Category Archives: Nader

Andree, Baier, Movies, Nader, Russell

Movie Reviews: Little Fockers and True Grit

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Movie – Little Fockers

Director: Paul Weitz (American Pie, About a Boy, In Good Company)

Writers: John Hamburg (Meet the Parents, Zoolander, I Love You, Man) & Larry Stuckey

Starring: Ben Stiller (Meet the Parents, Zoolander, Greenberg), Robert De Niro (Taxi Driver, GoodFellas, Heat) & Teri Polo (Meet the Parents, Beyond Borders, Meet the Fockers)

Theater – Cinemark Movies 12 – Ames, Iowa

Companion – Nader

Food – Probably, can’t remember.

Intellectual Honesty

Meet the Parents is one of my favorite comedies ever. Meet the Fockers was an incredible disappointment. Ben Stiller is usually hilarious, but he does make some bad movies. Robert De Niro is one of my all-time favorites, but admittedly, not for comedies.

Baggage

I can’t stand Barbara Streisand.

Synopsis from IMDB

It has taken 10 years, two little Fockers with wife Pam (Polo) and countless hurdles for Greg to finally get “in” with his tightly wound father-in-law, Jack. After the cash-strapped dad takes a job moonlighting for a drug company, however, Jack’s suspicions about his favorite male nurse come roaring back. When Greg and Pam’s entire clan-including Pam’s lovelorn ex, Kevin (Owen Wilson)-descends for the twins’ birthday party, Greg must prove to the skeptical Jack that he’s fully capable as the man of the house. But with all the misunderstandings, spying and covert missions, will Greg pass Jack’s final test and become the family’s next patriarch…or will the circle of trust be broken for good?

Review

This isn’t really the type of movie that is easy to write about. It is a big improvement on Meet the Fockers, but it is nowhere near as good as Meet the Parents. All the usuals are back and are great in their roles. Owen Wilson’s Kevin character seems a little more forced than before and his part could have been trimmed considerably.

The movie is enjoyable enough, but it just isn’t terribly funny. It feels like we’ve seen all these jokes before, because we have. I don’t mind so much because I love the characters and the dynamics between Greg (Stiller) and Jack (De Niro) are lots of fun, but at the end of the day you feel like something funnier could have been made.

It is perfectly pleasant way to spend an evening, but I hoped for so much more than pleasant.

Rating
2.5/5 Caramels

Buy on DVD
Nope, but I will watch it when it is on television.

2010 Ranking
Doesn’t really deserve a ranking. I’ll have to be more proactive in my ranking system in 2011.

Bonus Information

I saw a preview for a movie starring Topher Grace and Anna Farris called Take Me Home Tonight. I am super pumped to see this movie. The fact that they lip sync to N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton is enough for me. I don’t even care what happens in the rest of the movie.

Movie – True Grit

Director: Coen Brothers (Fargo, Blood Simple, The Hudsucker Proxy, No Country for Old Men)

Writers: Coen Brothers (Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?)

Starring: Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart, Seabiscuit, King Kong), Hailee Steinfeld, & Matt Damon (Good Will Hunting, The Departed, The Bourne Identity)

Theater – Springwood 9 – Ankeny, Iowa

Companions – Andree, Baier and Russell

Food – China Buffet – Ankeny, Iowa

Intellectual Honesty

I’m a big fan of Matt Damon and have been since Good Will Hunting. I like Jeff Bridges a lot as well. I have been excited for this movie since the first time I saw the trailer and not just because the trailer features a Johnny Cash song.

Baggage

I’m not really sure this is baggage or intellectual honesty, but it is probably a little of both. I love/hate the Coen Brothers. They have made some of the best and most original movies of the last couple of decades: No Country for Old Men, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Fargo, The Hudsucker Proxy, Miller’s Crossing, Raising Arizona, Blood Simple. They have made some of the worst movies as well: Burn After Reading, The Ladykillers, Intolerable Cruelty. They have made some of the most overrated as well: The Big Lebowski and Barton Fink.

I’m not a fan of remakes, but since True Grit isn’t what I would consider a classic of the cinema, I don’t mind it being remade.

Synopsis from IMDB

Following the murder of her father by hired hand Tom Chaney, 14-year-old farm girl Mattie Ross sets out to capture the killer. To aid her, she hires the toughest U.S. marshal she can find, a man with “true grit,” Reuben J. “Rooster” Cogburn. Mattie insists on accompanying Cogburn, whose drinking, sloth, and generally reprobate character do not augment her faith in him. Against his wishes, she joins him in his trek into the Indian Nations in search of Chaney. They are joined by Texas Ranger LaBoeuf, who wants Chaney for his own purposes. The unlikely trio find danger and surprises on the journey, and each has his or her “grit” tested.

Review

It is hard to really pick which version of True Grit is better. This Coen Brothers version, or the John Wayne original. They are very similar. If I was forced to pick one over the other, I would pick the original. The few changes that the Coen brothers made from the original are not improvements. Even though Jeff Bridges is a better actor than John Wayne, John Wayne is better in the role of Cogburn. The role of LaBoeuf is not a particularly good role, but Glenn Campbell is better than Matt Damon. This is one of Damon’s worst performances to date. He isn’t dreadful, but he isn’t particularly good either. Barry Pepper’s performance is enigmatic. It seems that he is actually imitating Robert Duvall’s performance from the original.

Hailee Steinfeld is a revelation however. She is wonderful and all of the Oscar buzz surrounding her performance as the 14 year old girl that hires Rooster Cogburn to track down and bring her father’s murderer to justice is well-deserved. Mattie Ross is one of the best characters for a teenage girl to play and she nails it.

Although this is a small critique for a movie that is mostly filmed beautifully, there are scenes in the movie that are so overexposed that the natural beauty of the scenery loses its contrast. While I’m certain that this was intentional, (although it is possible that this was just laziness by the lighting crew as well) I didn’t enjoy it.

It is a good movie with many good performances and 1 great performance and a couple of subpar performances.

Rating
3.5/5 Caramels

Buy on DVD
I would consider buying this movie on DVD if I got it for a good price.

2010 Ranking
It is probably in the bottom half of the Top 10 movies I’ve seen this year. Maybe #7 or #8.

Bonus Information
The Ankeny theater is perhaps the poorest designed theater I have ever watched a movie in. The door was left open for the 1st 15-20 minutes of the movie. So was the door to the theater directly across the hall. For a good portion of the film I had to listen to the movie across the hall.

Before the movie there was a trailer for Country Strong. Baier announced anybody that saw that film would lose their “man card”.

Mom, Movies, Nader

Movie Reviews: Love and Other Drugs and The Fighter

Movie – Love and Other Drugs

Director: Edward Zwick (Blood Diamond, Legends of the Fall, Glory)

Writer: Charles Randolph (The Life of David Gale, The Interpreter), Edward Zwick, and Marshall Herskovitz

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko, Brokeback Mountain, Zodiac) and Anne Hathaway (The Devil Wears Prada, Bride Wars, Brokeback Mountain)

Theater – Cinemark Movies 12 – Ames, Iowa

Companion – Nader Parsaei

Food – Probably, but can’t remember.

Intellectual Honesty

I love Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway. Particularly Anne Hathaway. I probably even like the Princess Diary movies more than I should.

Baggage

With the obvious exception of Glory, I don’t think that Edward Zwick can make a superior movie. I think he can make good movies, but they fall just short of great because he has tendency to allow the movie to break down into its weakest elements in the third act. Blood Diamond is a prime example. It starts out so intelligent and then turns into a run-of-the-mill action movie in the third act. You don’t leave the theater angry, but slightly disappointed by the wasted potential.

Synopsis from IMDB

Maggie (Hathaway) is an alluring free spirit who won’t let anyone – or anything – tie her down. But she meets her match in Jamie (Gyllenhaal), whose relentless and nearly infallible charm serve him well with the ladies and in the cutthroat world of pharmaceutical sales. Maggie and Jamie’s evolving relationship takes them both by surprise, as they find themselves under the influence of the ultimate drug: love.

Review

Once again I left the theater disappointed by wasted potential. Gylenhaal and Hathaway give full effort and they certainly have chemistry, but this movie is schizophrenic. It doesn’t know what it wants to be and instead goes in a hundred different directions.

The filmmakers clearly wanted to make a modern day Love Story and so they did aspire to great things, but since part of the movie is comedy and part of it is super serious it just feels very disjointed.

An example is a great scene where Jamie goes to a meeting that is sort of a support group for people suffering from Parkinson’s. While Maggie is finding out that she isn’t alone in her struggle with Parkinson’s, Jamie is talking to the husband of a woman suffering from Parkinson’s. I wish I could find a snippet of the dialogue so I could copy and paste it.

The scene is a real eye opener and shows Jamie that being with Maggie is going to go down a very negative road as her health degenerates. It is a great scene as a stand alone, but in the movie it feels slightly out of place.

I think this movie had a lot of potential, but it tries to be too many things and ends up being not much of anything.

Great characters and great actors though.

Rating

3.0/5 Caramels

Buy on DVD

Not likely, but I would watch it again.

2010 Ranking

I don’t know that it particularly ranks anywhere. Maybe 2nd best Romantic Comedy that I’ve seen this year.

Bonus Information

Really nothing to report.

Movie – The Fighter

Director: David O. Russell (Three Kings, Spanking the Monkey, I Heart Huckabees)

Writer: Scott Silver (8 Mile), Paul Tamsay (Air Bud). and Eric Johnson

Starring: Mark Wahlberg (Boogie Nights, The Departed, Planet of the Apes), Christian Bale (The Prestige, The Machinist, The Dark Knight), Amy Adams (Junebug, Doubt, Enchanted) and Melissa Leo (Conviction)

Theater – Cinemark Movies 12 – Ames, Iowa

Companion – Mom and Nader Parsaei

Food – I don’t think so…

Intellectual Honesty

Amy Adams is by far my favorite actress. I would watch her in virtually anything. I’ll even slum and watch Talladega Nights now and again because of the small role she has in it. I don’t even hate myself in the morning. I had very high hopes for David O. Russell after Three Kings, but then he disappeared after I Heart Huckabees bombed.

Baggage

I really want to hate Christian Bale because he is such a doucher in real life, but he is always great and he makes such great movies. I’m never excited for a Mark Wahlberg movie because he is so hit and miss. He can be brilliant like in The Departed or terrible like he was in The Happening.

Synopsis from IMDB

A look at the early years of boxer “Irish” Micky Ward and his brother who helped train him before going pro in the mid 1980s.

Review

This movie is dominated by great performances. Christian Bale deserves the Oscar for his performance as Dicky Eklund, a drugged up-washed out former boxer living off the glory of once knocking down Sugar Ray Leonard. He is followed around by a camera crew that he thinks is doing a documentary on his boxing comeback. In reality they are doing a documentary on “Crack in America”.

Dicky isn’t the main character in the movie. Dicky’s young brother Micky Ward is the main character. Dicky, along with the rest of Mickey’s family are hurdles that he has to hurdle to have a chance at an actual boxing career and an actual happy life.

I bring up Dicky first because he absolutely steals the movie. That isn’t to say that Mark Wahlberg is bad as Mickey Ward. He isn’t, but Micky is the simplest character in this movie and he is upstaged in nearly every scene.

Almost as great as Bale is Melissa Leo as Alice Ward, Mickey and Dicky’s mother, that uses Mickey (by “managing” his boxing career) to support the rest of her worthless family.

A particularly great scene in the movie is when Alice goes to get Dicky out of a crack house. She is crying behind the wheel of the car when Dicky starts to sing. He wins her back and damn it, no matter how much you hate him for ruining Mickey’s life, he wins you back too. Dicky makes bad choices, but he isn’t a bad person and you want to see him succeed almost as much as you want to see Mickey scrape off the barnacles in his life.

Amy Adams is wonderful (would you expect anything less) as the woman that tries to help Mickey steer his life in the write direction.

Without giving up too much of the movie, one of my absolute favorite scenes in the movie is when Dicky gets out of prison. He is cleaned up and intends to stay cleaned up. It is the scene where he tells his friends from his crack den goodbye. It is understated and brilliant.

The boxing scenes are by far the most realistic boxing scenes I’ve ever seen portrayed in a movie.

My only real complaint about the movie is that I would have liked to have seen more out of Wahlberg’s Ward.

Rating
4.0/5 Caramels

Buy on DVD
On Blu-Ray the first day it comes out.

2010 Ranking
3rd Best Movie of the Year. Behind Inception and The Social Network.

Bonus Information
There is a ton of profanity in this movie. Despite that fact, my Mom still liked the movie, even though she hates profanity.

Movies, Nader, Sara

Movie Review: Conviction & Unstoppable

So I fell really far behind in my movie reviews, so I’m going to crank out a bunch of these in short order and without much detail.

Movie – Conviction

Director: Tony Goldwyn (The Last Kiss, A Walk on the Moon)

Screenwriter: Pamela Gray (A Walk on the Moon)

Starring: Hilary Swank (Million Dollar Baby, Insomnia, Boys Don’t Cry), Sam Rockwell (Moon, The Green Mile, Matchstick Men) and Melissa Leo (The Fighter, 21 Grams, Frozen River)

Theater – The Fleur Cinema – Des Moines, Iowa

Companion – Sara Junck

Food – Mezzodi’s

Intellectual Honesty

I didn’t bring much to this movie. I enjoy Hilary Swank’s acting, but I don’t think that I’m partial to her in a way that impairs my judgment.

Baggage

None. Don’t have a strong dislike for anybody in this film.

Synopsis from IMDB

A working mother puts herself through law school in an effort to represent her brother, who has been wrongfully convicted of murder and has exhausted his chances to appeal his conviction through public defenders.

Review

This is a fascinating true story, but it doesn’t really come off as that interesting in the movie. A woman without even a high school diploma goes back to school in the hopes of eventually getting a law degree and then getting her brother out of prison for a crime he didn’t commit. And she does it!

There is nothing wrong with this movie and the performances are solid, but this is the type of white trash that overcomes incredible adversity character that Hilary Swank plays in her sleep. Sam Rockwell is solid as the brother. Melissa Leo is impressive as the cop that frames Sam Rockwell, but she has an even more impressive performance that I’ll get to in a later movie review.

What isn’t covered in the movie is what happens after the brother gets out of prison. A year after he won his freedom he fell of a wall and died. How tragic is that? What I think is also fascinating about this woman that spent years and years trying to get her brother out of prison is that after she gets him out, she stopped being a lawyer. She went back to being a bartender. That is a fascinating person.

If this thing interests you, check out this link:

The Innocence Project

Rating: 3.5/5 Caramels

Buy on DVD

Not likely, but I would definitely watch it again.

2010 Ranking

I don’t think this really has a ranking. I guess it would sit just out of the Top Ten Movies I’ve seen this year.

Bonus Information

Before the movie I developed a love for boursin cheese. Thank you Mezzodi’s and Sara!

Movie – Unstoppable

Director: Tony Scott (Man on Fire, Top Gun, Domino)

Writer: Mark Bomback (Race to Witch Mountain, Live Free or Die Hard)

Starring: Denzel Washington (American Gangster, Glory, Malcolm X, Training Day) and Chris Pine (Star Trek, Just My Luck)

Companion – Nader Parsaei

Food – Probably but can’t remember.

Intellectual Honesty

I love Denzel Washington. I’ll watch him in just about anything and makes almost everything better. I like train movies. If I were to ever make films, one would definitely involve a train wreck. A real train wreck. No CGI!

Baggage

I think Tony Scott is a merciless hack and one of the worst filmmakers in the world.

Synopsis from IMDB

With an unmanned, half-mile-long freight train barreling toward a city, a veteran engineer and a young conductor race against the clock to prevent a catastrophe.

Review

Unstoppable? Unbearable is more like it.

You want to make a Tony Scott movie, here is his style in a nutshell:

Zoom camera. Cut to: Camera panning in a circle. Repeat until audience is nauseous.

For the most part, the acting in this movie was okay, but the action sequences were dreadful and the “ideas” these people had for stopping the train were laugh-out-loud ridiculous.

Plus here is free advice for Tony Scott. Next time you are trying to make a train look like it is going faster than it really is, even if you speed up the film rate, it is still obvious how slow the train is moving when you include so many other moving points of reference in the shot.

This film isn’t really worth any more discussion.

Rating: 1.5/5.0 Caramels

Buy on DVD

Not even for a buck.

2010 Ranking

Probably the worst action movie I saw in 2010.

Bonus Information

Nothing to report.

Movies, Nader

Movie Review: Megamind

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Movie – Megamind

Director: Tom McGrath (Madagascar, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa)

Screenwriter: Alan Schoolcraft & Brent Simon; Both their first film as a writer.

Starring: Will Ferrell (Anchorman, Stepbrothers, Talladega Nights), Brad Pitt (Se7en, Fight Club, Babel), Tina Fey (Mean Girls, Date Night, 30 Rock), David Cross (Mr. Show, Run Ronnie Run, Arrested Development) and Jonah Hill (Super Bad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him to the Greek)

Theater – Cinemark Movies 12 – Ames, Iowa

Companion – Nader Parsaei

Food – Chinese Homestyle Cooking

Intellectual Honesty

I love David Cross.  He and Daniel Tosh are kind of 1A and 1B for my favorite comedian.  I would watch David Cross do about anything.  That includes be in Scary Movie 2. Mr. Show is still the greatest show ever. Arrested Development is one of the Top 10 shows of all-time as well.  I also love Tina Fey.  Not enough to watch 30 Rock, but I think that is because I’m sick of people telling me I should watch it.  Also, I can’t stand Alec Baldwin. However, if David Cross was in it, that would surely trump my hatred of Alec Baldwin and I would start watching.

Baggage

I don’t particularly enjoy Will Ferrell in starring roles.  Anchorman is entertaining.  I enjoy Elf. But Talladega Nights is simply wretched, despite the fact that Amy Adams is in it. You all know how I feel about Amy Adams. I would rather watch anything with Will Ferrell than watch Jonah Hill.  I can’t figure out why he still gets work.

Synopsis from IMDB

After super-villain Megamind (Ferrell) kills his good-guy nemesis, Metro Man (Pitt), he becomes bored since there is no one left to fight. He creates a new foe, Titan (Hill), who, instead of using his powers for good, sets out to destroy the world, positioning Megamind to save the day for the first time in his life.

Review

Will Ferrell is actually fairly decent in this film.  Tina Fey is great. David Cross is brilliant, of course. Brad Pitt is barely in it, but is great.  Jonah Hill sucks it up beyond belief.  That is particularly hard to believe considering this is an animated film.

I don’t know if there is particularly much to say about this film.  It is decently written. The animation is good, but probably not all that special. Especially compared to the work Pixar does.  The characters are likable. The ending is satisfying.

The best part of the movie is Megamind’s interactions with Minion. I also enjoyed the references to Superman.  I’m not a comic book guy by any stretch of the imagination, but I enjoyed the references to the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie.

In essence this is an enjoyable kids movie that has enough going on to entertain adults as well. I enjoyed the movie, but I will have forgotten it exists in about 3 years.

Rating

3.0/5 Caramels

Buy on DVD

Not likely.  But I would definitely watch it again.

2010 Ranking

3rd Best Animated Film I’ve seen this year. How to Train Your Dragon and Toy Story 3 are both much better.

Bonus Information

I had to endure an ad for some Glenn Beck thing before the movie started. I remember when that guy wasn’t a complete psycho doucher.  That feels so long ago.  Some people think I’m liberal because I believe decent Health Care is a right and not a privilege. Other people believe that I am conservative because I hate poor people. (The 2nd part is a riff on a Daniel Tosh joke.) The truth is that I’m not an ideologue at all. I favor common sense and solving problems.  Neither political dogma has a monopoly on the right answers. I don’t hate Glenn Beck because he is conservative. I hate Glenn Beck because he never tells the truth. You are entitled to your opinion, but you aren’t entitled to your own facts.  The point is, seeing him on the movie screen made my movie experience at least 15% less enjoyable.

Up Next

Conviction, Unstoppable, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 and Morning Glory. I would still like to go see Waiting for Superman and Fair Game while they are still in Des Moines. 127 Hours comes to Des Moines next week as well. I will DEFINITELY be making a trip to Des Moines to see 127 Hours! Good thing I have lots of free time Thanksgiving week.

Movies, Nader

Movie Review: RED

Movie – RED

Director: Robert Schwentke (The Time Traveler’s Wife, Flightplan)

Screenwriters: Jon Hoeber (Whiteout) and Erich Hoeber (Whiteout)

Starring: Bruce Willis (The Sixth Sense, Die Hard, Pulp Fiction), Mary-Louise Parker (Weeds, The West Wing, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), John Malkovich (Dangerous Liaisons, Being John Malcovich, Secretariat), Helen Mirren (The Queen, Excalibur, Calendar Girls) and Morgan Freeman (Glory, Driving Miss Daisy, Seven)

Theater – Cinemark Movies 12 – Ames, Iowa

Companion – Nader Parsaei

Food – Mongolian Buffet

Intellectual Honesty

I love Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren. They are great in everything they are in and make everything they are in better.  I don’t necessarily love Mary-Louise Parker, but since the show Weeds has been thrust upon me several times by several different people, I genuinely like her as well. I also favor Bruce Willis, but recognize that he has made just as many bad movies as good movies.

Baggage

As a general rule I don’t like comic book movies.  I’m sure some comic book guy living in his parent’s basement is uttering the term “graphic novel” right now. Government conspiracy movies often do very little for me as well.

Synopsis from IMDB

Based on the cult D.C. Comics graphic novels by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner, RED is an action-comedy starring Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren.

Frank (Bruce Willis), Joe (Morgan Freeman), Marvin (John Malkovich) and Victoria (Helen Mirren) used to be the CIAs top agents but the secrets they know just made them the Agencys top targets. Now framed for assassination, they must use all of their collective cunning, experience and teamwork to stay one step ahead of their deadly pursuers and stay alive. To stop the operation, the team embarks on an impossible, cross-country mission to break into the top-secret CIA headquarters, where they will uncover one of the biggest conspiracies and cover-ups in government history.

Review

I have numerous complaints about this movie.  It is hard to pick out my top complaint, but it might be the fact that the trailer reveals all the funny lines and all of the best action sequences.  There are no good surprises in the movie.  There needs to be a technical name for a movie where all of the good parts are in the trailer.  Until I figure out if there is a name for it, I’m going to call it Trailer Revelation Disease.  This movie suffers from TRD.

There are positives to the movie. The main characters are genuinely likable.  The movie is well acted. There are some decent action sequences.  There is definitely chemistry amongst the actors. That is kind of where it ends.

The main problem with RED is that it is poorly written.

There is sequence after sequence that doesn’t seem to make sense. Or dialogue that makes you scratch your head.

For example, Richard Dreyfuss shows up as the bad guy.  He gives a long speech about how he is the bad guy.

Another frustrating aspect is that Morgan Freeman is supposed to be 80 years old and suffering from Stage 4 Liver Cancer.  Morgan Freeman does not look anything like somebody that is suffering from cancer.  Let alone Stage 4.

The film dwells on setting up things, but doesn’t give you much of a payoff for what you are expecting.  For example, John Malkovich’s character makes a big deal about carrying around a stuffed pig, but when he actually opens up the pig to reveal what is inside of it isn’t anything special and it is barely used.

Another failing of the movie is with the character that is in charge of pursuing and terminating Bruce Willis’ character. By the end of the movie you are supposed to see him as an honest and likable character.  Devoted to his children.  However the scene that introduces this character to the audience shows him murdering a guy while talking to his wife on the phone. Not endearing.  Not likable.  His character doesn’t exactly go on a journey where he is “changed” either.

At the end of the day, RED is decent enough entertainment, but this cast deserved a much better written script.  Something where at the end of every scene you weren’t left wondering “why did they do that”?

Rating

2.0/5 Caramels

Buy on DVD

Not a chance, but I won’t mock people if I see this is their DVD collection.

2010 Ranking

This isn’t a Top 10 or Bottom 10 movie.

Bonus Information

Still pumped up for The Fighter and True Grit.  Cautiously optimistic about Unstoppable.  Intrigued by The Dilemma.

Up Next

Megamind, Conviction and Unstoppable

Movies, Nader

Movie Review: Hereafter

Movie – Hereafter

Director:  Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Letters from Iwo Jima)

Screenwriter: Peter Morgan (The Last King of Scotland, The Queen, Frost/Nixon)

Starring: Matt Damon (Good Will Hunting, The Bourne Identity, The Departed), Cecile De France (High Tension, Around the World in 80 Days, L’auberge espagnole)

Theater – Cinemark Movies 12 – Ames, Iowa

Companion – Nader Parsaei

Food – King Buffet

Intellectual Honesty

I love Clint Eastwood movies.  I love movies that he is in, but I love movies he directs even more.  I consider Unforgiven to be the greatest western ever made.  I’ve been a sucker for Matt Damon movies ever since Good Will Hunting. That reminds me that I still need to buy Good Will Hunting on Blu-Ray. This is one of the movies I’ve been most excited for all year.

Baggage

I don’t think I carried any into the theater with me actually.

Synopsis

A drama centered on three people who are haunted by mortality in different ways. George (Damon) is a blue-collar American who has a special connection to the afterlife. On the other side of the world, Marie (de France), a French journalist, has a near-death experience that shakes her reality. And when Marcus (Frankie/George McLaren), a London schoolboy, loses the person closest to him, he desperately needs answers. Each on a path in search of the truth, their lives will intersect, forever changed by what they believe might-or must-exist in the hereafter.

Review

This is a truly great movie.  I read some reviews complaining that this movie has a new age view of death.  I would not consider that a valid criticism.  The movie doesn’t reveal any theories about what life after death is like.  It very clearly states that it doesn’t know.  You know what?  Nobody else knows either.

From a Christian perspective, I have no clue where this view that heaven will involve bouncing on clouds and playing harps came from.  But it isn’t in The Bible. In fact, The Bible doesn’t say much about heaven besides it was created by God, is everlasting and is immeasurable.

So while Hereafter’s depiction of life after death doesn’t include clouds, pearly gates and harps, it isn’t a new age view of heaven.  Its view of life after death is consistent with everything we truly know about what life after death is like.  Which is to state that we know nothing.

Matt Damon is great (as usual) as George a psychic who can make a connection with the dead.  His brother Billy (played by Jay Mohr)  pushes him constantly to go into business to use his gift to make money.  George repeatedly tells him that this ability to talk to the dead isn’t a gift.  It is a curse.  A curse that makes any chance at a normal and/or happy life impossible.

This point is brought painfully home when George meets a woman at a cooking class.  There relationship is advancing when she finds out he can talk to the dead.  In one of the best scenes in the movie (a movie filled with great scenes) she begs him to give her a reading.  When George finally relents, he connects with her father who apologizes for molesting her as a child.

Even though she tells them that they are still “okay”, she stops coming to cooking class, essentially ending their relationship.

In addition to George’s story, the film also follows two other stories.

The second is the story of French report Marie. She drowns in the tsunami that his Indonesia in 2004.  She is brought back to life, but she can’t forget about what she experienced when she was dead.  She tries to return to her normal life, but rather than being able to concentrate on politics, she becomes infatuated with her near death experience.  It tears up her life as her co-workers and boyfriend treat her as if she is insane.

The third is the story of Marcus.  Marcus and his twin brother Jason take care of themselves and their drug addicted mother.  Jason is killed on the way back from the pharmacy with medicine for his mother. This leaves Marcus completely alone in the world. He is placed in foster care and becomes infatuated with contacting Jason.

Marcus’ story is perhaps the most heartbreakingly beautiful in a collection of stories that are all beautiful and well… heartbreaking. I normally despise child actors, but Frankie and George McLaren are wonderful.

The movie concludes when all 3 stories intertwine at a Book Fair in London.

Without revealing the ending, it was very satisfying.

This is just a very hauntingly beautiful movie that deals with a very serious subject in an intelligent way.

My only criticism of this film is that I wish they would have also explored the issue on whether or not it is even right to make money on George’s curse.  George’s brother is very excited about making money on this “gift”. He even refers to it as a duty. George runs from this duty because it has ruined his life. But I would have liked to have seen the issue of whether or not it is even a duty explored a little bit more.  Furthermore, if you have this kind of gift, is it right to commercialize it?

If you are wondering, I consider John Edward to be a fraud, but also about the biggest scumbag on this planet.

Rating

4.0/5 Caramels

Buy on DVD

Definitely

2010 Ranking

#3 – Behind The Social Network and Inception.  Right above How to Train Your Dragon.

Bonus Information

We were late to the theater, so we didn’t get our customary seats in the last row.  That was kind of a bummer. Saw the preview for the True Grit remake again.  I’m definitely getting excited for it.

Up Next

Red.  Then maybe Megamind or Conviction or Waiting for Superman.

History, Jesse, Movies, Nader

Movie Review: Secretariat

Movie – Secretariat

Director: Randall Wallace (We Were Soldiers, The Man in the Iron Mask)

Screenwriter:  Mike Rich (The Nativity Story, Radio, The Rookie, Finding Forrester)

Starring:  Diane Lane (The Perfect Storm, Unfaithful, Jumper); John Malkovich (Dangerous Liaisons, Being John Malkovich, Con Air) and Dylan Walsh (Congo, The Lake House, The Stepfather)

Theater – Cinemark Movies 12 – Ames, Iowa

Companion – Nader Parsaei

Food – King Buffet

Intellectual Honesty

I am an absolute sucker for a horse movie.  I’m not sure Hollywood could make a horse movie I wouldn’t love.  That includes you Hot to Trot!

Baggage

I don’t think that Randall Wallace can direct a movie that is above average.  I don’t think Disney makes very good live action movies.  Yes, Old Yeller is the first movie to make me cry and I still cry every time I see it, but in the last 20 years the only Disney live action movie that is watchable is The Rookie.

Synopsis

Housewife and mother Penny Chenery (Lane) takes over her ailing father’s Virginia bases Meadow Stables, despite her lack of horse-racing knowledge. Against all odds, Chenery – with the help of veteran trainer Lucien Laurin (Malkovich) – and while putting her marriage at risk – manages to navigate the male-dominated business, ultimately fostering the first Triple Crown winner in twenty-five years.

Review

I often heard the following indictment of the movie Titanic: “I don’t need to see the movie. I already know the ship sinks.”  It is a statement of ignorance and is hardly a decent indictment of 2nd highest grossing movie of all-time.  It isn’t a legitimate criticism because the setting of Titanic sinking is just that, the setting. You know the ship sinks, but you don’t know what is going to happen to the fictional characters Jack and Rose.  So while you watch the movie knowing that eventually the big ship is going to run into an iceberg and end up on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, you don’t know if Jack and Rose will end up on the sea floor with the mighty ship or if they will be part of the few hundreds of people that managed to survive that freezing April night.

If somebody was to say to me, “I don’t need to see Secretariat, I already know that he wins.”  I actually would agree with them that knowing that Secretariat wins does take something out of seeing this movie.  The way the screenplay is written, the entire payoff of the movie is the Belmont Stakes.  A race that even people who know nothing about horse racing know Secretariat won by over 30 lengths. Perhaps the single most dominant performance in any sport in sporting history.

However, even knowing how the movie is going to end, I’m not sure that the story of Secretariat would make a great movie without considerable creative license taken by the filmmakers.

Let’s face it, Secretariat is the greatest racehorse to ever live.  The only other horse that can ever be entered into the conversation is Man o’ War.  A horse that was so dominant that the 1 and only time he lost a race, it popularized the term upset for a description of a surprising outcome in a sporting event.  The horse that defeated Man o’ War was named Upset.

However, Secretariat was at least as dominating as Man o’ War. He won the Triple Crown while setting records in 2 of the 3 races.  Winning the third jewel of the Triple Crown by an incredible 31 lengths.  His time of 2:24 broke the stakes record by more than 2 seconds!

An absolutely amazing animal, but great sports movies aren’t about dominant athletes.  They are about underdogs.  Nobody would watch a movie following my training for a 1 on 1 basketball game against Jesse Howard with a climax of me beating him yet again.  No! People would want to see a movie following his training to play me.  Then he would have lots of unorthodox training methods and in the game he would make some improbable shots and upset me barely.  On a last second shot.

So in Secretariat they make a game effort to make Penny Chenery (Lane) an underdog, but it falls short.  She is a woman in a man’s world, sort of.  She is never the victim of any discrimination. She isn’t supported by her husband and she borderline abandons her family, but the only thing that ever happens in that world are a couple of terse conversations with her husband and her eldest daughter almost becomes a hippie.  That being said, her hippie daughter and her hippie friends are the cleanest hippies I’ve ever seen.  They look more like the cast of the Partridge Family than real hippies, but I guess that is still a threat to conservative Southern family values. The only real conflict she faces in the entire movie is she has to raise 6 million dollars to pay her inheritance tax or risk having to sell Secretariat.  As intriguing as that sounds on the surface, when was the last “underdog” you knew that had to struggle to pay 6 million in inheritance taxes?  Boo-frigging-hoo!

There are aspects of the story that are undeniably interesting.  Secretariat was won on a losing coin toss.  The richest man in the world flipped a coin with Penny Chenery and won the coin toss.  Then he picked the other horse.  Chenery won Secretariat by default.

Secretariat lost his last race before the Kentucky Derby because he has an abscess and wasn’t able to train much before the Kentucky Derby.

But an abscess and 6 million dollars in inheritance taxes do not much of a story make.

In addition to not taking you on much of a roller coaster ride, the script is riddled with some pretty bad dialogue. I don’t think anybody could have given a great performance, considering the type of stuff they were forced to say. Malkovich’s character Lucien Laurin plays more like a caricature than a character.  That being said, it is still awful fun watching him play the cheeseball to the hilt.  Secretariat’s great rival’s (Sham) owner is way over the top.

I’d read a couple of reviews of this movie that claim that Secretariat is a form of Tea Party propaganda.  Certainly some of the politics in the movie are right wing (who else would use inheritance taxes as a plot conflict? Even though it is true.) but it isn’t propaganda.  At least it isn’t decently made propaganda.

The horse racing action sequence are well done, but boring when compared to what is still the greatest horse movie ever made Seabiscuit.

Secretariat might have been the better horse, but Seabiscuit is a way better movie.

Rating: 2.5/5 Caramels

Buy on DVD: Nope, but I’ll watch it again when it is on ABC Family.

2010 Ranking: Unranked at this time.

Bonus Information: There weren’t really any trailers that rang my bell.  I saw a longer trailer for Tangled, the Rapunzel movie and it looks even dumber than the teaser trailer I had seen a few months ago.  I remain intrigued by Megamind. I am bothered by the fact that the trailer for Unstoppable makes it look like a really good movie, but it is directed by Tony Scott, therefore it will suck.

Next Week:

Next week I will actually see 2 movies.  Red on Tuesday and Hereafter on Sunday.  I will also be on vacation, so I’m not sure when stuff will get published, but we’ll see how that cookie crumbles when I get my hands on it.

Movies, Nader

Movie Review: The Social Network

1 Comment

I might make an attempt to do add movie reviews to this website again.  This has failed on several occasions, but no reason to give up now.  What is that definition of insanity I love so much?

Movie

The Social Network

Director: David Fincher
Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake, Andrew Garfield

Theater

Movies 12 – Ames, Iowa

Companion

Nader Parsaei

Food?

Mongolian Buffet

Intellectual Honesty

I love David Fincher.  He is one of my favorite living directors.  He is certainly in the Top 2 or 3.

Baggage

Fincher has some amends to make for the terminally boring Zodiac.

Synopsis

The Social Network follows the testimony in two separate lawsuits surrounding the founding of Facebook. 

The movie opens with a scene where Facebook inventor Mark Zuckerberg is dumped by his girlfriend.  He goes home an gets drunk and blogs about his ex-girlfriend.  Then he hacks into all of the the Facebooks of all of the Harvard residence hall and builds a website called Facesmash where people can log on and vote between 2 Harvard girls to determine which one is hotter.

There is so much activity on the website that it crashes Harvard’s network.

This event makes Zuckerberg a campus celebrity and he is approached by 3 other guys to help them make a Harvard dating website.

Instead of helping them with the website, Zuckerberg gets financial backing from his best friend and designs his own website “The Facebook”.

Zuckerberg and his best friend meet up with one of the founders of Napster.  This eventually leads to the removal of Zuckerberg’s best friend from Facebook.

After Zuckerberg becomes the youngest billionaire in history he is sued by the 3 guys that wanted him to help them with their dating website for stealing their idea.  He is also sued by his best friend who is railroaded out of the company.

Review

There was much hype about Justin Timberlake’s performance as Sean Parker, one of the creators of Napster.  He is decent.  I’d even say he is good, but the hype around this performance is quite a bit overblown.  However, Eisenberg’s portrayal of Zuckerberg is phenomenal.  As is Jesse Garfield’s portrayal of Zuckerberg’s best friend and initial CFO of Facebook Eduardo.

But what really keeps this movie humming is a great script by Aaron Sorkin.  What could be a convoluted movie following two lawsuits and 3 sides of a story all at the same time is handled masterfully.

There is a certain amount of hype about how poorly the female characters are portrayed in this movie.  With the obvious exception of the girlfriend that dumps Zuckerberg in the opening scene, most of the female characters are scene as little more than prizes to be won.  However, I think this is actually the way these characters see women and since the movie is from their perspectives, I don’t really have a problem with it.

Easily the most likable character in the movie is the girlfriend that dumps Zuckerberg.  She only appears in 1 other scene in the movie, but she is phenomenal and she is the only character that completely handles Zuckerberg.

I can’t point out enough how great the first scene in the movie is enough.  The dialogue is crisp and clever.  It sets up a perfect bookend with the last scene in the movie, which is also a favorite of mine.

The scene ends with the girlfriend telling Zuckerberg:

“You’re going to be successful, and rich. But you’re going to go through life thinking that girls don’t like you because you’re a geek. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won’t be true. It’ll be because you’re an asshole.”It is perhaps my favorite line in the movie besides when Zuckerberg tells the lawyer for the 3 men suing him for “stealing” the Facebook idea:

“I think if your clients want to sit on my shoulders and call themselves tall, they have the right to give it a try – but there’s no requirement that I enjoy sitting here listening to people lie. You have part of my attention – you have the minimum amount. The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook, where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing.
(pause)
 Did I adequately answer your condescending question?”

There is also a certain amount of hype about how negatively Zuckerberg is portrayed in the movie.  So much so that he donated 100 million dollars to charity recently to help offset the bad publicity from this movie. In my mind I don’t think that he was portrayed that badly.  He is a dick at times, but I think that there isn’t much in this movie that isn’t characteristic of anybody that isn’t driven at the same level as he clearly is.  He suffers from the same social retardation most geniuses suffer from.  At least the geniuses that they make movies about. I’m a Lone Wolf, but I’m not socially retarded. He is victimized by hero worship and unfortunately that leads to him betraying his best friend.  But I don’t think it is portrayed without a certain amount of sympathy. I think alot of people might have done what he did if they were manipulated by their hero.

The score by Trent Reznor is also a bonus to the movie.  When I heard that Trent Reznor was doing the score I thought that the music would end up being a distraction, but it isn’t.  It fits in perfectly with David Fincher’s directing style.

As a bonus, I believe that there is a rowing race scene that owes quite a bit to the work of Stanley Kubrick.  I think you know how that pushes my buttons.

Finally, I loved the way this movie ended. I think it was a perfect way to end the movie and was a perfect bookend with the opening scene of the movie.

Rating

4.5/5 Caramels

Buy on DVD

Definitely

2010 Ranking

I’m torn, but I’m going to go ahead and rank this as my new #1, sliding Inception down to #2.

Bonus information

I saw the trailer for the remake of True Grit for the 1st time.  I’m big time pumped for this movie now and not just because they used a Johnny Cash song as the background music.

Also saw the preview again for Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter.  This is the movie I want to see the most that is left this year.  The Fighter is no. 2.

Next Week

Probably Secretariat – Directed by Randall Wallace – Starring Diane Lane

I have to confess to having a huge weakness for horse movies.

Small possibility that if we don’t see Secretariat it will be Life As We Know It.