Mud Songs

Although it can’t help but fall into comic book territory from time to time, The Dark Knight doesn’t feel like any super hero movie I’ve ever seen. It is a mean and twisted Batman movie made for adults. It may not be an emotionally engaging film (who cares if Batman’s girlfriend gets killed?), but the storyline keeps you on edge the whole time — because of Heath Ledger as the Joker (he’s likely to get a posthumous Academy Award for his performance). Ledger establishes his character within seconds of appearing on screen — and it’s powerful. By the time his first scene is over, everybody knows who and what the Joker is all about: he’s clever, calculating and 100% homicidal, so look out. Villains don’t get much better than this. There are also plenty of explosions, chase scenes and other neat stuff. I’m not a fan of any of the previous Batman movies, but I may see this one again before it leaves the theatres.

The Incredible Hulk is another Marvel comic book movie. The Hulk smashes the crap out of everything. Ed Norton and the rest of the cast play their roles well. The story isn’t as involving as Iron Man, but it’s done well and it’s never boring. What else do you want from a comic book movie? It’s fun for what it is.

Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a fun movie if you don’t take it seriously. The first and third Indian Jones movies have stories that are fun and characters you can care about. The second movie doesn’t. This, the fourth in the series, has one interesting character (Indiana Jones), and a story that just barely pulls the action forward. But it does manage to make it over the finish line without thoroughly disappointing. There is some CGI, but it’s not distracting. There are no scary or super evil villains, but there is plenty of entertaining action. I had fun watching Harrison Ford play Indiana Jones one last time. Every other aspect of movie is forgettable.

I’m not sure what to say about A Mighty Heart, so I’m quoting the linked review from James Berardinelli: “Daniel Pearl’s kidnapping and subsequent death at the hands of terrorists became a major media story during January and February 2002… A video leaked to the Internet showing Pearl’s decapitation magnified the tragedy. A Mighty Heart… examines events of that one month period from the perspective of those who sought Daniel’s release: his pregnant wife [played well by Angelina Jolie], his friends and colleagues at The Wall Street Journal, and the Pakistani security forces. The film is fascinating and at times disturbing, but Winterbottom’s arms-length style mutes any emotional impact.” I felt like I was looking at real events, not actors. And thankfully they don’t show the beheading.

I enjoyed Iron Man more than any super hero movie that has come out in recent years. It’s well-acted and it tells a good story that doesn’t exist just to show off special effects. Had the producers gone heavy on the CGI, it could have easily slipped into mind-numbing territory like Transformers. Instead, it’s in a league of its own, presenting us with real characters and a compelling origin story that doesn’t feel childish or cartoonish but is still entertaining and full of really cool stuff.

The sequel to the apocalyptic zombie thriller 28 Days Later. That movie, which fell a little short of being great, scared the crap out of me and is worth watching because it presents such a convincing last-man-on-earth scenario. 28 Weeks Later gives us all-new characters and then brings on “the infected” (or the zombies) in full force. It effectively re-creates the run-for-life elements of the original movie. The ending is stupid, but it’s passable, creepy entertainment.

I saw The Maltese Falcon tonight in a theatre. It was okay, but it’s not in the same league as Casablanca. Bogart’s performance is uneven, the romantic element is unconvincing and the story isn’t too intriguing or compelling. For me, it has more style than substance. And even then, it’s not spectacular. My favourite film noir starring Bogart — if you really want to aim for cool just for the sake of being cool — is The Big Sleep, which would be great to see in a theatre.

I’m slowly losing my taste for films about people who do adventurous but stupid things (e.g., Grizzly Man, Into The Wild). Deep Water is a documentary about a guy who enters a competition to sail across the world non-stop by himself, and fails. It’s mostly a sad story and not nearly as gripping as something like Touching the Void, but it’s interesting, especially for viewers who know anything about sailing.

Here’s the set-up to Small Time Crooks: Some small time crooks devise a plan to open a bakery next door to a bank and tunnel underground into the bank’s vault. But the bakery does such good business that they make more money from the bakery then they would have from robbing the bank. That’s the first 30 minutes of the movie and it’s funny as hell. These guys are completely incompetent criminals. The scene where they first try to dig the tunnel with a jack hammer in the basement of the bakery had me howling. After that the story drags and becomes too serious. Individual scenes work on their own, and Tracy Ullman gives an excellent performance as the baker (and Woody Allen’s wife), but the comedy loses its momentum long before the final credits.

In The Bank Job, Jason Statham plays exactly the same character he plays in all his movies, but he has enough charisma to keep things interesting. (I could have sworn I originally wrote more than this. At any rate, it’s a passable heist movie.)

Sketches of Frank Gehry is a documentary directed by Sydney Pollack about Frank Gehry, an architect famous for designing buildings that look like things you’d see in an art gallery and wonder, “What the hell is this supposed to be?” It’s a straightforward telling of how and why he became an architect. A portrait of an artist / architect. Interesting to see how he works.

In Rescue Dawn, Christian Bale tries to escape from a Viet Cong prison camp in this by-the-numbers P.O.W. movie directed by Werner Herzog. Although based on a true story, it’s pretty light stuff compared to something like The Deer Hunter. The documentary, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, also directed by Herzog, presents a slightly more compelling take on the story. Both films are interesting but seem emotionally cold and less affective than they could be.

Despite its excellence, There Will Be Blood didn’t do much for me. Daniel Day-Lewis’s performance as a sociopathic oil prospector during the early 1900s is impressive, and he’ll probably win an award for it, but it feels too much like Bill the Butcher from Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. It’s not a bad film, but I lost interest well before the finale. And there is blood.

The Spiderwick Chronicles is a fantasy film in line with the first Chronicles of Narnia flick and Bridge to Terabithia, but a bit scarier and probably not suitable for children under 10. The kids in this one spend most of their time running from and fighting against goblins and other forest creatures. There’s not much to the story, but it’s adventurous and fun.

In Rosemary’s Baby, a newly-wed couple move into an apartment where all the tenants are unnaturally friendly, and after a while it becomes apparent that everyone is up to something, possibly something sinister. Directed by Roman Polanski in 1968, Rosemary’s Baby has the dated Technicolor look and feel of a Hitchcock film, with an ending that’s more laughable than shocking. I wasn’t on the edge of my seat waiting for the final reveal (which doesn’t hold up well 30 years later), but it’s fun trying to figure what the hell’s going on in the meantime.

The Sacrifice is the last film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky and, as is the case with most of his films, it’s an interesting but extremely slow and challenging film for most audiences. I like it but only recommend it for fans of Tarkovsky. From Ebert’s review: The Sacrifice “is about a man who learns, or dreams, that the bombers have gone on their way to unleash World War III. He offers his own life as a sacrifice, if only his family can be spared… [Tarkovsky] uses a great many long shots — both long in duration, and with great distances between the camera and the subjects. Long shots inspire thoughtfulness from the audience. We are not so close that we are required to identify with a character. We stand back, and see everything, and have time to think about it.”

The Triplets of Bellleville is full of crazy animation, definitely on the bizarre side, surreal, sad and poignant at times, grotesque, yet elegant and perhaps profound, and highly satirical. I just took a peek at Ebert’s review and I notice he tries to describe it like I just did: “It is creepy, eccentric, eerie, flaky, freaky, funky, grotesque, inscrutable, kinky, kooky, magical, oddball, spooky, uncanny, uncouth and unearthly. Especially uncouth. What I did was, I typed the word “weird” and when that wholly failed to evoke the feelings the film stirred in me, I turned to the thesaurus and it suggested the above substitutes — and none of them do the trick, either.” Read the linked reviews to get an idea of what we’re talking about.

Atonement is a sweeping, epic, war-torn romance, and a story well-told. I can see it winning some major awards: Best Picture, Best Direction, Best Score and so on. It’s not the kind of story that excites me, but it’s a good movie.

Cloverfield is the Blair Witch version of Godzilla. Passable entertainment for what it is: a monster movie full of beautiful people running and screaming — all through a single hand-held home video. We get glimpses of the monster destroying Manhattan, but the scares and thrills are fairly tame; frightening isn’t the word for it. More like indifference. Seeing how it’s supposed to be a video tape, it would probably play just as well on a TV (i.e., it’s a rental).

Waitress is a feel-good “dramedy” about a waitress with a talent for making pies who gets pregnant and falls for someone who isn’t her husband. It has a cute quirky quality that seems popular with shows like Pushing Daisies and Dead Like Me, if you like that kind of thing. It’s sweet and harmless, something my mother-in-law would probably enjoy.