Alright, fine. I'll jump on the bandwagon, too. I hate Leonardo DiCaprio. I mean hate enough to bury him under a pile of hybrid vehicles. I loved this movie. The last movie I bought was a DVD copy of Blazing Saddles because my VHS tape had worn out. I'm buying a copy of this one.
The first 2010 movie I have watched was.... Inception Nolan's best movie yet. The action, pacing, and excitement was brilliant and amazing. There are weaknesses to the film, but as a pure action movie, it's very close perfect. I'm especially impressed with how Nolan has impressed in shooting action scenes; from the God-awful shaky cam garbage to the "Batman Begins" to the outstanding detail and mesmerizing choreography in this one. The acting was good (even fucking Ellen Page), but frankly, it didn't need to be; the characters were all relatively boring and not outstanding. That injection of humor was great, and elevated the film even higher. There are a lot of other things, including the weaknesses, but I'll save that for the main thread. A true action masterpiece, and a definite must see. 86/100
Salt I have to disagree with Chater and expound on this movie's faults. What a giant, messy abortion of a movie. I thought for sure we were at the 2 1/2 hour mark when I looked over at my friend and she said that it was only an hour and a half. The pacing was completely wrong. It felt to me like they were stretching it out for no good reason, as if the whole movie could have been done in a MOTW sort of thing with time to spare for commercials. The plot was obvious about 20 minutes in and that is being generous. All of the good action was sacrificed for the trailer to get you there. One of the most far fetched action scenes involved Spoiler Angelina jumping from not one truck trailer but two. Seconded only by the scene when she'd apparently shot the Russian president and escaped from custody because the cops cuffed her hands in front of her. After which she piloted the vehicle from the back seat by using a taser at different settings to engage the drivers foot. WTF. Really? Then there was the preface to a scene where I leaned over and said to my friend Spoiler If this bitch has on a mask and then peels it off like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, I'm going to shit myself Followed by her saying, I hope you wore your diaper this time. (Yeah, I put that there so you'd wonder what I put in spoiler tags) The lines in the movie were awful. I kept saying "Who the fuck wrote this?" After we walked out of the movie I had trouble speaking as did my friend. Why you ask? I was dumbfounded and honestly dumber for the experience. Its like they took everything cool about the action movies over the past few years, plagiarized them yet afraid of comparison and someone saying "Wait, didn't we see this in XYZ movie?" decided on changing all that was cool in the first place. There was one cool scene. If you choose to rent this flick to see Angelina (who needs a fucking cheesburger) because staring at her lips produces instant chub I won't ruin it for you. I'll say this - Never thought of using that as a silencer. I shit you not, Liev must have had rent due.
Dinner for Schmucks Went and saw this tonight. I was really expecting a hilarious movie. I thought it was ok, Steve Carell and Zach Galifigonsnufalufagus just get to be a bit much at times in my opinion even though I do like both as funny actors. There's numerous chuckles throughout but nothing gut wrenching like I would expect from either of these guys. There's also the love story aspect I wasn't expecting and that lamed it down a little bit also.
Dinner for Shmucks It was really really watchable. At no point was I really into the movie but I also was never checking my watch waiting for it to end. I had heard that a large portion of the movie was improvised, which definitely explains some of the scenes that don't really go anywhere and the pointless dialogue. The 16-year-olds that packed the theater really seemed to enjoy it, though (including the large black guy in the front row that announced "that's messed up" at the climax of every scene). Spoiler The main issue I had was that they titled the movie "Dinner for Shmucks" and the entire movie is building up to this final dinner, but by the time they actually get to the dinner the movie has made you feel like such a shitty person for wanting to laugh at these misfortunate people. And don't worry about the Jeff Dunham cameo. He's not on screen long enough to ruin the movie and looks enough like Jason Sudeikis to pretend he isn't there.
Animal Kingdom The majority of Australian films are terrible. Animal Kingdom is not one of them. Firstly the ensemble cast is excellent throughout. Jacki Weaver does a good job as the matriarchal head of a family of legitimate psychopaths. There is a subtext of an incestuous relationship between the mother and her sons. The film is slow paced, however at no times is it ever self indulgent. The tension is nail biting throughout and we see a family being destroyed by its own hubris. Highly recommended. Final Score: 84/100
Dinner for Schmucks I came in with high hopes for this movie, and was neither disappointed or overly satisfied. Steve Carrel carried pretty much the weight of the movie. I'm a fan of Paul Rudd as well but he just didn't do much for the film here, although it was nice to see him with another hot actress playing his girlfriend. There were some good laughs but nothing fall on the floor funny either. The pace of the movie seemed a little off, by the time the final dinner scene came I felt like all the big laugh set ups were already used. C+
Dinner for Schmucks - I felt envious of the people who had the resolve to say to themselves "I'm giving up" and walked out of the theater. There were a few times where I laughed but they were so interspersed amongst a formulaic plot and terrible pacing that I think it made the experience worse than if the movie had no funny moments at all. Typical annoying guy messes up straight guy's life comedy. And the damn dinner was only about 10 minutes of the entire movie. 3 out of 10 Scott Pilgrim vs the World - Just saw this tonight. I like Michael Cera but he plays the same kind of guy in every movie, including this one. Nevertheless, it was pretty cool seeing him kick ass and also get the crap kicked out of him at times. This movie had a decent amount of action, some great sight-gags and plenty of witty dialogue. If you grew up playing video games, you'll appreciate a lot of the humorous references scattered throughout the film. 8 out of 10
Guess I should have stuck with only watching a single 2010 movie before the release of "The Expendables"; Get Him to the Greek (2010) One of the worst fucking abortions I have ever seen. No jokes, just endless, monotonous pop culture references and cameos, plus a litany of generic, semi-funny cliches done to death in thousands of much funnier movies. ("Pussy-whipped, timid guy", "brash, foul-mouthed record exec"). Not to be outdone, the script features some of the lamest, most pathetic dialogue of any movie ever made. Painful to even sit through; I left the movie theater after the first half hour. (Which, according to my friends, was actually the good part; it gets much worse later) It was only 3 dollars at the local movie theater, but I still feel like I was mugged. 9/100
Last night I DVRed I Hope they Serve Beer in Hell and watched it for the first time. I had heard previous reviews but went into it open-minded. I found the book really surprisingly funny, actually, and I thought that it could translate well onto the screen. I really, really don't understand what happened. I mean I was actually analyzing the movie about halfway through going "why isn't this funny?" and it was just really hard to put my finger on it. The script itself had a lot of potentially funny dialogue in it. Realistic scenes of guys busting on each other can be the funniest shit in the world. I think they were going for this vibe in the recent Grown-Ups but it really, really didn't work there. In Grown-Ups, the guys will all be hanging out together and talking about something reasonable, and all of a sudden one of the guys will just throw in a "Yeah well your mom's ass is gigantic!" or some shit like that and then...silence. The line isn't even clever or contextual, it's just non-sequitur. It's just uncomfortable, it's like watching somebody with Tourette's have an uncontrollable outburst. Didn't work for me. Yet this movie, with better lines, was not doing it for me either. It wasn't any one thing. I think it was a combination of delivery (nobody was really 'selling' the lines) and a major lack of reaction by the other characters. When guys are busting on each other, it's not funny unless 1) the guys not being busted on are encouraging it and 2) the other guy is busting back. Otherwise, it's like watching a tennis game between John McEnroe and Stephen Hawking - one sided, not very entertaining, and just a little sad. The other issue with this was when the characters were busting on the chicks in the film. That can also be funny, but you have to do it just right. Similar to the guys, the girls have to react somehow - acting especially indignant, shooting back, or showing shame (i.e., the busting was cleverly insightful in some way). None of this happened. They just sort of stood there and were like "that's a terrible thing to say, why would you say that?" And again...crickets. The reason insult comedy is funny is because there is an audience there who is being entertained by the insult. If Don Rickles makes fun of your hairstyle in a comedy club, everybody laughs and it's funny. If Don Rickles tells you that your wife is a real butterface while you're alone together eating dinner, that's just mean. In this sense, the only decent interactions were between Joey from Hackers and the stripper character, because the stripper had a personality and shot back at him. However, not two minutes after she started this, he turns from over-the-top militant he-man woman-hater to total pussified bitch, because I guess they thought women would enjoy this? "Aww, the character is a misogynist with a heart of gold, how sweet!" What the fuck? Did not play at all. Two counterexamples of how to make this work. Number one: Jeremy Piven's character from PCU. Piven busts on all the vegans and protesters and shit and it's funny because 1) he's doing it to entertain the other guys in the frat, who are around, and 2) because he is calling them out on legitimate bullshit. Number two: one of my favorite movies of all time, Real Genius. Real Genius has this wonderful conceit in the script, that despite the movie being all about these prototypical male nerd supergeniuses, every female character in the movie is smarter and more quick-witted than the males, and also less insecure about it. When Val Kilmer thinks he will easily con the hot defense contractor's daughter into sleeping with him, this exchange occurs: Hot daughter (matter-of-factly): "Can you hammer a six-inch spike through a board with your penis?" Kilmer (taken aback): "...not right now." Hot daughter: "Girl's gotta have her standards." I guess my point is, if the premise of your humor is going to be one character busting on another, there has to be a challenge and an audience involved. The other character has to try to defend themselves in some way, and there has to be something at stake (the favor of the audience). Without this, there is no funny. What's amazing is how subtle this is, and how hard this must be to fabricate and still make it look natural. The same exact dialogue in the script, with some additional banter, better delivery, and more reactions, might be uproariously funny, but if you don't get it just right, it falls apart. I imagine that for the director, caught up in trying to make the movie and do the other 10,000 things that you have to do as a director, it might be hard to objectively evaluate whether you've caught 'funny' on the film or not. You've heard the joke 20 times and filmed it 10, you probably can very easily lose perspective on whether something is actually funny or not. As noted above, the blatant turns in the storyline to attempt to inject "heart" into the movie fell flat for me, even though they were formulaic and have worked (in these same formulas) umpteen times before. I understand that the Tucker character was trying to be portrayed as the bad-boy that everybody loves to hate, throwing out insults with a wink and a smile. Except he didn't wink, and he didn't smile, and when he did there was nobody around to see him do it. At the end, you've got this character that's basically an unrepentant jackass who suddenly makes this grand out-of-character speech and everybody loves him. The implication is that everybody loves him again, but there is no evidence that anyone should have ever loved him at all. This is a stock character arc, but it's missing something: since we never learn anything about the character's motivations, his behavior just comes off as confusing. The Joey from Hackers character is another stock character in these movies: the curmudgeon with a heart of gold. If you want to see how to make this work on a grand scale, just watch seasons 1-6 of House. It is tough to pull this off believably and this is why House is one of my favorite shows of all time: Hugh Laurie (and the writers) manage to create a character who is gruff-as-can-be on the outside, but who clearly has a deep internal struggle between humanization and losing his edge. Joey, as noted above, is one-dimensional as they come right up until he meets the stripper with a kid, then transitions instantly and inexplicably into the best stripper-boyfriend/adoptive-father-figure character in history. It's like Cargo Cult Moviemaking: you know that the audience is supposed to sympathize with the curmudgeon when he comes out of his shell and softens up, but you don't understand all the subtlety in how you have to portray that to make it work. So you just soften him up and assume the audience will follow along. They don't. The suffering everyman character (Generic Dan or whatever his name was that was getting married) is another stock character in these movies. How many times have we seen the groom-to-be who, led astray by his friends, arrives beaten and broken minutes before the wedding? Honestly, I have never seen a character in this role who was used as more than a plot device, and that rule certainly isn't broken by this movie. Just once I'd like to see that character take an active role in one of these movies. Overall I guess I was disappointed because while the individual components were there to make a funny (if formulaic) movie, they did not congeal into a whole. I was surprised at how much I had to mentally deconstruct the movie to figure out why I didn't enjoy it. Was it the script? Not really. Terrible acting? It wasn't that bad. Unbelievable plot? I dunno, it's the same plot that's worked in dozens of other movies. It wasn't any one thing, it was the details of all these things, and how they interacted, that sunk this ship. Too bad, too.
The Expendables. Very weird dialogue at times and it could have been 15 minutes shorter. But the final action scene alone was worth the admission. And god damn Dolph Lundgren is a shit actor.
Restrepo Excellent documentary about a platoon of American soldiers deployed in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan. It gets pretty intense at time and showcases the emotions and frustrations of the soldiers very well. I would definitely recommend it.
Watched The Girl who Played with Fire earlier today. I had a mind spitting head ache all day so I might have a missed a couple things, but overall I enjoyed it. Going in I didn't know it was a sequel either, but all the necessary back story seemed well covered so I doubt it was a problem. I remember in another thread people were discussing that strong female leads are virtually absent in hollywood. If that's what you're looking for this would be a good film to start (and of course this is foreign made). The movie had some decent dark humor, and the lead roles nailed their parts, but the 'action' almost ruined this movie for me. Spoiler The entire scene where the barn was lit on fire was retarded. Especially the flying knee to the face. Later on, I don't think they ever explain how Lisbeth survives being buried alive all night. I can buy surviving the gun shots. You can get hit in the side of the head, bleed like a stuck pig, and walk away from it. It was dark out so maybe Zalachenko couldn't see the wound very well. Maybe he got a little sloppy. Loose explanation, but I can deal with it. Rising from a grave after being under several hours? Not so much. Plus, she's able to swing an axe at her father, but can't raise the gun high enough to shoot until Mr. rare genetic disorder slips out of the shed. Lame. It might have been the most disturbing film I've seen since Old Boy. It has good pacing though, reveals information at the right moments, and is fairly unpredictable. Not great, but probably better than most stuff in theaters right now. 7/10
Scott Pilgrim vs the World: Alright, this movie isn't for everyone, point conceeded. It's over the top, full of referential (mostly to video games though to lesser extent comics) humour, and Michael Cera continues to play mostly the same role, though he actually has balls in a few scenes. It's also very obviously targeted at the young-20 something crowd more than anything else. That said the dialogue is fucking hilarious, the rediculous action scenes are awesome, and it flows really well. The music the bands play in the movie was all done by Beck and Metric, while the score was done by Nigel Godrich (google is seriously blocked at my work, so no I'm not sure how to spell his name) - it's really sound musically. Wallace (Kieran Culkin) - Michael Cera's gay roommate - absolutely steals every scene he's in and it's totally worth it just for his one-liners. I forget where I read it but the best way to think of this movie is like a musical, but instead of music there's over the top action sequences. And it's awesome.
Haven't watched it, but here is what my friend wrote me; "Everything you said was right - the bad lead characters, the bad trailer, the bad source material. I think all of that contributed to the movie's dismal financial performance. I mean, Michael Cera and that other chick are as bad as always. However, there are some really, really funny jokes in this one, and most of them aren't in the trailers! On top of that, the fight scenes were nicely done, and the visual style was neat (if a bit overdone at times). On the downside, the character of Ramona was extremely boring, the last half hour lost some steam, and the story's overall message is somewhat iffy. All in all, great movie - my favorite of the year so far." So yeah, he loved it. Might be worth a shot when it comes to my local $3 theater.
Hands down worst part of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, this bitch. Someone please stop giving her parts. All in all I thought the movie was cute, the art style was something new, and the whole overacting tongue in cheek thing was kinda funny. It definitely did drag on for a while though, they could have managed the pacing better. I don't know shit about movies but I'd say 7.5/10
Winter's Bone Just saw this tonight, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's all about the "political" intrigue within the inbred meth cookers of the Ozarks, and the incredibly strong 17 year old girl who is forced to confront and deal with it in the search for her father. If you need CGI in your movies, pass it by. But if you enjoy solid storytelling and character development, this might be for you. I'd give it a solid 9/10
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World I took my daughters, 16 and 12, to see it yesterday. My oldest liked it, me and the 12 yo, not so much. I felt like I needed to take a shower afterwards to wash the stupid off. A few good laughs, sure (as noted, the Wallace character and some of the inserted text), but overall, it made my hair hurt it was so painful to watch. After fighting the first 2 evil exes, my youngest turned to me and said, "We actually have to sit through 5 more?" Thankfully, it was a weekday matinee and only cost $4/ticket. Recommended only if you have a teenage daughter. Or are dating one.