April 30th, 2012, Ebert Top 10

Ebert’s Top 10 OF ALL TIME!
My Top 10 of ALL TIME (in no particular order and likely dealing with genres) – I struggled with this mightily:
– Shawshank Redemption
– Godfather
– Jaws (thriller)
– Amadeus
– Exorcist (horror)
– Braveheart
– Monty Python and Holy Grail (comedy)
– Raiders of the Lost Ark
– Ben Hur
– The Notebook (romance)

February 27th, 2012 – Oscar musings

This past week I managed to get to see a couple of films.  One not-so-well known the Canadian Best Foreign Film nominee Monsieur Lazhar.  The other J Edgar.  No luck seeing the Best Picture of the year.  Seems that the Director is rather chummy with his leading lady from the telecast last night.

First comments about the show last night Oscar night.   I enjoyed it.  I had a few laugh out loud moments and I thought that Billy Crystal is a fine host.  He’s funny, he does really good bits with the existing films and he pokes fun without being nasty about it.  The presentation reminded me that I need to see again Bridesmaids.  The clips made me laugh out loud every time.  It was good to see Christopher Plummer win in what was really a Lifetime Achievement Award.   I liked Jonah Hill in Moneyball but had no issue with Plummer (the Canadian) winning!    Early technical awards given to Hugo but the big prizes went to The Artist.  Guess I need to see it.  Meryl won and gave a memorable speech I thought.  17 nominations and yet only 3 wins now from the greatest living actor.  Good to see her acknowledge her husband as she says “you have brought everything WE value into our lives and made them happen” with tears.  Well done.  I also liked the acknowledgement by Plummer to his Wife about the Nobel Peace Prize.  Excellent.  In years when some spouses get forgotten, these are made to shine and Meryl said hers first!   A nice classy touch.
Back to the movies.  Friday was Lazhar at the Bell Lightbox Theatre that I have never been to.  Very nice digs, more adult.  A bar and some restaurants at street level and then theatres more like a viewing than cement bunker.  The movie, unknown to me before my law school friend suggested seeing it was set in a Montreal classroom.  During recess one Winter’s day a female teacher hangs herself and a student finds her.  There is scrambling to hide this from the rest of the class (Grade 6).  The rest of the movie introduces us to the substitute teacher who is from Algeria and seeking asylum in Canada.  There are really good performances from the students here, and couple notably.  Plenty of emotion and some parents getting upset, and then the kids’ perspective and take on the whole thing.   This is a good story, well told.  Sorry that it did not win last night, but I had heard good things about The Separation as well.
Yesterday I watched J Edgar on DVD with my brother and his girlfriend.  This of course is the tale of the head of the FBI.  Funny that my mind always jumps back to Agent Starling in Silence of the Lambs and her desire to work work for the Bureau, and her ambition.  Here is the guy who started it all.   This movie jumps around a lot from end of life, to middle to early days.  Watch Leo’s hair and make up to keep track.  There are flashbacks and forward shots sometimes in the same sequence (like going up and down and elevator or sitting at the race track).  There is background into his relationship with his Mother, the heavy handed and opinionated Mother that shaped his life.  Another strong female influence again much like Howard Hughes played earlier by Leo in The Aviator.  I think that the movie makes some excellent points about the life of this man, with both his personal life and his professional life.  Without a doubt, he is a well accomplished man creating a bureau from nothing.  But some of the foundations and how he wishes to be remembered are shaky.  There is much that lies beneath the surface and that is not shown here but hinted.  The relationship with Tolson was not a focal point.  In truth I would think that the real book about Hoover that could be written would be by his assistant, played by Naomi Watts.   She was with him for virtually his entire career.  A good movie.  I enjoyed it and even had a couple chuckles with my brother.  If you think about the FBI and investigating crimes and subversive behaviour and anti-American activities, you wonder how the assassinations of both Kennedys and MLK take place under his watch.  Violent times I suppose.   No hint here about whether the FBI knew or was involved.  Knowledge of the FBI of the extra marital affairs for sure, including wire taps in Kennedy’s suite for a tryst.
Two good films that I am glad that I saw.

February 13th, 2012 (Valentine’s Day edition)

So Saturday night, I was looking to get out and see a movie in the theatre.  The first thought was Mission Impossible but it did not work out.  Then it was Safe House with Denzel Washington, but it ended up being Sold Out!   That does not happen very often these days.   So I ended up seeing The Grey, with Liam Neeson.
Neeson seems to be in every other movie these days.  I guess the loss of your Wife can bring you to dive back deep into your work.
I came out of the theatre here thinking that I cannot remember feeling colder at the end of a film.  Colder, that’s right.  Here is a movie set up in the north.  It’s not specified where.  If you ever watch these reality shows about flying in the north you can relate to Neeson and some collegues flying on their way to Ankorage AK.  On the way, the plane goes down and then the survivors then have to deal with the elements and how to survive.  The largest of the problems seems to be this local band of wolves who takes interest in this group.   That essentially is the story.  It is well told.  You certainly get a sense of the surroundings and the elements and the atmosphere.  I am in the middle of reading the classic sci-fi book Dune, and there you had to deal with the elements of oppressive sun and a lack of water.  But the key was the right equipment and being smart as to how you moved.   Here with few resources from the crashed plane, then you are dealing with your wits.  Query whether ever leaving the semi-shelter of an aircraft is a good idea.
The wind, the snow, the deep snow, the cold, the lack of heat and appropriate clothing all gave this a look and feel like Fargo.  Desolation.  Isolation.  In the face of a natural predator who has no fear of you, and is part of a larger pack that doesn’t have to sleep.   You do.   There are elements here of fighting for a life that on your own you were willing to walk away from.   But ultimately it’s a question of survival and getting through the elements.   It was good to see and Neeson has that toughness and ruggedness that this role demands.   It would have been an exhausting film shoot, especially the on location shots .   Technically sound, a movie that gives you a sense of what it’s like.  The sounds of the aircraft accident are startling.   It seems that Hollywood seems to be perfecting over the years the look and feel of an airplane crash.   This is not Airport ’75.   Nor is it Fearless, which did a good job with Jeff Bridges or even Tom Hanks in Cast Away with his Fed Ex jet.  For me on a plane, I am looking at the flight attendants and when they start to grab on or look nervous then I know something is up.   I have not to date.  But here was a seemingly realistic sight and sound experience of a plane going down.  There are certain moments where characters here do things where you think “you just sealed your fate”.   In the end it killed a couple hours.  It was well filmed.  You don’t get to know the characters all that well, as they are bundled up and bloodied but you will wonder about whether the people who didn’t survive the crash were perhaps a little better off!

Wednesday February 8th, 2012

I am beginning the annual catch up on the Oscar nominated films.  Ideally I get to watch ALL of the Best Picture nominees but with now up to 10 films it’s not always that easy.  This year I am done with three and now four.  I have seen The Descendants (mostly), War Horse, Hugo and now The Tree of Life.

Tree of Life:  This was a film that I had relatively no expectations.  I had read the glowing Ebert review as he reminisced about how closely this movie pulled him in with the images of the time (50s middle America).  He has written a couple interesting articles on this and it intrigued me.  The movie is not about plot and a straight lined arc in the lives of its characters.  It makes both macro and micro observations about life and life on earth in general.  Many of the connections you have to make yourself (or not).  Two heavy hitters with Brad Pitt and Sean Penn are acting here, but they are really not the focal point.   On the micro level you deal with life on a planet in the universe after the big bang.  There are stunning visuals and images that are totally new to me.   You have life coming out of the seas and then other forms of life.  What I came away with the macro story is just how BIG it all is, and just how little (in comparison) that we all are.  There is also a theological discussion that takes place and questions for God.   Much of this stems from the micro level life of an ordinary family in middle America (in this case Texas) but it really could be anywhere.
Here the family starts at the more recent time and then deals with images backwards.  There has been a death in the family and there is questioning as to why.  Then the flashbacks to the times with this family.  I take away from this that life, as we experience it, is really a sum of little images and moments.  The unexpected hug from a child, the kiss goodnight, the images as perceived of a child with his parents, and how their relationship impacts them.  The family has three boys.  Pitt plays the father.  Penn plays the eldest boy Jack all grown up.   You care about these people.  You see the journey that they take but it isn’t along a straight path.  Life is a bunch of moments strung together.  And so it is.  Struggles, challenges, understanding where one fits and the place that they have.  All a part of this, as macro meets micro along the way.
This cannot win Best Picture.  Why?  Because it is just too high minded I think.  The average movie goer (the film was virtually ignored in the theaters) simply won’t “get it”.  It can be slow.  It raises as many questions as it answers, simply because it doesn’t answer that many.  It observes.  And let’s the viewer figure out the meaning.  I also think that this is a film for older and more mature viewers.  This is not a 17yo date movie.  That older crowd that watched Iron Lady would enjoy this and connect with this.  I did.  Having children, thinking about the structure that we as parents provides, makes you think about where this fits in the grand scheme.  It shows too how attitudes and actions in front of children have an impact.  What the child remembers.
I would see it again.  I would catch more and pay more attention to the beginning.  In the end, time well spent last night, where after the movie I decided to watch the Extras as well on the DVD.   The director here is painting with a broad brush and giving some real insight into human beings.  I am really glad that I saw this.

February 1st, 2012

So I did end up going to see War Horse last week.  It was a 3/4 full theatre which wasn’t bad for a Thursday night.

So what do you get when you combine Black Beauty, with Saving Private Ryan and then a little bit of Gone with the Wind (visually anyway) and Seabiscuit?   You get another Speilberg movie where he seems less focused on originality and something new, but rather something that will sell.  He is a master of the blockbuster.  There are some tremendous visual pictures on this movie.  I am not so sure that it is a Best Picture.  Then again, with 9 nominated films, could we perhaps have a B Category?   What would the shortlist be?   But I digress.
Here we have a horse that is born and witnessed by a young boy.  He and the horse grow with very little interaction until his Dad attends an auction and decides that he sees something in this horse (very Seabiscuity).  There are plenty of other sideline stories that go to show the relationships among the humans here.  Then the war comes.  WWI to be precise.  And off our horse goes to War.  There more characters are introduced and situations and our horse separates from our young boy protagonist (looks A LOT like a young Ethan Hawke IMO).  Again without going into plot details, our horse ends up with various people from time to time on various sides within the War.   He shows courage, and determination, and loyalty and a concern for others of his kind.
This was a good watch.  Spielberg is becoming the King of putting War on film.  Here he is equal to the task.  He also has a Cinematographer who takes marvelous looking pictures and vistas.  There are some obvious horse CGI moments (yes, and I did say horse) where there are some jumps and situations that a real horse simple cannot do.   Was I moved by the story?  Yes.  Did I care about the characters?  Yes.   Then it probably did what a movie needs to do.  It does not incidentally wallow in War and make it uncomfortable with blood and guts.  Some is used for effect, but generally it’s not gory.
Can’t say honestly that this was a Best Picture, but it was good.   Those who really like horses should seek it out.  To me, I get far more intrigued by watching LUCK at the horse track with Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte than this.   So enjoy your viewing.

December 19th, 2011

I ventured out on Saturday to the Varsity Theatre as it was the ONLY theatre in town that was showing Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.   This is the most recent incarnation of the John Le Carre novel set in the Cold War, with the US, USSR and Britain playing espionnage games between themselves.   Previously it has been a tv series and other movies as well (or so I think).  None have been previosuly seen by me.  I have not read the book.   This film is cast with a Who’s Who of British film.   Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, John Hurt, Mark Strong and others that are all familiar.  It is well acted.  It is believable and they do a very good job of creating suspense.  Basically there is an accusation that there is a mole very high up in the British Intelligence community.  The question is who could it possible be.  The plot is told starting at present time late 1970s and then through a series of flashbacks.   You are told other ancillary stories as you move through it.  Pay attention.  It gets complicated, as there are plenty of characters in play.   And it can be slow.  There are shots with little dialogue to show the passing of time.  I was squirming in my seat a couple times and wondering if the average movie goer can pay attention and follow.  I suspect that they can’t and won’t.   My crowd was older and likely many would have read the book.   I think that would help as you would know the characters better.  As a film, it does not need to be seen on the big screen.  There are no big chase scenes and that fits.  This isn’t Mission Impossible.    They may make Sherlock Holmes an action hero, they did not do the same here.    So I was overall a bit disappointed but I had high expectations.  I am glad that I saw it.   I want to read the book, and that says something too.

April 22, 2011

I have not been to the theatre in a good long while.   However I watched on the plane ride to Calfornia the movie How Do You Know with Reece Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Jack Nicholson and Owen Wilson.  I am not sure that I have seen a more contrived premise to a movie in a long while.  I also feel that most of the dialogue was completely inane.  Poor Reece plays an aging Women’s Softball star who has totally focused on her baseball.   Now she is going to get cut.  Looks like her Mom (??!) is part of the team of coaches that makes that decision, or hears it from the coach anyway.   Then there’s Paul Rudd who is the son to businessman Nicholson.   Suffice it to say that there is some drama in his life, and he has a Meet Cute with Reece, and then not.   Wilson (who you KNOW I am not a fan of) plays a baseball player in the Majors, playing for the Washington Nationals.   I’ll believe THAT when pigs sprout wings and fly.   Just look at him in the uniform and you realize that this guy can’t possibly throw a pitch 94 mph.   He has NO chemistry with Witherspoon, and is generally despicable.   Why ANY women would want to be with him here is beyond my pay grade.   Money sure, but nothing else.
To sum up, this is terrible, with no real resolution to Dad’s troubles, but quite frankly I didn’t care.
Shame on all who were involved in this fiasco.

September 21st, 2009

I found myself Friday night with nothing on the tube and thinking back to the movies that you loaned to me.   Thursday night I had watched Being John Malkovich and had a couple truly LOL moments especially when Malkovich himself is trying to shut down this ‘amusement ride’ that has become his existence.   It was very good, and another profanity laced tirade that Malkovich himself can deliver so well.   In the end, it was a strange movie but it had some funny times.   Given this I decided that let’s make this a Kaufman week by seeing the much awarded Synecdoche NY .

What can you really say about this movie?  I recall Ebert saying that this would be a movie that people remember and talk about for years long after they had forgotten Benjamin Button.   This was strange.   There were some interesting life lessons about getting older and being and living in your own life, but this whole reality within a reality within a reality with this play and people acting as the people outside the play all got a little weird.   There are some good actors here, and Catherine Keener seems to be in all of his movies (not sure why) but in the end I just muttered to myself (“WTF was that all about…?”)    It hurt my head watching this, and I would not be talking about this for a long time afterwards.   In fact I turned on Kingdom of Heaven with some good arrow through the throat scenes and swords skewering people that I forgot it almost instantly.   Although the only real refresh is for the purposes of writing to you, right now….

September 17th, 2009

In the past few days I did see a couple of films.   Starting with the Ryan Reynolds flick Definitely Maybe, which I had seen parts of previously but in seeing more of it (missed the first 10 mins) I caught a great deal more and enjoyed it more as a result.  It’s a bit quirky in a How I Met Your Mother kind of way, as a Father tries to explain his love life before the birth of his precocious daughter.   In it there are principally three women for this political campaigner, and all of which come and go in and out of his life.   There’s an early sweetheart, a friend and then a writer.  The most interesting of these is Isla Fisher, who is a very interesting character here.   A close second is the Rachel Weisz character, who is a writer that has a moral and personal dilemma as her world crosses with the political world that our protagonist works in.   In the end, it is all very satisfying and the journey is fun getting there.   I was impressed with Fisher the most, and always like seeing Weisz on screen.

The next movie was RockNRolla, the Guy Ritchie gangster movie from London .   I have to say that the plot here is almost impossible to follow.  Suffice it to say that everyone is trying to scam everyone else here.  It spins around on itself in so many ways that your head hurts after a while.   Then you just watch the images, and from that standpoint it was interesting.   I can’t say that I recommend it, as I guess I am really more of a plot guy and when my head hurts at a movie, then I get frustrated.   Perhaps that explains my frustration with movies like Magnolia….hmmmm….but I digress.  Suffice it to say that if you like a UK gangster yarn, then you might like this.   The very good Jordanian cop from Body of Lies with Leo Dicaprio is here and is solid once again.  I like that guy (Mark Strong) and he seems very versatile.

September 9th, 2009

So on the movie front, I watched a little of Run Lola Run (in German with subtitles) the other night and it was alright.   I did watch one of Ebert’s old favorites Dark City with William Hurt, Jennifer Connelly and others.   It was an interesting sci-fi movie and contained a lot of similarities in my mind with The Matrix.   World created by aliens to study and better understand humans, with a hero who has taken on an ability that mirrors the aliens (who are superior).   There is the whole idea of implanting memories and personalities which is explored, with the creepy Kiefer Sutherland in the role as doctor.    I enjoyed it but was happy that I did not fork over money for it.

I have been seeing bits and pieces of other movies as well, like Dirty Dancing and wondering what the heck ever happened to Jennifer Grey’s career?!!   She gets a nose job then no one wants her to work again.  Ferris Bueller, Red Dawn, Dirty Dancing, she was a box office darling for a time.   Swayze couldn’t seem to find a shirt that would fit him in that movie.   The sister in that movie cracks me up.