Henry Saw: Grace

I'm gonna go ahead and say no woman should see this movie...ever



Grace is about a pregnant woman named Madeline who is involved in a car wreck that kills her husband and her unborn baby. Or at least that's what she thinks. Deciding to carry the baby to term, Madeline and her mid-wife are shocked when the baby, a girl, is born alive and seemingly quite healthy. Madeline brings home the baby, who she names Grace, and it quickly becomes apparent that not everything is normal. Flies seem to always be flying around Grace, buzzing around her room, and congregating in her crib. Even more disturbing is that Grace doesn't seem to want breast-milk...in fact Madeline begins to learn painfully that all Grace wants is blood. Soon Madeline is cutting herself, buying bloody meat, and using any other means necessary to get the blood that Grace craves.

That's basically the entire plot. There's a subplot about Madeline's mother-in-law who is desperate to get custody of Grace and another about the midwife wanting a romantic relationship with Madeline but the hook of the film is the bloodthirsty baby; which means it is kind of hard to categorize Grace. It's not really a horror film; at least not for a man. The idea of a baby drinking blood from their mother's breast is a horrific idea, and a potentially scary image (though the director Paul Solet is tasteful about that aspect), but is far more disturbing to a woman than a man I would think.

Jordan Ladd, who plays Madeline, actually does a decent job playing the sadness, love, and madness required for the role. No one else in the cast stands out, though Gabrielle Rose as the mother-in-law does a nice job, and the film kind of feels like the most disturbing and messed up Twilight Zone episode of all time. Adding to this feeling is the limited number of locations (most of the action takes place in Madeline's house) and that the film is just around 80 minutes long.

Thankfully we don't get gratuitous shots of Grace looking like an evil baby. She doesn't have fangs, or yellow eyes, or any other scary feature. This definitely adds to the eerie feeling of the film as she looks like any other infant...she's not even especially adorable.

I don't really think Grace is a movie you have to see; it's pretty forgettable and lacks the quirky appeal found in 2007's Teeth (another semi-horror film with a high-concept). Still, it's an amusing idea for a movie, and film manages to never take itself too seriously. Lesbian midwifes, a strange running theme about vegans, and a really cheesy/perfect final line make this rather somber film feel more like the fun B-movie it could have been.

Grade: C

Best Scene: The final line is fun but I'll go with the image of all the flies on Grace's crib...it is the film's scariest image.

Disney Buys Marvel Comics

I'm sure you've seen this by now but Disney has acquired Marvel for 4 Billion dollars. For the purposes of this site it is interesting to think of the possibilities of a marriage between Pixar and some kid-friendly Marvel characters like Runaways and Power Pack. Then there is this:

Asked about potential Pixar-Marvel synergies, Iger said Disney executives have had some conversations internally, and Pixar creative guru John Lasseter has met with Marvel folks as well. 'The group got pretty excited pretty fast,' Iger said, adding he expects exciting collaboration opportunities. 'Sparks will fly,' he said."

Source

Pixar has already made "their" superhero movie with The Incredibles (which did borrow some from the Marvel Comics franchise The Fantastic Four) but I'd love to see them bring some Marvel characters to the screen.

Here's the NY Times article about the whole thing

Henry Saw: The Baader Meinhof Complex

I guess you had to be there...


Der Baader Meinhof Komplex was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars last year but just recently came over to the states in limited release. It is based on a book by Stefan Aust and looks at the late-1960s/1970s West-German terrorist group, The Red Army Faction (RAF), which organized attacks and assassinations in an effort to protest Vietnam and force the American military presence out of Germany.

It is a story I knew nothing about going in so if nothing else the film was very interesting for me. I of course knew about the events on the 1960s in America, and knew a little bit about the student protests in France during this time, but I had never heard of the RAF or any of the real life figures this film depicts.



The film opens by letting us know where we are (Germany), when we are (late 1960s), who we are (Ulrike Meinhof - played by Martina Gedeck - who is a mother of two and a very liberal news reporter) and how we are (in a general state of unrest). The film's big opening scene is one of its most effective. Students and other liberals have gathered to protest the Shah of Iran arriving in Germany. A riot breaks out and we watch as the police brutally beat, and even kill, the protesters. Its a wonderfully directed scene and also tells us how the young people of Germany were unhappy with their government and the state of the world.

Meinhof ends up meeting Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu) and Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek) a good looking couple with a destructive streak. Out to protest America's imperialist desires, Baader and Ensslin set fire to a department store (that will show them) and do other assorted criminal acts. Meinhof, seduced by these pretty people and their fervent beliefs, uses her position as a respected reporter to help Baader escape police custody and helps form a terrorist cell. I did not quite get enough from the film on why Meinhof did this, I mean she abandons her two daughters to start blowing stuff up, but maybe that kind of thing really can't be explained.



The rest of the film is a very detailed and sprawling reconstruction of a decade of robberies, bombings, assassinations, arrests, suicides, hijackings and finally how the RAF ended not with a bang but with a whimper. It was this extended look at the actions of the RAF I had a problem with. I never connected with any of the characters, only Wokalek as Ensslin had any presence on screen, and the film is so concerned to fit all of the RAF's deeds in that we are denied any kind of storyline or common thread. Sometimes we cut to men in the government reacting to the RAF's actions but little comes of these scenes outside of seeing the other side every now and then.

The film is well cast, though Bleibtreu is pretty dull at Baader, and everyone looks right. Wokalek really is solid as Ensslin, the real brains behind the Baader-Meinhof group, and Nadja Uhl is both alluring and scary as Brigitte Mohnhaupt, who led the second (or third?) generation of the RAF after the core leadership was imprisoned. Also standing out is Bruno Ganz, who played Hitler in the brilliant German film Downfall, who plays the government official with which we spend the most time.



At one point in the movie one of the members of the RAF says they feel they must stop Germany from becoming a fascist state again. It is one of the best lines in the film and it was revealing to learn that these young Germans were so desperate to avoid going down that road again that they became murdering terrorists. While I would not go so far as to say this film is important, I really don't think many movies have ever achieved that status, it is a thought provoking examination of how futile terrorism can be and how people find themselves sucked into these seductive groups.



One problem I had with the movie is that is one of the only explanations we get for why these people did this. To be fair we basically understand the choices made by each of the characters but in a sort of cliff-notes fashion. We never really get inside anyone's head. Some plot threads are introduced and then abandoned, and the fact that the American version of the film is 30 minutes shorter than the German version is definitely felt, leading to confusion on why they bothered to show us one thing and not another.

I saw this film with my parents and they both liked it more than I did. They could remember some of the events portrayed in the film, relate more to the attitude of the 1960s that inspired the RAF, and fill in some of the gaps in the film with their own background knowledge. From the perspective of a 23 year old in 2009 it was a very hard movie to penetrate and the whole thing might have worked better for me had it been an extensive documentary instead of a dramatic portrayal.



I do recommend Baader Meinhof and not just because it has the most fun title to say aloud of all the movies released this year. It is a movie that will get you to talk, and not because of some twist ending, but because it is tackling some troubling and fascinating history. Films that spur discussions like Baader Meinhof will should always be sought out. Still, as a film, I did not find that it worked that well. It tried to do too much, without ever giving the audience something or someone to latch on to, and ended up feeling somewhat scattered. By the time we are following the third generation of the RAF, only a few of whom we get any kind of introduction to, it is hard to feel invested in the film in any way.

An interesting subject, a good looking and ambitious film, but not quite a movie I enjoyed in any meaningful way.

Grade: B-

Best Scene: That opening sequence showing the riot and how brutal the police were in stopping it.

Henry Saw: 500 Days of Summer

Cute...perhaps a little too cute...


There's a lot to like about 500 Days of Summer. It has a charming lead (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and an innovative premise. Levitt plays Tom, a 20-something greeting card writer who falls in love with a secretary at his office named Summer (Zooey Deschanel). Over the course of the movie we jump around chronologically so that we'll see a fight they had on day 255 one scene, and the next scene it is day 100 and they are happily walking around an Ikea. Also, the film's narrator states very early on that this is "not a love story" and what that means is that the movie sets out to show not just how a relationship starts, or ends, but also how one gets over it. These choices (the jumping around chronologically and the choice to follow not just how a relationship ends but how one gets past it) make 500 Days a very original romantic comedy - in the end that's the genre it still fits in - but it had some issues that kept it from being a great romantic comedy.

This is, definitely, a comedy. There's some very sharp dialogue, some good comedic pacing, and even entire sequences that really made me laugh. A great deal of the humor comes from how honest a lot of the scenes felt. The early "courtship" between Tom and Summer is something every guy could relate to I think. A lot of the film feels like the screen-writers (Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber) brought real life experiences to the film. Even the film's opening dedication, which I won't spoil for you, managed to be hilarious and brutally truthful. For the 75 minutes of the film there are very few false notes (more on this later)...

Another thing I liked about the film was how the director Marc Webb used different styles to convey different feelings. After bedding Summer for the first time Tom leaves his apparently and the film suddenly becomes a musical, set to Hall and Oates' "You Make My Dreams", to reflect Tom's post-coital bliss. It's a fantastic scene, including a great Harrison Ford "cameo", and I think it's the movie's best sequence. When he's sad the films briefly becomes a parody of sorts of 1950's European art films (black and white - dreary and abstract narration). There's another nice sequence where Tom is heading to a party and the screen splits in two and on one side with see how Tom expects the night to go and on the other side we see how it actually goes. Again, Webb and his screen-writers nail how the mind of a young man works and it was perhaps the scene with which I most connected.

One problem though is that at times the sheer amount of stylistic changes and chances become a bit much. While I liked the split screen sequence, and the musical number, I didn't love the black and white sequence or the flashbacks to their childhood or other "quirky" choices made by Webb. It became a bit too much for me and at times I thought Webb was working way to hard to be cool and not just trying to serve the story. I'm just surprised Webb avoided having an animated sequence like One Crazy Summer or Better Off Dead - kudos to him.

Another issue I had with the film was that other than Tom none of the characters felt like they really exist. Even Summer, who is well played by Deschanel, is viewed from Tom's point of view so she is always a bit of an idealized mystery. While this works okay for Summer's character, there was no reason that Tom couldn't have had a realistic relationship with anyone but Summer. The two best friends Tom has have no real personality and are there just so Tom has someone to talk to so the audience can find out how he feels. Tom also has a younger sister (she's like 13) who is smarter and wiser in the ways of love than he is and offers sage advice whenever he's feeling down. It's a ridiculous character who, despite having some funny lines, took me out of the film each time she was on screen.

As I said earlier, the films final reel doesn't really work. While Tom's depression immediately following the breakup rang true, and definitely elicited a laugh, other choices in the script were just awkward. Tom does something at work that I just did not believe and the final scene, while cute, made me wince from its obvious wink at the audience.

I recommend 500 Days of Summer, it's a refreshing movie in many ways, but it's not the Annie Hall of the 2000s. There are too many things that made me cock my head and mutter "that doesn't really work". The film's best moments will stick with me, as the film really captures the joy and pain of being in love better than a lot of films I've seen tackle those things, but the film loses so much truth and energy in its conclusion that you don't walk out of the theater on the same high you felt one hour before.

Grade: B

Best Scene: In terms of a bravura execution I'd say the split screen moment but I most enjoyed the Hall and Oates scene.

9 - The Original Short Film

September 9th sees the release on an animated film produced by Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov and directed by Shane Acker called 9. It should not be confused with the already released District 9, or the upcoming musical Nine, and looks like it could be a pretty cool movie. It's based on a student film that Acker made that actually won him an Academy Award. Thought you might like to see the 2005 Original Short. Enjoy:

Henry Saw: Inglourious Basterds

Tarantino's best work in 15 years...and while that might not be saying much...this is actually a pretty great movie



I thought this was going to be a very different film. From early rumors on casting (Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Eddie Murphy?) and the legacy of movies about a rag tag group of soldiers on a mission (The Dirty Dozen for example) I expected Tarantino was out to make a ridiculous war film; an ode to the gaudy WW2 pictures of the late 1960s and 1970s in the same way that Kill Bill and Deathproof "honored" kung fu and grindhouse films respectively. Instead, unexpectedly and to my very happy surprise, Inglourious Basterds (I.G. from here on) is easily the most inventive, unconventional, and compelling movie that Tarantino has made since Pulp Fiction. Really, given how poor I think his output has been since 1994, that's not really saying enough so let me put it a different way: I.G. is the coolest movie of the year and, along with Taken and The Hurt Locker, it is one of the three best movies of the year.

I will first let IMDB tell you the plot: In Nazi-occupied France during World War II, a group of Jewish-American soldiers known as "The Basterds" are chosen specifically to spread fear throughout the Third Reich by scalping and brutally killing Nazis. The Basterds soon cross paths with a French-Jewish teenage girl who runs a movie theater in Paris which is targeted by the soldiers.



I.G. is a long movie, 157 minutes in total, and I won't lie and say that you don't feel the length at times. Tarantino composes him film by connecting 5 rather long scenes (that are titled as if they were chapters) that really take their time to introduce characters, build suspense, and end in climaxes both large and small. There are multiple scenes in the film, including one that takes place in the basement of a bar, that really do straddle the line between magnificently creating tension and just dragging the film to a halt. The overall effect, and the fact that each of these scenes end so satisfyingly, keep the movie from ever being boring...but if there is a flaw in I.G. it is definitely its length.

There's not really anything else I can single out to complain about. The acting? Pretty great across the board. Brad Pitt is actually really funny as the leader of the Basterds. Mélanie Laurent, playing the French-Jewish girl out for revenge, has a presence the camera loves. Diane Kruger is well cast as a glamorous German actress working against the Nazis, as is Michael Fassbender as a stiff-lipped English spy. Also impressive is how well cast a lot of the supporting players, many of which are French or German speaking roles, and how much authenticity and freshness they bring to the movie.



Then there is Christoph Waltz who plays Col. Hans Landa. If you've read a review of the movie then I assume you've read about Waltz's performance already. He is astonishing, a revelation, and gives what is unquestionably the best performance in a film this year. Landa, known as "The Jew Hunter" and ordered by Hitler to locate hidden Jews throughout France, is one of the most charismatic and terrifying villains to ever hit the screen and can fairly be compared with Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh and Heath Ledger's Joker, the last two winners of the Supporting Actor Academy Award.



Waltz, who kind of looks like Tim Roth, brings life to Landa by playing him as a man always three steps ahead of everyone else and in love with his own superior intelligence. He has his own motivations for doing what he does, some of which we never learn, but Waltz makes it all feel eerily natural and it is one of the scariest portrayals of an evil man that I can recall. Perhaps what makes it so troubling is that Landa is one of the most likable characters in the film. He's not charming in the same way that Alan Rickman is in Die Hard or Anthony Hopkins is in Silence of the Lambs, though there is some of that, but because he's so clever - he's like a Nazi Sherlock Holmes - it seems impossible that he could ever be on the losing side of a conflict. Waltz, a native Austrian, speaks four different languages throughout the film and seems comfortable with any of them which adds to both Landa's appeal and menace.

While Waltz's performance elevates I.G. it doesn't spoil every part of the movie that doesn't contain Colonel Landa. The movie is always doing something to keep you interested and invested. Whether it is a quick flashback to one of the Basterds killing 13 S.S. officers, to a strange appearance from comedian Mike Myers, to fun usage of a 1980's David Bowie tune...I.G. throws a lot out there but with a definite sense of control that was missing in Tarantino's other post-Pulp Fiction work.

The conclusion, a fantastical wish-fulfillment scene if I've ever seen one, is a great deal of fun and littered with some beautiful shots. There is no question that this is the best looking film Tarantino has ever made with shots that echoed everything from The Searchers to the work of Brian De Palma. The music, less noticeable (other than the Bowie track) than in earlier Tarantino movies, contains some music cues by legendary composer Ennio Morricone. This is also a nice call back to films of the past without being too obvious or clumsy about it. Even some of the actors, like Pitt playing a slightly ridiculous version of a Clark Gable hero, or Laurent who seems ripped out of a 1950's French noir, successfully channel the legacy of their specific roles.



I really enjoyed Inglourious Basterds. It is an utterly engrossing film with great and restrained dialogue, moments of genuine humor and suspense, and a real ability to surprise and entertain the audience. If Tarantino falls into his same old traps at times like not being able to edit his own work, using some familiar faces in the cast (did we need Eli Roth or Sam Jackson to have anything to do with this movie?), or an obtrusive obsession with cinema within his own films, these flaws are not grave enough to keep Inglourious Basterds from being a fantastic time at the movies. I hope you go see Basterds, and do try and see it in theaters, and I hope you find it to be the fun, interesting, and unexpected experience that I did. Most of all, go see it for Christopher Waltz's performance; you'll be behind the eight-ball come Oscar time if you don't.

Grade: A-

Best Scene: The opener, as Col. Landa interrogates a French farmer suspected of hiding Jews.

Quentin Tarantino: A Quick Look Back

Before I post my review of Inglourious Basterds let's take a quick look back at Tarantino's six previous directorial efforts




Tarantino had one of the best debuts in Hollywood history in 1992 when Reservoir Dogs was released. Filled with the dialogue, pop culture references, experiments with linear story-telling, great music, and homages to genre-films of yesteryear that would come to be synonymous with Tarantino's films, Reservoir Dogs is brimming with confidence and energy. Featuring Harvey Keitel and two actors who would go on to become famous due partially to Reservoir Dogs (Steve Buscemi and Tim Roth) the film is a very masculine film but actually has moments containing something like tenderness (no, really). Featuring scenes that would become iconic ("I don't tip", "Little Green Bag", and of course the "Stuck in the Middle With You" ear scene) part of Reservoir Dogs' charm is that it is a very small and relatively unambitious movie. The script is fairly tight and Tarantino's device of never showing you the actual heist works surprisingly well. The film deserves its reputation as one of the better crime films of the 1990's.



Meanwhile, 1994's Pulp Fiction is considered by many to be the best American film of the 1990's. Though it borrowed from, and made reference to, countless other films, Pulp Fiction felt like something completely original. It was wired with a love of cinema, populated by iconic characters, and contained some of the best dialogue in Hollywood history. Told in a series of chapters that are shown to us out of order, the film is a triumph of structure and editing, and the film's mysteries and connections make for a totally engrossing experience. This is the film that put Sam Jackson, Uma Thurman, and Ving Rhames on the map and put John Travolta and Bruce Willis back on it. The whole cast is great and perfectly deliver Tarantino's Oscar winning dialogue. Pulp Fiction is a cultural milestone for a reason. It's probably one of the most influential films of all time (just ask Guy Richie) but still feels as original and brilliant as it seemed when it first came out.



Since Pulp Fiction, Tarantino has failed to come close to the same heights as his 1994 masterpiece. 1997's Jackie Brown was an overstuffed genre piece that never quite clicked. Made with the aesthetic of a blacksploitation film and the pacing of a 70's crime drama, Jackie Brown is a loose adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch. This time it was clear that Tarantino was trying to write great dialogue but it never had the same humor or heightened authenticity that we saw in his first two movies. While Jackie Brown's soundtrack was fantastic, something you can always count on in a Tarantino picture, the movie lacked energy and seemed like it was made by a man more concerned with honoring the past than trying something new.

Some considered Jackie Brown a far more mature work than his first two movies, as it contained less overt pop culture references and featured more grounded performances from Pam Grier and Robert Foster, but I find Jackie Brown to not be "more mature" but just more boring. I don't say this because Jackie Brown lacked action, you could hardly call Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction action packed, but because none of the characters pop and the more conventional storyline lacked a sufficient hook. Jackie Brown is, ultimately, a forgettable movie that started a bad trend of Tarantino's self-indulgences hurting his films (the film is overly long and never seems to have the audience in mind) rather than supporting his work.



It took six years for QT to return to the big screen and he did so with two of the more overrated films of the decade: Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2 (the second was released in 2004). The first Kill Bill movie, more of a straight-forward action film, included some high points that allow it to look brilliant compared to its "sequel". The fight scene between Uma Thurman and Vivica A. Fox, Daryl Hannah whistling, Gogo Yubari (Chiaki Kuriyama), and the epic fight with the Crazy 88 make the first Kill Bill an enjoyable action film.

Other parts of the movie, like the sequence with Buck, the fascination with Uma Thurman's feet (a fetish of Tarantino's), or the overly stylized homage sequences (including an anime section) lead to Kill Bill Vol. 1 being a messy piece. The actors, though well chosen over-all, struggle with Tarantino's dialogue that is filled with awkward "tough-guy" talk and groan worthy exchanges. It might say something that I didn't even bother to see Kill Bill Volume 2 in theaters despite the fact that Part 1 ended on a pretty big cliffhanger. Still, had the second part of Tarantino's revenge epic been more like the first, I might think better of the whole thing. Unfortunately...



Kill Bill Volume 2 is the worst movie Tarantino has made. Somehow too long despite being part two of a story conceived as one film, it is a boring, ridiculous, and plodding mess. David Carradine (RIP), playing Bill, is just awful and Michael Madsen needs to not act ever again. The fight scenes, which had some pep and scale in the first film, take a significant turn for the worse as they are far more stilted and clumsy this time around. Many felt Kill Bill 2 was superior to Part 1 due to its dealing with weightier themes and giving Thurman more opportunities to overact but I find the film nearly unwatchable. The Kill Bill films, again filled with homages to The Bride Wore Black, Bruce Lee films, and revenge movies of all kinds, are hardly modern classics and very disappointing when one imagines what could have been. I admire Tarantino for making films he wants to see, and in the spirit of films he loves, but it's obvious that he didn't live up to his potential, or even the potential of his idea, with the Kill Bill films.

Tarantino then did a guest appearance and directed a very brief section of Sin City, which was directed by his friend Robert Rodriguez, and didn't exactly distinguish himself. The scene, a bizarre dialogue sequence between a dead Benicio Del Toro and Clive Owen, is one of the most colorful parts of Sin City (perhaps as a way for fans to identify the directorial shift) but doesn't show any of the flair or audacity of the rest of the film (all directed by Rodriguez). Still, it's only a 4 minute sequence, and Tarantino really only did it for a lark.



Rodriguez and Tarantino teamed up again to make an ode to 70's midnight drive-ins with Grindhouse. Grindhouse, made up of 2 different feature films (each director wrote and directed one of the films) and 4 fake movie trailers, was nothing but Rodriguez and Tarantino falling into traps of their own making. Filled with purposefully bad camera work, effects, film production and editing (trying to replicate the feel of those 70s grindhouse films) the two filmmakers really expected their audience would have the same exact sensibilities as they did and enjoy the whole experience of seeing a cheesy double feature. Rodriguez's film Planet Terror was more in line with the B-Movies of the 1970's that the pair wanted to emulate. Containing gross out moments, boobs, guns, poorly produced negatives, random cuts that were suppose to be a result of loss footage...though the movie wasn't that good at least Rodriguez clearly had fun making it.

Tarantino's entry was called Death Proof. and was about a stunt-car driver (Kurt Russel) who uses his car to stalk and try to kill two different sets of girls. The biggest problem Death Proof has is that for most of its run time it is a very boring movie. Tarantino, who must think we find his characters far more interesting than they actually are, spends most of the film having his characters spout his aimless dialogue about boys, crushes, and other such fluff. This buildup doesn't make us care about the characters, nor does it make us loathe them and therefore root for their deaths...it just makes us stew in our seats. As always Tarantino uses music well, but for what is supposed to be a thriller he produces no tension, and the first half of the film is just an astonishingly dull series of dialogue exchanges with a payoff that offers little in thrills.

The second half, when we meet our second group of girls (including Rosario Dawson and Austrailian stunt-woman Zoe Bell), contains more of the pointless dialogue but at least culminates is a pretty solid car chase. Using practical effects, and the impressive Zoe Bell, Tarantino crafts an exciting and satisfying conclusion to an otherwise limp exercise. Death Proof, made for cheap like the films it was inspired by, is acceptable in part because of its lack of ambition, but it still lacks any of the brilliance found in his first two films or even the entertaining zest found in the first Kill Bill. It's a film not worthy of a man with Tarantino's potential and talent and again he made a film more for him and his friend than for anyone else. Theoretically this isn't the worst thing in the world, authors should write books they would want to read and directors should make films they would want to see, but that needs to be balanced with an effort to connect the film to its audience and to try to have a sense of purpose to the narrative beyond a series of homages and repetitive, meandering, and forced dialogue.



So that's just a quick overview of my thoughts of Tarantino's previous films...I didn't go into the movies he wrote like True Romance or From Dusk Til Dawn...but those don't really count in my mind. I'll post my review of Inglourious Basterds soon.

Be Good,

H

Ben (also) saw: District 9

Most times, Henry and I agree on the quality of a movie. This is not one of those times. Kind of.......



First of all, I think Henry needs to get an absurd amount of credit for finishing his Top 100. While it does indicate a somewhat insane level of dedication on his part, it's been entertaining for me to read and, hell, I knew what the list was going in. Yay Henry. He also had my favorite movie as his #1 choice so, um, great call on his part.

Anyway, where were we? Oh yeah, District 9. My first reaction when the credit's started was "Gosh, I've learned a valuable lesson: I guess segregation and oppression are bad things after all. Who knew?" District 9 does, in parts, get very heavy-handed especially in creating its bad guys, who have been taken wholecloth from the 'amoral corporate vampires' and the 'Stone Cold Steve Austin-lookalike roided-out sadists' sections of the stock villain library. Can a movie with this message of in-your-face sensitivity and tolerance be taken seriously when, later in the movie, the audience is clearly expected to be thrilled and/or amused when faceless soldiers (who are presumably just following orders and don't understand what the two sides represent) start getting slaughtered in various gruesome ways? I'd get it if, to a man, we had some confidence that these soldiers were vicious, gore-soaked bigots but all we know about them is that the movie clearly expects us to get pumped when they start getting vaporized by various zap guns.

So the motivating thought behind the movie is well-meaning but thick-headed and poorly thought-out. I digress though....we need more movies like District 9 to get made. It's inventive, fresh and incredibly good-looking given the money spent (letting you know just how much waste is in the average Hollywood action movie budget). I loved the premise. Really, really loved.

There's an SNL skit where Bill Hader impersonates Keith Morrison of Dateline who gets way too excited when hearing other people recount bad news. I reacted similarly to the set-up for District 9: Aliens have come to Earth but, in defiance of cliche, they're not more sophisticated than humans. Ohhh...... Instead of arriving in the same-old U.S. or European locations we've seen in a million 'alien encounter 'movies, they arrive in South Africa. That must have worked out well.... No, actually, it goes terribly and an international effort effectively ghettoizes the aliens (the titular District 9) with profound impacts on South African culture and politics that the movie makes a real effort to explore at the beginning. Oh my..... And there are well-armed, competent soldiers (as well as police) that periodically make heavily-armed incursions in to the ghetto. They sound like some tough customers.... And then there are Nigerians who have made themselves lords of the slum and are also heavily-armed and intent on acquiring a huge arsenal of alien weaponry. *Keith Morrison squeals in giddy anticipation*.

You get the point. It's a very fresh kind of powder keg and it spits in the eye of many sci-fi tropes. The unconventional, documentary-type style also helps the clever story telling along with some wonderful little embellishments that add richness and depth to the world of the story. Basically, the movie was cruising along at an A or an A- for the first 30-40 minutes. Then it runs off the rails a good bit. Nothing fatal to its being an ok movie, but beneath the film it could have been.

The moment where a character only has to go through one guard and four flights of stairs to escape from a top-secret, 'heavily guarded' lab facility is when I knew I had to stop taking District 9 very seriously. It had broken its own illusion and I started noticing the problems piling up.

The first problem is that the movie becomes a fairly brainless action vehicle from that point and the actor playing Mikus (the lead) is simply not up to the task of selling an effect-heavy action sequence. There's a challenging (I'd go so far as to say 'improbable') character transformation that has to occur, linked but apart from his physical changes, and he doesn't sell it. Frankly, the whole second half of the movie loses its way a bit and I stopped feeling like I really understood the stakes or what these various factions were fighting for (except the Nigerians who were admirably clear-eyed about the whole thing).

The cinematographer got way too visually self-indulgent; one gets the sense that he felt that he just had to incorporate every camera he's ever had his hands on. It worked at first (although it was still a bit showy) when the movie was working in a documentary-style but after it rubbished that approach I found it distracting and it made the film needlessly choppy and visually busy.

Most importantly, though, this movie that starts out so smart gets thoroughly stupid by the end. All sorts of deus ex machina, harebrained (and unexplained) pseudoscience and lack of logic. **Modest spoiler alert** Why in the world are the humans so intent on keeping this guy from going home? If this dude is planning on calling down the thunder on humanity (the only sensible explanation I can think of for why the humans are intent on stopping him with this level of gusto) then I really don't feel so bad for the aliens who in that case go from being misunderstood victims of bigotry to the sharp point of the spear for some bloodthirsty aliens. The superpowers of alien technology and introduced and then forgotten when they would subtract tension/ In a bout of 'Stormtrooper Syndrome' the soldiers go from being competent to cannon-fodder, forgetting how to use their radios and insisting on not using most of the many, many big guns they displayed early in the movie (why in the world was the sky not swarming with helicopter gunships in the final action piece?). More importantly, the soldiers (and the bad guys in general) are revealed as engaged in cliched mustache-twirling villainy with a health side business in seemingly unmotivated bigotry. The movie offers us an alien child dangerously reminiscent of young Anakin in The Phantom Menace. The whole documentary style is shoved out the door and then abruptly brought back right before the end.

This sounds pretty harsh, but I was deeply impressed by some of the craft on display and I enjoyed the set-up portion of the movie. District 9 prompted more discussion amongst people I talk to than any movie I can think of in the past many months and for that alone it should be commended. But District 9 wanted us to think of it as a thoughtful, clever movie and on those grounds I thought it dropped the ball way too often.

Grade: B-.

Henry's Top 100: A Look Back and a Look Ahead

The complete list in one place, films that would be on the list had I started it today, and what my next massive undertaking will be for PITAOE...



Well doing this Top 100 was both very rewarding and very humbling. The first thing that surprised me about this process was how easy it was to put together the list. All I really had to do was go through my DVD collection, list the films I most adored, and then just start comparing them one by one. The only issue was how does one compare Austin Powers and Schindler's List but for those decisions I just had to go with my gut. What surprised me was how hard I found it to write about some of the movies on the list. I like them all but some where just much harder to write about than others.

So here's the list in its entirety including the 12 I said barely missed the cut:

112. Road To Perdition
111. Jaws
110. Hotel Rwanda
109. The Two Towers
108. Out of the Past
107. Out of Sight
106. Inside Man
105. Airplane
104. The Third Man
103. X-Men
102. American Beauty
101. Superbad
100. The Lives of Others
99. The Night of the Hunter
98. Batman Begins
97. Donnie Darko
96. South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut
95. Match Point
94. Seven Samurai
93. Golden Child
92. The Rock
91. Office Space
90. Bad Boys 2
89. Return of the King
88. The Last King of Scotland
87. Henry V
86. Ordinary People
85. Knocked Up
84. Reservoir Dogs
83. Witness
82. Training Day
81. Spider-Man
80. Trading Places
79. Tombstone
78. Manchurian Candidate
77. Alien
76. Battle Royale
75. Terminator 2
74. The Little Mermaid
73. Amelie
72. Hard Candy
71. Children of Men
70. Casino Royale
69. Dodgeball
68. Life is Beautiful
67. Schindler's List
66. This is Spinal Tap
65. The Bourne Identity
64. Cruel Intentions
63. Ghostbusters
62. Snatch
61. Munich
60. Eastern Promises
59. The Insider
58. Ferris Bueller's Day Off
57. 25th Hour
56. The Wizard of Oz
55. 300
54. The Shawshank Redemption
53. Braveheart
52. Donnie Brasco
51. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
50. JFK
49. Goodfellas
48. There Will Be Blood
47. On the Waterfront
46. The Fugitive
45. Jurassic Park
44. Billy Madison
43. To Kill a Mockingbird
42. Pulp Fiction
41. Army of Darkness
40. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
39. Tommy Boy
38. Star Wars: A New Hope
37. Blade
36. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
35. M
34. X-Men 2
33. The Incredibles
32. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
31. Shaun of the Dead
30. Citizen Kane
29. The Empire Strikes Back
28. Fight Club
27. Brokeback Mountain
26. Black Hawk Down
25. Amadeus
24. The Fellowship of the Ring
23. Rosemary's Mary
22. The Princess Bride
21. Austin Powers
20. Closer
19. Casablanca
18. The Matrix
17. The Usual Suspects
16. Rushmore
15. Gladiator
14. Good Will Hunting
13. L.A. Confidential
12. The Godfather
11. Die Hard
10. Last of the Mohicans
9. Rear Window
8. Psycho
7. The Departed
6. Big Fish
5. Silence of the Lambs
4. The Exorcist
3. Spider-Man 2
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark
1. Aliens

Whew...

Well my initial thought after reviewing this list was "Knocked Up? Really?" When I wrote up the list for the first time it was right when Knocked Up came out on DVD so it must have been in my head but...yeah...that's not one of my 100 favorite films. Neither is The Night of the Hunter (Really cool but I have no love for the film), Office Space (a few brilliant scenes surrounded by crap), The Rock (I think Bad Boys 2 gets my Michael Bay entry out of the way), or Hard Candy (good movie but something I don't feel I need to see ever again).

Seven Samurai, The Third Man, Children of Men, and Battle Royale should all rank higher on the list. Tommy Boy and Billy Madison should be much lower (how could I have put them in the upper half?). Also, I'm now not even certain that Rear Window and Silence of the Lambs are really in my top ten of all time...

Finally, what movies have I seen since I first drafted this list that I think would make it had I started it today? Well to figure that out I looked at all the movies I've given B+ or better to over the last 16 months:

Forgetting Sarah Marshall - Funnier than Knocked Up but still not a top 100 film

Iron Man - Definitely would make my "new" top 100

Wall*E - Maybe

The Counterfeiters - Really loved this movie but not quite memorable enough

The Dark Knight - Not the best movie ever but I think it would make it because of Ledger's performance

Tropic Thunder - Nope

Man on Wire - Yes

Slumdog Millionaire - Yes

Let the Right One In - Yes

Control - I gave this an A-? ...No

Frost/Nixon - I gave this an A- cause I had seen so many bad movies leading up to seeing this. So no

The Little Foxes - Maybe

Revolutionary Road - Nah...I like this movie...but I don't really feel like I need to revisit it anytime soon

Singing in the Rain - Maybe

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - No. Rewatched this recently...really didn't care for it a second time around.

Taken - Yes!

Star Trek - Nah...I had fun with it but...nah

The Hangover - No

Drag Me To Hell - Really fun but no

Public Enemies - Maybe...probably not

The Hurt Locker - Great film. Yes

Coraline - Also a good movie that doesn't make the cut

In the Loop - No

District 9 - No


And then there are some movies I just plain forgot the first time around:

The Nightmare Before Christmas - How did I forget this? Yes

Bambi - Maybe

Band of Outsiders - Maybe

City of God - Yes

Zodiac - No...a little too slow. Great movie though

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - Maybe

The Pirates of Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl - ...You know what? No. Those sequels really torched this movie for me

The Constant Gardner - No, definitely not.

So that means if I was to rewrite the list today I'd have to find room for: Iron Man, The Dark Knight, Man on Wire, Slumdog Millionaire, Let the Right One In, Taken, The Hurt Locker, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and City of God.

I'd also have to consider: Wall*E, The Little Foxes, Singing in the Rain, Bambi, Band of Outsiders, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Public Enemies...though looking at that list I'm not sure any would really break into the top 100. Maybe Bambi or the Harry Potter film...

Iron Man would be in the high 30s.

The Dark Knight would be in the 45-55 range

Slumdog would be in the 35-45 range

Man On Wire would be in the low 30s

Taken would be in the 80s

The Hurt Locker would be in the 50s

City of God would be in the 70s

Nightmare would be around 60

And Let the Right One in...that would be really high...top 14 maybe? Very high.

Someday I'll rework the list with these additions and post it.


So now we come to the question...what next? I had a lot of fun doing this top 100 series, I loved inviting friends and family to write guest reviews of movies on the list, and I loved always having the challenge of writing a new entry (though I was hardly diligent and punctual about it). I was considering doing a top 100 scenes but given that I would want clips of each scene (and those can be hard to find), and the fact I already included "Best Scene" in all my reviews...I don't think that's the best choice.

So I think I'll tackle the Top 100 Performances of all time. Now, there will inevitably be some overlap with my top 100 movies but I think there will enough unique entries that it won't feel too repetitive. And here's the rub...any part, not matter how small, is viable. Also, actors can appear as many times as they deserve to be on the list. So often I've seen lists of this kind where there is only one Brando performance or something...that's nonsense. I will try to put down the top 100 performances, by any actor or actress (and I'll say this right now...there will not be a 50/50 split...more male performances will be on this list), that I've ever seen.

I think I'm gonna need to call in some help on this one...

James Cameron's Avatar Trailer

So they say this movie will change the face of movie making forever.

Honestly? It looks kind of silly. Like Fern Gully and Apocolypto had sex in George Lucas' bedroom and this is what came out. It still could be awesome...I'm still very excited to see it...but I'm a little worried now...

Henry Saw: District 9

Is this the start of the cinema redemption of 2009?


Not quite...but I did really enjoy District 9. It is an exceedingly original film but is not quite the sci-fi masterpiece that the internet would have you to believe.

D9 tells the story of a world in which almost 30 years ago an alien ship came to earth and just hovered over Johannesburg. Inside the ship we Earthlings discovered more than a million alien refuges who lacked the charm or intelligence of many Hollywood imagined extra terrestrials. Nicknamed "Prawns", these aliens are ugly, disorganized, and unproductive. At least that's how we see them. The aliens are brought down to earth and set up in a shanty town called District 9. Tension builds between the South Africans and their alien neighbors and a company called MNU, an international business obsessed with figuring out how to get the Prawns' weapons to work for humans, decides to lead the effort to relocate the aliens to a spot further away from Johannesburg.



Our protagonist, Wikus Van De Merwe (played by new-comer Sharlto Copley), is a company man put in charge of the massive relocation. Wikus goes door to door in District 9, backed by the police and vicious mercenaries, and coerces or threatens the Prawns into agreeing to move. In one shack Wikus gets sprayed by an alien fluid and suddenly his world gets turned upside down.

I won't spoil the rest but I will say that Wikus is soon forced to work closely with the smartest Prawn we meet (who is named Christopher and happens to have a precocious son) and what they decide to do brings them into direct conflict with MNU and their mercenary soldiers...

First time writer/director Niell Blomkamp, with backing from Peter Jackson, has crafted a film made up of two distinct halves and, it seems to me, two distinct ambitions. On the one hand Blomkamp wanted to make an allegorical film that shined a light on racism and how the world treats refuges. Blomkamp also clearly loves action films and wanted to try his hand at less serious fare as well. The end result of this marriage is a movie that really does feel like two different films, both entertaining, but one being slightly more successful than the other.

The first half of the film, told using "documentary footage", is a masterclass in telling exposition in an interesting way, world building, and grabbing the audience immediately. Though Wikus is not entirely likable (he's a bit of a bumbler and seems as bigoted as everyone else in this world) it is fascinating, humorous, and chilling to watch him march into District 9 and serve the Prawns with eviction notices. For the first 45 minutes District 9 was looking like it would be a true modern classic. When the plot twist comes however, and the action kicks in, the film does not quite pull off the transition. D9 continues to be entertaining but some of its logic falls apart and the stakes never feel as big as they should.



The film cost only 30 million which is amazing as the film looks better than G.I. Joe and that had a budget of well over 100 million. The one place the smaller resources seems to have hurt the film was the last action scene in which we should have seen a lot more Prawns running around (the aliens are done entirely with CGI) and their absence actually led to some confusion. Otherwise, Blomkamp's direction is excellent, beautifully integrating the cgi aliens with the real world, and shows skill at directing action even if that section is not the strongest part of the movie.

Ben had more of an issue with the second half of the film then I did (and hopefully he'll write a little something as a counterpoint to this review) and I think his main issue was that D9 starts off as a very savvy science fiction parable and becomes a series of action scenes that all feel vaguely familiar. This bothered me too but I think I was fairly invested in the film at that point so some of the little things that would be easy to nit-pick I just went with. The cartoonish villains, the oddities of Christopher's plan, questions about what exactly Wikus was fighting for at the end...I kind of accepted that they fell into the grand tradition of action science-fiction. While it's a shame that the conclusion could not be as fresh or as clever as the set-up, I don't begrudge the filmmakers too much as they managed to make the film far more accessible to a wider audience and kept the energy level high.



All in all, District 9 is a film you should discover for yourself. In a pretty vapid summer movie season D9 is a vibrant and ambitious option. The first half of the film is worth the price of admission alone, and while the second half sees the film enter more generic ground, the film never lost me. It's a film that demands a sequel (though I did really appreciate how much is left unsaid and unknown) and I can't wait to see what Blomkamp does next, whether it is District 10 or something completely new.

Grade: B+

Best Scene: Wikus going shack to shack in District 9 serving eviction notices.

Henry's Top 100: #01 - Aliens

After well over a year, 99 articles, massive delays, guest appearances, lots of suggestions, questions, and comments...we've finally reached where we were going all along.


Aliens is my favorite movie of all time.

And in the end it isn't that close.

For a long time Raiders of the Lost Ark was my answer to that question...with Aliens always a definite number two. However, over the last half-dozen years, it's become clearer and clearer that while Raiders is basically a perfect movie that I'll always have a deep and childlike affection for, Aliens is the movie by which I compare all others. It is the movie I have quoted the most in my life, have referenced the most in my life, and, probably most important, Aliens is the movie I have watched the most times in my life.

I'm not unaware of what people who have not seen Aliens think the film is like. Yeah, it might be a sequel to a pretty great film, but it's still a sequel right? And it's just a science fiction movie...an action movie at that...in the end how good can it be? Well, it happens to be the best sequel of all time...and the best science fiction film of all time...and the best action movie of all time...so in the end it is pretty amazingly good.



IMDB's plot description: Ellen Ripley, the sole survivor of the alien attack on the mining ship Nostromo, awakens half a century later when she is found by a salvage ship. The welcome given to her by the "Company" officials is far from warm, since they refuse to believe her discovery of alien existence and strip her off her flight officer's license. Ripley also discovers, much to her horror, that the planet LV-426 where her crew had encountered an alien species for the first time, is now colonized by the company. But when all contact from the planet is lost Ripley is called back into action again as an advisor to a team of tough space marines with lots of firepower. To get rid of her recurrent nightmares about the alien creature, Ripley prepares for a final battle with the monsters - and this time, there are hundreds of them out there.

I know I've already used a lot of superlatives (is it considered a superlative if it's true?) but Aliens really might have the best ensemble cast in cinema history. I don't mean that the actors in Aliens surpass those in The Godfather or Silence of the Lambs or L.A. Confidential but in terms of a collection of characters that feel real, and lived in, and never like they're playing a type when it would be very easy to fall in that trap - I think that Aliens' cast is unsurpassed. The standouts include Bill Paxton as Hudson, who was never, and I mean never, so well cast again. Jenette Goldstein, playing Vasquez, is still the most bad-ass character ever put on the silver screen. Lance Henrikson, playing the "synthetic" Bishop, is both tragic and quite funny all at once. Even Carrie Henn, the little girl playing Newt, is never annoying and adds a very important element to the film.



And leading this group is Sigourney Weaver, reprising her role as Ripley, and just owning the role this time. Ripley is a mother and a soldier in this film and never has that duel role ever been played better. The evolution Ripley goes through over the course of the film, and it's really a full character arc going from shattered victim to confident warrior, is just a great piece of work from Weaver and she definitely deserved the Oscar nomination she got for Aliens (and I can't really think of any other case of a lead actor or actress being nominated for a science fiction film) and her place on AFI's list of the 10 greatest heroes in film history.

I have yet to mention Aliens' director James Cameron who deserves a tremendous about of credit. Not only did he take on a rather large challenge by daring to follow up on the original Alien, but he took it in a completely different direction (from horror to action) and took a cast of unknowns (other than Weaver) and made a modern classic. The film's editing is also impressive, as despite the fact that the film is well over two hours, it never drags.

I could go on and on and on and so to limit myself I'll say this one last thing: Aliens builds to a perfect final sequence. Think of the great movies of all time, or classic action films, or the other 99 movies on this list...it is very rare for a movie to really save the best for last. Films often peak somewhere around two-thirds in. Films like Spider-Man 2, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Matrix, The Dark Knight - they all have their greatest moments somewhere before the grand finale. Aliens, a film made of so many amazing scenes and lines and moments actually rises to its crescendo with the power loader scene. Even if you haven't seen the movie you probably know what I'm talking about, and if you haven't I'm not going to fully spoil it for you, but I will just say that I honestly believe no moment makes me wanna clap my hands and say "F*** yeah!" more than when Ripley utters the film's most famous line of dialogue.



I recently had the opportunity to watch Aliens in a theater with 20 close friends and family and it was an amazing experience. There's something about the movie that sucks me in every time I watch it and seeing the same thing happen to some of my favorite people was really special. Aliens is a movie I feel like I share with Ben as he also adores the film. We have a strange Polish one-sheet of Aliens hanging proudly in our TV room in our apartment:


(Yeah...that's how the Polish advertised the movie Aliens...it's bizarre)

We have watched the film together more times than I could possibly remember and could probably hold a conversation just quoting the film. Also, one of the first jokes my dad told me that I can vividly remember really laughing at is when he first quoted this exchange from early on in the film:

Hudson: Hey Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?
Vasquez: No. Have you?

I distinctly remember a ride I went on at MGM in Orlando that recreated a scene from Aliens with automated dummies of Ripley and Newt. It is things like this that only adds to the place that Aliens holds in my heart. It feels like an old friend that I'll have my whole life. A little strange to be saying that about a movie about evil creatures fighting marines but that's how it is. Entertainment Weekly earned a lot of respect from me when it placed Aliens on its list of the top 100 films of the 20th century. So often sci-fi and action gets ignored on those kinds of lists (other then when they get it wrong and put 2001: A Space Odyssey or Blade Runner). Well Aliens was 42nd on their list (good for them!) but there's no way it's not 1st on mine. And I'll be amazed if that ever changes.

Best Scene: I've already said what I think the best scene is so instead I'll list my ten favorite lines from the film in no particular order:

"He's comin' in. I feel safer already."

"I say we grease this rat-fuck son-of-a-bitch right now"

"Hey, maybe you haven't been keeping up on current events, but we just got our asses kicked, pal!"

"They can bill me!"

"That's it man, game over man, game over!"

"You always were an asshole, Gorman..."

"Look into my eye."

"Allright, sweethearts, you heard the man and you know the drill! Assholes and elbows!"

"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

"It's gonna be dark soon, and they mostly hunt at night. Mostly."

"Get away from her, you bitch!"


...I love this movie so much

Henry Saw: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Everything you need to know about G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and knowing is two-fourths the conflict...that didn't work...


G.I. Joe is exactly what it set out to be. The director, Stephen Sommers, clearly wanted to make a live action cartoon and he accomplished just that. This movie is loud, action packed, fast-paced, stupid, kinda fun, mostly groan inducing, and above all completely care-free. The best thing I can say about the movie is that it has absolutely no illusions of grandeur. Unlike the Transformers films, which are also based on a toy line, G.I. Joe does not run over 2 hours and makes the action the center of the film.

I'm not going to bother describing the plot (The G.I. Joes fight some bad guys - there, done) but I will say that it is fairly nonsensical, filled with inconsistencies and awkwardly placed flashbacks, and only slightly more serious than what you would expect from the old 80's cartoon show. There really aren't any compelling characters (the two leads for instance, Channing Tatum as Duke and Sienna Miller as The Baroness, are both dull as could be) so all the interest in the film comes from watching Sommers recreate the giant battles every little boy in the 80's would imagine with his action figures. We're given giant secret bases, air and sea vehicles, gun fights, ninja fights, girl on girl fights...despite the lack of a compelling plot you can't accuse this film of being boring.

You can accuse it of having some mega-bad acting. The aforementioned Channing Tatum is tremendously bad here. He looks stupid, acts stupid, fights stupid...there is nothing charming or winning about Tatum as Duke. Marlon Wayans, playing Ripcord, is equally lame and much more obnoxious. Dennis Quaid is laughable, Sienna Miller is a blank the whole time, Ray Park plays Ray Park playing Snake Eyes, and no one else stands out in any way....other than Joseph Gordon-Levitt as "The Doctor". Which is not to say he's great in the film, but he at least seems to be having a great deal of fun and shows no hesitance to ham it up a little bit. The filmmakers decided to give him this weird and husky voice that is not only distracting but has nothing to do with the character that he is really playing.

The action in the film ranges from okay to pretty bad. The fights between Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow are relatively exciting, as is an extended scene in which the villains break into the Joes' headquarters, but some of the other actions scenes are truly awful. One such scene is a overly long chase scene through "Paris" in which Duke and Ripcord use "Accelerator Suits" (which are as retarded as they sound). The conclusion is also a let down with Sommers biting off more than he can chew so no individual part of the finale gets enough space.

There are some in-jokes (I probably missed a few), a very strange Brandon Frasier cameo, and a clever little closing scene... the movie throws tons of stuff out there all in the name of having a good time. All-in-all this is a film I think I really would've enjoyed when I was 8 or 9, and as is I can sort of appreciate for its brainless 'splody action. It's a pretty poor film, and I didn't exactly love my two hours in the theater, but at least it's a step up from the Transformers films and it's never not kind of fun. So if you ever played with action figures when you were little, or still do, I just barely recommend G.I. Joe...otherwise...not so much.

So though it could have used more of this:



and this video might have captured the G.I. Joes better than the whole film:



I will still give it:

Grade: B- (it deserves worse but I appreciate its lack of pretension)


Best Scene: When Storm Shadow, Baroness, and Zartan break into the G.I. Joes' headquarters.

Henry Saw: In The Loop

A sharp film that is well worth your time and money...


So I'd heard good buzz about this little British film about the relationship between the English and American governments but I wasn't sure I was going to have a chance to see it. So to my happy surprise I saw that it was being offered via Cable On Demand for only six dollars. Ben and I ordered some pizza and watched one of the smartest films of the year thus far.

IMDB's plot description: IN THE LOOP is a foul-mouthed comedy that draws on non-specific events to create a world that is terrifyingly familiar: The US President and UK Prime Minister fancy a war, but not everyone agrees that war is a good thing. US General Miller (James Gandolfini) certainly doesn't think so and neither does the British Secretary of State for International Development, Simon Foster (Tom Hollander). But when the mild-mannered minister inadvertently appears to back the war on prime-time television, he immediately attracts the attention of the PMs venomously aggressive communications chief Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi), who latches onto him like a hawk. Soon, the Brits are in Washington, where diplomatic relations collide with trans-Atlantic spin doctors and Fosters off-hand remark quickly spirals into an insurmountable mountain of conflict.

So a few things...first off the film is shot very much like an English television show. I wouldn't say it's quite as much like a faux-documentary as many of the BBC series are (In The Loop is using better cameras for starters) but the film does have that hand-held look. This did not bother me, but that might have been because I watched it on TV, so the fact that it looked more like a show than a movie might not have phased me as much as if I had seen it in a theater. Here's a brief clip to give you an idea:



Not only is it shot a little bit like a television episode but the structure of the film is also reminiscent of a television show. The way characters are introduced and the way the plot unfolds makes you feel like you are watching a splicing of The West Wing and the English version of The Office; the good thing about this is that In The Loop combines the strong dialogue of that first show with the wit and dry humor of the second.

The stand out in the film is Peter Capaldi, playing the communications chief Malcom, who has the most quotable lines in the film. He is probably the funniest character I've seen in a movie this year (just edging out Zach Galifianakis in The Hangover) and he single handily makes In the Loop a bit of a must see. The rest of the cast, which other than James Gandolfini is made up of unknown faces, are all funny as well but every time Capaldi is not on screen you can't wait until he comes back.

The plot, which tries to act like it is about something when it really isn't (which is perfect for a film like this) has more to say about how American and English politicians interact than any specific issue in particular. Ben pointed how he was struck by the fact that the American politicians are actually portrayed as competent (and certainly more put together than their British counterparts) which was unexpected coming from an English film. Also a pleasant surprise was having the General (Gandolfini's character) actually be against going to war. It was little touches like this that helped In The Loop seem fresh and standout from other comedies of this ilk (which are actually few and far between).

I strongly recommend In The Loop. It's a very clever and grown-up comedy which is a rare and wonderful thing nowadays. You can wait to see it on TV, and I really do think it might play better on the small screen, but try to see it as soon as you can. This film deserves your dollar and I promise it will make you laugh.

Grade: A-

Best Scene: It's actually one line that Capaldi says at the end of a phone call early in the film that made me laugh the most but if I had to pick a whole scene it would be Capaldi and Gandolfini's one scene together.

Henry Saw: Funny People

This is a very unlikable films for multiple reasons...



Judd Apatow's third directorial effort is definitely his worst film. Funny People is an unfocused, overly long, and self-indulgant dramedy that somehow managed to forget to consistently make me laugh or have a compelling dramatic story-arc.

I'll let IMDB tell you the plot: George (Adam Sandler) is a very successful stand up comedian who learns that he has an untreatable blood disorder and is given less than a year to live. Ira (Seth Rogan) is a struggling up-and-coming stand up comedian who works at a deli and has yet to figure out his onstage persona. One night, these two perform at the same club and George takes notice of Ira. George hires Ira to be his semi-personal assistant as well as his friend.

This description fails to mention that Ira has two roommates (played by Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman) who are both super irritating and get a lot of screen time. It also neglects the fact that the last 50 minutes of this 140 minute movie deal with Adam Sandler trying to steal an old flame (Leslie Mann) away from her husband (Eric Bana) and two kids.

The movie has no coherent structure and everyone in the film is so unlikable (except Ira every now and then) that you really don't care what happens to any of them. Strangely enough, despite the fact that the part of the film he appears in is the worst stretch of the movie, Eric Bana is by far the most charming performer here. As an actor I've liked since Black Hawk Down I was happy to see this but it speaks very poorly of the movie that the most winning performance in the film is from the non-comedian who doesn't show up until 110 minutes into the film.

Yes, the movie has some funny lines throughout (mostly throwaway lines from Rogan and Bana's Aussie enthusiasm) but there are no funny "scenes" and way too much of the attempted humor are lame sex and dick jokes that almost never hit. The drama of the film, concerning Sandler's quest to change his life in the wake of his illness, somehow plays false and we never care enough about his character that we want to spend an extra 50 minutes with him to see how it will all shake out.

Also irritating was Apatow casting his wife and daughters in prominent roles. When he did this in Knocked Up it was okay as we hadn't really seen them before and they were not on screen that much. Here, they dominant the second half (or should I say "final third"?) including a galling sequence where we watch video of his eldest daughter singing "Memories" from the musical Cats. While it almost has a purpose in the plot it goes on a little too long, and the characters talk about it a little too much, for it to come off as anything but incredibly obnoxious.

Don't bother with Funny People. It is a big investment of your time and doesn't have enough laughs to be worth it. Both 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up were a little long but 140+ minutes is just ridiculous for what is ostensibly, despite it's higher aspirations, a fart and dick joke "bromance" comedy.

Grade: C

Best Scene: I liked a line Rogan had referencing The Deer Hunter but I'll go with Norm Macdonald's cameo because it features Norm Macdonald.

Henry Saw: Orphan

I really like movies about evil kids...


The Bad Seed, The Good Son, Damien: Omen II... they're all entertaining. There's something about an evil little kid that is both eerie and comical; it's a perfect mix for a horror film. This brings us to Orphan which I got to see last week with my sister. Orphan stars Vera Farmiga (The woman from The Departed) and Peter Sarsgaard as a married couple who are dealing with the fallout of their last attempt to have a child ending in a still-birth. Despite already having two kids (including a deaf daughter) the semi-happy couple decides they want to adopt an older child from an orphanage and give all their love they would have given the still-born baby to an orphan they will take in.

At the orphanage they meet Ester, a very smart and reserved girl of around 10, and decide to bring her home. Almost immediately we become aware that the tag line of the film wasn't wrong: there is something wrong with Ester.

Soon Ester is attacking fellow students, killing animals, threatening her siblings, killing nuns, framing her adopted (and former alcoholic) mother, and all other sorts of evil stuff. These scenes are entertaining, if a bit repetitive, and we don't really feel the "stakes" of the film until the couple's two birth children are put at risk by Ester. Some of the film deals with Farmiga's character trying to learn more about Ester's past to see if she can find out what exactly is wrong with her. This seems to have been a poor choice by the filmmakers as the audience doesn't care about why Ester is screwed up...we just want to see what creepy thing she will do next.

At least that's what we think...as Orphan ends up having a twist that is so wacky and silly and, in my opinion, delightfully perfect for this kind of movie, that I didn't even care about the action of the 3rd act after the reveal. I was still processing the twist, and how the film chose to reveal it, so that the ho-hum conclusion to the film just kind of passed before my eyes without investing in the finale.

Also, quickly, I just want to say that Peter Sarsgaard is horrible in this movie. There's a scene where he has to have a little bit of a breakdown and he just bombs. Sure, the material is weak, but he does absolutely nothing with it. Vera Famiga is fine, a little boring, but Isabelle Fuhrman is quite good as Ester.

Orphan is not as good as the evil kid movies I listed above, but it's kind of entertaining, and is worth a rental if you're in the mood for a generic horror film with a very memorable and wacky twist.

Grade: C+

Best Scene: When we find out what's really wrong with Ester.

Henry Saw: Moon

It's a good thing that movies like this are still being made


I can see why, in what has been a pretty weak year for movies thus far, Moon is some people's favorite movie of 2009. It's not the kind of movie you see everyday. Made by first time director Duncan Jones, Moon is a 5 million dollar movie that gets every dollar out of it's budget.

The film follows Sam Rockwell, in what is pretty much a one man show, as a cooperate employee stationed on the moon for three years to mine for a clean energy source. It's a lonely and boring life but his service time is almost up. Things get weird however when he encounters someone else on the moon...someone who looks just like him.

The movie is hardly unpredictable (in fact I kept waiting for something to happen that I didn't see coming) but it's always interesting. The use of miniatures, a a well designed and dirtied-up set, and at least the illusion of dealing with big ideas and themes, make Moon a very admirable if not lovable film.

Moon is not a movie I ever really care if I see again. I wasn't that entertained by it nor did I find it intriguing enough to have to revisit. Still, as I said, I'm quite pleased that someone is still trying to make films like this and I actually do recommend Moon because it's not like any other film you will see this year.

Grade: B

Best Scene: The first couple scenes of the two Sam Rockwell's interacting with each other.