Movie Reviews

I haven't done reviews in a while mostly because I haven't seen anything that interesting. Some quick updates:

It Might Get Loud was quite a good documentary about how rock guitar has evolved over the years. It's a meeting of Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White with background individual interviews and lots of guitar playing. Page produced it. There are a few of stand out moments but the two I most remember were Jack White playing his favorite song, Son House's "Grinnin' In Your Face", and the Edge playing a riff with and without amplification and effects. This film convinced a friend to learn guitar.

Exit Through the Gift Shop is another documentary, this one about street art, or about a street art documentary. Thierry Guetta is an eccentric character who obsessively films his whole life. He gets interested in graffiti art and follows and films some of the better known ones, including Invader and Shepard Fairey and begins a quest to find the elusive Banksy. Since most of this art is illegal they're a little concerned to let Guetta film, but he decides to make a documentary about them and builds some street cred. At some point the film falls apart and Banksy takes over and edits the film from Guetta's footage (Banksy is listed as the director). It then takes a few more twists. I thought it was a little long, particularly since Guetta is so annoying, but much like The Sixth Sense, the ending made up for a lot.

The Secret in Their Eyes won last years Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. It's an Argentinian crime noir with a romance thrown in. It opens in 2000 and we meet Benjamin, a retired criminal investigator and Irene, a judge. There was clearly something between them. Benjamin is writing about an unsolved rape-murder case they were both involved with 25 years ago. The film flashes back and forth telling the past story and his current investigation. There are some interesting supporting characters, a great chase in a stadium, some ruminations on memory and love and some funny moments. it's also a little slow at points and a bit unbelievable at others. Still it's the best movie I've seen in a few months.

Please Give is a small film set in New York City. Rebecca (Rebecca Hall), a mammography technician who's genuinely nice and spends her life taking care of her 90 year-old grand-mother Andra (Lois Smith) who's genuinely not nice. Her self-obsessed sister Mary (Amanda Peet) works in a salon and lives with Rebecca and isn't helpful in taking care of Andra who raised them. Kate (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver Platt) live next door to Andra and have arranged to buy her apartment after she dies so they can expand theirs. Maybe this seems a little less odd as they are antique dealers who regularly deal with estates. They buy low from grieving family members who don't know what the pieces are worth and then sell high in their shop. Kate is a little bothered by this and is always giving five and twenty dollar bills to homeless people she passes in the street, much to the annoyance of her acne-stricken teenage daughter Abby (Sarah Steele). The characters are all a bit quirky which probably stems from depression in a way that makes their one-dimensionality seem multi-dimensional.

I have fond memories of watching Land of the Lost as a kid on Saturday mornings. I'm sure it wasn't very good even if there were episodes written by Larry Niven,Theodore Sturgeon, and Ben Bova. I'm also surprised to learn they did a remake series in the early 90s. Last summer Will Ferrell turned it into a typical Will Ferrell movie. It was certainly ripe for parody but Ferrell just plays Rick Marshall as the same character he always does (so no, this isn't for kids) and the script isn't particularly funny.

Holy Rollers had potential. It's based on a true story of young Hasidic Jews who smuggled drugs into the US from Europe. The dealers used them because custom agents didn't suspect them and didn't search their bags. Jesse Eisenberg plays Sam Gold who's first tricked into it thinking he's bringing "medicine for rich people" and is lured in by the money. This should have been interesting but you're never made to care about the characters. Sam is 22 but acts like a whiny 14 year-old. Which is perhaps understandable as it seems he's never even touched a woman and he's just waiting for his parents to arrange a marriage to the pretty girl in the neighborhood. He has no coping skills other than to get angry or stop talking to someone; which is understandable because that's all we're shown his family and friend as being able to do.

Avoid The Spirit at all costs. A friend said it was the worst movie of 2008 and it came on cable and I had vague interest in seeing it because of fond memories of writer/director Frank Miller's comic book work in the 80s. That was a mistake. Miller hasn't had an original idea in 20 years and corrupts his idol Will Eisner's character. The film has the same look as Sin City (and to a lessor extent 300) but makes no sense, has no life and is tedious as all hell. Seriously, just avoid it (as you were probably going to), it's not so bad it's good, it's just bad.

Splice got some good reviews as an intelligent sci-fi horror film. Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) are biochemists who create a new species which can be used to create pharmaceuticals. To be really useful they need to splice in some human DNA but oddly the company is a afraid the public isn't prepared for the ethical implications. But Elsa doesn't care, she convinces Clive to go ahead with it in some secret corners of their soon to be shutdown lab (how Eve-like). Clive and Elsa are married and he wasn't kids but she doesn't. But now they are raising Dren, an almost girl experiencing rapid aging. They get to go through all the stages of parenthood in a couple of months. Well maybe a few more than the normal stages, this is after all a horror film. It's not particularly gory and this is far from a slasher flick but I never got too engaged with it. It might have been because of the heckler in the audience who wouldn't shut up or it might have been but the constantly dumb things these scientists did that he had to heckle about it. Then there's a big dumb action that I just couldn't get past and it becomes a monster movie in the woods film. Friends I saw it with like it, I think for campy genre fun, so if you're into that kind of thing, maybe you'll like it. Still compared to The Spirit, this movie is Psycho.

I had never seen the infamous Myra Breckinridge and caught it on cable. It's an incoherent mess that isn't worth seeing.

Valkyrie was a reasonable attempt at making a thriller out of an actual failed plot to assassinate Hitler. It just never quite came to life.