Movie Reviews: Chronicle, Men in Black III, Cars 2

Chronicle

With very few exceptions, I don’t watch horror movies. I don’t like the sensation of being scared, and so I have little interest in spending time and/or money watching something that is primarily interested in scaring me. One of the consequences of this avoidance, however, is that I have no real experience with the increasingly popular “found footage” genre, which (other than Cloverfield and a few other minor films that I have not seen) is mostly contained to the horror genre. As a result, this approach—especially in the context of a superhero origin story—seemed fresh and interesting.

Chronicle is the story of how three relatively normal teenage boys gain superpowers. Andrew, played by Dane DeHaan, is shy and introverted, frequently bullied both at school and by his unemployed, alcoholic father. His cousin Matt (Alex Russell) is a stoner with a fondness for pretentious philosophy, but is still able to fit in much better than Andrew. Matt’s friend Stephen (Michael B. Jordan, of The Wire and Friday Night Lights) is an extroverted golden boy, good at seemingly anything he tries and an aspiring politician. One night at a rave that Matt convinces Andrew to attend, the three find a mysterious meteorite (or something….) that grants them the power of telekinesis. As the boys use their powers, they grow stronger and stronger, eventually allowing the boys to fly, lift cars, and more. But although the three become fast friends, all is not well with Andrew, who remains lonely and isolated.

Film Reviews: The Ides of March, Barry Lyndon, The Road

The Ides of March

The days of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is long past. Cynicism is in for political movies, and George Clooney’s newest movie (directed, that is) reflects that. While the system isn’t presented quite as darkly as in something like Syriana (also featuring Clooney), it certainly fits into the mold.

The Ides of March stars Ryan Gosling as Stephen Myers, the idealistic but ambitious young deputy campaign manager for the charismatic and talented Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania Mike Morris (Clooney), who is the favorite to win the Democratic nomination for president. While Morris is the favorite, and leads in the polls, the election is hardly decided, and may hinge on the upcoming Ohio primary. Former candidate Senator Thompson of Ohio (Jeffrey Wright) still hasn’t endorsed anyone, and his support (and his delegates) could be key to victory, but how much will his support cost? As the day of the primary grows closer, Myers gets a call from the rival campaign manager (Paul Giamatti), who insists that there are things Myers doesn’t know. Other plots involve a tenacious reporter (Marisa Tomei), Myers’ semi-paranoid boss (P.S. Hoffman), and a pretty young intern (Evan Rachel Wood).

Paul's Cinema Chronology: 1990-1994

What I’ve Seen:

1990

Back to the Future Part III

Dances With Wolves

Die Hard 2

Goodfellas

Home Alone

Presumed Innocent

The Godfather: Part III

The Hunt for Red October

The Rescuers Down Under

1991

An American Tail: Fievel Goes West

Beauty and the Beast

Dead Again

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

Rock-A-Doodle

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

The Rocketeer

The Silence of the Lambs

1992

A Few Good Men

Aladdin

Glengarry Glen Ross

Honey I Blew Up the Kid

Malcolm X

My Cousin Vinny

Porco Rosso

The Last of the Mohicans

Unforgiven

White Men Can’t Jump

1993

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

Groundhog Day

Ninja Scroll

Jurassic Park

Look Who’s Talking Now

Philadelphia

Robin Hood: Men in Tights

Schindler’s List

The Nightmare Before Christmas

Three Colors: Blue

1994

Ace Ventura: Pet Detective

Clerks

Dumb and Dumber

Forrest Gump

Hoop Dreams

Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision

Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills

Pulp Fiction

Quiz Show

Speed

The Crow

The Hudsucker Proxy

The Lion King

The Mask

The Santa Clause

The Shawshank Redemption

The Swan Princess

54 Total

Film Reviews: The Tree of Life, The Hangover Part II, and X-Men: First Class

The Tree of Life

Wow, where to begin with this one? I have the strong suspicion that over the next few months and years many critics much more insightful and articulate than I will be writing about this film, and I feel almost presumptuous talking about it. And yet, here I go.

Film Reviews: Babel, Source Code, The Machinist

Babel

It’s a good thing that I generally don’t fault a movie for being “award bait”. Sure it can be funny when they try and miss spectacularly (Australia), or were clearly mismarketed as such (The Men Who Stare at Goats), but unless it ludicrously obviously calibrated for an awards crowd (Crash), I’m usually not offended. Which was good for my enjoyment of Babel.

Paul's Cinema Chronology: 1985-1989

What I’ve Seen

1985

Back to the Future

Brazil

1986

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

The Great Mouse Detective

Hoosiers

An American Tail

Three Amigos!

Platoon

Little Shop of Horrors

Castle in the Sky

Aliens

1987

The Chipmunk Adventure

The Untouchables

Full Metal Jacket

Spaceballs

The Brave Little Toaster

The Princess Bride

Wall Street

1988

Bull Durham

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

A Fish Called Wanda

Die Hard

The Land Before Time

Rain Man

Cinema Paradiso

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Talk Radio

The Naked Gun: From the Files of the Police Squad!

1989

The Abyss

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids

Back to the Future Part II

Glory

34 Total

Paul's Cinema Chronology: 1980-1984

What I’ve Seen:

1980

Caddyshack

Airplane

The Empire Strikes Back

1981

Clash of the Titans

Raiders of the Lost Arc

Heavy Metal

1982

E.T.

Blade Runner

Tron

The Scarlet Pimpernel

Tootsie

Gandhi

The Secret of NIMH

1983

The Meaning of Life

Return of the Jedi

Scarface

1984

This is Spinal Tap

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Streets of Fire

Ghost Busters

Amadeus

The Terminator

Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

24 Total

Paul's Film Chronology: The 1970s

What I’ve Seen

1970

The Aristocats

Patton

1971

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

Dirty Harry

A Clockwork Orange

1972

The Godfather

1973

The Exorcist

Robin Hood

Charlotte’s Web

Badlands

1974

Young Frankenstein

The Godfather: Part II

Chinatown

Blazing Saddles

1975

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

The Apple Dumpling Gang

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Barry Lyndon

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

1976

Taxi Driver

Rocky

Network

All the President’s Men

1977

The Rescuers

Star Wars: A New Hope

Saturday Night Fever
Cross of Iron

1978

The Star Wars Holiday Special

Animal House

1979

Manhattan

Life of Brian

Apocalypse Now

Alien

32 Total

Reviews: Black Hawk Down, Centurion, Rango

Black Hawk Down

One reviewer famously concluded that Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down was “Saving Private Ryan without the slow parts”. Hyperbole aside, there is something to that. Black Hawk features as visceral battle scenes as any movie ever made, and there is little to no down time once they start. It’s an exhausting experience.

Paul's Cinema Chronology: The 1960s

What I’ve Seen

1960:

Pycho

Inheret the Wind

Spartacus

1961:

One Hundred and One Dalmation

Judgement at Nuremberg

1962:

To Kill a Mockingbird

Lawrence of Arabia

Dr. No

1963:

The Sword in the Stone

From Russia with Love

1964:

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Neindeer

Mary Poppins

Goldfinger

Dr. Strangelove

1965:

The Sound of Music

1966:

A Man for All Seasons

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

1967:

The Jungle Book

1968:

Yellow Submarine

Romeo and Juliet

Barbarella

2001: A Space Odyssey

1969:

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Age of Consent

24 Total

Paul's Cinema Chronology: The 1950s

What I've Seen

1950:

Cinderella

Rashoman

1951:

A Streetcar Named Desire

Ace in the Hole
Alice in Wonderland

1953:

Roman Holiday

Niagara

Peter Pan

1954:

Seven Samurai

Rear Window

On the Waterfront

1955:

Les Diabolique

Lady and the Tramp

1957

Nights of Cabiria

12 Angry Men

Paths of Glory

The Seventh Seal

1958

Vertigo

1959

North by Northwest

Ben-Hur

The 400 Blows

Some Like it Hot

21 Total

Paul's Cinema Chronology: Film Until the 1950s

Today I’m debuting a new feature, which I’ll call Paul's Cinema Chronology unless and until I think of something better. The idea is for me to write about the movies I’ve seen in a given year. If I have any specific thoughts on the year I’ll give them, although I doubt I’ll have many. The plan is to list all of the movies I’ve seen from that particular year, then give a top and maybe bottom five with a brief explanation (only a couple of sentences), and finally to mention any notable films from that year that I haven’t yet seen.

Obviously this will be a long-running series, but it won’t be quite as bad as it might sound. For the first few installments I’ll be conglomerating the years; until the late 90s I usually have seen only a handful of movies from any given year. The plan is to cover everything up to 1950 in this first (and probably shortest) entry, then have one each for the 50s, 60s, and 70s. I’ll probably do two to cover the 80s, and then one that covers the first half of the 90s before I get to year-by-year. Also, the point of this isn’t any sort of essay on how a particular time period affected film history. I might possibly write a few things, as I mentioned above (about a particularly interesting Oscar race, for example), but for the most part this is strictly about me. So there.

The Ballad of Jack and Rose (Film Review)

The Ballad of Jack and Rose

There are very few actors about whom I can honestly say I’d see anything that they appear in (a larger number of actresses, but that’s not exactly for the same reasons). Of that very small group, Daniel Day-Lewis surely tops the list. He is an incredible actor, one of the best working today, and has impressive screen presence to boot. His appearence in Gangs of New York is one of my top ten favorite movie performances by anyone ever, and he’s almost as good in There Will Be Blood. In addition, he’s one of the most selective actors, willing to spend five years as a cobbler in Venice if he doesn’t like a project.

Black Swan (Film Review)

Black Swan

A movie aptly described (by me) as a live-action version of Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue, Black Swan is a grand example of the ‘mind-fuck’ genre. It’s confusing, f-ed up, and very, very weird. But it’s also engaging, interesting, and visually very cool. And I’m not just referring to a surprisingly steamy scene between Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis.

I Love You, Man (Film Review)

I Love You, Man

I Love You, Man is a generally clever and sometimes very funny inversion of the romantic comedy genre. There have been movies about bromances before (Superbad is a well-known recent example), but I’m not aware of one that so gleefully embraces bromantic comedy-hood. The writers have a lot of fun taking very familiar tropes and clichés from more standard romcoms and plugging them into a bromantic context. There’s the “meet-cute”, the friend jealous of the relationship (in this case, of course, it’s Paul Rudd’s fiancée, not a male friend), the awkward meeting with the parents, and dozens more.

Election (Film Review)

Election

When I learned that Bravo Network had named Election as #61 on its list of the 100 funniest movies of all time, I figured they must have been being facetious. That, or presenting a subtle but devastating commentary on the failure of many in the Hollywood machine to come up with something that’s actually clever and humorous. For, you see, this movie is not funny.

To Pixar

In 1995 an unknown animation studio, with a name playing on the word ‘pixel’, released a little movie called Toy Story and changed the way that movie viewers regarded animation. No longer was computer generation reserved for blockbusters' special effects. Instead, within a decade it had almost entirely supplanted the traditional 2D animation, the hand-drawn sort that had dominated the industry since a man named Walter Disney brought Mickey Mouse into the world seventy years earlier.

Which is not, of course, to say that this revolution has been necessarily a good thing. Putting aside the issue of computer versus traditional animation artistically, CG (like any other tool in the industry) has been used to turn out a lot of crap. I saw Barnyard. But the granddaddy of the trend, the seemingly venerable Pixar, has been remarkably successful. In the 16 or so years subsequent to Toy Story they’ve released ten more movies, all of which have been more than profitable. It’s a remarkable streak by industry standards, but perhaps even more astonishing is the sustained quality. Sixteen years and ten movies later, Pixar has yet to release a movie that’s even mediocre, let alone bad. And so, in honor of the American movie studio with the highest batting average, here’s a ranking of all eleven Pixar films, from least good to best.

Mamma Mia by way of Across the Universe

Today, a review (sort of ) of Mamma Mia, but in a little different style than the last ones. I'll probably keep experimenting with these from time to time.


When you think about it, the concept behind Mamma Mia is a little strange. It's a fictitious story that is told through ABBA music, after all. But it isn't the only member of its weird little sub-genre of musical, which I'll call a One Band Musical, or OBM for short (not to be confused with the OMB, although I hear Jacob Lew has a lovely singing voice). The first OBM was probably Yellow Submarine, which featured the music of The Beatles. Which leads to the other movie I want to talk about, the prominent and somewhat polarizing 2007 film that also features The Beatles music, Across the Universe.

Movie Review: Meet Joe Black

I should note that the plot summary here was lifted verbatim from reelviews.net. I don't much like summarizing, especially for bad movies. I think I deserve some credit for not making even a small pun on the director's last name. Trust me, it was a battle.

Meet Joe Black

1998

13 October 2010

Rating: 5 Bad

Meet Joe Black was the last picture directed by Martin Brest before he helmed one of the most derided films of the last decade, 2003’s Gigli. Brest has not had a job in the movie industry since, and it is not hard to see why. He somehow manages to stretch a script that might justify a two-hour movie into a three-hour mess, stretching a few promising ideas well past the point that they become tiresome. His work here could be Exhibit A in a case that studio interference is not always a bad thing.

Atlantis: The Lost Empire Review

Atlantis: The Lost Empire

More Than Second Viewing, 10 October 2010

Rating: 8 Very Good

Atlantis: The Lost Empire, despite being less then a decade old, is already quickly becoming one of Disney’s lesser-known animated pictures. When it came out in the summer of 2001, it received mediocre reviews and a lukewarm reception by viewers. Its box office, while not a catastrophe like Treasure Planet the next year, was more than a little disappointing to Disney’s executives. So the Great Mouse in the Sky decided to bury Atlantis with Disney’s other disappointments. No merchandise, no TV show, no theme park rides, no strange “Disney Vault” advertising. Atlantis, like The Black Cauldron before it and Treasure Planet, Brother Bear, and Home on the Range after it, is already fading from pop cultural consciousness.