Archive for Movie Commentary

Many moons ago there was a children’s book written called Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. It was a simple story of a land where food fell from the sky like rain. Of course, things take a turn for the worse and the food does get out of hand, but like any good children’s book, all turns back to normal by the end. This book was every kid’s dream: being able to stand outside and catch dinner falling from the sky, what’s not to love?

Like all great books, a movie has to be made about it at some point and potentially tarnish the wonderful memory some of us possess. Nothing against the upcoming release in September, but it seems to be taking the story to a different direction. Granted the original book didn’t have all the action and suspense of a movie, but why ruin a perfectly good book? What you really should do is watch the movie Congo then ask yourself the same question.

This movie probably will be peppered with many laughable quotes and other funny gags that hold your attention, but what message is this movie sending? A ventured guess would be the movie is telling people not to screw around with nature and make food fall from the sky, just stick with what you have even if it is sardines.

This book was a childhood favorite for many people, and with luck it won’t turn out to be the debacle that was Bridge to Terebithia. They could have let this book slide away and not make a movie about it. You know Hollywood though: if you totally twist the story, it will make the people that enjoyed the book love it even more. Bring a napkin, this movie opens September 18^th.

Johnny Depp is strange. Everyone knows that he can play a strong dramatic role, but no one wants to watch that. Come on, you know you’d rather watch him play some bizarre character with that huge grin on his face. Which is why his latest movie, Public Enemies, doesn’t sound nearly as exciting as what he has in store in the coming years.

First, he’ll be back working with Tim Burton to revamp Alice in Wonderland and what more perfect part for Johnny than to play the Mad Hatter. Very few people in Hollywood can be eccentric like Depp and make you forget that he also played Don Juan a decade ago.

Next year he dives into another Hunter S. Thompson novel, The Rum Diary, and plays a freelance journalist living in the Caribbean trying to stay sober while deciding the next point in his life. This novel was written before Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, so there won’t be as many acid flashbacks, but be ready for a dark trip through the soul of humanity.

Of course, what else would be news if it weren’t for rumors of a Pirates of the Caribbean 4? This only means that the most noted role Depp has played, Jack Sparrow, will don his hat and swagger for yet another movie in the years to come.

Leave it to Depp to play some of the most bizarre leading characters in Hollywood which turn out to be his most memorable. Then again, he was also Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood which probably meant that he was destined to play odd roles forever.

You may know him as Jim Halpert from TV’s The Office but John Krasinski, the Newton, Massachusetts, native, is starting to blossom all over the place. Until he’d struck it big as Jim, Krasinski had acted in several small parts in movies and television. Now he finds himself opposite SNL alum, Maya Rudolph, in a coming of age movie about 30-year-olds trying to start a family.

As Burt Farlander, in Away We Go, you can almost think to yourself: if Jim Halpert were going to have a baby, this is the kind of guy he would be. All of the work Krasinski has done up until this point seems to have been getting him ready to act in a role like this. You hate to see actors pushed into the same role all the time, for Krasinski playing the nice guy isn’t so bad.

Yes, he was in Licensed to Wed, which was pretty bad. His new movie looks a lot more grown up than Wed was intended to be. At least he isn’t making the leap from small screen to big screen all flashy, he’s doing projects he can look back on and feel proud of.

Besides Away We Go he also has written and directed a movie titled Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, the story of a guy who suffers a break up and interviews other guys for help in coping with the situation. No matter what Krasinski decides to do he will always be known as ‘Jim from The Office’ which isn’t a bad thing. According to interviews he’s done recently he has no desire to leave his desk yet and he’d rather stay as Jim Halpert for a while longer. Thank goodness because next season should be a lot of fun.

Away We Go is playing in select theaters.

If there’s one film that I look forward to watching, it’s Transformers 2 : Revenge of the Fallen. Why am I looking forward to watching it? Simple, you can judge a movie by its teaser trailers and posters, and I judge this movie as “very good”.

When I saw the first trailer of Revenge of the Fallen two months ago, I was impressed. The makers of this flick are living up to their promise of bringing us a better sequel, and it’s how a sequel should be–better than the first.  It’s evident in the trailer that Revenge of the Fallen will be a visual feast.

Like most everyone, I saw Transformers in 2007 and loved it. I bought its DVD and watched it again and again with my family. We loved the amazing visual effects and could not get enough. When we heard that a sequel was in the making, we were very excited and pounced on the first trailer when it was released. Yesterday we saw the second trailer, which was released the other day. The second trailer shows that Revenge of the Fallen, like Transformers in  2007,  would not be all action because it also is laced with humor. The visual effects are evidently more superior than what impressed us in 2007. The two years that passed have surely brought a lot of improvements in the field of visual effects in films, and the makers of Transformers are making sure that we get the best out of what technology has to offer.

As to the storyline on which this movie is built, well, it has the typical structure we can expect with this genre: after final battle a bigger battle comes because the enemy is not that beaten. The bigger battle happens after Starscream assumes command of the Decepticons and Megatron’s dead body is stolen from the US Military and revived by Skorpinox.  Starscream and his Megatron get back at the autobots and the human race.

In his latest movie, The Soloist, Jaime Foxx plays a homeless man that possesses an incredible talent for playing stringed instruments. Haven’t we seen Jaime Foxx play a musician before? 2004’s Ray is a little different than what we have here, but it feels like the same movie.

Jaime Foxx might be best remembered for his work on In Living Color and the sitcom under his own name, but out of nowhere someone discovered that he could sing and perform. I can remember thinking before I saw Ray that anything based on Ray Charles has some high standards, and I was impressed with Foxx’s performance. Ye,t here he is again playing another musician that has to overcome some kind of hardship to inspire people and himself toward success. Is Foxx being type-casted?

You always expect Will Ferrell to play characters that are all somewhat the same in just about every movie he is in, because that is what he does. It feels like Jaime Foxx is going to be portraying down and out musicians forever. True this is only the second time in his career, but you can imagine that there will probably be another one of these movies made in a couple of years.

Type-casting in Hollywood happens all the time, and it really is a shame, until Foxx played Ray Charles I never would have taken him seriously as a performer, now I will think twice. When I saw him playing another musician I thought that Hollywood was exploiting his talent and maybe he could move on to different projects.

That is probably the same question many people ask themselves when they see his un-bearded face flash on the screen. He had a brief role in Anchorman and a supporting part in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and now he is the go-to guy for comedy. Judd Apatow can work miracles.

His image has changed, too, over the course of a few roles. Before he was the generic-looking stoner/nerd/stoner nerd. Now he looks almost clean cut and ready for action. Leaping in to save defenseless women from sexual predators, or so he thinks. Observe and Report is his latest venture and turns out to be some pretty good action and some okay laughs. Think of a mall cop that wants to be Harry Callaghan, but doesn’t every mall cop want to be Dirty Harry?

Rogen seems to do best in awkward moments where a normal person might just let something slide; he always has something witty or stupid to interject. Either way it is good for a few laughs no matter which side you cheer for. Working with Ray Liotta and Anna Faris must have been a fun time too- talk about different ends of the spectrum.

Well, if you can’t get enough of Seth, then keep your eyes out for Apatow’s next movie, Funny People, hitting theaters in the coming months featuring an incredible cast of comedians headed up by Adam Sandler. Thank goodness Seth is back to working with Apatow and company, nothing against Kevin Smith, but Seth seems to be more at home working with people that know how to bring out his funny side rather than just hope it will shine through a dirty window.

Turn back the clock 40 years and watch a John Wayne movie. What would happen if you saw John Wayne give some other male lead a big hug and then say, “I love you, man”? There probably would be riots in the streets, and John Wayne would be considered a heretic from all that is just and manly in the world.

Fast forward to present day where more movies are being made now with the average male in mind. Most guys out there want to be tough like John Wayne was, but they don’t want to express their feelings about it. Thankfully with directors like Judd Apatow and John Hamburg, dudes can still be tough and have a soft side, if need be.

Everyone knows that it is awkward for two guys to do anything beside shake hands. Bromance movies embrace that and show you that you can give a bro a hug and still be cool as long as you throw in a funny pause afterward. Make sure to blame the hug on alcohol or sports.

Movies like I Love You, Man and Pineapple Express really are breaking down the wall that Hollywood established decades ago with John Wayne: guys can have feelings. The idea of bromance is something that has been used a lot within the last decade or so, and it is great to see the idea come across on the big screen. Hopefully this sends a more positive message to guys everywhere that they don’t all have to play tough to be tough. Unless you’re John Wayne then everyone knows that The Duke never cries, he just shot a bunch of guys then jumped on his horse and rode to a new town to start over.

In 1987, Street Fighter hit the arcades, and teenagers all over America were mesmerized by Ryu’s wicked awesome moves. Then in 1991, Street Fighter II dropped to consoles and changed how kids played fighting games. Before you’d be stuck with just one player, but now you had the chance to be anyone you wanted and fight in your own campaign.

These games ruled much of the video game world for a better part of the 90s with many spin-off games and plenty of imitators. The last official game, Street Fighter 3, was released in 1999, and that was the end of that.

Until recently, when for some reason, there was an idea to release Street Fighter 4 around the same time as the movie Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. Doesn’t anyone remember the original movie that was made in 1994? If there is anyone to feel pity for, it would have to be Raul Julia. That movie was proof enough that anything adapted from a video game would be a disaster.

Second of all, why would you pick Chun-Li? Why not Blanka the blue guy from Brazil? There has to be a better story for why he looks like Beast from the X-Men instead of Chun-Li. It just seems like Hollywood will never learn that adapting a video game into a movie never really works.

Third, why did anyone wait this long? If this movie had been made 7-8 years ago, then it may have been more culturally relevant. Most teens now don’t even play this series of games anymore, and half of them that do don’t appreciate how awesome ST2 was. No matter, this movie is coming out, and there is nothing you or M. Bison can do about it. Maybe Jean Claude Van Damme will make a cameo.

Joaquin Phoenix’s decision to leave acting and pursue a career in hip hop music could well be the worst decision he has made in his life. Watch Two Lovers, and I am sure that you’ll agree with me. Phoenix’s portrayal of a broken man trying to pick up the pieces of his broken heart is more than superb. He successfully captured the character of Leonard, a man with bipolar disorder who, after being dumped by his fiancee, finds himself involved with two beautiful women. The film revolves around how Leonard is torn between pursuing the sexually alluring but destructively impetuous Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow) and the simple (but not plain) and caring Sandra (Vinessa Shaw).

If it were another actor who portrayed Leonard, the film probably would have come out as mediocre with a cliched storyline, which is drab in the first place. I am not discrediting Gwyneth Paltrow and Vinessa Shaw, these two actresses made remarkable performance here, but the film is based on the character of Leonard, and Pheonix successfully made this gloomy and complicated character shine for the audience.

Gwyneth Paltrow has shown us in the 2003 film Sylvia that she is capable of portraying a troubled and destructive character. So, it is not really a surprise to see her in Two Lovers effectively giving us the not so common but believable character of Michelle, a manipulative woman who is losing control of herself and on her way to self destruction. Vinessa Shaw also gave justice to the character of Sandra, the exact opposite of Michelle.

There is a little flaw in the storyline, though: how could two beautiful women fall for a very gloomy loser like Leonard in the first place? But this little flaw will melt in the light of the great acting of Pheonix, which is perfectly complemented by the performances of Paltrow and Shaw.  Despite that weakness in the storyline, it somehow manages to slowly build up and thicken into something interesting enough: how would Leonard extricate himself fom the predicament he’s entangled himself with? Would he opt for the reasonable way out, or would he allow the messy hand of love to crush him? I rate the movie 7 out of 10, it is a good movie to watch with your date.

Leave it to Clint Eastwood to show up guys half, or even a quarter, of his age. In his most recent movie, Gran Torino, Clint plays Walk Kowalski, a retired Korean War veteran living in a predominately Asian neighborhood. Knowing this, the only humor you’ll find in this flick is Walt’s use of his stagnant racism against those of Asian heritage and the situations he gets himself into.

Truth be told, over the course of the reel his heart softens, but that doesn’t mean he still isn’t bad to the bone. The character of Walt in this movie can be related to Sergeant Thomas Highway from Heartbreak Ridge: he may look old and helpless, but don’t say it to his face.

Without going in to incredible detail, there are a few areas where Walt brings some crushing blows to a few deserving characters and manages to wield a gun as if he were using a camera to take pictures of bridges. At one point, while the camera looks up from the ground, you might say to yourself, “Gee, I hope I never make Clint Eastwood angry; then again, I’ll never meet him, but just in case I do, I shouldn’t cross him.”

Gran Torino is Clint Eastwood at his finest, probably one of the best roles since Harry Callaghan. In a time where Sly Stallone can come back and play Rocky Balboa or John Rambo, it is good to see Clint still can make you shiver in your boots. Oh, and he has a pretty slick looking 1972 Ford Gran Torino you should see.