Sunday July 31, 2011

A Serious Man- Coen brothers at their finest. But not really. Still great though. Just underwhelming. It's a movie that builds up so much electricity, but refuses to shock the audience with it. Don't blame the bros. for doing a movie their way. After all, "True Grit" ends with the chick losing her leg and feeling "sad" about stuff, and "The Big Lebowski" ends with his friend dying, him having a possible kid on the way, and bowling. The whole film interests you with the misfortune of its protagonist, but it ends with something that amounts to nothing so it really is just a religious metaphor. It presents us with the question, but leaves us completely answerless. It's a movie that ends right before its climax, so the audience wishes they could have saw more, or that the brothers are just to lazy to work their movie another 20 minutes more. It poses the same example that it points out in the beginning. The protagonist professor tells his failing asian student, that although he understands the pictures and fables that he presents to describe physics, without understanding the mathematics, the picture is meaningless. So too is the religious questions posed. 'A Serious Man' is a fable, one with only the picture, but no mathematics behind it. I enjoyed the questions it poses, because as religion is as a concept, each individual must decide on their own.



Crazy, Stupid, Love- An ensemble film piece with great chemistry between Steve Carell (the normal suburban divorcing father/husband) and Ryan Gosling (GQ styled and womanizer extraordinaire). Everybody else does their part and they do it fine, but it is these two men, that truly shiny. Yes, a corny rhyme. So too, does this film present a background of reality, but is cushioned by a foreground of cliche and happiness. The true love/ soul mate schlock is fine… but the real problem is the ending that chooses to give everybody their soul mates, which ruins the illusion of reality. At least one couple shouldn't have survived this film's cycle. But no, even the 13 year old boy gets with the 17 year old girl, at least eventually he will. But if you look at it from a different angle, one ignoring the ending, this film is very enjoyable and lasting, and vastly different in comedic style from 'Friends with Benefits', which will pay off in years to come for viewing. Because, after all, love, is the most powerful story of them all. So, for a funny, but more dramatic version of the latter described, this one is the way to go.



- Jeff Bassin

Friday July 29, 2011

Ready- This is the first Bollywood film I have ever actually seen, if you don't count 'Slumdog Millionaire' (which I don't), so I'm gonna get real deep into this one. From one angle, I loved how stylized and fast paced some sequences are filmed with fast cuts and odd sound effects. Another thing I enjoyed was the romantic aspects, since famed actor Salman Khan and chickita, Asin have great interactions with one another. It tells a simple story of a man who doesn't want to get tied down, but then gets forced in the middle of a mob-like situation to save the girl he comes to love. The first half of the film tells of how the two (Prem and Sanjana) come to fall for one another, and the second half is about Khan being a badass and using his family to trick the mob feuding families into being better "peoples" and allowing him to marry Sanjana. I loved that it had two acts to it because it was like getting two films in one. Granted, both were comedies with over the top humor, but the first one is a love film, and the second was an action-con film. One problem with it was its jokes, which mostly relied on a fart joke, a crab on my butt joke, and people getting hit in places joke. Although there were some clever bits like the accountant who is tricked into thinking he has the ability of creating people by inventing them in his mind. Another problem I had was the fact that it built Salman Khan's character as the coolest man on earth at just about every moment in the film. There are no real feeling stakes in this movie. The entire movie is built around how great Salman Khan is. He can hold onto a tree branch over a cliff with one hand and carry the chick with his other, he can knock men around 20 feet away, and he can manipulate just about anyone into trusting him. This guy can do it all, and because of that, it kind of seems weird that all of a sudden in the first act, between a song, the guy falls for the chick while he used to be the not settle down type 3 minutes before. There really are no three dimensional characters in the film, so there is no real heart to the film. But it's all in good fun, so I enjoyed it. Especially the musical numbers, specifically one titled "Dhinka Chika". Overall, good, certainly not bad, but I hope for better next time I watch a Bollywood film.



- Jeff Bassin

Thursday July 28, 2011

Atlantis: The Lost Empire- This is the first time I've seen it full way through. It is not amazing, but the characters (awesome explosions expert character voiced by Father Sarducci) are interesting enough to assist in the holes in the story. The designs and drawings are very creative and neat. The overall problem I had was with the predictability of the story and the poor third act. Honestly, I didn't even really have any stake in Atlantis by the time soldiers were taking it apart, and the fact that the guy who funded this "Exploration" was a good guy and not the one who hired the mercenaries kind of pissed me off. First, I was like oh, the boss man only brought on the protagonist for personal gain, but at the end, when it shows him again, he is told of the adventure and he's just plain old proud. Lame. It's a disney film, so I give it some credit for keeping a childish charm and adventure to it that anyone can watch, but to truly enjoy it, the film might be pushing it below its depths (clever?).



A Clockwork Orange- I think this might be the 2nd time I have watched it full from start to finish and might I say, there is a lot to love. Kubrick has a knack for not only framing portrait-esque shots that I could only aspire to create one day, but also follow long fluid tracking shots and takes that are kind of awe-spiring. I will definitely come back to this when I review shots before making my first real feature. Or at least I should. If I remember to. You know how it is, future me. Anyways, the plot is also interesting, with it's themes of government exploitation, violence, sexuality, the media, etc. and cyclical structured window bits (enters a window and ends up killing a woman, ends up going to physical jail, jumps out a window at end to provide himself with death, releasing himself from a metaphorical prison), although a large amount of the plot is derived from the Burgess novel. But here's the problems: It's overt weirdness, i.e. weird hair color for most woman, phallic symbols abound, big strong Hipster looking dude carrying a wheelchair down steps instead of having a handicapped walkway in the disabled man's house, etc. throw this movie partially in the so- called "cult" bag, where I feel unfairly judged for liking it, and shunned for disliking it. Just because something is abnormal doesn't mean it is artful. Maybe this would be a question for the sadly deceased director to have been asked about. Also, the ending seems to negate the principles developed in the movie, which is kind of dumbfounding for first time viewers, and only a little bit less dumbfounding for second time viewers. The guy is evil, rapes a man's wife (leading to her death in the future) and cripples the man, goes to jail, is rehabilitated (skipping 12 years of his 14 year sentence), gets prayed upon by his past errors and misdeeds, then is reversed, becomes evil again, and is rewarded for the whole thing by getting a good job, sending the crippled man to jail for trying to get revenge, and comes out of it a happy and unchanged man. What's the thesis? The novel ends quite differently. With a point to make. I'm just not sure what one should get out of the movie outside of the fact that the man goes from step A to… well… step A again… so it really only adds up to 2 wasted years of a horrible man's life. Happy trails, and avoid singing in the rain.

Wednesday July 27, 2011

Delirious- A light drama (technically what one would call a comedy with no laughs) but because of the performances of it's leads, Steve Buscemi and Michael Pitt, the movie is a little better than average. In other words, it's the movie I felt like seeing at the moment, but it won't leave any impact on me in any way. Through all the noise of the "comedy", you get a slight glimpse into the disappointing world of paparazzi, but at it's core, the movie is really only about two things: The friendship between Buscemi and Pitt, and the romance between Pitt and a musician character played by Alison Lohman. Even though you have no idea how the romantic interest works (it honestly doesn't seem like one of those soul mate things as it claims it is, just a dude who thinks a girl is beautiful and a girl who thinks the dude will be the first guy to treat her right), I still find myself rooting for them, though thats probably just the charm of Pitt and the cuteness of Lohman, so I'm not sure if it counts.



Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch has a Glitch- Some disney straight-to-dvd films are enjoyable. This is not really one of them. The movie's plot surrounds around a) a hula competition b) the attempt of one character to win the other character's affections through the use of jealousy by dating an alien (although the one who should be jealous knows from the beginning it is a ploy so it's useless), and c) Stitch having a Glitch. Outside of the characters, it hardly connects to the first one, and the plot lines aren't interesting enough to keep me involved in the characters. In fact, it was kind of boring. Like an episode of Dora the Explorer, the film follows through like a procedural with "let's go to the mountains" and "we have to create a machine to help Stitch" and even an emotionally wild "Stitch is dead!". We all know he'll come back to life with the power of love, duh, so this movie is pretty much useless. Lilo & Stich 2: Make a Quick Buck.



- Jeff Bassin

Tuesday July 26, 2011

What Lies Beneath- A modest work from Robert Zemeckis that is entertaining, but also probably too long and disappointing in the hopes of something better. The opening makes it seem like almost a remake of "Rear Window", with Michelle Pfeiffer's character spying upon the relationship of her neighbors and suspecting her neighbor of murder, but "Disturbia" it is not. The worst part is that with at least 40 minutes left of the movie, I was just waiting for Harrison Ford's character to reveal he murdered the ghosty that was haunting Pfeiffer. Okay, overall, but really only worth a watch at a point where I forget the plot of the film… or if I just want to see Ford make weird incestuous and crazy remarks about his daughter toward the end... Cause he totally does.



Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 3D- This is the second time watching this movie, the first time being at the midnight showing, where I professed my love for the film as the best of the series. It's high time I took back that remark, as I thoroughly enjoyed the first part much more on the second viewing than I did with this one. Originally, I thought it was perfect, but for some reason, this time, I was much more bored. It's still fun, and the scenes where Helena Botham Carter portrays the aneurisms of Hermione, that one bit where Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) gives Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) an awkward hug, and the life and times of Severous Snape (Gonna need a montage) are always affective. But for some reason, the war cutting midway into this movie not only makes the film feel like less went on in it, but also that maybe they could have cut an hour of it and fit it into a three hour version of part 1. I don't know, I might be wrong. It's not like it wasn't still great. Just, like a thrill ride, it's just not as surprising or exciting the second ride through.



Friends with Benefits- An alright script with a great cast makes exactly the formula this movie has. Sure it's funny and isn't the point of romantic comedies supposed to be that it has a predictable formula, but then again, it doesn't have to be that way (here's looking at you "500 Days of Summer"). The movie chooses to insult the cliche and then result in them, almost as an insult to the audience's attention span. Yes, we remember when you just complained about the "Soul Sister" song by Train playing just at the happy ending of the romantic comedy you were watching, and oh, now that song plays when you get together. I just don't get what point about generic romantic comedies the movie was trying to say. Is it for, or against? Either way, it doesn't matter because it is one. All the Woody Harrelson gay jokes, Patricia Clarkson sex jokes, Richard Jenkins alzheimer's disease jokes (played for laughs and sentimentality oddly), and amazing chemistry between Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake doesn't quite make up for that confusion… since that's kind of the entire point of the movie.



- Jeff Bassin

Monday July 25, 2011

Swimming with Sharks- Not only a great cautionary tale about the dangers of the film industry within the film, but also one from a meta perspective. Director George Huang has not received many great jobs after this interesting character piece, apparently because most producers were led to believe that Kevin Spacey's amazing selfish boss character was based on them. I guess this is the kind of movie that ought to teach filmmakers like myself not to makes films that bite the hands that feed you. After all, film is a business of pleasure. A business of pleasing everyone around you, from critics on a critical level, to producers on a money making level. Lesson learned, Huang.



- Jeff Bassin

Sunday July 24, 2011

John Carpenter's Vampires- There is only so much to say about this movie. It's fun, in a "From Dusk Till Dawn" kind of way, but the hooker/Baldwin brother love story was weak, and so was most other things about the movie. I mean, you know how people say John Carpenter has bad movies. Well, this is kinda one of them. Sometimes inventive, but really nothing worth doing more than a slight reference to feel cool that you are a Carpenter Fan. I mean, I enjoy James Woods' voice, but as a so called bad-a#@ vampire slayer, he can only do so much justice. Overall, the only redeeming aspects were John Carpenter's great cinematography (as usual with his films) and catchy guitar score. It's a fun and light entertainment, ironically associated with darkness.



Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas- Watching this movie, being it as one of the few animated films of recent times I haven't seen yet (outside of a bunch of Studio Ghibli films I have been mean to get to), I was both pleasantly surprised, and ultimately saddened. But then again, the sadness was part of the film's intention. The story is intriguing and the voice work is pretty good, especially on the part of Eris, voiced by Michelle Pfeiffer, but the 3D animation mixed with 2D drawings is kind of jarring (almost like a Real D 3D film except without glasses, the claim being based on the idea that there are some weird moments of depth in between landscapes and creatures). I guess my only real fist against this film is the ending, which was altogether, too happy and hollywood styled, where a simple action in the film's plot could have easily prevented it.

SPOILER






SERIOUSLY, I'M GONNA TALK ABOUT THE ENDING (POSSIBLY WON'T MAKE SENSE UNLESS YOU HAE SEEN IT)

The film ends with Brad Pitt's Sinbad ending up with Joseph Fiennes' Proteus' fiance Marina (voiced by Catherine Zeta-Jones). Proteus, early in the film, puts his life on the line in order to give Sinbad the chance to redeem himself by getting back the Book of Peace that Eris framed him for stealing. Sinbad's actions of gratitude in return for this unselfish act on part of Proteus… steal his fiance's heart while on the journey. Sure, Proteus allows her to be with him in the end by giving his approval, but that doesn't change the fact that before Sinbad re-entered the picture of their long lost friendship (Sinbad, as a streetrat boy, befriended the royal Proteus, and was basically welcomed into their family to an extent), Marina was way into the noble Proteus. Tragic stuff, Dreamworks. Way to write a hollywood happy ending and still make me sad.



Superhero Movie- Yeah, it's stupid. But ehh, it's sometimes funny. Caught it on Comedy Central so it's not like I sought it out. Leslie Nielsen does his best to liven the film up with his spoof comic charm, but the script doesn't give him (or anybody else for that matter) a chance to create anything more than the movie "Spiderman" with fart jokes inserted in. Some sequences even seem like shot for shot copies except traded for dumbed down material. It kind of doesn't make sense that they even used "Spiderman" since "Spiderman 3" came out a year before... so why are they referencing 7 year old material. Also, the "X-Men" spoof sequence fails on even being a logical plot point in the film. It doesn't belong at all. Filler in a movie that is a giant filler.



- Jeff Bassin

Saturday July 23, 2011

Wicker Park- I enjoyed this underrated foreign remake. Most of all because I felt intriguing stories from almost every character in the film. I think the best kinds of movies are the ones where each character could easily get their own individual film. For instance, with this one, the film may be about the couple played by Diane Kruger and Josh Hartnett, and the manipulation of the character played by Rose Byrne into forcing the two apart, but the film could also be seen as the struggle of Byrne tragic figure, who wishes desperately to be with Hartnett, and had noticed him before Kruger, and now must fight a battle with the fates of love, who continually try to bring the couple together. Byrne tragic 'psycho' made this film way better, so it will only be a solid movie if you look at the storyline unexamined in the film.



Gentleman Broncos- Honestly, it's up there with some of the worst comedies I've witnessed, and if for that reason alone, it was worth watching. Sure, Sam Rockwell and Jermaine Clement have their moments, but what about the other hour and ten minutes of the film? I guess Jared Hess of 'Napolean Dynomite' fame wanted to leave that to the creepy mexican smiley kid and Stifler's mom. Terrible stuff, indeed. The funny thing is, if Hess tried to do a serious film about Plagiarism and the difficulties of loose adaptations to writers' works, this might have been an "ok" movie. But snake shit jokes are what he guffaws at, so I guess this film was destined for it's downfall.



Rare Exports- An interesting entertainment, but the premise was flimsy and kind of anti-american (Portraying us as money consuming frauds in desperate need of Santa for some reason), and there were way to many why? questions left in my brain by the end. For instance being that the child chooses to sacrifice himself in the end by jumping into an electric fenced up area so he can open the gates so Santa's helpers can follow him in and capture them. Who would shut the gate after he opened it to lead them in. Nobody? This is confusing. Also, the ending was confusing considering the fact that nobody is so desperate to pay $85,000 for a so called 'trained mall santa' that could go crazy at any moment. Really? What's your problem, Finland?



- Jeff Bassin

Friday July 22, 2011

The Rocketeer- Joe Johnston directs this film in the same way he directed 'Jurassic Park 3'. With humor and a great sense of both pace and adventure. The meta aspects of the ending where 'the bond guy' (who plays an actor) fights the main dude and states that he "does all his stunts" gave me something to think about and Jennifer Connelly is great in her role as the love interest. She doesn't do much in terms of acting, but everything she does do makes me like the really boring lead way more (a solid Alan Arkin comedic bit helps as well). It seems to me that in our day and age, we misuse her, since I've seen her play the "wife who gets cheated on" character in at least 2 or 3 films in the last couple of years (I exaggerate, it's 2: 'Little Children' and 'He's Just Not That Into You', but 'The Dilemma' really ought to count for something). Rethink, Hollywood.



Captain America: The First Avenger- Without planning on seeing this film today (being pretty much dragged by friends to pay for it since the can't go to free movie tuesday this week), I realized I would be celebrating Johnston's career by watching 2 of his films in one day. Sweet. And honestly, it's kind of tough to decide which was better. They both take place in that lovable WWII era, so they both look great, but clearly where 'The Rocketeer' slows down (less action, but then again, it is an older film), 'America' kicks into gear and doesn't slow down. It has humor, action, drama, and plenty of tragedy, and overall may be my favorite of the individual Avengers films. That means I may be calling you out, 'Iron Man'. Though its arguable and I may just be speaking out of after viewing jitters (since it's not all that original of a film, but it's hella fun). Evans' performance may not be as good as Downey Jr.'s, but then again, Jr.'s reinvigorated his career, so it's not exactly fair. Still, Evans does a fine job portraying the heroic and noble type and makes use of sweet time for Romantic banter with the gorgeous Hayley Atwell. Also, Hugo Weaving does a fine job as well, only, it's no Agent Smith, and it's really nothing memorable. Tommy Lee Jones and Stanley Tucci get some good comic lines, and the action sequences are fast paced and beautiful to look at. Especially all the mud and debris exploding in craters from the ground due to grenades. Also, there is something about blue explosions of light that look a little bit cooler than normal red ones. I even enjoyed the somewhat unfulfilling ending, though it kind of just seemed like poor setup for The Avengers flick.

- Jeff Bassin