would probably want to discover; that their biological parent is the total opposite of their actual ones.  Of course, a tug of war ensues.

What impressed me most about the film was that there weren’t any bad guys. Or, to be more specific, everyone in the film did their share of bad. It reminded me of Juno that way. Every character had their flaws, but every character had their good points as well. I also enjoyed how little preaching the film engaged in.  It was rare that I felt like I was being lectured to. If anything I felt the filmmakers were probably mocking themselves.

But, the film had its share of troubles that are holding me back from a glowing review. The biggest problem is a very common one among independent films and its one I’ve talked about before. Namely, the quirk factor. This movie loves it’s quirkyness and isn’t frightened to brag about it from the rooftops. From the scenes of the two mothers watching all male gay porn, to the sex scenes between Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo, It just felt at times like the movie was entertaining itself a little more than it was entertaining me. Also, and this is going to sound horribly politically correct but I must say it, I felt like there was an inherent sexism in the set up of the lesbian relationship. Nic (Annette Bening) is the breadwinner of the family and she’s portrayed as the most masculine. In her hair style, her mannerisms and how she dresses. Jules (Jullianne Moore) is the accidental house wife and she is portrayed much more femininely. She’s also the one that falls for a guy. Look, I’m sure the lesbian community has it’s share of switch hitters but it did seem like they were making clear which was the “man” of the couple and which was the “woman” and it rubbed my guilty white liberal conscience the wrong way.

But, as critical as I felt at times, for the most part I was just happy to be watching people who I liked dealing with the problems in their lives. For all its flaws The kids are all right is an enjoyable time with smart folk who haven’t got life perfect yet. I’m sorry the film couldn’t reach greater heights but I’m happy it got as high as it did.

Grade: B.

Okay, slight schedule change. Instead of Wild Grass being my next review it should go Ramona and Beezus, A Solitary Man, and then, finally, Wild Grass. Then I get to tackle Salt and I am love.

Sef.

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Written and Directed by: Christopher Nolan

Really, was there ever any doubt that this movie would kick every ass in the room?

Inception is the story of a group of thieves that specialize in a very specific form of industrial espionage. Namely, instead of breaking into someone’s office to steal secrets they break into their minds. You see, these highly trained criminals are in possession of a technology that allows people to share in someone’s dream state. The result is, when done correctly, easy access into a persons deepest secrets.

The film, quite brilliantly, skips the whole ‘discovery of the device’ sub-plot that most other science fiction films would have dwelt on for a good half hour at the top. Instead the filmmakers make it clear from the get go that we are in a world where this is possible. Even more impressive is it’s not some random dystopian future. It is, for all intents and purposes, right now. That writer director Christopher Nolan could pull all of this off is a tribute to his narrative skill.

And that’s something that I don’t think enough people are mentioning about this film. For all the talk about how ‘experimental’ the movie is many are forgetting to point out how well the experiment works. That’s because there is not a split second in this movie where it seemed like the director was bragging about what he was accomplishing. It’s not like Southland Tales or Slipstream where you could almost feel the film daring you to point out that it made no sense. This movie takes an unbelievable premise and stops at nothing to guarantee that it makes sense. In other words, it does exactly what all great science fiction should do and it makes you believe.

There really is barely a moment in this film that doesn’t work. The performances are spot on. It sounds great. The special effects are so minimalistic and so suited to the story that I was filled with the urge to fed ex a copy of the sucker to George Lucas.  But the key is, as it should be, the story. And when the main characters get into the big heist that is the movie’s climax  (which lasts for a good quarter of the lengthy film) there’s barely a moment for any of the audience members to breathe. I was speechless.  Considering where the director took things it really should have fallen apart but, as with all of Christopher Nolan’s films, you always feel like your in good hands.

I’m just so happy dudes Like Nolan are making films. I really am. I mean he’s never made a bad movie! Inception stays in that vein. With its risky structure and it’s near perfect delivery, Inception is another on a list of excellent films from an artist who is establishing himself as one of the best of his generation. Make time for this one, you will NOT be disappointed.

Grade: A.

Okay, I have to take a couple of days off blogging to make a living but I should be back soon with The kids are alright followed by Wild Grass.

Sef.

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel, Alfred Molina

Written by: Matt Lopez, Doug Miro, Carlo Bernard

Directed by: Jon Turteltaub

There are some movies (actually, strike that, there are a lot of movies) that just seem to get made because they can. Not because anyone really wants to tell a story but because a series of people thought “yeah, that will probably work”. This year, in that vein, we’ve seen Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland and Grown Ups to name two. Well, add The Sorcerer’s Apprentice to the list. A film where you can almost hear the producers looking at the dailies and saying “well, that’s good enough I guess.”

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice tells the story of Dave (Jay Baruchel) a young physics student who, it turns out, is descended from the greatest magician of all time, Merlin. He discovers his destiny thanks to a powerful Sorcerer named Balthazar (Nicolas Cage) who takes him under his wing to teach him magic in order to prepare him to, eventually, save the world.

I think that’s it. It doesn’t matter. No one cares in this movie. Nothing matches. There’s no effort to make Magic consistent. And yes, I know, magic is supposed to be mysterious but in the best fantasy movies Magic is, at least, narrowed down to a certain set of principles making it specific to that world. In this film Magician’s can do pretty much everything. They call certain things ‘Spells’ but we never see them actually using a spell. They just wave their hands and freaky shit happens. Every now and then they get into a trap that magic can’t get them out of. There’s no reason it shouldn’t be able to but the script needs them to be in danger so that’s how it works I guess.

There are some moderately entertaining moments near the beginning but those become distant memories quick.  The story is so predictable and so without energy that eventually I just stopped paying attention and started counting product placements (and holy crap are there a lot in this film. This review may end up having a sponsor just based on some sort of advertising contact high). Also,  and this is the kind of thing I probably wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t watched eight gazillion movies this year, but this movie is really badly edited. There are countless times where the dialogue sounds badly looped, and even where actors mouths don’t actually match the words they are saying.

I really get the feeling everyone in this movie said yes without thinking much. From the actors, to the director, to the copious amount of writers (I only listed three, but there were three more) no one worked particularly hard to make something special and everyone did just enough to get the job done. The result is a painful and forgettable film that has nothing to say and no reason to say it.

Grade: D.

Okay, next up will be Inception in the next couple of days,  followed more than likely by the kids are alright.

Sef.

Starring: Steve Carell, Jason Segel

Written by: Ken Dario, Cinco Paul, Sergio Pablos

Directed by: Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud

Just think of this movie as How to train your Dragon’s twin. Not in that the story is similar, and not just because they are both animated (though that is of course a factor) it’s more because both have that feeling of a “just pretty good” movie that leaps at greatness every now and then.

Despicable Me is the story of a super villain named Gru who adopts three small children, not because he likes children but because their side line of selling cookies is a convenient way to break into people’s houses. Specifically the house of Vector, another villain who has a shrink ray that Gru wants.

So, you have a charming but cold villain who adopts three cute kids. Can we all agree we know what’s coming? Sing along now…

At first Gru hates the kids as they are uncontrollable. But damn are they cute and funny.

The kids win him over. And damn are they cute and funny.

Something happens to drive them apart. The kids think Gru has given up on them. Making them less funny but more cute in that tragic sort of way.

Gru defeats a bad guy and saves the kids, promising never to leave them again.  Keeping the cute, bringing back the funny, and giving us a happy ending.

Look, I know I shouldn’t really criticize Despicable Me for its predictability since many truly great movies follow a formula but the formula for CG kids movies is really starting to bug me. I think it’s because it always seems to involve children having their hearts broken. The action itself is painful enough to watch but when you can see it coming from a mile away, it just feels manipulative.

However, as with How to train your Dragon this is a positive review and there are a lot of positives in this movie.  The main one  is the fact that it is just really really funny. From the minions, to the bank of evil (formerly Lehman Brothers) to the squid gun (which fires some very unenthusiastic squids) the movie knows how to hit its laugh lines. Add to that some state of the art 3D effects that, for the most part, don’t go too over the top and you’ve got an enjoyable afternoon at the movies.

So it’s nothing particularly special, but it’s still a lot of fun. I do still dream, someday, that a non Pixar Computer generated movie will take a risk or two but until then, stuff like this should tide me over fairly nicely.

Grade: B+.

Okay, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice should be up before the night is over. Followed by sleep.

Sef.

Starring: Adrien Brody, Alice Braga, Topher Grace

Written by: Alex Litvak, Michael Finch

Directed by: Nimrod Antal

grumble grumble for the love of grumble grumble of all the stupid grumble sonofa grumble grumble is it so much to ask for grumble grumble god dammit WHY CAN’T THEY MAKE A GOOD SEQUEL TO PREDATOR???!!!!

It can’t possibly be this hard. With the amazing talent pool in Hollywood. With all the writers, directors, and actors that grew up in the eighties and LOVE the original, it just shouldn’t be this difficult to pull off.

But they’ve boned it again. Maybe not as badly as with Aliens Vs. Predator but they still mucked it up pretty soundly.

Predators is about a group of elite soldiers/criminals/killers that find themselves stranded on an Alien planet. They don’t know each other. They don’t know how they got there. All they know is that they seem to be in SERIOUS trouble. They learn quickly that where they have been brought to is a game preserve, and they are the game.

What made the original Predator work  was the way the stakes just kept on going up throughout the film. In the beginning, you have an elite commando unit that is armed to the teeth and can take out anyone. In the end that commando unit has been reduced to one guy with a sharpened stick.  And all this damage was caused by ONE FUCKING PREDATOR.  A villain so bad assed that you actually fear for the heroes life, even though he’s Arnold Schwarzenegger and you know he can’t die.

In Predators I never once felt an escalation in tension. it just seems to plod from location to location, meandering through awkward exposition and increasingly inexplicable escape scene. Credit where credit is due the characters are, for the most part, interesting, and there are a few witty lines, but things like this actual serve to frustrate more than to entertain. You can tell there’s a good movie in here, it just can’t find its way out.

I really wanted to like this movie. I was very close to giving it a pass, even two-thirds of the way in when I realized something was horribly wrong. But by the time it gets to its inevitable climax the flaws are just to apparent. In the end of the original Predator you get one hell of a battle that the entire film has set up beautifully. In this one, you’re not even sure which kind of predator our heroes are fighting (there’s two, apparently). And even those don’t seem all that threatening as two of them are beaten in hand to hand combat with humans. Think about that. Could you imagine the Predator for the original getting beaten up by a human with only a sword or an axe? Even a strong human? Didn’t think so.

Maybe it if hadn’t been a Predator movie I could have forgiven its many flaws but the fact of the matter is, it was a Predator movie. And when your making a film that is A:  a sequel to an eighties genre masterpiece and B:  self designated as the film that will “put the series back on track” you’d better be prepared to be held to a higher standard than most science fiction/action movies. And for all it’s good intentions Predators fails to live up to the original (or even the just okay second one) and ends up being an occasionally amusing but mostly forgettable story that further damages the good name of a classic film.

Oh well, maybe they’ll salvage it all in Predators 2. Which I’m sure I’ll line up to see, filled with the same ignorant hope I had for this one.

Grade: C-

Okay, Despicable Me should be in the next couple days. Till then.

Sef.

Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist

Written by: Jonas Frykberg

Directed by: Daniel Alfredson

Okay, before the review I would like to do a quick rant.

If you’re a subtitle maker (or sub titlist as I believe they prefer to be called) and you have been given a European movie to do your subtitle magic on. And said movie has a great deal of plot twists and clues and bits of dialog that really shouldn’t be missed. And the predominant colour scheme in the film is white (white apartments, white computers, white work desks etc) perhaps, when picking the colour scheme for your subtitles, White should not be your first choice.  I seriously thought it was a joke. In one scene an key character is revealing clues but we don’t know what they are because the middle three words of what he says are made invisible by a lap top. It was like an Austin Powers gag.

Okay, the film.

the girl who played with fire is the sequel to the film the girl with the dragon tattoo which also came out this year. I looked back on my review for that film and I was surprised. I gave it a positive write-up, but I spent a lot of time pointing out the negatives. As I look back on it I find it’s grown on me a lot more. So much so that I would even consider bumping up it’s letter grade from a B+ to an A- (it’s my site, I make the rules).

Thankfully, with the sequel, I don’t have to wait several months to start liking it. I’m in love with this movie right now.

Lisbeth, the girl with the dragon tattoo herself, is back. After defeating the bad guys in the last film, a whole new slew of bad guys  are now framing the computer hacker/adrenaline junkie for a series of murders. That’s about all I can tell you without giving away some serious plot points but suffice it to say, this movie builds on the last one and keeps on going.

I read one reviewer that said that this film (and this series of films) feels like what Hitchcock would have done if he’d been allowed to make R rated movies. I think that’s about the best description of The girl who played with fire. With the flashy international backdrops, the espionage, and the unlikely heroes, this really is the kind of movie Hitchcock might have made if he’d been allowed to show things like Lesbian sex and men getting tasered in the nuts.  That’s not to say these scenes are gratuitous, there’s not a nasty thing in this film that doesn’t feel like it fits into the picture. But you should be warned, from rape scenes to severe beatings, this movie has its share of nasty.

There are times when it all feels a little melodramatic but the characters have grown on me so much I was far more forgiving this time around. Lisbeth (Noomi Rapace) is just as dangerous and mysterious seeming as always and her reluctant sidekick, the journalist Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) is the perfect calm counterweight to Lisbeth’s chaos. I really could watch these two solve crimes all day. In this film they are both in separate places solving a trio of murders but I would have been fine if they’d moved to a small town together and solved traffic violations, just so we could see them do their thing.

I read that there’s already an American remake on the way, which is no surprise as this series has a very universal feel. But  I suspect, as with many international remakes, the best bits will get lost. I highly recommend you check this out before it explodes so much that you feel like you’re jumping on the bandwagon. Me? I’m going to go back one more step and check out the trilogy of books it’s based on. If they’re anything like the films (or at least like the first two since the third hasn’t been released yet) they’ll be worth it.

Grade: A-.

Okay, after that love letter everyone will need to brace themselves, coming up tomorrow is my rant on why they should stop making Predator movies right now, because it’s obvious they will NEVER get it right again.

Cheers.

Sef.

Starring: John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill, Marisa Tomei

Written and Directed By: Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass.

Imagine a fairly conventional romantic comedy plot and then execute it in the style of an indie and you’ve got Cyrus. A flawed but entertaining movie that, for the most part, works.

Cyrus is the story of John (Reilly), a man seven years divorced. He’s pretty much given up on love until he meets Molly (Tomei) and the two hit it off immediately. The only problem is, she has a grown son named Cyrus (Hill) who has been the only man in his mother’s life since he was born and he plans on staying that way. Thus, the rivalry starts between Cyrus and John for the love of Molly.

It’s really tough not to like the characters, even when they are doing horrible things to each other.  The premise is a strong one and the actors sell it. John C. Reilly plays an everyman with his usual high level of accuracy and Jonah Hill continues to stretch his acting chops away from his Apatow stock roles into something that’s much more challenging. Tomei shines as well. Her portrayal of a mom who needs her son’s love a little more than she’s willing to admit is tragic without being off-putting.

At it’s strongest moments, the story is very smart in how little it tells. We don’t know who Cyrus’s father is, only that he disappeared very early. The film also manages to imply similarities between Cyrus and John without hammering us over the head with them. The dialog is cutting (not sure how much was improvised and how much was written which is usually the sign of a good script) and the way the film was shot gives it an invasive feel that works very well given the plot.

But for all my compliments of this film, not everything works. The story is very rushed, especially near the beginning. I think this was because they wanted to get the set up over with and get into the premise in as short a time as possible. The result is it feels staged. The same feeling comes near the end. As the story wraps up you suddenly get the feeling that the writer/director team wanted to make sure to get the message out in the limited time they had left. The result is, as it comes to a close it starts to fall into what I will call Greenberg Syndrome (named after my least favourite independent film of the year) where suddenly I feel like I am reading a script, not watching a movie.

But, while this isn’t a strong recommendation, it is a recommendation. The endearing characters and the strength of the premise are a good counterweight to the films flaws.  I wish the movie had taken a little more time with its set up and pay off but as it is, it’s still worth your time.

Grade: B.

Okay, this week is polished off. There’ll be a couple of days where I have to work for a living but once that’s done we are into next week. The menu so far is Predators, Despicable Me and The girl who played with Fire. Also, on the recommendation of a friend/fan of the site, I’m going to try to do a half way through retrospective where I talk about where I’m at with this.

Goodnight all.

Sef.