Reviews

I went into this movie with high expectations. With its knack for combining high-powered action sequences with character personality and humor, Marvel as an independent studio should exist for quite a while, at least until it makes Ant-Man.

For you action-junkies, you're going to be sorely disappointed. There are action sequences, but this movie refreshingly focuses on the personality behind the steel. Robert Downey Jr. is fantastic. He's probably one of the few who could make the lovable arseface character of Tony Stark believable. Much of the humor comes from the spot-on delivery of his lines alone. The other performances do not disappoint, but you will remember Downey's multi-dimensional portrayal long after you forget Terrence Howard is in this movie.

The film looks at the origins of Iron Man, who is created out of Tony Stark's encounter with morality after he realizes the weapons that have made him rich are fueling terrorism. While traveling in the Middle East to promote his latest invention, he gets captured by terrorists who want him to create a replica of his latest invention for their own personal use. He escapes with the help of his astounding brilliance and an unlikely ally, and returns home with a need to rid all traces of the empire he's created for the future good of humanity--much to the dismay of his co-workers (played ably by Howard and Jeff Bridges). Said co-workers--one of whom is not what he seems--disagree with Stark on whether weaponry ends do justify means as Stark turns his attentions to a new project to make sure terrorism can never use his brilliance for such atrocities again. This leads to the creation of Iron Man.

The script is excellent, something that's usually sub-par in an action movie because filmmakers think special effects can compensate for it. Iron Man isn't as fast paced or Transformers, but the dynamic acting of Jr. and the witty script make the dialogue-heavy scenes interesting. Without so much reliance on action scenes to carry this film, the audience gets to know and relate to every aspect of the characters, much to Iron Man's advantage. Iron Man doesn't forget to blow stuff up, but shows the human behind the iron, which makes a more powerful impact than any missile ever could.

The scariest part about Cloverfield is not its monster, but its realism. Casting a bunch of unknowns to be witnesses of the monster's wrath was a brilliant idea; both that and the camera footage added to the movie's believability. I've heard some reviewers criticize the "acting". I think they're missing the point. This movie isn't about that, and making millions of people believe a terror is raging Manhattan through dialogue does take some sort of skill.

If you're reading the review you know the story: a bunch of twenty-somethings are holding a party to see their pal off on his new job in Japan when something straight out of Japanese cinema rudely interrupts their celebration. The scenes before the monster do feel a little forced; the screenwriter's desperation to make his characters more authentic shows in the first twenty minutes of screen time. The actors do their best with the direction and script, but the party almost feels like the homework you need to finish but rush through so you can go watch television.

Yet the first few minutes are pivotal. While slightly one-dimensional (Rob is stubborn, Hud is the comedian, etc.), the interaction of the characters does set the entire movie in motion. Listen to all the conversations closely and you'll be even more impacted by the movie's ending.

And a few booms, crashes, and explosions later, our twenty-somethings are scrambling through the streets of New York, trying to find a way out of the perilous wasteland our monster has created. Most likely you'll be frustrated by the characters' inability to have common sense in an emergency--the most cliché part about the film.

However, the cinematic experience entirely compensates for the stupidity of the characters. You will the notice the difference between a true Hollywood film and JJ Abrams' creations. Something...gets you about seeing CGI characters on homemade, crappy quality, REALISTIC footage. The moving camera did make some people nauseous, but for me the cameraman should have been nominated for an Oscar since it added to the chaos quite well. By the third BOOM I was in almost as much confusion and panic as the people on screen--and I liked it.

The movie's gritty reality--in contrast to its overblown, often ostentatious genre--was what captivated me. Cloverfield was made on a budget of 25 million, and I was 10000 times more into it than I Am Legend. Making anyone satisfied is the least of Abrams' priorities; all the horror film and monster movie clichés--INCLUDING THE MONSTER--crash and burn like the decapitated Statue of Liberty. Horror and thriller cinema needed a shock to the system, and this is it.

The ending is expectedly unexpected, but appropriate. It doesn't matter what it would have been because the audience would have applauded anyway.

P.S. Stay after the credits.

After the breathless blockbuster race of 2007, seeing films that realize the emotional (as opposed to visual) appeal of the art is rather nice. Juno will show moviegoers that awesome special effects are not the only qualities that can make a movie a hit.

With great, captivating performances by the entire cast, Juno spotlights the subtle, small moments of life that are often overlooked. The unique quirkiness of Juno especially makes the movie worth watching. Page is a combination of eccentric, rebellious, romantic, and cocky; the result of such a mixture is a compelling character, the likes of which haven't been portrayed so convincingly since the John Hughes films of the '80s (Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller, etc.).

But Juno's take on her predicament--her unplanned pregnancy with a quiet schoolmate named Bleeker--does become slightly irritating. In the scene where she meets her adoptive parents (Garner and Bateman) for the first time, the focus eventually shifts from her to Garner's character because the protagonist's insensitivity toward the situation is almost repulsive. You almost want to slap Juno for her immaturity toward a situation with such gravity, a contrast to the film's delicate and sympathetic treatment of her pregnancy.

But Juno's eventual maturity is redemption for her initial arrogance. Page gives a multifaceted, heartfelt depiction of a teenage mother, and the impact of her decision on the rest of the Juno universe is made believable by the great performances of the rest of the cast. The subtlety of JK Simmons and Bateman's acting is something to marvel at considering the types of characters they usually play.

The script is excellent. The writing really captures the point of view from the adults and children equally and with authenticity. It's hard to fully support or oppose Juno's decision because you also become attached to the rest of the multifaceted characters. The screenwriter's ability to develop fully fledged, realistic individuals in an hour and a half should not be ignored.

The folksy quaintness of the score, mellow colors of the cinematography, and great humor of immaculate editing all contribute to the movie's polite quirkiness. The director's refusal to ignore the minor realistic and cinematic elements of Juno creates an engaging, compelling, heartwarming story that will be a great way to begin the movie-going journey of 2008.

Can movie-making genres become stale? Are filmmakers running out of new methods to scare people, to thrill audiences? I Am Legend is a movie that prophesizes a grim future for two genres that are becoming defined by the enigmatic multiplicity of the Saw franchise.

I Am Legend should be called I Am a Really Desperate Lonely Dude Who Plays Golf On Airplanes and Likes Long Walks in Central Park Cornfields; My Ad is on EHarmony.com. The "legend" is Robert Neville, who is immune to a virus that has infested the entire human civilization with vampire-like symptoms. He is unable to make contact with anyone who has retained his humanity, so he assumes 99.9% of homo sapiens are dead. Despite the pain and mental duress these creatures have caused, apparently a Hippocratic oath taken by colonels prevents him from wanting to obliterate the entire vampiric race; instead he uses them for study because he believes his immunity means he is supposed to find a way to cure the vampires.

The vampires themselves...I won't spoil it. But you've seen creatures like them in about 500 other fantasy/horror/thriller movies that already exist. Makeup is becoming a dead art yet creates more realism than any CGI effect I've seen (except for maybe Transformers). It is the filmmakers' reliance on these artificial ways to scare audiences that make this movie--which is fueled by real feelings and real people and real terror--so...lacking.

The terror comes from amplified noises of objects and long, drawn out moments of hunting with Neville. This kind of scaring process has been experienced before in countless other films. Can't directors and writers find other ways to scare people besides this cycle: tense moment, scary monster crashes through something, monster chases hero, hero thankfully escapes and looks amazing while doing it, repeat? Why are scary movies scary when they're only showing human torture? Why are thrillers and horrors not as innovative as they used to be? Last comment: I read the novel, and was disappointed. The bastardization of books by filmmakers because they're too afraid to portray uncomfortable topics on screen has reached the point where they're ignoring a novel's most appealing aspects because they don't want to shatter the mental status quo of the movie-going public. Something was "too perfect" regarding the final moments of the film; and the tone of the movie (consistent throughout the entire novel) drastically changed. The last twenty minutes almost felt forced, as if Hollywood was looking for a way to compensate for making the first hour and a half more human than it should have been--but that was the most compelling part of the film.

P.S. The scene where Will Smith does his pullups is the high point of the movie.

My friends and I are big Disney fanatics, so we went to see Enchanted with open minds.

The movie's playful satire of the age of classic Disney animation is the best part. Even the title is written in the Gothic style shown in Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. The animation and score (composed by Alan Menken...see The Lion King and numerous other 90s Disney movies) are simply the icing on the cake at the beginning. In the animation world the kids will be entertained and the teenagers and adults will chortle as they remember the overly-enthusiastic naiveness of the protagonists of early Disney films.

Giselle (played superbly by Amy Adams...this woman walks, sits down, does EVERYTHING in character. The innocent vitality she has for life at the beginning of the movie never wavers even when she experiences reality) is super excited to get married to her cliché Prince Charming (James Marsden, also wonderful. His range is incredible...I still can't believe he is also Cyclops and Corny Collins). Conveniently, Charming rides up on his white horse and saves her from a troll, and upon meeting her for the first time decides to get married the next day. But alas, the evil queen(Susan Saradon, who has a regrettably short part so I can't comment on her performance) knows that once Charming, her stepson, marries Giselle she will have to give up her throne to her stepdaughter. So she decides to trick her into a play "where there are no happily ever afters" by way of a magic well.

Patrick Dempsey plays a lawyer who grows skeptical of the subtle fantasy of living thanks to his own corroding marriage, but thankfully he meets Giselle who reminds him (through turning a daily stroll through Central Park into a musical Howard Ashman would be proud of) of the Disney magic in everyone! The movie is rather cute, but the singing and the happiness and the flowers get annoying (although still bearable) after about an hour. The score is better than the forgettable script...the jokes come from the performances, not the writing. I was mostly disappointed in the holes in the plot. Events that shouldn't have happened in reality were never explained (how did the queen's henchman keep disguising himself? How was Giselle able to swing herself up on a building after the queen?)...I know the movie's supposed to be a fantasy but the screenwriters should not completely alter the rules of reality when the point is to show the differences between the real and animated world.

The script is the biggest flaw. Frankly I think the cinematography could have been better too, especially in Giselle's scenes (more sweeping tracking shots of the scenery would have maintained the realism of the fantasy). But whatever. It wasn't a waste of a movie. Take the kids, and Disney fanatics will appreciate the attempt to recreate the classic animation age...but will notice some elements missing that makes this movie feel like it has less heart than it advertises.

This film will make guys wonder why dramas are even a movie genre, and females (and most males) will appreciate the witty script and great performances by LaBeouf, Julie Dunn, and Kevin White (the latter two play parents of the young human hero). A few plot holes (if the All Spark is raw power, then why the lame ending to Megatron and Prime's battle?) will anger ardent fans of the TV show, but everyone has known that plot holes are flaws of 98.9% of action movies since they were ten. The last battle is in crowded L.A., so the Transformers kind of blend in with the set design--watch it closely or you'll miss a few bullets. What also bugged me was the rapid camera pacing in battles; ten camera changes in seconds made it hard to determine the fights' progress. What would have made this movie great is if Bay didn't reveal the robots right away, adding to the movie a magic that made the child in most of us love the show in the first place. Great fun that will satisfy both sexes.

Lessons I Learned from Blades of Glory: Heder will never win an Oscar, and the night is a dark time for everyone--but not for Alaskans and dudes with night vision goggles. The movie is brought to a higher level of stupid thanks to Ferrell's hilarious performance. Props to him for making his Chazz Michaels--who literally pairs up with Heder's Jimmy MacElroy to win the Olympics after they're banned from singles ice skating--multidimensional in such a comedy. I wish I could say the same for Heder; during the entire movie I was wondering why Napoleon Dynamite was ice skating instead of feeding Tina. Anyway, I wasn't even bugged by the film's ending (similar to a ridiculous one belonging to a 1978 film), because by the end of its two hours my I.Q. had dropped about forty points and life was simply a box of chocolates and shrimp gumbo. Thanks to Ferrell's acting and some so-dumb-they're-funny jokes I realized that films like these feed America's stupidity...and I was okay with it. ***

I had no idea who Judd Apatow was until this movie came out (shut...UP). Then I read the review for Knocked Up in Entertainment Weekly and People. Both gave the movie a great review and mentioned its constant, in-your-face realistic humor, which is a rare element in most comedies nowadays (the Chuck and Larry movie does NOT count). Intrigued, I went and saw Katherine Heigl shag Seth Rogen's stifler without protection (boo protection, yay beer!) and witnessed their physical (former) and mental (latter) transformations in the subsequent nine months. Saying the movie wasn't great would be criminal, but as I was laughing I had this slightly disturbing feeling in my gut. What hinders this movie from becoming a classic is the way it treats such a realistic, life-changing topic. Kramer vs. Kramer treated divorce with delicacy and poignance, but Knocked Up treated, well, being knocked up as if it's something that should be shrugged off and laughed about at a dinner party. ***

I saw the midnight showing the first day it came out. Looking back, I have the feeling that the movie was better than it was because 3/4ths of the audience was overly tired and would have seen the movie if it filmed the title character taking a crap in the loo for two hours. The movie is very dark (literally AND figuratively...lots of scenes with dark interiors and clouds produce a moody ambiance that at least gets the point of the film across), so it's not the most fun of the previous four. And Hary is just...irritating. I understand the boy is going through a load of hormonal and emotional changes, but couldn't Daniel Radcliffe bother to SMILE ONCE? At least the veteran actors are entertaining (Alan Rickman has about ten lines and the man is still GOD), although I wish Imelda Staunton could have had a little more fun with Umbridge. That seems to be the bottom line...the entire movie and it's components are are burdened with its dark mood, and much of the magic is lost.

Samuel L. Jackson does have an on screen presence. Whether he's in Do the Right Thing or The Negotiator or whatever, you know that when this guy is on screen SOMETHING is gonna happen. Too bad the man didn't really have any function though. This movie wasn't as big on explaining as it was on showing. Yeah, some skeptical author on supernatural phenomena who ironically doesn't believe in the paranormal spends a night in some haunted hotel room...and that's the plot. What the hell? What was the function of Jackson's character besides providing gory background about 1408? How could the dream sequence happen if Cusack actually never left the room? How come a hotel employee mutilated herself seconds after being in left in its bathroom but Cusack could spend five minutes in there unharmed? Maybe it's because he's Cusack, and the ghosties decided to give him a chance because they really liked his performance in Better Off Dead. Entertaining, but leaves questions unresolved.