The Official Review Thread of 2005

[dylanfan23]

Ok i finally saw the squid and the whale....so i'll comment on that one. The best film i've seen so far this year. It's really a great story with great characters. Brilliantly written and directed by noah baumbach. Jeff Daniels plays the lead of the film...the father of the family the film is about. He is about as unlikeable as a character can be in this type of film. Nothing could have happened for me to feel any sympathy for this character, and the story basically revolves around the way he acts and how his kids react to that. And its a story about wether the kids will take to his way of acting or find they're own way. Jeff Daniels does an absolutely perfect job in showing you everything this man is made of, or lack there of. Great performance by a very underrated actor. He is at the top of my performance list so far this year. Laura Linney is in a supporting role to daniels lead, and gives one of the best supporting performance by a female i've seen this year....her character is flawed but great because she can see her flaws and daniels cannot....and she is a good mother and shows her emotions very well, a great character and perfectly done by the reliable linney. And the two kids do a wonderful job as well. Jesse Eisenberg as the oldest son is so good that i will almost guarentee he'll be in my top five of supporting characters this year if not on top. His characters developement is what makes this film great and he does a perfect job. And finally "my brother" william baldwin is a very likable familiar face and with one continous line gets more and more laughs as the film goes on, much needed laughs. Great job by everyone, i hope this film is remembered with at least a screenplay nomination at the end of the year, it is brilliantly original and written. 5 out of 5 stars.

[FilmFan720]

phew...I was afraid I missed something in that film:)

[dylanfan23]

hahaha, didn't you see him the film...god i get those names mixed up....frank langella

[FilmFan720]

Anthony LaPaglia?

[dylanfan23]

I guess this is a good time to comment on Good Night, and Good Luck....probably the best i've seen this year....though not a perfect 5 stars for me. Probably a very high 4 and a half....i agree with the last poster, in saying at times i felt like a student watching this film. But at the same time, this was not a turnoff in the least. I'm 26 years old and do not have the knowledge of these events that i should have. And this film gave me a little more knowledge and that is a good thing. I did feel what these characters were going through, i felt the tension that was building and that made the film great for me, the viewer needs to feel that tension or this film would get very boring. David Straitham is owed to a lot of this because he hits a home run with the morrow character, i don't think you can help but get behind him 100% and just hope he gets out there and starts this arguement, because it is a very good arguement to be had. This is also owed to clooney's direction, like him or not, he has made two very solid films now, and has acted in at least a half dozen great roles(out of sight, three kings, O Brother, oceans 11, intolarable cruelty and ER), he's a great talent and i hope he continues.....he does a great job with a great subject matter here. The ensemble is right there as well, all doing there job very well. Anthony Lapaglia stands out for me, in the 3 or 4 scenes he was in. Robert downey and patricia clarkson were kind of wasted, but didn't hurt the film at all. I didn't mind they're secondary storyline. All in all, i was moved by the film, moved by David Straitham's performance and this film will end up at or near the top of my list at the end of the year....great film.

[Kova]

I also saw Good Night and Good Luck yesterday: I admired Clooney's sustained vision of the era, with details ranging from the chain smoking right down to Patricia Clarkson's slip. The ensemble is very strong, and the script is concise, smart, and informative.

However, I can't help but compare this film to a project that Clooney was involved in a few years ago: the live televised remake of "Fail-Safe." Everything about that production was easy to admire, but it left me with one simple question: Why? Why resurrect this artifact from the Cold War era and turn it into a TV stunt? GNGL felt similarly dusty to me. It not only idealizes hard news journalism, but the 50s as well. It is so intensely focused on the minutiae of the early-television newsroom that it abandons any attempt to engage the viewer with narrative. By bookending the film with Murrow's speech, Clooney & co. make their points early and often, even if the bulk of the film lacks any overt polemics. Even when the film could have been rousing (e.g. after the accused serviceman is re-enlisted), I still felt like an observer, or-- even worse-- a student.

It is certainly valuable as a commentary on the increased association between news media and consumerism, but this is a film that cares less about its audience than its own message.

And yes, I'm enraged about the fate of AD!

[Franz Ferdinand]

Saw Good Night, and Good Luck. and Jarhead last night (aah the old double-headers) and found them to be opposites.
GNGL is easily the best movie I've seen this year: the acting was spectacular (oh yes, David Straitham is my front-runner), the direction by Clooney was amazing (to coax performances like that is no easy task), and the overall feel of the movie was sublime. Not only that, but the periodic musical interludes with that wonderful singer whose name I forgot were just great, very atmospheric and fitting to the story arc. I felt like I was in the CBS studios watching the developments unfold (and my lungs could almost feel the constant second-hand smoke). I was lost in 1953/4 for 94 minutes, and I loved every one. (4.5/5)
Jarhead on the other hand is as underwhelming as the reviews said they are. Maybe its our expectation that a war movie would be loud and right in the thick of the action, but the movie is based on a private's memoirs of waiting around in a war better suited for air combat - I did not feel there was a need for this movie, especially since it made no comments on the nature/necessity of war aside from some tossed-off comments about Kuwaiti oil, etc. If the movie had to be made, it could have been kept much shorter with the same sense of waiting. The acting was solid, but the material felt lightweight. The constant references to past war movies also did not help establish Jarhead's own individual image: I felt like its own shortcomings were highlighted by the stronger war movies noted. It was appropriate the soldiers all went jihad with their guns at the end as a phallic reference to holding it in...and in...and in...before finally exploding in a fierce orgasm of pulling triggers. It could have been so much stronger. (2/5)

In other words, Fox has cancelled Arrested Development. I posted a page in the Misc. TV discussions, but felt I needed to mention is here so everybody sees the injustice. Black day for all A.D.'s fans.

[Penelope]

Pride & Prejudice is a mixed bag of a movie--the direction/photography alternates between splendid and dreadful, sometimes in the very same scene--there are times when it's stately and oh-so-Masterpiece Theater, and other times it looks like somebody shook Love Story and Barry Lyndon together and this is the result. But a classic story always seems to work (well, almost--Bride & Prejudice, the Bollywood version, was simply dreadful across the board), and the story works here, mainly due to a fine cast. I still say Keira Knightley is a long shot for a nomination--she's good, the best performance I've seen her give thus far, but she still lacks the oomph to totally carry this off--she's no Greer Garson (I love the 1940 version with Garson and Olivier, but must admit I've never seen the highly regarded TV version with Colin Firth). Matthew MacFadyen is bit too brooding, too Heathcliff as Darcy--yet, on the other hand, seeing him stride across a misty moor, his shirt opened, is undeniably a very swooning moment (really, this is Jane Austen as filtered through an ad for Obsession by Calvin Klein). Personally, I thought the best performance was provided by Donald Sutherland--has there been any discussion of a Supporting Actor nod for him?--he'd be most deserving.

[Sabin]

I saw Batman again a couple of weeks ago and I felt more than a little underwhelmed. I still admire the film a great deal, but four hugely debilitating factors stood out for me: 1) we're not dealing with a real movie, but three storylines that feel overly rushed; 2) the Batman stuff isn't nearly as compelling as anything with Bruce Wayne; 3) the dialogue is absolutely horrific and never does more than state the absolute obvious; and 4) Katie Holmes does indeed suck. I mean, she really sucks. She's not just passable as I initially thought. She takes away from every scene that she's in, and some of the ones that she's not.

I still like the thing, but studio bullshit really hurt this one.

[Franz Ferdinand]

Totally agree about Batman. I'm still surprised at the antipathy towards it earlier in this thread: great direction, solid acting, and a well-written story. I only hope that the Superman movie in 2006 will be as well made as Batman Begins. A solid top 10 pick for me so far as well.

[dylanfan23]

Batman Begins

I just saw this for the second time so i thought i'd talk about this now. A great film, probably will be one of the my ten best at the end of the year. I have to give my upmost respect to christopher nolan, he's 3 for his last 3...probably couldn't have done a better job with memento, insomnia and this. The main reason i love the batman story, is for the time your watching the film, you can really see this whole thing happening, i mean this is logical superhero so to speak, and i love that, i love how its a very real story about a very unreal idea. And this film adds to that because it tells the story about how this superhero got his start, and a very interesting start at that. Christian bale is a very perfect batman. The story moves right along and has many many great actors to help it along. Michael caine does a very good job, as does everyone else. Everyone kinda does what they're suppose to do, make you smile. Cillian Murphy probably is the best supporting actor in this film. It's just a good tight film thats a lot of fun and is very interesting if you enjoyed the comic book or the first two batmans. I was not a comic book fan but i very much enjoyed the first two batman's. I didn't think this could be better then the first batman and it wasn't. The first batman just had a better quality of story i think, the joker vs. batman was a lot better then this scarecrow and liam neesons character, not for anything else but it was just fun watching nicholson as the villian and the great batman as the guy to go against him. So the first batman wins, but this is a great film i think, 4 out of 5 stars.

[dylanfan23]

I'll add another crappy review, not the movie, but my review.

Shopgirl

I have to say i liked this film a lot. I can't give it 4 out of 5 stars though. I can give it 3 and a half. It's a very good story, very good acting, and very good work from the director...nothing great at all though. And 4 stars to me equals great. I never lost interest in the story once, i was intriqued by claire danes character from the moment she was in the picture. I enjoyed following her around and she's such a good actress that i cared about every manerism she gave. This is probably her best performance on the big screen, she has yet to achieve better then the season of my so called life....but she will i'm sure. I wouldn't be surprised if her performance ends up in my top five, but i hope it doesn't, theres got to be 5 more meatier roles for lead actresses where they got the job done. But she does everything she can with what she has and more. As does everyone else, steve martin is pretty perfect in his role as well, not that its very hard for him to play this part, he's done it before, but here he has to be right on because this is a very important part and we have to feel what he's going through and we do, at least i did. Jason swartzman probably did better then those two, he lit up the screen from the moment he was on it, the only problem with his part was that it was annoying at times, but i guess it was suppose to be. He's a great actor and he showed it here, one of the best supporting performances i'll see this year i'm sure. But this film made me anylize what was going on and i enjoyed that, it made me feel what the claire dane character and the steve martin character was going through and that was a good thing, because i do think they were real feelings that anyone could relate to, so it was very much a good film....just not great.

[Franz Ferdinand]

This isn't a review, but Jarhead just opened to $10.4M on Friday, which is quite a spectacular number considering tracking had it pegged at maybe $15-18M the entire weekend. Who knows how good the weekend multiplier will be, but as a movie playing to both adults and younger folk (the screening we arrived late to was packed, and we had to get a refund), it should be quite decent and see a weekend gross of above $30M. Does this change anything? I say no, but it's a good show of popular support in the meantime.

[Penelope]

Jarhead is, as I stated elsewhere, admirably mediocre. I thought Mendes' American Beauty was quite overrated and Road to Perdition an absolute waste of celluloid, and considering some of the withering reviews for Jarhead, I wasn't expecting much. And it isn't much, really, but for a movie that tries to dramatise boredom and waiting for something to happen that never does, it managed to hold my interest. Although, I suppose that could be due to the lingering, loving shots of the male body throughout the film....

[Mister Tee]

Well, for once I'll be the grouchiest about a movie: I think you're all being WAY too kind about North Country. I thought it was, for most of its running time, a complete mediocrity -- Lifetime on the big screen. Then, in the last 20 minutes or so, I thought it turned totally godawful. The end title made clear there was distinction between the film's chacraters and the "real" people who inspired the movie. Let me just say this: if the hopelessly melodramatic flashback events that climaxed this were created, not drawn from reality, the screenwriter who came up with them should be kept away from writing implements for the remainder of his life.

And if they're not, he still ought to be chastised, for so bungling his plot materials. A revelation like this at the end of the film totally upstages the class action suit that's the ostensible focus of the film. Moreover, a Josey character who's endured this life experience would be a very different sort of protagonist -- a flawed character from the start; and, like Jodie Foster's Sarah Tobias in The Accused, a dreadfully poor test case for any law. That should have been how WE viewed her. Instead, we were presented with her as Joan of Arc from pretty much the first scene -- always wronged, never wrong herself except in her choice of companions. Not only dramatically stifling, but untrue to the facts of the character.

As for Charlize...whatever there is to "get" about her, I guess I just don't get. There's nothing wrong with her work here, but nothing exciting either (nothing that couldn't have been done more interestingly by lots of actresses). I have no candidate for best actress to date this year, but if I had to choose one from what I've seen, I'd go for Paltrow or Joan Allen in their mediocrities over Charlize in this.

The only one I truly liked was Frances McDormand, even though her character went to ludicrous land with the rest of the film. I found myself wondering, Did McDormand get all the best lines in the movie? -- or does she just make it seem that way?