Movie Review - The Haunting In Conneticut

The Haunting In Conneticut (4 of 5): Any fan of this genre knows that the state of horror movies has been reduced to cheap gorefests, perpetuated by movies like Hostel, Saw, and endless gory remakes of classic 70's and 80's horror. However, Connecticut does not bombard you with excessive violence and blood.

Instead, it tells the story of a teenage boy suffering from cancer who agrees to undergo some experimental treatment. In an effort to ease the burden, his family abruptly and hastily moves the entire family to a rental home in Connecticut. The home seems to provide the ideal setting for the grief-stricken family, however, from the onset, most of the family is unaware of the home's disturbing past. The movie explains itself thoroughly, so there is no point in re-capping it here. Suffice to say that the house has a chilling and haunted past "filled" with death, self-mutilation, spirits and lost souls.

Where this movie succeeds is in it's ability to scare with imagery. There are a handful of scenes that really made me jump, simply due to a look from an on-screen character, or some environmental effect. The make-up and CGI in some areas were very effective in presenting a truly frightening scene.

That being said, the movie is not without it's generic horror pitfalls. My biggest pet-peeve in horror is the cheap scare that is delivered as the music builds up, and something pops out of nowhere and makes the character and viewer literally jump. Connecticut certainly has it's share of these cheap scares. Additionally there are a lot of borrowed concepts from other successful horror successes such as Poltergeist, The Ring, and The Others.

It's important to remember that in horror, more than in any other genres, there are so few universal truths as to what is scary. It is a very personal and wide ranging emotion. This one did it for me and I was very pleased to leave the theater pretty freaked out at the film I had just seen.

*Note* If you do see it at the theatre, be sure to stay well into the credits. There is a very spooky, albeit contrived surprise at the end.

Movie Review - I Love You Man

I Love You Man (3 of 5): I'm almost ready to say "enough already". These movies are coming a little to quickly ( I know what that's like) one after another. I Love You tells the story of a sensitive guy who is recently engaged to a beautiful woman. Through the planning of the wedding, it becomes painfully obvious that the male lead (Rudd) lacks a network of social male friends. In an attempt to gain some independence and not be so smothering, as well as to find a best man for the wedding, Rudd engages in a series of "man-dates". These dates culminate with Rudd discovering Segal the quint-essential "man" who slowly weens Rudd away from a lifestyle of Appletinis and musicals to a life of beer drinking and playing in a Rush cover band.

The movie flows well, but I really didn't find myself laughing. The one strength of the movie; which is a common thread to the success of this brand of movie, is the ability to connect and identify with the characters. Anyone who has been in a serious relationship or marriage knows how incredibly difficult it is to maintain your identity with respect to your existing friends. You understand the constant balancing act between hanging out with friends and your relationship responsibilities; especially when either of those two dynamics are new to you. Rudd's character is the most socially awkward on screen personality since George Costanza or Larry David from Curb your Enthusiasm. Coincidentally the same person essentially.

The man dates are comical, and the constant awkwardness of Rudd trying to fit in and connect using "guy-slang" are painfully familiar and funny. However, overall, I really found very few laugh out loud moments. But maybe that's the point; life really isn't always that funny; rather a series of socially awkward moments punctuated by a few amusing comments. Very few of which were found in this review...

Movie Review - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (4 of 5): A few months back I watched the first two movies of Sergio Leone’s The Man With No Name Trilogy (see those reviews here and here). The Good, The Bad and the Ugly finishes this trilogy of spaghetti westerns off in style. Set during the American civil war, Clint Eastwood’s character forges an uneasy alliance with a bandit in order to find 200,000 of buried Confederate gold.

The Good… is a great flick. It has an engrossing story, good shoot-outs, awesome characters, and even a few lines of humor too. It is also a beautifully filmed movie. The widescreen shots of the desert southwest are just breathtaking and set a wonderful tone for the film as a whole. Also, the sound in this film, as in the others, is really awesome. The sound of this movie has to be the king of Western films. I mean, who doesn’t recognize “aww-yee, aww-yee, awww, whah, whah, whah”? (well, maybe you don’t recognize it spelled out like that, but you do if you have seen this movie)

As I mentioned, the story is great, but it does get a little too elaborate for its own good. Having the civil war scenes throughout the movie and the extended scenes of character development are just too much in some instances. Some of these scenes just don’t add anything to the movie as a whole and only prolong the ultimate climax. Overall, I felt his film is longer than it needs to be.

But how about that climax!? It is arguably one of the best showdowns in Western movie cinema. The tension that it builds is just incredible and really fun to watch. I had a really good time watching The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Although I have seen parts of it throughout my childhood, it was nice to finally sit down and watch it all through.

Movie Review - Gangs of New York

Gangs of New York (4 of 5): Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York focuses on the rise of Irish and Italian gangs in New York in the mid-1800s. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Amsterdam, a boy who watches his father, a prominent leader and priest, die in a territorial gang-fight. As a young man, Amsterdam seeks the revenge on his father’s killer, Bill "The Butcher" Poole, played by Daniel Day-Lewis. Along the way he finds love with a street-smart thief played by Cameron Diaz and begins to relate to his father’s killer a lot more than he cares to admit.

This movie is very well done even though it is overly long and contains an unneeded love story. Overall, the cast is exceptional. Daniel Day-Lewis is amazing in this film and gives a frighteningly realistic performance as Bill. Even Cameron Diaz who is not normally associated with movies of this type, really looses herself to the character she plays. The story is very entertaining – typical Scorsese gangster fare, only this time set in the 1800s. I especially like how the politics of the time are so prominently displayed throughout the movie. There is a lot of detail showing how tough, chaotic, frenzied and corrupt life was in the growing city of that time.

Gangs of New York presents an entertaining and engrossing story that really transports you back in history. The sets, characters, story, etc. all feel unique and believable. It is definitely recommended as one of Martin Scorsese’s best films.

Movie Review - The Fountain

The Fountain (3 of 5): The Fountain is a bit of a mixed bag. At its heart, it is a love story, but it also has some science fiction and fantasy elements, which makes classifying the movie as any one particular genre difficult. Unfortunately, I think this aspect hinders the movie from being really good.

The film is presented in three different time periods. Tomas (Hugh Jackman) is a 16th century Conquistador on a hunt to retrieve sap from the mythical Tree of Life for his queen (Rachel Weisz), who is desperate for immortality. In 2005, Tom (Jackman) is a doctor searching for the cure to cancer to save the life of his wife Izzi (Weisz), who is in the final days of her battle with death. Then, many years later, Tom travels through space on a quest to reach the place of tranquility that Izzi spoke fondly of, using the Tree as a device to get him to the answers he needs to finally rest.

The various elements of the story, including time, immortality, love and spirituality form a story that is challenging and demanding to the viewer of the film. Although these elements are a great strength to the movie by making it such a unique film, they also drag the movie down too. In the end I felt that there was very little actual story presented and a whole lot of mildly confusing filler and visual imagery. The story itself needed to be grander to fit the epic scale of time that the film spans. Also, it may frustrate some viewers that the ending is not very clear. There are a lot of different ways that you can fit the various pieces of the movie together based on the ending of this film.

Overall, I liked the Fountain. There are some great performances from both Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. If the story was just a little more clear and well developed and there was more reason to care about the characters plights, I would have liked it a lot more.

Movie Review - The Good Shepherd

The Good Shepherd (3 of 5): Matt Damon stars in this drama that examines the early history of the CIA as seen through the eyes of a dedicated agent named Edward Wilson. As an upstanding, sharp-minded Yale student, he is recruited to work for the CIA during World War II and the film follows his career within the organization up to the Bay of Pigs invasion. Though loyal to his country, Wilson begins to feel the job eroding his ideals, filling him with distrust and utterly destroying his personal life.

It’s a great setup to what I expected be a pretty cool espionage thriller. Unfortunately, it doesn’t add up and the film becomes frustrating and even boring at times. The story is told through multiple flashback sequences which make following the story and its characters difficult. Plus, the viewer is never really keyed in to understanding what this movie is about. Instead of a gripping story with some good intrigue and mild action scenes, the movie feels more like a jumble of arbitrary conversations that don’t add up to a whole lot by the end of this almost three hour film. It left me wondering what I was supposed to get from it all, besides a mild case of depression for how crappy Wilson’s life turns out after so many years with the CIA. Although there is some minimal payoff at the very depressing end of this film, it’s not enough from saving The Good Shepherd from being mediocre at best.

Movie Review - For a Few Dollars More

For a Few Dollars More (4 of 5): For a Few Dollars More is the solid follow-up to Sergio Leone’s A Fistfull of Dollars, and part two of the Man With No Name trilogy. This movie continues the story of The Man With No Name (Clint Eastwood) as he joins forces with Colonel Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef) to catch a ruthless outlaw named Indio. Eastwood is after money but Van Cleef’s motives remain mysterious for much of the film. Van Cleef is such a solid acting presence in this movie, and his character's story is so much more developed, that he pretty much steals the show from Eastwood in this film. Throw in some great shoot-outs, deadly double crosses, an awesome musical score, and heavy doses of violence and you've got yourself one highly entertaining western. It's definitely a film you won't hesitate to watch again sometime on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Movie Review - Happy Feet

Happy Feet (3 of 5): This is a rather bizarre movie about a penguin who can’t sing (huuhh?). Instead, he is a really good dancer (umm, WTF am I watching here?). Ostracized from his community, the penguin goes on an adventure with some other penguins to make contact with the “aliens” (humans) and find out why the fish supply is dwindling. News to me, but apparently adventures of this kind in the Antarctic require a lot of song and dance routines to unusual selections of music (sorry, nothing of JTs) and interaction with a variety penguins with some variant of Robin Williams' voice. Yes, truly, the Antarctic is a strange and wondrous place!

The music routines are hit and miss, but overall are fun. The animation is excellent. I was especially impressed by the wide screen shots of the penguin colonies. The story could have been a little tighter, cutting at least 15 minutes from the film. Unfortunately, late in the movie, the environmental message becomes both preachy and cheesy, leading to an ultimately muddled message that many kids will probably overlook. Overall this movie was just okay, surprisingly beating the far superior Monster House for Best Animated Feature at the 2007 Oscars.

Movie Review - A Fistful of Dollars

A Fistful of Dollars (5 of 5): A young Clint Eastwood kicks some ass in the first installment of Sergio Leone’s The Man With No Name trilogy. Folks, this is spaghetti western entertainment at its finest. As a wandering gunman, Eastwood’s character rides into a feud between two families and plays each side against the other. Great action, a tight story, funny moments, suspense, drama, cheese… This film has it all and I loved it. Special thanks to my brother-in-law for letting me borrow it.

Movie Review - The Great Escape

The Great Escape (4 of 5): This is a classic film that I am happy to have finally gotten the chance to watch. Lots of great actors in this real-life story about a prison camp escape during WWII. Those clever Nazis rounded up all the POWs that continued to escape from their camps and put them all together in a new "impenetrable" facility. It does not take long for the prisoners to start testing their new cage and pretty soon they are all working together in an elaborate plot to escape. It’s a great film with some surprising moments and fun action.

Movie Review - The Illusionist

The Illusionist (2 of 5): This film is set in early 1900s Vienna and centers on a magician who falls for an aristocrat well above his social standing. They fall in love, but when she becomes engaged to the Crown Prince, the master magician must use his powers to free her from her unwanted marriage.

Pretty basic story really, with the added element of magic. There are some strong actors in this movie (Ed Norton, Paul Giamatti) and they do their best, but the material just doesn't justify their work or their forced period accents. When it all comes down to it, this movie fails as both a drama and a mystery.

I never felt like I really cared about the characters because the stories all felt too rushed, especially the love story. Also, early in the movie you can pretty much figure out exactly how this one is going to play out. Then, the end offers this big "M. Night Shyamalan-esque" reveal as the inspector pieces everything together, which just comes across as hoaky and unnecessary. Finally, I hated how there was no explanation at all of how the Illusionist was performing his tricks! I understand that magicians need to have their secrets (even in movies), but there was absolutely no description of how he was pulling off some major illusions. This is very frustrating because the movie leads you to believe that he has supernatural powers and can conjure up dead spirits yet never explains if that is the case. Add to these complaints a handful of plot-holes and you have yourself a pretty mediocre movie.

Skip this one. Instead, I encourage you to watch last year's other magician movie, The Prestige. It was far superior.

Movie Review - High Tension

High Tension (2 of 5): Now, here is a movie that I was really getting into and quite enjoying, right up until the last 20 minutes or so which totally ruined, and I mean ruined, the entire film. We follow two girls who are going home to one of their parents' house to do some school studying before exams. The night they arrive all hell breaks loose when a psycho killer arrives at the house. The remainder of the movie follows the two girls as they try to escape the grasp of the murderer. This movie is very graphic and bloody! Honestly, there were some scenes that were just so gratuitous that I had to just squeal in glee. Although some scenes are hard to stomach, it was all in good fun. Then, the end... Poof, there goes a pretty great movie given today's low standards in horror films (I am looking at you SAW). Anyway, if you totally have to see this movie, I suggest stopping it before the climax/twist ending, otherwise you'll be as pissed as I am. The ending makes absolutely no sense, no matter how you look at it. As a matter of fact, I challenge somebody to defend the the end and explain it to me so that it makes sense.

Movie Review - An Inconvenient Truth

An Inconvenient Truth (4 of 5): This movie is about global warming. Wait! Please, continue reading. I know for many of you the thought of watching a movie about global warming is not as appealing as say, watching this summer’s "can’t miss" installment of The Fast & The Furious, but I insist, you must read this review and go see this movie. An Inconvenient Truth presents Al Gore’s approximately 30 years of study on the topic. Gore is truly passionate about the subject and it shows. He presents all the facts you need to know in a carefully crafted scientific presentation, using graphs and charts that just about any layperson should be able to understand. His presentation thoroughly details the human race’s contribution to global climate change in a professional and unbiased manner, without any spin and in terrifying clarity. If I have one complaint, it is that his presentation is intercut with details about his personal life and efforts as an environmentalist. These moments seemed to convey him as a martyr and distracted from the core of the film. However, this is a minor quibble to an overall very interesting movie. An Inconvenient Truth is a compelling and thoughtful call to arms about a subject that we as a society have chosen to largely ignore. Unfortunately, global warming is a problem that is not going to go away and I strongly believe that every American has the responsibility to see this movie in order to better understand the subject.

Movie Review - Grandma's Boy

Grandmas Boy (3 of 5): If you are into juvenile, gross-out humor in the same tradition as "Waiting" and "The 40 Year Old Virgin" this movie will be right up your alley. I thought it was hillarious. The movie revolves around a 30 + year old video game programmer who has been evicted from his apartment and is forced to move in with his grandmother and her 2 elderly (1 is a basketcase, the other a whore) roomates, while upholding his stoner, partying lifestyle. His workplace dynamic is very relatable as he is the oldest "geek" at the company in a sea of younger video game enthusiasts and one truly creepy prodigy. It is a lot of the same cast from films like Big Daddy and Happy Gilmore. Fortunately Adam Sandler does not make a cameo appearance.

Movie Review - Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas

Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas (4 of 5) : This is a weird movie about Johnny Depp as famous writer Hunter S. Thompson and Benicio Del Toro as his lawyer friend during their Las Vegas escapades during the 70s. Any curiosity I had in the use of recreational drugs has been satisfied after watching this movie. Just about every drug known to man was used. It presents such an education, the movie should probably be shown in Highschool health class. I liked it, but I am in to weird movies. Del Toro was great and, not surprisingly, Depp was perfect.

Movie Review - Good Night & Good Luck

Good Night & Good Luck (4 of 5) : This movie chronicles Edward R. Murrow's personal and professional stand against Joseph McCarthy and his witch hunt for Communists in America. I really liked this movie. Clooney was good and Straitharn (Murrow) was excellent. Depending on how you look at it, the crux of this movie really parallels what our country has and is currently going through with the "War on Terrorism" and our presence in Iraq.