2009 as it stands now

A pure joy of a film to behold that was surprisingly a bit different and deeper than I expected. The different started with the humor. "Brick" was not exactly a comedy (though it did have its bits of dry humor) and the jokes in the trailers for "The Brothers Bloom" weren't the smartest in my opinion. But when I finally saw them with their complete set-ups, they just worked and were a whole lot funnier than I expected. The performances were also more than I was prepared for. Mark Ruffalo was effortlessly charismatic in a way that I haven't seen before, Rachel Weisz took what could have been an easy caricature and added some layers and originality to it, Rinko Kikuchi was just a whole lot of fun, and Adrien Brody made a perfect damaged but beating heart for the film. The dialogue was crisp and fresh with the right balance of wimsy, sweetness, bitterness, intrigue, and play on words. And all of the location shooting was gorgeous with fun colors and scenery flying around at a rapid pace. By the time a tree fell in the background of a scene in Mexico...I was sold.

It is refreshing to watch a comedy that doesn't shift tones in the last third/fourth of the film and make a sappy statement about relationships or something of that nature. Don't get me wrong, a lot of great comedies can do that and be fine, it was just nice to watch "In the Loop" and not have someone's political opinion be hammered home at the end of the film. This is a comedy through and through and if it happens to say something about the incompetency of politics, then so be it, but it is all done with the intention first and foremost to make you laugh, and for that matter laugh really hard. Peter Capaldi is like the Shakespeare of f-bombs crafting these extremely intricate uses and spitting them out like a rapid fire machine gun. Tom Hollander is extremely funny to watch flounder in every social situation in which he is put on the spot. The rest of the cast does a great job of drawing laughs out of even the most minute details of their performance. All in all this is one of the best pure comedies I have seen in theaters, probably since "Hot Fuzz".

The Sam Rockwell show and he more than lives up to carrying an entire film. There were so many ways for "Moon" to fall into easy science fiction cliches and traps and for the most part director Duncan Jones navigates away from the obvious. The set designs and special effects are fantastic for a low budget indie such as this, but most importantly, there aren't there for the sake of mugging the camera, they are necessary for the character to encounter and for the story to move along. After a summer of very big but unfocused films, it was quite refreshing to watch a small character piece that had a specific goal in mind and used every scene to work towards that goal without unnecessary subplots or themes. Oh, and did I mention that Sam Rockwell is wonderful in this communicating a wide variety of emotions without many big over the top scenes? Because he is. "Moon" is on a very short list of films from 2009 that I really loved.

A tightly written suspense/action film with several strong characters and a strong theme represented in every scene of the film is a welcome sight in my book. Kathryn Bigelow deftly navigates this film, steering clear of most of the pitfalls of modern day war films and actions films while nevertheless having several great action sequences. My only real complaints were with the heavy-handed psychologist sub-plot and how the Beckham/DVD salesman sub-plot seemed to end up a bit lacking. Jeremy Renner gives a phenomenal performance in what could have easily been a very over the top character, but who Renner wisely chooses to make very calm and collected with only a wildfire happening in his eyes and below the surface. Anthony Mackie is good as a much more dynamic character who changes and learns upon meeting Renner's Will. Also the cameos by Guy Pearce, Ray Fiennes, David Morse, and Evangeline Lilly are all very tastefully done and add to the film as a whole. I would highly encourage anyone who can to seek out this film, especially those action movie fans who supported crap like "Transformers 2" and are in the mood for a really good action film.

This film has sparked a lot of thought for me as I look at what makes me "like" a film or think that it is "good". Here Steven Soderbergh is a master of storytelling, knowing when to not give us details or to leave out conversations, knowing when to give small glimpses or hints at what happened and knowing when to show the whole thing. He does this to both heighten the mystery of the piece and tell a cohesive and thorough story. The acting is nice and dry from both Damon and the plethora of comic actors in only very mildly comic roles working around him. As such the casting adds a level of bizarrity to the already weird story, showing that Soderbergh knows exactly what he is aiming for and he uses every possible aspect of the film to move towards that end. The internal monologue of Damon's character is funny and enjoyable and, unlike a lot of films, used properly as a filmic device. All of this to say that there is very little wrong with this film and Soderbergh really understands his craft of filmmaking. That is where the "good" part of my thought comes into play. There is no way to deny that this is a "good" film simply based on the level of understanding of filmmaking on display. But, I can't say that I "liked" this film as much as some of the other films that I have seen this year which do have identifiable flaws. I still really do like and enjoy this film, I am just not as passionate about it as I have been towards some slightly more flawed films. I am still trying to figure out how I rate a film balancing both my "liking" of a film and identifying that it is "good", a conclusion I haven't arrived at yet though I would enjoy discussing the concept and working it out with you, my friends.

A refreshing comedy about relationships that safely navigates away from the standard romantic comedy cliches and, for the most part, away from the standard indie movie cliches. There isn't a predictable plot where the main characters break up 20 minutes before the end of the film just to get back together in the last scene and there isn't excessive fawning over whatever particular indie bands that the director likes accompanied in the film by music that doesn't fit and is purely designed to sell copies of the soundtrack. Instead there is a real film here more about how the boy, Joseph Gorden Levitt's Tom, saw the 500 days of his relationship with the girl, Zooey Deschanel's Summer. That is why the jumbled structure isn't a gimmick but rather necessary for the film. Moments are heightened or lowered based on how Tom remembers them and times and places are shown in the way that Tom perceived them. This also allows for some moments to actually be funny unlike much of what is described as a "romantic comedy" in Hollywood today. Joseph Gordon Levitt gives a great performance communicating great heartbreak and great joy without the aid of dialogue in most places. Zooey Deschanel is mainly the mysterious muse and she does have a great mystery about her that allows you to see why Tom was drawn to her. My only real complaint was with the narrator. I feel that narration is very poorly utilized in modern cinema by just about everyone aside from Terrence Malick. The narrators voice was perfect here, but if you are going to use a narrator, use him in every scene, not just when you couldn't communicate with the actors what you wanted to get across. And that is more of the responsibility of the screenplay than the actors. Aside from that little peeve though, this is a great look at relationships that actually connects with the audience and makes them feel and care.

I am really enjoying what Tony Gilroy is doing with his films. After practically redefining the modern day action film with the Bourne series, he started his career as a director with the wonderful "Michael Clayton". With both Clayton and "Duplicity" I think that Gilroy has made two films that look at very modern and relevant themes, the intersection of private life and work in "Michael Clayton" and the couples relationship in "Duplicity", but he puts a fun spin on things by both having his characters be a part of big corporations and by making his films generally thrilling. So yeah I really enjoyed "Duplicity" with its twists and turns and fun back and forth dialogue. It was great to see Clive Owen finally smile and have fun with a role after playing quite a few very solemn roles. Julia Roberts actually had some fun as well and she really made the relationship between the two characters believable. The only thing that really rubbed me the wrong way was the admission of love scene towards the end. I think it was necessary for the characters, but it just felt so generic almost like Gilroy was told he had to put that scene in the film so that people would understand what the characters were feeling. Other than that though it was a great second directorial effort by Gilroy and a lot of fun for anyone watching.

This review has been a long time coming because as I think back on "Inglourious Basterds" I like it even more, which isn't normally the case with me. As time goes by most films fade and their flaws become more apparent, but not so with Tarantino's latest. Regardless of your opinion about him, Tarantino is a film-loving filmmaker who makes his films for fellow film-lovers, to varying degrees of effectiveness each time out. With "Inglourious Basterds" he really grasps onto this and made a film that is more about honoring the films that came before it instead of ripping them off.

The pacing of "Inglourious Basterds" is a thing of beauty in the way that 20 minute long sequences of dialogue located in one room can ramp up the tension so much that it becomes unbearable before the 30 seconds of violence used to resolve the tension. The dialogue in the whole film is so twisty and fun and, again, very honoring to the films that came before it. The way that pop culture has seemed to embrace Tarantino is somewhat of a mystery to me, his films are very slow by modern standards and very much ado about nothing, but I like slow films and I will gladly tune into Tarantion's cracky fun babble.

My only reservation about "Inglourious Basterds" is tied to the structure of a film as a whole. The way the film is laid out, in five separate chapters, is great at building tension, but robs the audience from seeing the big character arcs and the changes that the characters go through from the beginning to the end of the film. We see these characters as characters and not as people in seeing what they went through and why they changed. Again, that works for what Tarantino was going for here, but I can't say that I think the film is perfect because of that.

The performances were universally great with, in my mind, one exception. Much talk has been given to Christoph Waltz's performance as Hans Landa and for good reason, a man with a very kind exterior, but a brutal and lethal interior. Brad Pitt goes for big broad loopy fun and is a joy to watch. Melanie Laurent is the heart of the film and I felt like I could see her turmoil and resolve in how she acted. Personally Til Schweiger and Michael Fassbender were my favorite basterds to watch in their little ticks a dialogue flairs. My one complaint here was with Eli Roth. He really tries, but he felt to me like a person acting the whole time, not a real character. And I don't feel he had the real physical presence for what the Bear Jew sounded like to me. Overall though I would highly recommend "Inglourious Basterds" to any fellow film-lovers.

Neill Blomkamp's unique sci-fi vision isn't perfect, but it gets a lot of things right that are ignored in many sci-fi films. Newcomer Sharlto Copley gives an effortless performance running all up and down the emotional spectrum throughout the films run time. It was very nice to see a gritty and cluttered future, much like the masterpiece "Children of Men", and not the squeaky clean future of this summers "Star Trek". There was a very distinct difference in the first half and the last half of this film in terms of style, but I feel that Blomkamp had very good control of the tone of the film so that the jump from mokumentary to action film wasn't very jarring. What Blomkamp did not nail perfectly, to me, the way that his mentor Peter Jackson does, was the sentimentality of the film. I felt like the little kid alien was a good job of sentimentality, but the relationship between Wikus and Christopher was too much and in the end didn't make a whole lot of sense in why these characters cared for each other. But I must admit that there has to be something to say for a film that has the guts to *spoiler alert* turn it's main character into an alien at the close of the film *end spoiler*. That is gutsy.

I have always been a Star Wars kid and the Star Trek property holds little sway over me. So imagine my surprise when I started to see things for the new Star Trek movie that actually looked really good and made me want to see the film. While I won’t say that I am converted and want to watch everything Star Trek related I can say that the new “Star Trek” film was a fun ride and I look forward to future installments with these characters and actors.

One of the most heart-wrenching scenes that I have seen on the big screen all year has been the pre-title sequence in “Star Trek” that culminates with the birth of James T. Kirk and the death of his father George Kirk. Unfortunately it was followed up by one of the worst and most pointless sequences in the film showing a slightly older and very rebellious James Kirk drive a car off of a cliff for no other reason than to point out that he is so rebellious. The rest of the future crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise are introduced one by one in rather fun and memorable ways.

The film’s villain is a miner known as Nero, played by Eric Bana, who sets the plot in motion with events that might infuriate long time Star Trek fans, but which work fine for the film. This is after all a reboot of the Star Trek franchise using the characters created for the original series.

On that account, all of the actors do a good job following in the footsteps of their predecessors, whether they are shooting for a direct interpretation, like Karl Urban’s Leonard McCoy, or doing their own thing, like Simon Pegg’s Scotty. Chris Pine’s James Kirk and Zachary Quinto’s Spock are the two dynamic characters in the crew and the actors effectively communicate the internal changes in their characters from start to finish.

Kirk and Spock’s relationship highlights the main difference between this Trek film and the previous installments in the franchise. In a word this is an emotional Trek film whereas I would describe other Trek films as intellectual due to their focus on big and socially relevant sci-fi themes. This film would have been great if there had been a big theme tackled, but as it stands it is a very engaging emotional story.

Another thing to note is the direction style of director J.J. Abrams. The man certainly loves his lens flair and shaky cam action, which is not a bad thing unless it gets in the way of what is going on. Unfortunately I felt like there were several times where this happened in “Star Trek” since the backgrounds were so littered with great sci-fi visuals that just seemed to be glossed over by these particular directing gimmicks.

All in all a fun reboot to a franchise that will be interesting to watch evolve in the future.