The Official Review Thread of 2011

Sabin
Laureate Emeritus
Posts: 10747
Joined: Thu Jan 02, 2003 12:52 am
Contact:

Re: The Official Review Thread of 2011

Post by Sabin »

Just lost my entire Crazy, Stupid Love. post. What I'll say is this...Dan Fogelman screenplay? One of the better "Suburban Malaise" post-American Beauty blehs, but it doesn't change the fact that it's a very modest piece of work elaborately constructed around said modesty. The directing team of Requa/Ficarra? Outstanding. There are moments in this film where I thought I was watching one of the destined to be forgotten gems of the year. But it's not. It doesn't have much on its mind at all, although the journey along the way yields some pleasures. But they sell the shit out of this material until the final act. Their manner of coverage allows for the wacky and the earthbound without much blowback. After this and I Love You Philip Morris, these are my guys. A mixed bag with a heart somewhere in there, presumably the right place.

On the fence, leaning forward.
"How's the despair?"
anonymous1980
Laureate
Posts: 6377
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 10:03 pm
Location: Manila
Contact:

Re: The Official Review Thread of 2011

Post by anonymous1980 »

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER
Cast: Chris Evans, Hayley Atwell, Hugo Weaving, Tommy Lee Jones, Sebastian Stan, Stanley Tucci, Dominic Cooper, Toby Jones, Neal McDonough, Derek Luke, Samuel L. Jackson.
Dir: Joe Johnston.

I always thought that a Captain America movie would be tricky to pull off. In the wrong hands, it would come off as overly jingoistic, red-state, flag-waving type of film. But placing the character in World War II is a good move that perfectly justifies the character in a very tasteful way. The result is a very entertaining, well-made Americana/World War II film with a superhero in it. In a way, it also feels like an Indiana Jones movie as well and it's a better Indiana Jones movie than The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Oscar Prospects: A strong contender for Visual Effects, Art Direction, Makeup, Original Song ("The Star Spangled Man"), Sound Mixing and Sound Editing.

Grade: B+
Sabin
Laureate Emeritus
Posts: 10747
Joined: Thu Jan 02, 2003 12:52 am
Contact:

Re: The Official Review Thread of 2011

Post by Sabin »

Farmiga is fine but the manner in which Declan Jones shoots those scenes deflates so much of the solid train sequences. Outside of the Capra-esque ending (which is more corny than anything else) and a powerfully disappointing antagonist, it's a good ride. But those scenes at the agency are all so bad!

This is likely Gyllenhaal's best performance. He might be better in Donnie Darko and Brokeback Mountain, but the amount of material that Jake had to work with and what he brought to it is pretty unprecedented in his filmography.
"How's the despair?"
Mister Tee
Tenured Laureate
Posts: 8637
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 2:57 pm
Location: NYC
Contact:

Re: The Official Review Thread of 2011

Post by Mister Tee »

Sonic (welcome back, by the way), you think it's possible you liked Source Code better just because it was a sort of B-level programmer without the pretensions to grandeur Nolan's movie had? I'd be hard pressed to say one or the other is better, but my expectations for Source Code were considerably lower.
User avatar
Sonic Youth
Tenured Laureate
Posts: 8003
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 8:35 pm
Location: USA

Re: The Official Review Thread of 2011

Post by Sonic Youth »

Jeffrey Wright was horrible. Farmiga's line deliveries were pretty terrific. More importantly, Gyllenhaal was far more engaging and compelling than DiCaprio in... okay, I've bashed it enough.
"What the hell?"
Win Butler
Sabin
Laureate Emeritus
Posts: 10747
Joined: Thu Jan 02, 2003 12:52 am
Contact:

Re: The Official Review Thread of 2011

Post by Sabin »

Sonic Youth wrote...
"Source Code"
As you all know by now, I'm not to be trusted on matters like sci-fi or comic book or blockbuster films. I hated "Avatar", I hated "Inception", I hate the Nolan "Batman" movies, etc. So, feel free to disregard me when I say that everything "Inception" strived and failed to "Source Code" managed to pull off a hundred times more successfully. It's a more modestly scaled film, but far more interesting narratively ("Source Code" slowly and enticingly revealed whereas "Inception" incessantly analyzed), stylistically (every single shot and edit in "Source Code" feel crucial to the film's mystery, but naturally it's not going to win a Cinematography Oscar), and performance-wise (okay, maybe not by much, but Jake Gyllenhaal does well enough in what would have been Tom Cruise's role ten years earlier; when it comes to sudden teary outbursts, he could be his successor.) For all that, it's a minor film anyway. It's still a strict genre film, and at the very end when it decides it wants to be so much more it goes way too far with the soft universal humanist messages. But if we have to have genre sci-fi, I'd rather it be like this.
Didn't you find the goofiness of Jeffrey Wright and Vera Farmiga annoying?

As I predicted, Source Code has risen in my estimation a bit since watching it. I'd like to see it again to see if it got better. I think I may have been too harsh on it, but there is a goofiness to the film that I think does its relative sleekness a disservice.
"How's the despair?"
User avatar
Sonic Youth
Tenured Laureate
Posts: 8003
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 8:35 pm
Location: USA

Re: The Official Review Thread of 2011

Post by Sonic Youth »

I've been gone and very busy for most of the year, seeing only two movies a month and with not much time to post. This is a positive thing, actually. And because my head has been in a real good place for so long, I've liked nearly everything I've seen... probably more than they've deserved (except for stupid, boring Thor). Anyway, time to play catch up, a little at a time. (I'll get to Woody's and Malick's in a bit.)

"Win Win"
Everything I've hated about Thomas McCarthy's previous films I enjoyed here, probably because he takes his contrived character studies and strained ethical quandaries and places them in a light vein which suits his films best. It's as idealistic as anyone could ask for in their unchallenging movies, and for once I couldn't care less. The filmmaking may be television quality, but one thing television has excelled at recently is adeptly melding drama and comedy, and the same goes for "Win Win". The comedy never falls on the grotesque side of broad, and the drama never descends into despair and angst. And that describes Giamatti as well. For all his character has to go through, he's troubled rather than at wit's end, and the result is his most engaging performance in a while. I also loved the casting of the teenage wrestlers. All gangly, inexpressive and monotone, they don't come across as polished youth actors, but as very credible youths, much like a Gus Van Zant film.

"Source Code"
As you all know by now, I'm not to be trusted on matters like sci-fi or comic book or blockbuster films. I hated "Avatar", I hated "Inception", I hate the Nolan "Batman" movies, etc. So, feel free to disregard me when I say that everything "Inception" strived and failed to "Source Code" managed to pull off a hundred times more successfully. It's a more modestly scaled film, but far more interesting narratively ("Source Code" slowly and enticingly revealed whereas "Inception" incessantly analyzed), stylistically (every single shot and edit in "Source Code" feel crucial to the film's mystery, but naturally it's not going to win a Cinematography Oscar), and performance-wise (okay, maybe not by much, but Jake Gyllenhaal does well enough in what would have been Tom Cruise's role ten years earlier; when it comes to sudden teary outbursts, he could be his successor.) For all that, it's a minor film anyway. It's still a strict genre film, and at the very end when it decides it wants to be so much more it goes way too far with the soft universal humanist messages. But if we have to have genre sci-fi, I'd rather it be like this.
"What the hell?"
Win Butler
anonymous1980
Laureate
Posts: 6377
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 10:03 pm
Location: Manila
Contact:

Re: The Official Review Thread of 2011

Post by anonymous1980 »

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Helena Bonham Carter, Jim Broadbent, Robbie Coltrane, Warwick Davis, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Gambon, Ciaran Hinds, John Hurt, Jason Isaacs, Kelly MacDonald, Gary Oldman, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, David Thewlis, Emma Thompson, Julie Walters, David Bradley, Tom Felton, Matthew Lewis, Evanna Lynch, Helen McCrory, Nick Moran, Natalia Tena, Bonnie Wright.
Dir: David Yates.

Yes, I'm a Harry Potter fan and an unapologetic one at that. I would say that this is absolutely the best Harry Potter film since The Prisoner of Azkaban. The second half of the film version of the seventh book of the series is a spectacular piece of pop entertainment that pretty much rivals, say, The Lord of the Rings in terms of sheer visual delights but more than that, it's also as emotionally involving as the books and I have to say the final showdown between Voldemort and Harry is better in the film than it was in the book. I'll stop comparing the books now. But all in all, one movie, Part 2 is pretty fantastic as a whole 5-hour film, I would have to say it absolutely works. It will definitely satisfy most fans. This is my 2nd favorite film of the year so far.

Oscar Prospects: I think it's a Best Picture contender. But also: Visual Effects, Art Direction, Makeup, Cinematography, Editing, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score.

Grade: A-
anonymous1980
Laureate
Posts: 6377
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 10:03 pm
Location: Manila
Contact:

Re: The Official Review Thread of 2011

Post by anonymous1980 »

AMIGO
Cast: Joel Torre, Garret Dillahunt, Chris Cooper, Yul Vazquez, Ronnie Lazaro, Rio Locsin, Irma Adlawan, DJ Qualls, Lucas Neff, Dane DeHaan, Bembol Roco, John Arcilla, Pen Medina, Stephen Taylor.
Dir: John Sayles.

This is John Sayles' latest film and it's about one of the more, little-known wars in both American AND Filipino history (I think we only mention this in passing during our history lessons). It's the turn of the century and after the Philippines was liberated from Spain, in comes the Americans. This is a fictitious story about a small rural Filipino village and head of village (Joel Torre) that find themselves in a crossfire between insurgents and the American troops wanting to introduce democracy to the country. Although Sayles often gets a bit preachy and more than a little heavy-handed, the extremely talented American and Filipino ensemble group of actors deliver great performances (especially Torre, Dillahunt, Locsin and DeHaan) and he does a great job of humanzing every side. It's not a perfect film but it's still a very worthy effort.

Oscar Prospects: I don't know if this is eligible for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars since the 1/3 of the film is in English.

Grade: B+
Sabin
Laureate Emeritus
Posts: 10747
Joined: Thu Jan 02, 2003 12:52 am
Contact:

Re: The Official Review Thread of 2011

Post by Sabin »

Although, I wish that there had been more with Christopher Plummer (especially a stronger final scene), more with Visjnic (especially when McGregor picks his dog back up, that scene screams for an opportunity to learn of his father better than he ever did), and less with Laurent (or rather more specifics with her), Beginners is still a very powerful film with a mood I can't banish from my mind. Mike D'Angelo's review pretty much encapsulates what I find so strong about it.
Beginners (2010, Mike Mills): 75

Couldn't squeeze any reservations into my too-brief review for Las Vegas Weekly (link forthcoming), so let me add here that Mills broke my heart in the home stretch, crafting an absolutely exquisite final scene that had me in tears (and flashing on Exotica, believe it or not), then continuing the movie for another 15 minutes. Goofy rapprochement? Really? Part of me worries that I'm resisting his tentatively happy ending due to the same ingrained cynicism/pessimism that cripples his protagonist—do I almost invariably prefer downbeat to upbeat simply because the former confirms my own low expectations? Yet that flashback of young Oliver and his mother driving ("And left again. Going in circles. I like it.") is such an intensely moving crystallization of everything Mills has been deftly dancing around that I longed for the film to end on that note, obliquely bleak though it is. (Then again, I may just have been overwhelmed by the titanic force of Mary Page Keller's astonishingly flinty performance, which boasts the most impressive ratio of complex character detail to screen time I've seen in ages—in just a few fleeting scenes, she somehow manages to convey the sad but self-imposed plight of a fiercely intelligent woman with no outlet for her passions save the inadvertent warping of her only child.) Still, that I genuinely believed Beginners might conclude in such a powerfully indirect way is a testament to how little it resembles the conventional boy-and-his-gay-dad dramedy that I'd expected and kind of dreaded. Mills is working in a radically different register than Terrence Malick, obviously, but his fluid, fragmented treatise on the deceptively gentle weight of personal history would make a superlative double-bill with The Tree of Life. It just wears its ambition more lightly.
"How's the despair?"
Okri
Tenured
Posts: 3345
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 3:28 pm
Location: Edmonton, AB

Re: The Official Review Thread of 2011

Post by Okri »

I saw Tuesday, After Christmas a while ago and have been meaning to put together a few words. Briefly, though, it's another sterling entrant from the Romanian New Wave and the three main performances are exceptional.
dws1982
Emeritus
Posts: 3790
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 9:28 pm
Location: AL
Contact:

Re: The Official Review Thread of 2011

Post by dws1982 »

Incendies
I liked it and would've voted for it easily over the other three Foreign Film nominees I've seen, although it's got nothing on the inexplicably rejected French entry, Of Gods and Men. (Haven't seen the Algerian entry, but given what I thought of Bouchareb's last nominee in this category, I can't say that I'm too excited about it.) All I knew going in was that it had to do with two siblings trying to find out about their mother's early life in some un-named Middle Eastern country. (Meant to be Lebanon, but not explicitly named.) I was expecting it to end up one of those "can't we all just get along?" pieces that we usually see about that region. That's definitely not what it is. It's well-constructed, and very well-paced--to be honest, Midnight In Paris, which I saw right before Incendies, felt longer. It has some genuinely surprising twists. There's one (which most movies would save for a big reveal) that is very casually dropped into our lap, and then when we think we've found out the main surprise (which is a bombshell, but not played that way), there's still another one in store. But those lead to some issues that just don't make any sense. (Some of those issues could've been handled very easily with just a few lines of dialogue too.) It's hard to discuss it without giving away major spoilers, though. Like I said, it's a good movie, well-acted, well-shot, and pretty affecting. Definitely worth a look.
Mister Tee
Tenured Laureate
Posts: 8637
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 2:57 pm
Location: NYC
Contact:

Re: The Official Review Thread of 2011

Post by Mister Tee »

Well, this will officially be the first PIXAR movie I don't see in a theatre. I had little interest to begin with in a sequel to their (in my view) nearest-to-boring effort; then I heard they upped the screen time of my least favorite character (the cosmically irritating Larry the Cable Guy). Cap that off with displeasing even BJ, who was way kind to the first movie, and I won't be spending my money on this.

I wouldn't be so confident it misses nomination, however -- the opening weekend gross is fairly enormous, and reflexive PIXAR voting may carry it in. A win, though, is dubious...you have to figure even at this point Rango would beat it, and there are more possibilities up ahead.
anonymous1980
Laureate
Posts: 6377
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 10:03 pm
Location: Manila
Contact:

Re: The Official Review Thread of 2011

Post by anonymous1980 »

The Original BJ wrote: It's probably time somebody else had a shot at the gold. I have no doubt the studio will be back in the running again soon.
They've got Brave coming out next year. PIXAR's first attempt at a "fairy tale"-type story and the first one with a female protagonist. They' will very likely be back on track next year and everything will make sense again. (Haven't seen Cars 2 yet though).

I suppose the only reason Cars 2 was made is purely from a commercial standpoint since Cars, as it turns out, is HUGE among younger boys. Billions of merchandise have been sold so far, more than any other PIXAR film.
Greg
Tenured
Posts: 3285
Joined: Thu Jan 02, 2003 1:12 pm
Location: Greg
Contact:

Re: The Official Review Thread of 2011

Post by Greg »

The Original BJ wrote:I thought Larry the Cable Guy's character was entertaining enough as second banana in the first film, but he's just too annoying, and too one-note a character, to headline this movie.
How many times does he say, "Get 'er done!" I am quite surprised at how ubiquitous Larry The Cable Guy has become. I was channel surfing one time and actually saw him on the History Channel of all places.
Post Reply

Return to “2011”