42 Review

It's no secret that I don't like Harrison Ford.  He's one of the most over rated actors in Hollywood.  Going into this one, you got the feeling that his portrayal of Branch Rickey as a crusader for human rights was supposed to be an Oscar bid.  If it was, he failed miserably.  Everything about the character is overplayed.  The gravelly voice and forced delivery comes off so cheesy as to be completely unbelievable.

And that's a shame because, almost everything else about this movie is actually very good.  The rest of the acting performances are quite strong (with the exception of the kids but they're too young to be great actors).  I was especially impressed with Chadwick Boseman as Jackie Robinson.  Everything about his performance was convincing.  it would have been easy to try and make the character bigger than the movie given the subject matter. but it was restrained just enough to be able to tell the story well.  I also like John C McGinley as the radio announcer.  His old-timey sayings and voice gave the right feel to baseball scenes that were well shot and thought out.  it really felt like I was watching a game from 70 years ago.

Finally, I liked that the movie didn't think it was bigger than it actually was.  In an era of ultra political correctness, it is easy to try and make a story like this bigger than it really is.  Don't get me wrong.  What Jackie Robinson did was groundbreaking and unbelievably important for human rights and the game of baseball.  I don't want to take away from that.  But in movies like this, they often put the characters on these soap boxes and have them make these grand speeches about how what they are doing is so important.  In 42. they addressed the overall good of what they were doing without being overly preachy.  It stayed grounded in a baseball movie and balanced it very well.

See it.  Ford is difficult to watch but the rest is done just fine.

Goon Review

This one's a mix of Necessary Roughness, Rocky and Happy Gilmore.  An underdog discovers a hidden talent and is given the opportunity to be a minor star.  It sounds like a half decent premise for an ok comedy.  The reason it took me so long to see it is that I'm not a hockey fan and one of the main reasons is their unwillingness to seriously address the fighting issue.  Then, Karl told me it was actually very funny so I thought I'd give it a shot one afternoon on my day off.  Karl was right.  This is actually a very good movie.

One of the reasons is Sean William Scott.  We all know he can play a smart ass and jackass.  But what most people don't know is that he's actually very talented.  He veers off a little here in that he plays a loveable goofball with a slightly violent streak (like Happy Gilmore).  But he's even more "aw shucks" and it really works.  Some of the lines he delivers because the character is so dim are absolute comic gold.  The rest of the cast does a decent job of providing the needed caricatures that a sports comedy needs.  They all have them and this one is on par with the best.  In fact, all of the dialogue is very cleverly written and well timed.

The only beef I have with the film is some of the inconsistencies and continuity.  It's a Canadian made film and they really play up the stereotypical Canadian accent.  As a Canadian, it rubs me a bit the wrong way when they really play it up.  We don't all sound like confused Americans with head trauma.  In fact, most of us don't.  Yes, our "out" does have a lot less of a drawl than the Americans but it isn't that different.  When they had a character with a Canadian accent, the only one that was believable was Liev Schreiber.  It was just enough and he made it very convincing.  The rest were over the top and obvious attempts to make Americans think it was quaint and get them to watch the movie.  The other continuity issues are only recognizable if you know a little about Canada and hockey.  The MTS Centre is in Winnipeg but it was home to the Quebec team here.  There's lots of local Brandon, MB advertising on Halifax's boards, etc.  But that's OK.  There probably just wasn't enough budget to fully modify the sets for realism.  And even the big budget films don't get it all right.

See it.  The laughs are definitely worth the time.

Trouble With The Curve Commentary

I'm a baseball fan.  So I will admit that I spent some time picking apart some of the inaccuracies in this movie regarding the sport.  First, in what universe would the Red Sox or Braves have a top two pick given that it's a movie that takes place in current time?  Also, there is no way that, in a championship game, there would be a spazzy, "please just let me get hit" Charlie Brown type kid batting in front of "the next Albert Pujols."  But, the Red Sox and Braves have appeal for the masses and the wimpy kid allowed for a decent little scene.  After all, this isn't a movie about baseball.  Rather, it is a movie about redemption and second chances with a baseball background.  So I can forgive the numerous baseball inaccuracies.

Overall, this is a good film.  It started out a little boring and slow.  But, by the time I got halfway through, I found myself really enjoying it.  It has a very decent mix of heartwarming, heartbreaking and humour that keeps the audience interested.  Performances are strong from all of the main actors.  Amy Adams plays the "had to be strong to get by yet oddly vulnerable" daughter very well.  Justin Timberlake gives a fantastic performance as a former pitcher who has already adjusted to his second chance and, in turn, teaches Adams and Eastwood how to do the same.  The weakest of the three (and it wasn't that weak) was Clint Eastwood.  His performance was basically the same thing he did in Gran Torino: the stubborn old crank that refuses to change but can't help but soften a bit.  But, let's face it.  Isn't that all he ever really played?  Go back and watch the Dirty Harry movies.  That's just Eastwood.  He's never been a great actor.  But he's got that quality that just makes us want to watch him.  He used to be a bad ass but now he reminds us all of our own cranky grandfathers.

Most of the secondary actors are decent too.  John Goodman, Robert Patrick, the guys who played the other aging scouts, etc. are all good.  The only one I would say they needed to change was Joe Massingill.  While he looked the part of a high school baseball prospect, his acting was just too poor to make his character entertaining.  You're supposed to hate him.  But I hated him, not because of his attitude but because of his inability to deliver a line convincingly.  His character was too important to allow for that performance.

The writing, overall, is a bit weak.  The movie is very predictable and really has no surprises.  It follows basic movie formulas of things that need to happen in order for the heroes to win and the villains to lose.  But it isn't a thriller that would rely on surprise twists to keep you interested.  Instead, Trouble with the Curve is a drama that wants you to be vested emotionally.  Because the performances are decent, it can rise above slightly above mediocre writing and deliver a quality movie.

While it isn't a masterpiece, it's still worth two hours.  See it.

Division III: Football's Finest Commentary

Following in the great tradition of football comedies that includes Wildcats, Necessary Roughness, and The Replacements comes a movie that can really only be described as odd.  Andy Dick plays a head coach that is hired for his colourful background to give a hopeless Division III team some life and recognition.  My first thoughts were that there is no way that the same guy who played Matthew Brock on NewsRadio could ever convincingly play a football head coach.  Andy Dick just doesn't have the Je ne c'est quoi to pull it off.  But, what you quickly realize is that the character of Rick Vice isn't much of a football coach at all.  Instead, he's an insane, dangerous, and downright weird character that you could actually see being Matthew Brock's crazy uncle at Thanksgiving dinner.

The whole film is less about making a football comedy and more about seeing what kind of crazy stuff they could get Dick to do.  And they get him to do some really crazy stuff.  From his rants that trail off to mumbling to the way he parks his bike by spinning it around and chucking it like a hammer to the absolutely comic genius of him chasing his players while on a bike and using a yard marker as a joust to stab at them, watching Rick Vice is one of those movie experiences that is utterly painful yet hilarious to watch.

Like I said, it's really not much of a football movie.  There is a bit of a plot and some half-assed character development with a romantic sub story.  But the film makers realized that any real attempt at building those up would make the movie terrible because they're using stories that are done to death.  So instead, they focused on what makes sports such an attractive backdrop for movies: hilarious violence and over the top characters.  And this movie has that in spades.  Ultimately, it seems like an excuse for some old Mad TV cronies to get together and be weird.  But Mad TV was funny when Mo Collins, Will Sasso, Bryan Callen and Debra Wilson were on it.  So getting them together for this is pretty funny too.  Throw in a little Adam Corolla as the play by play announcer and there's a lot of potential for some really clever banter (which is fantastic between Corolla and Sasso during the final game).

Technically, this movie is terrible.  But just look at the poster.  Do you really think they want to do anything but film Andy Dick being Andy Dick and make you laugh.  Because it does what it sets out to do, I say see it.

Invincible Commentary

I used to really love inspirational sports movies.  But that was back in the day when I only read Sports Illustrated and could sit through 3 full football games on a Sunday.  Times have changed and I’m a lot more critical of the inspirational sports movie now.  Had this movie been put out 15 years ago, I would have loved it.  But now, it felt like it was lacking some punch.  Overall, Invincible isn’t bad.  But it isn’t great either. 

I’m not sure how accurate the movie is.  I know it is based on the true life of Vince Papale, a nobody who gets a shot with the Philadelphia Eagles and makes the team.  But considering how inconsequential the Eagles were at the time, I’m not familiar with the story too much.  It also takes place in the year before I was born.  And I did spend a lot of the time thinking, “it doesn’t matter.  Through the whole 1976 season, nobody can hold a candle to my Raiders.”  Accurate or not, the story is still missing something. 

They take an inspirational story and try to give it some oomph by focusing on the recession and really turning it into a “local boy makes good against all odds” thing.  But they also try to make you think that he’s losing touch with his roots and becoming aloof.  This would have been a lot more believable if the character wasn’t constantly going back to his old neighbourhood and hanging out in his old bar.  That isn’t the only drama that they attempt only to have it fall flat.  There is no relationship development between Papale and his father or Janet Cantrell.  It could have been a football movie or a relationships movie.  They didn’t fulfill either. 

The good thing about the film is the authenticity of the era.  I felt that the props, costumes and sets were all done very, very well.  It is also very well cast.  Mark Wahlberg is a star that has the ability to make you believe he is an everyman.  He plays humble very well.  This is also the first time that Elizabeth Banks has been on a screen that didn’t make me want to put my foot through it.  Finally, Greg Kinnear really played Dick Vermeil well.  I found that I never took notice that it was Kinnear (like I did with Philip Seymour Hoffman as Art Howe in Moneyball).  He made you believe the character. 

So, overall, it’s a good movie to see.  But the story is a bit flat and it’s one of the few times I would say they could have made a movie longer and it would have been better.  That would have allowed for more character and relationship development.  While there are better inspirational sports movies out there (Rudy, The Rookie), I would still say See it.  Especially because it should be cheap to watch by now.

Rudo y Cursi Review

The one thing you really have to keep reminding yourself of while watching this film is that it is not American or even Canadian or British.  It is Mexican and, because of that, there are going to be some things in the film that don't really make a whole lot of sense to an American or Canadian viewer.  If it had been an artsy or dramatic piece, then that gap would have been quite a bit narrower.  However, this is very much a comedy.  And while I'm sure there were things that were supposed to be funny but went over my head, I still found that it was an entertaining and very funny movie.  Some of that, though, could be due to me finding things funny that were not intended to be so.  It's the danger of a cultural difference like that.  I'm going to find some of those differences to be comical.  Add to this that the subtitling seemed to be done by someone from the East End of London and it seemed even more humourous.  Somehow watching a Mexican comedy where the translation of Spanish ends up being words like "wanker" and "mate" just makes it more comical.

The story is a pretty basic one.  Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna play brothers who are very competitive and get discovered as soccer "diamonds in the rough."  They make their way to Mexico City and each make it big.  But they are distracted by different things (a singing career/playboy lifestyle and gambling) and things go awry.  It's the age old "rags to riches and back to rags but I learned a lesson" story.  It is very predictable.  So it's a good thing that they made it a comedy.  You are distracted by the humour and don't get bored because you really know what is going to happen. But they also keep enough of the dark side of the story (Rudo's downward gambling spiral) in it to keep you from getting tired of the brothers calling each other an "asshole."

Being a non-English language film, it is hard to tell if the line delivery was convincing or not.  But I will say that the body language of all of the actors throughout was very convincing.  The body language and look of Diego Luna was especially good.  He is very convincing as a small village guy who is thrust into a big time life and has a difficult time adjusting and leaving his old ways and habits behind.  The same holds true for Bernal.  While he wasn't as convincing as Luna, he was still very strong as a small village guy who gets swept up into fame and fortune and the playboy lifestyle.

Because it's a sports movie, I do have to say something about how the sport is represented on screen.  While they didn't dwell too much on it, I thought they did a fantastic job when they did have to show soccer on the screen.  The final game is especially good.  They focused on the crowd and home viewers a lot without losing too much of the game itself.  In fact, the way they filmed the crowd and had the announcer dialogue really brought out the tension and excitement that can come from a soccer game anywhere in the world.  I felt that they took the brothers' competitive nature and magnified it in that climactic scene.

If you like sports movies, see it.  If you don't like sports movies, still see it.  It doesn't dwell on the sport like Goal but it has enough of a balance to keep everyone interested.

Moneyball Review

I need to preface this review by disclosing that I am a baseball fan and an Oakland A's fan.  So any movie that lets me relive the winning ways of my team from ten years ago is one that I am going to enjoy on some level.

That being said, this is a great movie.  Any time you can take a film that is almost 2.5 hours long and not make me bored at any time is a good thing.  With something that long, there are bound to be lags and, while the movie slows a bit during the non-baseball Billy Beane moments, I found I didn't lose focus and those moments were short.  If you have read the book, you'd find that like another Michael Lewis sports movie (The Blind Side) they took a book that talks about technical sports stuff and turned it into a human story without losing too much of the sports jargon, etc.  I haven't read the Blind Side but a friend told me it was very sports skewed.  I have seen the movie and it is more a story about human nature.  Moneyball keeps even more of the sports angle while still letting you see Beane's transformation as a person (I'd say it's very true to the book without just being a statistics course - something the book almost becomes).  It is done so subtly that I didn't really even notice until my brother pointed it out after the film.  So you really have to tip your hat to Brad Pitt there.  He goes from a bit over-cocky to humility through subtle gestures and tone of voice very well over the course of the film.  And there's a lot of subtlety in the film that lets the viewer figure things out on their own.  They don't hammer into your face who each person is or what's going on.  They let the story tell itself.  A baseball fan will have the light go on quicker and enjoy it and a non-baseball fan will just say to him/herself, "oh, that must be the boss at the Cleveland Indians.

The way this film was made is terrific with a couple of exceptions that I will address later.  First, you can feel the dramatic emotion right from the start.  It starts with one of the most entertaining and dramatic baseball playoff series ever (New York vs Oakland in 2001 shortly after 9/11) and never lets go.  Throughout the movie they use music, brief montages and terrific dialogue (especially the dynamic between Jonah Hill and Brad Pitt - fantastic) to keep you hooked and almost mesmerized for the whole time.  They even manage to make the worst park in all of baseball (the Oakland Coliseum) seem like a cathedral for the sport.  (I don't recall if they were selling out during the big winning streak in 2002 but it was nice to see the Coliseum appear to be full for baseball.)

The authenticity was near flawless too.  Overall, this movie is exceptionally cast.  When you are making a film like this with so many true characters, you have to balance the acting with looks and believability.  For the most part, this is done well.  All of the old guard scouts and coaches seem like old cranks that will balk at Beane's new philosophy.  While I know most of the actors don't look at all like the players they were portraying (Chad Bradford, David Justice, Ron Washington, etc.), it was never a distraction.  In fact, the actors must have done their research well because they were able to get Bradford's submarine delivery and Justice's swing down well.  The best though was Scott Hatteberg.  Not only did he get the batting stance down, he actually looked like Scott Hatteberg.  The other top casting choice was Jonah Hill.  He is great as a nerdy, out of his element, statistician.  The only one I didn't like was Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Art Howe.  He's too big for the role and the fact that it was him overpowered what should have been a much more minor role.

The only things I didn't like were the little continuity things.  First, the typo on the Game Time posters in the clubhouse bugged me.  But maybe they are actually accurate for what is up there in real life.  Having never been in the A's clubhouse, I don't know.  The other is that, when listening to the game on the radio at the beginning, Pitt should not have been hearing Thom Brennemann's voice.  Brennemann was the TV guy and having his commentary for the TV footage was great.  But, when they cut to a radio shot, they should have switched to the radio announcer commentary.  While it keeps consistency for the viewer, it takes authenticity away.  For that one (And a couple others I won't mention), I would have erred on the side of authenticity.

See it.  A baseball fan should see it now during the playoffs.  A non-baseball fan can wait as there's nothing the theatre can really add to it.  But definitely see it before Oscar season because it should get a Best Picture nomination.