If you’re looking for 30 minutes of amusement but have two hours to spend, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story may be just the movie for you. I’d give it the arguably-generous rating of 6/10 only because when Walk Hard is on, it can be brilliant. An early Sun Records parody sticks out in particular, but it’s a high bar the movie only reaches a few more times over its, uh, 120 minutes.
I always want to hedge a bit when writing such things, but Sicko may very well be my favorite movie by Michael Moore. It’s well written and, with the exception of a trip taking Ground Zero workers to Gitmo, not prone the sensationalism that can sometimes accompany Moore’s work.
While the fact-checking behind this movie is pretty solid—Moore has seemingly made a point of that since Bowling for Columbine was shot full of holes—you can find a lot of sources making some very legitimate complaints about the movie, particularly its tendency to gloss over some of the less spiffy sides of socialized systems. But focusing on such criticisms misses the larger point, as similar criticisms could easily be leveled against many healthcare institutions in the United States. The question should be would we as a country, as a whole, be better off with a nationalized system? Sicko makes a fairly convincing argument that the answer would be “yes.”
By a weird coincidence, Robin and Andy happened to watch Sicko the same evening Lisa and I watched it for the first time. While Andy seemed to think Moore made a good case for socialized medicine, he said felt the chance of such a system being instituted in the United States was unlikely. I’m not so sure. While immediate or even short-term change on the federal level does seem unlikely, there does seem to be the opportunity for change on state and local levels, as initiatives in San Francisco (more background) and Massachusetts have shown. Granted, those initiatives are very minor efforts compared to a national system (and, especially in the case of Massachusetts, can still be prone to the problems highlighted in Sicko), but they’re steps in the right direction, and if 25 years from now we had a de facto national health care system, that would probably put us in a better place than where we are now.
Anyway, to get back to the movie itself, not only do I recommend it, but I’ve bought a copy to foist upon unsuspecting friends and coworkers. 9/10.
As I mentioned a few days ago, Lisa and I caught No Country For Old Men with Robin and Andy back in Madison, and it was well worth the trip to the theater. I’m not sure I’d be able to pick my favorite Coen Brothers movie (how could I?), but if I were to make the effort it would definitely have to be in the running. The acting and cinematography were great, but the sound production was what really set this movie apart. This may be the best sounding movie I’ve ever experienced, and not in the stereotypical “holy crap, did you hear that car blow up” way, either. This is a movie where socks on pavement, the hollow echo of a pressurized air canister being gently set on the ground, or the unscrewing of a light bulb (seriously) are enough to make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck, and, maybe, momentarily stop breathing.
The story is great. I’m not much of a fiction reader, but I may have to pick up the book by Cormak McCarthy. The movie is very, very dark, possibly the Coen brothers’ darkest, even when compared to Fargo or Miller’s Crossing. While there are characters that have a lot of humanity to them, they’re weak and unable (or unwilling) to fight the world around them, and grow even weaker as the plot progresses. By the end, not only has good not gained any ground, it’s actively on the retreat.
Maybe the best way to sum up the movie is to mention Lisa’s reaction–she had her eyes closed for much of the movie, and not out of boredom. It’s not a fun movie to watch, per se, but it is fascinating and wonderfully executed, and I’d definitely catch it again. 8/10.
Another contender for the Coen Brother’s darkest film would have to be their debut, Blood Simple. (It would lose, though, as humanity does manage to hold some ground.) While No Country For Old Men makes you cringe, Blood Simple relishes the opportunity to make you squirm. It’s a brilliantly painful movie, a 1980s interpretation of film noir, that at times can be exceedingly difficult to watch. Full of gullible or not-too-bright people making one exceedingly bad decision after another, the movie escalates from the bad to the horrific, with characters meeting gruesome fates along the way. As with No Country, the acting is great, and sound plays a major role in the movie (although not advancing the plot as No Country does).
It’s amazing to me this is the Cohen Brother’s first film. It is as mature and detailed as anything else they’ve ever made. Equally amazing is that it’s Frances McDormand’s first film, too. She’s fantastic in it. Or that Dan Hedaya can really act. Or that this movie was made by the same people who would go on to make The Big Lebowski of all movies… I mean, holy crap, talk about range. How the same people can make two such exceedingly different types of films is beyond me, but I’m grateful that they can.
I wouldn’t want to watch it again, but still have to highly recommend Blood Simple. (Part of me wants to give this a nine, but for some reason I can’t.) 8/10.
Shaun of the Dead is funny, but in the end the movie gives itself too much credit. Oooh, people with crappy customer service jobs are like zombies. Zombies, get it!? Ha ha. Clever, but not that clever. 6/10.
Its ending didn’t quite match the great ride leading up to it, but overall Thank You For Smoking was a hilarious and enjoyable film. Aaron Eckhart was perfect for the role of Nick Taylor, who summed up his philosophy of life while helping his son with a speech assignment: “That’s the beauty of argument, if you argue correctly, you’re never wrong.”
I can’t wait to see Jason Reitman’s next movie. 8/10.
Air Force One is, without a doubt, one of the most offensively stupid movies ever made. It spends the bulk of its two hours trying to insult its viewers’ intelligence in every way possible, be it by ridiculous storyline, horrible special effects or catastrophically bad acting. Worse, the bad acting comes from some truly talented actors one would think would know better, namely Harrison Ford, Glenn Close, Gary Oldman, and William H. Macy. My guess is there must have been a lot of money involved. A lot of money.
In retrospect, Childstar was exceedingly gracious in its spoof of this film. Air Force One deserved a much more brutal handling. Seriously, I can’t believe how fucking bad a movie it is. 1/10.
I’ve now seen three films by Wolfgang Petersen. One, Das Boot, was a fantastic work of art. The other two, Poseidon and the piece of shit referenced above, would have been better off aborted than forced upon an unsuspecting public. I have The Perfect Storm sitting in my Netflix queue, but now eye it with an unusual amount of suspicion. I don’t know how it could be any worse than Air Force One, but am not sure I want to risk it.
There are films where complexity adds to a storyline, and cases where complexity is there to cover up the fact the main story doesn’t have much meat. Primer, the exceedingly complex $7000 film about the accidental invention of a time machine, doesn’t really fit neatly into either category; instead, one could argue the complexity is story. It’s impressive that the film could be put together on such a budget, but as far as whether it’s any good or not, well, I don’t know. I’ve watched it twice, and the most I can say right now is that it was… interesting.
No rating on this one for now.
For some reason, this movie seemed best reviewed in list format:
I’ll give this movie 7/10. I won’t remember it because of the film itself, but because it was the last movie Lisa and I saw at the dearly missed Har Mar Theater.
I have to admit to being a bit confused as to why A History of Violence was as well-received as it was. It’s not a bad film, but it’s not a particularly good one, either. The acting was kind of tepid, and it was chock full of cliches: Good natured, honest working folk in small town America–is there a dark underside? Of course there is! On top of that, the movie, set in Indiana, doesn’t make the slightest effort to hide the fact it was actually filmed in Canada. Hello, road stripes, people!
Final verdict: It’s good it’s out on video. That way you don’t have spend real money on it. 6/10.
While The Da Vinci Code is by no means the unmitigated disaster some have portrayed it to be, it’s by no means good, and in that sense it didn’t seem that odd that the guy sitting next to Lisa and I fell asleep about a third of the way through the movie. All the actors seemed to be on sedatives–especially Audrey Tautou, who’s character had practically no response to learning she was related to Jesus–and in the end it kind of felt like we’d just watched an action movie that had forgotten to include the action. Robert Langdon’s cop-out speech near the end of the movie was annoying, too, especially since it was worded broadly enough to basically endorse the behavior of the bad guys in the story, not to mention those taking part in religious practices ranging from ritualized paganistic sex to, oh, human sacrifice.
If the book is even half this bad, I don’t want anything to do with it. 5/10.
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