A Year of Movies #8: Paranormal Activity

This movie has all the makings of this decade's Blair Witch Project. It was made on the cheap ($15,000), shot by the actors themselves,it had a great marketing push behind it, and it's a really decent scary movie when you get down to it.

The movie follows a couple who are being haunted by what they think of as a ghost. Pretty soon they realize that it is a demon...something much more sinister. They carry a camera around during the day and then set it on a tripod at night to see what happens while they sleep.

Without giving anything away, you can guess that the presence of the "entity" gets dramatically stronger as the movie progresses. What is really amazing is to watch this movie and try to figure out how they shot some of the scenes. Most of the movie is shot in long takes where the camera never cuts angles. Events that occur are seen from one point-of-view as the camera doesn't move while things are "happening".

That is the biggest deviation between this movie and the Blair Witch Project. The technology is better than it was in the late 1990's so the filmmakers can do some pretty crazy stuff.

I can't say anymore without really blowing it so I am going to stop now. If you like good scary movies then check this movie out. It is pretty creepy, and will stay with you for days after you watch it.

A Year of Movies #7: The Box

Shhh! Can you hear that? That is the death rattle of director Richard Kelly's filmmaking career. Poor thing. It started off promisingly, but after Donnie Darko it just went down the toilet.

I should say that Kelly's third film The Box is not nearly as bad as his second film Southland Tales. That movie was complete garbage. The best line in that movie was by The Rock and it was equal parts bad, terrible, and absurdly awesome "I'm a pimp...And pimps don't die." Tell that to Gary Oldman's in True Romance.

The Box, Kelly's third film, is based on a Richard Matheson short story so you expect it to be somewhat interesting. Matheson being the predecessor to Stephen King. The movie itself starts off as a pretty normal film that takes place in the mid 1970's. James Marsden and Cameron Diaz are a married couple that are having some money troubles and they are hiding it from their kid. Marsden works for NASA and is expecting to be promoted soon and that will free them from financial difficulty forever.

Well, as you can assume, Marsden doesn't get the job. The family sinks deeper into debt. Then a strange man with half of his lower jaw missing knocks on the door and offers them a way out. This is where the movie gets interesting. The man presents the couple with a wooden box and a red button. He tells them that they have 24 hours to decide whether to press the button or not. If they do they will get $1 million, but someone they don't know will die.

So it's a test. Can you live with knowledge that you caused someone's death if you get $1 million for it? The family in this movie decide they can and push the button. (This really isn't a spoiler because if they didn't push the button the movie would only be 30 minutes long so the only logical thing to do to progress the story is to push it and see what happens.) Then the movie takes a weird turn. We start to learn more about how Mr. No Jaw and Marsden's character are linked and how this whole "project" of offering the box is tied to a much larger experiment.

The problem is that by the end of the movie the several story lines have mixed and jumbled to the point that it is somewhat confusing as to what exactly is going on. You get closure to the story of Marsden and Diaz, but by the end of the movie they aren't really even minor characters in this messed up Sci-Fi morality play. Sadly, by the end I didn't care what happened to them.

A Year of Movies #6: Law Abiding Citizen (A Fistful of Poo)

Well like The Final Destination there isn't much to say about this movie. It follows Gerard Butler who for reasons we learn later witnesses his family murdered in front of him. We also follow Jamie Foxx who is a rising star in the D.A.'s office and when the trial of the two men who murdered Butler's family comes across Foxx's desk he does what every attorney does... he makes a deal with one to convict the other.

This clearly won't sit well with Butler as he wants to see both men go to jail for their crimes. It doesn't help that Foxx makes a deal with the guy that committed the actual murders, while the man convicted was just a "lookout".

Fast forward 10 years and Foxx is now the D.A. and Butler is now ready to see his master plan come to fruition. I won't tell you what he does, but if you've seen the trailer you know that it involves a lot of killing and blowing up of things.

Overall this movie was competently directed, but that is about all I can say. I didn't go into this thinking I was watching something spectacular, I just like to watch every movie I can. For me it's the experience of watching movies. It also helps to see movies that don't work to learn what does work.

This movie was a typical hollywood affair. Foxx and Butler clearly did it for a paycheck although the difference between them is that Foxx has actually made a movie that was worth watching more than once, Butler hasn't. He's actually not a bad actor, he just chooses movie roles that utilize his brawn over all else and that subsequently keeps him one step ahead of the WWC wrestler John Cena in the action movie genre.

Noir Film Schedule for March

Since I am getting a late start on this we are going to make things a little more laid back this month. This will help you guys get into the feel of watching a movie each week, and help me get into the groove of posting and keeping tabs on this stuff.

That said, here is the schedule for this month's marathon:

March 7: Sunset Blvd.
March 14: Double Indemnity
March 21: Strangers on a Train
March 28: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

You may notice that these movies are more along the lines of Noir than they are detective stories. That is because I decided that there was enough great material to make an extended detective marathon that will come out in the summer. All of the movies that I have listed are readily available at any Blockbuster worth it's salt, or Netflix if you are one of those cool people who have an account.

If there are any questions just post a comment and I will get to them quickly.

And the first movie marathon is........

Noir Stories!

Thanks to those who voted. I will post the schedule for the movies by tonight so that we can get these underway.

A Year of Movies #5: Avatar (or a $150 million, 2.5 hour CGI remake of Dances with Wolves)

I will say from the start that I liked Avatar. The Title of this post boils down the movie to its essence, but it is still a fun film. That said, the main draw to this movie is the CGI. I had the fortune to see this movie in 3D and it was even more spectacular.

James Cameron is not known for his small indie budget films and this one certainly doesn't disappoint. Within the first five minutes he probably spends the $4million budget of "The Hurt Locker" just on an animator to make the grass flow naturally. Ten years in the making though, I wouldn't expect much less.

The film follows a paraplegic Marine who just happens to have a twin brother that was accidentally killed a week before he was to fly off to Pandora to help a group of scientists convince the native people of that planet to abandon their way of life so that our country can wreak havoc over the land and mine the planet for a futuristic fuel source.

The problem begins when Jake Sully, the wounded Marine, finds a new life in his avatar (remotely controlled body that looks like the native people) and begins to buck the system, and slowly becomes more of a Na'vi than human. That sounds strangely similar to the plot of "Dances with Wolves" don't you think?

Without spoiling anything the whole disagreement between the native Pandorans, the Na'vi, and the not-so-welcome invaders who wish to rape the planet of it's resources for their own profit, "Us", comes to a head in a battle royale that stretches the limits of what CGI can produce.

This movie is a technical marvel. It is glorious to look at, but that is about where it ends. It is a fund movie and the performances are strong, but the characters are a little too polarizing. The bad guy is hardcore evil. He is so bloodthirsty he probably substitutes his bloody marys with actual blood instead of tomato juice. The "corporate" character is a greedy slimy little worm who has an equally non-existent backbone. Siqourney Weever is the typical tree hugging scientist that will lay down in front of a bulldozer to stop the destruction of a natural habitat. The problem being that the bull dozer has now issue with running over her patchouli scented butt.

All that to say that the only person who really goes through any sort of change in the film is the main character. Everyone else pretty much stays the same throughout, and that is fine really because we are ultimately watching a film about how a man finds redemption in a new world, and how he becomes "complete" again.

The only other issue I take up against Avatar is the preachiness that Cameron puts in the subtext of this movie. The fact that Jake's body is neglected because he spends more and more time in the Avatar machine is a good example. It is pretty obvious and while it doesn't take you out of the movie experience, it is (to me) needless exposition on Cameron's opinion of what online gamers do to themselves all for the sake of their "other world experience".

Being a recovering World of Warcraft addict I can see what he is saying, but is this film about MMOs and the general lack of exercise that our country gets or is it about a re-imagining of history where this time the native americans kill the settlers before they can take their land and spread their "white man diseases"?

Overall this movie was a lot of fun to watch...once or twice. I really don't see this movie as being one that I would watch over and over like "Raiders of the Lost Ark" or even Cameron's earlier work "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" when TNT has an all day marathon of it.

A Year of Movies #4: Julie & Julia

There isn't really a lot to say about this movie. It was made by Nora Ephron who directed movies like "Sleepless in Seattle" and "You've Got Mail" so you should have a good idea of what to expect from the outset. The movie follows Julia Child as she begins her life as one of the foremost experts of French cuisine. It follows her as she starts to learn about cooking as well as the French culture and then, with the help of a few friends, begins to write the cookbook that is one of the best selling cookbooks ever.

The Julie in the title is Julie Powell. She lives in Queens, NYC and in 2002 decides to start a blog that will document her quest to cook every recipe in Julia Child's cookbook (over 500 of them) in one year. The obvious happens with this half of the story: the husband who initially supports the project begins to feel neglected by his wife because of it, they fight, they get back together, all is love.

There are very few "twists" in this movie for obvious reasons, but there are a few things at the end of the movie that are atypical for this type of film. Overall it is a cute film, but it has about as much cinematic relevance as the rest of Nora Ephron's film credits will show.

It is, however, a great movie to watch with your wife if she is tired of watching movies like The Seven Samurai or Star Wars with you.

A Year of Movies #3: The Hurt Locker

It is always nice to see a director like Kathryn Bigelow (director of such commercial garbage as K-19: The Widow Maker, and Point Break) make a little indie film, and completely blow the doors off a movie like Avatar. Her film was made on a small budget, especially compared to the budget of Avatar, and she managed to make a movie that was as thrilling and important to the cinematic experience as any modern war film I have seen in years.

The film centers around a squad of soldiers in Iraq that are assigned to disarming bombs. The film packs a lot of action into the 2 hour running time, but the primary focus of the film is the type of person that it takes to risk their life day after day to disarm bombs. as you might have guessed, there is one soldier in particular that the film focuses on, and similar to Patrick Swayze's role in Point Break, William James is a bit of a cowboy. He bucks the system and really pushes the limits of how much a soldier can be an individual in an organization that stresses teamwork. This starts to wear on his team, and you start to see tensions flare.

What struck me most about this movie is that Bigelow, being a woman, perfectly captures a very masculine tone that is just under the surface of every man on earth. She captures the moments of guys teasing each other, somewhat harshly but all in good fun, that without any forewarning turns into a very tense, but quiet battle of two people that have very different ideas of what teamwork is. Every guy has been there. They are teasing each other and suddenly one person takes it a little too far and what was just boys being rough turns into an all out fight.

The other point that Bigelow makes that I appreciated was that in her film not every citizen in Iraq was a terrorist in waiting. In Peter Berg's 2007 movie "The Kingdom" every person was secretly a terrorist waiting to strike. In Bigelow's film you had the soldiers looking at everyone suspiciously, especially the ones standing around watching as the soldiers disarmed bombs, but she didn't have scenes of random people going home and opening up a trunk to reveal a cache of rocket launchers and C4. The people that were terrorists were labeled as such from the first second of their screen time and everyone else, for the audience at least, was just a citizen that had the bad luck of being born in that country at this time.

All told, this movie is intense. There are gun fights and explosions, and yes several people die, but what the movie is really about is what does it take to be the type of soldier that disarms bombs every day. How does that person deal with waking up every day and preparing themselves to die? And ultimately, once you have lived that life, can you go back to a life where the highlight may be going to Kroger to pick up milk for the family?

Those are some tough questions.

A Year of Movies #2: The FINAL Final Destination...dear God please let it be the last...

The Final Destination...

Okay, so you know the plot. Some person gets a glimpse of a terrible accident before it happens, and he and some others avoid death only for it to find intricate ways to kill them. It is essentially a gore filled R-rated version of the Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons we saw as kids. Only when Wile E. Coyote gets shot off on an Acme rocket and slams into a wall, in this movie the person explodes in a bloody mess.... Just going to let that sink in for a minute.

That said, this is the 4th movie in the franchise and it is by far the worst. The elaborate Rube Goldberg contraptions that kill everyone are so horribly designed that they might as well have Zeus ride down from the skies and zap everyone dead. The acting is also, understandably, terrible.

The sad thing is that the first film in this series was really creepy. Mostly because the "bad guy" that was after the survivors of an airplane crash wasn't a monster like Freddy Kreuger or Jason, it was death itself. The very act of the "killer" being a personification of death made it quite creepy. You can't bargain from death. You can't run from death. You can cheat death (as these movies show), but only for a while. And usually when death finds you, the manner in which you die this time is far worse than it would have been had you not cheated it the first time. The point is, death can't be stopped. That alone gave the first movie this eerie feeling. Not IF these people would die, but WHEN and HOW. By the third film, and definitely with the last, they essentially turned it into a, usually less than 90 minute, movie that sets people up to be killed off one by one in interesting ways.

Sadly, the last film didn't even get that right. There are some movies that I watch just to see how awful they can be, this ranks up there with some of the best of the worst. Even with that I can't say watch it. The reason you watch bad movies is to make fun of them ala Mystery Science Theater 3000, but when a movie is this bad you can't even make fun of it.

A Year of Movies #1: Up in the Air...

Ryan Bingham is a corporate downsizing expert whose cherished life on the road is threatened just as he is on the cusp of reaching ten million frequent flyer miles and just after he's met the frequent-traveler woman of his dreams.

That is the synopsis according to imdb.com. It's a pretty accurate one too. I will tell you up front that Up in the Air is not nearly as fresh as the marketing leads you to believe. It is, however, one of the best performances of George Clooney's career. He plays the lead part with a quiet tone that you usually don't see from him. He still has the swagger of someone who is happy with their life, but none of the arrogance that Danny Ocean or Jack Foley display.

I say that this movie isn't anything fresh because it is a plot that you have seen before. A person (man or woman) who makes no time for love puts all they have into work. Work becomes their lover. Then somewhere along the way they meet someone who challenges that belief system and slowly but surely they begin to take a detour from their "old" way of life and bravely journey into a new era. Then near the end one of two things happens: they live happily ever after or they get their heart stomped flatter than a pancake. The latter of the two options is usually resolved by the person taking what they have learned from the other (now very disliked) person applies it to their lives. I won't tell you which side Up in the Air falls on, but it really doesn't matter.

The thing to watch in this movie are the performances. The three main characters (Clooney, Vera Farmiga as the pretty woman who is just as dedicated to work as Clooney, and newcomer Anna Kendrick as the protege to Clooney who challenges his way of life) all give great performances. They come at the roles in a very natural way that feels real as opposed to how some actors try to just emote the right way. Clooney though is very good at that kind of subtle introspection that makes you think he is really working over something in his mind. Just watch Ocean's Eleven and you'll know what I mean.

The other notable aspect of this movie is the photography. It was done in a very natural, if slightly unsaturated way that makes the movie look more like real life. Especially the way the director Jason Reitman takes the camera from fluid moves when Clooney's life is focused to the Soderbergh style of handheld shooting near the end. It is all designed to inform you that there are changes on all levels going on with Clooney, and we should take note.

All said, this movie was fun to watch. It wasn't the best of last year, and in my mind certainly doesn't deserve the Oscar nod for best picture or best director, but what do I know.