The Core Commentary

In the interests of full disclosure, I have seen this movie twice now.  The first time I saw it was back when it came out.  I thought it was a poor attempt then and I think it was a poor attempt now.  I really cannot find any redeeming qualities for this film.  it is full of very good actors and all of them underperform.  Any attempt at being dramatic comes off as just plain cheesy.  Any attempt at humour falls flat.  The best performance came from Delroy Lindo and it was just average.

Disaster movies are almost always disappointing.  I think it's because we secretly want the world to be destroyed in them.  It never is.  That's just a "rule" of cinema.  The ending has to be a net positive.  But that isn't the only thing that makes The Core a disappointment.  The production value of this film is downright bad.  Even nine years ago when it was made, the effects were ancient.  They look like something more akin to Fantastic Voyage than a fairly big budget 21st century action/disaster movie.  The sets were bad and had no real lifelike look to them.  The film is also very poorly researched with anything technical.  That whole thing with getting unlimited long distance in a phone by sending some sound frequency to it made me want to scream in frustration.  Everyone involved with that scene in any way right down to the guy who sold them the comb should be very ashamed of themselves.  And that's just one example.

So, you're probably wondering why I watched it a second time.  I thought there was no way that it was as bad as I remember.  And Karl was pushing to watch it for a while so I thought what the hell.  Well, it was just as bad.  But there is a redeeming quality.  It gives you over two hours to make jokes with your friends.  And that part of it was fun.

Did I mention I thought this movie was really bad?  Don't see it.

Whip It Commentary

Sitting around on a Saturday evening with nothing to do, Steph suggests we watch Whip It on Netflix.  I'm sceptical.  It seems like a chick movie and stars that girl from Juno.  I didn't like Juno.  She was too angsty and too much of a jerk for me.  It's directed by Drew Barrymore.  I have nothing against Drew Barrymore but it seemed like it was going to be another lame attempt at actor turned director.  I'm glad I clicked on it instead of saying I'd rather not.  This movie was a huge surprise.

Yes, the story is a bit too hipster teen angst for my taste.  I'm starting to wonder if that's all Ellen Page can play.  (Maybe not because Inception was really good.)  But she plays it well.  Even though I didn't like Juno, her performance was good.  And in Whip It, she delivers again.  The whole subplot with the boyfriend in the band was completely unnecessary.  But it added to the angsty theme of the film and that's what they were going for.  Ultimately, it felt like a tacked on distraction.  But the rest was really good.

The supporting cast was very solid.  From Daniel Stern and Marcia Gay Harden as Page's parents to Alia Shawkat as the obligatory "less-pretty but oddly attractive and more controversial" best friend (all of these movies have one) to the entire roller derby cast, everyone plays their part at least competently.  Some go even farther and kind of steal the show.  Drew Barrymore, Kristen Wiig and Juliette Lewis are all very, very good.  But I think the one who performed higher than expected was Andrew Wilson.  The younger brother of Owen and Luke has never gotten the chances he deserves.  While he isn't quite up to either of those, you have to admit.  He's no Frank Stallone either.  I thought he was very believable and funny as the coach.

While it has the angst feel to it, it never goes overboard in that.  Whip It has plenty of laughs to keep you entertained while not going into the crude, bathroom humour that many comedies are doing now.  Its got just the right mix of high and low brow for pretty much anyone to enjoy it.  See it.

The Grey Commentary

The Grey starts out like it is going to be a very disappointing movie.  Liam Neeson is writing a letter to his woman and having a huge crisis regarding the meaning of life and blah, blah, blah.  However, after watching it I realized that exposition was vital to the rest of the film.  Given where it goes and how the story unfolds, you really needed the aura of absolute despair at the start.

The Grey is not a basic story of survival like Castaway (which is a great film in its own right).  Unlike Castaway, there is an underlying philosophical message to the Grey and it took me a little while to figure out what I think it was.  I'm sure if the film makers were to read this, they would tell me I'm wrong but I see a lot of film as art and interpretation of art is all up to the viewer regardless of what the artist intends.  What I took away is that the Grey uses a story of basic primal survival to show the devolution of man.  Even though man has devolved to an almost animal state, we are still mankind and there is something that makes us different and better than the animals.  Whether or not you believe in a higher power, there is something about man that gives us morality and the will and desire to be better.  The concept of a higher power and character reaction to it is brought up in the film a couple of times and I was actually quite satisfied with the results.  As a religious and spiritual person, I am often disappointed in how this topic is handled in entertainment art.  But in the Grey, I thought it was done fairly well.

So, it starts out really slow and almost too philosophical.  But, once they get that groundwork out of the way, the story picks up and the real thriller starts.  Director Joe Carnahan did an absolutely fantastic job of developing a sense of tension all the way through.  Once the plane crashes, there is not one time where I felt like the characters or I could relax and that they were safe.  Through the use of tense music and wolf sounds, I always felt that there was potential for an attack on the group.  This builds right up to a very dramatic and fantastic final scene.  I won't spoil it.

The setting also lends itself well to the thrilling aspect.  A story of survival could be told almost everywhere.  But to set it in the absolute bleak and dangerous winter yet beautiful scenery of Alaska lends a juxtaposition that is hard to describe.  But I really felt that it added to the tension and watchability of the film (and it must have been absolute hell to film).  The actors also played a significant factor in making a fine thriller.  Liam Neeson is always going to be good and he plays the alpha male of the humans quite well.  But the rest of the cast was very strong and convincing in their roles.  Despair, determination, denial, etc.  It was all done very convincingly.  There's no cheesy line delivery which is a real danger in a movie like this.  Taking it all into account, the result was a film where I found myself sitting still, staring in wonder at the screen with my mouth open.  Normally, I have a hard time sitting still in any setting.  When a thriller can mesmerize me like that, you know it's good.

There are a couple of problems with the movie.  First, they have shotgun shells for a rifle.  That's just laziness.  Second, in a showdown with wolves, there seemed to be a lot of non-wolf related death and injury.  But I guess there's only so much you can do with wolf jumps, wolf tears off body parts, wolf runs away before the audience gets bored.  Any problems like this are minor and far outweighed by the whole film making package.

See it.  It is definitely worth your time and effort.  You do have to be in a bit of a philosophical mood though.  And I'd love to hear anyone's comments as to what message they got from it.

The Bourne Identity Commentary

The Bourne Identity is a lot like Jimi Hendrix.  When you watch it ten years later, you see a fantastic action movie but you tend to forget just how groundbreaking and game-changing it was when it was first made.  Prior to 2002, many spy movies were still following the old mould of James Bond where an extraordinary person was put in an extraordinary position with extraordinary results.  Bourne changed all that.  The fact that many spy/action films are following the same pattern (much like musicians almost always listing Hendrix as an influence) is a testament to the way things are going in the action genre.  Even the James Bond movies have rebooted to make the characters and situations more accessible to the viewer.

I will concede that there have been lots of action moves with a regular guy that we can relate to being put in an extraordinary situation.  John McClane in Die Hard is one of these.  But McClane was thrust into an unbelievable situation.  Jason Bourne, while he leads an extraordinary life, is made accessible and relatable through his amnesia.  Through the whole film, the viewer can relate to not only the character but his situations as well.  We will probably never be fully privy to what goes on in the spy world but I imagine that the events could be very similar to what we see in these films.  From start to finish, you feel like most of these things could actually happen.  Granted, falling 5 stories, shooting a guy on the way down and breaking your fall on a corpse is not likely to turn out for you the way it did for Bourne.  But no action movie is going to be 100% realistic.

Bourne comes as close as you can while making it exciting.  The tension mounts right at the start with Bourne being found floating unconscious in the Mediterranean Sea.  It never lets go and builds to a very tense climax between him and Treadstone at a Paris safe house.  Matt Damon and Franka Potente do a fantastic job of working their way through their mystery and making the viewer feel that they are actually scared as to what they might uncover as well as what is chasing them.

Finally, because it has one and I love them, I need to address the car chase scene.  It is one of the finest I have seen in any movie.  Car chases are great when they involve regular cars in crowded situations.  using a beat up Mini in the narrow Paris streets was fantastic.  The entire gloomy rain atmosphere just adds to it.  The choreography throughout is flawless.  And Bourne's and Kreutz' reaction when it ends in the parking garage is absolutely priceless and one of my favourite movie moments of all time.

This is a fantastic action movie that grabs you and never lets go.  Definitely see it.  You should probably have it in your collection as well.

No Strings Attached Commentary

In my review of The Switch, I talked about the romantic comedy formula.  That movie followed it very closely and, while it didn't blow me away, it did enough for me to give it a See recommendation.  No Strings Attached tried to follow much the same formula.  There's the rivals for the attention of the lady, the obligatory Jiminy Cricket friends for the protagonist, and the big gestures to finally win over the lady.  But No Strings Attached does it in a slightly different way.  Because the movie is all about two people trying to not fall in love at all, they have to take a slightly different angle on the formula for most of it.  I wouldn't say it worked but I wouldn't say it fell completely flat either.  They really should have either stuck to the formula or broken the mould completely.  There seemed to be a lot of indecision in how they wanted the film to unfold and it never really got going into anything too good.  The best example is that, for two people who see each other three times in 15 years, they hook up pretty quickly and seem to know each other better than they should (Kutcher has Portman's phone number already?).  That and the friends' hooking up with no real warning or exposition jsut seemed too convenient and confusing.

Speaking of Jiminy Cricket characters, there were two main problems with them in this movie.  First, there were too damn many of them.  Ashton Kutcher has two friends who give him advice.  His Dad is rolled into the mix as well.  Natalie Portman has three roommates that all seem to get in the way more than anything else.  Because they all had to share the spotlight, there was never that one "Philip Seymour Hoffman from Along Came Polly" that you could really count on for good comedy and story progression.  The second problem was that they really made a half assed attempt at edgy, crude humour.  There's some talk about lady periods and sex euphemisms that, for some reason, just aren't funny.  When you put them in a movie like American Pie or Forgetting Sarah Marshall which set out to be a bit over the top and goofy, they get a bit more humorous.  But No Strings Attached was trying to do the same thing while trying to make the audience believe this could all actually happen.  It just doesn't work.  You have to go one way or the other and they tried to do too much.

The good thing about this film is the performances.  I've never been overly impressed with Kutcher but I've never been disappointed in him either.  When an actor sets the bar with Kelso from That 70's Show and Jesse from Dude, Where's My Car? it really doesn't ever make me expect too much.  I prefer him in roles like those others because he can be more physical and idiotic.  He plays that very well.  But when Kutcher tries to be more serious and grounded in a comedy, he becomes decent but nothing too noteworthy.  He delivered that here.  Portman, on the other hand, was very, very good.  Her emotions were always top notch and believable.  She really ran the gamut from busy and horny doctor to happy to heartbroken and took the audience along with her.

But Portman was not enough to save the film entirely.  I've said it before.  My criteria for a romantic comedy is 1. Did it make me laugh?  Yes, but not a lot.  I laughed at a few things but rolled my eyes more than anything else.  2.  Did it make me feel good for having watched it?  No.  While I don't regret it, I came away thinking I could have done better.  It's not something to avoid completely and at all costs.  But it isn't something to seek out.  All in all, don't see it.

Midnight in Paris Commentary

It's definitely a quirky Woody Allen movie.  And they found the perfect guy to play the main character.  Owen Wilson does loveable quirky better than anyone in Hollywood.  When you combine that with Allen's off the wall yet strangely grounded style, you get a very enjoyable film.  Allen takes a normal world and makes it abnormal but acceptable to the people in it.  In a way, it is the only thing I didn't care for in the film.  Gil (Wilson) and Adriana (Marion Cotillard) accept the fact that they are jumping back in time to their own perceived golden age of Paris.  That bugged me a bit at first.  In a movie that was meant to be realistic, they would be freaking out for a while.  But this is a Woody Allen movie so it moves to the surreal much more easily.  Instead of having a crisis that Gil would go through to accept his predicament, it is accepted and Gil just moves on and rolls with the punches.  The result is a much faster paced and enjoyable film that doesn't get bogged down in this kind of crisis.

That isn't to say that there is no message to the movie.  I don't really know if Allen often tries to have any kind of moral or lesson for the viewer.  But regardless, when I see a message in a movie (not all of them have anything allegorical or such that hits me), I like to jump on it.  I couldn't care less if it's intended or not.  If Allen meant for it, great.  if not, I will still take it away and heed it.  Midnight in Paris really hit me as a message that we should be happy with where and who we are.  That it is too easy to get caught up in the nostalgia of the past and become miserable when we cannot experience it.  So, instead, make where you are your own golden age.  Even in such a complicated world, we can find the things that make it special.  I have to think it was intended simply due to the one bit of dialogue between Adriana and Gil.  Either way, it's a message that I think we can all really take to heart.  I think this is also what made it into the Oscar voting.  This year's Oscars were all about artistic nostalgia and the Academy really skewed everything that way from the get go.  Otherwise, even though it's a great film, I don't think it would have gotten the buzz that it did.

The one thing that really stood out to me on a technical standpoint was Wilson.  As I said, nobody plays loveable quirky like him.  His ability to deliver what I can only describe as distracted dialogue has always been his strength.  And it plays perfectly in such a quirky Woody Allen movie.  He's at his best when he plays a character that is unsatisfied yet strangely optimistic about it.  It's the same type of character he played in the Darjeeling Limited, Bottle Rocket and even Drillbit Taylor to a certain extent.  In Midnight in Paris, he plays it perfectly.  Sadly, I thought his interactions with Cotillard could have been better.  Most of their dialogue fell a bit flat and slowed the movie down a bit too much. I think she was maybe a poor choice.  There was no real on-screen chemistry that I felt and, given their roles, there really needed to be some.

I feel I also need to mention how the historical characters were portrayed.  To a large extent, these would be Allen's interpretation of what they would have been like combined with how the actors were motivated.  For the most part, I thought it was satisfactory.  I was, however, a bit disappointed in how Corey Stoll played Ernest Hemmingway.  There was the brooding and depressed element to the character but it was done as too much of a caricature for my taste.  At one point, in the car, he kind of reminded me of Peter Graves in Airplane asking the little boy if he liked Gladiator movies.  But, considering that it's a lighthearted film, that can be somewhat forgiven.  Another one that I think is worth mentioning is Adrien Brody's portrayal of Salvador Dali.  It was just downright bizarre.  Maybe that is what Dali was like, I don't know.  It was a bit too far left of centre to really fit with the overall comic level of the movie.  But it was only one scene and it was still entertaining even if out of place.

I also need to mention the music.  It was done absolutely perfectly.  You really got the feeling throughout that, even in the present day scenes, you were still almost in the 1920s "golden age."  To me, that really drove home the "live in the present" message that I took away from the film.

Definitely see it.  The drawbacks I mentioned are far outweighed by the use of dialogue, music and romantic Paris sets that just give you a nice inspiring feeling after watching it.

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.