The BEST Potter movie. Some very nice moments, stunning scenery, great visuals.
[He kept it short, knowing I am not a Potter Person.]
DadReaction: Harry Potter #6
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Monthly Archives: July 2009
DadReaction: The Ugly Truth
Alternate title: Cinematic Horror.
Good. God. Worst. Movie. Of. The. Year. Perhaps the Decade.
Added treat. Sitting in front of some…well, clone of the neanderthal in the movie who thought the film was high-larious. Bellowing guffaws at (all AND ONLY) the grossest parts. And, oh, there are many.
At one moment I thought: this is the kind of movie you hope your mother doesn’t know you were at.
At one point, Katherine asks Gerald why he loves her–for a second, I thought he was going to say “Because the script makes me!” NO other reason.
DadReaction: The Proposal
Alternate title: Movie Moan.
Spectacularly funny beginning. In a way, they did to The Devil Wears Prada what His Girl Friday did to the Front page–switched the gender of the assistant/reporter. Bullock v. good here, kid adequate. But if you can imagine Streep and Hathaway becoming lovers in Prada–go ahead, try it. No really, are you trying? Okay, now you’ve got some idea of what goes spectacularly wrong with this flick. The romance is EMBARASSINGLY UNBELIEVABLE. Wow. CANNOT express how unbelievable. Also, the dad is simply from some other, horrible movie about a father who drives his son to suicide. Just warps the comedy. (It’s like the public humiliation of the girl in Much Ado About Nothing–you never get back to the lightness.)
What’s truly disappointing about all this is that Bullock and what’s his name–the Boy–have pretty good comic timing: verbal and physical. They step on each other’s words and look awkward when they’re pretending to be cuddly very well. Also, so much of the humor is good, like the beginning set-up. But then, just as it goes for simple romance, it goes for simple laughs. Compare the super set-up of the dog/eagle joke with the non-set-up of the
nude collision joke. (When’s the last time you took a shower without knowing where the towel was? First grade?)
I’m really sick of movies that take hyper-competent women, send them to somewhere with–I don’t know–TREES, and assume they will become completely helpless. I mean, they won’t even be able to carry a suitcase. PLUS: she’s supposed to be Canadian. Just who in Canada can be surprised at living conditions in Alaska?
You keep thinking of different ways the romance could have gone–including nowhere, with some other development of these two: what’s wrong with mutual respect? Is romance the ONLY way we grow? Why not have the kid have an older brother that she falls for? Or–geez–why not have her take on the dad? She eats guys like him for breakfast in her job–she can’t manage it in Sitka?
A Lil Romance for This Boring Sunday Afternoon
Well it’s getting late, we should stay here
But you’re on the phone, miles away
And though I know it’s not the same
We can fall asleep, dream of ways
But you’re already in my heart
I said you’re already in my heart
And I knew right from the start
That you’re already in my heart
-from Earlimart “For the Birds”
I really love this album. (I talked about it here.)
Big Screen: MOON
First of all, god I am so glad space movies are back. With Sunshine a couple years ago and now Moon, things are looking up for space movie lovers like me.
That said, this is so different than most space movies, being that there is basically one dude in this movie. No big crew of lonely astronauts and their inevitable small-living-space conflicts. No scary aliens. Just Sam Rockwell at his (insane, quirky, bizarre, disturbed) best.
Really unique story. Really nicely filmed. Really creepy, in the best (and not too scary) way.
Big Screen: Away We Go
Perfect soundtrack by Alexi Murdoch, some of which I’d heard before but hadn’t listened to in ages. Just fit the movie perfectly.
A movie about a happy relationship through and through = so rare these days! Instead of a couple in trouble, this is a couple looking for “home”. Trying to find that place they belong. Wandering together, looking for the place they both fit. Visiting friends, visiting family, seeing what they have, and what they don’t. Trying it all on.
Quite lovely. (And both the leads are so NOT at all what they have been before. Really unexpectedly good performances.)
Big Screen: State of Play
This was actually a well-plotted, well-acted, intelligently written thriller and a really good movie…up until about 10 minutes from the end when it went just one twist too far and basically EVERYTHING falls apart from that moment on. And I mean EVERYTHING. If you go home and think about what that moment CHANGES, you get about 17,000 strands going off in the wrong direction that just don’t even make sense anymore.
At the exact moment it happened, P. and I looked over at each other, and I said “Sigh” and he made the universal hand motion for “DOWNHILL” and the movie just threw away all the good it had been up to that point.
If you pretend those 10 minutes didn’t happen: some really tight performances by Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck, and Helen Mirren was great, and Rachel McAdams really made her part sing, and Jason Bateman has really made himself a new career out of playing slimeballs so well (what with this and with Juno) and there was some nice cinematography and wow Jeff Daniels looks HORRIBLE, WTF happened to him. And then BAM. 10 minutes of suckage that destroys all the fine plotting of the previous two hours.
Ah well. Happens to the best of us, doesn’t it. I know my plotting falls apart pretty much every time I try. (I’m talking Life there, not Movies.)
Big Screen: Terminator: Salvation
So…I guess I just had really, really low expectations because honestly I can’t really figure out why people are bitching and moaning so much about this movie. Hello, it was the FOURTH installment in an ACTION SERIES. How fucking good did you expect it to be?
I myself expected it to be horrible…and instead found it quite watchable. There was a sad lack of romance or even, at least, sex (hello, you are an action movie, where’s the mack session?). And there was one car chase type sequence that went on way way waaaay too long. (But of course most of the people bitching about the flick didn’t seem to mind that!)
But otherwise, I thought it was fine for what it was: the fourth installment in an action series, that wasn’t ever that great to begin with! I liked Moon Bloodgood or whatever her name is, and yeah the half terminator dude was quite nice to look at, considering Christian Bale was a bit wooden.
And really, probably the main reason I enjoyed it was I thought it raised some interesting, and VERY Battlestar Galactica-like, questions about “man or machine” and what defines a person.
Big Screen: Star Trek
I’m so not a Trekkie, I’ve probably seen maybe 10 episodes total? But I’ve seen just enough to be able to tell what a great job they did with the casting of this flick. The actors were able to give performances that were just reminiscent enough of the actors of the original as to make it believable that this was them in their younger days.
Enjoyed a lot of the humorous touches. Didn’t take itself too seriously. Some cool effects. Pretty good job, if you ask me. But again, not enough of a Trekkie to have taken issue with it anyway! 🙂
Big Screen: Gigantic
A quirky little indie flick that was quite enjoyable but ultimately suffers from a lack of plot. Nice nuanced performances by Paul Dano (who played the brother who rarely talked in Little Miss Sunshine) and Zooey Deschanel. But ultimately one of those movies that’s a bio piece on a quirky dude but nothing much happens or if it does, it doesn’t seem to lead to anything. Also there’s a weird little Fight Club thing happening in the background that never ultimately amounts to much (or is even explained).
So while I liked it…I also thought it lacked that “story” or momentum that would have brought it to a higher level.
p.s. I did think John Goodman was a bit over the top. For a quiet, slowly evolving movie to have this big ole loud dude on screen? He always took me a bit out of the “action”. Not that it was “action” per se.