Seis De Mayo

Apparently Cinco de Mayo means heavy movies. I watched two. Half Nelson and A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints. Some similar themes, but significantly different films. Both were well acted, well shot, and well written.
Ryan Gosling was amazing in Half Nelson. The young girl (Shareeka Epps) definitely has a future in the film business. The movie was gritty and raw, but within the raw imagery was a balance of a Dead Poets Society classroom and the drug realism of Traffic or Rush.
Chances are A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints didn't show up on your radar. I didn't know much about the story when I dropped it in my queue, just saw a favorable review from someone I trust. It stars Robert Downey, Jr. and Shia LeBeouf as Dito Montiel. The film simultaneously follows him coming of age in New York and a successful 30 something returning to care for his ailing father. It's powerful and entertaining, but definitely heavy. Robert Downey, Jr. is on the short list of actors who I can watch do anything.

Catching You Up On My Netflix Activity

I think the last movies mentioned were the Illusionist and Prestige comparison. Since then, I've been plowing through some new releases and a few movies I missed the first time around.

Marie Antoinette
I thought Kirsten Dunst did a great job portraying a misunderstood queen, but I thought the way that it was directed was lacking a certain depth. As I mentioned, the cinematography was first class and the art direction was pretty amazing too.

Hollywoodland
Another movie that was shot beautifully. Ben Affleck will always be overlooked as an actor, probably more for a couple of poor choices of films and the whole J-Lo thing than any performance he's ever done. You have to remember that he was amazing in Good Will Hunting, Chasing Amy, and Shakespeare in Love; and overlook Gigli, Pearl Harbor and Daredevil. I feel like his portrayal of George Reeves had a lot of himself in it too. Adrian Brody is one of those actors that causes you to hold your breath without realizing it whenever he's on the screen. He's so talented and unique that you can get captivated by the characters he creates.

The Last Kiss
I think all the performances in this film were great. Zach Braff, Rachel Bilson, Blythe Danner, Tom Wilkinson, Casey Affleck, and Michael Weston were all spectacular and well acted. I think the story was too spread out and the direction didn't lend itself to the film. I was intrigued much more by the Casey Affleck storyline, the Blythe Danner/Tom Wilkinson storyline, and the roadtrip to South America storyline than I was with the Braff/Bilson/Barrett story. I'm interested to see the original Italian film (L' Ultimo Bacio) to be able to compare.

All The King's Men
This is an example of a deep cast not being able to make up for a weak film. The film stars Sean Penn, Jude Law, James Gandolfini, Anthony Hopkins, Kate Winslet, Mark Ruffalo and Jackie Earle Haley. Sean Penn plays Louisiana Governor Willie Stark. While the movie might have been better served to have been about the change between the idealistic and passionate Willie Stark we meet in the beginning of the story to the idealistic, passionate and corrupt Willie Stark we see at the end, the film focused on Jude Law's character instead. The film is based on the book by the same title by Robert Penn Warren and was made into a film in 1949 that won three academy awards including Best Picture, but where the 2005 version differs is ultimately it's downfall. The character of Willie Stark is based on Louisana's corrupt governor Huey Long.

Casino Royale
Best Bond movie ever; hands down. I think Daniel Craig portrays the James Bond that we all imagined as kids, before we understood all the double meanings of the words. A classic example of this is towards the beginning; while the guy he is chasing is displaying some pretty good parkour, there's Bond crashing through walls like the blunt object he's described as. Craig does a great job portraying James Bond as the heroic genius, but also as the tragic character with nothing to lose we meet later (err...earlier) in the series. I did think that the sequence with Eva Green went on too long in the middle for the ultimate payoff, but the deception of Bond as well as us the audience are done better than other Bond twists.

Idiocracy
A very clever, entertaining movie from Mike Judge (of Office Space, Beavis & Butthead, King of the Hill fame). Luke Wilson plays the character he's played in most of his movies, but still manages to be believable in a ridiculous, unbelievable story. It's crass and slapstick, but funny all the same. Overlooked might be Maya Rudolph's brilliance.

Winter Passing
One of the harder movies I've seen recently. Despite having Will Ferrell in the cast, this is a haunting film about some pretty broken people and how they live and learn from each other. Zooey Deschanel is amazing as is Ed Harris. Will Ferrell, in the bonus features, says he's the closest thing to a comedic performance in the movie, but mainly because his character is so awkward. It's an interesting look at death, family, drugs and writer's block. To fully show her talent, Zooey Deschanel sings a couple songs in the film, though they aren't on the soundtrack.

Borat
Hilarious. I'd watched Ali G a bunch over the last few years, and didn't think that the movie would go beyond the overall joke of the skits on the show, but whether the plot made any sense or not, the movie was funny. I'm glad to see that Sacha Baron Cohen is putting together a Bruno movie, but this is the type of performance art that can't be repeated, so get in while you can.

The Long Con: The Prestige vs. The Illusionist

Two movies about magicians coming out at the same time takes me back to the summer of 1998 when Armageddon and Deep Impact both showed us how to avoid the Earth being destroyed by comets, meteors, and asteroids. In the same way that Armageddon and Deep Impact separated themselves despite similar plots and elements, both The Prestige and The Illusionist are both similar and unique. I'll preface this further by saying that I enjoyed both movies, though I would have done something different with each of them. Whereas The Prestige deals with the rivalry between two magicians and the lengths they are willing to go to in an effort to best the other, the rivalry in The Illusionist is between a magician from humble beginnings and the crown prince of Austria. Both movies are period pieces, both movies have a generation's most promising actors (Edward Norton and Christian Bale), both movies have one of the hottest young actresses in Hollywood (Scarlett Johansson and Jessica Beil), and both movies con their audiences in the same way that the characters con each other. I'd heard enough about both movies to know that more was happening than they were willing to give away, but I think both movies could have done better at protecting the reveal yet still keeping true to the con. To protect anyone who hasn't seen them, I won't go into too much detail other than to highlight a couple of performances. Michael Caine, who worked with Christian Bale and director Christopher Nolan on Batman Begins was great in The Prestige. I thought Paul Giamatti and Rufus Sewell did well supporting Norton's performance. I think I liked the Prestige better, but I don't feel as though to like one better is to not like the other.

Stranger Than Fiction

I've had Stranger Than Fiction sitting here from Netflix all week, but with the live music schedule, I haven't had a chance to watch it. I got around to watching it last night and let me tell you...this is a great movie. The performances were fantastic. Will Ferrell puts his acting chops on display whereas the performances by Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal and the brilliant Dustin Hoffman complimented both Ferrell and the movie. Having taken several creative writing classes and having a affinity for fiction writing also made this movie intriguing for me. Zach Helm's writing is genius and director Marc Forster did a great job putting it all together on film. I'm surprised actually after seeing it, that it wasn't included in any Oscar nominations. Will Ferrell was nominated for best actor in a comedy (though, I wouldn't label Stranger Than Fiction a comedy), but lost to Sacha Baron Cohen. I recommend you rent it or drop it into your Netflix queue for a pleasant surprise.

Serenity & Firefly: The Space Westerns

As previously mentioned several times, I spent the early months of 2005 watching every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer the TV series. I gained an appreciation for what Joss Whedon has running around in his head. Joss directed a recent episode of The Office, though he apparently had nothing to do with the writing, ironically considering the vampire storyline. There's been increasing buzz about the short lived TV series Firefly, lately in my "meta-circles" so I added it to my Netflix queue to see what all the buzz was about. I knew from my Buffy experience that there was going to be witty dialog and that the characters would all be uniquely gifted to make the whole of the group more powerful. I didn't have a concept of what the story was, though. Without giving too much away for those of you who will immediately run out and rent it, I'll share what I liked about the TV series and then the movie (that due to a Netflix hiccup, came before the Firefly discs, which incidentally came out of order too). I like that there aren't alien creatures. It sets it apart from just about every other scifi space story. Some might argue the Reavers are alien creatures, but we don't learn enough about them in the TV series to know anything other than they used to be humans and you don't want to be anywhere near them. I like that the visual effects (which won the series an Emmy) don't make it look like one of those weekend mid-day scifi shows on syndicated networks (you know what I mean). There were probably too many characters for the show to not become messy with holes in the story. Perhaps had the show continued beyond the 14 episodes, we would have had some more insight. There are hints throughout the series that we don't know everything we should know about Book, but we're never told what makes him so experienced for a Shepherd. TV has a long history of having romantic tensions play out for a season or a series and there are plenty of cases where once two characters finally get together, it's a letdown, so the tension between Mal Reynolds and Inara (the prostitute in an age where prostitutes are at the top of the social food chain) never came to fruition either by design or because of the shortened series. I'm left at the end of the movie (which comes chronologically after the TV series) wanting more, but I'm not sure there was more to tell about these characters. The conflict and themes were compelling and I loved the universe (the 'verse) they were set in, though so there's potential. I know there are comics about the series, but that's not my thing. The space western worked for George Lucas once too, maybe it's a valid genre for a clever writer to explore.

New Camera and I Finished Babel

I got a new camera. It was on my list of resolutions for 2007 to get a digital SLR and I can cross that one off. I got a Canon EOS Rebel XTi...that's the 10.1 megapixel model of the Digital Rebels. It will definitely get the job done for getting some pictures of California over the next couple weeks as well as chronicling my adventures in Alaska. Also purchased to go along with it is a Waterproof backpack that should ease my anxiety of taking a supercamera out of it's box it came in.

I finished Babel. It's a pretty interesting film, but I still think The Departed deserves best picture. I felt like Babel was making some valid statements, but they were a little heavy handed and I felt like there was a lot I already had seen in movies like Crash and Traffic. Some great performances, though. Definitely worth two and a half hours of your time. Drop it in your queue with Little Miss Sunshine, The Departed, and Everything is Illuminated.

Netflix Dump

A couple of movies that have passed through the USPS lately...

The Science of Sleep
What a great movie! There's so much about it that I don't understand, but the way the film mixed dreams, reality, lucid dreams and the film's own reality was pretty brilliant. It comes from Michel Gondry who directed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Where Charlie Kaufman's writing helped Eternal Sunshine have a little rhyme and reason to it, Gondry wrote The Science of Sleep and brilliantly keeps you confused the whole time whether what you're seeing is real or dream or just the reality in which the film lives. It's highly recommended.

The Departed
I like gangster shows and films and I like clandestine stories too. This latest film from Martin Scorsese does the gangster genre, the cop genre and adds the thriller suspense plot twists to it to make an excellent film. It was originally a Hong Kong film called Infernal Affairs (Wu Jian Dao). Jack Nicholson is great in the film. Leonardo DiCaprio is pretty amazing as usual. Mark Wahlberg does a great job (he's nominated for Best Supporting Actor for the role) but I think Matt Damon's performance is overlooked. He may never have a Will Hunting performance again, but I think this was one of his best roles.

Never Cry Wolf
I saw this movie several times as a kid, but only had vague memories of it. It's the story of Farley Mowat and his adventures in remote Canada. Farley Mowat was sent by the government to study wolves to see if they are the cause of caribou shortages. It's fascinating and beautifully told and filmed.

Game 6
This movie didn't come in the mail, but rather was my testing of the new feature of Netflix to stream movies on your computer. The service worked flawlessly (though it requires using Internet Explorer and isn't compatible with Firefox. The movie surrounds Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, the game made famous by the Red Sox collapse culminating with Bill Buckner letting the routine grounder slip by him giving up the winning run. It stars Michael Keaton and Robert Downey Jr. Though the movie only briefly touched on the idea, I was thinking that it was going to explore the impact of that game by showing an alternate reality in which Buckner got the ball and put Mookie out at first base. Somethings would be significantly different, but much would be the same. This isn't a baseball movie, so put that idea that the players on the team are actors like a Costner movie. The events of the movie surround the game. It's a good story and I liked the characters a lot. I can recommend the movie and I can recommend the service of watching the movies on your computer.

Little Miss Sunshine

I've had Little Miss Sunshine at the top of my Netflix queue for weeks and I finally had a chance to watch it. I had pretty high expectations because it seemed like the type of movie I would enjoy. While I did enjoy it, I was also disappointed. I know the disappointment stems from the high expectations and not from it being a bad movie. It's a good movie. The story is unique and the characters are even more unique. Though each of the other characters try to put themselves in the center of the story, Olive, the seven year old pageant hopeful is the center of not only the plot but the emotional center of the group of misfits. I was surprised at how easily I was able to accept Steve Carell as a suicidal, homosexual former professor. In some reviews I'd read, the reviewers couldn't get past Michael Scott, Andy Stitzer, and Brick Tamland when watching him be sad. Alan Arkin was phenomenal and deserves his Oscar nomination, the scene in the hotel room with Olive is worth the win, especially if he did his own stunts under the sheet. I guess there were only two things that I felt were a let down and thus led me to be disappointed; I was let down by a real lack of development of Toni Collette's character as a wife, sister, and mother and by the scene at the pageant. I'm purposely being vague, as I know many of you might not have seen it yet. I do recommend you see it, because it's a rather beautiful story about how like I said before the youngest member of the family causes change in the rest of the characters. The music by DeVotchka is perfect and helps pace the action as well as set the tone. I'm glad to see Abigail Breslin was nominated for her performance as Olive because I'm sure there was a lot of her in that role.

Who's In Your Entourage?

I have a habit of abstaining from watching serial TV shows if I miss the first episodes. But some of my favorite shows have been serial and many of them I've had to figure out how to get engaged to the storyline midway through arcs. I've avoided a few shows because I can't figure out what the larger arcs are. I've mentioned that I've used Netflix to catch up on The Sopranos, but I've also caught on to Entourage too. I remember when the show premiered, but I can't remember why I didn't watch it. Anyone who has HBO knows that it isn't because the time slot conflicted with something else, because they have a habit of over exposure. The first season of Entourage engaged me, but it seemed to go pretty fast. It's not deep stuff, even the Sopranos has several layers to the stories. Entourage is all about is its characters and the cameos. I'm enjoying the second season more than the first because the characters are even more emphasized. You have to love a show in which one episode involves Rainn Wilson (Dwight Schrute from the Office) playing a geeky blogger and closes with the guys in the audience of a U2 show in which Bono wishes a happy birthday to Johnny Drama. If you're not familiar with the show, it's about a young actor in Hollywood, two childhood friends that fill the roles of his manager and his driver, and his former A-list acting older brother...and his agent played by a longtime MKinMotion favorite, Jeremy Piven. The principal character, Vince Chase, is intriguing because he's equally interested in the craft and art of acting, as well as the inflated lifestyle of a big star. I highly recommend renting the DVD's and starting at the beginning. It's been nominated for Emmy's for casting and writing and this year Jeremy Piven walked away with the supporting actor award, a role he's been nominated for a Golden Globe for 3 years. It's nominated for the ensemble cast Screen Actors Guild Award, as well as another nomination for Jeremy Piven. The show mocks as much as it celebrates in the entertainment industry, and its apparent parallels to Executive Producer Mark Wahlberg's experiences in Hollywood, make it appealing on several levels.

For Your Netflix Queue: Blasts From the Past

Netflix is a great product. I think I've made my opinion about them clear in previous posts, but it demands repeating. I've been using my Netflix queue for two main purposes, the first being to catch up on all the recent movies I haven't seen and the second is to re-watch or watch old movies from some of my favorite directors/actors. I figure it's a worthy weekly feature for MKinMotion.com, so I will start to review two movies each week that I've recently experienced via Netflix. Full disclosure, I was a customer before I added them as an incentive link in the sidebar, but I did add them as a "sponsor" because I use their product and enjoy it and have no hesitation telling you that if you don't already have a Netflix account, you're missing out and you can get one through MKinMotion.com. OK, enough disclosure...

This week I've chosen to feature two movies that I hadn't seen until just the last week or two. Their both from directors that I have a lot of respect for and anything that they've released tends to be worthy of a rental. I took 3 quarters of Film classes in college and taking those classes really gave me an appreciation of the art form and also reinforced the idea that some movies are there just to entertain you without making you think at all...and that's okay. They're all art and creative regardless of whether there are explosions, CGI, or brilliant acting. When I was taking these classes at the end of each term there was a project that allowed you to watch 3 movies from one director and do some compare/contrast from different films. While a lot of people went after Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction had just blown up), Steven Spielberg, and the popular film class safe bets of Scorsese, Woody Allen, Coppola, Kubrick, Wells and Hitchcock, I spent the three terms looking at the films of Robert Altman, Wim Wenders, and The Coen Brothers. For Robert Altman I watched MASH (the movie, not the TV show), The Player, and Nashville (and I'd seen Short Cuts and Popeye also). For Wim Wenders, it was Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire), Bis ans Ende der Welt (Until the End of the World), and Im Lauf der Zeit (Kings of the Road). For the Coen Brothers, I watched Raising Arizona, Barton Fink and Miller's Crossing. I could go into some observations of each, but me even listing the three films for each director is already probably tiresome.

This week's features come from Robert Altman and The Coen Brothers. First from Robert Altman comes a movie that I couldn't believe I hadn't seen when I finished it. The Long Goodbye was released in 1974 and teamed Altman with his star of MASH, Elliot Gould (who this generation knows more for Ross and Monica's Dad than his previous leading man work) as Philip Marlowe a private detective, based on the Raymond Chandler novel of the same title. Gould is brilliant and Altman's directorial style shines in this movie. One of the shining moments of the film for me was the opening sequence of Marlowe feeding his cat, I've never seen a cat that well trained and the humor was priceless. The movie came out in 1973 and is set in Los Angeles in 1973. Arnold Schwarzenegger has a brief and silent role in the movie (his second role of his career). It's a mystery and has some good twists, but nothing or no one can outsmart the eccentric Philip Marlowe. I was surprised to see that Elliot Gould wasn't nominated for any awards for his performance as it was dynamic and performed flawlessly. It reinforces my appreciation for Altman's other movies and the loss that the artform experienced in November when he passed away.

The first movie that the Coen Brothers directed was Blood Simple which featured a very young Frances McDormand in her debut (Frances would go on to be in Fargo, Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing and The Man Who Wasn't There with her husband Joel Coen) and a pretty solid performance by Dan Hedaya. John Getz shared the lead spotlight with Frances, but his career hasn't been nearly as illustrious as McDormand's. The movie centers around several relationships and focuses on how badly things can go when relationships and communication break down. Dishonesty begets dishonesty, violence begets violence. It's shot well and the acting is very solid.

So, if you're a Netflix customer add them to your queue and if you're not, click the link in the sidebar and check out their pricing plans.