Favorite Movies 2005

I've seen 90 movies in theatres so far this year, from January 1st until yesterday. I've seen all the movies I really wanted to see (the only exception being Howl's Moving Castle) and a lot of movies I didn't even know about at the beginning of the year and ended up loving them.
So, here it is...

***FAVORITE MOVIES - 2005***
1- War of the Worlds
2- Sin City
3- Unleashed
4- Fever Pitch
5- Me and You and Everyone We Know
6- Cinderella Man
7- Kingdom of Heaven
8- Crash
9- Millions
10- Kung Fu Hustle
11- Lords of Dogtown
12- The Devil's Rejects
13- The Jacket
14- Hooligans
15- House of Wax

***WORST MOVIE OF THE YEAR - 2005***
1- Elektra

War of the Worlds

I knew I was going to absolutely love Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds, but not this degree. This movie is no doubt in my mind the best movie of the year (Sin City was at the top before) so far. It's so good, from the actors and characters to the story to the perfect special effects, that I saw it an hour ago and I can't stop thinking about it, going through every scene in my mind. Just incredible work by Spielberg, very much in the line of his Jurassic Park, but with much more emphasis in the character work.

Based on the 1898 novel by H.G. Wells, and adapted by Josh Friedman and David Koepp, War of the Worlds is about Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) and his son Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and daughter Rachel (Dakota Fanning) running from an Alien invasion in search of the kids' mother (Miranda Otto) who they hope is alive in her parents' house in Boston (they are in Newark).
Ray is a bachelor, the kind of guy who drives a Mustang and has a pinball machine in his living room and a car engine in his kitchen, and is a very messy house overall too. He's divorced, and so he doesn't care much. And even though he tried, he doesn't care much about his kids either, who have to sleep in the same room when they go stay with him, and of course there's no food in the refrigerator.
His kids know all this, and so they don't care much about him either. Rachel even kisses her stepdad goobye but just hugs his dad when she first sees him. Robbie ignores him, and tries to do what he wants though he knows he has to be there for his sister. But after the attack, the family unit runs together and Ray must protect them from this things, Tripods they're called, and they are amazing.

Make that Fucking Amazing. ILM's special effects are unbelievably mindblowing with these machines. Add that to the intense action from when we first see the Tripods to the moment when we get to Tim Robbins' basement and I my jaw was truly on the floor for those 45 minutes or so. The movie pauses a bit here, Robbins gives us some crazy talk and then the Aliens appear for the first time (awesome work with the Aliens' effects too) and my jaw was on the floor again with a scene that reminded me of one from Jurassic Park but was still amazing because is the first time we see the machines, or at least some parts of them, up close.

Tom Cruise gives one of his best performances ever in this movie, and it makes you forget all his real life craziness he's been promoting lately, because his Ray Ferrier is a true man, totally believable thanks to Tom's work. Justin Chatwin and Tim Robbins give fine performances too.
The true star of the movie is Dakota Fanning though, who also upstaged Robert DeNiro earlier this year in Hide and Seek. I've always been a huge fan of hers, so cute and all, but her acting is what I've always loved, and this is no exception, she's magnificent here.

Steven Spielberg is the star too, filming the story from the character's point of view, so we see what they see and not the cliched sequences of the landmarks of the world getting blown up like in every other sci-fi movie. The close camera work also gives us a sense of the fear the characters feel in every scene, keeping us at the edge of our seats all the time.
This is supposed to be a summer movie, and it has all the elements for it, but is not the mindless stuff we get all the time.
War of the Worlds is smart, it has heart, amazing characters, out of this world special effects and it has Dakota Fanning, and this little girl rules the world.

Herbie: Fully Loaded

Lindsay "Hottest thing on Earth" Lohan's last movie before she turned into drugs (ok, maybe not, but she's really skinny and not hot at all) is Herbie: Fully Loaded, a follow up to 1968's The Love Bug and its 3 sequels. Herbie is a classic for me, and when I saw the 'fully loaded' in the title, I pictured a pimped out Volkswagen bug and it made me scream. Luckily, my beloved Number 53 is not pimped out at all, and the movie ends up actually being good.

The beginning is great, honoring Herbie with newspapers' headlines teaching the kids of today about his past, and even showing scenes from the previous movies, excellent. Then they show us the fall of Herbie, how he started to lose and became a joke, and so he was retired.

Lindsay then comes into the movie as Maggie Peyton, who just graduated from college and is going back home for the summer waiting for the fall when she'll move to New York. She used to street race, but an accident (which they really don't bother to explain) made her stop. Her father Ray Sr. (Michael Keaton in full redneck mode) is the owner of the Peyton Racing team who compete in Nascar and Maggie's brother Ray Jr. (Breckin Meyer) is the actual racer of the team at the moment.
Long story short, Maggie gets Herbie as graduation present and after fixing him with her best friend/love interest Kevin (Justin Long, who loves to get physically hit in all the movies he does), and thanks to Ray Jr. getting his leg hurt just before the big race, she ends up driving Herbie in a Nascar race against Trip Murphy (Matt Dillon), the current Nascar champion seeking revenge after Maggie and Herbie beat him in a street race a few days before.

All in all, the movie is good, with Lohan looking hot, Herbie looking as great as always, and the movie keeping the magic of the classics, at least until the final Nascar race which is too over the top and the use of CGI really shows. But hey, at least Lohan looks hot, and that's reason enough for me to like this Herbie: Fully Loaded or not.

Mysterious Skin

Based on the novel by Scott Heim and adapted and directed by Gregg Araki, Mysterious Skin is a disturbed but touching story about child abuse and alien abduction. Yes, it sounds weird, and it is, but at the same time is completely real and these great characters are perfectly portrayed by gifted young actors.
We have two stories here, as Neil and Brian, two 8 year old small town Kansas kids play little league baseball, and after the game their lives are changed forever.

Neil goes to the Coach's (Bill Sage) house, a place with videogames, toys and individual boxes of cereal, everything a kid wants. The two of them play and have fun for days, until the coach professes his love for Neil and here's when his life changes. He's not really abused, because he likes it. He worships his coach, thinks of him as a father figure, and he knows how much he's loved by him. He's his superstar, and this continues for the whole summer.
Ten years later, Neil (wonderfully played by a very energetic Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a prostitute, and he's slept with every older men in town. He doesn't do it for the money, but because he likes it, because it's what his coach did to him and marked him forever. His friend Wendy (a very out of her normal but very good Michelle Trachtenberg) loves him, but she knows and understands Neil's life. They would probably get married and have children if he wasn't gay, she says.
She moves to New York, and after a while when Neil really gets bored of the town, Neil follows her there leaving his mom (Elizabeth Shue), who doesn't know about his life (I think) and his gay friend Eric, who's in love with him, back home.
While in New York, Neil continues his life, but the city is dangerous Wendy tells him, and he learns it the hard way.

Back to when they were kids, 8 year old Brian blacks out after the game, and wakes up in his cellar with a bloody nose. He doesn't remember what happened to him at all, but grows up dreaming about the Aliens that abducting him for those 5 blank hours. He also gets a bloody nose every now and then.
Ten years later, the grown up Brian (played very quietly but at the same time very strong by Brady Corbett) is a shy boy in search of an explanation. He's obsessed with aliens, making friends with Avalyn (Mary Lynn Rajskub) a young woman from a nearby town that appears on TV saying she was abducted by aliens. Avalyn gives Brian some answers, like the reason of his nose bleeds being that they inserted a tracking device in there. She also helps him with his dreams, as they dig up and find out that another kid named N. McCormick, who played with baseball with him appears in his dream too. And so Brian leaves Avalyn and goes on to find Neil but just when he left for New York. Brian makes best friends with Eric, who is fascinated by him as the two of them talk about Neil and the aliens.
Neil finally comes back home for Christmas, and it's a beautiful and deeply touching scene as the two young men unite after ten years for a trip down memory lane.

The movie's subject matter will probably scare some people, specially if you go see it not knowing what it is about. And while there are many sexual scenes, there's nothing explicit.
Gregg Araki has made Mysterious Skin a perfect movie about troubled teens as a result of a corrupted past, a childhood that in very different ways, scarred them forever.

Rize

Music video director and photographer David LaChapelle bring us Rize, a documentary about clowning and krumping, the new dance styles recently invented by the urban communities of South Central Los Angeles in California where this phenomenon is incredibly big right now but has no coverage at all on TV.

Tommy The Clown is the pioneer of 'Clowning'. He's a real life clown who felt the need to invent this new movement as a response to the Rodney King riots back in 1992. Gangs is all we know about L.A., but Clowning is an alternative to them that is not about violence but about dancing and letting your energy move your body in incredible ways and speeds. And it's funny when the movie starts by telling us that the footage has not been sped up, but when you see it, it's really fast.
After the introduction of clowning and its major players, we go to its alternative. Called 'Krumping', it was invented by Lil C, Tight Eyez and Dragon, who used to be clowns but they left Tommy to make this new school of dancing, which is the same but a bit more violent looking, mostly because they don't wear the clown costumes and so they are people dancing really hard and fast and ripping their clothes off.
And then we get to the great Battle Zone V, the final showdown between the clowns and krumpers, all in a good way of course, remember these are not gangs.

I've never seen LaChapelle's work before, by a friend of mine is a huge fan and he thought the documentary could've been done by anybody else, with just little pieces of the photographer's work every now and then, specially at the end when even I could notice that it was a different style of filmmaking, and it was very good.

After the competition, the documentary goes into the private lives of the supporting dancers, and while it is still entertaining, I could've done without. But LaChapelle keeps giving us footage of them and their families, and I thought it was enough already.
Still, Rize shows us something almost nobody knows about, but that will probably become huge everywhere in the years to come.

Rebound

It's bad, but not as bad as it looks, or as it could've been. That's my take on Rebound, the latest from Martin Lawrence, a funny guy who's made some of the most horrible movies ever like Black Knight and National Security. He's got the sequel to Big Momma's House coming out later this year, but even though the original was funny (but forgettable) I don't have any hopes for it.

Lawrence plays Roy McCormick, a college hoops superstar coach that gets banned from the league after a series of violent and humiliating situations with the referees when his team loses game after game. And so he ends up coaching his former high school's junior team, who consists of 5 pathetic kids who have never won a game and haven't even scored once in their lives.
The kids, and they are the only good thing about the movie, are the classic ones, with the one kid who can play but has no confidence, the fat kid who eats all the time, the down syndrome kid, the kid that gets hit in the face by the ball all the time and the kid that thinks is good looking and only thinks about himself and his shoes. Then Coach Roy makes some additions like the tall geek kid and the fat tough girl. Yes, they're all cliches, but these kids are funny.

Of course, the story is all about Coach Roy wanting to win and don't get embarrassed and so he doesn't care for the kids, but then they teach him a lesson, he gets to like them, they start winning games, he gets involved the kid-who-can-play's mother, but then the league wants him back and he must choose between fame and money or the kids. And all this because like it always happens in this type of movies, the league executives make their decisions the same day the kids' team play their final game.
And by the way, Martin Lawrence 40 years old, but he looks like he's in his early 30s, so it didn't make sense that he was a basketball coach that's been winning championships for years. And there was no mention of him ever being a great basketball player or even a normal basketball player other than a picture of him when he was in High School.

Lawrence is ok but not great, specially compared with the similar character played in Kicking and Screaming by Will Ferrell (who really went crazy with it and it worked). And here, the adult supporting performances like Horatio Sanz, Patrick Warburton, and Megan Mullally (who's in the first half but then disappears) and then Alia Shawkat (Arrested Development's Maebe Funke!!!) are better than him.
Despite the good kid performances and those very good supporting players, compared to the many movies for kids out in theatres right now, Rebound isdefinitelyy not the one to see.

Land of the Dead

Land of the Dead is the latest (though probably not last) in the Dead series that George A. Romero created 37 years ago, and just as the zombies were evolving with each movie, Romero was also evolving. This time is no exception, as he brings us the most character focused chapter of the now quadrilogy, and these characters, be them humans or zombies, truly rule the movie, and some of them will become instant classics.
Romero sure knows what he's doing here, giving us one of the most pleasant movies, and arguably (not right now, maybe in 10 years) the best movie of the series.

The story is simple as always (though Day's kind of sucked), with the humans now living in a closed city protected by electric wire fences, thanks to the rich people (led by Kaufman), who put their money and power to help the poor, and in exchange are the owners of everything and the more privileged can live in a huge paradise building called Fiddler's Green. There's a group of trained men who work for the city, going out to get food and whatever the people need. These men (led by Riley), ride a huge truck called the Dead Reckoning (Land's original title), which has every possible weapon and is designed to go through anything that's ahead of it. In its way are the zombies of course, which now rule the streets of the world (or at least the U.S.), and as in the previous movies suggested, they are now much stronger and smarter than before, and after some internal problems in the city between the rich and the poor, the zombies find a way in, and all hell breaks loose.

What's great about the movie are its character, even though the main hero Riley (played by Simon Baker) is not as good as the ones around him. Classic character number one is Charlie (played by Robert Joy), Riley's friend and a man that at first look looks like a zombie because of his burned face. Charlie is good guy with great lines and a very good aim for zombie's heads. Next is Slack (played by Asia Argento), the girl of the group. She doesn't have that much to do, which is weird having in mind that the ladies were very important characters in the previous movies.
Then is John Leguizamo as Cholo. He is Riley's second at command though they are not very good friends. Cholo likes to get extra stuff (like booze and cigars) from their trips and then take them back to Kaufman (played by a very great Dennis Hopper) as gifts, dreaming that he will let him buy a place in Fiddler's Green someday. But when Kaufman tells him that it'll never happen, Cholo steals the Dead Reckoning and threats Kaufman with destroying the city if he doesn't get paid. Kaufman then hires Riley to get the tank back from Cholo, which Riley accepts to do but at the same time he plans to steal it again so he can retire for good and leave the city. Besides Charlie and Slack, there are two soldiers sent by Kaufman going in search for the tank, one of them Classic character number two named Pillsbury (played by Pedro Miguel Arce), a huge Samoan who doesn't care about Kaufman and joins Riley. Samoan Guy (as I call him) is great, and though is a very small part, it really leaves an impression of awesomeness because of his actions.

Then the zombies, as we get a handful of unforgettables. They are led by a zombie credited as 'Big Daddy', but I call him Gas Station Manager Zombie, and he's awesome. It's great because Romero put black guys in the lead in all the previous movies except this one, instead, Gas Station Manager Zombie is a huge black zombie and he's the most evolved zombie so far. They can now communicate between them, not talking of course but moaning and just pointing at stuff and making hand signals. Gas Station Manager Zombie is always the one that learns everything first, even how to shoot a machine gun!. He's always the one in front of the pack when they attack and the one that creates most of the chaos. After him are Soccer Girl Zombie (Number Nine in the credits) and Butcher Zombie, who are also great and instant classics.
Go to the next paragraph if you don't want the Zombie Cameos spoiled though I think pretty much everybody knows about them.
Makeup guru and the MVP of the series Tom Savini roars the streets (his Zombie name is Blade) at one point and he gets a whole sequence of rampant human killings that will surely get the entire theatre on their feet cheering. Awesome cameo.
Then the ones I was most expecting, by Shaun of the Dead masterminds Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, but I'm totally sad because I missed them. And none of my friends saw them nor we saw any zombies that could be named Photo Booth Zombies as they are credited. I think they got cut and will be in the DVD.

But yes, the zombies are back and in top form. Great characters (and their weapons), great dialogue and gore, gore and more gore thanks to the amazing makeup work by Gregory Nicotero (no idea why Savini didn't participate in this one).
George A. Romero certainly knows what his audience wants and he delivered like no one else could with Land of the Dead, making for an extremely satisfying comeback to the genre he created, and hopefully will continue.

George A. Romero's Trilogy of the Dead

Zombies, man. They creep me out. Yes, as a little preview of my Land of the Dead review coming out later, here's my take on the Trilogy of the Dead by George A. Romero, the man that created the Zombies in movies genre around 40 years ago with the movie that started it all, Night of the Living Dead. It was 1968 and it was a horror movie, so it's forgivable that is pure crap. Sure, at that time, it must've been terrifying, as there hadn't been anything like it, but as a movie it was pretty bad. The acting sucked, but mostly because the character's were a disaster, doing one stupid things after the other and always behaving the wrong way. Also, there were only a handful of characters but they weren't developed at all.
The gore is what surprised me, because it was very minimal, and when they had the good chances to have gore, like when the good guys had to shot the zombies in the head, the camera would just show the terrified faces of the people and not the exploding heads.
Another low point, probably because of the budget, was the sound. Whenever the actors were talking, there was no music, and when the creepy tune was on, there was no sound effects at all nor actors talking.
In 1998, and to celebrate its 30th Anniversary, the movie was recut by John A. Russo, who also added a subplot about a young reverend trying to explain the phenomenon of the zombies and the whole idea that "When there's no more room in hell, the dead shall walk the Earth". The extra scenes are unnecessary, the reverend character sucks, and the actor playing him looks like an amateur porn actor.
But back to the original, it was a long time ago and very cheap, but it's fine, because the movie allowed Romero to make a sequel, the masterpiece of the trilogy, and just one of the best horror movies ever made.

Dawn of the Dead is perfect in almost every aspect, with better acting, characters, the addition of a soundtrack, and the real MVP of the trilogy, Tom Savini in charge of the makeup and special effects.
With only 4 main characters, Romero got time to concentrate on them, and we get the first good characters of the trilogy, Ken Foree as Peter (a SWAT team member) and Gwyneth Paltrow look alike Gaylen Ross as Francine, who is some kind of TV producer and the girlfriend of Scott H. Reiniger's Roger, a traffic reporter, and the only stupid character of the movie. Dawn's remake leading lady Sarah Polley also resembles Ross a lot.
But what's great about the movie is that is fun, with the characters getting to an empty (of other people) mall full of stuff to eat, use and things to do. With a great score by Dario Argento and his Goblin band, Romero lets his imagination run wild as he gives us 2 very fun sequences of mall madness, first with our heroes running rampant in the stores, and then the zombies get to relive their shopping days at the mall too. This is also a great advancement in the zombie mythology, as we learn that zombies behave by instinct, always emulating stuff did in the past.
And finally Savini, whose exaggerated gore is perfect and really groundbreaking, giving us scenes of terror and also great, amazing scenes to cheer and laugh.
Something interesting happens in the movie, as after the first hour or so, we get the first (and I think only) mention ever of the word "zombie" when referring to the creatures.
The movie is excellent and a classic, and it shouldn't have been remade, but it was, and comparing them now, I have to say that the 2004 remake by Zack Snyder (directing) and James Gunn (writing) is a better and more enjoyable movie.

Day of the Dead came in 1985, the weakest part of the trilogy and pretty bad movie overall. Romero changes the whole idea of the previous movies, which was to have the characters survive the attack of the zombies using whatever resources they can find in the first safe place they find. But now everything changes, and the movie deals much less with the zombies, concentrating in a group of scientist playing doctor with the zombies. There's also a group of military guys who are supposed to be there protecting them but they get too impatient and want to take of the scientist who are the good guys of the story. What's really bad is that there's very little zombie action, though we get a massive zombie attack in the last half an hour with amazing work by Savini again.
And after Dawn's amazing score, I don't know what they tried to do here as the movie has no songs at all, only a boring eerie melody that is played during the entire running time.
A couple of more interesting little things from the trilogy, like that all 3 movies are lead by a black guy and a blonde woman. And then the zombies, who in the first movie look like normal people all bruised, weak and tired looking. But for the sequel, the zombies' skin is blue, and by Day they are green.

Overall, the Trilogy of the Dead represents the Zombie genre in the horror world, and that alone makes it excellent. The terror of Night and the greatness of Dawn makes me forgive the very bad Day, and give the original master of horror George A. Romero a very warm welcome to the genre he created. And as a little preview, Land of the Dead rocks!.

Me and You and Everyone We Know

Originality is difficult to achieve, but when it's done, and it works well, it's usually described as a masterpiece. Writer and Director Miranda July's debut feature Me and You and Everyone We Know is so original and different that it's hard to put into words. At times, it feels like a collage of weird situations with quirky characters and fascinating dialogue, but is so much more than that. A winner at Sundance and Cannes this year, the movie is about lonely people of all sexes and ages, and their search for relationships.

The very likeable July plays Christine, a performance artist (and Elder Cab driver) who falls in love at first sight with a show salesman named Richard (played by John Hawkes). They share a magical scene walking down the street which instantly reminded me of Richard Linklater's Before Sunset, as the 2 (who had just met a day before) talk about the different stages in their relationship, from when they met to the time when they will eventually split, deciding if it'd be in 5 years or 20 years. Their relationship is non-existent of course, which makes their conversation even more great and fun with every step they take towards the street where they'll separate and go their own way. Such a beautiful scene, and that's only 15 minutes of the movie's 90 great minutes.

They are the stars, but the movie has many more great characters. Richard is a recently separated man with 2 young sons, who like to create ASCII images in the computer and fake personalities in online chatrooms. 6 Year old Robbie (Brandon Ratcliff) is one of the best kid characters ever put into a movie, and he gets most of the laughs in the movie as he types in and makes for some of the weirdest lines ever. His older brother Peter (Miles Thompson) makes friends with their neighbor Sylvie (Carlie Westerman), a very smart little girl who has her future planned as a homemaker. He also befriends Rebecca (Najarra Townsend) and Heather (Natasha Slayton), two sexually curious teen girls who like to tease their adult neighbor Andrew (Brad William Henke) who works at the shoes place with Richard.

So many characters, and all very important to make this work, a movie with many stories and situations but no real big plot, though the idea is there. Me and You and Everyone We Know is about people searching to connect with other people, and how not easy it is. What is easy is to appreciate Miranda July, who's made a genuine and artful movie that yes, is a masterpiece.

My Summer of Love

2005 British Academy Award winner My Summer of Love is a powerful love story so artistic that it made me wonder if this was really new movie (well, last year's), as it feels like something made decades ago when times were easier and movies were simpler. But it is a movie from last year, and it's something only Europeans could've made. My Summer of Love feels like a poem.

Two teenage girls, one a small town tomboy and the other rich girl on vacation, fall in love and spend the summer together. That's the story, simple. What makes the movie so great are the performances by Nathalie Press as Mona and Emily Blunt as Tamsin, who make the girls feel real from the moment they accidentally meet. Nathalie Press in particular has such a special beauty which is hard to describe but I'm sure it has to do with her being a redhead.
Paddy Considine costars as Phil, Mona's brother. A once troubled man who met God, who told him to make a cross, place it in the hills of the beautiful Yorkshire, and dedicate his life to him. It sounds like a completely separated subplot, and that's not totally untrue, but the ideas of love and faith go together.
And Paddy Considine has been doing great work lately, quickly becoming one of my favorite working actors.

But make no mistake, this is no comedy, it's a full on serious romance. And thanks to the great direction by Paul Pavlikovsky and the excellent cinematography of Ryszard Lenczewski who shot the film so beautifully, really shown in the outdoor scenes under the radiant sun on the two stunning girls, My Summer of Love is a sweet, delicate story that looks and feels like a classic, even if it's only one year old.

The Perfect Man

Awful. That's the only way to describe Hilary Duff's latest, The Perfect Man, a movie about Holly, a teenage girl tired to move from city to city every time her mom gets her heart broken and so she decided to make up a perfect guy and write letters and email her mom pretending to be him. It sounds like the excellent drama Dear Frankie, but comedic, and with the lamest dialogue ever written (thanks Gina Wendkos!) with some of the cheesiest line delivery (thanks director Mark Rosman for such a lazy job). Again, awful.

Besides Duff (who's totally hot and has big breasts but I just realized she has no ass at all), Heather Locklear is in the movie too and she plays mom Jean. I like Heather Locklear, and when the movie started I thought she would have a crazy performance that could save the movie, but nope, she sucks too, probably because it's Hilary's movie and there's no way they were going to let Heather steal the show, which none of the other castmembers gets to do either despite being there just for that, steal the show with their small roles.
They are Aria Wallace who plays little sister Zoe. She's totally cute but gets so little to do that she's probably the most wasted kid in a really supporting performance I've seen in a long time. Then Chris Noth, who follows up Sex and the City playing Ben here, the man in which Holly bases the perfect guy on. He's the uncle of a friend of Holly's. Another wasted performance (though nothing original) is Carson Kressley (from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy) who plays a gay waiter in Ben's restaurant.

And so after 100 minutes of pain, The Perfect Man finally ended and I can go on with my life, though I know I will put myself through something like this again in the future, since I also watched Hilary's last year's movie Raise your Voice which was another horrible movie. So Hilary, please, while I still like you, either stop acting or start making better selection of the movies you make, cause just like other teen princess like Mandy Moore (who I really like as an actress), you'll get better and someday make good movies. Good luck.

Lonesome Jim

Steve Buscemi is directing a movie after his 2000 masterpiece Animal Factory (watch it!). That's all I needed to know to be first in line (not literally though) to see Lonesome Jim, a movie about the miserable lives of a small town people in Indiana. Loosely based on his life (or maybe just his family), writer James C. Strouse has come up with a very moody story that is touching and also funny, but for all the wrong reasons.

Casey Affleck stars as Jim, a 27 years old who comes back home to live his parents and big brother after a failed attempt to make it big in New York as a writer. His family's lives suck, and while his sucks too, he doesn't hesitate to tell them why theirs are so bad leading to even more depression. After driving his brother Tim (played by Kevin Corrigan) to try to kill himself, Jim meets Anika (Lyv Tyler), a nurse in the hospital who likes Jim from the start, even though he's almost suicidal (just cause Tim beat him to it). She's also a single mom.
Tim doesn't die though, but he has to stay in bed after breaking his legs, so Jim must go on to work to the factory owned by his parents Sally (Mary Kay Place) and Don (Seymour Cassel). His uncle Stacy (played by Mark Boone Jr.), self nicknamed 'Evil' also works at the factory. Jim must also take care of coaching Tim's daughters' basketball team, a pathetic group of little girls that haven't score even one basket in the entire league currently being played.

Fantastic performances are to be found everywhere in this movie, with emphasis on scene stealer Mark Boone Jr. who's just awesome. Jack Rovello who plays Anika's son Ben also steals all the scenes he's in.
But is Casey Affleck who owns the movie, with a perfect portrayal of a young man whose miserable life inundates everyone who surrounds him. The way he delivers his perfectly written lines makes you laugh but at the same time feel so awkward for the situations, like when Jim tells his mom that "Some people are just not meant to be parents", and he means it.

What doesn't work in the movie is its technical aspects, and I have to blame Steve Buscemi for it. Yes, the movie is probably really cheap but I'm sure the cast of mostly (if not all) friends worked for free, and so I can't understand why would he chose to film the movie with such bad cameras making for a horrible cinematography. And the sound is not very good either.
But all that didn't keep me for liking Lonesome Jim, its great performances, and amazing storytelling from James C. Strouse who really has a future in movies, and I wouldn't mind them being about his family again.

Crónicas

John Leguizamo stars in Crónicas, a journalism thriller set in Ecuador, where his big time reporter Manolo Bonilla searches the truth behind the "Monster of Babahoyo", a serial killer who kidnaps children and rapes them, before killing and burying them. Writer/Director Sebastian Cordero does a really great job showcasing the lives of the people of this very small town in South America where violence reigns the street and the police tries but can't do anything about it.

We know from the start who the killer is, so we then spend the whole movie with Manolo as he investigates after clues given by Vinicio Cepeda, a bibles salesman who is thrown in jail after a car accident where he ran over a kid. He says he's going to get killed in jail, so he tells Manolo what he knows about the Monster (he had an encounter with him in one of his travels around the country) in exchange for an interview to be shown in Manolo's popular show "Una Hora con la Verdad (An Hour with the Truth)", hosted by Victor (played by Alfred Molina), so that he can explain what happened in the accident, and gain the people's empathy which would make the police set him free.

There are great performances here from everyone involved, in particular Damian Alcazar playing Vinicio, who's beating to near death and then burned alive. Leonor Watling (previously seen in Hable con Ella) and José María Yazpik costar as Manolo's producer Marisa and cameraman Ivan respectively. She's also Victor's wife.
John Leguizamo does a really good despite uttering random lines in English when the everyone else is speaking Spanish and he's the only one that does that and without reason.

For the money he had, Ecuador's own Sebastian Cordero has made a really good movie. And even though the ending is not really satisfying after all the build up, the performances and realism of the story of Crónicas make for an intense thriller that sadly, is probably based on real events.

Mr. And Mrs. Smith

Did Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie hook up while making a movie? Did Brad and Jennifer Aniston split because of Angelina? Are they together now? Who cares! What matters is that they made Mr. and Mrs. Smith, a summer movie that cares more about the characters' relationship than the action sequences, but that doesn't stop it from being one really entertaining film.

Pitt and Jolie play John and Jane Smith, who met in Bogota, Colombia 5 or 6 years ago, fell in love and have been together ever since. But they're having marriage trouble lately, though there's no cheating or anything like that, their problem is that they got bored, and there's no excitement anymore. They're in marriage counselor when the movie starts and while they try to explain the reason of the boredom, we learn how they met, and how their lives are now. They get up, get dressed, brush their teeth, have breakfast and the go separately to work, all of that without exchanging one single word of substance.
But things get interesting at work, as they don't go to do what the other think they do, and instead, they go to kill people for money, being some of the top assassins at their correspondent agencies. While he fakes being drunk and plays cards at the back of a restaurant to then kill the other players, she dresses up as a dominatrix, breaks her target's neck, and then jumps off the building's window to land on the sidewalk and very gracefully get in a cab.
For their next assignment, they both get the same target, and after inadvertently messing with each other's plans, they found out who their spouse really is, and that's when the action starts as their new targets become that person they been married to for the past 5 or 6 years, each other.
The actions rocks, with an awesome fight between John and Jane in their house right after they find out who they are. Then director Doug Liman gives us a very impressive chase scene with the Smiths driving a minivan. And for the final showdown, the Smiths are attacked at the same time inside a hardware store and the bullets and knives used here sum up for an incalculable amount.

But even with all that action, the movies works better the relation between the Smiths, who after learning of the other's real job, must deal with their feelings, deciding if there really is love in their relationship, knowing that they have kill each other now.
There one single conversation that's really great, in which John asks Jane if their first meeting was for real or a job. He goes first and confesses that he fell really in love, she's stronger than him and lies to him saying he was her target, though still the most beautiful target she'd ever seen, and then she cries. A truly nice and emotional touch that really gives class to the whole movie.

But the movie has some problems too, though very minor ones. An example is that we only get to see just one job performed by each of the Smiths. This a wasted opportunity to just let their imagination run wild and give us at least 3 of their jobs as assassins. Then the supporting characters which just a few and not very used. And it's worse because of the actors who play them, as Vince Vaughn and Adam Brody are wasted in their small roles as fellow agents. But all that is forgivable, as what really matters are the leads and their chemistry which is excellent.

Great action, a lot of comedic and very funny situations, with Brad Pitt in special giving a very entertaining performance, and that chemistry between the leads that really works well, Mr. and Mrs. Smith is a great movie, summer or not.

Batman Begins

Batman Begins is the start of a new era of my favorite superhero. Tim Burton's Batman and Batman Returns are perfect. Then Joel Schumacher took over and while I like some things of Batman Forever, it was still bad compared to the first 2, and then Batman & Robin came out it was just atrocious. Now Christopher Nolan takes over, and he changes everything we know about Bruce Wayne and Batman, but everything we know from the previous movies, original comics, and from Batman: The Animated Series which is my favorite Batman saga ever.

What was changed from the common knowledge mythology or added? We learn about Bruce Wayne's training, and how he became the Dark Night, and why he chose a bat as his symbol. I really couldn't care less about Bruce's training, even though during this part is when we learn about one of the future villains in the movie, Ra's Al Ghul. Still, it's a very good introduction.
Then Batman's vehicle not being the Batmobile. I didn't like the first pictures I saw of "The Tumbler" as it's called, and I still don't like it after seeing it in action. Yes, the action is awesome and the chase is excellent, but I just love the Batmobile, and I can't accept this thing as Batman's vehicle.
The Tumbler comes from where Batman's other gadgets come in the movie, and that place is a Wayne Enterprises division that works developing technology. It's a very good idea to put this in the movie, specially because it features a great character, but again, I just didn't care how Batman got his gadgets.
Another huge complaint is that we see Bruce's parents die, and yes we know how it happened, but here, is not Jack Napier (who would then be The Joker) the one who kills them in front of little Bruce, instead the killer here is just some thug who then goes to trial, declared free and is then killed by someone while leaving the court. That was so bad and a total waste of time (the whole sequence took like 15 minutes).

The whole idea of the symbol being the Bat is fear, and that goes on to be the theme of the movie, and here is the reason I didn't like the movie: the fear theme made the movie dark, way dark. Written by Nolan and David Goyer, this Batman movie is dark like Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns comics, in which the movie's style is based. This made for a completely different Batman than the one I love, the Michael Keaton Batman, cool and calm, inspiring fear with his moves and look and not by screaming to a guy's face. And that I hated, to see Batman in anger all the time.

So after my complaints, and knowing that I did not like the movie, I will explain why I still think the movie is excellent. It is excellent because everybody from Christopher Nolan to the entire cast to the production designers did a perfect job. Well, James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer's score doesn't come even close to the classic Danny Elfman made for Batman though.

I'll start with Christopher Nolan. I was so excited when I learned he was going to direct it knowing that since his masterpiece Memento was so original and different and just awesome, that he would do no wrong to this franchise. And his work here doesn't disappoint. The script they wrote is full of fear, and the whole movie feels like a horror movie set in a very atmospheric Gotham City like we've never seen before, trashed, chaotic, and just a very scary city to be walking by yourself at night.

Then the cast, which again, I was crazy in love when they decided to cast Christian Bale as the Bat and Bruce Wayne. American Psycho is one of my favorites movie, and one that has so many classic scenes and situations in it that is just amazing. Bale does an incredible work here, giving us a Bruce Wayne very scared and hurt as a young man, and then growing up into into the Playboy he needs to pretend to be. And his Batman is scary. While I'm not a huge fan of the Batsuit, the anger and rage and the energy he exudes when confronting the bad guys is amazing.

Katie Holmes (-Cruse?) plays Rachel Dawes. An assistant to the DA that grew up with Bruce and is supposed to be his soulmate. I think Rachel is the only badly written character in the whole movie. She's way too tough, going around the city wanting to take the bad guys down and even going against the mob. She's no damsel in distress, that's for sure. And the way she lectures Bruce all the times, just shut up bitch! After the ending, I'm not sure what's going to happen with her, if she's going to be around for the sequel, or maybe they make like in all the other movies when Bruce's women just disappear.

Sir Michael Caine plays Alfred, a kind of different one from Michael Gough's (who played him in the previous 4 movies but was not asked to play the part I guess. He's like 88 years old but he's not dead yet). Alfred is more of a father figure here, knowing when to tell his Master Bruce what he needs to know at the exact time. And even though he has very few lines, Michael Caine says much more with his expression. Great work by the Oscar winner here.

Recent Oscar winner Morgan Freeman plays Lucius Fox, the best character I did not care for because of the role he played in the story. Fox is in charge of the Technology development Dept. at Wayne Industries, and he's the one that gives Bruce the suit, all the gadgets, and the Tumbler. He also plays a part in the final instances of the story.
Also at Wayne Industries is Richard Earle played by Rutger Hauer. He's the man in charge of the company since the Waynes died and he's trying to split it. He's not very happy when Bruce comes back from his training since it was rumored he was dead but now that he's back he starts going to the office and see how things are going. Earle is not really one of the bad guys, but just the baddest in Bruce's life when he's not Batman.

Finally the best of the good guys is Gary Oldman playing James Gordon. First as a young cop and then as a Lieutenant (though not yet a Commissioner by the end of the movie), Gordon is perfectly written and this is his best incarnation so far. His relationship with Batman is great from start to finish. I just loved the character completely.

The bad guys are a few, starting with Ken Wantanabe's Ra's Al Ghul. It's a very small role and really one of my problems in the movie. There's a twist regarding this character towards the end and I thought it was just lame. A total waste of Wantanabe here who only gets 2 lines in English, 2 in Chinese (or another Asian language) and he only exchanges a few punches with Bruce for a minute. Him and his second at command Henri Ducard are the ones that recruit Bruce Wayne to be part of their group. A gang of highly trained ninjas who want to protect the world of the bad guys by killing them. Bruce accepts the training but once they demand of him to kill someone he resists.
Liam Neeson plays Ducard and is just a great character. He's Bruce's mentor and trainer. And Neeson even fights! It was just awesome. And even though Neeson is taking a million of these same roles lately, he does it perfectly and has a charisma that everybody would like to be taught anything by him.

Then Tom Wilkinson who plays mob boss Carmine Falcone. There's something weird in Wilkinson's performance. I kept remembering him in Normal and I just couldn't believe him as a criminal boss. He does have a moment of craziness towards the end that is really great. Attached to him is Dr. Jonathan Crane, the man in charge of Gotham Asylum where pretty much all the bag guys in Batman history have ended up at one point. Crane is played by Cillian Murphy and his work is excellent here. His transformation into The Scarecrow is just perfect, and he's one of the best villains Batman has seen in movies so far.

Batman Begins is a perfect movie that I don't like, but I can see how well done it is and how great the performances are. Also, I think is better than Nolan made it so different from the previous ones, because this way we can't really compare them, as they both represent two very different styles of the Batman mythology we all know and love.
If they keep the great cast and everybody that contributed in creating this new era of Batman that bring us our favorite superhero to the big screen, I'm sure this will turn into a great new saga of movies that I hope I can grow to truly love some day.

Lords of Dogtown

After the award winning Dogtown and Z-Boys documentary, Stacy Peralta continues the mythology of his younger days surfing and skating in Venice, California. Directed by Dogtown resident Catherine Hardwicke who directed Thirteen a few years ago, she now brings that same energy and teen realism Lords of Dogtown.
It's tough to follow up the excellent documentary, but the movie succeeds following the same events but adding a lot to the relationships between the legendary Z-Boys.

We follow the story Tony Alva, Jay Adams and Stacy Peralta himself, as well as their somewhat of a mentor and Zephyr Team founder Skip Engblom, who saw a chance to take skating to the next level (and make money) thanks to the kids impressive and inventive abilities.
There were 12 Z-Boys, but we concentrate in the 3 most talented, who went on to rule and revolutionize the skateboarding world in the 70s way before Tony Hawk made it the ultra popular sport it is now.

We see the kids first riding the waves at the locals only Pacific Ocean Park Pier, and then after the team is created, make their way to the at that point ballet-like Skating Competitions, causing chaos with their manners and never before seen style. After that, and thanks to the drought that affected California in the 70s, the boys take their skating to the huge pools in rich people's houses.
Played by Victor Rasuk, Tony was the arrogant kid who wanted it all, and so when the opportunity came to get a sponsor and leave the Z-Boys, he was the first to take it. The rest of the kids followed his steps, with Stacy (played by John Robinson), the quite and most intelligent of the boys staying until the end but finally leaving too when Skip's Zephyr Store went downhill causing the end of the Zephyr Team. Skip is played by Heath Ledger in a perfect performance, totally nailing the real Skip's mannerisms and way of speaking.
Tony and Stacy went on to win the Skating World championships at the end of the 70s, skating around the world, making money and even having their own brands of skateboards.
The tragic story is of Jay Adams (played by Emile Hirsch), the best skater and pioneer of the revolutionary styles, whose troubles at home hurt him and led him to a disastrous selection of sponsors that never helped him, ending up alone and a delinquent, totally wasting his huge talent. The movie ends like the documentary, with the boys going back to Dogtown and reuniting for the DogBowl, thanks to one of their own's sickness.

The weak point of the movie is the addition of a girl to the mix, in this case Tony's sister Kathy (played by Thirteen star and co-writer Nikki Reid). Since Stacy himself wrote the movie, I guess she was there during the times, but in the movie all she does is get between Jay and Stacy's friendship.

Just like the documentary too, the movie is enriched by its soundtrack, with rock classics that were part of the skater era from Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple, David Bowie, Ted Nugent and the Allman Brothers.
With great performances and an amazing recreation of the period and its locations, Lords of Dogtown is the perfect way to complement Dogtown and Z-Boys, a story of revolution but also of kids growing up in the 70s doing what they wanted and loved to do, skate.

Cinderella Man

When Ron Howard makes a movie, he makes them emotional, some even say he manipulates his audience the way he makes us cry and laugh whenever he wants. Those who say that say it as if it's something negative when Howard does that, but I say it's great, and when the final result is something as brilliant as Cinderella Man, I applaud him, and the I give him the Oscar.

The man knows how to make movies, and he certainly knows how to cast them, so is no surprise that Russell Crowe is at the lead, specially since their latest collaboration was A Beautiful Mind, which robbed the Best Pic Oscar from The Fellowship of the Ring but got robbed the leading actor Oscar for Russell courtesy of Denzel Washington back in 2002.
There's more Oscar in this movie as past winner Renee Zellweger and twice robbed Paul Giamatti costar. Oscar-less Paddy Considine, Craig Bierko, Bruce McGill and even Ron's brother Clint Howard (in a very small role) round the cast.

Written by (also Oscar winner) Akiva Goldsman and Cliff Hollingsworth, this is the story of Jim Braddock, the heavyweight champion of the world up until the Depression era is the US, when he went downhill from living in a great house and very happy with his wife Mae and their 3 kids, to living without food or electricity in a crappy apartment, still with his loving wife and kids, and at times happy, specially when he can get picked to work at the docks and earn some (though not enough) money. He can't box anymore because his license was revoked after a hand injury that made for some very poor boxing that nobody wanted to see.
One day his luck changes when his trainer/manager Joe Gould gets him a last minute fight, and with no training and no food in his stomach, Jim wins the fight out of nowhere. He now knows what he's fighting for he says, "food". And so he keeps winning, and it all ends in a final showdown at the Madison Square Garden between Braddock and current heavyweight champ (and a man who has killed two boxers in the ring) Max Baer, with the entire country filling churches, bars, and whatever places they could find with a radio so they could listen to the fight and pray and cheer for Jim.

Russell Crowe is so good that his performance here is hard to rate. He's not a loud warrior leading a battalion or a man with a troubled mind like in his previous movies when he blew us away with his acting. He's not Russell Crowe acting either, here he's Jim Braddock, a humble family man who loves his wife and children and working hard for the in the country he loves and believes in. And there is no one scene that can be shown come Awards season as an example of his performance, because he's perfect the entire movie.
Then Renee Zellweger, who I've grown to dislike for some reason, but she's so good here. Her performance as Jim's wife Mae is so Oscar worthy that I could give it to her right now. She's the heart of the movie, helped in part to the screenplay centering her in pretty much all the emotional scenes of the story, even in some when not even Russell is on screen, but that work to let the other actors like Paul Giamatti do their thing. And I was hoping this would be Giamatti's year to get the Oscar, even if it's a supporting one, and he's sure to get a nod, but compared to another truly great supporting performance I've seen this year already (that of Matt Dillon in Crash), I fear Paul came up just a little bit short. Don't get me wrong, his performance is excellent as Joe Gould, but I felt that he was missing the big scene that would have made it perfect.
Paddy Considine gives a great performance too as Mike, Jim's friend from the docks, as well as Bruce McGill who plays boxing commissioner Jimmy Johnston. Finally Craig Bierko as Max Baer is the scene stealer (in his few) with a ferocity and intensity in the boxing ring that made me fear him even from the other side of the screen.

Not my favorite movie of the year, but still a perfect movie with perfect performances, writing and direction, and even the score by Thomas Newman is excellent. Yes, it's an Oscar grabber, but so what, just because the summer is just starting doesn't mean that great movies can't be released now and if they are they must be forgotten by December. I certainly hope not, the Academy should learn from last time (Eternal Sunshine not up for Best Picture? Please!) and remember Cinderella Man and everybody who was part of it, because those awards will be coming their way.