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The brilliance of a film like Wall*E is that it’s so at once disarming and endearing that it can draw out this incredibly powerful emotion, uncorking years of feelings — loneliness, longing, the yearning to explore — without your realizing that it’s happening. These are sometimes feelings for adults that are awkward to be uncorked in a theater full of kids and parents, but there is no stopping them once they wiggle their way out. Wall*E and Eve, and their cockroach friend unlock these beautifully. It’s the magic touch of Disney that has been lacking seriously for years, but this time reborn for adults by Pixar in a way that they’ve not ever come close to in the past, with just enough Three Stooges thrown in to keep the bread and butter audience, kids, giggling, but it’s not simply a cartoon. It’s a film. A film with the capacity to entertain the whole world that somehow makes you feel like you’re the only one in an empty universe watching it. Andrew Stanton and Pixar are operating on another level with this, and I find it hard to see a way that they can possibly top it in the future.
If there is a flaw to the film, and it’s not at all a fatal flaw, it’s that the ending of the plot is not of pure intrinsic value to Wall*E, himself. It’s that the climax of plot of the movie is not Wall*E getting Eve, but Wall*E getting Eve only through helping the pudding people get back to earth and sow the seeds of their pizza plants. Yes, Wall*E gets his wish and gets to hold hands with Eve, but the way in which it happens does feel like something of a sleight, like Wall*E was convenient for human use (which, yes, he was designed for) and this is his reward for helping puddingkind, not the point of the story (which he, and his love for Eve, is). If that feels like I’m riding the film too hard, it’s because I am. Great films have to be held up to those standards. And it’s because I expected so much of it, and it lived up to 99% of that, but I’m greedy about things such as this and I want that 1% so badly for this film, but, as of how I see it right now, it’s just not there. I hope I will find it in the future, but it’s really not going to matter if I don’t. Nothing will ever taint this work of art.
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This is my Mom’s favorite movie (or second to Mary Poppins, I’m not sure), so I’ve seen this film many times from way back to the early days of VHS, and learned a good deal about our founding fathers from this. Though I’m not sure if that’s entirely a good thing, it can’t have been any worse than what I learned in the NYC public school system anyway. As a historical recreation, well, the important points are there, amplified to be alternately hysterical and poignant, but it’s as good a teaching tool as anything, because kids will actually sit through it for the song and dance, and the jokes (as many to get as a kid as will be missed until older). Or maybe that was my generation, because we got to see Kit talking in person and not so much the current generation. Anyhow, it’s about the only patriotic film that actually makes me feel any kind of patriotism, outside of WWII films. Because of its strongly American wit and candor, and how well the mix together when it counts.
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This is not my favorite Hitchcock film, and despite having made it into the Library of Congress’s culturally important films list, the most lasting impression this seems to have is the vertigo stretch shot, and lingering lure of Kim Novak’s luscious eyebrows. There just wasn’t enough true character to offset the overabundance of plot, nor the use of coincidence to tie the third act up. It’s a nice postcard for San Francisco, but the more enduring Hitchcock works, for me, remain Rear Window and Strangers on a Train. Though, I hardly claim to be a Hitchcock fanatic.
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It was just a coincidence that I got this and High Noon at the same time. I didn’t know this was a rebuttal to High Noon at the time, and didn’t see the HUAC allegory in either (but, then, I wasn’t looking for it as they were in the height of the paranoia). It’s hard to take this film on its own merits now that I know the motive behind it’s production, and am repulsed by the idea of it. And I wasn’t a John Wayne fan to begin with. Even just taking them on story and character alone, High Noon is the superior film. High Noon is about a man’s man, staying behind to face what he has to face when seemingly no one will help him, but it also features strong female roles for the time, in my opinion, despite the supposed assertion by feminists that they weren’t strong enough. Neither of them are quite Mrs. Miller, sure, but Grace Kelly is the one who saves the day at the cost of what she has come to believe. In Rio Bravo Angie Dickinson throws a flower pot through a window and has to drink herself back in off of the ledge because of it. Helen Ramirez is essentially the financial muscle in Hadleyville, and is only running because she has a brain, where Carlos is a Mexican caricature barely above Speedy Gonzalez. So much of Rio Bravo rubs me the wrong way that the positive points have gone lost in the dust trail. Mixing in the politics of the situation into the decision makes High Noon even more the superior film, though, and it makes for delicious irony that it was Wayne who went on stage to receive Cooper’s Oscar for Marshal Will Kane.
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If ever there was a good shout for a 2.5 stars, this would be it. It’s not a terrible movie, but it’s not very good either. There are glimpses of good within, and Patrick Dempsey steals most of the scenes he is in with his dramatic ivy league intellectual art student act. Pesci almost had a second home run, but almost doesn’t count. He tried too hard too often and drowned out the level voice of the bum that talked a right wing prep schooler into a left wing thesis by teaching him humanity through the “one thing for one thing” theory.
I should be paying more attention to this now that Euro 08 is over. Glad Spain won between the two countries on show, but I was pulling for the Dutch. It was kind of amazing how much I tuned out of the game once Fabregas was subbed off for Alonso. Hopefully that is just the first trophy of many for the Little Maestro.
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A classic western about a man’s man who won’t hide from his trouble. It’s a little hard to relate to because if Grace Kelly was my wife, I sure as hell would have run away with her. But, I’m not a man’s man, and I never would have made it in the old west, that’s for sure. I’m not sure why I’m so fascinated with westerns, really. I hate guns, I hate whiskey, I hate horses, and horse poop, I like to shower and shave more than once a month… but there is something so visceral and irresistible about them that I can’t say no to watching one.
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This is the David Gordon Green that I miss. Where has he been lately, I wonder? Snow Angels doesn’t look up to his quality (though I haven’t seen it yet, so I shouldn’t judge), and his next flick is… Pineapple Express? Hmm. This from the guy who once said, “if I ever do anything clever, shoot me”? Well, we’ll see about that one. I’m sure it’ll be good, but it’s going to be a Seth Rogan movie, not a David Gordon Green movie. It seems like such a step down, from someone poised to the be the next brilliant auteur, America’s own version of Alain Resnais, it evaporated somewhere along the line for him. There is a quite a dearth of them lately, but that’s been the case since the 80s, minus a minor blip in the early 90s.
This is such a strong character piece, played so brilliantly by Paul Schneider, Zooey Deschanel and Shea Whigham, that the small scraps of plot in it seem almost criminal upon first view. It feels like they would have gotten there anyway without the incitement, and plot almost seems contrary to the small town they live in. That’s really the only thing keeping it from being a perfect film, in my opinion.
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Harris Goldberg gives us an all too intimate glimpse into depersonalization with Numb, his first feature. It’s a change in pace from the, well, let’s face it, dreck he’s given us previously as screenwriter for Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo and Without a Paddle, but it’s a U turn so drastic that it’s a little bit jarring, like a change in filmic cabin pressure.
In it, Matthew Perry plays a screenwriter on the fritz, sent into a spiraling case of dysphoria triggered by excessive toking. His life is out of whack until he meets Sara (Lynn Collins), a production executive that Hudson and his partner Tom (Kevin Pollack) are pitching a script to. In her presence, he is able to get through the meeting and a relationship blossoms, that ends up being such a perfect, comforting match that the viewer may suspect that this is all a figment of Hudson’s overactive imagination, and he may wake up at the end like an episode of Dallas finding it all to be a dream. But, before that thought gets to fully form, she’s gone. They’ve broken up, because he is too broken. And the picture never recovers from it. Hudson bumbles through a series of quick-fix hail Mary passes, each less satisfying and fitting than the last until the film finally peters out and crawls to the finish line exactly where you’d expect it would.
Collins and Perry’s valiant attempt to save the movie from some of the saggier script elements end up saving enough of the picture to be worth a view, but it has the ability to leave you frustrated if you try.
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Always is pretty much the forgotten Spielberg film. It came out the same year as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, so it had a lot to contend with at that time. But it comes in the middle of what you could consider a fallow spell for Spielberg, box office-wise (aside from Indy). It’s another one of those small, personal stories (a re-make of A Guy Named Joe this time) that had too much big-budget flair and failed to jibe. He’s a director more suited for big stories, which is not to say he is bad at these, but they tend to be overblown when something more muted would suit the picture better. I half like the casting of Dreyfus in this (for the sinister/playful parts) and I half hate it (for the sincere parts), but the rest of the cast worked well, I thought, especially John Goodman. He never did get the right roll that would have put him in the stratosphere, and now it’s probably too late (though, Sorkin knows how to use him well). It’s the magic of the picture that I like in this, which the country was clearly aching for at the time (see: Ghost, 1990), but this wasn’t the cast to tap into that at a mainstream level like Swayze and Moore were able to.
He did ask one question in this film, though, and he answered it correctly. The question is, “who would God send as a spiritual emissary to deliver this charge?” And the correct answer is, of course, Audrey Hepburn. Not quite an angel, but much more than a princess, this spiritual emissary role is maybe the most fitting of her storied career.
Getting close to having seen every Spielberg film now. The only theatrical release of his that I have to see is Duel, 1941, The Color Purple, the Twilight Zone thing and The Unfinished Journey. I’ve even seen his Columbo episode, finally (it’s great, but not worth logging since it was TV). I’ll get there.
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It’s hard to know where to start with this film, just like it’s hard with any Godard film. He pushes boundaries and redefines the musical genre, or tries to anyway. Like with his other films, some of these work, and work well, and some of them are duds fired in good faith. You can get away more duds than most when you have such an electric cast. Or at least Anna Karina. She could be surrounded by corpses and it would still be a bright picture because of her eye bats and consuming smiles. Most of the moments that didn’t work for me were to related to the film’s music. Specific to that, is the strip show in which Angela sings and the music cuts out when she is singing. I couldn’t wrap my head around that (maybe I’m too square, I don’t know). It’s a very good film overall, though.
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I never really bought into the threads of coincidence and happenstance that the film plies its trade on, so the whole thing was pretty much a lost cause for me. These kinds of films never work for me because you learn almost nothing about any of the characters, you’re with them for too short of a time to learn anything of substance. And the jokes never work.
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So, yeah. I’d never seen Jerry Maguire before this. I don’t have a reason why, I just hadn’t seen it. I wasn’t avoiding the charm of crazy Tom Cruise. I don’t have the same problem with Tom Cruise that everyone else seems to have with him. I don’t care about his personal life, or his crazy religion. The only thing about his personal life I care about is that his dentist keeps that toothy squint-smile in order for the camera. He wasn’t crazy Tom Cruise at this point anyway. I was just watching other stuff for the last 12 years.
I don’t really have a lot to say about it, to be honest. It did have its charms, but Ari Gold is the only super agent I have room for in my heart.
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It’s hard to rank the Wyatt Earp films, because they all have good points and bad points. Very little about this film is historically accurate, but it’s not really a big deal, I don’t think. Just like it’s not in Tombstone. Wyatt Earp seems to be the most historically accurate, but also the most boring. So it’s not a big deal that the skinny, tuberculosis-ridden dentist who died in a hotel at a hot spring is turned into a thick, sturdy surgeon who dies at the OK Corral, or any of the other inaccuracies. Ford masters the story for the screen, not as a living biography. And boy does he master it. You can see shots in this film that Kurosawa has used. You can even see a touch of influence on There Will Be Blood in the look and feel.
It’s a God awful title, though.
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It’s a bit hard to get into some of the more extreme aspects of the film, but that’s the nature of a film like this one. It’s compelling and well done for the most part, although, I guess because the first movie I ever saw James Spader in was Stargate (hey, it came out when I was 13), I’ve never gotten used to him in such overtly sexual roles. He’s just so…nerdy. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see it. For the most part, the ending is what I mean by “the more extreme aspects of the film”. It’s just very out there. More-so for the crowd gathering at the office and the press attention than the S&M part of it, actually. That just didn’t make sense at all.
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I’m going to have to change my statement “I don’t like Italian films” to “I don’t like Italian films featuring Italians in Italy”, I think. I’m a little divided about this. There is plenty about it to dislike. The opening hour should have been the opening twenty minutes, but art films always linger and are indulgent in this manner, but it’s just incredibly dull until he makes it to the park. It gets cooking after that, including the infamous backdrop paper wrestling match that seems relatively tame these days, but understandably caused and uproar 40 years ago. The second half is strong and full of excitement and drama, and more than makes up for the first half in my eyes.
