Blood Diamonds

Many people I know hate Leonardo DiCaprio and I for the life of me can't figure out why. He is easily one of the top five actors working in Hollywood today. Every performance he gives is top quality. Blood Diamond is no different. The movie follows Danny Archer, a diamond smuggler in Sierra Leone. In the course of the movie, Danny meets Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly), an American journalist and Solomon Vandy (Djimon Honsou), a local man who is caught up in his country's civil war and horrific conflict diamond trade.

Note to the screenwriter: Try to be a bit more subtle when naming your characters. I mean Solomon? A movie about diamonds and you name one of your characters Solomon? I find that a bit much.

Aside from that, Blood Diamond is a great action filled drama. Sure it has a bit of a preachy side but when you set a film outside the US, it is bound to happen. DiCaprio is what makes this film work. He isn't the most original character to ever grace the screen but he sells his character so well. From the ruthless moments when he is threatening Vandy to the raw emotional moments when he is revealing what happened to his parents, DiCaprio shines on screen.

Is his character arc predictable? Well, yes. Although I couldn't help think how great (and by great I mean extremely depressing but cinematically satisfying) to see a film like this where the bad guys win. But as my uncle pointed out to me once, the bad guys win every day in real life, who wants to go to a fantasy and see them win there too. Well, I kind of do. Just once or twice. But even if arc is predictable, DiCaprio sells it. And that is all that matters. There are those subtle changes throughout the movie when we slowly start to see him be more of a decent human being.

And in the end I'm not even sure how pure his motives would have been if his circumstances were different. I won't reveal what happens exactly but DiCaprio has a look near the end where I actually believed for a second he might actually not do what I expected. But I knew Hollywood wouldn't let that happen. Despite the heavy handed moral of the story, I still enjoyed this film.

Delays are inevitable

No one was more disappointed than I when I stopped posting reviews. I apologize for the long delay but things were out of my hands. School just got in the way and school has to come first. I apologize for the shortness and lameness of the reviews as well but I can barely remember some of the films and I can only comment on the remaining impression in my brain. I make no promises for the next month. I might not even reach my goal of 100 films in 2006. Which makes me want to cry. We shall see though.

Bobby

I'm not really sure what the point of Bobby was other than a venue to make people sit through some RFK speeches. The plot follows the lives of way too many people through the course of the day leading up to RFK's assassination by Sirhan Sirhan. There are former employees, current employees, campaign members and even a Czech reporter. It was sickeningly a big poster board for liberal idealism. I get that Bobby Kennedy was considered a great hope. I get that he had a lot of good ideas. I don't need to be beaten over the head with it. But that is all Emilio Estevez seems able to do. This felt like a big Hollywood love letter to RFK. It served no other dramatic purpose.

Tenacious D

I'm not the biggest fan of Jack Black. I tend to find him a bit annoying. Which was why I was more than surprised to find myself laughing in Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny. I also hate musicals, which for all intents and purposes this was, but I enjoyed this film. I can't explain why because part of me knows it was really bad. Fun rock and a ridiculous plot somehow worked. Plus Meatloaf makes a humorous cameo.

The Fountain

Darren Aronofsky impressed me with Pi. It wasn't a perfect movie but it was an interesting. Then came Requiem for a Dream which left an indelible image of Jennifer Connolly in my head that always floods to the surface when I see her in any film. It was a depressing film but I didn't feel much sympathy for any of the characters. Now comes The Fountain. Usually the second film from an upcoming director is the pretentious, self-indulgent metaphysical movie. How he managed to hold off til his third film I do not know. I can imagine how this film could have been worse but it stretches the capabilities of my mind to do so. I don't even know how the three story lines really connect. I'll give him another chance to impress me before I decide Aronofsky is a pretentious jackass.

That's how Bond should be done

Casino Royale is one of the best Bond films I have ever seen. Daniel Craig plays Bond as a suave but ruthless secret agent. Many a fan might be upset by the disappearance of a beloved icon, but I was refreshed by the change of tone. To me a suave Bond that everyone knows would hardly make a good secret agent now would he? Was I skeptical that Craig could pull it off? Yes. Was I happy they chose Craig instead of Clive Owen? Hell yes. Owen is too good to be bogged down by such a trite roll. Craig showed he had Bond chops in Layer Cake.

There is a nice playfulness with the old Bond in this film. This film does not star either Q or Moneypenny. But early in the film when Eva Green shows up she says "I'm the money" and Bond responds "Every penny". I laughed alot at that line. Was I a bit skeptical that the European casino was offering a game of No Limit Texas Hold'em? Okay, I admit that was the one bit I thought a bit ridiculous. Still the film was paced well, with one notable section near the end. I look forward to future darker Bond films. Especially since spy movies finally have a big baddy again. The 90s were a rough time for Bond, with no more Eastern Bloc, but with the War on Terror, Bond can go back to fighting a phantom enemy. Here is hoping the new Bond is here to stay.

Fiction

Stranger Than Fiction was a delightful film. The first film in quite some time that starred Will Ferrell where I actually thought he was pretty good. The plot concerns Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) who it turns out is the main character in the latest book by Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson). Crick becomes aware that his story is being narrated and attempts to figure out what is happening to him. In the course of his adventures he will fall in love with a baker who is being audited and seek the aid of a literature expert played by Dustin Hoffman.

Everyone seems like they are having fun in this film. Hoffman seems like he is having the most fun. The way in which his character tackles the whole ridiculous situation was priceless. There is an exchange at one point that ends with Ferrell uttering the line "Yes, I'm very glad to know I'm not a golem." This line alone sealed the movie as being good. All the performances were strong and I was really rooting for Harold by the final act of the film. Which is a good sign. Kay Eiffel's explanation of why she is changing the story from its intended course is poignant and makes perfect sense and I was quite content when I left the theater.

Borat

The goal of Borat, I assume, was to show people in the US how ridiculous some aspects of its culture truly are. Let all America laugh at the racist southerner and the sexist frat boy. But watching this film I felt like the joke was truly on the US. Because sadly the racist guy and the sexist college student aren't the exception, I think they are the rule. Tie that in with some unfunny stuff involving naked wrestling and you have a movie that the general masses will eat up like candy. But for me this film just wasn't funny. It was more sad than funny.

Saw 3

Yes, I have seen Saw 3. Yes, I have often expressed how horrible the first two films were and how much I hated them while I was viewing them and I hated them more for having to sit through them. They are so ridiculously predictable. People act without the slightest bit of sense. Yet somehow, these films keep making money and so they keep making movies. Yes, I acknowledge that my ticket in some way contributes to this fact, but I'm trying to see a crap load of movies in one year here people. Inevitably I have to see the crappy ones. It isn't possible to see 100 good movies in the theater, not in this state at least.

Being Jigsaw must be a tiring experience. No wonder he is dying. So much set up, elaborate bend over backwards set up for so little gain. I suspect even real psychopaths would opt for a far simpler way of killing people. This movie really tried to be deep. Or at least the screenwriter thought he was being deep. Unfortunately, the writer's idea of depth is woefully misplaced. I've seen wading pools with more depth. The saddest thing is that although I hate these "Saw" movies with a passion that I generally reserve for things like Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor, I will undoubtedly go and see any and all sequels that are made and I'll be as bitter then as I am now about it.

Man Of The Year

What to say about Robin Williams? What to say about Man of the Year? If Hollywood had never acknowledged either I suspect the world would be a better place. I don't buy for one second of this film, the idea that Robin Williams is a successful "Daily Show"-esque comedian news reporter. Part of the plot revolves around some crazy fouled up voting machine and the whole reason Williams gets elected is because of the error. And no one suspects fraud, even though he had only 10% of the vote going into the election. This movie exists in a fantasy world where apparently the Gore/Bush race never happened. Oh yeah and its horribly not funny. When, o when will Hollywood learn to use Christopher Walken to his full comic potential? He was the only bright spot in this horrible movie.

The Departed

Martin Scorsese is one of the greatest directors in American Cinema. Even when his movies miss their mark, they are still cinematic feats. The Departed is a refreshing film in a rather dismal year at the movies. Sure its a remake, and Hollywood should really get off the remake band wagon, but if every remake were done as well as Scorsese does this one, I might not complain as much.

The story revolves around Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon). The former is a police officer placed undercover in a gang run by Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), the latter is a police officer, who secretly works for Costello. What more need you know except that is an intense thriller with twists and turns that kept the entertainment value high for the whole movie.

DiCaprio was excellent as always. There are a lot of people out there who hate him as an actor but I've never seen him give a bad performance. Nicholson is a blast to watch as he plays over the top. I enjoyed everything about this movie and the ending was refreshing. Easily one of the best movies I have seen this year.

Why, Mr. Statham, why?

Jason Statham has played memorable favorites in Lock Stock and Two Smoking barrels and in Snatch. Which is why it pains me to see him in films like The Transporter (either one) or this film Crank.

Crank follows Chev (Statham) who wakes up having been injected with a poison that will kill him. All he can do is put off death by keeping his adrenaline pumping. A reviewer called it a crude combination of Speed and D.O.A. which would seem to imply that either of those movies was good.

Crank is painstakingly bad. It is so painfully overstylized as they director uses split screen shots, bizarre use of flashback and scene cuts that I was boiling with rage and wanted to shout at the director to just keep the camera still and let the images tell the story but then I realized that there probably wasn't enough good footage to complete an entire film and all this ornament is simply to confuse.

This movie can't even fall onto the time tested defense of at least the action was entertaining. The action was boring. There is no sense of pacing at all. The movie wants to be serious, it isn't. It wants to be funny, it isn't. Whatever the director was attempting, he has failed on every level. He like the director of Pulse should be taken to the woods and put away quietly.

In Heaven There Is No Beer

It is hard in good conscience to talk about Beerfest as anything but an intentionally offensive, desperate pandering spectacle but the reality is that despite being dumb, and I mean really dumb, I laughed a whole lot. The film follows two brothers who journey to Germany to place their Grandfather's ashes in the ancestral burial place and stumble upon a secret international beer Olympics.

They suffer humiliation and return to the States to train and return triumphant. They gather together a team together and train and eventually return to Germany. A fairly straightforward underdog story placed into a fairly conventional drinking movie. But there are moments in this film when I was literally in tears. I should probably be ashamed to admit that but if I stop laughing because I need time to breath then I must admit what I have just witnessed is in some way funny.

I've heard reviewers speak unfavorably about this film and suggest going to see funnier films such as Animal House. I assure you I never laughed at anything in Animal House that was as funny as when one of the characters wakes up from a night of drinking. I won't ruin the manner in which he wakes up but it was priceless. Perhaps the appeal to this movie is the exaggeration of events that anyone who has ever done serious drinking recognizes as being plausible.

I won't try to intellectualize why I found it funny more than that. I just did. I have no qualms about saying this was the funniest thing I've watched all year.

Pulse

Sometimes you go to a movie because you are a fan of one of the actors or actresses who happens to be starring in said movie. I can give you no better reason for why I willingly went to see Pulse. I don't particularly like Horror films or Americanized knockoffs of Japanese originals. But I do like Kristen Bell. So I happily turned my wallet over and shook it until the seven dollars that I needed fell out and marched into the theater.

The problem with liking actors/actresses who aren't making top dollar is that they make movies that earn them a paycheck but aren't skillfully demanding. Pulse feels like a paycheck movie for young Ms. Bell. I hope it was a paycheck movie for everyone involved because if this is a director's artistic achievement said director needs to be taken out into the woods and disposed of in a quiet manner. I haven't even seen the original film and have the sense that it is being done an injustice.

The worst conceit being, what kind of computer illiterate retard clicks on a pop up!! And ultimately that is all the strange ghost virus is. Why can't the people just go in and erase all the harddrives with giant magnets? I'm not going to bother with summarizing the plot of this film, suffice to say I got my Kristen Bell big screen time and I paid for it, monetarily and otherwise.

The Descent

The Descent is a pretty decent horror film. It doesn't do anything new or exciting, but the cast is good and the premise holds up over the film. If anything the arrival of creatures in the film actually hurts the movie. It provides several "jump" moments and has a generally dark atmosphere that makes it work despite being a fairly generic creature feature.

After an obligatory, quite unnecessary and surprisingly brutal prologue we come to meet our six characters. All women who are about to go on a cave exploration. Once in the cave an unfortunate accident traps them there. They have two choices. Stay put and die or keep moving and try to find another way out. The choose the second one and soon run across some Morlock-esque monsters who start in a traditional movie way killing off our heroines.

The movie moves into a more generic creature gore fest at this point but still manages to keep the plot moving and interesting. There was one completely unnecessary subplot and the American ending is a lot more upbeat than the British version but neither takes much away from the film. If you are looking for a decent horror film, this one works well enough.

Road To Gitmo

You could imagine my shock when I discovered that Road To Guantanamo was not a long lost Bing Crosby/Bob Hope movie. Actually it is a documentary account of three British Muslims who were captured in Afghanistan and held as suspected Al Qaida terrorists for several years in Guantanamo. This documentary is of course barely that given that there is very little documentation that the filmmakers could no doubt get their hands on.

They make up for this with dramatizations of what happened. This includes a very long, drawn out detailed accounting of their time in Pakistan and Afghanistan leading up to the US invasion. The dramatization is intercut with interview scenes of the real men involved. The film is naturally one sided since the US military would clearly refuse to cooperate but that isn't what makes it problematic as a film.

It feels like retread of all the things we already know to be true. There could have been a powerful story told here. They could have interviewed the family of the three. They could have shown efforts by their lawyers or advocates in trying to free them. All of this is absent. In the end it feels like a 45 minute special than a feature length documentary.

Lady In The Water

M. Night Shyamalan has been trying to perfect self indulgent tripe for some time now. He has finally succeeded in the agonizingly bad Lady In The Water. When I wasn't pinching myself to keep from falling asleep during this movie, I was contemplating slitting my wrists and ending the agony. Everything about this film was annoying.

The film begins with our introduction to "The Cove" an apartment complex whose superintendent is Cleveland Heap (Paul Giamatti). Cleveland is a stuttering nice guy who is seen interacting with all the major players of the film. These include a bizarre guy who only works out one side of his body, a room full of drug using hippies and an incredibly offensive stereotype Asian mother and daughter.

Story (Bryce Dallas Howard) is introduced as a mystical water creature who has come to view an important man who's work will one day change the world. Of course it is a writer of and *spoiler warning* although not really the writer is played by the director of the film. *end spoiler*

There is also an arrogant movie critic who gets a violent death. Why? Because clearly movie critics can't possibly be right that a film is bad. This movie is so generic and pounds home its sentimental moral. Apparently the whole story originated as a bedtime story for his kids. Which makes me wonder what kind of kid would find a story this self indulgent and blatantly symbolic interesting.

I understand that by their nature fairy tales are formulaic. But you could take any one of the Grimm fairy tales and make it into a better movie than this. Was the acting okay? It was decent except for the terrible director. I feel like Shyamalan has figured himself a new Kubrick who can make crazy out of left field movies against the Hollywood model. The difference being that Kubrick had talent.

District B13

District B13 is a French action film. Its characters are wooden and poorly developed beyond their archetype. The plot has been recycled from Hollywood. And since it has been recycled it is fairly ridiculous and non-sensical. Oh and just one more thing. It is the most entertaining film I have seen all summer.

The ghettos of Paris have gotten so bad that the government constructed walls around them to contain crime. This essentially makes them large lawless prisons. The film starts following Leito, a man who grew up in District B13 and despite the crime considers it home. He attempts to put an end to a local drug lord but the cops balk and he ends up going to prison instead of the bad guys.

Enter Damien, a by the book, tough as nails, 'I work alone' cop. Damien busts a crime lord and is called in by his higher ups for a special mission. A clean A-Bomb has been stolen and is now residing somewhere in District B13. They need him to recruit Leito and get to and disarm the bomb.

Now with some variation I realized quickly that this was a rehash of John Carpenter's Escape from New York. But that movie worked as an escapist fantasy with a badass hero played by Kurt Russell. And this movie works too. In fact thanks to amazing stunts and martial arts, it might work better.

The movie starts strong with an action sequence of Leito escaping from the bad guys. The fighting is fun and fast, but the best part of it is that the camera stays still! Hollywood directors have gotten into the habit of whipping the camera around so fast you don't know what is going on. It might make it feel more like a fight but it makes it boring to watch.

Because the actors are stunt men and martial artists, everything they do looks and is real. No highly stylized tree running like you see in Ang Lee inspired features. The dragging exposition doesn't last too long and you forget it when the action picks up again.

In the realm of watching films everyonce in a while it is nice to watch a guy kick ass and take names. This was the appeal of Jean Claude Van Damme movies and Steven Segal. I laughed and cringed and oohed and aahed at the things I saw in this movie. It was fantastic.

Yes this movie is light on the development of characters and plot but it makes up for it in action sequences. The scene with Damien in a casino at the beginning of the movie along is worth the price of admission.

So Much Potential, So Little Good

My Super Ex-Girlfriend had a premise I really liked. A man dates secret identity of a superhero. He grows tired of her and breaks it off. She uses her alter ego to harass him. A revenge comedy that could be truly darkly comic. The movie they made was not that, I knew it wouldn't be that but I still held out hope. Luke Wilson has some comedic chops (I'm starting to think more than his hacky brother Owen). This movie wastes every actor it has in it. It isn't worth seeing.

Clerks 2

Clerks 2 represents a sad moment. In some ways I was interested to see the return of Dante and Randal but in other ways it shows the true talent of Kevin Smith. Unfortunately his true talent is dialogue and his weakness is directing. While making Jersey Girl, Smith apparently promised never to return to his View Askew universe that his previous films existed in. When his attempt to move beyond his one trick pony failed utterly, he quickly ran back to the warm embrace of the familiar.

The film returns us ten years after Clerks (1994) but gives us two characters who haven't changed. In fact they are still working in the same dead end jobs. What seemed like witty playful philosophizing in their twenties has been reduced to sad, exhausted dribble. I sat and watched some of Randal's rants and became bored with them and didn't even feel like he was saying them with conviction anymore. Now this could have been intentional but the actor doesn't play it that way, it just comes off that way.

Even Smith's typically clever analogies with Star Wars fall flat. He can't even muster a convincing argument for why the Star Wars trilogy is better than the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Its reduced to focusing on one flaw and hitting it on the head again and again. Dante's dilemma is centered around a bizarre love triangle that doesn't work on any level. And when the high note of your film is a very disturbing donkey show, then you definately have lost perspective.

The more I think about Clerks 2 the more I dislike it.