Review: MONEYBALL

Moneyball totally took me by surprise and I couldn’t be happier. Yes, that’s right. I am declaring a big budget studio feature about baseball starring Brad Pitt a huge, wonderful success. I dare you to tell me you don’t like this movie.

Between Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill and the script, this film is rock solid. And what a relief to say that! I don’t need to mention brilliant visuals or alluring starlets. I don’t have to justify recycled excuses for why I enjoyed this film. There aren’t flashy action sequences or dazzling special effects. There is no 3D or IMAX to melt our brains. There are no gimmicks!

Review: TUCKER & DALE VS EVIL

Sometimes all the necessary things for a great movie to come into existence line up; it is the holy alliance or a fresh idea, a great script, and good acting comming together. If you have this it is quite unlikely for any filmmaker to screw it up. Eli Craig was blessed with this trifecta on his directorial debut, Tucker & Dale vs Evil, a warm parody of the teenage slasher classics (if we can call them classics). The film is what the Scream and Scary Movie franchises could have been had they not lacked, a fresh idea, a good script to tie down that idea, and good acting to make that idea come to life. And yet while those movies make millions Tucker & Dale vs Evil has sat on a shelf for two years, mostly because studios increasingly refuse to believe newcomers can be bankable filmmakers.

The Grey

Review: THE HELP

Some might argue that The Help presents itself as too rosy a movie for a movie about the lives of black maids in the South during the Jim Crow Days. That a movie of its kind should attempt to be painful, and provocative, not, as this movie is, a feel-good dramedy with a white girl as its top billing. But why does it need to be painful? Personally I believe the exaggerated pain drama only help propagate the problem they claim to be fighting against (I am referring of course to Crash, and the like). And that The Help might be just so much more effective a movie because it is not that: it just shows things as they were without caring for exaggerated drama.

Review: CONTAGION

Contagion is one lazy piece of fiction that banks on the names of numerous stars, pretentious direction, and the general audience’s fear of anything swine flu related. Ironically, several of the characters do point out, how the exaggerated fear over the swine flu made things worse. Would I be spoiling anything if I said the same thing happens in Contagion? Probably not because Contagion is trying to be a realistic film that speculates how a global epidemic could affect our lives.

Review: APOLLO 18

No, the moon may not be made of cheese, but let me assure you that the latest film about it is.

To the eternal delight of conspiracy theorists, Apollo 18 is sold to us as a found-footage project recovered from a secret mission to the moon, which would have been easier to swallow if it wasn’t so comically serious in its presentation. As it is, I found myself chuckling 10 seconds in and I was not alone.

Review: DRIVE

There is a silent elegance to the way Drive presents itself; there is some clear nostalgia at work, as the film tries to emulate classic noir of the 60s and 70s, which results in a film that is very different from what modern day viewers are used to. But despite the nostalgia, Drive has suffered time’s filter nevertheless. Today all car chases are loud, explosive, and somewhat incoherent. With this background in mind, I welcome a movie like Drive; a movie that takes its time to explore the craft of driving. When you think about it logically car chase should be much more about stealth and avoiding the spotlight than blowing up half of downtown LA.

Review: SUMMER 2011

            Labor Day weekend, movie wise this means the summer season has officially ended, even if there are still a few blockbusters to be seen. Over the weekend The Toronto Film Festival will kick up the award movie season, movies will slowly raise their IQ, with an obvious break for Halloween when they tend to plummet into the negatives. But let’s take a look at what the summer of 2011 had to offer.

 

            Overall summer is the highest grossing times for movies. It is the time the studios bring out the big guns and release their 200 million dollar + movies. It is the time of superheroes, loud explosions, and gross amounts of CGI. It is also the time in which actors and filmmakers get the most exposure, so it is not uncommon to see a capable actor like Neil Patrick Harris in a movie like The Smurfs selling his soul.

            Above all things, summer is the time of the year when money talks.

Review: DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK

What is it about basements, old manors, and dark corridors that cause the dark side of our imaginations to soar? It would seem that most horrors seem to inhabit these places; common sense would tell you not to go in there, not to go were the light is scarce because there might be something creeping in the shadows. Something you can’t quite explain, and that most people won’t believe is there.

As a rule of thumb, you should not move to an old manor who’s previous resident disappeared after allegedly going insane. But alas, 10-year-old Sally (Bailee Madison) and her father (Guy Pierce) move into such a place. Bad idea.

George Lucas Fixes "Star Wars"

As reported by Moviefone, here.

In the re-re-re-re-re-release of the "Star Wars" trilogy...

Obi-Wan's dragon call has been changed.

Darth Vader screams "No!" when saving Luke Skywalker.

All I can say is, "Finally!" Because, man, I love the original trilogy but those two audio clips are really saving what I always said were the worst parts of any Star Wars film. For some reason, like always, there are talks of boycotting the Blu-Ray releases--so I guess that means I'm going to have to buy multiple copies of the Blu-Ray super 9-disc set to off-set those efforts.

Come on people! If we buy enough Star Wars crap again, Lucas is sure to keep "releasing" the films and we'll finally all get what we really want: a CGI Admiral Akbar!