Tuesday, January 30, 2007

The 10 Most Redeeming Films of 2006

According to Christianity Today. Click here.

Monday, January 29, 2007

The Painted Veil

New from The Movie Snob

The Painted Veil (B). Edward Norton and Naomi Watts star in this beautifully filmed tale of love and adventure in 1920s China. Norton plays a British bacteriologist working in Shanghai, and Watts is the socialite wife he adores but cannot make happy. When he discovers that she is having an affair, he signs up to go into the Chinese heartland to fight a cholera epidemic, and he drags his wife along with him to punish her. Their personal drama plays out against a backdrop of political, and especially anti-Western, turmoil. Good movie.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Volver

New from The Movie Snob

Volver (B+). This is only the second movie directed by Pedro Almodovar that I have ever seen. The other one was Talk to Her, which I found incredibly repugnant. Only a glowing review of this new movie on National Review Online got me into the theater to see it. And rather to my surprise, I really liked it. It is about the women in a family from the Spanish village of La Mancha and the men who hurt them. Seriously, there are very few men in this movie, and the few there are have very little screen time. Penelope Cruz plays Raimunda, a woman who has a no-good husband, a teen-aged daughter, a single sister, and a close female friend named Agustina. The ghost of her deceased mother also plays an important role. Although the women in the film have generally been done wrong by men (almost entirely off-screen, happily), they survive and pull through by pulling together. Cruz does a fine job and probably deserves her Oscar nomination.

Monday, January 22, 2007

The Last King of Scotland

From The Movie Snob:

The Last King of Scotland (B+). I have avoided seeing The Departed because I tell myself that I don't like violent movies. Yet, now I have seen three pretty violent movies in a row, and liked them all. This one is getting Oscar buzz for Forest Whitaker's portrayal of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, and he does turn in a typically fine performance. However, I also thought that James McAvoy did a very good job as a young Scottish doctor who goes to Uganda more or less on a whim, by sheer coincidence gets brought into Amin's inner circle, and ultimately is very, very lucky to escape from the murderous dictator with his life. The fact that Amin died in comfortable exile in Saudi Arabia only a few years ago is a travesty of justice. Good movie, but be prepared for some pretty gruesome violence.

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Pan's Labyrinth

From the desk of The Movie Snob

Pan’s Labyrinth (B+). This is a dark and violent movie, but very well-made. The setting is Spain, 1944. The civil war is basically over, but there are still a few Communists at large in the forests and mountains. A cruel Fascist military captain in command of a garrison in a remote area summons his new wife, who is pregnant, to join him. She is a widow, and she brings her young daughter and the movie's protagonist, Ofelia. Ofelia loves fairy tales and gets caught up in one of her own. A fantastic creature calling himself a faun tells her that she is really a princess from an underground kingdom, and she must perform three heroic tasks in order to rejoin her family below. The movie alternates between Ofelia’s fantasies (or are they real?) and the cruelty and violence of the real world. Not a very cheerful movie, but a compelling one nonetheless. The little girl who plays Ofelia is exceptional.

Friday, January 19, 2007

Children of Men

Movie review from The Movie Snob

Children of Men (B). A bleak action movie set in England in the year 2027. Some 18 years earlier, every single woman on the planet was mysteriously rendered infertile, and no children have been born since. Despair is widespread. Suicide kits are advertised on television. England itself has become a police state engaged in a massive campaign to deport illegal immigrants and torn apart by terrorist movements. Clive Owen plays Theo, a depressed guy who works in some government bureaucracy. His joyless existence is shaken up when his ex-wife (played by Julianne Moore), now a member of a terrorist group, contacts him and seeks his help in smuggling a young black woman out of the country. The young woman’s amazing secret—she’s pregnant. The politics and some of the character’s motivations are a tad murky, but the depiction of a dystopian, childless future is convincing, and the action sequences are compelling. Owen confirms his talent as an actor once again, turning in a fine performance as an ordinary guy caught up in extraordinary events. Grim, but worth a look.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Caesar: Life of a Colossus

Book review from The Movie Snob

Caesar: Life of a Colossus, by Adrian Goldsworthy (2006). This is biography at its finest. Goldsworthy truly brings Julius Caesar and all of ancient Rome to life in this roughly 500-page treatment of the great general’s life and career. It is exceptionally well-written, contains a sprinkling of helpful maps and diagrams illustrating some of the most important battles, and has some nice black-and-white photos in the middle of Roman artwork depicting Caesar and the other main players in the saga—Crassus, Pompey, Cicero, Marc Antony, Cleopatra, and of course Caesar himself. If you have any interest at all in ancient Rome, you will love this book.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

It Happened One Night

DVD review from The Movie Snob

It Happened One Night (B). I got "The Premiere Frank Capra Collection" on DVD as a gift, and I decided to watch this movie, starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, first. It wasn't bad. Colbert plays spoiled heiress Ellie Andrews, who has defied her wealthy father by getting married before a justice of the peace to a man she hardly knows. She escapes from her father's yacht in Florida and tries to make her way back to her husband in New York. On the way she falls in with down-on-his-luck newspaperman Peter Warne (Gable). He quickly figures out who she is and agrees to help her avoid her father's detectives and get back to New York if he can publish her story. Made in 1934, it is certainly an old-fashioned picture, but pretty enjoyable nonetheless. Remarkably, it won the Oscars for best picture, director, actor, actress, and screenplay, a feat not duplicated until One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

The Descent

DVD review by Nick at Nite

The Descent

Good and creepy. Don't look for the happy ending because you won't find one. Clever tale about seven ladies who take extreme vacations every year (one of the ladies is a special guest on "This Descent" and thus serves the role of the first die, also known as the "Star Trek expendable crewperson"). Usually, the vacation revolves around a little whitewater rafting or rock climbing. Adventurous, but not crazy vacationing. Well, after one of their whitewater rafting vacations our lead protagonist's husband and daughter die in a tragic motor vehicle accident. They die right after our lead protagonist is clued into the fact that her husband has been having an affair with one of her vacationing buddies. Fastforward to the next year's vacation. The seven ladies gather, drink a bunch of beer, and try to cheer up the lead protagonist. The seven ladies then climb into an unknown, never-before-explored cave in the Appalachian Mountains. They believe they are going into a known, completely explored cave ... except the adulterer among them has planned this vacation as a really extreme trip into the unknown, never-explored cave. She is trying to bring out their inner strengths. Deliverance pales in comparison to what they find in the cave. A rock slide gets them stuck in the cave. The go deeper into the cave in an attempt to come out of the cave. The don't find the way out, instead they find crazy vampire-like humans who like to hunt animals and humans. Our seven ladies are taken out one by one. I will not give away any of the three twists at the end of the movie. I will say the adultery plot finally seems like less of rabit trail and makes sense. Check it out yourselves. This movie has a very high gore factor. Some mild cussing. No nudity - unless you count the crazy vampire-like humans. It can't be that bad, my wife actually watched it with me. I give it a "B."

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Books in brief

Book reviews from The Movie Snob

America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, by Mark Steyn (2006). This is a doomsayer’s book of a different sort. Instead of lamenting the population explosion, Steyn takes the opposite tack. As he has reported in his journalism for some time, Japan, Russia, and the Western democracies (the United States excepted) are about to go into sharp population decline on account of unprecedentedly low birthrates. Countries with large Muslim populations, by contrast, have the highest birthrates in the world, and the Muslim populations within Europe have many more children than do the natives. This spells big trouble on several fronts. If trends persist, the depopulating countries will face economic upheaval as they try to sustain expensive welfare systems and political upheaval as unassimilated Muslims flex their numerical muscle. And the United States will find itself even more unpopular and even more bereft of allies in the struggle against Islamic fascism.

Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary, by Henry Hitchings (2005). This is an enjoyably breezy read about how Samuel Johnson almost single-handedly wrote one of the best, earliest, most comprehensive dictionaries of the English language. Certainly a much quicker introduction to the famous Johnson than Boswell’s 1200-page biography.

Friday, January 12, 2007

Stop Making Sense

DVD Review from That Guy Named David

Stop Making Sense (B+)

For whatever reason, I have seen several music documentaries in the past year or so. I have raved on and on about No Direction Home, director Martin Scorsese's lengthy documentary about Bob Dylan. This led me to rent Heart of Gold, director Jonathan Demme's documentary on one concert performed by Neil Young in Nashville (which was horrible, by the way). So, when a friend put in Stop Making Sense, another documentary directed by Demme from the mid-80's about the Talking Heads, I was a bit skeptical. For those of you unfamiliar with the Talking Heads, they are best known for the songs "Once in a Lifetime," "Take Me to the River," and "Burning Down the House," as well as their unusual antics on stage and in their videos. Well, I must admit having a deeper appreciate for the Talking Heads after watching that video. Granted, the video was playing while we were drinking and playing cards; however, it dominated my attention, and we actually put it in to watch for a second time. I only wish I would have discovered the video while I was in college, but alas...

Thursday, January 11, 2007

The Movie Snob's Best of 2006

Hello, Gentle Readers! You know the drill — here I will announce my picks for the best movies of 2006. For a movie to be eligible for consideration, I had to see it for the first time in a theater during the calendar year 2006. Yes, that means that some late 2005 releases will be included in my list, but deal with it. For the record, I saw 45 movies in the theater last year, of which nine got a B+ or better. (My track record with DVDs was distinctly worse: 19 first-time views, and only one with a B+. Ben Hur, if you’re wondering.)

Best Drama: And best picture of the year, in my humble opinion, was the riveting United 93. Filmed in documentary style, it grabs you from the start and never lets go. How they persuaded some of the people who were on the ground on 9/11 to play themselves in this movie is beyond me. I would have been way too freaked out to relive those events. The runners up are also excellent films. First I’ll mention The Nativity Story, and I’ll urge you to catch it in the theaters if you still can, before the Christmas season is too faint a memory. I thought it was reverent and sensitive without crossing the line into sentimentality. Even if you’re not Christian, go see it and see part of what makes us tick. And second I’ll cite the outstanding 2005 release Capote. Philip Seymour Hoffman delivers a terrific performance, but there’s not a sour note in this movie about a fascinating 20th century character. And I can’t omit The Queen, starring an outstanding Helen Mirren in a quasi-documentary about the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death.

Best Comedy: I’m not sure it belongs in this category rather than Best Drama, but let’s put it here anyway since good comedies are in short supply — Little Miss Sunshine is a wonderful mix of the absurd and the genuinely sweet. A marvelous depiction of how even the most dysfunctional family can learn that it is, indeed, a family. Watch out for the language, though; this is not a movie the whole family can enjoy. Honorable mention to The Devil Wears Prada, especially the terrific performance by newcomer Emily Blunt as the office assistant that Ann Hathaway unintentionally elbows out of their boss’s favor.

Best Action/Adventure: King Kong takes this one, hands down. The critics didn’t go ape for Peter Jackson’s last effort, but I thought it was a terrific popcorn flick. I’m hard pressed to come up with any other contenders in this category. Let’s put The Illusionist here too, featuring yet another fine performance by Edward Norton, and outstanding supporting work by Paul Giamatti.

Best Documentary: Sorry, Al, I’m going to pass over An Inconvenient Truth in favor of an IMAX movie called Deep Sea 3D. But the Truth wasn’t nearly as hard to swallow as I thought it would be, so that’s something.

Honorable Mentions: Woody Allen’s thought-provoking Match Point, the inimitable Judi Dench in Mrs. Henderson Presents, Scarlett Johansson going Wilde in A Good Woman, architecture documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry, a fabulous performance by Gretchen Mol in The Notorious Bettie Page, suburban angst run amok in Little Children, Daniel Craig’s blond Bondshell in Casino Royale, and Robert Altman’s last film, A Prairie Home Companion. All well worth adding to your Netflix queue.

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

High Noon

DVD review from The Movie Snob

High Noon (A-). I thoroughly enjoyed this classic Western that won Gary Cooper the Best Acting Oscar. Cooper plays Will Kane, the marshal of the little town of Hadleyville. As the movie opens, he is turning in his badge and marrying a Quaker gal (Grace Kelly, looking terrific). But even as he is getting hitched, three tough customers blow into town and ominously sit down to wait at the railroad station. Word gets out that Frank Miller, a convicted murderer that Kane had put away five years earlier, has just gotten out of prison and is arriving in Hadleyville on the noon train, and the rest of the movie unspools in real time as high noon approaches. Kane answers the call of duty, picks up his badge, and tries to gather a posse to stand up to Miller and his gang. Will the townspeople back the honest lawman? Will his Quaker bride abandon him for his refusal to forsake violence? Watch the film and find out for yourself.

Saturday, January 06, 2007

Dreamgirls

Movie review from The Movie Snob

Dreamgirls (B-). Being a fan of musicals, I wanted to like this movie more than I did. The story is a promising one. A struggling black girl band in 1960’s Detroit teams up with a used-car salesman who has dreams of being a music mogul. And although they do eventually conquer the pop charts, there are some casualties along the way. The Dreamettes' manager, Curtis Taylor, Jr. (Jamie Foxx), softens the rough edges of the Dreamettes’ R&B roots and ruthlessly demotes the most talented singer, Effie (Jennifer Hudson), to back-up while elevating the more appealing (to whites) Deena Jones (Beyoncé Knowles) to the lead. The story is good, the performances are fine, but the movie falls short. It is a little long, and it feels more than a little too long. The songs are not memorable, and they often don’t feel integrated into the story. One exception is Hudson’s central performance of "And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going," which drew applause in the middle of the showing I saw. And the ending worked well for me. But on the whole, I was a little disappointed.

Friday, January 05, 2007

The Emperor's Children (book review)

From The Movie Snob

The Emperor's Children, by Claire Messud (2006). For the most part -- right up until the end -- I really enjoyed this novel. The central characters are three thirty-year-old New Yorkers, old friends from their college days at Brown. Members of the privileged class, they all believe themselves destined to do great things, but none has the appetite for hard work that greatness generally entails. Marina, beautiful and spoiled, is forever working on a pretentious book that she will probably never finish. Julius, a gay freelance writer of reviews, yearns for domesticity but sabotages it when he finds it. Danielle, the most grounded of the three, actually has a steady job working on documentaries but then embarks on an affair with a married man. Presiding over all the proceedings (like an emperor) is Marina's father, Murray Thwaite, a celebrity journalist and author who is a little like a liberal version of William F. Buckley. Most of the pleasure of the book comes from these four well-sketched characters, who are believable if not particularly likeable. The other characters are not as well done, and as the book goes on it becomes clear that the story will end on or around the events of 9/11. The use of that milestone falls a little flat. But I enjoyed the book a lot along the way.

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Night at the Museum

New from The Movie Snob

Night at the Museum (D). There are children's movies that both children and adults can enjoy. Night at the Museum is not one of those movies. The premise sounded promising--an ordinary guy takes a job as a night watchman at the Museum of Natural Science where, to his surprise, all of the exhibits come to life after sundown, including the tyrannosaurus rex skeleton in the lobby. In the inept hands of director Shawn Levy (The Pink Panther, the Cheaper by the Dozen movies), what should be magical is rendered amazingly dull. Having the unappealing Ben Stiller (Starsky & Hutch) as protagonist Larry Daley didn't help matters any. Neither did the sappy subplot about Larry's son being terribly disappointed in him because he can't hold down a steady job. The swooning musical score was terrible. To be fair, the kids in the audience seemed perfectly happy with the movie. If you're an adult, however, you should consider taking a flashlight and a book.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Happy Feet and others

New reviews from Nick at Nite

Happy Feet

Took my son to see Happy Feet over the weekend. Learned important lesson. No amount of popcorn, candy, and coke will keep a toddler entertained if the movie is slow, dialogue intensive, and more "real" than "fake" in its animation. Talking, cute cars? Great. Talking, cute bugs? Great. Talking, cute fish? Great. Talking, realistic, penguins? Not great. The music was good. A little like Moulin Rouge for kids. Sappy environmental message, a little over the top even for this liberal. I give it a "C."

Bewitched

Bewitched? How about Bebored. At one point, I actually fast forwarded through some of the film just to see how it ended. How could so many good actresses and actors get caught up in such trash? It wasn't funny. It wasn't clever. I just don't get it. Did notice parts for Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell. Both parts were small. I actually thought Steve Carell was pretty funny as the original Uncle from the Bewitched series. I digress. The movie stank. Don't rent it. Read a book instead. I give it an "F."

And a book review ...

Hannibal Rising

I read this disturbing book over the holiday break. I probably would not have purchased the book, but it was given to me as a gift so I thought what the heck. Well, the what the heck was that this book is about how Hannibal, of the Silence of the Lambs, Red Dragon, and Hannibal, became so fond of fava beans and a side a human flesh. Why would anyone care or want to know? Well, I now know. And, you guessed it. Some really bad things happened to him that made him the crazy, sicko that he was in all of those books and the accompanying movies. Turns out Hannibal's aristocratic family hid from the Nazis, their thugs, and looters for several years during WWII. They hid in a secluded lodge that was not far from their castle home. Eventually, they were attacked by thugs. All of Hannibal's family and friends were killed with the exception of his sister, Mischa, who was not killed until later. A Donner party moment between the thugs and Hannibal's sister is what changes Hannibal from a sweet, smart, attentive little boy to a monster consumed by a need for revenge. The book is filled with flashbacks as it follows Hannibal on his path of revenge after the war as he tracks down and kills the Nazi thugs one at a time. Don't get me wrong, I hate Nazis just as much as everyone else, but even I had some difficulty stomaching the descriptions of how Hannibal ends their lives and disposes of their bodies. I give it a "C" for Creepy.

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