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| MATT AT THE MOVIES |
| MOVIES 2012 So What Have You Seen Lately? Matt's Ultra-Complicated Rating System: GO! I can recommend this movie without reservation CAUTION I liked this movie a lot, but you should check it out before deciding. STOP! This movie is unworthy of your attention. YIELD There is merit here; I just wasn't a big fan--and I'll tell you why. |
Top 10 Movies of 2010 |
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| This Means War When I driving home from watching this movie, somebody named "Debbie Does Politics" was on the radio reviewing this movie. Her assertion was that the two CIA agents in the lead roles in this movie are clearly gay and would rather be doing each other than doing Reese Witherspoon. My own surmise was that the writers of the movie were big fans of the "Spy vs. Spy" feature in Mad Magazine as younger persons and were now fighting over Reese as they had once fought over a bomb or a sandwich in the comic strips. ( But now that I think about it, maybe they were gay, too.) In any event, a movie about which a critic suspects that two men would rather have sex with each other than have sex with Reese Witherspoon is clearly bad news for Reese Witherspoon. And this movie is really bad news for Reese Witherspoon. This Means War continues a dismal string of movies like How Do You Know and Water for Elephants, which have done nothing to challenge her amazing skills and have done plenty to lower her status as one of our very best actors. I think she needs to do lunch with Sandra Bullock, who was going through a similar patch a couple of years back (remember All About Steve?) and pulled herself out of a rut with The Proposal and The Blind Side. Do something, Reese. Get help. Meanwhile, you dear movie-goer, should give this hot mess a wide berth. (2/17/2012) The Vow About a minute into this movie, there's a scene in which Channing Tatum, playing a New York hipster dude, wears a straw hat. Channing Tatum is a large man--I don't know how large, but he's bigger than average. Anyway, the sight of a ridiculosly small straw hat on such a large bulbous head is so disorientingly absurd that you know that everything that will follow it will be equally contrived. And it is. In a nutshell, newlyweds Tatum and Rachel McAdams are in a car accident, and Rachel loses her memory of the last four years of her life--including being married to Tatum. (Frankly, losing the memory of the sight of him in the hat might not be a bad thing, but I digress.). Few actresses are as effortlessly charming as Rachel McAdams, but even she gets lost in the plot of a movie so stale that you feel as if you seen it before--several times. In the movie, Sam Neill and Jessica Lange play thankless roles as Rachel's parents. I would so much rather watch this play out with Sam and Jessica in the lead roles. Yes, it would look a lot like The Notebook, but I bet no one would try to put a goofy hat on Sam Neill. (2/15/2011) Chronicle This was a nice surprise in the glut of post-holiday features like Haywire and Contraband. Chronicle is the story of Seattle teenagers who stumble into a hole in thre ground, lay hands on something that looks like the mother ship from Close Encounters, and emerge from the hole--changed. They have telekinetic powers--and they can fly. Unlike the Marvel comic dudes who use their newfound powers to make the world safe for democracy--or whatever--these guys use their powers to impress girls at parties and get even with their enemies. In the end, the powers get the better of some of them, with tragic results. This is a terrific movie by first-time film-maker Josh Trank looks great--combining the hand-held vibe with elaborate special effects. I think you'll like it a lot. (2/7/2012) One for the Money The chief pleasure to be had from this movie is seeing Katherine Heigl, a fine actress, liberated from the woeful array of romantic comedies which have enslaved her for the past four or five years. There are lots of rom-com vibes in this movie--not that there's anything wrong with that--but they're balanced by a good mix of action and drama. Ms. Heigl is a former retail therapist in New Jersey who is down on her luck and looking for a job. Why not be a bounty hunter? Well, why not, indeed. One for the Money may not be fine cinema, but it is good entertainment--and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. (2/3/2012) The Artist If you haven't seen this movie, I'm sorry to report that everything you think you know about this movie is untrue. No, it's not a silent movie; and no, it's not one of the best movies of the year. While I'm at it, the second best performance in the movie was NOT given by the actress who was nominated for Best Actress. If you want to pick a bone with me about the silent part, give me a shout after you've seen it and feel free to vent. And if you want to claim that Berenice Bejo, a human actress, gave a better performance than Uggie the dog, you're entitled to your opinion. In regard to the part about beting the best movie of the year, the plot is so old it has mold on it, and while the Hollywood scenes are pretty slick, some of them are just pitiful. My biggest complaint about the movie is that it's about one and three-quarters hours, it feels like it's about fifteen minutes too long. But having said that, it not unpleasant. Some if it is very clever, and I think that Jean Dejardin will deserve all the awards he will receive for the movie. But Uggie is awesome. (1/30/2012) Haywire With stars like Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas and Channing Tatum, you think that the director of Oceans 11 would find some way to drip some of the panache of the earlier movie into his current project. Well, you'd be wrong--and disappointed, as I was. The conceit of this movie is not the testosterone-driven name on the marquee, but the female lead who kicks their collective movie star butts. I have no problem with that notion, but the female lead in question--martial arts superstar Gina Carano--has the potential to be a fine action movie actress, but unlike most of the men with whom she shares the screen, she's no movie star and can't hold the screen with them. In other words, you find yourself asking your questions like, "Did they really need Antonio Banderas in this role?" or "I wonder if Ewan McGregor actually read the script before he agreed to appear in this movie." Here's to looking forward to better things from everyone. (1/23/2012) Extremely Lound and Incredibly Close is a tough call. It is a case of--as we say here in Cliche Town--the whole being less than the sum of its parts. The parts in play--most of them, anyway, are fairly remarkable. There's a wonderful performance by 13-year-old Thomas Horn as the surviving child of a father who was killed at the World Trade Center. There is a very good performance by Max von Sydow as a mysterious neighbor who befriends the boy, and there is a "merely" good performance by Sandra Bullock who has shockingly little to do until the movie is almost over. Tom Hanks and Viola Davis are good in what are little more than cameos. With all that going for it, you'd think the movie was pretty terrific. Well, it's pretty something. While Mr. Horn gives a first performance that compares favorably with debuts like 12-year-old Christian Bale in Empire of the Sun and 10-year-old Henry Thomas in ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, his character is something of a pill. You know the child is both traumatized by the loss of his father and may or may nothave Asperger's Syndrome, but that doesn't make spending practically every frame of the movie with him a particularly pleasurable experience. Sitting in the audience, you know that the child's profoundly contrived quest is going to end in disappointment for him, but you get dragged along. Along the way, you wonder what Sandra Bullock is doing and wish you could see how she's coping with the loss of her husband instead of the kid. The movie is a long slog. I didn't mind so much because all along, I thought I was watching the beginning of what I expect will be a spectacular career for Mr. Horn. Otherwise, it was kind of a drag. (1/21/2012) Contraband They say there aren't any good jobs in Louisiana. This is the story of a reformed smuggler (Mark Wahlberg) who reforms and opens a burglar alarm business in New Orleans. (Sounds like a sure path to sucess) His brother-in-law stays in the business and screws up by tossing a bagful of drugs overboard during a Coast Guard raid on the container ship he's using to bring the stuff into the country. To make it up to the scum who were bankrolling his brother, Marky Mark has to go back into the business and run a deal that will square the brother-in law with the scum. It is what it is, and what it is is a decent shoot 'em up with enough of a story to sound plausible and enough action to justify paying $5.25 for a Coke Zero to enjoy as you watch it go down. (1/18/2012) The Iron Lady When this movie was announced a year or two ago, there was some degree of kerfuffle offered by Baroness Thatcher's children who protested that the picture of their mother presented in the script was not reflective of the totality of her life. Having seen the finished product, I can say that I feel their pain, although I'm somewhat surprised that the children? ever thought that an even-handed portrait of their mother would ever be presented as popular entertainment. Having said that, I will say that The Iron Lady is about as good as they can hope to get. Meryl Streep is astonishing in the role, and I'm certain that Oscar will find her this year. She is surrounded by a host of fine actors as the people in her life. If I have a concern, it is filtering the events of her life through her memory as a dementia patient near the end of her life. That device essentially gives Ms. Streep an entirely y new character to play, and it provides some cover for the movie makers who could not have made a straightforward narrative of her biography. It diminishes the impact of the movie--and her life--but it's so well, that you can't complain too much when the rest--especially Ms. Streep--are so fine. (1/16/2012) War Horse Remember While You Were Sleeping? At the beginning of the movie, Sandra Bullock is doing a voice-over narrative of her childhood, especially a sun-soaked image of standing on a pastoral bridge over a calm Wisconsin stream. "I remember a lot about my childhood," she said. "I just don't remember it being this orange." And so it is with War Horse. There was one scene near the end of this movie that is SO tangerine-tinted that you'd swear that Steven Spielberg was trying to re-create the burning of Atlanta from Gone With the Wind. When a movie this big has to score points by recalling earlier, better movies, it's in trouble. Spielberg moves mountains to breathe some life into what is reputed to be a very fine play from the West End and Broadway. Just as he recreated the D-Day landings for Saving Private Ryan, he now reproduces the Battle of the Somme in all its filth, gore and horror. The biggest problem I have with War Horse is that its star is a quadriped with a limited acting range. Most of the humans around him are fine actors doing the best they can in a difficult situation and a limited opportunity to express themselves. But they are limited. And that limits the movie. That and being very orange. (1/15/2012) Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy If you're planning to see this movie (and you should), the best thing you can take with you is someone who remembers either reading the book or seeing the seven-hour mini-series. Director gets mixed results in trying to condense this very dense story into a two-hour movie. The style, the look and the pace of cold-war London and Budapest are there, but on far too many occasions, you'll find yourself wanting to nudge your neighbor and say, "Who's that?" or "Who was she again?" I won't say that the movie is inpenetrable, but you have to pay atttention at all times. Gary Oldman gives a fine performance as Smiley, but lots of other fine actors like John Hurt and Colin Firth get lost in the shuffle. See the movie--but think about taking notes. It might help. (1/10/2012) Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol The big movie of the holiday season is a perfect diversion for weary moviegoers who just want to sit and watch a spectacle without having to think too much about the logic of what is unfolding before them. It requires no thought at all. In fact, it defies thought. To paraphrase William Hurt's character from The Big Chill when he was stoned and watching a late night Japanese horror movie, "Sometimes you just have to let art flow over you." And that's pretty much what you have to do with MI4. You sit and watch things blow up and bad people get what's coming to them. As an added bonus, you get to be reiminded of why Tom Cruise became the biggest star in the world. Although he may not be that now, but he certainly reminds you of how he got there in the first place. (1/1/2012) |