(no subject)
Here, to meet your incredible demands for it, is the final batch of movie reviews for 2006.
Monster House
When I was a kid we didn't have fancy computer animation. The early attempts at it that we did have resulted in cartoons featuring the bathrobe wearing animated corpse of a deranged elk; and thus were not popular. As kids, then, we had to rely on good old live action movies to provide us our more dangerous adventure films, and we had those in spades with classics such as Goonies and Gremlins.
"Monster House" is an attempt to fuse the sensibilities of those 80's classics with the animation technology of today and it succeeds admirably. Paying homage to its roots by subtly setting the movie in the 80's, "Monster House" delivers both humor and elements of genuine terror to create an experience decidedly unlike most mainstream animated films. "Chicken Little", for example, didn't feature a carnivorous house or a corpse cemented into a foundation, though perhaps a little cement would have prevented the corpse of Walt Disney from spinning so much in recent years.
Perhaps its no surprise that Goonies and Monster House share an otherwise unique feel, since they were both Speilberg creations (writer for Goonies and Executive Director for Monster House). Maybe he should stop doing shit like AI and do more of these smaller films so that the youth of every generation can have their own Chunk or Chowder.
Rating: 8
The Departed
Confession time. Forgive me manhood, for I have sinned. I have committed the ultimate transgression against testosterone for, lo, I am a fan of Leonardo DiCaprio. I am prepared to do, like, 9 Hail Marys or something for the sin of watching "Romeo + Juliet" multiple times. I will count beads? Or... something... because I saw "Titanic" on opening day. I request absolution.. or.. you know what, this metaphor isn't working, this Catholic shit is so damn weird.
The point is, now I can say I like Leonardo DiCaprio without complete stares of disbelief or sighs of disgust, thanks to his excellent performance in "the Departed" (and "Blood Diamond" didn't hurt either). Leo brings the thunder and Matt Damon provides the lightning in this perfect storm of acting, while Martin Scorsese directs them like Thor himself. While some critics have complained that the plot is too unbelievable, I'd like to point out that some people also refuse to believe the Earth is round; sometimes a suspension of disbelief is necessary to keep from floating into space, or in this case, from ruining an otherwise excellent movie experience by bringing your own preconceptions of how "realisitic" a Scorsese film should be.
First and foremost this is an action movie, a thriller, a puzzle of a movie. If there's any problem with the movie it lies not with the convoluted plot but with the unnecessary and occasionally over the top presence of Jack Nicholson. He is balanced, however, by minor turns of brilliance by Donnie Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin. Now if only Claire Danes were in it, it would be perfect.
Rating: 9
Flags of Our Fathers
Call... him... drunken Ira Hayes, he won't answer anymore. Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian or the Marine that went to war.
Oh, sorry. I was just grooving to some Johnny Cash. Which, come to think of it, is one of the major problems with this potentially excellent film: Johnny Cash told the heartbreaking story of Ira Hayes better in a two minute song than this movie manages to do over what seems like a nine hour running time. That, in my estimation, is a bit of an issue, because in that same amount of time I can listen to "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" and still have enough time left over to watch some more interesting movie like "The Departed".
It's not that this is a bad film by any stretch. Indeed, long segments of this film are excellent. The flaws in the film lie in the fact that it tries to be an all-time war movie statement piece of classic filmmaking; it wears the ambition of Major Serious Film like a Silver Star. Maybe thhe burden of needing to be great got in the way of actually being great, because the fringes of the film seem bloated and portentious. Things like the frame-story structure and the weirdly inappropriate score detract from the center of the film which had the chance to be great but is weighed down under too much expectation and not enough focus.
If you want to see what the film could have achieved, watch instead the companion piece "Letters From Iwo Jima". Put together with less time, money and expectation and instead made as a quick labor of passion it trumps "Flags" in every facet.
Rating: 7
Borat
A friend of mine by the name of Big Doofy John is a big fan of Borat from Da Ali G Show, so, persuaded by his pleas and by the pervasively positive reviews, I went with him to see Borat. Unexpectedly, at the theatre we ran into my freind Astrid who was also going to see the same showing. I say unexpected as Astrid was once called a prude by her own mother. So, I did a little math and A x (B + M) =/= sense (where M represents her boyfriend Monty).
Personally, I enjoyed the movie a great deal. While there were some segments that perhaps flagged a little, particularly towards the end, it was consistently funny with some scenes bordering on genius. One segment, which I don't think I need to explain to anyone who has seen the movie, was particularly funny, especially seated as I was between John the former drug lord who was convulsing uncontrollably with laughter and Astrid who was sputtering indignantly.
I realize that you yourself will most likely not have this exact experience; it's likely, though, that you may experience something similar. For that alone Borat deserves high praise.
Rating: 9
Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny
Here's a case of an idea whose time came and went. And then, several years later, they decided to film it.
Look, I love the D. JB and KG are personal heroes of mine. This completely assy beard I have right now? Jack Black. So I don't want you to get the wrong idea here -- Tenacious D is really cool and everyone should lurve them like puppies.
The problem is that most of the jokes in the film are either extended visual riffs on the songs from their eponymous 2001 album or extended version of skits from their 1997 HBO shorts. Turning a 3 minutes song into an 8 minute short? Funny. Turning that song into a 100 minutes movie? Well... hmm. Not so much.
There are certainly funny segments to the film, and Tim Robbins is a surprisingly funny guest star, but if you're expecting some of that special kung fu juice that defeated City Hall, well, you're SOL.
Rating: 5
Casino Royale
Before you sit down to watch this movie -- or stand up, or balance on your hands, I don't know what freaky way you watch your movies -- I want to issue this warning: there is a fifty percent chance you will break a bone or suffer a deep bruise simply by looking at Daniel Craig. His aura wears brass knuckles.
If you need to pass the time while in the infirmary, though, Casino Royale is a pretty darn good way to do it. After just one film I think it's fair to say that Craig is already the best Bond ever, and don't bring that Connery junk into my house unless you want to be crapping kilts for a month. Craig can pull off the suave sophistication needed while still looking like he's about to assassinate someone with mind bullets. The mix of menace and charm further serves to point out just how bored Connery seems during most of his scenes.
As great as Craig is he can't quite keep the movie from going on about a half hour too long; perhaps a daring raid with a silenced Walther P into the editing room was called for. The narrative urgency seems to dissipate entirely well before the end of the film, giving us a climax that seems a bit disjointed; and unless you're into poker, some of the high stakes hold-em scenes may tax your interest, something that a ninja battle between Bond and Chris Ferguson would have easily remedied.
Even with those flaws, though, this is still the most energetic and gripping Bond in decades if not ever.
Rating: 8
Night at the Museum
Museums are cool. I enjoy going to museums, especially when I am on vacation; while other vacationers are blowing their minds with sun, surf, dancing, skiing and cheap foreign flesh, I'm at the local museum staring through glass at a carefully preserved shard of someone's old broken chamber pot. Good times, my friend, good times.
Not once, however, have I ever wondered what happens at a museum after the doors close, because I'm pretty sure it's exactly the same as what happens when the doors are open: nothing at all. Night at the Museum, then, features one of the most fantastically unbelivable plots in science fiction history: that, at night, when nobody is around, something happens at a museum that is actually interesting.
Unfortunately the producers of this movie forgot to actually show anything interesting to support this crazy idea. Ben Stiller is likeable, which isn't quite the same thing as funny but almost seems like it when compared to Larry the Cable Guy. Other things and people in this movie are also likeable. Of course, so are some of my friends and they don't take two and a half hours to get to the point.
You probably won't hate this movie, but unless you're 7, your lasting impression will probably be that Dick Van Dyke is still awesome. And whether you're 7 or not you should probably just watch Mary Poppins next time instead of this.
Rating: 5
Children of Men
I know what you're thinking: they're already doing a remake of "Junior"? No. No, this is actually a dystopian vision of a near-future world where people cannot have children. And then, suddenly, someone kinda does.
Now, I know what you're thinking: ew, dystopion future, that's so 20th century, call Yevgeny Zamyatin and tell him we want our We back. No. What's particularly interesting about "Children of Men" is that unlike most dystopian novels there isn't a painfully obvious political agenda being advanced through allegory. Instead there's a subtly obvious moral agenda being distrubted through everyman asskicking.
Of course, I know what you're thinking: a burrito would taste really good right now, as would Scarlett Johansson's face. No, sorry, that's what I'm thinking. Rather, you're thinking about the reviwers in the movie's ads who compare "Children" to "Blade Runner". While both movies have strong visions of the near future in disarray, this comparison is an injustice to both films. Better to let "Children" stand on its own considerable merits as a dark, stylistic treatise on modren living, than to try and lump it in with a classic film that otherwise shares little with it. It might need the comparison to fill seats, but it doesn't need it to be compelling.
Rating: 9
Letters From Iwo Jima
Movies like this are really a bigass bummer for snarky dickwads like myself who like to kick movies when they're down. It's a lot easier to be funny when a movie blows and you can weave elaborate japes about their idiocy.
Unfortuately, every so often, a movie like this is really really good and instead I have to try to figure out how to explain that while still being interesting and not something from the New Yorker. Not that the New Yorker doesn't have interesting reviews, it's just that their fun reviews are also all based on the fact that they don't seem to like anything.
Anyway, enough egotisitic meta commentary about myself. Letters From Iwo Jima is a great war movie; or a great anti-war movie; or a great movie about war; or whatever. When critics speak of "war movies" they seem to always mean movies with big heroic action while anything that shows the real horrors of war is labeled an "anti-war" movie. In many cases this seems to be mostly based on the idea that any rational person seeing such darkness would of course be anti-war rather than it being based on a specific intended message of the movie.
In the case of "Letters", however, there is a message, or a couple. Multiple messages, really, but when taken along with "Flags of Our Fathers" they add up to the idea not that people are the same everywhere but rather that while societies and individuals are different everywhere, the mechanism of war causes all societies to dehumanize and de-individualize their own people to feed them into the war machine. While "Flags" suffered from mistiness and a lack of focus, "Letters" drives right through to the point and stays, stuck there like a knife, for its duration.
Rating: 10
Monster House
When I was a kid we didn't have fancy computer animation. The early attempts at it that we did have resulted in cartoons featuring the bathrobe wearing animated corpse of a deranged elk; and thus were not popular. As kids, then, we had to rely on good old live action movies to provide us our more dangerous adventure films, and we had those in spades with classics such as Goonies and Gremlins.
"Monster House" is an attempt to fuse the sensibilities of those 80's classics with the animation technology of today and it succeeds admirably. Paying homage to its roots by subtly setting the movie in the 80's, "Monster House" delivers both humor and elements of genuine terror to create an experience decidedly unlike most mainstream animated films. "Chicken Little", for example, didn't feature a carnivorous house or a corpse cemented into a foundation, though perhaps a little cement would have prevented the corpse of Walt Disney from spinning so much in recent years.
Perhaps its no surprise that Goonies and Monster House share an otherwise unique feel, since they were both Speilberg creations (writer for Goonies and Executive Director for Monster House). Maybe he should stop doing shit like AI and do more of these smaller films so that the youth of every generation can have their own Chunk or Chowder.
Rating: 8
The Departed
Confession time. Forgive me manhood, for I have sinned. I have committed the ultimate transgression against testosterone for, lo, I am a fan of Leonardo DiCaprio. I am prepared to do, like, 9 Hail Marys or something for the sin of watching "Romeo + Juliet" multiple times. I will count beads? Or... something... because I saw "Titanic" on opening day. I request absolution.. or.. you know what, this metaphor isn't working, this Catholic shit is so damn weird.
The point is, now I can say I like Leonardo DiCaprio without complete stares of disbelief or sighs of disgust, thanks to his excellent performance in "the Departed" (and "Blood Diamond" didn't hurt either). Leo brings the thunder and Matt Damon provides the lightning in this perfect storm of acting, while Martin Scorsese directs them like Thor himself. While some critics have complained that the plot is too unbelievable, I'd like to point out that some people also refuse to believe the Earth is round; sometimes a suspension of disbelief is necessary to keep from floating into space, or in this case, from ruining an otherwise excellent movie experience by bringing your own preconceptions of how "realisitic" a Scorsese film should be.
First and foremost this is an action movie, a thriller, a puzzle of a movie. If there's any problem with the movie it lies not with the convoluted plot but with the unnecessary and occasionally over the top presence of Jack Nicholson. He is balanced, however, by minor turns of brilliance by Donnie Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin. Now if only Claire Danes were in it, it would be perfect.
Rating: 9
Flags of Our Fathers
Call... him... drunken Ira Hayes, he won't answer anymore. Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian or the Marine that went to war.
Oh, sorry. I was just grooving to some Johnny Cash. Which, come to think of it, is one of the major problems with this potentially excellent film: Johnny Cash told the heartbreaking story of Ira Hayes better in a two minute song than this movie manages to do over what seems like a nine hour running time. That, in my estimation, is a bit of an issue, because in that same amount of time I can listen to "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" and still have enough time left over to watch some more interesting movie like "The Departed".
It's not that this is a bad film by any stretch. Indeed, long segments of this film are excellent. The flaws in the film lie in the fact that it tries to be an all-time war movie statement piece of classic filmmaking; it wears the ambition of Major Serious Film like a Silver Star. Maybe thhe burden of needing to be great got in the way of actually being great, because the fringes of the film seem bloated and portentious. Things like the frame-story structure and the weirdly inappropriate score detract from the center of the film which had the chance to be great but is weighed down under too much expectation and not enough focus.
If you want to see what the film could have achieved, watch instead the companion piece "Letters From Iwo Jima". Put together with less time, money and expectation and instead made as a quick labor of passion it trumps "Flags" in every facet.
Rating: 7
Borat
A friend of mine by the name of Big Doofy John is a big fan of Borat from Da Ali G Show, so, persuaded by his pleas and by the pervasively positive reviews, I went with him to see Borat. Unexpectedly, at the theatre we ran into my freind Astrid who was also going to see the same showing. I say unexpected as Astrid was once called a prude by her own mother. So, I did a little math and A x (B + M) =/= sense (where M represents her boyfriend Monty).
Personally, I enjoyed the movie a great deal. While there were some segments that perhaps flagged a little, particularly towards the end, it was consistently funny with some scenes bordering on genius. One segment, which I don't think I need to explain to anyone who has seen the movie, was particularly funny, especially seated as I was between John the former drug lord who was convulsing uncontrollably with laughter and Astrid who was sputtering indignantly.
I realize that you yourself will most likely not have this exact experience; it's likely, though, that you may experience something similar. For that alone Borat deserves high praise.
Rating: 9
Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny
Here's a case of an idea whose time came and went. And then, several years later, they decided to film it.
Look, I love the D. JB and KG are personal heroes of mine. This completely assy beard I have right now? Jack Black. So I don't want you to get the wrong idea here -- Tenacious D is really cool and everyone should lurve them like puppies.
The problem is that most of the jokes in the film are either extended visual riffs on the songs from their eponymous 2001 album or extended version of skits from their 1997 HBO shorts. Turning a 3 minutes song into an 8 minute short? Funny. Turning that song into a 100 minutes movie? Well... hmm. Not so much.
There are certainly funny segments to the film, and Tim Robbins is a surprisingly funny guest star, but if you're expecting some of that special kung fu juice that defeated City Hall, well, you're SOL.
Rating: 5
Casino Royale
Before you sit down to watch this movie -- or stand up, or balance on your hands, I don't know what freaky way you watch your movies -- I want to issue this warning: there is a fifty percent chance you will break a bone or suffer a deep bruise simply by looking at Daniel Craig. His aura wears brass knuckles.
If you need to pass the time while in the infirmary, though, Casino Royale is a pretty darn good way to do it. After just one film I think it's fair to say that Craig is already the best Bond ever, and don't bring that Connery junk into my house unless you want to be crapping kilts for a month. Craig can pull off the suave sophistication needed while still looking like he's about to assassinate someone with mind bullets. The mix of menace and charm further serves to point out just how bored Connery seems during most of his scenes.
As great as Craig is he can't quite keep the movie from going on about a half hour too long; perhaps a daring raid with a silenced Walther P into the editing room was called for. The narrative urgency seems to dissipate entirely well before the end of the film, giving us a climax that seems a bit disjointed; and unless you're into poker, some of the high stakes hold-em scenes may tax your interest, something that a ninja battle between Bond and Chris Ferguson would have easily remedied.
Even with those flaws, though, this is still the most energetic and gripping Bond in decades if not ever.
Rating: 8
Night at the Museum
Museums are cool. I enjoy going to museums, especially when I am on vacation; while other vacationers are blowing their minds with sun, surf, dancing, skiing and cheap foreign flesh, I'm at the local museum staring through glass at a carefully preserved shard of someone's old broken chamber pot. Good times, my friend, good times.
Not once, however, have I ever wondered what happens at a museum after the doors close, because I'm pretty sure it's exactly the same as what happens when the doors are open: nothing at all. Night at the Museum, then, features one of the most fantastically unbelivable plots in science fiction history: that, at night, when nobody is around, something happens at a museum that is actually interesting.
Unfortunately the producers of this movie forgot to actually show anything interesting to support this crazy idea. Ben Stiller is likeable, which isn't quite the same thing as funny but almost seems like it when compared to Larry the Cable Guy. Other things and people in this movie are also likeable. Of course, so are some of my friends and they don't take two and a half hours to get to the point.
You probably won't hate this movie, but unless you're 7, your lasting impression will probably be that Dick Van Dyke is still awesome. And whether you're 7 or not you should probably just watch Mary Poppins next time instead of this.
Rating: 5
Children of Men
I know what you're thinking: they're already doing a remake of "Junior"? No. No, this is actually a dystopian vision of a near-future world where people cannot have children. And then, suddenly, someone kinda does.
Now, I know what you're thinking: ew, dystopion future, that's so 20th century, call Yevgeny Zamyatin and tell him we want our We back. No. What's particularly interesting about "Children of Men" is that unlike most dystopian novels there isn't a painfully obvious political agenda being advanced through allegory. Instead there's a subtly obvious moral agenda being distrubted through everyman asskicking.
Of course, I know what you're thinking: a burrito would taste really good right now, as would Scarlett Johansson's face. No, sorry, that's what I'm thinking. Rather, you're thinking about the reviwers in the movie's ads who compare "Children" to "Blade Runner". While both movies have strong visions of the near future in disarray, this comparison is an injustice to both films. Better to let "Children" stand on its own considerable merits as a dark, stylistic treatise on modren living, than to try and lump it in with a classic film that otherwise shares little with it. It might need the comparison to fill seats, but it doesn't need it to be compelling.
Rating: 9
Letters From Iwo Jima
Movies like this are really a bigass bummer for snarky dickwads like myself who like to kick movies when they're down. It's a lot easier to be funny when a movie blows and you can weave elaborate japes about their idiocy.
Unfortuately, every so often, a movie like this is really really good and instead I have to try to figure out how to explain that while still being interesting and not something from the New Yorker. Not that the New Yorker doesn't have interesting reviews, it's just that their fun reviews are also all based on the fact that they don't seem to like anything.
Anyway, enough egotisitic meta commentary about myself. Letters From Iwo Jima is a great war movie; or a great anti-war movie; or a great movie about war; or whatever. When critics speak of "war movies" they seem to always mean movies with big heroic action while anything that shows the real horrors of war is labeled an "anti-war" movie. In many cases this seems to be mostly based on the idea that any rational person seeing such darkness would of course be anti-war rather than it being based on a specific intended message of the movie.
In the case of "Letters", however, there is a message, or a couple. Multiple messages, really, but when taken along with "Flags of Our Fathers" they add up to the idea not that people are the same everywhere but rather that while societies and individuals are different everywhere, the mechanism of war causes all societies to dehumanize and de-individualize their own people to feed them into the war machine. While "Flags" suffered from mistiness and a lack of focus, "Letters" drives right through to the point and stays, stuck there like a knife, for its duration.
Rating: 10