“Forty thousand years of human language, and there’s no word to describe our relationship. It was doomed.” — Ewan McGregor as The Ghost in The Ghost Writer.
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Green Zone (2010) Green Zone is a good war movie, a good thriller, and a great action film. And it tells some important truths about the liars who buffaloed the American people and some of our NATO allies into supporting the invasion of Iraq. Because of that, some will refuse to see this movie, citing “politics,” as if exposing evil to the light of day is political (as opposed to moral). Too bad. It will be their loss. |
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Legion (2010) Here’s a hint: if you don’t believe in god — if you put angels and demons in the same category as the tooth fairy and the easter bunny — don’t rent this movie. Here’s another hint: if you do believe in god — if you believe in angels and demons — don’t rent this movie. Here’s my last hint: if you are a fan of Paul Bettany or Dennis Quaid — don’t rent this movie. |
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Invictus (2009) As a Hash House Harrier, I share an affinity with rugby (and rugby songs), so great parts of the movie appealed to me. So did the parts showing black and white South Africans coming together for the Springboks as they advance toward victory in the 1995 rugby World Cup, even though those parts were manipulative and heavy-handed, making it look like Mandela’s support of rugby resulted in quick and easy racial reconciliation. In fact, racial reconciliation has barely begun in SA and will take generations to complete, and Mandela fought for reconciliation on all fronts, not just sport. In this aspect, Invictus reminded me of one of those inner-city educational dramas, with an inspired teacher single-handedly pulling an entire oppressed minority up by its own bootstraps (yeah, right). Eastwood overdoes the hagiography of Nelson Mandela, giving the film a slightly creepy Great Leader propaganda feel. Still, if you go along with Eastwood’s narrative, Invictus is an inspirational, feel-good experience, and both Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon are fantastic, right down to the accents. |
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The Cry of the Owl (2009) I haven’t read Highsmith’s novels, and can’t say how faithful this film is to her intent. On its own it’s an interesting film. A somewhat creepy man finds himself surrounded by other creepy people, some of whom are downright evil. At first you think everyone is bent, but later on you discover some are more bent than others. It’s a good psychological thriller, though slow in parts. The film was shot in Canada, but — oddly — a Canada disguised as upstate New York. Why the pretense? It added nothing to the film, and actually took something away from it. I spent more time trying to figure out where the scenes were filmed than I did figuring out the characters. |
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The Ghost Writer (2010) Wow. I guess you can make a suspenseful movie without exploding cars . . . Mr. Polanski, perhaps you could tell your friends in Hollywood. The Ghost Writer is a fine film, and will remind you of Hitchcock. The scenery is bleak, even sparse, so as not to interfere with the story. The dialogue is sharp, the plot relevant and adult. The twist, when it comes, is brilliant, and the final scene will chill you to the bone. Pierce Brosnan was perfectly cast as the Tony Blair-like former prime minister, and that Ewan McGregor kid is gonna go far, I’m thinking. |
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Hot Tub Time Machine (2010) A movie for boys and young men, based on crude sexual and potty jokes. No redeeming value whatsoever. But it’s surprisingly endearing. What makes it so is the inclusion of likable actors John Cusak and Craig Robinson. If they’d gone with Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell, I’d have hated every second of it. And that’s all there really is to say about this movie. |
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Youth in Revolt (2009) Sort of a Fast Times at Ridgemont High spin-off, with pretensions toward sophistication. The kids are cute as hell, and the depiction of the intense, around-the-clock sexual obsessions of teenage males is spot on, but much of the humor is heavy-handed, even slapstick. Not offensively so, but if you’re looking for subtlety, this movie may not be for you. More importantly, if you’re looking for a moral message, you’d better look elsewhere — the only moral this movie provides is that you can get away with wrongdoing if you’re young & pretty. |
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Unthinkable (2010) A cheesy movie with made-for-TV ambiance. Which is appropriate, because it’s a cheesy rip-off of TV’s 24, with Samuel Jackson instead of Kiefer Sutherland, and the message is 100% pro-torture. You get the good girl FBI agent who’s against torture, the holdout Muslim terrorist with a nuke, and the scary torture guy, all pretty much sitting around in a high school gym, interrupted by short segments of torture porn. In every scene the winner is the torturer, the loser the good girl. And in the end the terrorist kills himself before the torturer can get the truth out of him and an American city gets nuked, but the whole point is that the torturer would have got the truth out of the terrorist if only everyone had let him do his job. Okay, let’s all go kill Muslims now! |
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Cop Out (2010) A takeoff on the Lethal Weapon buddy-cop movies, with Bruce Willis playing Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan playing Curly from the Three Stooges, with a little Spongebob Squarepants thrown in. Forgivable: stale jokes, slapstick comedy, unbelievable situations, cardboard cutout villains. Unforgiveable: Tracy Morgan. He is so wrong for the Danny Glover role, so over the top, so frankly awful . . . okay, specifically: he spends the first half of the movie screaming like a four-year-old throwing a temper tantrum. Probably the second half as well, but I can’t attest to that because his screaming drove me from the room 50 minutes in, 20 minutes after he drove my wife away. Tracy Morgan, shut UP already! |
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The Girl Who Played with Fire (2009) There are differences between the first movie, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and the second, The Girl Who Played with Fire . . . some subtle, some not so subtle. There are a number of differences in the tone and direction of the story itself, because the second novel is quite different from the first. The characters and the actors who play them are the same, but there is a different director, and perhaps that accounts for another difference that registered with me, just barely . . . a slightly less Swedish feel to this one? I can’t quite put my finger on it. At any rate, I loved this movie as much as the first, and can’t wait to see the third and final movie (The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest) later this year. Noomi Rapace has become Lisbeth Salendar to the point where I can’t imagine another actor playing her; ditto Mikael Nyqvist as Michael Blomqvist; both their characters grow and become more interesting in this movie, and you begin to understand the reasons behind the near-autistic face Lisbeth shows to the world. Speaking of actors, Lena Endre, the woman who plays Erika, is a beautiful and sexy older woman who looks her age (right down to the wrinkles). Who among us thinks Hollywood can even imagine using a similarly-aged woman to play this role in the American version? The only actor who didn’t seem to fit, to me, was Micke Spreitz as Ronald Niedermann — he was big enough, and scary enough, but too damn handsome. I don’t generally buy DVDs. After I’ve watched a movie once I just don’t feel the need to watch it again. But I’m buying the DVDs for all three of these movies, and splurging for Blu-Ray too. That should tell you something about how great these movies are! |