Category: Movie Reviews

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button | A

director: David Fincher
starring: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, Julia Ormond, Taraji P. Henson

ben buttonThere are movies you’ll go see having heard next to nothing about, perhaps only having seen the poster or a brief trailer while watching television. I knew very little about Benjamin Button prior to heading into the theater, other than it starred Pitt and was directed by Fincher. The latter is pretty much enough to get me into the theater, Fincher being one of my favorite directors. But it’s always nice to have your faith rewarded with an outstanding moviegoing experience. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was a highly enjoyable experience, and it is most certainly on my official top ten list for 2008 (were there an actual, official top ten list penned by yours truly, you’d surely have seen it by now….OR WOULD YOU HAVE?!).

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Quantum of Solace | B+

director: Marc Forster
starring: Daniel Craig, Mathieu Amalric, Judi Dench, Olga Kurylenko, Jeffrey Wright, Giancarlo Giannini

Quantum of SolaceFrom what I’ve heard, reviews of the latest James Bond outing seem to be fairly split between “fantastic action that carries on the outstanding precedent of 2006’s Casino Royale,” to “a boring, poorly-edited, plotless waste of time.” I guess some people are just too hard to please, because I freakin’ loved it, albeit with a few caveats. If you haven’t seen Casino Royale recently, you might be a little lost early on, and forget about knowing what the frick’s going on if you haven’t seen Royale at all. So, if you haven’t seen it yet, stop reading and go check it out. It’s well worth your time, so much so that I even upped it a grade after having watched it again this past weekend. And my one piece of advice before seeing Quantum of Solace is to do just that: watch it again, even if you’ve seen it before. The plot here carries a bit more resonance if you’re familiar with the character arc Bond starts upon in Royale.

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W. | B

director: Oliver Stone
starring: Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Banks, Richard Dreyfuss, James Cromwell, Jeffrey Wright, Thandie Newton, Ellen Burstyn, Scott Glenn

W.No matter your opinion of our current president, it’s clear George W. Bush has been one of the most polarizing figures of the last fifty years and will be talked about in the history books decades from now for the impact he’s had on the United States and the world during his presidency. Whether that turns out to be positive or negative remains to be seen, despite how strongly you may feel one way or the other. Thus, it doesn’t seem too outlandish for a biopic on the man while he’s still President and still very much in his prime years. He’s a fascinating figure that bears analysis, and who better (or worse) to do that than Oliver Stone?

I’ve always found Stone’s films to be compelling, even if they’re a mess (Any Given Sunday is a good example). More often than not, though, he covers topics important in a societal sense, from the horrors of war in Platoon to the amoral exploitations of the media in Natural Born Killers. In any case, there’s an inherent bias in his point-of-view, as I’m sure we all have, but he typically avoids subtlety in making sure the audience knows what his views are on a given subject, whether that there was a government conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy (JFK), or that the majority of pro athletes are hopelessly egotistical drug addicts (Any Given Sunday). The point is, don’t expect to get a completely objective film on a given subject from Oliver Stone.

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Step Brothers | A-

director: Adam McKay
starring: Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Mary Steenburgen, Richard Jenkins

stepbrothersI’ll make this short and sweet, since a review of a comedy seems kind of ridiculous. Step Brothers is hilarious, and you should all go see the movie about 40-something idiots who still live with their parents. When they move in together, hiliarity ensues. There’s a small sect of people out there that seem not to “get” the whole Will Ferrell as comedy genius idea, and I pity you. Please go continue watching Larry the Cable Guy movies. Add John C. Reilly’s mentally challenged brand of comedy into the flick directed by Anchorman director Adam McKay and you’ve got the recipe for great success! Sexy times! Very nice! Yegshemash! I’m really writing just enough here to maintain the formatting of this post before getting to the world premiere of the “Boats ‘n Hoes” music video, uncut and uncensored. If you’re gonna see Step Brothers, don’t watch quite yet, or you may spoil one of the best moments of the movie.

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The X-Files: I Want to Believe | B

director: Chris Carter
starring: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Amanda Peet, Xzibit, Callum Keith Rennie

xf2An ultimately pointless exercise, perhaps, this second film entry in The X-Files franchise. While I Want to Believe certainly has some very good moments, it makes for a relatively underwhelming episode if it were a part of the long-running TV series, let alone as a major motion picture. And God forbid you’re not an X-Files fan, as you’ll likely be hopelessly confused at some of the references in the film. Despite this not being a “mythology-centric” story, there are references liberally sprinkled throughout the movie that only fans will grasp. Said mythology was the underlying, driving force behind the show for it’s 9-season run on Fox (that mythology was largely completed in season 6, but that’s a discussion for another time…in the past), and was the central plot of the first X-Files movie in 1998, Fight the Future, which did quite well despite that type of plot.

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The Dark Knight | A+

director: Christopher Nolan
starring: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Gary Oldman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman

TDKHow could you expect anything less than an A+ after all the advance hype and favorable critical reviews leading up to The Dark Knight’s release date of July 18? Never have my expectations been so high going into a moviegoing experience, and never have I had such lofty expectations exceeded in so brilliant a fashion. The Dark Knight is a masterpiece, one that will require many more viewings to fully absorb its’ nearly perfect execution. Hyperbole aside, this movie was as thrilling and impactful on an artistic level as any I’ve ever seen.

I guess I’ll start with a few non-spoiler points, for the three of you that haven’t seen TDK by Monday morning (what are you waiting for?).

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The Happening | C

director: M. Night Shyamalamadingdong
starring: Marky Mark, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo

The HappeningWhat the frick happened to M. Night Shyamalan? He hits his first two movies out of the park, in my mind (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable) and since then has slowly devolved into a heavy-handed, melodramatic con artist of a writer and director whose crowning turd hits theaters today: The Happening. I liked Signs quite a bit, Lady in the Water a little less, and was mystified at some of the editing decisions made in The Village–decisions that effectively destroyed all semblance of tension and surprise in the movie’s final act. Shyamalan’s clearly a talented director, and has some good ideas in terms of storytelling, but the decisions he’s made as of late are baffling. But I digress. I’ll have some spoilers in the rest of my review, but I’ll save you your 12 bucks now:

Dear Humans,

Stop treating me like shit.

Sincerely,

Earth.

There, now you have no need to see this snoozefest. On with the spoilers…

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The Incredible Hulk | A-

director: Louis Leterrier
starring: Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth, William Hurt

HulkNot quite “incredible,” but outstanding nonetheless, the incredible Hulk returns to the big screen for a tighter, more action-packed outing that is sure to revitalize the franchise and further augment the burgeoning Marvel film universe, which now includes the X-Men, Iron Man, Spider-Man and the Punisher (and coming soon: Thor and Captain America). Unlike George Lucas, there is no raping of my childhood here; the faithful adaptations that Marvel’s produced over the past several years not only encourage nostalgia, but they also work pretty damn well for people that have no inkling of the characters’ origins.

Going back a bit, the much maligned 2003 edition of Hulk is widely regarded as a misguided flop; with many thinking Ang Lee’s inventive and unique approach to the story was corny and awkward. This, despite a $132M box office haul (read more about the film here).

I thought it was an excellent if slightly off-beat approach to telling the story, and I’m a bit baffled by the depth of the loathing some people have for Ang Lee’s version. I liked it a lot…but with all that being said, it ain’t as good as the 2008 iteration.

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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull | ?

director: Steven Spielberg
starring: Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Shia LaBeouf, Karen Allen, John Hurt, Ray Winstone, Jim Broadbent

Indy 4I’m not sure where to begin with this review. My mind was all over the place during the movie, and it’s still going in a million different directions now, as I write this, struggling to reconcile the power of nostalgia with what might’ve been a much less than perfect fourth entry into the Indiana Jones franchise…an entry almost twenty years in the making. It’s strangely affecting on an emotional level to walk into a movie theater and see Indiana Jones posters on the walls; it’s like walking into my childhood. And I think that resonance the first three Indy films have, two decades prior, largely informs my approach to this review.

This review is going to contain some mild spoilers, so if you want to go in with a completely unbiased viewpoint, stop back after you see it once–and you should definitely see it at least once. I don’t spoil any big plot points, so if you must know more, continue onward.

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Iron Man | A

director: Jon Favreau
starring: Robert Downey Jr., Jeff Bridges, Terence Howard, Gwyneth Paltrow

Iron ManStoried comic book hero + crew respectful of source material + great actors – Hollywood = a nearly perfect movie. Iron Man, based on the long-running comic book series of the same name, comes to the screen having been bankrolled and produced solely by Marvel Entertainment. This is a big endeavour for a non-Hollywood entity. Marvel Comics being the group from whence the comic originated, and having seen the dreck that sometimes results from Hollywood comic book adaptations (see: Ghost Rider, Captain America, The Punisher, X-Men 3, etc.), they took it upon themselves to make sure the ironclad warrior got the proper big-screen treatment.

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