Category Archives: Watchin’

Big Screen: Up in the Air

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Even though I am waaaay behind on movie reviews (which is odd considering I haven’t even seen very many this year, I’m going to tell you about last night’s flick anyway! I’ll get all caught up on Snip over my “winter break.” I’m sure you were concerned heh…

So last night I saw the new Clooney movie (I believe it’s set to come out 12/25 [per IMDB] but I have connections…)… It was a really good solid flick. My friend Steve is calling it, at this point, his #1 of the year. I don’t feel quite as strongly as him, but I did really enjoy it.

As Jason Reitman movies are (Juno, Thank You for Smoking), it’s chock full of dialogue and witty interplay. Clooney is really charming for a character with some very fucked up ideas about how to live life, and the interplay with Vera Farmiga is pretty great.

It’s quite bittersweet and the ending is either really sad or sorta hopeful depending on which members of our group you ask. We all enjoyed it. We also enjoyed that they credited someone as playing “Makeout Dave.” I plan to introduce myself as Makeout Carolyn in the future. Hahahaha.

I oddly happened to be with a group of people who mostly have not seen “The Departed”* and was really weirded out the whole movie by how different Farmiga’s face looked from her (awesome) performance in The Departed. Lo and behold, she was pregnant (or had just been pregnant?) during the filming. That must’ve been a body double in the one, fairly gratuitous, random look at her nekkidness.

*I didn’t think those people existed. Watch The Departed. It’s good!

Big Screen: Paper Heart

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An odd little half fake / half true indie piece. One of several sweet lil romances of this summer in film. I guess the fact that I knew all along (before seeing it) which bits were faked made me never really fall for some of it. If you really love the whole awkward geek thing, this may be the ultimate film for you. Jenni and I have a whole routine of us walking around with our sleeves pulled way down and our shoulders hunched and letting out just a funny giggle every once in a while…

Charlyne Yi (writer, star) was there taking questions and it was really funny. I liked her more there in her real self than the self of her that was in this film.

Funny and worth seeing, and some good tunes, and a Michael Cera performance, but ultimately I liked both 500 Days and Away We Go better. (But maybe that’s because I am looking for fantasy, and not reality, on the movie screen.)

Big Screen: Hurt Locker

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Wow. Just…WOW. If you only go to one movie this year, make it this one. (If you go to two movies, make it this one and District 9.)

Really breathtaking filming in how much it puts you right into the minds and hearts of these soldiers and into the insane tense unknown world that is this war right now. There were so many scenes where I was on the edge of my seat…and the choice NOT to explain everything, and NOT to tell you whether something that appeared dangerous really was as dangerous because they went away and never saw the resolution of it… So good.

Well-acted, well-directed. Tour de force. This is brilliant filmmaking. And some other piece of crap is going to win the Oscar for Best Picture and I’m going to keep telling you: Hurt Locker is the movie that should win and that you should be watching and talking about and watching.

If I was going to send out my Christmas packages this year (which most likely I won’t be due to lack of any income), this is the movie I would choose.

You may be a little paranoid after seeing it the first time. And the second. You may be noticing every car that’s weaving on the streets, and every passerby who looks at you and then seems to signal to someone else across the road, and every window that suddenly closes right as you walk by it…

But it’s so worth it.

[I liked it so much…I accidentally reviewed it twice! Turns out I told you about it months ago already!

Big Screen: Public Enemies

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I thought this was a good movie, but not a great one.

On the great side, Johnny Depp’s performance was brilliant. The sets, clothing, atmosphere were all well done. The dude playing the agent from Texas was great – and I loved his (kind) lie at the end. Marion Cotillard was wonderful and it was so nice to see her not looking like Edith Piaf on screen! 🙂

On the not as great side, he winds up in jail way too soon. The audience hasn’t been given enough time to know the gang, to know the politics of dealing with the other mobsters. It’s like just as the action was getting good… I thought that was a bad decision in terms of timing. A lot of the dramatic tension was lost after that. And there were a bunch of scenes that I thought felt too flat (and clearly flatter than they were intended). Not enough tension / somewhat balanced out by Depp’s bravura performance, but not entirely.

As Dad said after a re-watch of Point Break: Now there‘s a movie about bank robbers and an obsessive agent that pursues them plus a little romance –Michael Mann, take note.

Big Screen: Hump Day

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A “straight and narrow” dude and his wife are paid a visit by his wildchild former college roommate. Of course Mr. S&N finds himself seduced by the wild side (again, presumably) and the weekend turns into a crazy dare situation based on a festival of amateur porn films that others plan to enter: “we should make a gay porno together. and the reason it’ll be awesome…is because we’re not gay!”

Some of it was funny and some of it was sad; some of it felt true and some of it felt fake. Overall, I’d say there were too many disconnects that weren’t solved.

The director was there for Q&A after the flick. It was interesting to here how little scripted the movie was / sounds like her process if mostly giving the actors free rein “here is what your character is about, now what do you think he would say in this situation?”. Of course, the fact that the director referred to “Zach & Miri Make a Porno” sarcastically pissed me off (she obviously did not “get” Zach & Miri”). I guess she was reacting to being compared to Z&M and not enjoying that fact.

Z&M is a better flick in my opinion.

Big Screen: MOON

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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

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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

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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.)