Yeah, yeah-- I'm way late on giving the list of (and grades) on what I watched in April, May, and June. Give me a break. I had a busy summer, and I'm now in the midst of the Fantasy Football season (I'm 1-0 in both leagues on my quest to repeat in one and three-peat in the other).
Anyway, the rules are the same: these are just very short things that popped in my head to write about these films or DVDs. Also, I am not a professional. If I got paid to write, I'd be a professional-- and I don't get paid to do this. I go with my gut. There are more than one film I rated a little low because it just didn't do for me what the pros said they did for them. Also, I tend to grade movies I see in the theatres a little higher than I would on DVD (maybe half a grade). I don't intentionally do it, but the theatre brings a lot to a film, in my opinion that can't be replicated on a TV.
These are my grades. Repeat: my grades. I tried to be consistent, which is to say, if I graded one movie a B, and another one an A, then I enjoyed/was impressed by the A more than the B.
And the basic thought behind a grade is:
F: Utter crap. Do not waste your time.
D: Pretty bad. May have one funny scene or an especially good acting performance among the rest of the garbage.
C: Average. Not bad, not special.
B: Pretty good. Worth watching.
A: Very good. Highly recommended.
And, as I've said before: I tend to watch more good movies than bad. If a DVD gets a great review in any number of magazines/newspapers, I'll probably end up watching it. Why I say that: I'm trying to show I'm not skewing the grades; I just tend to watch better movies.
Titles are given. I saw them on DVD unless otherwise noted (film=theatre; TV=premium channel; uncut).
Awake-- I want to like Hayden Christensen. I really do. But he makes it hard with acting here as wooden as it was in Attack of the Clones. There was a great scene where his mind is screaming when he’s being operated on (the premise of the film is this guy undergoes a heart transplant and is awake during it all because the anesthesia didn’t knock him out; it just paralyzed him), but other than that, the rest of the film was weak. And to make the film even more lame, there is a conspiracy to kill him during the transplant, which led to a number of twists and turns that got more and more far-fetched as the film drug on. D-
Balls of Fury-- A silly, not very good movie-- but I knew that going in. This is brain candy. It did offer some great cameos, though; particularly Thomas Lennon’s German ping pong champion. D+
Deepwater—TV. Being a Lucas Black fan, I wanted to check this out. Considering I ran across it on one of the movie channels and hadn’t heard about it before then, I didn’t have high hopes. It was weird. Black’s character steals a car to get out of a fight and ends up in this town run by a hotel owner. He meets up with a maid, and they agree to take the owner’s money and get out of town. But everything isn’t what it appears. D+
The Darjeeling Limited— I don’t understand “arty” movies. I can see the appeal for directors and actors and can often see the benefit for viewers, but some have me wondering “what is the purpose of this?” about 45 minutes in. This was one of those movies. Good acting, nice lines, mildly humorous, but at the 45 minute mark, I almost stopped it. Then the hour mark came, and something happened that actually brought quite a bit to the movie and pulled it all together. But it was a long wait. C-
Baby Mama—film. Tina Fey is the greatest thing since sliced bread if you’ve read any critic’s pieces about her, her show, or this movie. I like Fey a lot, but this movie was standard fare all the way. I’m woefully inadequate when it comes to “predicting” plots; I like to just watch the movie/show or read the book and be brought along for the ride. But I saw the ending coming a mile away. It’s not to say the movie wasn’t funny or anything; it was just a standard B-type comedy. Nothing you can’t see in a hundred other films in any given year. C
Before the Devil Knows you’re Dead-- Another well-crafted movie that left me cold. Two brothers decide to get some easy money—by knocking off their parents’ jewelry store. Things don’t go as planned. C
Incredible Hulk—film. Another attempt at getting this franchise right, and another near-miss. Ed Norton tried, but I wasn’t buying him as Bruce Banner. I really didn’t buy Liv Tyler as Betty Ross (I thought she was too soft). The guy I “bought” the most was the guy who didn’t seem to fit in: Tim Roth as Emil Blonsky/Abomination. Now he was great. I also have some issues with some character choices: why couldn’t the Hulk be green? Why did he have to be this dull grey/green thing? And why did the Abomination have to not look like the guy from the comics? I’m not one of those fanboy haters, but I did not find the movie version an improvement at all over the comic version. At least ti didn’t have stupid Hulk dogs this time. Nice try; but try harder next time (and there will be a next time, I’m sure). C
Lars and the Real Girl-- Lars is a quiet guy, who lives in a quiet town, and everyone wants him to meet a girl in the hopes that he’ll be more sociable. Instead of meeting one, he designs and buys one. He picked the “type” of woman he wanted, and bought a high-end sex doll. Then he treated her like a real person; he talked to her, set her up with a room at his brother’s house (she couldn’t stay with Lars because they weren’t married), and even brought her to church. And everyone played along because they all loved Lars. It wasn’t a bad movie—in fact the acting was above average—but it was just pointless. It was one of those well-written, well acted, well directed “slice of life” movies that doesn’t have a conflict or a resolution. C
Sex and the City—film. I watched the toned-down series on TBS, but I didn’t fall in love with the show like everyone else in the world seemed to. But I did enjoy it, and I was happy my wife was able to get excited for a movie like I get to be a few times a year. The movie felt long, as it covered material that probably would have made a decent sixth season of the series. Half-way through, I thought, This can’t be how this will turn out; these characters aren’t that stupid, but the movie was able to rectify the conflicts it began, and the movie ended by telling a complete story. But the thing is: there was no need for this movie. It ended with everyone in the same boat they were in at the end of the series. C
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story-- A ridiculous parody of the musical biopic. There wasn’t anything spectacular about it. The funniest moments for me were the ones where John C. Reilly was trying to pass himself off as the teenaged Dewey Cox. It’s a decent enough movie to kill some time with, but nothing must-see. C
Cloverfield-- I don’t know what to make of this. I’m not a monster movie aficionado, so maybe I wasn’t the target audience. It was done well considering it was meant to look cheap (everything is through the lens of a handheld video camera operated by one of the main characters). I thought the monster looked goofy (when we could actually see it), and I guess since it was supposed to resemble true life, we can’t really expect an answer to “where did it come from/what does it want?” But it would have been nice. The story just kinda started and then just kinda stopped. But it did stay true to what it was trying to capture (one small group of people’s experience with a monster), so I guess it succeeded that way. C+
Death at a Funeral— I was hoping to like this more than I did. Take a small, silly British movie with bizarre characters and increasingly bizarre situations, and I should be all over it like I am for BBC America shows like Worst Week of My Life. But this film just seemed like it was trying too hard, and it, ultimately, wasn’t as funny as I hoped. C+
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull—film. I’m not gonna say Harrison Ford is too old. I’m not gonna say George Lucas didn’t come up with a good concept. And I’m not gonna say Steven Spielberg didn’t do his job. But I will say this didn’t feel like an Indiana Jones movie. Something was “off”. I don’t know if it was the setting, the sci fi elements, or what, but it didn’t feel right. It also didn’t help when the nuclear bomb went off. I know Indy doesn’t live in the real world, but come on… It still had great action, though; so there is something worth watching. C+
Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium— This film tried to be too many different things. It was a fairy tale of sorts, but it had its dark moments that took me out of the fantastical elements. It was a coming of age story that came a little too easily. It was a “learn to believe in magic” story that was tidied up too quickly. Dustin Hoffman was a little too much, Natalie Portman was a little too little, Jason Bateman worked well in a character that wasn’t fleshed out enough, and Zach Mills was perfect as the hat collector. The film certainly wasn’t bad, just disjointed. And it didn’t live up to what it could have given premise and the actors. C+
My Kid Could Paint That-- A young preschool girl becomes an art sensation when her abstract paintings sell for tens of thousands of dollars. That creates a frenzy because it’s abstract art; an art type that a good chunk of the population believes is bunk to begin with, and now a little girl is creating works that stack up against some of the abstract greats. And then people begin questioning if she was doing the paintings herself, or if she had help from her artist father. There was a lot going on in this movie, and it was interesting to see the fragility of the art world, but nothing really got “solved”. The movie just ended. It was all you expect, but I wanted more. C+
Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic—TV. Sometimes I like Silverman, and sometimes I don’t. This film was a mix of her standup and some skits and pieces in between bits. Some were funny, some weren’t. If you’ve watched her Comedy Central show, you know what to expect. C+
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