Alexander

Oliver Stone's work of love, Alexander, is an epic story, and I have to compare it to'Troy' and say that the latter is a much better movie, with richer characters, and though some people complained that Troy avoided the bisexuality of the men in those times (specially in the movie' hero Achilles), Alexander is over packed with it, taking it to a point where is actually laughable

Alexander The Great is played by Colin Farrell in an excellent performance that surpasses his work in this year's, and also gay themed, 'A Home at the End of the World', only because of Alexander's massiveness. And also about that movie, where they decided to cut the scene where Colin's dick is shown, they show it here, in the shadows but they do, though there's a much longer scene of nudity which I'll discuss later.

Angelina Jolie plays Alexander's mother Olympias. She wants the best for Alexander, which is of course the kingdom, and she'll do whatever for Alexander to get it, even if she ends up being hated by him. Angelina looks beautiful, she's not old enough to play a 20 year old's mother yet, but it really didn't bother me. She was good at it, except for her accent which took me a while to get comfortable with.

King Philip II of Macedon, and Alexander's father (though not his birth father) is portrayed by Val Kilmer in a very good performance. He's got a few great scenes of rage and drunkenness, and his eye (or lack of it) also takes a while to get comfortable with, and in close ups you can't take your eyes out of it, but it doesn't hurt the character either which is a good character.

Anthony Hopkins gets top billing in the movie but his part is very small. He plays Ptolemy in his older days (he was one of Alexander's companions), and he narrates the story.

The we have the two loves of Alexander's life, and I'm not talking about his mother and father, nor about his child, cause he didn't have any (well, he did have one, but he never met him cause the child was born after Alexander's death), I'm talking about his wife Roxane, a dancer he fell in love with while in Persia, and his friend Hephaistion who was the person who he loved the most.
Roxane is played by Rosario Dawson in an ok performance. She doesn't have much to do except to get naked, and we get a full nude from her. Didn't know she had such huge tits.
Jared Leto plays Hephaistion, and his performance is very good.

My problems with the movie are a few, starting with the whole bisexuality issue, because it really was too much. The way Alexander and Hephaistion looked at each other all the time had a gay way to it, and don't get me started with Alexander's not love of his life but sexual partner, the bathing boy. When Alexander and the whole group goes into the Persian Harem, the place it's full of women, and Alexander, being the King, gets first choice, but his eyes are not with the women, but with this guy that is later going to bathe him.
And all the other guys kiss every now and then too, and at the parties there are old guys spanking the younger ones, etc. Stone really went too far with it cause while it was true, it happened, he spent too much time showing it.

My other complain is the editing, and not the way the story went back and forth in the years, but specifically during the battles. The first one is also very similar to the Battle of Pelennor Fields in the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King in magnitude and style, only that more dirtier, but bad edited and choreographed. The second battle, which happens in the woods, is better but still has editing problems. Both battles have a very good deal of gore though.

Colin's work here is really Oscar worthy, it'd be great if he gets nominated, as well as Oliver Stone for his direction, because I don't think the movie will.

Seed of Chucky

Seed of Chucky, like all the Chucky movies really, is a horror movie that has more comedy than horror, but the comedy is really good.

I have to admit that I've only seen the three Child's Play movies, but I've never seen Bride of Chucky, and I now I really regret that cause in that one is when we were introduced to Tiffany, Chucky's bride, and she's awesome.
Anyway, in this movie, Chucky (voiced by Brad Dourif who played Wormtongue in LotR) and Tiffany (voice by Jennifer Tilly) find themselves with the news that they have a child after he saw them during the filming of 'Chucky Goes Psycho', a Chucky movie that Hollywood's is making starring Jennifer Tilly herself.
So their child, after seeing them on TV, and noticing that they had the same mark in their wrists than he/she (I'll get into that later) had, a "Made in Japan" sign, decides to fly to America from his native god knows why England where he was a circus freak, and go meet his/her parents.

So why the duality in the child? Just cause we don't know what 'it' is, and neither do Chucky and Tiffany, cause it doesn't have any genitals since he's still a doll, so Chucky decides to call him Glenn, and Tiffany decides to call her Glenda (a nod to Ed Wood's 1953 movie Glen or Glenda).
Glen/Glenda, voiced by Billy Boyd, also of LotR fame (he played the Hobbit Pippin), has a little problem with his/her parents, as he/she doesn't like the whole killing people stuff his/her parents love so much, specially Chucky.

So what happens is that Chucky and Tiffany want another child, so they can have the boy and the girl, and they decide that Chucky should impregnate Jennifer Tilly.
Jennifer has a little story of her own too, as she's trying to convince movie producer/director/rapper Redman (he's the least funny in the whole movie) to cast her as the Virgin Mary in his next movie, and how is she going to convince him? By sleeping with his of course, after all, that's how Julia Roberts got the Erin Brockovich part, Tilly says.
Jennifer Tilly is extremely funny, specially cause she's fun of herself, and she's great.

So the story continues, and so I don't give up anything else, I'll just say that the comedy is really strong, and really not suitable for kids, in theory, cause I think that kids would find it funny even though there's lots of sex jokes, and it's very fun.

The Polar Express

I wasn't waiting for this movie to come, and after watching it, I was right, the movie is no good.

The animation is the worse, not good at all compared to Pixar, Dreamworks and ILM. The characters looked creepy, specially the little black girl and the nerdy boy who was extremely annoying btw. I also didn't like a lot of very unrealistic situations like kids walking at the top of a speeding train in they pajamas?. First of all, it was freezing, and second, they would've been thrown off the train by the wind going at that speed. There were more situations like these that didn't work.

The story was too much for kids, believing in Santa Clause and all that, and it's ok to do these movies, but there have been already many great Christmas movies for kids (Home Alone, Miracle on 34th Street) which are masterpieces compared to this. Also, I felt like Santa played very little part of the story considering that the whole story consisted in not believing in him. He should've been there a lot more.

The score was ok, but I felt it was pushing the whole believing situations a lot. The melody shown in the commercials is heard every time something 'magical' happened. It got boring after a few times.

Tom Hanks portrays almost all the characters: the kid, the father, the train conductor, the hobo, Santa, and a few more, and he's good. You can spot all the trademark Tom Hanks face expressions he always does.
The little black girl was Nona Gaye, she was ok, and again, the nerdy boy was some actor called Eddie Deezen and his voice was horrible. Really annoying.

For some reason, because I pretty much love the songs in all movies, I didn't like these. Pretty disappointed with it, maybe it was because of the repetitive score but I don't know, didn't like it.

All in all, kids will like it, I can see that happening, though with The Incredibles out right now and that one being a far better, almost perfect movie (animated or not), I don't think The Polar Express will catch much attention.

Sideways

Alexander Payne's follow up to About Schmidt is another drama, filled with dark comedy, and class.

Paul Giamatti is awesome. This is the best performance I've seen this year by an actor, with Johnny Depp (Finding Neverland) in second, and Jim Carrey (Eternal Sunshine) in third (haven't seen Ray yet) and Thomas Haden Church was a revelation for me, second best Supporting Performance of the year after David Carradine (Kill Bill vol2).

Giamatti plays Miles Raymond, kind of a loser, divorced a few years ago but still with hopes of getting back together with his ex. He's also middle school English professor who just finished writing novel, a mix of fiction and personal situations, 'not easy to explain' he says, which nobody wants to publish because of that, they don't know how to market it.

Haden Church plays Jack, a former soap opera star now doing voice overs every now and then. He's getting married in a week, so Miles being his best man (they know each other from college), is taking him on a road trip through California to taste wine, play golf, and relax.

Jack plays along the wine tasting with Miles, but he wants more, he wants to get laid before the nuptials, and he also wants Miles to get laid, who hasn't been with anyone since the divorce.
They meet Stephanie (Sandra Oh), a wild and very cool (she rides a motorcycle) single mom waitress, who's friends with Maya (Virginia Madsen), another waitress but from Miles favorite restaurant up there, with whom he has connection.

And so they go out, and while Jack and Stephanie do their business, Miles and Maya have one of the most wonderful and passionate conversations ever shown on screen. Turns out Maya is also a wine lover, and they talk and talk about it. She wants to know why Miles is so passionate about Pinot Noir (a kind of wine), to which he replies with a very detailed description about the grape's texture and its selection. Miles wants to know how she got into wine, and her answer goes about how wine is always different depending on the day you open the bottle, how it evolves.
The conversation finishes and you can see the love in the air.

Jack is also falling in love with Stephanie, or so he says, because he's getting married in a few days, which Maya and Stephanie don't know until Miles talks with Maya about the rehearsal dinner by mistake, and Stephanie crushes Jack's face with her motorcycle helmet and so they're off.
Stephanie's rage turns Jack's nose bloody and broken, so they come out with a story (a car accident) to tell his wife to be about what happened to him.

Now comes the hilarious part of the movie, as Jack, now in his last day of freedom, engages in a one night stand with another waitress. She's married though, and her husband catches them which causes Jack to leave all his clothes in her house, including his wallet. Miles goes back to the girl's house to get the wallet, and what happens next is as funny as it gets.
Also, Alexander Payne likes to show a full nude in his movies, so like Kathy Bates in About Schmidt, we get another one now, and is not any prettier. Not that Bates' was.

Best movie of year? Not for me, but I can see it getting more than a few nominations, specially in the acting categories and director, and possibly winning for Best Adapted Screenplay (Sideways is a novel by Rex Pickett).
Still, it's an excellent movie, touching, romantic and hilarious, and I hope people get to see it, because like a great wine, it has class.

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason

I loved Bridget Jones Diaries, and despite being totally unnecessary, I liked The Edge of Reason.

Renee Zellweger is back as the title character, and she got her weight back for Bridget Jones. She looks more beautiful now than ever, even with a chubbier face.
Bridget was more neurotic this time, happy after 8 weeks with now boyfriend, and perfect at that, Mark Darcy played by Colin Firth.
She's getting a little bit crazy, as she's expecting a proposal soon, and then chaos occurs in her head when she learns about Mark's colleague Rebecca (Jacinda Barrett), a hot young girl always happy to be around Mark.
Mark is still the same man he was before, only now he loved Bridget, but he's not about to show any emotions out loud.

Hugh Grant plays Daniel Cleaver once again, now a hot shot TV personality doing a travel show which Bridget, who ended up in Diaries working for a TV station doing the not so professional reports (like skydiving reports for example), is now joining because the show needs the male audience to grow.

The main difference now is that we know how the characters are going to act beforehand, and so the story becomes somewhat predictable. Even before watching the movie we can guess that a fight will happen between Bridget and Mark, she'll flirt with Daniel, but Mark will come back to her, and it happens.

Still, I loved the characters again, and the comedy is very good too. There's good sing-along (in jail!) and of course, a new fight between Colin Firth and Hugh Grant that it's very funny.

I know this is all based in the books (there's even a third one), but Bridget Jones Diaries was an excellent movie that didn't need this good sequel, because it's almost the same, which is not bad though, because Renee Zellweger continues make Bridget the lovable girl we want to know about. Just don't expect an Oscar nomination this time.

The Incredibles

Yep, Pixar did it again, still with Disney though and they have still one more, 'Cars' which looks like a redneck story (I didn't like the two old cars, though the Nascar scenes were awesome).
Anyway, The Incredibles is one of the best animated movies ever, and my third favorite from Pixar after Toy Story and Monsters, Inc.

The animation and sound is excellent, you can't really comment anything about except that it looks and sound awesome, but what I totally loved about this movie, compared to their latest, Finding Nemo, is that this wasn't all for the children, this one was more adult, though not even close to the adultness of Shrek 2 which was quite a lot.

The characters make this movie, the Parr family, composed by retired Superheroes Mr. Incredible (I) and Elastigirl (Holly Hunter). They got married and a little after they, and all the rest of the Superheroes, they had to retire and go undercover after a very fun sequence of events that happened because of Mr. Incredible.
They have three kids: Violet, my favorite one, a shy young girl who can turn invisible and also create energy forms much like X-men's Jean Grey does; Dash, the little kid with that can run at immeasurable speed; and Jack Jack, the baby boy who doesn't have any powers... or does he?
There's also Frozone, Mr. Incredible's best friend who can freeze water. He's voiced by the Bad Motherfucker that is Samuel L. Jackson.
I should note though, that the kids are not Superheroes actually, because they were born after their parents retired, and they're not allowed to use their powers because they shouldn't catch anyone's attention and so they are a little frustrated by that, specially Dash who wants to play sports but can't because he's beat everybody.

The best aspects of the movie are the characters lives after retiring, specially Mr. Incredible, who has to go to work to a little cubicle in an office and he's just miserable. His car sucks, his job sucks, his boss is all over him, and he can't help the city and fight the bad guys.

And so they remain retired, until a message comes for a special mission for Mr. Incredible, who doesn't tell the family (since he would help some people and go unnoticed every now and then) and goes my himself. Bad guy Syndrome (Jason Lee) is behind it all, so of course, chaos happens and the family has to join dad, now back in Superheroes suits to save the world.

Again, an excellent movie at the top of the animated ones that will take the gold one more time for Pixar comes Award Season.