Prime

There's a new trend in Hollywood these days, they're trying to be indie, even with big names attached to their movies, and they're leaving the fairy tale stories behind. There's less and less cute boy meets cute girl, hate each other, fall in love, get in a fight, break up and then reconcile at the end of the movie and live happily ever after. The characters these days are not perfect, the stories are more normal even if still kind of stupid overall, but most importantly, there's no falling in love at the end and living together in love forever. I mean, there's still some like that, those movies are necessary because they make more money, but these new ones, in which the characters learn from what happens to them and move on, are better, and that's the case of Ben Younger's Prime.

And the lead in this movie is not multiple Academy Award winner Meryl Streep, or Academy Award Nominee Uma Thurman, is Bryan Greenberg, whose last project was the Clooney-Soderbergh HBO series Unscripted, which has still not been renewed after its first season. Greenberg plays David Bloomberg, a 23 year old Jewish artist who falls in love with Thurman's 37 year old Rafi Gardet, recently divorced, and not Jewish. This is already a problem, as the relationship can't go anywhere, plus Rafi would like a baby and she would need that to happen soon but David is too young to be a father. So Rafi talks to her therapist Lisa Metzger (Streep) who tells her that if he's making her happy, she should stick with him and see where it goes, and so she does. This works perfectly for a while, until Lisa finds out the truth, that David is her son. This should not have been spoiled by the trailers like it did, because I was always trying to see if they could've find out earlier but it was very well done. Lisa and David's last names are different because she uses her maiden name as a professional, and Lisa could not realize before that they were talking about each other because none of them said the names and both of the lied to her about their age. Rafi said her new boyfriend was 27 and David said his new girlfriend was 27, and the age difference was still important enough for Lisa to worry about them. But anyway, she finds out, and what should be a deal breaker continues after Lisa goes to see her own therapist Rita (Madhur Jaffrey) who tells her that is her professional responsibility to keep working on Rafi, and so she does. This brings much comedy from Streep, specially when Rafi tells her about her love life with David. The story goes somewhere, and the ending is really good, though I think that they stretched it a little bit, even though the movie is only 105 minutes long.

As I mentioned before, Streep shines in her role. She has a million facial expressions to respond to every one of the Rafi and David erotic tales. I was not sure that Streep could pull this comedic role off but she did and she was great. Uma is looking hot as always and she's got a couple really good emotional moments with Greenberg, and this guy is going to be really big one day. He's charismatic, funny and good looking, and he's better than expected considering he's working with two big names like Uma and Streep.
The other supporting character with noting is Jon Abrahams who plays David's friend Morris, who has a thing about throwing pies to girls that wont go out with him a second time, a subplot that is funny at first, but ends up going nowhere.

Don't get thrown off by the title, which I have no idea what they meant by it in this case, because the acting is superb, with some really funny scenes to laugh at. Ben Younger's work is very good, script wise and behind the camera, and the great, touching ending is what makes Prime better than it should, worth watching and very good overall.

Saw II

With James Wan working on a different project, Leigh Whannell, writer and star of last year's twisted horror hit Saw turned to Darren Lynn Bousman to direct and co-write the sequel with him. Saw II is the result, a more generic horror movie that is no better than the first one, but it does have some very nice ideas again, better gore and killer traps. I'm going to go kind of spoiler crazy on it, though I'm not going to reveal the big twist at the end so don't worry.

What I remember from Saw last year was that the acting sucked, specially towards the end, but I revisited the movie before watching the sequel and I have to say that it didn't bother me at all. Now in Saw II the acting is better, that's for sure, but there's a characters that's really stupid and almost ruined the movie for me, the Franky G character. He goes crazy on the others and nobody thinks of stopping him.
But other than that, Donnie Wahlberg is really good as Det. Eric Mason, who's leading the investigation after the Jigsaw asks for him, and then points him to monitors showing a big old house full of traps where 8 people are trapped at the mercy of his games.
Dina Meyer reprises her role as Det. Kerry (something) from the first one. She more to do here, though still not that important, but she is good too. And then the victims, Shawnee Smith is also back as Amanda, the only Jigsaw survivor, and she's ok in the acting department, as are the kids, Erik Knudsen as Mason's son Daniel, and 7th Heaven's Beverley Mitchell who plays another young victim. The aforementioned Franky G is also there in the house, and then there's Tim Burd as Obi, Emmanuelle Vaugier as Addison, and Glenn Plummer as Jonas the black guy, but none of them three have much to do.
The best performance is that of Tobin Bell who plays John the Jigsaw Killer just like in the first movie. He has great exchanges with Donnie Wahlberg for most of the movie and it's very atmospheric and it works great.

I mentioned the traps, the one used in the opening scene is amazingly cool, and there's another one later involving needles that is really sick. I also liked how they tied the story with the first one at the end, it was pretty good, though they did leave something unexplained but it worked anyway. It was great that one of the saws from the first movie finally appeared here at the end, and it seems that someone sharpened it because I don't think that after sitting there all that time it could cause a would like the one in the movie.

What I really didn't like was how the big twist ending left the door open for a third movie. I mean, it was pretty obvious that they had no intention to finish the franchise here, but the way they do it, while unexpected, was a terrible cheat.

And I also didn't like how stupid the movie is compared to the first one. Saw was perfectly calculated, every detail of it. The only way out they had was if the Adam character had found the key right at the beginning when he woke up in the bathtub, but that was very difficult to happen. Now in Saw II, right after they listen to the first recorded message I knew right away that they had to check the back of their heads, maybe there was something on the neck, maybe if they cut some hair, but no, they totally forget about until the end when only one of the remembers.

And what also happened in the first one is that all of Jigsaw's traps and devices were used. Here they never get to open the first safe, and he tells them to check the house for more antidotes and they don't do it. And there's most stuff that had potential but is not used. It's like they had all these ideas, and lots of characters to use them on, but then the movie would've been too long or complicated so they decided to not use that stuff.

It's crazy that I didn't like so much stuff, but I'm still recommending the movie. It even sounds like I hated it but I didn't, I quite liked it despite all its flaws. There's lots of gore, excellent traps, and the same idea than before, that the Jigsaw Killer is not actually a killer, but someone who wants to make these people value life, and that's what makes Saw II good and worth watching, and if they keep it insane like this, it'll be the same for the third one.

Nine Lives

Writer-Director Rodrigo Garcia new movie gives us short stories that show a small part in the lives of these strong, broken down women. Garcia's last effort was a similar one, Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her was also a movie showing a slice of the lives of women, and I haven't seen that one yet, but I'll look for it now, because Nine Lives is powerful, tragic, and extremely well acted. We only get to see around twelve minutes of each story, but it is enough, at least for most of them, to let us know all we need to know about the characters' situations, and then, after their abrupt ending, is up to us to figure out what happened before and what will happen later. There's so much talent at work here, even from the lesser known actresses, and with the stories being so short, everybody is at the top of their game, and is just excellent to watch.

We start with Sandra (played by Elpidia Carrillo), an inmate doing some cleaning work waiting for a visit from her young daughter. Sandra is tough, but she's a troublemaker. She's been there for more than 4 months now, and this is not her first time in jail. Apparently there have been some problems between some inmates lately, and Sandra is probably involved, and so she's questioned about it by one of the guards (played by Miguel Sandoval). Then when she gets to see her daughter, through a glass window, she gets enraged when the phone doesn't work, and her daughter wont be able to come back for a month. The acting and the drama in this first story is so engaging, that it takes you right in and ready for what's to come.

Other story includes Robin Wright Penn and Jason Isaacs as ex-lovers who were very much in love once, but something happened. They meet in a supermarket, haven't seen each other for 10 years maybe. They're both married, she's pregnant, but this encounter is troubling.
There's also Amy Brenneman as a woman going to her ex-husband's wife's funeral. She's shouldn't be there, and she knows it, but she wants to support him. He's played by William Fichtner, he's a deaf-mute, and they're both still in love with each other.
There's also Holly Hunter and Stephen Dillane as couple getting into a fight while visiting a friend couple. These friends happen to be the Jason Isaacs character from the Robin Wright-Penn short and his wife. Various characters that are central to a story appear as secondary ones in others.
In another story Kathy Baker plays Camille, a woman in a hospital bed about to get surgery to remove one of her breasts. Her very patient and loving husband (played by Joe Mantegna) is there, and she's being a total bitch towards him and the nurse, who is the central piece in one of the other stories. Camille's actions are understandable, she's nervous and frightened, and the nurse knows that.

As if there aren't enough big names already, Sissy Spacek is featured in two stories. In the first one Amanda Seyfried plays Samantha, a young girl who did not go to college to stay home and care for her father (played by Ian McShane) who is in a wheelchair. Spacek is Ruth, her mother and his wife. They have a very dysfunctional relationship, but Samantha understands and is there for them. And then Ruth's story with Aidan Quinn's Henry. They are checking into a motel. Is she cheating on her husband? Or does he know about and approves knowing that his condition doesn't allow him to give her what she needs? This could also be the first time this happens, maybe not.
Lisa Gay Hamilton is Holly, the nurse of the Kathy Baker story, and her short is one of the most troubling and moving. She's goes to the home she grew up in, where she was abused, she's infuriated, screaming and crying, her young sister is there, and Holly's waiting for her father to come to confront him. He's a character we've seen before.
In the final and most haunting story, Glenn Close and Dakota Fanning are Maggie and Maria, mother and daughter going to the cemetery to visit a family member's grave. They have a picnic in front of it, they play together, and they talk about Maggie's father. Glenn Close is amazing, and Dakota plays a regular little girl for once, and she's really good too.

I just found out Rodrigo Garcia is Gabriel Garcia Marquez's son, the Colombian Nobel Prize winning novelist, and that is just amazing. Rodrigo's work here is exceptional, in the screenplay and behind the camera. The stories are deeply touching and realistic, we care for these characters. And the way he filmed them is great, each one shot with a single camera filming non-stop around these women. The stories in Nine Lives continue, we don't know for sure how, but what happens during these sequences, for most of the characters, is life changing, and what we see is enough to affect us too.

The Weather Man

Gore Verbinski's The Weather Man is a tough movie to talk about. Is very minimalist, with small performances, real situations but there's nothing super big happening. What does happen is the great acting, sharp writing courtesy of Steve Conrad, and many laugh out loud scenes perfectly contrasted by the down to Earth dramatic turns.

Nicolas Cage, one of my favorite actors since forever, stars as David Spritz, a Chicago TV weather man who is a marvel on camera but a disaster in his private life. He kind of knows it, and wants to do everything he can to make things better for him, but mostly for his family. He wants make things work with his ex wife, help his daughter with her image, but most importantly, make his father proud of him, so it's his chance when he gets a chance to go to New York to work for Bryant Gumbell's Good Morning, America. The problem is that he would have to leave his family behind, and his father too, who during the movie gets word that he's got only a few more months to live.
There's excellent work by Cage here, very good with the depressive tone, a very normal portrayal, and very different from the usual man with a million ticks like he usually plays. I haven't heard any buzz on this movie or his performance, and the movie was even moved from earlier this year and is just being released now with very little promotion but I believe that this is an Award worthy performance. At least a comedic nod at the Golden Globes since these kind of movies that are both a drama and a comedy tend to be taken as comedies. But really, there's one scene in particular between David, his father and Bob Seger's Like a Rock, that is truly great acting from Cage.
And I have to comment on the whole fast food throwing thing. It's funny, because he's recognized every once and a while, and people ask him for an autograph, but he doesn't want to sign anything and treats those people bad, and then he gets mad when other people throw food at him. This could look like product placement but it really isn't, as its part of the story, and pretty much all the fast food chains are involved. The parts when David has to explain his father, who doesn't know anything about fast food, what each item is are really good.

His father is Robert Spritzel (David changed his last name to make it more TV friendly) and is played by Sir Michael Caine. Robert is a Pulitzer winner, very respected, and he loves his son, though is very hard to tell. And he cares for the rest of the family too, as he is the one who makes David take a better look at his daughter. Caine is great as always. A lot of low key, simplistic acting, but very effective.
Hope Davis plays David's ex wife Noreen, who still would like to make things work with David, but at the same time she's pretty much done with him, and judging by what we can between them, and a few backflashes, you can understand why.
And then the kids, About a Boy's Nicholas Hoult is Mike and Gemmenne de la Pena is Shelly. Mike is a troubled teen, currently finishing rehab because he was caught with pot. He's friends with Don (played by Ally McBeal's Gil Bellows), his rehab counselor who may have one or two creepy ideas for Mike. The way this is handled towards the end is different and really well pulled off.
The story with Shelly is funnier but more tragic than Mike's, and even though she doesn't really know, she's miserable. Robert tells David that Shelly's classmates call her 'camel toe' and anything with that idea could've been handled as a very lowbrow comedy bit but David takes it seriously, and tries to help. This leads him to spend a lot of time with his daughter, buy her new clothes and even retaking archery lessons, which David will then really embrace.

Besides Cage's acting, what's best about the movie is the script by Conrad. Surprisingly, is an original one, but it really looks like an adaptation. The dialogue and happenings and the relationships are extremely well written. Gore Verbinski's work behind the camera with cinematographer Phedon Papamichael make for a great view of the cold and gray Chicago in the winter. The Weather Man is a movie doesn't look interesting, it happened to me when I first heard about it, but once you are watching it, and if you put at least a little bit of interest on these rich characters and storyline, you'll be more than satisfied, and if you are like me, maybe end up loving it.

Stay

You know those movies that are impossible to understand, that you think is something but other people think is something totally different, and maybe it's both, or maybe none. Donnie Darko is like that, but overall you know what really happened there. Not with Stay, a mindfuck thriller from director Marc Forster (Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland) and writer David Benioff (25th Hour, Troy) that is very confusing until the ending, when it becomes less confusing but you're still not sure what happened. If you can live with watching a story you won't understand, watch this movie, because everything else is excellent.

The movie stars Ewan McGregor as Sam Foster, a psychiatrist filling in for a colleague whose patient is Ryan Goslin who plays Henry Latham, a young man in crisis who after rejecting Sam when they first meet, comes back and tells him he will kill himself at midnight on Saturday, so Sam has 4 days to help him. The story is about Sam, but also about Henry, maybe because they are the same person, maybe not. They could also be Lila, played by Naomi Watts, who is Sam's artist girlfriend, and former patient. She tried to kill herself years ago but Sam saved her, and they've been together ever since, and they love each other, but Sam still doesn't trust her and feels she could do it again. Sam talks about them while playing chess with Bob Hoskins who plays Dr. Leon Patterson, a blind man who could be Henry's father, even though Henry's father is dead. Sam also looks for advice from his colleague Dr. Ren (B.D. Wong) and from Janeane Garofalo who plays Dr. Beth Levy, Henry's regular psychiatrist.
And just to throw more names in there, Kate Burton plays Henry's mother who Sam talks to one night before being attacked by a dog, even though both Henry's mom and the dog have been dead for a while, and then Amy Sedaris plays a secretary in a 10 seconds scene.

What happens between all of them is too much to explain, or maybe just unexplainable, but is fine, because what's great about the movie is the work by Forster behind the camera, and is postproduction. Forster, cinematographer Roberto Schaefer, and film editor Matt Chesse, make Stay a visual feast. There's crazy camera work, there are geometrical movements and repeated sequences. There's an amazing background work with the locations and is even better if you look at the extras, yes, those people on camera that are not the stars of the movie. And the transitions between scenes are insane. There's frequently used stuff like a character opening a door which transform into an elevator door, but then there's stuff like a window getting closed that morphs into a transparent water tank that turns out to be an aquarium.

There's nothing else I can say about the movie, because even if I were to spoil the ending, which I won't, I wouldn't be explaining the movie anyway. What I can do is recommend it, because the acting is great, and everything that is not the acting is even better. And I don't even want somebody to explain Stay to me, because it would lose its mystique, and I'm in love with what I know and tried to understand, even if I didn't.

Doom

Adapted from the video game to the big screen, Doom is more video game than a movie, but is fun, gory, and full of game ideas to love, even if the movie is bad overall.
It also has Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson in a crazy performance that makes this movie campy, the only way it could work, and that it does.

The story is a bit modified from the game, specially on the locations and the enemies. Here is the year 2046, and us Humans have discovered/created a portal to Mars 20 years ago that's been investigated by scientist since then. But something happens, they need help, and a group of US Marines, the Hell Fighters, are sent there to rescue the scientist and eliminate anything evil that could try to find its way to Earth.
The marines are like us video game players, and they are even introduced by their guns too. There's their leader Sarge (The Rock), second at command Reaper (Lord of the Rings' Eomer, Karl Urban), big black guy Destroyer (DeObia Oparei), Goat (Ben Daniels), black funny guy Duke (Raz Adoti), crazy Steve Buscemi-in-Armageddon wannabe Portman (Richard Brake), Asian guy Mac (Yao Chin) and the newbie The Kid (Al Weaver).
And for another cool video game reference, Rosamund Pike plays Samantha Grimm, the only female in the movie, who is not a potential love interest for any of the characters, but Reaper's sister.

After they go to Mars, it's more like the video game as they start shooting at everything that movies, while trying to figure out what caused the problem, which is a genetic experiment about the 24th chromosome (us Humans have only 23) which turned people in monsters, but it could also turn them in Super Humans.
The 24th chromosome is injected in one of the characters that is about to die at one point in the movie, and he gets a new life, and in a reference to the 'God Mode' from the video games he transforms into that Super Human, and we get the super cool First Person Camera just like the game. The whole sequence is between 5 and 10 minutes, enough to be amazing. Monsters coming from out of nowhere getting blown into pieces, and then we grab the chainsaw, excellent. There's also the awesome Big Fucking Gun which will give you an erection just like it does to The Rock when he first gets it, you can see it in his eyes. And then when he shoots it, amazing.

Yes, the plot is kind of stupid, but is secondary, the movie is mindless fun, just what it needed to be. The effects are pretty great, the monsters are cool, even though we don't see enough of them. And though some gratuitous nudity would have been much appreciated, Doom is still cool, very fun and it has lots of blood and cursing, just what its audience could want from it. One thing though, wasn't this supposed to be a The Rock movie?

Shopgirl

Steve Martin wrote the best selling novella, adapted it for the big screen and now also stars in Shopgirl, the Anand Tucker directed love story about searching for that small connection that can mean love, little moments that cause a big impact in someone, and even though the look or the moment is not right, sometimes is just enough for it to be love. Even though it has some stuff that didn't work for me, it's pretty good, and I really liked it.

This is not the cliched Hollywood love story. The male characters here don't fight over the girl or anything like that. And there are no characters breaking up and then getting back together at the end in the usual big fashion.
Instead we have Claire Danes as Mirabelle, a lonely girl, depressed, with low self esteem and a weird, old looking wardrobe. She works at the gloves department in the Saks Fifth Avenue in Los Angeles, and even though she is not looking for love, she wants it.
She meets Jeremy (played by Jason Schwartzman) one day while doing laundry, and they go out. He's an "ok guy" he says, and he's right. But he's also clueless about relationships and love, but he's charming, and Mirabelle sees that in him. There could be something in him, they have stuff in common (they are both wannabe artists, very different ones though), but she knows he is not ready yet.
Jeremy works at an amps shop, but he has big ideas for them as they are very important for musicians he says, even though nobody gives them respect. But soon he is backstage at a concert, the band's machines fail, Jeremy saves the day his amps and soon he leaves with the band on a road trip around the country that will change his life, he'll learn about love and perhaps will be ready for Mirabelle one day.
So he leaves, but it must be Mirabelle's lucky week, as she meets Ray Porter (played by Steve Martin) one day at work. Ray is an older man, has money, is sophisticated, and he is charming too. They go out, and she falls in love quickly. He likes her and cares about her, and he tells her that, but he also leads her to believe that they have a future together, when inside (and to his therapist) he's thinks that he only wants to sleep with her and use her when he's in town (he's a logistics guy and is usually out of town).

The movie has a little bit of everything when it comes to the performances.
Steve Martin was fine, though he tried to do the kind of quite person that Bill Murray plays often these days (like in Lost in Translation) but I don't think it worked that well here.
And I loved his voice over in the Father of the Bride movies, but here it pretty much sucks. He is doing the voice over, but the one talking is not Ray Porter, the character he plays, is just a narrator. That was very distracting.
Claire Danes was all over the place, happy and sad, laughing and crying, but it was a very good, very realistic performance. Her Mirabelle is the usual pretty ugly girl at first glance, but once she starts acting is amazing.
And then Jason Schwartzman. He was truly brilliant. I don't know how much is he acting here, because I've seen him in interviews and he is kind of like that, but still, he was excellent. The situations his character has are hilarious. I was almost in tears in his scenes with Bridgette Wilson (who plays Lisa, a coworker of Mirabelle's) and I think that if he would've had a couple emotional scenes he could've ended up Oscar nominated. Is a performance a lot like Thomas Haden Church's last year in Sideways, minus the crying.

The soundtrack is pretty good, lots of indie rock, but the melody played in that excessive amount of slow motion scenes got annoying after the first few times. The way they made Los Angeles look, while not true, is pretty good, smoke free so you can see an apartment from one side of the city to the other.
I had mixed feelings about Shopgirl at first, but the more I think about it in my head, and the more I talk about it, the more I like it every time, and it's a movie I'm sure I'll watch again.

Capote

Philip Seymour Hoffman transforms himself into the Breakfast at Tiffany's author Truman Capote, based on the book Gerald Clarke and adapted by Dan Futterman, Capote is director Bennett Miller's feature film debut and it follows the high pitch voiced novelist as he researched the violent murder of a family in Kansas, forming a relationship with the killer during their interviews, all which led him to write the best novel of the century, In Cold Blood, a novel that took him almost six years to write, and destroyed his life in the process, making him unable to finish another book for the rest of his life.

I'll start with the movie and leave PSH for the end because he is the only reason to watch the movie, even if is boring like in this case.
The movie follows Capote and novelist Harper Lee (around the time her To Kill a Mockingbird was published) as they travel to Kansas to investigate the killings. Capote is weird looking and it's worse when he speaks so Harper could help him interview the town people without freaking them out. Then the police catches the two killers, Harper leaves the picture, and Capote starts interviewing them, emphasizing in Perry Smith.
The movie is very slow paced, specially during the Capote-Perry interviews which happen again and again like 10 times, always showing us how Capote got from New York to Kansas, how he was searched by the guards, and then getting into the actual cell. And it's all also very uneventful, as Capote becomes fascinated by Perry, but he never asks him about the actual murders.

But I guess is all about the acting. Catherine Keener plays Harper Lee and I think the movie have been much better had she been more in it. After the killers are caught she disappears and that's when the movie loses the little bit of energy it had. She has an weird but great chemistry with Capote and it worked great.
Then there's Chris Cooper who plays Kansas Sheriff Alvin Dewey, who was the best friend of the man of the family that was murdered. His scenes too dramatic maybe, with him in a silent crying at various times just thinking about what happened, and everybody else around him just looking at him getting all emotional. I think it was a little too much, specially since the character is not important on the whole. Perry Smith is played by Clifton Collins Jr. and it's a great performance too. His countless with Hoffman are great and even though the process got repetitive, the acting was very solid.

And finally Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of the best actors working today. A man that completely morphs into his roles and you forget who he is, because the person you are seeing on the screen is not an actor playing a character, and it's real. Be it Lester Bangs or Scotty J., this guy can make any character real, and Truman Capote is no exception. He is perfect here. From the pitch perfect voice to all the mannerisms. It's an amazing performance with a few emotional scenes that are sure to give him at least an Oscar nomination and I wouldn't be surprised if he wins, though I think I'm yet to see the best performance of the year, probably coming from Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain or Joaquin Phoenix in Walk the Line.

The quiteness of the movie is exasperating, as the score is very low key and forgettable, and non present in many scenes with the characters just looking out a window or at each other without saying anything. And the colorless cinematography, while very well suited for the mood of the Kansas scenes, make the movie even more tiring.
I'm recommending Capote because of Hoffman, because he's a marvel to watch, but the movie bored me, made me sleepy, and it doesn't have anything else worthy in it.

Good Night, and Good Luck.

I love George Clooney's filmmaking career, in theory, because the execution so far has left me with mixed feelings both times. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind had great style, excellent performances, some very cool stuff in it (Julia as a killer!) but overall, it wasn't memorable for some reason, and I always love those kind of movies. Now Good Night, and Good Luck., which I should love because of my adoration for journalism movies, is kind of the same, but disappointing, because I was really looking forward to it.

Set in the mid-fifties, Clooney puts us in an era not everybody knows about. On my part, I know who Senator McCarthy was and all his stuff regarding communism, but I've never heard about Edward R. Murrow before, the CBS Newsman whose send off line is the movie's title. Apparently Murrow and McCarthy had a big fight that went on for months. McCarthy from his press conferences and Murrow using his TV news show, which people watched religiously every day, more people than if you added together all of the current news shows numbers. The news were huge back in the day, and the way the movie works is very historical and journalistic, my problem with it was that we learn what happened during those months of the debate, but nothing else. Nothing about why it started and then nothing about what happened later, which really frustrated me because it was really necessary.

There's a very good performance by David Strathairn as Murrow. Very focused and I'm betting spot on. But is also very monotonous. There are no feelings expressed other than the guts he had to do what he did, but it's always with a blank face. It's not his fault though, because what he's giving to is excellent, but being that this a real person, he should've been developed a lot more but end up knowing nothing about him, and it's not like everybody in the world, these days, knows who Ed Murrow was.
There's also Clooney himself who plays Murrow's producer Fred Friendly, the man who backs him up and goes to war (figuratively) with him. Clooney gives a more vivid performance that is much vivid or else the movie with be a borefest.
The only other worth remembering performance is Frank Langella's who plays CBS President William Paley, who was not was not behind the idea of going against McCarthy. There's some great scenes between the 3 of them as they battle the way the news will be given and what each of them will give in exchange for what they want.
But other than that is all pretty much a waste. I can't even remember what was Jeff Daniels doing in the movie, and then you have the subplot concerning Joe and Shirley Wershba (Robert Downey Jr. and Patricia Clarkson), a married couple working together in the same team as Murrow's, but their story is that about the fact that it was prohibited for married couples to work together, and so they kept it in the shadows for a long time. Or so they thought.

The movie is only 93 minutes, but it feels a lot longer. Not sure why though, because the fact that it is in black and white was not the reason I almost fell asleep around the 60 minute mark. The B&W actually worked really well honoring those times, and the way it looked, specially when everybody was smoking and there was smoke on most of the screen, it was excellent and it gave the movie a great visual style. There's also the music, as old jazz is sang and given focus doing the movie, performed on screen by Dianne Reeves.
And that Senator McCarthy is played by himself in film footage of the actual Senate sub-committee testimony, that was a great that worked really well and made the movie than it could've been if an actor played him.

Still, it's all about how it finished for me. Besides the movie not giving us a resolution to Murrow's and Friendly's happenings, the Joe and Shirley's subplot ends also without one, and that's why Good Night, and Good Luck. is so disappointing, because they engage us in these times, important and very interesting, but then they leave us without an ending.

Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story

It was a few weeks ago that I reviewed a Disney in Sports movie and gave it high praise. These guys really know what they're doing when they get in the family and competition business, and now that I'm reviewing the latest from Dakota Fanning, Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story, I'm going to repeat the high praise.

Ah, Dakota Fanning, there's no enough I can say about her, and since I've said enough already in previous reviews, I'll just say here that she is a marvel, and will be the biggest star in the world one day. I mean, she kind of already is.
And that's why I was shocked to see Kurt Russell top billing the movie. The story is about both of them really, kind of like Seabiscuit being about Toby Maguire and Jeff Bridges.
And that's not the only similarity Dreamer has with Seabiscuit. Both of them are about a hurt racing horse who's healed and thanks to the love of her owners, gets better, starts racing again and goes to win the big championship.

But the similarities are just those, as the movie is more about the relationship between Cale (Dakota), her father Ben (Russell) and her grandfather, Ben's father Pop Crane (Kris Kristofferson). Cale adores her father and wants to emulate her father in everything, but he doesn't want her to grow up around horses, which explains why they don't have even one horse in their barn. Cale has a great relationship with her grandpa though, who teaches her about horses and the competitions. She knows it all, though Ben is not so happy about it. He hasn't spoken to his dad for months, still hurt for something that happened years ago that made Ben stop training horses for himself, and so now he just works training horses for David Morse's Palmer, a rich man managing the horses of an Arabic Prince.
The name of their star horse is Sonya (short for Sonador which in English means the movie's title), and she gets hurt before their big race. Ben wants to stop her from racing, but Palmer pushes it and she ends up racing, falling on the floor and breaking her leg.
She's to put down Palmer says but Ben rescues her for Cale, quitting his job and exchanging some money Palmer owed him for the very hurt Sonya.

She'll race again of course, but what's great is to see the family work together for it, helped by Luis Guzman and Freddy Rodriguez, who play Sonya's trainer and jockey respectively, and go to work with the Cranes when they also lose their jobs when Ben quits on Palmer. There's also Elizabeth Shue who plays Kurt's wife and Cale's mom Lily.
With a very good cinematography and a great score, writer John Gatins' directorial debut Dreamer is another winner for Disney, a story of love and hope, led by that magical human being that is Dakota Fanning. Disney & Dakota, keep them coming please.

Elizabethtown

My love for Cameron Crowe and his Almost Famous is huge. I loved the theatrical cut that many people didn't, and then the Untitled cut is one of my top 2 favorite movies of all time. Now Cameron brings us Elizabethtown, and I can't believe how much I disliked this film. It has a few ideas I loved, but the execution is awful, the overall story seems like something I've seen before and loved (more on that later), and not even the soundtrack (a Cameron classic for greatness) did anything for me.

I'll start with the story, because this is was too much like Garden State. Parent dies, and a young man with a failed career goes to his father's childhood town to get the body, and there finds lots of weird people, and meets a young woman and falls in love with her.
Now when the movie started I had mixed feelings already. It starts with a voice over by Orlando Bloom who plays our hero Drew Baylor. The voice over is horrible, and it's used during the entire movie. A disaster really. Then he goes to the place he works, we meet his girlfriend who will later dump him, played by Jessica Biel, in a 2 scenes role, and she's an unlikeable character from the start, but then we meet Alec Baldwin and the movie is saved.
Baldwin plays Phil DeVoss, Drew's boss, he informs him that the shoe that Drew design will make the company lose a billion dollars, and that his career is over. Alec is way too little in the movie so he just saved it for that one scene he's in.

Drew goes back to his apartment, and feeling like a failure he tries to kill himself and right there he receives a call from his sister telling him that their father died and that he needs to take care of everything because their mother is going crazy. The sister is Heather, played by the wonderful Judy Greer, wasted again with just a handful of scenes and nothing to do. The mother is Hollie, played by Susan Sarandon, in a role that should've given her at least an Oscar nom but there's no way it will. It's a good performance wrongly handled, with a crazy funny scenes at the beginning and then a stand up show at the funeral that doesn't work at all. And the reason, which is the same for most of the characters, is the backstory, there's none.

And so Drew goes to Elizabethtown, KY, the place his father grew up. This is a great scene, the welcoming by the entire town. He doesn't know anybody, but everybody knows him. I know that feeling, it happens to me every time I go to my grandma's house where my mom grew up. Everybody knows me and I have no idea who they are, but they are always friendly happy to see me. Then he starts meeting the family he never knew and other people, and while some characters show promise, like Paul Schneider who plays his cousin Jessie or Bruce McGill's Bill Banyon, a friend of the family who did something to Drew's parents in the past but it's never clear what, they are not developed, and so I didn't connect with anybody there.

And finally there's Kirsten Dunst's Claire, my other huge problem with the movie. She's the muse, the new friend he falls in love with, she's Natalie Portman's Sam and she's Kate Hudson's Penny Lane at the same time, or tries to be, but fails. I love Kirsten, she's one of my favorite actresses but this was way too much of her. I got tired of her and her forced smile and the forced comedy bits from her never work. Natalie Portman was radiant and beautiful, the girl of dreams, but she has problems too and you felt for her. Kirsten's Claire is nothing like that. She has no backstory at all, and no problems at all either, other than faking having a boyfriend (another touch taken from Sam) which I saw coming from a mile away. I was also not happy with the "Hello Stranger" like that they show on the trailers, which is also a Natalie Portman line though not from Garden State but from Closer.
The other good idea of the movie comes from Drew's relationship with Claire, as the hotel he's staying in is currently taken by a couple who just got married. "Chuck & Cindy - The Wedding" is great, and even though is just a little bit, and it doesn't touch the overall story, is the only part of the movie I really liked.

Imagine of Garden State sucked bad, if you got tired of Sam, or if the rest of the supporting characters had no story or problems, that's Elizabethtown, a movie that manipulates your feelings with many slow motion scenes with characters having fun and falling in love, and we are supposed to care for them but we don't, because we don't have anything in common with them and because they have no problems, except Drew but he's different. I didn't like him because of Orlando Bloom, who I thought I would like without a sword and dressed in an armor but I didn't like. He's way too serious and I didn't buy him being a real person in today's world. I know it's impossible now, but I wish Cameron could back and make the movie with Ashton Kutcher as he originally planned. One of my biggest, if not the biggest disappointment for me this year, I was supposed to love this with all my heart but it didn't happen. And I hope I like Elizabethtown better with repeated viewings, I really do, but I'm not sure I will, because Orlando and his voice over will still be there.

Waiting...

Imagine if Van Wilder, the super cool, 7 year college student from the National Lampoon's movie named after his name, had not gone to college after high school. Imagine that he went on to work to a chain of restaurants called Shenanigan's, and that he's been there for a long time too. That's writer/director's Rob McKittrick Waiting..., only this is a not a National Lampoon's movie, and the Ryan Reynolds character is not called Van Wilder but Monty.

The movie has no real plot, is just a juncture of characters, many characters, and though most of them have very little to do, there are 4 or 5 that work well and keep our attention.
As I mentioned before there's Monty, who been working at Shenanigan's for years, and has no intention to move on or grow up. He has no interest in going up the ladder in the company either. He's happy just by waiting tables, playing games with the staff, and getting drunk and laid with underage girls he meets during the day at the restaurant.
The movie takes all on one day, in which Monty is put in charge of Mitch (Freaks & Geeks' John Francis Daley), the shy new guy, and so he shows him how the restaurant works and introduces him to the entire staff.

Monty's best friend is Dean (played by Justin Long), a 22 year old who graduated from high school 4 years ago and has done a few classes at the community college but nothing else. His story is the closest we have to a plot. He goes to have lunch with his mom one day and she informs him that his old high school friend Chett has graduated from college and is now an electric engineer, getting lots of money and doing great in his life. Dean is devastated, and has second thoughts about working at Shenanigan's, but right after that his manager Dan (played by David Koechner, Anchorman's Champ Kind) offers him the Assistant Manager position, though Dean sees it less as a good opportunity and more as a way to be living this dead end life forever, like Dan.
Dan is of course older than all his staff, so he usually gets marginalized and he's never invited to the parties. But he shares one thing with Monty though, and that is his attraction for Natasha (played by Vanessa Lengies), the underage hostess.

Mitch meets head chef Raddimus (played by Luis Guzman), who teaches him the Penis-Showing Game, which was invented years ago when the restaurant had problems, specially between the employees and their morale, so the game got everybody happy competing with each other.
It works just like it sounds, you have to get other coworkers to look at your penis (it has to be a surprise) and if they do you get to kick them in the ass. There are many positions to choose from, The Goat being the best one, and as better the position is, you get to kick the other person more times in the ass. I thought I was going to get tired of it easily when they first introduced the game in the movie, but even though they talk and talk about it, and play it a lot, I found it funny, and I didn't get tired of it.

Of course then the MegaBush appeared and that was really disturbing. And there are a few more disturbing scenes, though if you have worked in a restaurant like that you already know about it. Don't mess with the waiting staff is a rule that must not be broken unless you want them to spit on your food. And that's the best thing you can wish, because they do worse. There's also the 5 second rule about food dropped on the floor, a classic, and a lot more stuff that probably happens in real life, but we really don't want to know about.

The rest of the staff are Serena (played by Anna Faris) who used to be Monty's girlfriend. She has little to do though. Then there's Chi McBride's Bishop, the dishwasher who gives advise about everything and to everybody. Kaitlin Doubleday plays Amy, Dean's girlfriend who always has trouble with her tables and gets no tips. Also Patrick Benedit's Calvin, who can't pee in the restaurant's restroom after a guy stared at his penis while he was peeing some time ago. He can't do it anymore now and has to wait to get home to do it. Weird enough, he's the Penis-Showing Game champion. His story is kind of funny, but I did get tired of it towards the end. Alanna Ubach plays Naomi, the super bitch waitress who's always mad and hates her clients, but she always shows them the pretty smile.
There's also Emmanuelle Chriqui's Tyla, the lesbian bartender; Dane Cook's Floyd, the violent cook; and finally the busboys T-Dog, played by Max Kasch, and Nick, played by
Andy Milonakis, he of the Andy Milonakis' Show from MTV. He has a few funny scenes and then the ending credits are all his and it's all pretty good.

The movie has a very adult language all over the place, but always in comedic situations.
There are a few really funny situations, specially when Monty visits his mom (played by Just Shoot Me's Wendie Malick) one night. She attacks his way of life, and hopes he doesn't get any underage girls pregnant and that he uses protection, to which Monty replies stuff like "that's way I stick to anal" or "don't worry, I pull out".
There's more at the restaurant, like a discussion between Monty and Serena that starts with "haven't I been inside you?". And there's lots of stuff like that. There is no nudity at all in the movie, which I found weird considering the huge amount of hot girls in the cast and the language that goes on during the movie, and it's Rated R so why don't through some nudity in there. Weird.

Overall, the movie feels like a long pilot for a HBO sitcom that could very good, though after a few episodes would be too repetitive unless they get some kind of story going on.
Still, Waiting... is funny, not groundbreaking like American Pie or funny like Van Wilder but very good anyway.

Thumbsucker

Everybody is addicted to something, and for Justin Cobb, it's his thumb. He loves to suck it while sleeping or awake. He has to hide his addiction though (only a few people know about it, including family and doctors), as it would be embarrassing if everyone knew, so when he finally stops sucking his thumb, his life and that of everyone around him will change. This is the story of Mike Mills' weird but wonderful Thumbsucker.

Lou Pucci gives a starmaking performance as Justin. Quite, tormented, alienated from everybody because of his thumbsucking addiction. He's part of the debate team at school though, but I think only to be close to his friend Rebecca (Kelli Garner, much hotter than a few years ago when she played a drug addict in Larry Clark's Bully), the debate team captain, and the girl he secretly loves. They get together one day, but Justin's thumb problem prevents him to go further. Then something happens when he goes to the dentist.
In one of the best scenes of the movie, Justin's dentist Perry hypnotizes him to cure him, to free him from his thumb. Perry is played by Keanu Reeves, who gives the classic Keanu performance he always gives. But his voice is perfect for this role, and the dialogue during the hypnosis sounds like stuff Morpheus would say. It works though, and so Justin stops sucking his thumb, but right after that he starts going crazy. He starts losing control of himself and he can't concentrate, and going back to thumbsucking is not an option (I wont spoil the reason).

And so he's diagnosed for ADD and given Ritalin, and just like that he's good as new. Full of energy and confidence, Justin goes to lead the debate team, even winning awards. This makes for the second great scene in the movie, as Justin and the 3 girls in the debate team (Rebecca has left the team after Justin's rejection, for reasons not given) go with their debate teacher Mr. Geary to a debate in a different city. They stay in a hotel and Justin demands for him to stay in the same room as the girls since they are all of the same age and should stay up all night preparing for the debate. Mr. Geary, played by Vince Vaughn, accepts, and after that Justin convinces him to buy them beer. What follows is the dream of any guy, the girls are cute and they all get drunk, but they get too playful, and nothing ends up happening. It's a great scene though, specially all the first parts with Vince, and it's all backed with great music which I'll talk about later.

Justin changes once again after a debate rival informs him that Ritalin is only molecules away from cocaine, which is true I think, so he stops taking them, and just like that his energy goes down, he loses concentration, can't debate and leaves the team.
He goes back to Rebecca, who is now a stoner at school. Justin becomes a stoner too, and here's when the story loses it for me. I can't quite describe why but I love everything up until that point, and then it's just ok.
There's one more great scene though, as we are introduced to Matt Schramm (played by Benjamin Bratt), a big time actor whom Justin's mom Audrey (played by Tilda Swinton) loves. Audrey starts working in a rehab facility for celebrities, and Justin finds out that Matt goes there because of drug abuse. Justin thinks his mom is having an affair with the actor so he sneaks into the facility at night to spy on them, only to find Matt hiding in the bushes in the back smoking. Matt tells him the story of how Audrey (not knowing that Justin is her son) saved his life. The story is disturbing, and taking out of Trainspotting or something like that. It's amazing.
There's also Vincent D'Onofrio who plays Justin's father Mike. He hates the thumbsucking and even when Justin stops they have problems communicating. Mike used to be a football star, but an injury kept him from going pro. He's now very competitive, specially with Perry. They compete all the time in marathons and stuff like that but Perry always beats him.

The soundtrack is excellent, with original music from Elliott Smith and Tim DeLaughter. The songs by DeLaughter are performed by The Polyphonic Spree, and they work perfect in the movie if a little overused at times. And the dialogue is great, from Keanu's words of wisdom to the debate speeches, is all excellent. I loved the movie, despite that loss of energy towards the end. But on the whole, Thumbsucker has great performances, music, and writing, and it's one of the most original movies of the year. All thanks to Mike Mills' great work, can't wait for his next movie.

The Greatest Game Ever Played

Golf is a boring game to watch. I've never played it, and I think I'd be good at it, but watching it is horrible. Movies about golf are not though, I liked most of the ones I've seen, including The Legend of Bagger Vance and Happy Gilmore of course.
Now Disney brings us The Greatest Game Ever Played, Bill Paxton's directorial follow up to Frailty, his little seen but great horror movie.
Starring Shia LaBeouf, the movie is the true story of Francis Ouimet, a young man who was a caddy, was given a chance to play as an amateur despite being poor, and went on to win the US Open in 1913 against the top players in the world in one of the major upsets in sports history.

While I find Shia LaBeouf annoying most of the time for the way he talks, he does a great job in the lead here, playing against more experienced actors, and British ones which adds more class to the whole deal.
The other players we have are Stephen Dillane who plays the legend and favorite to win Harry Vardon, Stephen Marcus as the monstrous Ted Ray, and Michael Weaver as John McDermott, the only American with a chance and the current champion.

Elias Koteas plays Francis' father Arthur, a hard working man who doesn't want Francis to play golf as that won't give him any money to support his family. He will later change his mind and support his son of course but before that Koteas gives a very good performance. He did make me remember Daniel Day-Lewis' Bill The Butcher from Gangs of New York, from the mustache to the Scottish accent.

What makes the movie great is Paxton's camera, using CGI at many times but still getting great shots and visuals for very imaginative angles, like when he uses the ball-camera and we follow see everything as the ball that just got hit would see it.
The Greatest Game Ever Played is not the best ever, but it's a very good movie that doesn't get boring despite being 2 hours long, a bit too much maybe for a kids movie, but the movie works just fine, and it makes a fine addition to the Disney in Sports collection that such greats like Remember the Titans, The Rookie and Miracle are part of.

Oliver Twist

I have never seen any of the previous film adaptations of Oliver Twist (there are lots of them they tell me) and while I've always known the story, I've never read the book either, so the stuff director Roman Polanski and screenwriter Ronald Harwood, the Academy Award winning team of The Pianist put here is all I know for sure about the Charles Dickens story, and it was excellent.

Barney Clark plays the title character, a ten year old orphan who joins a house of pickpocketers in London led by Sir Ben Kingsley's Fagin, an old criminal mind who teaches the kids to steal on the streets. They steal jewerly at times, but it's mostly food and stuff they need to survive. Fagin is not a bad person though, he gives the kids food, clothes and a place to live, and he treats them well. Between the kids there's Artful Dodger (played by Harry Eden), the leader pickpocketer and the one who first meets a very hurt and hungry Oliver on the streets and brings him to Fagin's. And there's also Nancy (played by Leanne Rowe), one of the young prostitutes who would later risk it all for Oliver.
Bill Sykes (played by Jamie Foreman) is the evil man of the story. He hits the kids and hates Oliver, and he's the master thief who robs houses and uses guns.

Oliver is not unhappy with Fagin and the kids, but once he gets to taste a better life he doesn't want to come back. That comes from Mr. Brownlow (played by Edward Hardwicke), an old bookstore owner who takes Oliver to his house after he's mistakenly accused of robbery. Mr. Brownlow wants helps Oliver, but Bill finds out and comes for him.

The acting is amazing from young Barney Clark to Sir Ben Kingsley, who gives a great performance if kind of caricaturesc at times. But the technical aspects of the movie are even better. Polanski's direction is excellent, and the cinematography, costumes, sets, and also the score by Rachel Portman, all award worthy stuff.

Coming from Roman Polanski, it's no surprise to me that Oliver Twist is a very dark movie that could easily scare children. While there's no adult language or sex, there's violence towards animals and even more towards kids, but it's all essential to the story, and I think that if I were a kid I would have loved all of it.