2007: The Films of

This is exactly the type of movie that I love. A film with an independent feel, that has romantic elements that are as far from a stereotypical romantic comedy as one would like. Ellen Page and Michael Cera are two of my favourites and the soundtrack is fantastic, fun, and beyond appropriate for the film! I am so glad that this it the first film of 2008 that I've seen!

Oddly, this was one of the best musicals I had ever seen. It was so much fun! Perhaps the only John Travolta movie I ever enjoyed.

Well, 2007 hasn't disappointed me yet. Another fantastic movie. It starts off quite quirky with cartoonish characteristics and gets incredibly suspenseful and mysterious incredibly quickly. For fear of saying too much, I'll stop there.

Michael Moore does what Michael Moore does best in this film. Not only does he have a message that he brings home but he entertains as well. I chuckled and I cried and I was angry. This is very important for Canadians to see as well as Americans. Next to Bowling for Columbine, this is the best Moore film yet.

While it is absolutely beautiful with wonderful backdrops like the marine life of the Galapagos, this film is less about sharks than it is about the apathy and neglect of the human race as of late. It's interesting to see how Stewart's view fits with other filmmakers who explore the many impending global crises that human self-centeredness is responsible for. Oil Crash and An Inconvienent Truth immediately come to mind. Stewart's passion is undoubtable and both the frustration and hope are real. Even managing to be quite suspenseful in places, this film is extremely well done.

I can't believe that people are comparing this movie to American Pie. It's like the anti-American Pie, in my opinion. I thought it had an honest humour about it and much of that came from the obviously contrived plot. I'm embarassed (and a little proud) to admit that this is the crowd I hung around with in high school....the ridiculously self-conscious, wet behind the ears, so geeky it's cool types. He made his home ec partner into a kitty cat! "It's no fair. That looks like the most fun in the world!" And Michael Cers is too cute for words!

The best Christmas movie that I've seen in a long time. If you are the least bit skeptical of the magic of Christmas, try this on for size. The acting is superb. Watch this film to get your Christmas season started.

What a love story! I feel very priviledged to have been drawn into the intimate lives of these characters. Sarah Polley should be proud!

This movie worked and no one was more shocked than me! It is classic Simpsons all the way (i.e. Spiderpig!) which is much of the reason for its success. There were zero attempts to try anything new and it worked out for the benefit of the movie. I was particularly pleased with the screen time they gave to Abe Simpson, a person favourite of mine. With it being on the big screen, they were also able to be a little more racey (i.e. show Bart's doodle).

I went to this movie not knowing anything about it other than it had Seinfeld and was animated. I thought it was pretty enjoyable. I will warn though that if you aren't a Jerry Seinfeld fan, you may not like it. It was very much an outlet for his stand-up in parts. That's probably why I liked it. Zany, wacky, goofy, and adorable.

This far exceeded my expectations! This is the type of movie that sucks you in. I was boo-wooing in no time. While the lead actors, Sandler and Cheadle, were fantastic, this film did an excellent job of developing ALL the characters. What could have been a cliched cash-in on 9/11 turned out to be a story with major substance and depth.

This movie is cute, clever and fun! While it won't likely become a Disney classic, this film is truly underrated. It balances out laughter with heartwarming moments. The characters are quirky and the music is quite good. I think one of my favourite aspects is the colour. It's so bright and beautiful and futuristic. Give it a watch!

This is a really interesting project, certainly worth at least one viewing. (It's got great re-watch potential.) Understandably some shorts are better than others but overall there is some fine work within the film. Plus it's got mimes!

There's something absolutely charming about Rocket Science. This film captures the essence of real-life teenage life. The acting is very well done. I enjoyed the debating focus. And the love story played out so dorkily that it was believable.

I thought the acting in this film was stellar. Bobby Coleman has quite the career ahead of him. He had to portray a very deep, intelligent, distrubed child and he does so with ease. I really thought the roles were well presented in general.

But there was just something missing in this film. Kudos for straying away from the typical man-kid film. And what I mean by that is that they didn't simply drop a kid on a man who was living a horribly bachelor life who subsequently became completely transformed by the child. The changes were more subtle and interesting than that. While I applaud that, at the same time, it might have led to its downfall. Not much actually happens in the film. It's fairly slow moving and relatively uninteresting.

While I can see that this would have made a great novel (Was there one?), it doesn't translate to the big screen all that well, unfortunately.

I tried really hard to love this movie but ended up just liking it a tiny bit more than your average film. I couldn't help but to be reminded of About a Boy as I watched and wonder if maybe the screenwriters saw About a Boy one too many times as well. In the end, I felt that this film was trying to be something it was not and would have had much more success being true to itself, which oddly enough is the same lesson David learned in the film.

Lots of laughs. Being a Braff fan, I was expecting more Braffyness. It was missing something. And what's with the absolutely horrible boom operator? You can see the boom in every other scene! This had to be on purpose?! Maybe?!

I find this movie very hard to rate because I'm a chick and obviously fell for the cheap romantic comedy tricks and the beautiful buldge in Hugh Grant's pants. Alright. So you knew it was going to happen before you turned it on. Boy meets girl and they fall in love. However, Grant's hip movements are indeed unpredictable. For a little bit of fun, give this one a try.

I have to say, I was a little disappointed in this film. The animation was great and their were a few chuckles but I found it long and I really don't think that many kids would get it at all. Maybe I'm underestimating today's youth but I think that a lot of the narration (from Remy's perspective) was too sophisticated. So, while I am glad that I saw it, I have no interest in re-watching it which is unusual for a Disney or Pixar film. I think this film had many of the same flaws that cars did but at least it had a plot.

I'd like to see more films from the lead actor, Anton Yelchin. Having said that, this film fell short. It had it's really funny, indie-ish bits and multilayered characters. But then it had its cliched, predictable teen movie plot and moralistic themes as its downfall. Not to mention, Downey Jr.'s flat performance, although the irony of his character was not lost on me. Oh, Bobby.

So, Charlie Bartlett = a film with great potential that fell short of the mark.

First, a warning. A lot of what I'm about to say about TMNT is negative. I will begin by saying that I had fun watching the film and the nostalgia factor alone is worth a watch. However, there are a few major flaws that should have been taken care of, especially since this film was "long-awaited".

Perhaps the most glaring flaw to me was the inconsisent graphics. Some bits were absolutely, breathtakingly amazing while other (most) bits were no better quality than the original 1980s cartoon. Clearly they spent all of the budget on the fight between Raphael and Leonardo.

My other complaint is how Michaelangelo and especially Donotello were completely thrown to the side. I mean, seriously, why was Donotello even in the movie? They could have put a purple mask on a broom handle and it wouldn't have made a difference.

On the up side, I quite enjoyed the drinking problem that Splinter has developed since we saw our master last. But my favourite change had to be Raph's voice. Apparently he's from Jersey now.

It's always nice to see Steve Carrell on the big screen. If he's in the credits, you know that you will be enterained to some degree.

I think you'll get what you expect when you watch this film. It's a love story with minor complications. While it certainly doesn't off anything new to the film world in terms of plot, it does what it sets out to do quite well. If you give it a watch, expect to find some heartfelt chuckles along with some heartwarming moments. It's not really sexy and it's not really deep but, then again, I don't think that's its goal. The ending was a little too neat and tidy for my liking but I suppose it was to be expected.

I know it seems like I notice the music in films way more than I should but I have to make one little comment. The music that is performed mostly by Sondre Lerche really does a great job in setting the tone of the film.

The first third of this movie was invocative and thrilling. In fact, you can't wait to see what happens next. Then at a very distinct moment it begins to get boring and most people begin to lose interest. It's at the point when they begin to focus almost entirely on Gylenhaal's character. I really don't think it's his fault but the storyteller's. The other two thirds were unnecessarily long and repetitive. Despite Gyllenhaal getting all the credit, Ruffalo carries the film (welll, as best he can). In short, the problem with this movie is that it tries to do to much with decades worth of actual material to work from.

While this movie isn't quite dull enough to make you want to poke your eyes out with a fork, it certainly does not live up to its potential. Ok, so you've got a cast of beautiful people (including one world famous actress) and plates upon plates of visually stunning food to work with prepared by world-reknown chefs. Add to that a dash of your standard love story elements. Throw in the talented and cute Abigail Breslin. Mix gently and you should have success. But the one key ingredient that's missing is passion.

It starts out slow. Every so often a scene between Jones' character and her shrink is thrown in for good measure. The problem is those scenes are especially dull, uninteresting, and unnecessary. Come to think of it, there's a lot of scenes that really do little to progress the plot or provide entertainment, leaving you wondering why they didn't just leave them on the cutting room floor?

Flaw #2: The set of circumstances that allow for this entire story to take place unfold in the matter of, like, 30 seconds with seemingly little emotion amidst a great tragedy.

Flaw #3: Breslin's character says and does very little for the first half of the movie. When you've got a cute kid in a starring role, why would you not use it? In fact, all of the characters are rather flat.

When I hit stop at the end of this movie, I was still waiting for it to start. It felt like the whole thing was just a prequel to the real movie. I think it's fair to say that this movie was a flop.

Ok. Fighting polar bears are cool. I'll give it that. But that's about all I'll give it.

This movie is weird, confusing, and seemingly pointless. I spent the whole movie trying to figure out how it was about atheism, as I had heard over and over again. I came to the conclusion that it's not. It's an anti-organized religion movie (perhaps you could even say anti-church) but the magic, witches, mysticism, and spirituality that it promotes are NOT atheistic in the least. I blame the fundamentalist Christians for giving this movie hype and negative hype at that. If not for them, this movie would have quickly faded into the darkness where it clearly belongs.

It has pretty visuals. That's it! It's what many might simply call smoke and mirrors.

I know that I'm definitely in the minority here but to be perfectly honest, I thought it was fairly boring from start to finish. It was described as "gut-busting". Hardly. A huge disappointment! Save yourself the trouble and rent Fargo instead.

I don't know what's worse: The fact that the creators of Shrek milked this series until there was nothing left to milk or that Air Canada stopped feeding me on their flights so that they could provide each passenger with a personal entertainment system that shows crap like this. This film was totally forgettable. In fact, I'm trying to comment on it but I forget the plot already. Basically, in trying to make money, it turned into the movie that the first Shrek was mocking. Gross.

I enjoyed this spoof. As far as a comedy goes, it was average. I laughed out loud a few times but have no desire to watch it again. It served its purpose as momentary entertainment.

However, it gets an extra half star for having fantastic music. I'm really quite serious about that.