The Official Review Thread of 2010

[Damien]

Let Me In (Matt Reeves)

When I heard that the fine Swedish film, Let The Right One In, I couldn't imagine why. But even though I'm still not sure the remake was necessary, it is a better film.

The remake does follow the Tomas Alfredson original fairly closely but still trumps it. The first film had a cool sense of ambiguity, but Reeves's version occasionally shows an equally cool sly sense of humor. Where Reeves's movie beats Let The Right One in is in having the original's sense of dread replaced by a more affecting feel of melancholia. And even more, this film tops the earlier one because of the casting of the two leads. Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Moretz each possess waif-like looks that expresses a truly haunted air about them. Whereas the kids in the original (and I never bought that the boy in the Swedish film would be a victim of bullying) seemed like any two kids going through some pre-adolescent growing pains, Smit-McPhee and Moretz, with their hushed, hesitant line readings, tremulous presences and beautifully sad faces, truly show us two people very much alone in the world.

7/10



Edited By Damien on 1287350213

[kaytodd]

Just for my info, kaytodd, how did you manage to see 127 Hours?

The 21st Annual New Orleans Film Festival is running at venues all over town October 14-21. Saw 127 Hours last night.

In addition to 127 Hours and Howl, Soldonz's Life During Wartime, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest, I Am Love with Tilda Swinton, Fair Game with Naomi Watts and Sean Penn as Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson, Taylor Hackford's Love Ranch with Helen Mirren and Joes Pesci (I'll camp out for tickets for that one :laugh: ), The Human Centipede (ditto), Conviction with Hilary Swank as a high school dropout working mother who puts herself through law school so she can get her wrongfully convicted brother out of prison (Lame Magnificent Obsession update? I'll pass on that one as well) and lots of other feature films, short films, documentaries and animated films will be showing.

Every year I make a list of about a dozen feature films and documentaries I have to see and manage to see 3 to 4 at the most. This year will be no different. I will probably get to Howl, Fair Game and Life During Wartime.



Edited By kaytodd on 1287260156

[Mister Tee]

Just for my info, kaytodd, how did you manage to see 127 Hours?

[kaytodd]

I do not think Franco will be nominated for this performance. He will probably be nominated for Howl, which I will see Thursday night.

There is no way James Franco is going to be nominated for Howl. Most of his performance consists of his reading Howl as Allen Ginsberg.

I liked Howl and Franco was fine though he had little to do, but his was miscast as Allen Ginsberg.

I was under the impression Howl made extensive use of flashbacks featuring Ginsberg as a young man. Franco would not have been the first actor I would think of for the nerdy young Ginsberg. He is good as Aron Ralston as well, playing a wild outgoing adventure seeker who has to do a lot of deep thinking about his life as he stares death in the face. Very different from Alan Ginsberg. But one of the five best male lead performances of 2010? Not likely. I just assume the Academy would try to honor an up and coming actor having his breakout year and they would choose the film in which he spreads his wings a little.

I am glad to hear you enjoyed Howl. It is a very interesting and novel concept for a film and I've read witers/directors Epstein and Friedman really think outside the box. Even if it is a "failure" as some critics have written it sounds like a noble one that I want to check out.

[anonymous1980]

RED
Cast: Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, Mary Louise Parker, Karl Urban, Richard Dreyfuss, Julian McMahon, Rebecca Pidgeon, James Remar.
Dir: Robert Schwentke.

No, this is not the Hollywood adaptation of Kieslowki's classic third film from his Three Colors trilogy. But this film is still pretty entertaining albeit a bit by-the-numbers but the cast makes it fun. I bought the ticket when I saw Dame Helen Mirren firing a huge-ass gun in the trailer but John Malkovich was quite hysterical and pretty much stole the show and pretty much made this film worth watching.

Oscar Prospects: None.

Grade: B-

[Precious Doll]

I do not think Franco will be nominated for this performance. He will probably be nominated for Howl, which I will see Thursday night.

There is no way James Franco is going to be nominated for Howl. Most of his performance consists of his reading Howl as Allen Ginsberg.

I liked Howl and Franco was fine though he had little to do, but his was miscast as Allen Ginsberg.

[kaytodd]

127 Hours (Danny Boyle)

James Franco shows he has the charisma to carry a movie, even one in which he is alone on the screen in almost every frame. I always liked him in films but I had my doubts when I heard he had been cast as Aron Ralston. I knew that, due to the nature of the story, his chatacter would dominate the film. It takes more than acting talent to play a part like this. It takes charisma, presence and star quality and Franco pulls it off.

My main problem with this film is that I did not find Ralston to be an interesting character at all. And I think this is because we know almost nothing about him. We are rooting for him big time. Franco imbues his character with charm and spunk. His attempts to free himself and his sometimes funny reactions to how these fail got to me.

But the story is filled with flashbacks while Franco suffers in the desert. These are technically very well done but I know nothing about the people in these flashbacks or Ralston's relationship to them and this kept me from being engrossed in them. And that is a problem for a film like this. This could have been fixed with brief scenes giving some background on Ralston.

I think Boyle made a good decision to follow his usual practice of lots of quick cuts, split screens and liberal use of attention getting music. This film could have been static and stagy and Boyle's imagination keeps that from happening. But he overdid it this time. There are lots of quick cuts, changes in film speed and stock, sudden appearances of Ralston's hallucinations. This film could use a few quiet moments to allow us to absorb the story. This also kept me from becoming involved in Ralston's story.

But it is so technically well done and Franco was such a revelation to me I have to recommend it. I do not think Franco will be nominated for this performance. He will probably be nominated for Howl, which I will see Thursday night.

Grade B+

[anonymous1980]

THE TOWN
Cast: Ben Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Blake Lively, Titus Welliver, Pete Postlethwaite, Slaine, Chris Cooper.
Dir: Ben Affleck.

Ben Affleck continues to atone for his cinematic sins with a second-straight solid directorial effort. This one's not quite as good as his debut, Gone Baby Gone but it's still quite an exemplary effort. This time, he also stars as the lead. Though he is good in the role, the entire supporting cast makes him look even better. Jeremy Renner and Blake Lively are both standouts.

Oscar Prospects: Longshot for Best Picture and Best Director. It could sneak in Adapted Sceenplay and Supporting Actor (Jeremy Renner).

Grade: B+

[Sabin]

Enter the Void (Gaspar Noé)

This is my first viewing of a Noé film in a theater and it's certainly the place to watch it. Had I been at home, I would still be pausing and resuming it to date. It's somewhere between a technical marvel replete with an amazing audio mix and an outright sensory/sensibility assault. Being that it's a Gaspar Noé film, it essentially subjects you to all the uglies of the world. Whereas Irréversible made a point of isolating each universal ugly into a consolidated action separated from context, Enter the Void seems like a series of hat-tricks in search of transcendence.

Our hero Oscar embarks on a 40 min odyssey through tripping, New Age spirituality, and a drug deal gone awry until he is plugged in an ugly bathroom. These scenes have an enjoyable travelogue quality to them as we are experiencing it through his POV, the camera "blinking" (nowhere near as lame as it sounds) and all. Then he separates from his body and embarks on life-flashbacks consisting of being separated from his sister at a very early age after the abrupt death of their parents, and then he basically floats around waiting for an opportunity to be reincarnated. Now I admire any film that risks stupidity for providing the "Ultimate Trip" or allows us to contemplate the possible reality of our last moments, but this is pretty facile stuff. And then it becomes pretty endless stuff. Blake Snyder teaches that the mid-point of the 2nd Act constitutes a False Victory or a False Defeat. In Enter the Void, it is our POV hovering over the aborted fetus that "our" sister has just had.

At the end of Enter the Void, my friends and I sat down for a large Sapporo and debated what was the single toughest moment in the film. We established a rough top five or so, called it a draw, and drank some more. I have a knee-jerk tendency to distance myself during the film from any display of horrifying emotion that feels unearned. I unconsciously went through that a lot in Enter the Void. The abortion scene is bad enough, but there is a scene we return to of two childrens' parent's deaths after head-on colliding with a truck that is horrifying...and increasingly so each time, the final incarnation being one of the most depressing things I've ever been subjected to in a film. I'm still very much on the fence as to how much of this film is entirely unearned, because I don't want to outright dismiss this film, but on the whole I felt like I was watching something better left private, the work of a juvenile mind and master craftsman. Enter the Void is a dazzling piece of filmmaking no doubt, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was watching that had I been presented in script form I would find as revulsive as the person who presented it. It's a dunderheaded rumination of life after death wrapped in a litany of astonishing techniques that shouldn't work...but kinda do -- giant cock ejaculating into a vagina and onto the screen aside. That was just stupid.

[Damien]

Catfish (Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost)


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The people behind this rather purpose-less movie have no reason to come across as so self-impressed. Despite what they think, there's nothing particulary revelatory about someone creating a different persona on the Internet and not being who they claim to be. Craig Lucas dealt with it years ago in his play The Dying Gaul (and its screen adaptation). I'm sure it happens all the time -- after all, all of us on this Board dealt with it a few years back.

Schulman's brother who's the focus of the film is not a particularly interesting fellow. What the film does have, somewhat memorably -- even if the filmmakers aren't fully aware of it -- is a deep sense of sadness, of unfulfilled lives and of compromising hopes and dreams. It counters the smugness somewhat.


5/10



Edited By Damien on 1286506458

[Damien]

Nuremberg: Its Lessons For Today -- Stuart Schulberg (with his weasel brother HUAC Rat Budd Schulberg connected in an advisory capacity)

This is a restored version of a 1946 documentary commissioned by the US military, produced by the legendary Pare Lorent (with new narration by Liev Schrieber) and not previously seen. The footage of the trials is fascinating and the scenes of both Holocaust victims and the post-war survivors of a decimated Europe desperately trying to get by remain shocking and incomprehensible. But a complex half-year trial has been shoe-horned into a 78-minute running time and so much seems to have not been dealt with. For instance, in 1946, the defendants may have all been familiar to an informed public but 60 years later -- even to those of us fascinated by this history -- many of the principals here seem vague figures. A much better choice of the restoration team -- including the director's daughter -- wold have been to use the original footage as a starting point for a much longer, more detailed account of the trials.

6/10



Edited By Damien on 1286119903

[Sabin]

It's a message board.

[flipp525]

Overkill.

[Sabin]

I didn't really put a lot of thought into my equation. Although if you set the cooler the trailer the more to the power of one, my equation works. So if Scott Pilgrim's trailer gets a 4 b/c it doesn't accurately sell the film and Inception's trailer gets a 1, then my arbitrary equation I put no thought into is true.

[Greg]

And America ate Inception up. It must break down to (Dark Knight + Leo)/Cool Trailer = Hit.

Here's an error I think you made. Because you put "Cool Trailer" on the denominator of your equation, you are actually saying the cooler the trailer the less the movie is a hit, which I don't think you meant.