Who is your favorite horror movie icon?
Freddy Krueger 53%
Michael Myers 23%
Leatherface 13%
Other 6%
Thanks for voting!!
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Friday, April 4, 2008
Review - Leatherheads
Too often movies try to amaze us with their visuals and overwhelm us with flashy special effects; George Clooney's Leatherheads is a welcome reprieve from that posturing and lack of substance. The film tells the story of Jimmy "Dodge" Connelly (Clooney), the owner of a struggling football team who manages to convince star college football player and World War I hero, Carter Rutherford (John Krasinkski) to play for his team in order to draw a crowd and stave off financial ruin. Meanwhile, Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger) is a reporter who starts out trying to discredit Rutherford and ends up caught in a bizarre little love triangle with him and Dodge.
The film's great success is its homage to classic Hollywood. Clooney has proven himself a master at recreating different periods with his past few outings. Good Night and Good Luck, especially, managed to call up the suspicion and mistrust of the 1950's and the McCarthy hearings. Leatherheads is equally successful in recreating the simplicity and style of the roaring 20s.
The beginning of the film opens with a montage of the Duluth Bulldogs and their football legacy, which consists of about thirteen fans and several players who live for the gridiron glory. One of the best things about the opening sequences is how much fun everyone is having while they're playing. It makes even non-sports fans want to grab a ball and retire to the back yard. It also makes quite the statement as the league becomes legitimized and a nazi-like commissioner is appointed who regulates the fun out of the game.
Fortunately, Clooney doesn't allow his film to be regulated at all and uses all of his star power to make it work. The film wouldn't work without the appeal of Clooney. His charm and debonairness not only exemplify his character but the entire period he has created. By far the best parts of the film are his explosive dynamics with costars Krasinski and Zellweger. Its a real credit to the film's stars that the antiquated expressions of the 1920's seem appealing rather than stiff and forced. There is a lot going on in the film but there is never any doubt that the film is all about Clooney. Clooney and class. Even the fights seem classy. One even ends in a resounding chorus of "Over There."
The film echoes the greats such as His Girl Friday and Abbot and Costello, careening from genre to genre with as much charm and dignity as Krasinski and Clooney combined. One fantastic scene begins in a speakeasy and ends with a screwball chase scene that could have easily been ripped from I Love Lucy. Ironically, the only genre that Leatherheads doesn't play to is the sports genre. There are no miraculous final goals in this film; nor are there race struggles or abusive parents. Instead, football is simply presented as a game--a means for these men to have fun. When it quits being fun for them, it quits being worth the effort. Even the final game only half-delivers what you want or expect and that half isn't given to you in glorious slow-motion and it doesn't require a superhuman feat or the overcoming of an obstacle. It's just Clooney doing what he does best--smiling his way through. He doesn't overcome anything but rather recognizes the value of what he has already had and learns to be happy with it.
Clooney's 1920s feels like the end of an era. Indeed it was, but as you watch the dissolution of the ragtag professional football league and witness the entrance of what is to become one of the most powerful institutions in America, one can't help but feel just a little whimsical remorse for the simpler times-- the class, charm, chivalry and honor. One can't help but feel regret about missing out on times when things were just what they were. A barfight was a barfight, not a court case. Football was a game, not a national obsession. And love...well, love was about love. It was about the fighting and the hurting and the banding together and despite all that, it was still just about finding somebody to spend your days with riding on a motorcycle out of sight like Dodge and Lexie. It's a bittersweet experience when the final credits roll and the lights turn on in the theater and cell phones start jangling all around you as people check to see what they have missed in the past hour and fifty seven minutes. It makes you wonder what it would be like to live in a time where, as Dodge puts it, "you're only as young as the women you feel."
The film's great success is its homage to classic Hollywood. Clooney has proven himself a master at recreating different periods with his past few outings. Good Night and Good Luck, especially, managed to call up the suspicion and mistrust of the 1950's and the McCarthy hearings. Leatherheads is equally successful in recreating the simplicity and style of the roaring 20s.
The beginning of the film opens with a montage of the Duluth Bulldogs and their football legacy, which consists of about thirteen fans and several players who live for the gridiron glory. One of the best things about the opening sequences is how much fun everyone is having while they're playing. It makes even non-sports fans want to grab a ball and retire to the back yard. It also makes quite the statement as the league becomes legitimized and a nazi-like commissioner is appointed who regulates the fun out of the game.
Fortunately, Clooney doesn't allow his film to be regulated at all and uses all of his star power to make it work. The film wouldn't work without the appeal of Clooney. His charm and debonairness not only exemplify his character but the entire period he has created. By far the best parts of the film are his explosive dynamics with costars Krasinski and Zellweger. Its a real credit to the film's stars that the antiquated expressions of the 1920's seem appealing rather than stiff and forced. There is a lot going on in the film but there is never any doubt that the film is all about Clooney. Clooney and class. Even the fights seem classy. One even ends in a resounding chorus of "Over There."
The film echoes the greats such as His Girl Friday and Abbot and Costello, careening from genre to genre with as much charm and dignity as Krasinski and Clooney combined. One fantastic scene begins in a speakeasy and ends with a screwball chase scene that could have easily been ripped from I Love Lucy. Ironically, the only genre that Leatherheads doesn't play to is the sports genre. There are no miraculous final goals in this film; nor are there race struggles or abusive parents. Instead, football is simply presented as a game--a means for these men to have fun. When it quits being fun for them, it quits being worth the effort. Even the final game only half-delivers what you want or expect and that half isn't given to you in glorious slow-motion and it doesn't require a superhuman feat or the overcoming of an obstacle. It's just Clooney doing what he does best--smiling his way through. He doesn't overcome anything but rather recognizes the value of what he has already had and learns to be happy with it.
Clooney's 1920s feels like the end of an era. Indeed it was, but as you watch the dissolution of the ragtag professional football league and witness the entrance of what is to become one of the most powerful institutions in America, one can't help but feel just a little whimsical remorse for the simpler times-- the class, charm, chivalry and honor. One can't help but feel regret about missing out on times when things were just what they were. A barfight was a barfight, not a court case. Football was a game, not a national obsession. And love...well, love was about love. It was about the fighting and the hurting and the banding together and despite all that, it was still just about finding somebody to spend your days with riding on a motorcycle out of sight like Dodge and Lexie. It's a bittersweet experience when the final credits roll and the lights turn on in the theater and cell phones start jangling all around you as people check to see what they have missed in the past hour and fifty seven minutes. It makes you wonder what it would be like to live in a time where, as Dodge puts it, "you're only as young as the women you feel."
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Review - Sweeney Todd
Every once in a while a movie comes along that is clearly well-made, features great talent and yet fails to entertain. Sweeney Todd was one of those movies.
The story follows a barber who returns to London from exile to find that his wife has died and his daughter taken as a ward by the evil Judge Turpin (played by the ever-amazing Alan Rickman). He sets about murdering the immoral in the city while his partner in crime and lover/friend, Mrs. Lovett bakes their bodies into meat pies and sells them in her pie shop. It is a a very macabre, certainly unusual plot but it all seems just a little bit too familiar.
A lame bastardization of Sondheim's musical, Sweeney Todd feels more or less like a vanity project for Depp, Burton and Bonham-Carter. It is beautiful and lavishly shot with a dark, and foreboding mise-en-scene (Burton's specialty). Even Depp and Bonham Carter's singing talents are passable. However, the movie feels like it simply tries way too hard and it never manages to ensnare its audience. It is much more worthwhile as a filmmaker's experiment than as a story. It just feels a little bit too much like watching a family reunion of all of Burton's characters. Halfway through the movie, I found myself wondering where Edward's scissorhands were. There is not really anything particularly wrong with Sweeney Todd, it's simply fails to make an imprint. Looking crazy isn't enough to sell movies anymore...
The story follows a barber who returns to London from exile to find that his wife has died and his daughter taken as a ward by the evil Judge Turpin (played by the ever-amazing Alan Rickman). He sets about murdering the immoral in the city while his partner in crime and lover/friend, Mrs. Lovett bakes their bodies into meat pies and sells them in her pie shop. It is a a very macabre, certainly unusual plot but it all seems just a little bit too familiar.
A lame bastardization of Sondheim's musical, Sweeney Todd feels more or less like a vanity project for Depp, Burton and Bonham-Carter. It is beautiful and lavishly shot with a dark, and foreboding mise-en-scene (Burton's specialty). Even Depp and Bonham Carter's singing talents are passable. However, the movie feels like it simply tries way too hard and it never manages to ensnare its audience. It is much more worthwhile as a filmmaker's experiment than as a story. It just feels a little bit too much like watching a family reunion of all of Burton's characters. Halfway through the movie, I found myself wondering where Edward's scissorhands were. There is not really anything particularly wrong with Sweeney Todd, it's simply fails to make an imprint. Looking crazy isn't enough to sell movies anymore...
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Review - Awake
Joby Harold's Awake does anything but live up to its name. In reality, it is a yawn-inducing exercise showing what happens when you make a movie with a script that doesn't make any sense. I could attempt to analyze the performances or the film's construction but when a plot is this paper-thin and nonsensical those kind of things don't really matter but, just for curiosity's sake, the performances were terrible and the film itself was poorly made.
The premise behind the movie is that Clay Beresford (Hayden Christensen) is suffering anesthetic awareness, meaning that he has failed to fall asleep properly during surgery and is therefore, lying awake although paralyzed as his surgeons cut into him. This alone would make for a fascinating story and has both in film and television, most notably on Nip/Tuck. However, Harold sacrifices the inherent fear of such a problem by having Clay crawl out of his own body and begin a journey through his past in which he discovers that his new wife (Jessica Alba) and his doctor (Terrence Howard) have plotted to kill him in order to use his vast inheritance to pay off their medical malpractice suits.
The rest of the movie consists of Clay walking around the hospital, utterly impotent and talking to anybody who can't listen to him...because he's not really there. Finally, his mother, after seeing two pieces of mail with different names on them in his wife's bag somehow miraculously deduces exactly what must have happened and kills herself, leaving another potential donor heart that can be used to save Clay after they sabotaged the first.
There is a quick coda in which disembodied mother and son talk to each other about repressed memories of murder and child abuse, heretofore unmentioned. Then the film ends with a voice over by the doctor who tried to kill Clay in which he announces that the only thing that matters is that "He...is...awake." (direct quote from the subtitles).
The only thing that really mattered to me at that point was that this movie was over. The really terrible thing was that the fact that he was "awake" had nothing to do with the plot of the movie. This film could have happened just as easily if he had been properly anesthetized and probably would have benefited from the restrictions that would have placed on Christensen's whining, unintentionally comical voice overs.
The premise behind the movie is that Clay Beresford (Hayden Christensen) is suffering anesthetic awareness, meaning that he has failed to fall asleep properly during surgery and is therefore, lying awake although paralyzed as his surgeons cut into him. This alone would make for a fascinating story and has both in film and television, most notably on Nip/Tuck. However, Harold sacrifices the inherent fear of such a problem by having Clay crawl out of his own body and begin a journey through his past in which he discovers that his new wife (Jessica Alba) and his doctor (Terrence Howard) have plotted to kill him in order to use his vast inheritance to pay off their medical malpractice suits.
The rest of the movie consists of Clay walking around the hospital, utterly impotent and talking to anybody who can't listen to him...because he's not really there. Finally, his mother, after seeing two pieces of mail with different names on them in his wife's bag somehow miraculously deduces exactly what must have happened and kills herself, leaving another potential donor heart that can be used to save Clay after they sabotaged the first.
There is a quick coda in which disembodied mother and son talk to each other about repressed memories of murder and child abuse, heretofore unmentioned. Then the film ends with a voice over by the doctor who tried to kill Clay in which he announces that the only thing that matters is that "He...is...awake." (direct quote from the subtitles).
The only thing that really mattered to me at that point was that this movie was over. The really terrible thing was that the fact that he was "awake" had nothing to do with the plot of the movie. This film could have happened just as easily if he had been properly anesthetized and probably would have benefited from the restrictions that would have placed on Christensen's whining, unintentionally comical voice overs.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Review - The 11th Hour
Leonardo Dicaprio is no Al Gore and The 11th Hour, most definitely, is not An Inconvenient Truth. The film makes one huge mistake by failing to be engaging; people aren't exactly jumping at the chance to save the Earth so you would think that, at the very least, the filmmakers behind this wannabe-relevant film would have done something besides splicing hundreds of interviews together. You know there is a problem when the most entertaining thing about your film is Stephen Hawking's electronic voice.
The film does manage to do a few things right. It features some truly inspired camerawork-- everything from devastating natural disasters to a waddling flock of penguins. Dicaprio also trots out quite an impressive list of experts to support his assertions. It is inspiring to see such a wide variety of people coming together under the banner of environmentalism. As an audience, we are treated to testimonies from physicists, Native Americans, ex-Directors of the CIA, politicians and people from just about every other walk of life. This odd assortment of personalities certainly trumps 2 hours of Al Gore's dry commentary.
The worst part is that there is a lot of potential in the film. Especially, towards the end, we begin to see some really innovative and inspiring methods of achieving environmental sustainability such as a dance club powered by kinetic energy from the movement of the people. The film offers a hopeful message, tediously explaining that the environmental revolution can happen now, with technologies already in place. However, by the time it gets around to that message, everyone has already fallen asleep.
There is also a weird hippie vibe that permeates a lot of the film. One of the final messages of the film says something along the lines of "love will save the world." This sudden reversion to love after an hour and a half of scientific statistics seems a contradiction at the very least.
Allow me to save you that hour and a half: The earth is in trouble because we are burning through it. We need a change. Now. The End.
Now, go find something else to do with the rest of your night, don't waste your time on this movie.
The film does manage to do a few things right. It features some truly inspired camerawork-- everything from devastating natural disasters to a waddling flock of penguins. Dicaprio also trots out quite an impressive list of experts to support his assertions. It is inspiring to see such a wide variety of people coming together under the banner of environmentalism. As an audience, we are treated to testimonies from physicists, Native Americans, ex-Directors of the CIA, politicians and people from just about every other walk of life. This odd assortment of personalities certainly trumps 2 hours of Al Gore's dry commentary.
The worst part is that there is a lot of potential in the film. Especially, towards the end, we begin to see some really innovative and inspiring methods of achieving environmental sustainability such as a dance club powered by kinetic energy from the movement of the people. The film offers a hopeful message, tediously explaining that the environmental revolution can happen now, with technologies already in place. However, by the time it gets around to that message, everyone has already fallen asleep.
There is also a weird hippie vibe that permeates a lot of the film. One of the final messages of the film says something along the lines of "love will save the world." This sudden reversion to love after an hour and a half of scientific statistics seems a contradiction at the very least.
Allow me to save you that hour and a half: The earth is in trouble because we are burning through it. We need a change. Now. The End.
Now, go find something else to do with the rest of your night, don't waste your time on this movie.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Feature - Top 15 Animal Sidekicks
1.) Toto from The Wizard of Oz
2.) Donkey from Shrek
3.) Sam from I am Legend
4.) Cheetah from Tarzan
5.) Wilbur from Charlotte's Web
6.) Willy from Free Willy
7.) Beethoven from Beethoven
8.) Flipper from Flipper
9.) Lassie from Lassie
10.) Abu from Aladdin
11.) The Black Stallion from The Black Stallion
12.) Frank the Pug from Men in Black
13.) Siamese cats from Lady and the Tramp
14.) Old Yeller from Old Yeller
15.) Copper and Tod from The Fox and the Hound
2.) Donkey from Shrek
3.) Sam from I am Legend
4.) Cheetah from Tarzan
5.) Wilbur from Charlotte's Web
6.) Willy from Free Willy
7.) Beethoven from Beethoven
8.) Flipper from Flipper
9.) Lassie from Lassie
10.) Abu from Aladdin
11.) The Black Stallion from The Black Stallion
12.) Frank the Pug from Men in Black
13.) Siamese cats from Lady and the Tramp
14.) Old Yeller from Old Yeller
15.) Copper and Tod from The Fox and the Hound
