Movies 2011

2k11/12

• The Christmas Toy.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation. Season 7. 9/10.
• My Boys. Season 1.
• Water for Elephants.
• Stander. 7/10. This is an ok actionish movie. It never really brings you into characters however. The only one you might really care for is too small of a part to have much effect. Stander himself is interesting for a while, but too cold as things go on. It's also hard to feel much for him when the movie has such clear biases, and grossly distorts the actual historical record.
• Scott Pilgrim vs The World. 10/10. Awwwwweeeesome! Great music, effects, amazing mashup of movies, music, and video games.
• Revenge of the Nerds. 6/10. This could be ok, but significant parts of it are actually pretty upsetting: Cameras in the women's dorms, selling photos of them, and Louis essentially raping Betty (she, of course, loves him immediately afterward).
• Firefly. 10/10. Amazing, of course.
• Twins. 6/10. Absurd plot; even setting aside disbelief, it's not well put together.
• Die Hard: With a Veneance. 8/10. Excellently well put together action comedy.
• Die Hard 2: Die Harder. 7/10. Ridiculous plot, but it's entertaining and internally consistent.
• Killers. 6/10. The strangeness of this makes it more compelling than it would be otherwise.
• My Fellow Americans. 8/10. Fun, friendly movie.
• The Dirty Dozen. 6/10. It's almost tempting to like the movie, but it makes very little sense and actually has a lot of severely disquieting elements.
• The Terminator. 8/10.
• The Longest Day. 6/10.
• The Peacemaker. 7/10. Clooney's always watchable, though this movie is a little preachy and predictable to be much of a much. Some disquieting scenes of him beating people up as well.
• Mr Baseball. 7/10. Good sports comedy.

2k11/11

• Wonder Years.
• Zero Effect. 8/10. Suprisingly good movie. Goofy characters, some atypical roles, relatively surprising plot lines, good movie.
• Road to Perdition. 7/10. A little lacking, never quite really pulls you in.
• Going the Distance. 7/10. Silly but reasonable romantic comedy.
• O Brother, Where Art Thou? 8/10. Excellent music.
• Life as We Know It. 7/10. Fairly predictable but fun.
• Super Troopers. 5/10. Almost entertaining, but a little too disconnected and sporadic.
• Big Nothing. 7/10.
• Hulk. 7/10. Watching this you can definitely see why the franchise was rebooted a few years later with a much better Hulk movie. However, this is actually not terrible and has a couple interesting points.
• Source Code. 9/10. This was terribly mis-marketed. Put forward as some sort of weird action movie about programming, it's actually not about any of that at all. Pretty much all of the actors do a great job, particularly Jeffrey Wright in a quirky, strange character. The movie is based heavily on a few twists, some of which are fairly predictable, but they're not held off unduly and the movie doesn't suffer for it either way.
• Season of the Witch. 7/10. I was expecting a more straightforward, more realistic sort of film with Cage and Perlman fighting against injustice, so the more action oriented, paranormal direction this takes caught me off guard. Fairly predictable once that sinks in and a bit overwrought throughout, but entertaining if you can handle Cage.
• I'm Reed Fish. 8/10. This definitely throws some serious curveballs as a romantic comedy, set within a warm, friendly, engaging small town setting.
• The Good Guy. 7/10. I thought this was going to be an absolutely terrible C grade romantic comedy, but it goes in surprising directions. A lot of it is fairly predictable, but it doesn't really let up on the one character and it's kind of refreshing. There are also just enough hints of backstory here and there to give it a little bit of depth.
• The Chosen One. 8/10. I'm not generally a big fan of Rob Schneider. I think he has a lot of potential, but his humor just usually falls flat for me. This movie is a little bit more serious, almost dark comedy, and stays pretty far afield from his usual very young humor. It's definitely the best movie of his that I've seen, for exactly those reasons. I'm not sure the mix totally works, and certainly most people will think not, but I thought it was pretty reasonable and actually pretty engaging in the last quartile with the family issues taking front stage.
• Apocalypto. 10/10.
• Home Fries. 7/10. Passable romantic comedy.
• Wonder Years. Season 2. 6/10.

2k11/10

• Welcome to Collinwood. 6/10. Something about this movie just doesn't work. It should be pretty good, but it comes off more flat than humorous.
• Blues Brothers. 7/10. This should be way more awesome than it is. The timing's just a little off, it doesn't quite move fast enough---it should probably be half an hour shorter, rather than just over 2 hours---and a lot of the transitions are really bad. So many of them just cut so abruptly and obviously from the frame scene to the mid part, e.g., the cut to the Bluesmobile backflipping the Nazis, that it really seems like a lack of effort on making it believable. Still though, they destroy an impressive number of cars, so it's worth watching. The mile high drop of the Nazimobile is also pretty cool. The music is generally all great and the plot is a good time and ultimately that's what this is about so it's worthwhile. Even Caitlin was secretly watching it.
• Love's Kitchen. 7/10. Low budget but nonetheless acceptable romantic comedy. Better than lots of higher budget, star studded stuff. Some weird editing and just-off dubbing, but it's light & entertaining.
• The Walking Dead. Season 1. 8/10. This is a pretty solid series that seems to be getting better as it goes on. The opening stretch has a few too many cliches---guy wakes out of coma to zombie horror, passing as zombies to walk through them, etc---but these seem to be dissipating. I could do without a lot of the gore, but I guess that's part of the genre. It has enough dramatic points that it's a pretty solid story. I also really like some of the visuals, e.g., the old school looking sheriff wandering down the completely empty side of the highway, cars cramming out of sight on the other. Definitely worth checking out for anyone with even a remote interest in zombies. More: http://rocketshipgames.com/blog/?p=1097
• Roman Holiday. 8/10. Old school 1953 Gregory Peck, Audrey Hepburn black & white. Has some funny timing and so on that's a product of the times, but it's a good movie at heart. Couple funny moments. The ending is really what makes it for me, no improbably wishy-washy happy ending going on here.
• Tron: Legacy. 6/10. A pretty good visual and musical stream, but very lacking in plot and characters. It's not exactly disappointing because that's about what I expected, but it's certainly not a great movie. Decent to put on and just let play in the background, but not really to actually sit and watch. More: http://rocketshipgames.com/blog/?p=1082
• Intelligence. Seasons 1 & 2. 8/10. A great show from Canadian TV centering around the establishment of a new Canadian foreign spy service and its intermingled dealings in local organized crime. A large number of solid, complex characters and unknown, good actors throughout, as well as a fairly gripping plot. The story arc that occupies the first season or so is particularly good. The third story arc isn't as good and has a bit too many characters, but is still pretty good. Biggest disappointment is that the show was cancelled after two seasons. On the upside, it ends on a cliffhanger and there's tons of threads in the air, but it's not actually a bad series ending; suprisingly given the objective circumstances, I'm actually pretty ok with that endpoint. This post has some interesting comments on whether or not the show is actually anti-American.

2k11/9

• Troll Hunter. 8/10. This movie comes up a little flat and ends a bit abruptly, but is actually pretty entertaining. Otto Jesperson does a great job as the troll hunter, giving a perfectly understated performance. The movie's poking fun at banal, everyday bureaucracy (Otto complaining about his hours) while also having trolls and fantastical elements is pretty good. I'm just not a fan of the found footage genre. Almost by definition they don't have very strong endings, and the very ambiguous, unfulfilling conclusion here drops the ball on an otherwise very promising movie. More: http://rocketshipgames.com/blog/?p=1059
• Breaking Bad. Seasons 1--3. 10/10. Unbelievable. I would argue that this is one of the handful of TV shows that rise to Shakespearean heights. It starts off excellent, with great humor and style with just enough plot and action going on. From there the comedy largely burns away and it becomes much more dramatic but no less gripping. What made me realize it was really going to the next level though was when I realized Walt had started cutting the crusts off his bread. Excellent symbolism is rife throughout, e.g., when Walt gives up on his home rebuilding project, literally and figuratively dropping the whitewash to instead go defend his turf. There are also a fair number of pretty deep moments left wide open to interpretation and debate---the best of which the show itself explores. For example, one of the best episodes (Fly) seems at first that it's going to be more comedic and a lighter one-off, but it's actually amazing. The whole fly thing is a great look at Walt's character and descent, but his rambling at the end cuts hard into exploring his earlier critical scene with Jane, without actually making a very definitive stance on what exactly happened. Notably, the show feels extremely dark but is actually fairly accessible in many ways. There's literally almost no cursing---lots of "bitch" but only one f-bomb in the whole first three seasons---and even the violence, which seems pretty intense at times, is actually fairly clean in some sense---lots of people get decapitated, heads blown off, and so on, but rape is almost absent from the universe, etc. It's truly the depth and descent of characters and extreme, realistic and unforced tension that pull things along here, not gore or shock.
• Nights in Rodanthe. 6/10. Utterly predictable, staid romantic drama...
• Safe Men. 8/10. A cute, safe movie that's actually pretty funny in a quiet sort of way. From the premise of the Jewish mob in Providence, RI duking it out, to the pants story, to Veal Chop being an intern, it's never uproarious but definitely entertaining.
• Blitz. 6/10. This is hard to watch---gratuitously violent and largely immoral. There's no one to cheer for here. I guess in some sense the cops are trying to do what they think right, but there's no way to sympathize with their torture and killing.
• 3000 Miles to Graceland. 5/10. This could have been, should have been, an awesome movie, but is instead just pointlessly, senselessly violent and gory, with absolutely no internal world beyond the actors on screen---all these people are killed and the whole town doesn't go insane??? A real disappointment from Costner and Russell. Plus it has a stupid uppity kid. I had to turn it off.
• Broken Flowers. 10/10. Bill Murray strikes again with a super understated role exploring yet another lost, idle soul. The movie has a goofy and just slightly off character, atmosphere, and timing that serves it well. I think what really sets it apart is that it doesn't quite stick to formula. At first it seems Don's being set up as a jerk, but his former flings don't seem particularly hostile; at least at first. The first encounter is actually really fun to watch, in part because it's so different from expectations, and really goes a long way to carry the movie. The many ambiguities and unfilled details are also great. Let alone the ending, the vague unspecificity of the night with Laura is well done, a good case of knowing when more would be too much.
• Knockaround Guys. 6/10. This movie's not exactly painful to watch, it just doesn't bring anything at all to the table. Vin Diesel's performance is almost painful as he's wasted on such a braindead thug role.
• Fallen. 8/10.
• Lethal Weapon 2. 6/10.
• Cop Land. 8/10. Actually a pretty engaging movie. One of Stallone's best, even if he blames it for ruining his career. It leaves a lot of ends hanging and doesn't quite develop its characters as much as it opens up leads or them. Some parts of it are also basically beyond belief, even within the logic of the movie---flaunting the Superboy around at parties? While he's supposed to be dead and just before you're actually going to kill him? Makes no sense. The end is also somewhat disappointing, descending into a boring firefight. However, the movie throws up a lot of good plot twists and many of the characters and ambiguities are very engrossing.
• The Usual Suspects. 7/10.
• Lethal Weapon. 6/10.
• The Road. 7/10. This is good, but never really managed to draw me in or impress me. It all just felt a little flat and dead, and wasn't as gripping and somehow didn't manage to be as lushly desolate as the novel.
• Wedding Weekend. 6/10. Very low production values and goes a bit over the top with crude humor. However, it's somewhat endearing for all that, though perhaps only if you're approaching middle age. It has just enough darker points that it makes you guess a bit about how predictable the predictable plot will actually be.

2k11/8

• Falling for Grace. 6/10. Not offensively bad, but low productions values and utterly predictable, banal, ancient plot.
• Iron Man 2. 6/10. An utterly stupid movie, not even as good as the first one, which itself was not amazing. At first I thought the stream had gotten all screwed up and was playing a bloopers reel or something. Barely existent plot, boring special effects, stupid diversions and overly long sequences. No idea what people see in this.
• Rubber. 6/10. This was almost brilliant, but it's so in-your-face with its symbolism that it would be hard to take, even if that symbolism wasn't explicitly about how stupid and gullible audiences are.

2k11/6

• Super 8. 8/10. Very solid sci fi with a fairly relationship, growing up, and family component. Great effects and well used action set within a plot focused on people. not super deep or weighty, but just enough to make it really good. More: http://rocketshipgames.com/blog/?p=927
• Shutter Island. 7/10. This movie is extremely well done in sets, costumes, lighting, etc. Most of it has great atmosphere, though at times it can feel fairly cardboard, though it makes sense that a lot of the roles and places would be paper thin given the ending. By far the worst part of the movie though is just that it's not worth getting invested in. Only a fool wouldn't know the switch ending from the very first moments, it's far to predictable a trope.
• Burn After Reading. 8/10. Falls squarely in the middle of the Coen brothers' repertoire. Not super absurd, not serious and dramatic. All of the actors, almost all A-list, do well here in super wacky, somewhat atypical roles. I'm pretty sure John Malkovich doesn't have a single line that doesn't include at least one F-bomb. A cavalcade of idiots and bumblers in a ridiculous but tight, connected plot. Doesn't feel deep, but it actually has some interesting points about what all these people are looking for in their relationships and how different people's stories turn out. Pretty funny satire on Washington as well.
• Starman.
• Kick-Ass. 9/10. Remains awesome; notes below.
• Sunshine Cleaning. 8/10. This is a little hard to watch if you just can't stand useless, whiny people (Norah). However, it's a very good movie and has a lot of realistic elements. Lots of stuff is left in the open or just doesn't go anywhere, but I think that's kind of how things work in real life, e.g., the friendship with the store owner. Other stuff just ends and it doesn't actually turn into a huge production, e.g., the affair. Good movie.
• Babylon A.D. 6/10. Vin Diesel disappoints. I expected a better world build up here, but it's rather incomplete and not particularly novel or interesting. The movie has some good moments, like the refugee submarine, but it's a little uninteresting, a little full of itself, and has strange plot holes. I get that she's superhuman, but why she has the power to survive the missile blast is just never adequately explained...
• Harry Brown. 7/10. Michael Caine does a good job here, but this movie feels somewhat stranded in an odd place: Not quite an action film, not quite a drama either. Pretty solid though.
• The Royal Tenenbaums. 10/10. This had me from the start with the great soundtrack and excellent, pitch perfect voiceover by Alec Baldwin. The script here is amazingly tight, and watching it again rewards ample foreshadowing and symbolism.
• How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog. 9/10. I expected a straight comedy, but this is also fairly dramatic. Not too surprisingly given Branagh's role, it feels a lot like a modern Shakespeare, with the humor coming from wordplay and cosmic questions set into a slightly dark or at least serious world. Most telling is the moonlit talks with the doppelganger, which come off an awful lot like a soliloquy in Hamlet or such.
• Rushmore. 10/10. With a main character almost painfully awkward at times, the movie can be just slightly cringe inducing, but it's fantastic. Excellent music, settings, characters, and tight script writing.

2k11/5

• Southland Tales. 8/10. What the hell? I have no idea what to make of this. On the one hand, it's terrible. On the other hand, it's awesome. Completely over the top and absurd, and probably very empty but in such a cluttered way that you can't help but believe there has to be something going on there. The long exposition at the start is a huge weak point that shouldn't have been added after a dismal debut at Cannes. Similarly, if there were more musical numbers, they should never have been cut, as they are definitely the strength. Justin Timberlake's is awesome, and the closing performance in the megazeppelin is great as well. I was so-so on this, but totally sold by the sequence where Boxer runs into the fog after the shooting. Basically, you're either into its bubble-gummy crazed ridiculousness, or you're not. More: http://rocketshipgames.com/blog/?p=891
• The Anderson Platoon. 7/10. Non-fiction. Footage from report embedded with a unit in Vietnam. Doesn't really have much commentary or meaning to it, or enlightening footage. The one moment I really picked up on is where the Sgt gives HQ instructions in case they don't make it out.
• Chain Reaction. 6/10. Should be more solid than it is. It all seems reasonably well executed, but it's just so... boring.
• Time Bandits. 7/10. Lots of great costuming and settings.
• The Producers. 8/10. Mel Brooks version. Super awesome.
• The Graduate. 7/10. It seems like this movie was probably mind blowing when it first came out, but now is just kind of empty. It's odd because it seems so serious but is basically farce by the time you hit the ending church scene. It's also significantly hampered by Elaine, who basically says or does nothing of interest throughout the movie, yet near instantly becomes an obsession for Benjamin.
• Takers. 7/10. This is basically a black version of Heat. It's pretty solid, though extremely derivative of a number of similar heist movies and very predictable. Good action sequences, though as usual the violence here from the arguably supposedly sympathetic characters is a little disquieting. Ditto on the police violence. Very good and pleasantly unexpected parkour sequence. Nice ending too, leaving a couple open ends and a lot of ambiguous back and forth---who really won here???---that fit well.
• The Book of Eli. 8/10. A technically excellent movie with great photography that comes up a little flat in making you actually care about it. It's just not quite campy enough, or a little too predictable, or doesn't have enough backstory. Worth watching though. More: http://rocketshipgames.com/blog/?p=674
• Wasabi. 7/10.
• Dances with Wolves. 9/10.
• Sherlock. Series 1. 9/10. Fantastic modern day adaptation of Sherlock Holmes. They've taken a bunch of the stories and plot lines, mingled them together a bit, thrown in a lot of modern gadgetry, and it's fantastic. Holmes is compelling, Watson endearing, and the relationship between them interesting essentially from the start.
• Hot Tub Time Machine. 7/10. This should have been an absolutely terrible movie, and it's definitely not great, but it's ok. It's got kind of a weird thing going on where it's got a lot of low brow adult humor and a moderate amount of tepid nudity but feels cute and friendly almost like a kid's movie. I guess it's aimed at the older teen market. In any event, it is not without its appeal through sheer wackyness.
• Cloverfield. 8/10. I expected this to not be very good, but actually thought it was excellent for what it is. There are a ton of details in here that are well worth paying attention to and it probably makes more sense than it seems to. For example, why do they get attacked all of a sudden in the tunnels? They turned the camera light out. What do they find the guards at the department store using? Extremely bright lights. There seems to be a lot of backstory here that's kind of silly---and largely not present at all in the movie itself---but reasonably developed; see the splash in the closing scene, and the logos on some people's shirts at the party, and the logos on the capsized tanker. More: http://rocketshipgames.com/blog/?p=879
• Daybreakers. 7/10. Solid action-ish, science fiction vampire flick. Nothing too memorable, but it's well done and actually fairly clever compared to many others. Similar in many ways to Blade, though more on the drama side and less on the action.
• Kick-Ass. 8/10. Expected this to be awful, but actually very solid and fairly smart. From what I've seen it's probably even better than the comic books it's based on. It's a little disappointing in the end how it wraps up so neatly, how easily Hit Girl falls apart, and how easily guns wrap everything up, but through the bulk of the movie it's very good. More: http://rocketshipgames.com/blog/?p=858
• Absolute Power. 7/10. Solid Eastwood movie though he's well beyond overly capable as usual---is there nothing his character can't break into? Decent plot, but definitely just sort of standard fare.
• Ken Burns' The Civil War. 10/10. Non-fiction. Although essentially a history of the military aspects of the Civil War, it still does a good job portraying a number of aspects. An interesting early point is the people who had been pushing for years, decades, for secession and were finally the right kind of crazy at the right time. It also does a good but implicit job pushing the notion that Lincoln was a moderate, but he had an agenda leaning toward equality and emancipation, and when push came to shove, that's what he stuck with. At a number of points he could have easily caved, but despite his moderate, conciliatory tendencies, he always comes up on the right side of history. The primary source readings and the music are of course also excellent throughout this series.
• Last Action Hero. 8/10. Very underrated action movie. Actually fairly smart, good parody of action movies, just enough shading and dilemmas on the characters to make them interesting, even bit parts like the mom.
• Maverick. 7/10. Doesn't age well for some reason, less funny every time.
• Mercury Rising. 7/10. Solid actionish movie. Willis does ok here and the kid's not very annoying. Plot is reasonable.
• True Lies. 8/10. Pretty well done action comedy.
• The Big Hit. 7/10. Entertaining, not much more.

2k11/4

• Salt. 7/10. Good action, very kinetic, and the twists the plot will take is at least is not super obvious. It's just not super compelling either.
• From Paris with Love. 7/10. Entertaining, mostly because it just doesn't stop moving. Travolta is a whirlwind throughout the entire movie and that's really what keeps it going despite being over the top, possibly offensive at times, and basically a straight up, fairly predictable action comedy.
• Hunter Prey. 8/10. Excellently done genre science fiction. The very low budget this was produced on doesn't show as the effects are excellent. Great use of minimal action and settings to produce a good story. Plot has a lot of twists in it, but they're all pretty well thought out and justified by previous bits. Sort of a follow up to Enemy Mine. Highly recommended for sci-fi buffs. More: http://rocketshipgames.com/blog/?p=658
• Die Hard. 7/10. A definite classic action movie. I could give it an 8 just for the parts that have become pop culture, but I think it could be more.
• The Fog of War. 10/10. Non-fiction. Reminiscences of Robert McNamara. This is a fantastic documentary. Well polished and excellently executed. McNamara himself is fascinating in both what the overt content of what he says, and what he says and thinks and how he carries himself. It's not clear how much is heing whitewashed, consciously or not, but that's all part of bigger picture.
• Sons of Anarchy. Seasons 1 and 2. 8/10. Actually a pretty good series. Seemingly somewhat ridiculous if you think about the quantities of weapons they're talking about, but has a lot of great characters and solid plot lines. Pretty much all the headline characters are very good, particularly by Perlman and Sagal.

2k11/3

• Death at a Funeral. 7/10. Entertaining, funny, not super memorable or important.

2k11/2

• Crazy Heart. 8/10. Have to say, I found this slightly less engaging then I thought I would. Counter to some reviews, I think it actually moves too fast. There a ton of scenes and lots of movement among them, but it's all just slightly too easy, moves slightly too fast. Bad meets a woman... Now they're in love. Bad loses track of Buddy... Now he's sober. Bad and Tommy get back together... Now Bad's career's back on track. There's a lot to like here---characters, scenes, especially the music---but it's all very pat---we've seen all this before---and only skin deep. It does get some credit for setting up a lot of false expectations---we keep waiting for Bad to screw up where he doesn't---and having some sadly novel plot twists---Bad and Tommy aren't enemies, and Tommy remembers what he owes Bad---but it's not enough to elevate this above just being a good movie, rather than a great one.
• Hellboy. 8/10.
• Nature: Wolverine. 7/10. Non-fiction. Typical Nature episode. Pretty solid, not amazing.
• The Road Warrior. 7/10. Has a great, crazy comic book aesthetic going on. It's not super clear how we get from the first movie to this one, things have gotten dramatically worse without much backstory. Beyond that, I'm just not sure what to make of it. It should be rated more highly but there's just something offputting about the refinery people or something else about it that puts it down a couple notches.
• Get Shorty. 8/10. I think the followup Be Cool is actually much better than this.
• 2001: A Space Odyssey. 10/10. The trick with this is that you need to watch it for the whole visceral experience, not so much for story or characters.
• Hockey Mom. 6/10. Shows a lot of promise, but ultimately just doesn't come through with a big grab.
• Robocop. 7/10. Hard to tell what's intentional camp and what's 80s/90s.
• Ultramarines. 7/10. I have strongly mixed feelings about this. It's definitely not for non-fans of the game/universe. Animation is good in places, like stills of the characters, but weak on background---everything's clouded over to save on rendering---and a lot of the movement is strange. Much of the Dawn of War animations and so on just carry more weight to them. The story as it goes is pretty ok, though very action oriented. It's interesting noting just some of the difficulties working with this domain, e.g., basic difficulties identifying different marines once armored up, let alone having them express emotions, the latter of which they largely don't have anyway...
• Walk the Line. 10/10
• The Hudsucker Proxy. 9/10.
• The Parking Lot Movie. 10/10.

2k11/1

• HALO Legends. 7/10. Animation is up and down. Even where it's pretty good it's not clear it works, e.g., the weird rotoscoped-ish, voxel-ish look and feel to the Arbiter short. Nothing really amazing here, but it's not terrible.
• The Taking of Pelham 123. 7/10. This is more notable in coming up short than it is in being notable. It shows a lot of promise for a long while, but it never really builds to anything. There's also extremely little depth to the characters, even though a fair amount of backstory is built up that provides more than enough hooks for some real tension and confliction. In part because it doesn't convey any sense of inner monologue, toward the end it makes very little sense. Why does Denzel's character go after Travolta's? Denzel makes good on his escape, and there's just nothing really motivating him continuing to pursue after the guy. There could be, but as it stands everything up to that point would lead toward him turning around and going home while he had the chance. In any event, not a terrible movie, but not worth putting effort into.
• The Parking Lot Movie. 10/10. Non-fiction. Absolutely brilliant documentary, seamlessly mixing philosophy, social commentary, and absurdity.
• Kill Me Later. 6/10. Comes very close to getting another star, but there's just not much reason to recommend this. It's shaky but ok for about 2/3 of the movie, and then it just becomes predictable and boring mixed in with a lot of uncomfortable suicide humor.
• True Grit. 10/10. One of the best Westerns ever made. Scenery is beautiful, actors are awesome, plot is solid, action is heroic and larger than life without being over the top. Perhaps the riskiest part of the whole thing, the 14 year old Maddy character does not ruin the movie, coming off without pretentiousness or annoying precociousness. Bridges and Damon are excellent, as is everybody else as well. The use of language and the speech mannerisms are excellent, and so much better than modernized Western junk. The movie also manages to pull in a large amount of quirky humor without becoming cartoonish or a true comedy.
• The Weather Girl. 7/10. This is a pretty good romantic comedy, a little less sappy than most and with a different, slightly grittier feel. It's still very predictable, but reasonable light entertainment.
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. 8/10. To a large extent this is more clever than it is actually fun to watch, but it's still very good. Dreyfuss steals a lot of the scenes, but the primaries are very good as well.
• Insomnia. 9/10. This movie descends excellently into mania and depression. Pacino does a great job, and everybody else supports well. Williams is good as well. Dormer's breakdown at the end, about not knowing whether he meant it or not is fantastic, as is his coming around on Finch and facing up to it not possibly being an accident if it took Finch ten minutes to beat Kai to death. Excellent visuals as well, the terrain and funky settings like the cabin are beautiful and really fit the mood.
• Batman: Under the Red Hood. 8/10. Actually a quite excellent animated film. It's a little unfortunate that it creates almost no mystery as to who the Red Hood is, even if you haven't read the comics the film is based off. However, the film survives based on the strength of its action sequences and the moral dilemmas and cause and effect. The climax with Batman, the Red Hood, and the Joker is very good; I love the Joker's ranting along the lines of "Only I get what I want tonight!" The finale flashback scene is also suitably haunting. It's a little odd that Nightwing's appearance is basically thrown away and he doesn't come back for the end of the movie, but I think this was all done deliberately to put him up as a foil. Very solid animation and voice acting as well. All in all, great stuff.
• Chaos Theory. 8/10. Not quite a romantic comedy, but close. Maybe almost a 9/10? It actually does a very good job straddling comedic elements and more serious aspects and sequences, neither coming to dominate the other. Reynolds shows some aptitude toward the dramatic, he's notably more subdued here and relies less on facial comedy than in most of his movies, though retains enough comedy to keep the movie emotionally bearable. Bonus points for the interesting setting; the wet, woodsy Vancouver region scenery presents a nice, appropriately wet and dark but also lush background to the whole thing. The relationship between Frank and Jesse comes across really well.
• Dr Who. New edition, season 1. 9/10. This gets dinged a point for basically being a soap opera with just enough science fiction to make it palatable to an audience that otherwise wouldn't watch a soap. It's sometimes frustrating, particularly early on, just how powerful the Doctor is and how basically nothing presents a serious problem to him tactically. Hordes of Daleks? No problem, TARDIS forcefield. Trapped in a prison of one kind or another? No problem, sonic screwdiver that was oddly not confiscated. But the larger themes make up for it. I was skeptical the first couple episodes, gaining interest as things went on, and completely sold when the ostensibly last Dalek exclaims to the Doctor "You would have made a good Dalek!" It will be interesting to see how the show picks up the interesting bonds that were developing between Rose and the 9th Doctor.
  • Update: I'm only a couple episodes into the second series of the new show, having never watched them before, but I think the 10th doctor is much less interesting precisely because he's basically lost that war criminal/war hero edge. I was only so-so on the show but was sold by:
    • The captured Dalek's charge that "You would make a great Dalek!"
    • The Doctor's very emotional response to the resolution of the empty child plague.
    • The wrangling over setting off the delta wave in the finale, particularly in contrast with Jack's preference for setting it off.
    • The fight between Harriet Jones and the Doctor about her response to the Sycorax, and the Doctor's subtle counter response.
• You Kill Me. 7/10. Kingsley gives a perhaps overly deadened portrayal, but this is a fairly solid movie. The biggest issue is that it struggles sometimes in being realistic or absurd. Leoni and Kingsley act fairly realistically. But they do absurd things, such as Kingsley telling his AA meetings he's a hired killer, or Leoni assaulting an assassin, again at an AA meeting. Things like these standout a bit and it's not quite clear how to take the movie. Otherwise, it's fairly smart and tight. Well worth watching.
• The Informant. 7/10. Pretty entertaining movie of a pathological liar turned whistle blower. Don't read anything beforehand or it'll blow a bunch of the surprises! Bonus points for Scott Bakula in an understated but completely appropriate role.
• Children of Men. 10/10. On top of everything else excellent going on in this movie, it's reall the long, one-shot scenes that put it over the top. It's amazing how much more tense some of the scenes are as compared to highly edited action movies, even as most of the action is somewhat more realistic, all because you have that continuous perspective, wandering around, getting lost, coming back. The movie also has a steady progression of excellent set pieces throughout the movie, from the starting bombing to the assault on the car, to the fight through the camp. Many quieter moments are slightly overshadowed by those highlights, but no less excellent themselves. For example, the whole sequence with Nigel is excellent, with all of that artwork cooped away up there. Bonus points for the Pink Floyd pig floating outside...
• Scorched. 6/10. Extremely light, weakly entertaining heist movie. No serious character development, plot, or anything like that, but it's ok at what it is.
• The Bounty Hunter. 6/10. Pretty standard romantic comedy of the unrealistic, action oriented variety.
• Centurion. 8/10. This movie could have been a lot stronger, but I'm not sure how. It's hard to determine what separates this from, say, Gladiator, and why the latter got many more positive reviews. Both have about as much of a plot. Centurion has at least as much character nuance. The scenes, customing, and so on of Gladiator are more impressive, but they're well done here as well, though darker, grittier, and blander. In any event, this is an interesting take on the fascinating legend of the missing Ninth Legion.
• Up in the Air. 9/10. This falls just a little short of greatness, but is still very good. In particular, bonus points for the lack of a happy resolution with Alex, and the basic lack of a real ending at all. It does seem to well capture many aspects of this particular time period. The Natalie character is a little forced & simplistic at times. The post-breakup airport breakdown was both predictable and forced; she's surprisingly wooden and formulaic at that and several other points. Clooney does his usual good job, though it would be intriguing if for once someone could explain how a character that never works out stays chiseled...