Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Iron Man

New movie review from The Movie Snob

Iron Man (B+). I'll have to defer to Comic Book Guy as to how faithful this flick is to the comics from which it sprang, but it stands on its own merits as a solid superhero movie. Robert Downey, Jr. (Less Than Zero) stars as Tony Stark, a zillionaire inventor who made his pile in the weapons biz. After some unpleasantness in Afghanistan, he comes home with a bad ticker and a worse conscience. (How he built a pacemaker-sized nuclear reactor in a cave in Afghanistan is a great mystery to me.) To expiate his sins as a munitions maker, he creates a fabulous metallic suit that gives him, basically, super powers. Good action, good performance by Downey. Gwyneth Paltrow (Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow) is wasted as Stark's girl Friday, the improbably named Pepper Potts. Jeff Bridges (Starman) plays an oily (and bald) executive in Stark's weapons company, but I just kept thinking, "Hey, that's Jeff Bridges in a superhero movie!" every time I saw him. There's a tiny little extra scene after all the credits, but it meant nothing to me. Comic book fans would probably get more out of it. A very good summertime flick.

Oh, and it just happens to be the 1000th movie I've ever seen. I'm sure it sounds obsessive for me to know that, but my sister and I have had a contest for years to see who could see more movies, so we both keep track. Okay, she just tells me when she sees a movie; I do all the keeping track. Anyway, I'm totally kicking her butt, since she's seen only about 950 movies in her life. But I'm about 9 years older than she is, so I guess she's doing all right.

Monday, July 28, 2008

The Nanny Diaries

DVD review from The Movie Snob

The Nanny Diaries (B-). I was surprised that this movie did not do better at the box office, considering how popular the book was. (I read and enjoyed the book, way back when, but have long since forgotten most of the details.) The movie is a pleasant enough way to spend 106 minutes. Annie Braddock (Scarlett Johansson, Eight Legged Freaks) is a young woman trying to figure out who she is and what she wants out of life. By sheer happenstance, she finds herself hired on as the nanny for a fabulously wealthy family in Manhattan, with Mrs. X (Laura Linney, You Can Count on Me) as her exceptionally high-strung boss. She bonds with her charge, a kid by the name of Grayer (Nicholas Art, Syriana), and tries to flirt with the Harvard Hottie who lives in the Xes' building, all the while knowing that the situation will have to come to an end--probably sooner than later, given Mrs. X's temper. Linney steals the show, in my opinion, but then she's always good. Worth a rental.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Encounters at the End of the World

Movie review from The Movie Snob. Who else is going to see this movie?

Encounters at the End of the World (B-). German filmmaker Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man) takes his camera crew to the bottom of the planet: Antarctica. He was drawn there by some underwater footage he had seen, and it's easy to see why. The ocean under the ice is a weird place, with the ice for sky overhead and a desolate sea floor littered with clams and starfish. And he has some nice shots of a giant Texas-sized iceberg and an active volcano called Mount Erebus. But most of the film is about the collection of scientists and assorted misfits who live on Antarctica, studying seals or penguins or whatever, or working in the machine shop at the biggest settlement, or whatever. As one character says, if you're not tied to anything anywhere else in the world, eventually you fall down to the South Pole. Interesting documentary, but I wouldn't say a great one.

Monday, July 21, 2008

I Love You, Beth Cooper (book review)

From The Movie Snob

I Love You, Beth Cooper, by Larry Doyle (HarperCollins 2007). This is a fairly amusing novel about what happens when a high school valedictorian (i.e., nerd) named Denis Cooverman uses the bully pulpit of his high school graduation speech to announce the five words that make up the title of this book. Beth Cooper, of course, is the captain of the cheerleaders and Denis's near-opposite in every respect. Not to mention the fact she has virtually no idea who he is, even though he sat right behind her in plenty of classes. Anyway, Denis's bold announcement sets off a remarkable chain of events that is generally very entertaining, although faintly repetitious after a while. Doyle seems to have an ear for the dialogue of the young and clueless, and it's a fast read. It's kind of like a blend of Superbad and Mean Girls in book form, with the smart kid from Superbad as the hero. If this book isn't turned into a movie within a year or two, I'll be astonished.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Journey to the Center of the Earth

From the desk of The Movie Snob

Journey to the Center of the Earth (B-). Yes, this weekend while everyone else was watching The Dark and Stormy Knight, I was seeing the new family-adventure movie starring the Kurt Russell of our day, Mr. Brendan Fraser (Encino Man). You know exactly what you're getting -- decent sequences of roller-coaster-like action, punctuated by corny dialogue and phony "family moments," in this case between intrepid scientist Trevor Anderson (Fraser), and his angsty nephew Sean (Josh Hutcherson, Zathura). Mix in a pretty Icelandic mountain hiking guide (Anita Briem, TV's The Tudors) and a quest deep into -- duh -- the center of the earth, and you have what you should expect: a decent, family-friendly B movie. It's rated PG for a reason, though; the littlest kids would be pretty terrified by some of the monsters and stuff. At least I would've been. Maybe kids are tougher today.


"Say, do all Icelander mountain hiking guides look like you? And why does this giant fossilized jawbone float on water, anyway?"

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Brazil

DVD review from The Movie Snob

Brazil (C+). This, I gather, is a pretty well-known film from Terry Gilliam, who also directed Time Bandits and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. It is a tale of a dystopian future in the vein of Brave New World and 1984. In the world of Brazil, the government maintains control of a docile population chiefly by the crushing weight of its bureaucracy and the insane paperwork required to get anything done. It's like having the whole world run by the DMV. When necessary, however, the bureaucrats are backed up by frightening police forces dispatched by the Ministry of Information. Our protagonist is Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce, Evita), a low-level bureaucrat and generally decent guy who is superficially content with the status quo but whose dreams are filled with visions of freedom--and of a mysterious woman. Naturally she turns out to have a counterpart in real life that Sam sees from afar and becomes obsessed with. Robert de Niro (Meet the Parents) has a surprising role as Harry Tuttle, a freelance air-conditioning repairman and perhaps terrorist who inspires Sam to start bucking the system. It's a rather bleak movie, but certainly a visually interesting one.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

The Ruins

DVD review from Nick at Nite

The Ruins

Adapted from the book written by Scott Smith, this passable film does not rise to the challenge set by the book. It should not have been too difficult. All that was needed was a Mayan ruin, some jungle vines, several young actors, and an adobe village. What I mean to say is that the movie strays from the book, including the end, which undermines the frantic pace that is set by the book. The story follows several American tourists who travel to South America for a beach adventure. While on the beach the meet a German tourist who wants to go find his brother who is off visiting a Mayan ruin with an archeologist. The Americans go with the German and the rest is history. The Mayan ruin ends up being a very bad place to be. I will not give away the story because it would ruin, no pun intended, the book and the movie for anyone reading this review. The point I want to make is that I really enjoyed the book. Could not stop reading it. Had to turn the next page. The movie? I was ready to be done watching it ten minutes in. The book I still give an “A,” the movie I give a “C.”

Monday, July 14, 2008

10,000 B.C.

Nick at Nite pans a new DVD.

10,000 B.C.

This is the worst movie I have ever seen. This is saying a lot because I see a ton of bad movies. I don’t even know where to begin. I do have this question. Why is it that some of the characters in this movie speak the king’s English and others must speak in their native tongue with the requisite subtitles? When the story is already such a huge stretch why not just let them all speak the king’s English? Anyways this movie is Apocalypto. Seriously. It is the same story. Bad dudes come to village. They kill some villagers and take others. One who is left behind goes to rescue the villages and his girlfriend. There are some subtle differences and the movie does feature some cool woolly mammoths, but it basically the same movie. I don’t even know why I watched this. It was just terrible. I would rather watch Ishtar ten times. I would rather watch Mariah Carey in a movie. Our perhaps another Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck vehicle. I give this movie an “F.” I wish the grade could be lower.

Friday, July 11, 2008

Hancock

New movie review from The Movie Snob

Hancock (B). This is a different sort of superhero movie. Hancock (Will Smith, Men in Black II) is pretty much the equivalent of Superman, except he's a boozy bum whose heroics tend to cause catastrophic levels of collateral damage while he's catching the bad guys or saving the imperiled good citizen. (And there are apparently enough bad guys in L.A. to make Gotham City look like Mayberry.) After he gives a helping hand to p.r. man Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman, Juno), Ray wants to repay the favor by giving Hancock some free public-relations advice. The movie takes some unpredictable zigs and zags after that, which puts it a notch above your average summer popcorn movie, but I'm not sure that all the zags make sense, so that takes it back down a notch. "B" seems like a fair grade.

Definitely, Maybe

DVD review from The Movie Snob

Definitely, Maybe (B-). It's tough to come up with an original plot for a romantic comedy, but this one makes a game run at it. Will Hayes (Ryan Reynolds, Just Friends) is a thirtysomething guy in NYC. He's going through a divorce, and one day its his turn to pick up his 10-year-old daughter Maya (Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine) from school. The school is in pandemonium because parents have just found out that their kids have just been taught some pretty graphic stuff in sex-ed. (A big minus is how much sexual dialogue they foist on cute little Abigail.) Anyway, when Will puts Maya to bed that night, she wants to know how Will and her mom met, so maybe they can see what went wrong and fix it. So the bulk of the movie is a flashback as Will tells Maya about the three serious girlfriends he had in his single days, and she has to guess which one eventually became her mom. There's his college sweetheart Emily (Elizabeth Banks, The 40-Year Old Virgin), the quirky April (Isla Fisher, Wedding Crashers) that Will meets while working for the Bill Clinton campaign, and the free-spirited journalist Summer (Rachel Weisz, The Mummy). It's not a bad flick, and it's a hoot to see true-believer Will have to deal with Bill Clinton's foibles as they come to light in his flashbacks over the years.

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

In a Cardboard Belt! (book review)

From The Movie Snob

In a Cardboard Belt! Essays Personal, Literary, and Savage, by Joseph Epstein (Houghton Mifflin 2007). If you’ve been paying attention, you can tell that I like Joseph Epstein. A former professor at Northwestern University, he frequently contributes essays and short stories to Commentary and other magazines. He is also frighteningly well-read, and in his essays he drops names like nobody’s business. I enjoy his writing a lot, and I probably would not dissent from William F. Buckley, Jr.’s opinion that Epstein is the wittiest writer alive. (I got that last bit from wikipedia, so you may take it with a grain of salt.) This essay collection includes a piece about his father, who died at 91 when Epstein was 62, and essays about some writers he admires (Proust, Keats), and some of his contemporaries he doesn’t (Mortimer Adler, Harold Bloom). And he writes about the culture more broadly, as in his essays entitled “The Perpetual Adolescent,” “The Culture of Celebrity,” and “Why Are Academics So Unhappy?” He may turn out not to be your cup of tea, but you really should give him a try. Some of his books are available in paperback, so go find one.

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

The Incredible Hulk

New review from Nick at Nite

Hulk

Don't make Hulk angry. He is large, green, and plutonium poisoned. Much better than the Ang Lee version. What were they thinking? Action-packed tale of superhero that cannot be stopped by anyone, unless you consider WALL-E to be an anyone. Hulk wants to be cured, but alas must stay Hulk to save us all from the supervillain. The supervillain is the Abomination. Not a good-looking dude. I give it an A. Have fun with it.

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