“You failed to maintain your weapon, son.” — Michael Caine as Harry Brown in Harry Brown.
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The Last Station (2009) Confession time: I never read War and Peace, or Anna Karenina. I knew nothing about Tolstoy. Now I know something, and what I learned was interesting enough to make me want to know more. There were a lot of social and communal ideas bubbling around in pre-1917 Russia, and Tolstoy’s ideas were apparently quite popular. As to the movie itself, I’m amazed they found the financial backing to produce it. No exploding cars here — just damn fine acting, with Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren leading the way, and Paul Giamatti playing the greasiest little weasel you’ll ever see (and a catamite to boot). Well worth watching. |
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The Losers (2010) I really have to read those Netflix blurbs more carefully. I missed the line where it said The Losers was adapted from a comic book, but I began to suspect something of the sort was in the works during the previews, which were all for animated features. Ah, well, maybe more movies should be based on comic books. The ones I’ve seen — The Watchmen, Iron Man, X-Men, etc — haven’t been that bad. Matter of fact, they’ve been quite entertaining, if you don’t mind stereotyped characters, plot holes, and violations of the laws of physics. The stories themselves move right along, good is good and evil is evil, and with the exception of the Batman series, there’s always at least one likable superhero. That’s the case with The Losers. I think you’ll be entertained. I was. |
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Harry Brown (2009) What makes this different from the Death Wish franchise, or the more recent The Brave One? Well, it’s British … guns are harder to get, and it captures something of the bleakness of urban British council housing life. What else? The vigilante is even older than Charles Bronson was in Death Wish III. But as far as I’m concerned, Michael Caine pulls it off, even if it is a cheap and predictable concept. I particularly liked the ending, which is downright Shakespearean in the amount of blood spilled and number of bodies on the floor. |
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North Face (2008) This is the best mountain climbing movie I’ve ever seen. It’s also one of the best all-around movies I’ve seen in a long time — I watched it two times in a row, something I almost never do. The cinematography is fantastic, but it’s the story itself — simple and straightforward, told in a no-frills Hemingway style — that fascinates. The suspense, which builds as the climbers encounter escalating problems on the sheer north face of the Eiger, is exhausting. The ending in particular puts you through the wringer. In a movie where all the actors stand out, Johanna Wokalek, who I first saw in The Baader-Meinhof Complex, manages to stand out just a little more — she’s brilliant. Seriously, if all German movies are this good — and so far all the ones I’ve seen seem to be — I may give up on Hollywood completely. |
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Kick-Ass (2010) Over the top enough not to be taken seriously, this is a damn fun movie. I wonder how it came about that two similarly-themed movies came out about the same time (Defendor and Kick-Ass), and that they both had A-list stars (Woody Harrelson and Nicolas Cage). But I wondered the same thing when two different movie adaptations of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood came out at the same time, and never got an answer to that either. So screw it … Defendor was fun, and so was Kick-Ass. I would think twice about viewing Kick-Ass with children … that R rating is there for a reason … but as adult entertainment, and as pure removed-from-reality comic book fantasy, Kick-Ass kicks ass. |
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The Book of Eli (2010) When I ordered this one, I had the idea it was some kind of war movie. The second it started I could see that it was not a war movie, so I reached for the Netflix wrapper and read what it said there: that this was a science fiction flick. That turned out to be, well, somewhat misleading. The Book of Eli is not science fiction. It’s a religious movie. One with a message to the faithful, or at least that subset of the faithful who who read those awful Left Behind books and think Mel Gibson is probably right about the Jews. It’s an extended slow-motion rant about the power of the Holy Word of the One True (Christian) God, with ideas, imagery, and whole scenes stolen from The Road, Dawn to Dusk, Enter the Dragon, Vanishing Point, and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. Okay, my bad for thinking it was a war movie. I probably had it confused with In the Valley of Elah. But for Netflix to call a religious message movie science fiction? That’s their bad. And the movie itself? Did. Not. Like. |
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The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) This is the film most famous for Heath Ledger dying during production, with Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell stepping in to fill the scenes Heath didn’t finish. Which is done so well, if you didn’t know about Heath Ledger dying, you would not be deprived of anything important, although you might wonder about one or two short scenes. That out of the way, I think this will stand as one of Terry Gilliam’s better films, right up there with Time Bandits (my absolute favorite, and one I could watch over and over), Brazil, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and Twelve Monkeys. Obviously, Terry Gilliam is loved by some, hated by others … you get him or you don’t. I think I get him, and I like where he’s coming from. |
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Like Water for Chocolate (1992) Can’t believe we hadn’t seen this movie before; glad we finally caught up with it. An awesomely good food flick, with love and magical realism thrown in. Yes, I enjoyed the love story, the Mexican locale, the little bit of Pancho Villa-era history presented, and the strong characters of the female leads, but mainly I loved watching Lumi Carvazos at work in the kitchen! |
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Chloe (2009) After watching Chloe, I wondered what it was about. Oh, I understood the story — wife thinks husband is cheating, hires prostitute to seduce him, gets her rocks off listening to the prostitute’s descriptions of sex with husband, has one off with the prostitute herself, discovers husband didn’t cheat & prostitute lied, finds prostitute in bed with her son, yadda yadda — but what was it about? The human condition? Love? The vagaries of fate? An indictment of the sex trade? The travails of vain women who’ve begun to lose their looks? Was it just a simple mystery? Or was the whole production really just an excuse to show a hot lesbian scene? After reflection — and really, I gave the director and producer every benefit of the doubt I could muster — I think it was the latter. |
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Secondhand Lions (2003) Definitely one to watch with the kids or grandkids: wholesome family fare. One part Grumpy Old Men (minus the cussing), one part Up. The kid wasn’t that great, but the old grumps were a lot of fun, and the livestock? Killer. But the most fun of all was Michael Caine’s Cockney accent, which kept breaking through his imitation American one. |