Category: Movies

The world is lessened with you not in it.

All I knew going in was that it starred Ben Stiller and that I had heard positive things about his performance. I wasn’t sure if it was a serious role for him, or a comedy. I like Ben Stiller, generally, but about the most serious role I’d ever seen him in was the excellent (and filmed in Portland) “Zero Effect”, playing straight man Steve Arlo to Bill Pullman’s autistic and zany private investigator.

So last weekend, ignoring the awesome weather, I bought a ticket for a matinée showing of “Greenberg” to escape for a bit.

I was the only person in the theater.

Have you ever watched a comedy by yourself? You know a movie is funny when you laugh out loud and there’s no one else around. For some reason, our being in a group of people makes laughter more likely; likewise, being alone seems to make laughter less likely.

As I sat in the theater, alone, and watched Greta Gerwig as Florence, housekeeper/assistant to a rich and apparently high-strung couple, I wasn’t sure of the tone. It all felt so natural and understated. There were no laugh lines. Just people going about their business.

When the Greenberg’s leave for their vacation to Vietnam, and Florence gets a call from her boss’ brother, there’s no indication of trouble. But… it was Ben Stiller. And he was being very Ben Stiller-esque.

But was it funny? Or was it dramatic?

As the story progressed, and the 40-something Roger Greenberg displayed familiar entitled nice-guy behavior towards 25-year-old Florence Marr, I felt awkward and creeped out. Greenberg’s advances seemed predatory and both amply telegraphed and yet hidden. His passive-aggressive actions towards Florence, as well as towards his closest friend, Ivan Shrank (sad-faced Rhys Ifans), made me wince.

Around halfway through the film, I had the realization that this awkwardness is similar to what I feel watching Steve Carell on The Office. And that sometimes, it makes me laugh.

Is that what they were going for? I still can’t tell.

As a movie, I enjoyed it, though maybe “enjoyed” isn’t the right word. Stiller’s performance of a man who has deep issues with self-esteem and emotional expression was spot-on, though painful to watch – a pain that I sometimes express as laughter, because why not? I can’t believe he just did that!

I sought out the trailer after the fact, to see if I could discern if the movie was being marketed as a drama or as a comedy or something in-between, a “dramedy”. But given the generic trailer, I still could not tell.

Here, watch the trailer and judge for yourself.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=059skh1bn8Y&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1]

I am not a Baker Street Irregular; I have no detailed knowledge of the life and adventures of the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes. I only know the basics. I know he lived on Baker Street in 19th century London; I know his friend and companion was one Dr. Watson; I know his lifelong enemy was Professor Moriarty; and I know Holmes valued logic and observation above all else, taking such to extremes that we find almost supernatural today. Bits and pieces, here and there. Drug abuse. His brother Mycroft.

But I know enough to identify some creative additions in Guy Ritchie’s and Robert Downey Jr.’s interpretation of “Sherlock Holmes”.

First, in the modern movie, he’s far more physical than I recall him being in the past. A rough-knuckled, manic-depressive, substance abuser. Can’t remember the last actor who had to have a six-pack to portray the detective.

Second, from what I remember, Watson was nearly always much older; a harrumph-ing white mustached sort of chap. So having Jude Law play him feels like a change. A change for the better, I think. It puts the two characters’ friendship into the realm of bromance.

I gotta be honest with you, Marge, I would watch Robert Downey Jr. in anything. He’s one of a handful of actors that I find captivating. So it was a forgone conclusion that I would enjoy “Sherlock Holmes”.

But Guy Ritchie’s direction gives London such a gritty, realistic look, and the proper bantering between Holmes and Watson, and even the addition of a love interest for Holmes, the scandalous Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams)… The movie was great fun, even if the actual mystery, involving a Satan worshipping nobleman, was a bit of a letdown.

Still, if you dig brass-and-glass fittings, and Victorian clothing, and cobblestone streets, this is the movie for you.

In 2009 I saw 30 different films. I attended showings of two movies multiple times: Star Trek got my money three times, and Away We Go got it twice. And this year, for the first time in memory, I had friends accompany me to more showings than in a very long time.

I think that I saw fewer movies this year because I spent more time with friends, actually. And that’s not a bad thing. I want to be social and be around people I like, and who like me.

The following star ratings, from 0 to 5 stars, are given on the basis of the other movies I’ve seen this year, and are not meant to be compared to other years or other, older movies. I try to rate the movie based on my enjoyment, and how well it worked as that type or genre of movie.

Oh, fuck it, don’t make me justify my star ratings. I like lots of different kinds of flicks, so I’m pretty generous when handing out stars. Sue me.

The films’ title links to the IMDB page for the movie; the star ratings link to my blog post about that movie. Note that there are seven films on the list that I didn’t blog about; if I write about them in the future, I’ll update this list. Probably. If I think about it.

• 500 Days of Summer – **
• Avatar-****
• Away We Go–****½
• Capitalism: A Love Story–****½
• Coraline–***
• District 9-***
• Extract-**½
• Fantastic Mr. Fox-***
• Inglourious Basterds–***½
• Let The Right One In–*****
• Moon–*****
• Pirate Radio–****
• Slumdog Millionaire–****
• Star Trek–****½
• The Box–**
• The Brothers Bloom–****
• The Hangover–****
• The Informant!–***½
• The Men Who Stare at Goats–***
• The Messenger-****
• The Reader–***½
• The Road-***½
• The Wrestler–***½
• Up–*****
• Up in the Air–****
• Watchmen–***
• Where The Wild Things Are–***½
• Whip It–***
• Year One-**
• Zombieland–***

I’m feeling ramble-y about this movie. Be warned.

People often use the term “arc” as a metaphor for the changes a character in a story goes through. Writers, mostly. And I’ve always pictured said arcs as a parabola, starting at one point, going up, up, up, peaking, then dropping down. Think the shape of the St. Louis Gateway Arch.

Watching “Up in the Air” reminded me that not all arcs go up.

Am I being ironic and cute? The title of the movie describes, after all, someone flying high over ground, looking down on all the rest of us. The “flyover states”. George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a seasoned traveller who feels most at home when he’s in an airport or on a plane. He travels from place to place across the country and fires people for a living. This is the kind of soulless profit-driven job that has become a familiar starting point for emotional change in our movies. 60 years ago it was the traveling salesman who epitomized empty work; now we see lobbyists, contractors, day traders; they work for the minor corporations that serve the externalized needs of the major corporations, and actual human lives are just currency to them. Clooney’s charm made me feel uneasy about identifying with such a corporatist; I almost felt sorry for him, even before the story, and Bingham’s arc, began.

Bingham’s tidy, process-driven wandering is interrupted when a young, eager kid, Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick, who manages to embody the inner turmoil and exterior calm of many a corporate drone with just a tight purse of her lip or almost imperceptible roll of her eyes) comes up with the idea to use video conferencing to fire people and save traveling costs. This means the end of Bingham’s massive accrual of frequent flyer miles, and right as he’s about to reach his nearly meaningless goal: ten million “points” as a reward for his “loyalty” to a legal contract.

Of course, his “loyalty” has been paid with other people’s money, his expense account at the company, and not out of his own savings; Bingham is just a feeding tube through which passes abstracted value from one non-person to the next. And to earn those points, all he’s had to do is be the bearer of bad news and sit with each actual flesh-and-blood person while they break down, burst into anger, plead for another chance, pretended this isn’t happening, and, rarely, simply accept that their services are no longer required. His constant exposure to human emotion has made him sympathetic enough to realize that abstracting it even further with a computer screen may well be the breaking point. Or so it seems to me. Maybe Clooney’s charm won me over? After all, Bingham had a selfish reason to continue facing down his fellow corporate workers; his pointless goal of “loyalty” which will earn him status as one of only seven people to earn that many points.

This movie resonates with my growing passion against corporate institutions. Can you tell? I could deconstruct this movie for days, I think. And there may be some of you who find that interesting. But it’s also a movie, telling a story. And even though the director, Jason Reitman, is not a newbie director (he directed “Juno” and wrote and directed “Thank You For Smoking”, among others – that last one also about corporatist politics, though played as satire rather than straight drama, as in “Up in the Air”), he made some odd (to me) choices.

When I originally saw the trailer for this movie, it featured Clooney, as Bingham, giving a motivational speech. Here, let me show you it:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m-Da8Tz4_E&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999]

The monologue, with the sparse piano over it, and the flash of images, set a tone. Somber, serious, contrasting Clooney’s charisma with the sociopathic message of the words. To me it felt like a confession in a downtown bar on a weeknight, spoken over a drink or two – enough to get a buzz but not enough to really let go.

In the early part of the movie, when we first hear Bingham give this speech (he gives it, or a variation, three times by my memory throughout the course of the film), the music is much more upbeat. It’s a subtle difference but I noticed the change. It felt wrong, sitcom-like. The mood was off. I wondered if I had been tricked by the trailer and my man-crush on George Clooney into the wrong kind of movie.

When Bingham meets his female counterpart, frequent flyer Alex Goran (Vera Farmgia), spellbindingly beautiful and confident, a terrific match – again, with the tone-deaf music.

When Bingham flies back to the home office and has a meeting with his boss, and his boss is Jason Bateman, again I felt the tone was off. I love Bateman, but I love him for his comedic timing and snarky anger, which jarred, just a little, with what I hoped to be the intent of this movie. I felt a bit betrayed, and hoped that this wasn’t a comedy in the conventional, and classical, sense. I hoped for a deeper meaning and more mature tone to emerge.

Emerge it did, in the final half. Perhaps Reitman was aiming for contrast; I think I would have preferred a more consistent tone. This is a dark story, a classical tragedy, and, eventually, it arrived there.

I loved and laughed nearly every scene in “Pirate Radio” (released as “The Boat That Rocked” in the UK).

I adore the plot line of a rag-tag group of rock and roll rebels challenging the stifled, stiff-uppper-lip British officials.

I want a copy (legal or not) of every song on the soundtrack. The soundtrack contains 36 of the over 60 songs from the actual movie. That’s a good start.

And the movie left me wanting more. Mainly, how did Quentin (Bill Nighy) come to own and operate the boat/radio station? He seemed an unlikely entrepreneur. Was he the station manager, the captain, the owner, or some combination of all three?

But in the end, it was just a cute little comedy that plays very well on my internal anti-authoritarianism.

Still, I can’t imagine it being 3 hours long, as Wikipedia claims. Glad they edited it down for US release. But I’d probably watch every deleted scene if I buy the DVD.

There may be spoilers in this review.

At about 45 minutes in to “The Box” I was pretty sure I could see the ending.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially for a suspense/horror flick. As the master of the genre, Hitchcock, explained, suspense is built when the audience knows something’s going to happen but the characters don’t.

The question is, is the journey there a satisfying one? Does the end make sense for these characters?

Well, I thought so. Mostly. I didn’t entirely feel that the punishment fit the crime, but… OK.

But some of the odd turns and plot points seemed superfluous. Mars? The wedding? The creepy student? Waiting through all that made the movie a bit tedious. Just a tad.