Archive | movies RSS feed for this section

Down in the Valley

30 Sep

I wish I could review In the Valley of Elah fairly, but watching it was not a great experience.

That said, this is a very good movie.

Tommy Lee Jones gives a fantastic, Oscar-worthy performance as the father of an Army private who has disappeared after returning home from Iraq. It’s one of the best performances I’ve seen from him.

This is a more introspective character and his performance doesn’t require him to bark orders or chew scenery.

Instead, he’s often quite heartbreaking — particularly in his phone conversations with his wife, played by Susan Sarandon. Continue reading →

Thanks for Nothing

29 Sep

To the two women who brought their two young children to the 2:50 p.m. showing of In the Valley of Elah at the AMC Boston Common theater today …

You suck. You really, really, really suck.

Why do you suck? Do I really need to tell you? Continue reading →

Not Wild Enough

25 Sep

I remember when I first heard the story of Chris McCandless. It was in 1997 on an episode of 20/20, where there was a segment about author John Krakauer’s book Into the Wild. Something about McCandless fascinated me and I went out soon after to buy Krakauer’s book. I read it, too. McCandless tapped into my young, idealistic sense of adventure and wanting more out of life. Ten years later, there’s still a part of me that yearns for such excitement.

All that is my way of saying I was pretty excited to see Sean Penn’s Into the Wild movie, especially because the reviews have generally been very good. So I’m happy to report that the movie is good. Mostly. True to McCandless, it doesn’t pander and takes its time telling the story of how, following his 1992 graduation from Emory, McCandless cut up his credit cards, donated his savings to Oxfam, changed his name to Alexander Supertramp, and headed out on the road to, as Thoreau said, “live deliberately.” There’s a natural, organic feel to the 2.5-hour movie, and Penn really wants to pay tribute to someone he considered a kindred spirit. To that end, the film was shot in many of the same locations that McCandless journeyed to, and rather than raise questions about McCandless’ motives and psyche — as Krakauer’s book did a lot of — Penn clearly takes McCandless’ side and makes you sympathetic to the character. Penn also knows the affinity people feel for the book, and there are all sorts of reveals that seem to make readers excited, starting with when McCandless first stumbles upon the abandoned bus. (Amazingly, the tragic site has become a morbid tourist attraction for McCandless fans.) It helps that as McCandless, Emile Hirsch is generally very good, capturing the alternately wide-eyed and yet fearful young man. In supporting roles, Catherine Keener and Vince Vaughn are also very good.

But where Penn stumbles, and where he lost me, was with some of the filmmaking choices. I didn’t love how McCandless would every now and then look right into the camera. That didn’t seem true to the character or the film. I also didn’t like the multiple points of view. Between McCandless’ letters, his voiceovers, his sister’s voiceovers, etc., you either didn’t always know who was actually telling the story or were distracted from it. Why the film is broken into four “chapters” is unclear. Also, there were a couple scenes that could have been cut. And there’s one scene late in the movie where Hirsch’s performance is so lame that it damn near threatens to derail the whole momentum of the film. In fact, it’s so bad that when McCandless does finally die (no spoiler there), I wasn’t sure if I still felt the sympathy for him that I felt earlier.

So I think I’m going to call Into the Wild a little bit of a letdown. It’s still generally, mostly, a good film, but I can’t really give it a stronger grade than a B.

Killer Movie

8 Sep

If you’re looking for a man’s man movie, look no further than 3:10 to Yuma. A remake of an older movie (which I haven’t seen), Yuma tells the story of Dan Evans (Christian Bale), a down-on-his-luck rancher, who joins a team transporting convict Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) to the town of Contention, where Wade will board the 3:10 train headed to prison in Yuma, Arizona. Crowe is at his charming, but gruff, badass best, and Bale gives a fantastic performance as well. Ben Foster (Alpha Dog, X-Men: The Last Stand) plays a psychotic member of Wade’s gang, and he steals some scenes easily. Director James Mangold (Walk the Line) keeps the action moving, guns ablazing throughout, and doesn’t hold back on the testosterone. Sure, this is a western, but don’t call it classic style; the characters curse and speak like they are modern-day western characters. And speaking of testosterone, there are just two women in this movie. Between them, they have about 15 minutes of screen time — total. Yuma may just end up being one of my favorite movies of the year. I’m giving it an A-.

Hey Jude, You Made It Bad

5 Sep

Is there anybody going to listen to my story, all about the film I saw today … ? (Or Wednesday night, to be more exact.) Across the Universe is director Julie Taymor’s strange, strange movie set to the music of the Beatles (33 songs in all). To cut to the chase, it’s a mess. A truly bizarre, unnecessary mess of a movie. Often it takes the really easy way to a cliche; for example, the lead characters are named Jude and Lucy, and there’s another one named Prudence. Yes, this means you’ll hear “Hey Jude” and “Dear Prudence” during the film. (Mercifully, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” is saved for the end credits.) “Let It Be” is recast as a gospel song and sung during race riots and a funeral. And worse, “With a Little Help from My Friends” is sung by a bunch of drunk college students. The film goes from strange to stranger. And then Bono shows up to sing “I Am the Walrus,” followed by Eddie Izzard singing “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite.” And it’s a long movie too (more than two hours). Sure, the songs are good, but they’re not always the right fit and too often they feel forced into the story. I laughed out loud during “Revolution.” And I didn’t ever really buy that Evan Rachel Wood was doing her own singing. (On the other hand, Jim Sturgess, who plays Jude, makes a decent impression. And T.V. Carpio’s version of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” is tender and sweet.) Can’t say anything really makes Universe worth seeing. Nothing’s gonna change my world, not least of all this movie. I’m giving it a D.

Bah Humbug

17 Aug

Jeez … someone forgot to put sugar in Virginia Heffernan’s coffee this morning — or rather, whenever it was that she watched High School Musical 2 and wrote her review for The New York Times.

Of the movie, she writes that there’s “so much to hate. Just search the bottom of your shriveled little sunless heart. You’ll figure it out. The widespread pressure to embrace the experience as kitsch only twists the knife. This is supposed to be the time of your life, and yet — oh brother. Just like high school. Just like a musical.”

She criticizes the bad lip-synching, the tanned skin (mind you, the movie takes place in the summer), the dancing … she just really didn’t like it. And yet, she ends her review this way: “The movie is mediocre, and should be skipped. But I can’t wait to buy the soundtrack and do the karaoke.”

So at least she doesn’t have a heart completely full of coal. Continue reading →

Calling All Nannies!

16 Aug

I received a press release from the Weinstein Company this afternoon alerting me that to promote the new movie The Nanny Diaries, which hits theaters next Friday (8/24), companies around the country have banded together to create Nanny Week, and to offer special discounts to those who toil each day supervising children. How nice, right? Well, the cool thing is, why limit the promotion to just those few people? So the coupons — which are good at places like Baskin-Robbins, Blockbuster, and Victoria’s Secret — are available to anyone, no proof of child supervision required. Click here to check it out. The promotion and coupons are only good from tomorrow (8/17) to next Friday, so don’t wait too long to take advantage. Enjoy!

Geek City

14 Aug

As the saying goes, If You Lived Here, You’d Be Blogging Right Now. I read in the Boston Globe this morning that according to the Web site Outsidein.com, Boston is the bloggiest city in the country, with 89 posts per 100,000 residents recorded in March and April of this year. Good for us. I guess we have a lot to say. But it brings up an interesting question: what was I saying back then? Let’s take a trip in the wayback machine, shall we?

Ahh, March and April. Those were the good ole days of Haley Scarnato. When Dice-K was just bad, not quite awful yet. Back then I was listening to Amy Winehouse and making fun of Best Buy (how times have changed). There were good movies and not-so-good ones. Ah yes, March and April. Those were good times. No wonder I was blogging so much. And to think, we only had one more post than the greater Philadelphia area. I wonder if they counted this one or this one. Either way, I say Ha! Take that, Philly! (And yes, that was said with all due sarcasm.)

Welcome to P-Town

12 Aug

It’s really a shame that Talk to Me hasn’t found a bigger audience this summer, but I guess it’s not really too surprising. After all, how can a bio-pic about a Black radio DJ compete with the action of The Bourne Ultimatum or the humor of Superbad? The answer is it should have, because while Talk to Me might not have explosions, it does have an explosive performance by the always reliable Don Cheadle, making this the second great one he’s turned in this year (the other being Reign Over Me).

As noted, Talk to Me tells the story of Petey Greene, an ex-con who worked for a time at Washington, D.C. radio station WOL and became a hero in the urban community for discussing life in an uncensored, unvarnished style — basically telling it like it is. The film describes how Greene initially unsettled his white bosses, but ultimately earned a regular gig when he calmed his listeners following Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. It then shows how Greene became a media sensation with stand-up comedy gigs and a regular television show. (Here is a famous clip where Greene described the “proper” way to eat watermelon.)

But the film is more than that, and really, at its core, it concerns the relationship between Greene and his boss/manager/friend, Dewey Hughes (Chiwetel Ejiofor), two Black men coming from different places and points of view. While Greene is a product of the streets and sees himself as a real Black man, he views Hughes as simply a white man with a tan because he has assimilated into the establishment. Hughes views Johnny Carson as a hero, and he tries to make Greene more like him. But more importantly, the two men share a tight bond: one says what the other wants to say, and the other needs the other to say what he wants to say. Ejiofor (Love Actually, Children of Men) paints a sympathetic portrait of Hughes, and portrays him as a seeming polar opposite of the more raucous Greene. It’s a very good performance.

Talk to Me isn’t perfect entertainment; it feels longer than its two-hour running time and were it not for the Hughes-Greene dynamic, it’d be a pretty standard-issue film, with a plot similar in nature to Good Morning Vietnam. But Cheadle, as always, makes the movie worth seeing, and he’s also supported by Cedric the Entertainer, as another DJ at the station, and Taraji P. Henson (Hustle & Flow), who brings laughs and excitement to her role as Greene’s girlfriend. If you can still find it in a theater near you, I’d say the movie’s worth seeing. I’m going to give it a strong B.

Brokeback Entourage?

12 Aug

If you’re as big a fan of the TV show Entourage as I am, you know this video is complete fiction and totally ironic. It’s also really good and very funny. It’s perfectly edited, and uses the Brokeback music so well that you might think this is actually what the show is about. And it’s better than this version, about two different characters on the show. Have a watch.

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →