I’ve been catching up on movies the past month or so, thanks to Netflix, so I’m just going to give a few thumbnails of a couple of the movies I’ve watched. We’ll use the traditional 4 stars nonsense, as well.
Splice: I rather enjoyed this. It’s not quite what I expected…in many ways, the monsters are the scientist protagonists that create this chimera that is part human (Dren) in an effort to make a new drug product. The woman they make grows at a remarkable rate (’cause all test-tube monsters grow at the speed of plot), is intelligent, vicious, but surprisingly sympathetic due to the actress’ performance. The female scientist has an abused background and she finds herself applying some of the same controlling methods to Dren. The ending is a bit of the usual creature-goes-rogue stuff you’d expect but the performances are good, and the weird child abuse vibe really takes this a cut above. 2.5-3 stars
Iron Man 2: A bit less focused than the original, but it cracks along, Robert Downey Jr. does Robert Downey Jr., and there’s a nice libertarian vibe to the movie I really liked. 4 stars.
Public Enemies: How you can take the story of John DIllinger and make it boring is a challenge, but Michael Mann rose to it. Uninspired performances, slow pacing, but good art, set ,and costume direction and it’s pretty solidly historically. Did I mention boring? 2 stars.
The Road: A movie so dark, slow, and uninteresting I turned it off after 30 minutes. If I want a reason to snuff myself, I’ll listen to The Wall in the dark with a gun after drinking heavily. Can’t rate it, because I didn’t finish it.
Funny People: Judd Apatow takes on the world of stand-up comedians and fame. Adam Sandler turns in a superb performance as a comedian who is dying and tries to atone for being a tremendous dick. While there’s a lot of funny moments — it’s a serious downer. Fame sucks, you have no real friends, and your competition/friends will stab you in the back. It’s also a good hour too long. It’s good, don’t get me wrong…just waaaaay too long. 2.5 stars.
eXistenz: Cronenberg takes on virtual reality with his usual biological creepiness. It’s slow, a bit muddled, and while it would have been a bit more interesting ten years ago, it doesn’t do the “life is a simulation” idea as well as The Matrix or Inception, and nowhere near as well as Ghost in the Shell 2. 2 stars.
Shopgirl: The novella was poignant and charming…so’s the movie. Love story between a lonely older man and a young shop girl who is lonely. She thinks it’s a real love affair, he’s using her to salve his loneliness. Interesting performance by Steve Martin. 3 stars.
Extraordinary Measures: Based on a true story (allegedly), Brendan Fraser’s kids have a rare disease and are going to snuff it any day. Harrison Ford is an annoying academic working on the most promising cure. Fraser puts together a foundation to fund the scientist, gets a pharmaceutical company to sign onto their work which is then coopted. Good performance by Fraser, Ford is Ford (so good), and the story is a gutwrencher if you have kids. No big surprises, plot-wise. 2.5-3 stars.
The American: I went on a lone assassin gets a conscience kick and brings his employers down on his head. (Le Samourai, Eastern Promises, Ghost Dog) so this is pretty much the same story, but set in gorgeous southern Italy. I’m not a huge Clooney fan, but he’s bloody good in this. 4 stars.
Run, Fat Boy, Run: Simon Pegg plays his usual likable loser who leaves his pregnant girlfriend at the altar. Five years later, he’s still stuckin a rut, but her new American boyfriend inspires him (out of spite) to run a marathon in London, competing with the new beau. Hank Azara does a good slow burn as we discover the kinda cool guy is actually a dick. We don’t get the full happy ending, but we get close. Fun fluff. 3 stars ’cause I like Pegg.
The Expendables: Put a whole bunch of action stars from the last 30 years together in a movie, pull a script from 1987 and update it by shooting it with modern action camera techniques, and give a few of the guys a touching scene to show they can act. Shake vigorously. There you go. Dumb fun that, if you grew up on this sort of action pic, will get you all wistful for Contras and Soviet existential evil. 2.5 stars if you’ve never seen Commando or Red Heat and said “I need this on VHS”, 3 stars if you did and bought them.
Scott Pilgrin vs. the World: I’m not read the comic, and now I want to. Yeah, Cera plays his usual affable geek, but it works here. The same director from Shawn of the Dead brings a great mash-up of video game and comic book tropes and gags that really work here. Boy has girl, dumps girl for mysterious hot girl that has a bunch of evil boyfriends he must fight, boy loses cool girl, fights to get her back, realizes the geek girl was cool, too…aw, just see it. Really! Chris Evans and Brandon Routh are great in their evil exes roles. 3.5 stars.
30 Days of Night: No friggin’ emo pussy vampires talking about their feelings and getting angsty about their vampirism. No sexy vampires. These bastards are fast, vicious pack animals and that portrayal, mixed with the dark, isolated setting of Barrow, Alaska real works. I wasn’t expecting the hero’s tactic for “winning”. Ben Foster doesn’t come off gay. 3 stars
Faster: The Rock Dwayne Johnson (met him before he was the Rock; nice guy) plays an ex-con that was the victim of a rip-off by another crew. He gets out and over 5 days hunts them down. Standard fare save for the secondary characters that are all very intersting in a way the lead is not. Johnson shows a bit of acting ability here and there, Billy Bob Thornton is good, Carla Guigino isn’t doing sexy. There’s a seedy doper cop (BBT), a perfectionist assassin out to stop the Rock Johnson who is fun (and I suspect trained by the same acting coach as Clive Owen.) It’s not as fast-paced as the title would suggest, tries to be a bit deeper than the usual action pic, doesn’t quite pull it off. But I really kinda liked it. 2.5 stars.
Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story: Set against his Sexie stand up tour, we find out he was born in Aden, raised in Ireland until he was eightish, his mom dies, he’s in boarding school, and then spends 12 years or so busting his ass to be an overnight success. He’s a touch, stubborn bugger from the look of him, crossdressing or no. 3 stars.
The Crazies: Remake of a George Romero zombie movie where the people aren’t really zombies. A government plane goes down and infects a small Midwestern town with a biotoxin that drives them nutty. Timothy Oliphant is not creepy or a bad guy in this; he’s the town sheriff trying to figure out what’s going on, then rescue his friends when the Army inevitably comes in and experiments/kill off the town’s people to contain the event. You’ve seen this movie before…it’s still done pretty well. 2 stars if you think everything Romero does can’t be topped, 3 for the rest of us.
Ondine: An Irish fisherman (Colin Farrell) discovers a girl in his nets. His handicapped daughter thinks she’s a selkie…is she a sea creature? Is she not? It’s a charming movie and very well acted. See it. 4 stars
The Black Campbell 