October

Quick breakdown of October (would have done September but September’s movie lineup blew pretty much all month)

Movies That Have My Approval To Go Watch:

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist – great acting duo starring in a film taking place in one night of insanity, comedy & probably some romance. Hope it blows people away.

City Of Embers – not a lot is known about the film or its quality but if you watch the trailer and read the synopsis and look at the cast lineup I think you will be interested in it just like me.

Max Payne – I already gave my view on this film. I am really rooting for it being the first video game based film that actually makes it.

Rocknrolla – Guy Ritchie at the helm, an all-star cast, Gerard Butler leading the way, what else do I have to say?

Movies That If You See Will Be A Waste Of Your Money

How To Lose Friends And Alienate People – I love Simon Pegg but the trailer looks moronic, the writer is a nobody and its already gotten some rotten early reviews.

The Express – Because we all were of course thinking that we need yet another inspirational football film based on a true story. I know I was (not).

Saw V – I don’t think I need to explain myself on this one

Movies That I Will Need To See Because Of The Cinesnob In Me But Don’t Necessarily Want To Because I Am Still In Fanboy Mode From The Summer:

Blindness, Flash of Genius, Body of Lies & W.

Upcoming: Twilight (2008)

There are two films set to come out in the next year that I have had the pleasure of reading the books before the release of their film adaptations. The first being Watchmen which everyone by now should know is the movie I am anticipating the most in 2009. The second is film called “Twilight” which is based off the first book of a series created by the author Stephenie Meyer. I saw the teaser trailer for this film a few months back and then saw an interview with the author on a morning news show and it intrigued me. A lot of the same things were being said about her series of novels that were said during the early days of Harry Potter. People of all ages were enjoying them, the books are a huge success worldwide and the movie was making a lot of buzz in the world of film and literature. This intrigued me. Then I found out the book is based around a family of vampires. That was the selling point to get me completely interested in it.

So, as I was saying, I read the book. Finished it today actually. I just watched the trailer again and am now very much counting down the days to its release on the 21st of November. However, a few things are bothering me about the production part of the film. For starters it is being directed by a nearly no-name director whose career peaked in 99′ with “Three Kings” and hasn’t done any better since. The cast is also a bunch of B-listers, the most well known being Robert Pattinson who is playing Edward Cullen and he is only well known for playing Cedric Diggory in The Goblet of Fire. The production crew isn’t even sporting any popular names by anybodies standards either.

But, I am going to remain optimistic and hope that it doesn’t disappoint come Thanksgiving time. Few things better in films than a good vampire film for me.

Review: Burn After Reading

I believe I have come to an understanding of the film making process of the Coen Brothers. The Coen Brothers write, direct and produce their films for an audience of two. The two being Ethan Coen & Joel Coen. If the rest of the world happens to enjoy the film I am sure it is a plus to their feeling of success. Otherwise, as long as they enjoy the film it is still a success.

Burn After Reading is the second movie this year that has had the privelege of completely surprising me from what I believed the movie to be from the trailers. The other film being “Hancock” which is one of a couple dozen movies I have watched since my last post that I have yet to review on this blog (my bad). It is my own fault for thinking that I will understand a Coen Brothers film straight off the bat from just watching the trailers. Burn After Reading is a stark contrast to the Brothers’ last film, No Country For Old Men. Burn After Reading is a dark comedy with sick irony and not a lot of clarity to the plotline until the very end. NOCFOM was just plain dark and we’ll leave it at that.

The performances by the actors were pretty spot on and the dialogue was in the usual Coen-esque format (lots of repeated phrases, plenty of swearing and loads of witty one-liners). There was of course some pretty graphic violence (not nearly as much as NOCFOM though). About halfway through the film I was pretty pissed at the overall pace of the film and by 3/4 I still wasn’t very pleased. The finale did close it all together pretty well and pick up in speed but I feel even for a Coen Bros’ film they were pushing the envelope for the audience’s ability to stay attentive and enjoy the ride of the film.

If I were to score it overall it would probably fall in the low 80’s percential. I couldn’t help but feel that the movie was driven by both the fact that the cast was a bunch of all stars and the film was created by two guys who already have a healthy report with Hollywood. If the same film had been made by a nobody with some B list actors giving the same performances it probably would have tanked after the first weekend.

Summer Is Ending

Normally at this point in the year most people get post-Summer blockbuster withdrawls and count the days to the Winter Oscar films that start coming out in December. I, on the other hand, am getting very excited about a lot of the films lined up to be Fall releases this year. Here is a list of some of the big ones sticking out to me:

Batman 3 Poster?

Not really, seeing as how neither Christopher Nolan nor Christian Bale have decided on whether or not they will be a part of the next one. But it still is a pretty bitchin’ fan poster hoping for some Riddler action in the next one.

Someone Stop Michael Bay

Or else I am going to have to look up “Assassin” in the yellowpages myself. Michael Bay, the king of explosions, special effects and black hawk helicopter shots set to drum roll soundtracks, is producing three remakes of three classic horror films. The first of which is Friday The 13th. I know what you are thinking, “Aren’t there are already 12 films from that series? Why would anyone need to add one more?” Well, you are wrong, there are only 11 Friday The 13th films so we’re all good. Mr. Bay can go ahead and remake his little horror flick with my approval. Seriously, someone needs to give him some fireworks to go play with before he hurts himself and any other film genres.

Just in case you were wondering, he is also producing the remakes for Nightmare On Elm Street & The Birds (thats right, he is taking on Hitchcock).

Review: The Dark Knight (spoiler warning)

Seeing as how TDK is ranking #1 on the current IMDB Top 250 list, it broke three records on its first day ($18.5 million on its midnight showing, $66 million on its first day & 4300 screens across the U.S.) & Rotten Tomatoes has it at a solid 94% approval rating I really don’t think my opinion is anything more than white noise at this point. Nevertheless, I will give my ideas on why I think it is doing so well.

They Need Each Other

In the comic books there has always been this yin yang balance between Batman and Joker that goes deeper than any other hero & archenemy relationship in history. Neither will ever be able to kill the other and yet both wish the world would be rid of the other. Batman is held by a moral code to not kill & the Joker insanely enjoys his battles with Batman way too much to kill him. The Dark Knight is the first Batman film to finally tackle this complex relationship and succeed with flying colors.

Secret Identities

Something that comic book movies have always tried to shy away from is the preplexing question of why no one is ever able to figure out the secret identities of super heroes. The Dark Knight in its own subtle way includes this issue in the film and integrates it into the storyline with near perfection. In fact, Morgan Freeman’s character, Lucious Fox, gives one of the best lines in the movie when Mr. Reese, one of the accountants at Wayne Corp, unveils that he has figured out Bruce’s secret identity and threatens him with the information. “He sneaks out at night and beats people up… and you want to blackmail him?”

Real Tech

A theme that Christopher Nolan explored in his first Batman film continues in this one and adds onto it even more. Early on Nolan decided to give Batman some legitimacy to his gadgets and weapons by basing them all in real technology that has been developed by Wayne Corp but had never gone into full production due to setbacks or financial problems. TDK keeps this idea going with all of the new gadgets used by Batman throughout the film. An element in the story that changes it from being a melodramatic characature flick into a true crime saga with real depth.

Heath Ledger

All I could think of at the end of the film, when the Joker gives his final monlogue while hanging upside down from Batman’s grappling hook wire is that this amazing performance is not the beginning of a rising star’s soon to be stellar career. Instead it is the final curtain call for a performer who was taken before he could truly be seen for his outstanding genius and talent he had to offer the movie industry. Heath Ledger gave, in my opinion, the best comic book character performance any one has seen since Christopher Reeves (maybe even better than him even) and if he is indeed nominated for an oscar in 2009 he will not deserve it out of pity for his death but will instead deserve it for what it really was. A brilliant masterpiece that will stand out for years to come in the cinema history books.

There it is. Now, go see TDK are else pretty soon you will be the only person in America who hasn’t.

Watchmen Trailer

Not even joking, I got chills watching this trailer that was just released for the upcoming Watchmen movie.

It looks from the trailer that everything is being kept pretty close to how it is in the original graphic novel. Doctor Manhattan looks friggin sweet. There even some shots from the trailer that look as though they are direct remakes of stills from the novel, something Snyder did a lot with 300. The thing I am really curious about is seeing how snyder and his writers managed to pack some an in depth story into a respectabel feature length film timeframe. Hopefully nothing too iconic or important from the novel got cut in order to shorten the runtime. We’ll see next March.

Review: Wall-E

First came Toy Story, a masterpiece in a class of its own. Then came Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monster’s Inc., Finding Nemo & The Incredibles. All great additions to the Pixar family, all standalone blockbuster hits. Then came Cars, the first letdown from the guys at Pixar as far as I am concerned. Then after that came Ratatouille. Somewhat of an improvement from Cars but a letdown nonetheless from the quality we had all become accustomed to coming from the Pixar family. Now there is Wall-E, the great redeemer.
A read an article on Wall-E the other day and I think the author put it best when he said Pixar gained its fame from creating movies that had two strong elements. They all were spectacular achievements in 3-D animation technology and they all had stories and characters that will stand the test of time. Unfortunately, as time went on the spectacle side become more and more common in other films and with other production companies so Pixar was left with being challenged to make their stories stand out even more. In my opinion, Wall-E is their first achievement at actually accomplishing that goal ever since The Incredibles.
To be able to take a main character who says nothing more than one word through the entire film and make the audience fall in love with him within the first ten minutes and stay in love with him till the credits role is what real writing is about. Wall-E had a fantastic story, memorable characters, dazzling animation effects, a killer film score and even a hint of a sociological message that asked its audiences to think a little bit while on their way back to their cars from the theater. This film did not let me down and renewed my faith in the Pixar as a production company. This one gets a good solid “A” in my book, go see it if you haven’t gotten a chance yet.

Review: Lars & The Real Girl

When I saw the first trailer for Lars & the Real Girl I thought “Looks like an obscure and awkward comedy with ryan gosling. He’s an okay actor, maybe I’ll see it.” I thought this because that is what the trailers and marketing for the movie lead you to believe about the movie. Fortunately this movie turned out to be a lot more than just that. There was much less emphasis on humor than I was expecting and much more emphasis on character development and chemistry within a complex story about a severely disturbed and somewhat developmentally retarded young man who acts out his oddities in a unique way by purchasing a “Real Doll”. Don’t get me wrong, there were some pretty funny parts throughout the story, I just found, after watching it, that the movie was much deeper than a series of cheap laughs about a man dating a life-size mail order doll.
Ryan Gosling gives another outstanding performance and solidifies in my mind even more how much I see him becoming one of the great ones in the film business down the line. To be able to have arguments with a mannequin type object on screen in a way that does not have the audience chuckling to themselves (you’ll understand what I mean if you have seen it) is a difficult task to do and he thankfully pulls it off. This one gets an A- from me.