“If you speak of this, you and your parents will be killed.” — Glynn Turman as Dr. Woodward in Super 8
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Bridesmaids (2011, USA) One of my buds watched Bridesmaids with his wife and hated it. I thought, apart from a few flat spots, it was pretty funny. It’s basically a guy flick turned into a chick flick, complete with fart and puke jokes … but in this case the farting and puking are carried out, with gusto, by women, and (this being a chick flick) the story centers not around a drunken weekend but a drunken weekend wedding. Kristen Wiig is new to me, and I think she did a great job. If you don’t mind a bit of bawdy, or women acting like a bunch of rowdy, slobby guys, you’ll like this movie. |
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John Rabe (2009, Germany) Based on a true story but somewhat fictionalized, this movie is about the role played by German engineer John Rabe during the Japanese Rape of Nanking, when he helped an international committee of Nanking-based expatriates set up a safe zone for civilian noncombatants, making great personal sacrifices to do so. He was credited with saving the lives of 200,000 Chinese, holding off the depredations of the Japanese at least in part because he was a Nazi Party member and thus officially an ally of the Japanese. This is a very good, not-too-romanticized movie that explores an aspect of WWII little known to Westerners, and Rabe’s story (particularly as presented in this movie, where he is depicted as a less than fervent Nazi) is an impressive one. The war scenes, special effects, and especially the actors are all excellent. I particularly liked the way the director handled language: Japanese characters speak Japanese, Chinese Chinese, Germans German, etc, with English subtitles only where necessary. |
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Super 8 (2011, USA) Spielberg has a gift for movies about kids. He captures the separate, rich, largely hidden from adults life experienced by children. That gift is on full display here. Others compare Super 8 to earlier Spielberg films like The Goonies or E.T.; I see it more as brilliant young adult fiction, on the order of The Hunger Games and Ship Breaker … the kind of story Stephen King shoots for but usually misses. The young cast is great, the story is great, the alien is great, the villains are great … and the train wreck is epic. This was so much fun I watched it twice, and will definitely add it to my DVD library. |
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Klute (1971, USA) I was blown away by this movie when it came out in the early 1970s, and since lately I’ve been including older titles in my DVD orders, thought I’d watch it again. It holds up pretty well but is dated in its Hugh Hefnerish swinging sixties approach to sex … and my God were we really so hairy back then? All the men in the bar and nightclub scenes look like porn actors! The thriller/mystery storyline I remembered as being so enthralling now looks a little tame, but Fonda and Sutherland were every bit as good as I remembered them being. In 1971 I’d have given it four stars; today I still give it a solid three. |
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Timecrimes (2007, Spain) Timecrimes is billed as a science fiction time travel movie, and you get what you pay for. I only say this because I read more than one review complaining about the fact the movie was about time travel … don’t rent the movie if you haven’t read the blurb, people! The time travel is limited in scope to approximately one hour, and at first you think the story isn’t going to deal with the traditional paradox (going back in time to kill your own grandfather), because, what the hell, how much havoc can you wreak by going forward and backward just one hour? Plenty, it turns out. There were, it seemed to me, lapses in logic, but the movie moved along well and I enjoyed it. One comment: the English dubbing, which was the default version on my DVD, is amateurish and clunky. If you can, watch it in the original Spanish with English subtitles. It’s probably a much better movie that way. |
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Page Eight (2011, UK) This is a made-for-TV British spy drama cast in the mold of John Le Carre’s George Smiley novels, concerned with betrayals at the highest levels of MI-5 and the government. I’m glad I had the chance to see it before going to see the new release of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, because it has put me in the mood for British espionage thrillers. Page Eight is excellent but subtle, with none of the traditional Hollywood flourishes (tits and exploding cars) … just a damn good story with damn good actors and direction. That’s not enough for at least one reviewer, David Rooney of the Hollywood Reporter, who says of the director, David Hare, that “he fails to take the story anyplace especially revelatory or combustible.” By which, no doubt, he means tits and exploding cars. If your mental image of a spy is Bruce Willis, you will not love this movie. If your IQ runs to three figures, you will … and yes, I mean that to sound just as snobby as it does. |
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Water for Elephants (2011, USA) “You’re a beautiful woman, you deserve a beautiful life.” Average women, as we all know, deserve average lives, and ugly women deserve a kick in the teeth … in case you can’t tell, that line pissed me off. But I won’t let one offensive line ruin the whole movie for me. Overall, I thought Water for Elephants was faithful to the novel and generally well done. Even though the director makes fitful attempts to show how cruel circuses are to animals and roustabouts, you sense that things were much much worse than depicted. As for the romance (and that’s basically what this movie is, gussied up with circus stuff), it’s not convincing. You’re watching a couple of actors pretending to fall in love with each other … it’s not believable, the chemistry isn’t there. The movie is just so-so as a result. |
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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 (2011, UK) All the previous Harry Potter movies were reasonably faithful to the books they came from, so if you’d read them you more or less knew where you were. Not this one! I’m not necessarily saying that’s a bad thing, but still, as I watched I had no idea what was going to happen next, or even what was happening right now. I kept asking myself questions: where did this come from, when did that happen, what’s the deal with this? SPOILER ALERT: I thought, for one giddy moment, the series would end in admirably hard-core fashion, when Harry realizes that in order to kill Voldemort he must himself die. REALLY NO SHIT SPOILER ALERT: And then he does die. And then … of course, kiddies … he comes back to life, and the ending, for all the spectacular fireworks, is straight out of every sappy Hollywood movie ever made, awww. You know there are going to be sequels. There’s way too much money to be made here. And if I sound cynical, that’s because movies like this have made me that way. |
Paul’s DVD Hall of Shame
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Horrible Bosses (2011, USA)
I gave up partway through. Offensively stupid, crude, and nasty, clearly produced for the Ow, My Balls! audience from Idiocracy. Why do name actors associate themselves with projects like these? Oh, right … cocaine ain’t cheap. |