Take The Notebook and breed it with Back to the Future and you get this dreary love story cut from the cloth of Nicholas Sparks. Since I'm bringing up Sparks (even though he had nothing to do with this movie) you know someone is going to die. I'm not spoiling anything. He kills more men than cancer. The story is about a man (Eric Bana) who has a gene for time travels and since his last name isn't McFly or DeLorean it must be some kind of medical condition. He meets, falls in love, and marries Clare (Rachel McAdams) and the typical "my disease is ruining our marriage" plot kicks in.
This is a dull, over acted soap opera that is there to make you weep. Well, I didn't cry like a baby. I was yelling at the screen that Doc Brown and James Cameron told me that we have the ability to change out futures. Not in this movie. We're all fucked. Let's think about it for a minute *SPOILERS AHEAD********************************************************************************************************
If I knew when I was going to beam somewhere else and that I was going to be shot you would think I would have enough common sense to FALL TO THE GROUND!. I know I'm as naked as John Edwards on the road, but let's play the common sense game kids. Plus he shows up when his future wife is a little girl and that's Dateline creepy right there.*******************END SPOILER****************************************************************************************************
It's nice to see Peter Gibbons working again, but in the long run this is a milking opportunity, squeezing the teet of the Nicholas Sparks crowd. It's a dull, meandering experience that drowns in barely an inch of water.
Moon is the story of a miner (Sam Rockwell) who is about to finish up his contract on the moon. He has a wife and a new born daughter waiting for him back on earth as he eagerly anticipates the day that his replacement shows up. The problem is that a secret is going to be revealed that makes his return a hell of a lot harder than he thought it was going to be.
Even when you call something a homage, people will still say that it's a rip off. Most of the time it is a rip off. In Moon you know you've been here before, but it all gels together better than most movies of its genre. You have the nods to 2001, Star Wars, Alien, and a couple other sci-fi films that slip my mind right now. The 2001 inspired Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey) is probably the closest to being a rip off of HAL, but it's the only stickler on that point.
The thing that drags the film down a bit is a plot that tends to go in circles. There is a plot twist in Moon, a major one that wears thin after awhile. It's like the closed environment suffocates the story and the film suffers because of it. There's only so much you can do on the moon by yourself (no pervs, please).
Moon isn't a bad movie. It's a great concept that almost takes off, but falls flat near its middle. Better than most of the schlock we get today, but nothing to jones over.
Oscar winner Nicholas Cage in a garbage action film that's as cliched as they come. Joe (Cage) is an assassin. He has his own code and rules that he never breaks. His last mission takes him to Thailand where he proceeds to break all of his rules because that's what assassins do when they're on their last mission. As he breaks said rules the simple jobs become a huge pain in the ass, reminding our hero assassin why he had the rules in the first place. Bangkok wouldn't be so damn dangerous if you followed your damn rules! And while we're on the topic, why is it always the assassin's last mission? You never see the first one. Or the 22nd one.
Bangkok Dangerous is trash. Pure and simple. It's a mediocre, patchwork plot sewn together from a hundred other action films that weren't as dull and unappealing as this one. Hell, the Machete trailer from Grindhouse contains some of the same plot points. It's paint by numbers time with this pathetic film which is another step for Nicholas Cage toward the pinnacle of what we call Cuba Gooding, Jrism.
Any movie with an appearance of Lambert Airport AND Mike Shannon's is great in my book. The funny part about Up In The Air is that St. Louis is one of the nicer cities Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) visits as what I would call an anti-motivational speaker whose day job is traveling from city to city and informing people that they have been let go by companies to chicken shit to tell them.
Ryan's existence is a series of airports, hotel rooms, and rental cars that have turned him into the ultimate airport groupie. It may take you three hours. It takes him 30 minutes because he knows the ropes and loves it. He regrets having to go home. In his travels he meets Alex (Vera Farminga), a fellow traveler that seems to be cut from the same cloth as Ryan as they arrange "dates" against their flight plans. The problem arises when Ryan is called back to the home office in Omaha (no wonder he doesn't want to come home) and finds college grad Natalie (Anna Kendrick) has talked the boss (Jason Bateman, who is in everything now) into stepping into the future and having the men on the road fire people over T-1 lines. As the two clash over how their job should be performed, Natalie is sent on the road with Ryan to see how the job is done.
The plot almost sounds like a cliche but director Jason Reitman once again delivers a film that keeps you enthralled with Ryan's job and his odd embrace of the modern nomadic culture of over priced airports and beds that are your own for eight hours. The main trio of characters deliver performances that anchor the film into more than an old school guy teaching and youngster the ropes. It's much more than that. Clooney continues to be out generations Cary Grant, the movie star even on screen, yet he still gets beyond his Hollywood persona. Farminga opens up more in this role than the last time I saw her as the low key psychiatrist in The Departed. Finally, our third wheel Anna Kendrick proves that she will have a career after all this Twilight bullshit passes into the obscurity pond where films drown after their fans grow up.
Up In The Air has some laughs, but it's more of a character piece. Jason Reitman tends to make films and stories that are anchored in old school film jargon, yet they are shown with a new, modern perspective that is refreshing. This is one of the best of 2009.
The Coen Brothers have become their own worst enemy since winning the big one for No Country For Old Men. Last years Burn After Reading boasted an all-star cast, but was lacking as a film, descending into mediocrity and just plain blahness. A Serious Man is the same situation except this time the only actor you may actually remember from another movie is Fletch's ex- wife's attorney. Not that unknowns are bad for a movie. Clark Cable's corpse couldn't help this dry, go no where experience.Professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is having a bad week. His wife wants a divorce. His brother won't get out of his house. His tenure is in jeopardy. And things keep snowballing out of control as he moves into the Jolly Roger and tries to figure out what is life really is about and why he deserves the wrath that God has served him this week.
Basically a black comedy about being Jewish in the late 1960's, A Serious Man plays like an extended episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Larry continually gets dumped on and dumped on to the point of excess, trying to reach that mythical rabbi that won't see him because he's sitting there thinking. "Comedy" has to be put in quotes with this one because it really wasn't that funny. I know this isn't a screwball comedy, but it felt more sad than anything. Here's a guy whose life is being flushed down the toilet and he can't figure out why. The movie just feels like its sitting there spinning its wheels with nowhere to go but the two hour mark and then roll the credits.
This is being called the movie the Coen's can make since they won an Oscar. I've never understood why director's true pet projects mainly end up being crap. Let's face it- if the best picture category wasn't increased to ten films you would have never heard a peep from this Sunday night. Hopefully this is a pot boiler for the Coen's and their next flick will be something that will wow its audience a little bit.
I'll admit that I still like Robert De Niro. I just don't like the movies he's done in the last decade. It could be argued that the last great movie he was in was Jackie Brown. It almost seems like since the mid 1990's he's just been in it for a paycheck. Did the actor that could play anybody die when he started doing Ben Stiller movies? We can't quite close the book on him yet. Everybody's Fine gives us a small glimmer that the De Niro of old could still be lurking in the body that gave us the villain in Rocky and Bullwinkle. It is just a small glimmer, though.
The film is about Frank Goode (De Niro), a widower who has great hopes to bring his family all back together for a little reunion only to be dashed when everyone cancels out on him at the last minute. So he decides to travel the country seeing all of his kids (Kate Beckinsale, Sam Rockwell, and Drew Barrymore). The problem that occurs is that as he arrives at each destination the illusion that the kids and his deceased wife put up for him is shattered by the reality of what his kids lives are really like.
Going back to De Niro, he's still there somewhere, though the source material isn't much to work with at all. The script is your typical "moment of clarity bad father" stuff that Lifetime TV is filled with. The three kids are great actors, but can't really hold a candle to De Niro's chops and fall behind as he becomes Frank Goode. Basic, average, almost dull. At the end of the day this becomes another movie you watched and forgot about, never to be seen again except on cable TV while flipping around. This is another example of a great actor in a below average/almost mediocre movie. You'll watch it for who's in it and then not care the next day.
Martin Scorsese returns to the thriller genre for the first time since Cape Fear in a cat and mouse game on a small island on the outskirts of Massachusetts that houses a federally funded mental institution. Leonardo DiCaprio once again serves as Scorsese's 21st century DeNiro, starring as Teddy Daniels, a Federal Marshall sent to the island with his partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) to investigate a disturbed patient that has vanished from her cell and essentially disappeared without a trace. As their investigation continues, Teddy becomes more and more paranoid over something bigger than a missing patient that may be going on at Shutter Island, especially when dealing with the less than enthusiastic head doctors (Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydow).
The first thing I will tell you is that Gimme Shelter does not appear in this movie. Sorry. The funny thing about Shutter Island is that this is Scorsese trying to step out of his own shoes and try on someone elses, the closest being Alfred Hitchcock. From the opening ferry ride the film is bleak with this atmosphere of impending dread that every character wears around them like a neck tie. This is a real thriller in every sense of the word, right down to its orchestrated score that leaves shivers down your spine.
DiCaprio once again shines under Scorsese's tutelage, as does the rest of the cast. Ben Kingsley gets another notch in his belt with his laid back role of a head doctor that isn't quite telling Teddy everything. The addition of Max von Sydow as a former German doctor hearkens back to the days of Father Merrin, leaving more gloom in the atmosphere that wasn't there before. It's almost as if Scorsese was casting people known for dark and decadent roles to add to the atmosphere. Jack Earle Haley (A Nightmare on Elm Street and any film that needs a creepy sex predator) and Ted Levine (Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs) serve the same purpose as Sydow.
Beautifully shot, Shutter Island serves as Scorsese heading for the ditch as Neil Young would say. It's a great thriller that goes above the normal thrillers of today by actually being a little smart and using the atmosphere to create dread instead of endless corpses lying all over the place. This isn't a happy movie by no means, it's a gloomy affair that delivers what it promises. It may not be one of Scorsese's greatest (that's hard to do) but it is heads above the rest.
