December Movies

So I meant to have this done last week, but a quick overnight work trip to Billings last Wednesday turned into a 4-day stay when a sudden snow storm rolled through turning the roads icy as all hell. So instead of coming home Thursday, I ended not getting back until Saturday. But I am now back, and I’ve got four new movies to cover from the weeks leading up to Christmas, so let’s get to it. The first of these is the fantasy film Eragon, which , interestingly enough, is based on a book written by a teenage boy from Montana. All in all this wasn’t a bad movie, but it wasn’t exactly a great movie, either (sadly, with such stellar fantasy epics as The Lord of the Rings trilogy out, the bar’s been set pretty high for fantasy films these days). While I haven’t read the book, I have to say that part of my problem is that some of the elements of the story are kind of goofy, and I’m guessing these are actually from the book, so the movie can’t really be blamed for them.

If you enjoy fantasy films, this one is certainly worth seeing, and the performances are all pretty solid. At the same time, I don’t see it as one I’d rush out and buy on DVD, and I’m a really big fan of fantasy films. There’s not really much else to say about this one.

The next movie that I saw in recent weeks is the family comedy Night at the Museum. This is yet another comedy starring Ben Stiller that I can say I enjoyed despite Ben Stiller, and not because of him. He’s simply never really impressed me as an actor. As usual he does a passable job with his character, and it’s the story itself and the actors around him that make the movie worth watching. Of especial note are the small parts played by Dick Van Dyke and Mickey Rooney (who is incredibly funny in his small role). Robin Williams also gives a solid performance as Teddy Roosevelt, and Ricky Gervais is an absolute riot in the couple of scenes that he has (he is just a damned funny guy!).

This is a cute, fun movie. While not a spectacular movie by any means, it was still fun to watch. There were some pretty neat ideas as far as what things came to life in the museum (such as Brad Garrett as the voice of an Easter Island head statue). All in all a good movie for the whole family (despite the scene of the monkey peeing on Ben Stiller). Certainly worth a look.

And so we come to Christmas night, which found me at the theatre for the late showing of Black Christmas. I’ll come right out and say it now – this movie sucked. Now, I’m sure most people reading this are thinking, “Well, duh!” and yes, I admit that I didn’t have high expectations (about the only real reason I went to see it was that I’m a fan of Michelle Trachtenberg). But let’s face it, these sorts of movies can be fun in a campy sort of way. I actually really enjoyed the Friday the 13th series and the Nightmare and Elm Street series, and other such movies, as cheesy and dumb as they are. But they can still be fun in their own way, if nothing else simply because of the excessive violence and gratuitous nudity (not to mention the new and exciting ways that the killers come up with to dispatch their victims).

This movie pretty much fails on every level. Despite the R-rating, there’s pretty much no sex scenes, and the only real nude scene features the killer’s middle-age (and fairly skanky) mom. As much as I enjoy my nude scenes, you know it’s bad if I say that this was one I could really have done without! I’m sorry, but what’s the point of having an R-rated movie filled with hot, sexy college coeds, and then only show us a brief scene of the bare butt of one of the girls! Gratuitous nudity is as much a part of this sort of horror movie as the excessive violence and gore is, for crying out loud! It really makes me shake my head that movies are getting more violent and gruesome all the time, but we're seeing less and less gratuitous nudity to along with it. It’s just not right. ;-)

On the subject of excessive violence, the movie disappoints there as well. Everyone is killed in pretty much the same way, which takes all of the fun out of it. Let’s face it, part of why you watch movies like these is to see the amusing variety of ways that killers like Jason Voorhees dispatch their poor victims. This movie is predictable even for a cheesy horror film, and there’s no build-up of tension or anything even remotely scary or suspenseful about it. I actually heard someone behind me as I was leaving the theatre asking the person with them, “Was that supposed to be scary, or funny?” And I had to ask the same question. If it was supposed to be funny, they did a pretty poor job of that as well.

The movie starts out with a girl being killed almost immediately. Her older sister comes looking for her later in the movie, but since she was the first one killed and she’s in the movie all of two minutes, it’s hard to have any sympathy or feel any connection to the older sister’s loss. Also, you quickly find out the killer’s sister is the one killing the coeds, because the killer is still escaping from the sanitarium, and so there’s no build-up of tension at his escape (or any care that he’s escaping at all, as far as that goes), because there’s already someone killing people, so his presence in the movie at all is pretty pointless.

In watching Black Christmas and comparing it to other movies of the genre, there are some easy changes that could have been made to significantly improve this movie. But it’s pretty obvious that the movie as filmed was a hopeless disaster. One of the key signs of this is that there are a couple of scenes in the trailer that not only aren’t in the movie, but so differ from what’s in the movie that it’s hard to figure out where they’d even go (which tells me that the original edit was so bad they had to make a whole bunch of changes in the hopes of fixing the movie, which of course they failed to do).

The one high point of the movie for me was hearing Michelle Trachtenberg swear (and it's a damn shame when that's one of the only positive things you can say about a movie). Since almost everything she’s done prior to this has been either TV or family-oriented movies, I’d never heard her swear before. So hearing her drop the F-bomb was actually pretty amusing (what can I say, I'm easily amused). Plus the fact that she’s really, really cute and just fun to watch. That was about the only thing bearable about the whole movie. I’ll be curious to see if they offer a director’s cut/extended cut of the movie when it comes out on DVD (not that I can imagine myself wasting the time and money to rent it to see if it’s any better, since it’s unlikely it would be regardless of what changes they make to it).

The final movie I’m going to be covering in this entry is The Good Shepherd, directed by Robert De Niro. The movie goes from the beginnings of World War II until the Bay of Pigs, and shows the formation and early days of the CIA. This is a great, intense, exciting film. It’s not necessarily a summer blockbuster sort of movie, but it’s still a solid, interesting, well-done drama. De Niro does a great job as director, and the performances are all solid (which is not at all surprising considering the stellar cast they put together for this movie). If you enjoy good, old-fashioned spy thrillers (as opposed to the action/effects bonanzas that most spy movies have become today – most especially the recent James Bond movies), then this is a movie you’re very likely to enjoy.

That’s it for this entry. I’m headed to the theatre tomorrow, and caught a movie while I was in Billings, so I’ll have a couple more reviews for y’all some time next week.

Hotel Rwanda

So due to the busy holiday season (combined with an insanely busy week at work right after the holidays), I’ve gotten a bit behind on my movie reviews. So consequently I’ve got 4 new movies that I need to get reviewed (and will try to get to soon). Before I do that, however, I just watched a movie on The Movie Channel that I’ve been wanting to see for awhile now, that I was so impressed with I wanted to do a review of it first. The movie in question is the Oscar-nominated film Hotel Rwanda. This is a movie I’ve wanted to see since it first came out, primarily because I actually followed the events of the Rwanda genocide as they happened while I was working with military intelligence in the Army. And so I knew full how just how horrific the events detailed in the movie were (even more so than what was actually shown in the movie, as frightening as that thought is).

This movie is in a word, brilliant. I was completely blown away. The performances were riveting, the story was compelling, the dramatic tension maintained throughout the movie. The film is also incredibly tragic as it details the atrocities that were committed, and you can't help but be moved by what happens in the film. While not a cheery movie by any means, it is a powerful and moving film. It's not necessarily a movie you would want to watch more than once, but this is absolutely a must-see film. This is one of those powerful stories that needs to be told so that history doesn’t forget what happened. I would say this is especially important for the Western world, as Europe and America stood back and simply let the genocide occur, making no efforts to stop it (I guess a country has to have oil reserves before the U.S. will take an interest in their internal affairs – but I’ll keep my political views to myself. This is a movie blog, after all).

Don Cheadle’s performance is outstanding, easily deserving of his Oscar nomination. Of course, I’ve liked Don Cheadle since his days in the TV show Picket Fences back in the early 90s. Probably my favorite performance of his would be in Volcano (where he pretty much stole every scene he was in). He was also great in such movies as Devil in a Blue Dress, Ocean’s Eleven (with his goofy attempt at a British accent), Mission to Mars, and After the Sunset. I’ve always thought of him as an actor to keep an eye out for, and have enjoyed every performance I’ve seen him give. In Hotel Rwanda he gives probably his most powerful performance to date, showing just how talented an actor he truly is.

In conclusion, I easily give Hotel Rwanda a solid 5 stars. If you haven’t seen this movie, I absolutely recommend checking it out.

Deck the Halls

So last weekend my buddy talked me into going to see Deck the Halls, with Matthew Broderick and Danny DeVito. Now admittedly, this isn’t the sort of movie I usually go see at the theater. But neither of last weekend’s other two big releases (Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto and Leonardo DiCaprio’s Blood Diamond) were movies I was super excited to go see, and both my buddy and I figured it was a good weekend for a goofy comedy, so Deck the Halls it was. And I must admit, I’m definitely glad I went. I really enjoyed myself, and was laughing quite a bit during the movie. Yes, the movie was incredibly dumb (that pretty much goes without saying). But it’s one of those movies that if you go into it knowing it’s going to be dumb, you can sit back and enjoy the stupidity of it all and have a good laugh.

The two main stars are of course both brilliant actors, and each play their characters to perfection. The basic plot of the movie is that Danny DeVito moves in next door to Matthew Broderick in early December, and decides that his goal in life is for his house to be seen from space (I won’t bore you with the details of how this comes about). To do this, he sets up a garish Christmas light display that grows bigger and brighter and more outrageous every day as he adds more and more to the display. This naturally sets off Matthew Broderick, who has to live next door to this spectacle (the two characters also have pretty opposing personality types, so it’s pretty much a given from the first time they meet that these two aren’t going to get along).

Things of course quickly get out of hand as Matthew Broderick tries to get back at his neighbor and get him to turn off his light show. As is to be expected, hilarity ensues. Some of the jokes are pretty lame, while other’s are just plain wrong (while still managing to be completely hilarious). But it’s a lot funnier (and much more family friendly) than other would-be Christmas comedies such as Bad Santa (which I finally watched on one of my movie channels a while back. I hadn’t had very high expectations for the movie at all, and still managed to be surprised by just how horrid a movie it was – which was really a shame, because I think Lauren Graham is a total cutie, and just so much fun to watch). So if you’re looking for some goofy, mindless humor to give you a brief distraction from the hassles and stresses of the holiday season, Deck the Halls is worth giving a look.

Birthday Movies

Okay, so I didn’t get my movie reviews done over the weekend. But as I mentioned I was planning in my previous entry, I did make it to the theater for two movies back-to-back on Saturday for my birthday. And what two new movies did I go see? That would be Déjà Vu, and The Fountain. So here’s my short, sweet, and to-the-point reviews for these two movies. We’ll start with the latter. The Fountain is kind of hard to describe in too much detail without giving away too much of the plot, but to sum up, it is basically a love story about a man trying to find a cure for his dying wife, with something of a sci-fi angle to it. But the sci-fi elements of the story I’m not really going to touch on, firstly because I think they’re more enjoyable if you don’t really know what’s coming, and secondly because I truly feel they’re completely secondary to the love story. Now I’m sure there are those narrow-minded folks out there who won’t like it or won’t want to see it “because they’re just not into science fiction,” but I say that’s just their loss. At the heart of the film is the story of Hugh Jackman, a research scientist trying to find a cure for his dying wife, played by Rachel Weisz, and it's this story that really makes the film worth seeing.

This is just a beautiful, touching film. I definitely found myself fighting back the tears in a couple of spots (but then again, deep down I’m just a big old softy when it comes to these sorts of movies – what can I say). Visually it’s very impressive, and while the story is a bit confusing at first (since the storyline jumps back and forth in time, and is a bit on the metaphysical side in parts), once you get into what’s going on it really pulls you in and keeps you invested all the way up to the climax. While I’m sure this movie isn’t for everyone, I absolutely loved it. On the flip side, I don’t know that I’ll buy it on DVD, as it doesn’t really have a lot of replay value (at least, in my opinion), but I’m very glad I had the chance to see it, especially at the theater. Definitely a good couple’s movie (although, sadly, I had to see it by myself).

The next movie I saw on Saturday (and it timed out perfectly – I left The Fountain shortly after the end credits started to roll, bought my ticket, and sat down for the next movie just before the trailers started) was the latest from director Tony Scott: Déjà Vu, starring Denzel Washington and Val Kilmer (and with a supporting role by Bruce Greenwood, and actor I’ve really liked ever since his short-lived TV show, Nowhere Man – which I really need to pick up on DVD one of these days). This is another movie that’s difficult to discuss in too much detail without giving away plot points, so I’m going to give my spoiler alert now. If you want to be completely surprised by this one, just suffice it to say this is a pretty solid (although not spectacular) suspense thriller that, like The Fountain, has a bit of a sci-fi element to it. If you like action thrillers or Denzel Washington movies, this is one you’ll probably enjoy. And with that said, onto some more details about the movie.

You can probably guess from the trailers and from the title of the film that this movie has a time travel element to it. To be more specific, the government has found a way to look precisely four days into the past, and is using this technology to try and find those responsible for the terrorist explosion that features so prominently in the trailers. Denzel plays an ATF agent assigned to the case. Val Kilmer is the FBI agent in charge of the project that lets them look into the past. I think that’s about all I’ll say about the overall plot, because anything more than that would really be giving away some spoilers (and this is definitely a movie that’s more fun to watch if you don’t really know a whole lot about what’s coming).

Between the director and the stars and the premise, I was almost certain this would be a movie I’d enjoy. I say ‘almost’ because time travel movies are always hit or miss for me. The whole issue of paradox and changing the past, etc. can be done really poorly, which tends to ruin the whole effort. This movie actually does a pretty good job with the way it handles it, and I have to say I was impressed. All in all this is a pretty enjoyable movie if you don’t take it too seriously. As I said above, this isn’t necessarily a great movie, but it was certainly worth the price of admission, and I’m glad I went to see it.

Back to the Movie Theatre at last!

So I hadn’t been out to the movie theatre in a few weeks, mainly because there hadn’t really been a whole lot out there I really wanted to see. And even though there were a couple of movies that looked halfway interesting, I had enough other things going on that I just didn’t make it out to the theatre. Well, that finally changed weekend before last with the release of Will Ferrell’s latest film, Stranger than Fiction. From the very first trailer I knew this was a must-see movie, and it proved to be every bit as good as I thought it would. It was funny, touching, heart wrenching, and just bizarre and surreal enough to absolutely be my kind of movie.

Now before I get started on the movie itself, I’d like to take a moment to express my deepest respect and admiration for the editor(s) of the trailers for this movie. In my opinion, they were among a small handful of what I would call almost perfect trailers. They gave you enough of a feel for the movie to know whether it would be something you’d want to see or not, but without giving away any key scenes of the movie. As a matter of fact, there are a few things about the movie that come as a complete surprise to you because they aren’t even hinted at in the trailer. And this is wonderful, considering that the trailer very much has to give away the biggest plot detail – mainly that Will Ferrell’s character has started hearing the voice of an author in his head who’s planning to kill him.

Luckily the movie holds so much more than that, and so knowing that detail doesn’t spoil your enjoyment of the movie at all. And that is the key thing that so many trailers completely screw up. Which is why I had to take a moment to praise the creators of Stranger than Fiction's trailers (since most trailer editors I’d like to see tarred and feathered). I mean, ask yourself, how many times have you seen the teaser for a movie and thought, “Hey, that looks pretty cool, I might have to go see that,” and then the full trailer comes out and suddenly you’re like, “Gee, now I know pretty much know exactly how the movie is going to play out.” Mr. & Mrs. Smith is a perfect example of this. The teaser strictly shows them trying to kill each other, which really peaks your interest, but then the full trailer adds just enough shots of them together fighting somebody else that you know exactly how the movie is going to play out – they find out they’re assassins and are ordered to kill each other, that doesn’t work out and so they decide not to kill each other, and so their employers decide to kill both of them and they have to fight it out to stay alive. Now admittedly, Mr. & Mrs. Smith is a great enough movie that it’s still fun to watch, but I’d have been just as happy seeing this all play out as I’m watching the movie, as opposed to knowing exactly how it’s going to develop before I ever get to the theater.

And that’s hardly the worst example. The worst for me would have to be the trailer for the Colin Farrell/Al Pacino spy thriller The Recruit. The whole point of this film is that Colin Farrell has been turned into a double agent by Al Pacino, while the whole time thinking he was one of the good guys who was LOOKING for the double agent. But the key scene where he’s told that no, it’s actually him who’s the bad guy is in the bloody trailer!! What should have been a great movie was completely ruined for me because I knew the big secret of the movie before the opening credits rolled. Personally I think the moron who edited that trailer should be forever banned from Hollywood. What the hell was he thinking?!

But enough ranting about the goods and bads of movie trailers. Let’s get back to Stranger than Fiction. The movie is just brilliant. And I loved Will Ferrell’s performance, which was very understated compared to his normal over-the-top comedy. He actually reminded me of William H. Macy, who is the master of the quiet, befuddled character. Dustin Hoffman is also really fun to watch (but that’s not really a surprise). I don’t want to say too much more about the movie, but if you enjoy odd, quirky comedies, then this is a movie you’d likely enjoy. Four stars.

So last weekend was of course the release of the latest James Bond film, Casino Royale, starring brand new Bond Daniel Craig. I, however, spent the entire weekend helping my uncle butcher this massive bull elk he shot. It was a lot of work and some long days, but I now have a freezer full of elk meat, which is good. Consequently, though, I never made it to the theatre. Luckily I was able to correct that Wednesday, since the office closed early for the holidays and I got most of the afternoon off (and what better way to spend an afternoon off than at the movies).

And I must say it was an afternoon well spent. While not necessarily the greatest Bond movie ever (I am a big enough fan of the old Sean Connery films that they will be very hard to beat, although Pierce Brosnan is certainly a close second for best Bond). The movie is interesting in that it is jump-starting the series (much like Batman Begins did with the Batman franchise) by going back to the beginning and showing us how James Bond became 007 and going from there. And I have to say, the scene at the start of the film where we see Bond earning his 00 rating is brilliantly done.

The big controversy with this movie has been the new actor portraying James Bond, Daniel Craig. A lot of people were bitching and moaning and complaining the minute he was cast, long before any of them had actually seen the movie (which annoyed the hell out of me – just as a general rule I hate people who judge something, or more specifically condemn something, without ever actually having seen it. But that’s a whole other topic I could rant on about for hours, going off on conservative groups who attack TV shows and video games, etc., etc.; but we’ll save that one for another time). So I saved my judgment of the new Bond until after I’d actually seen him in action before deciding on how fit he was for the role.

Now that I’ve seen the film, I have to say my feelings are mixed. First off, I have to say that regardless of what all the naysayers out there might think, Daniel Craig I think is a fine actor, and did a very good job with the role. I don’t think anyone can legitimately criticize his performance in the movie. On the flip side, however, I found myself having a really, really hard time picturing him as James Bond. I don’t know if it was the blonde hair, or the way he played the character, or maybe the way the character was written, but I just didn’t see James Bond up there on the screen.

A lot of it, I think, has to do with the nature of the story, and the fact that they are starting the franchise over from the beginning. The reason I say this is that what we get in this movie is not the suave, sophisticated Bond that we’re used to. He’s a less disciplined, less experienced, more raw of a character than we’re used to. He’s more aggressive, less subtle in his tactics, closer to his military roots and less the sophisticated super spy. Which is exactly what he’s supposed to be. And that’s where I defend Daniel Craig’s performance. What we get isn’t the James Bond we’re used to or are expecting, but he’s not supposed to be. But the way the movie plays out, I’m really looking forward to the next one just to see how they develop the character, and how Daniel Craig grows into the character, because Casino Royale if nothing else leaves us with a lot of potential for future films.

As for the movie itself, it does indeed get back to basics (something the producers made a big deal about all through development). There is no Q present in the movie, and thus no super gadgets present, something that was always a staple of the Bond movies, but something that got a bit out of hand in the recent Brosnan films, so I think it’s something the movie can indeed live without. However, I think it still had too much of the big budget summer action blockbuster to it, and still not enough of the spy thriller elements that I was really hoping for (as far as spy movies go, I’d still take either of the Bourne films over Casino Royale). But that didn’t keep this from being a fun, fast-paced, exciting movie.

Dame Judi Dench returns as the hard-nosed M, and is as brilliant as ever. She has the absolute best line in the movie, in my opinion. Bond has just hacked into her personnel file, and when she catches him, he comments that he thought ‘M’ was a random letter designation, and didn’t realize it actually stood for her real name. Of course, he’s just about to say her actual name, when she cuts him off by saying, “Utter one more syllable and I’ll be forced to have you killed.” And she says it with a cold conviction that tells you she’s absolutely deadly serious. It’s just brilliant. And that’s just one of the many great lines from the movie. I have to say, the dialogue of the film is probably one of its strongest points, including a number of very humorous lines (among them a sly reference to Miss Moneypenny, who like Q isn’t in the movie).

All in all I was pretty impressed with Casino Royale. I think they’ve got a good foundation to build on for future Bond movies, and I think given a chance Daniel Craig will turn out to be a very solid James Bond. I have only two real criticisms of the movie. The first is the presence of a couple of very, very blatant product placements. Which is sadly something we’re seeing more and more of in both TV and movies, and so I guess you just have to shrug it off and not let it bug you. The second complaint I have is the desire by the producers to be more politically correct with the movie, and get away from some of the chauvinistic (for lack of a better word) elements of the earlier movies that were so a part of the James Bond films (but at the same time werer very much a part of the 60s and 70s eras that the movies were made in, something the producers are trying to get away from). For starters, we still have the complex, somewhat surreal opening credits with lots of crazy visual elements that’s just fun to watch, but nowhere to be found are the silhouettes of naked women that are a trademark of the opening credits of the Bond films.

The other thing they felt the need to take away was Bond’s blatant womanizing. They make a point of letting us know he prefers married women (since there’s less strings attached), but beyond that the only woman he actually goes to bed with is the romantic interest in the movie, who he falls for about two thirds of the way through the film (and who he doesn’t actually sleep with until AFTER he’s fallen for her). Now before the feminists start attacking me, I will admit that earlier Bond movies are fairly sexist in their portrayals of women, but at the same time it was always just so much fun to see Bond seducing several women through the course of every mission he went on. Hell, that’s a big part of what Bond is famous for – he’s the suave, sophisticated super spy who can have any woman he wants (and usually does, sooner or later).

So while I understand the producers desire for a more modern, less sexist Bond, I think I’m going to miss the Bond of the past. But that’s okay, because I’ve got the first two box sets on DVD, and will have the second two as soon as they come out, so I can always go back and watch the originals (I do have to comment, though, that I'd like to just slap hard across the face whatever marketing jerk decided to mix and match the movies so you get a couple from each actor in each box set, as opposed to releasing the damn things in the order the movies came out. But heaven forbid someone buy just the Sean Connery movies or just the Roger Moore movies. No, they have to make damn certain if you're buying them you're buying the whole bloody series. Which I had planned to do regardless, but I still stay it's a screwed up way to release the DVDs).

Well, I think that’s it for this entry. Tomorrow being my birthday, I will of course be at the theatre doing a double-feature, so look forward to another entry in the next few days (hopefully I can get it done before the weekend is over; we’ll see how it goes).