El laberinto del fauno (Pan's Labyrinth) (2006)

Written & Directed by Guillermo del Toro

This had been sitting around in my roommates room just waiting for me to watch it and I'm glad I finally did. It didn't rock my world, but I had a good time with it. At it's basis, this is a fairytale, but it is not like any fairytale I have ever seen. It is set in Fascist Spain during World War II. A young girl travels with her mother to her new step-father's place in the country. It bears mentioning that this new step-father is a Captain in the army and an overall horrible person. While en route, the little girl, Ofelia, encounters a strange bug that turns out to be a fairy. By following this fairy she is entered into a strange world with strange creatures and strange tasks that she must complete to return to this land to be a princess once again. Based on that simple description, one would think it is a standard fairy tale, but it is not.

The real world around her is just as turbulent as the wonderland she is trying to return to. The violence, and graphic nature of it is what shocked me the most. There is plenty of cringe worthy scenes and shots that includes knives and blood and other various things. What del Toro has created is an utterly original and twisted adult fantasy. The film works best, I found, when we spend time with the faun and the other creatures of the alternate world. These are the scenes that are truly soaring filmmaking. The imagination is in full force from both a creative stand-point and the viewpoint of the audience. The sets and decorations are astounding to look at, as is much of the film.

The problems I had with the film are few, but they are present. There were a few instances where I didn't buy the real world action. I will always be on board for any fantasy or fantasy world, but when you make a film like this, I need to be convinced that what is happening in the real world is real. There were one or two things that seemed off to me about paths the characters took. As I said, the film was beautiful, great to look at, but it also bears mentioning that this beat out Chivo and Children of Men for Best Cinematography that year, something I don't agree with, but I loved looking at this film too.

When all is said and done, I liked the film. It was something different, something I haven't seen before; a vision that was genuine and well crafted by del Toro and his fellow collaborators. Another thing, before I forget, is the score. The score was fantastic too. It wasn't too intrusive, but was there for all the right times and hit all the right chords so to speak. It wasn't completely up my alley and didn't always hit, but overall an enjoyable experience.

Rating: ***

A Single Man (2009)

Directed by Tom Ford
Written by David Scearce & Tom Ford

Simple and Beautiful. That is what this film was. What was most impressive about this debut feature from Tom Ford is the style of it. Mr. Ford has a vision (as he is writer, producer and director) and he follows through with it. A fashion designer by trade, Ford obviously has style, and that style is transferred onto the screen. The costume design is nice. What Firth, Moore, and Goodwin wear are lovely suits and dresses that convince me it is 1962. The set decoration is great too, total 1962 once again. The house in which Firth's character, George Falconer, lives is awesome, and it's no surprise when we learn he has been living with an architect. The visual style is rousing too, probably that which is most impressive. The cinematography (Eduard Grau), the choreography of each frame, each shot, each scene is just great. The actor or object is seemingly in the right place on screen all the time. And when it doesn't seem that way, it's because that is how Ford wants you to see it. There are many great close-ups and angles that bring the whole story together with images. The use of color adds another dimension too. This is visual storytelling. And when I say visual storytelling I mean it because there isn't a great amount of dialogue here really. Much of the story is told in images and the great score (Abel Korzeniowski) that goes along with it. And the score is great. And all of this doesn't even mention the story.

The story is strong too. In essence it's a story of love, of love lost in more ways than one. Without revealing too much about the story past the synopsis, let me just say it is simple, it is sad, but it is so complex and, if you look at it from the right way, it can be hopeful at times. The way that Ford composes his story, which at its core is simple, is spectacular. The way he uses flashbacks and symbolism, he weaves an intricate puzzle which, when put together, is quite a picture. What is more is the time span of the film. Believe it or not, it takes place in the time of one Friday in the fall of 1962 in Los Angeles. There are visions and flashbacks, but the actual story unfolds in one day. It certainly doesn't feel like that, and that is the wonder of Ford's structure. The first act of the film is some of the best filmmaking of the year I would say. It doesn't hold up all the way through but it stays solid and overall is a great achievement for any filmmaking team, let a lone one led by a first time director.

Now about the performances, Colin Firth is as advertised: amazing. His performance can be so subtle and moving at times and then there is a scene or two where he explodes on the screen and is still able to hold the character together. Start to finish a great presence on the screen, and a great performance. Julianne Moore (Charlotte) was quite good in a small role too. There are two things I have against her character though. For one, she doesn't have enough screen time. And for two, and it's is somewhat related to number one, she doesn't have enough story to her. We are given her past in outline form, but we know very little of her present, and maybe that's the point in the end, I just kind of wish we saw more of her, because she could have been great. Now for the men in George's life: Jim (Matthew Goode) and Kenny (Nicholas Hoult). Goode wasn't given a whole lot, but what he was given he handled like the professional he is. Hoult on the other hand was hit or miss for me. There were times where he was able to keep up with Firth, but more often than not he just looked bad next to Firth. Consider this film recommended, if not for Colin Firth and his great performance, or for Ford's great directorial debut, then for the stark beauty of either the story or the look of the film.

Rating: ***1/2

When In Rome (2010)

Directed by Mark Steven Johnson
Written by David Diamond & David Weissman

This was rough. My first reaction was "what is Angelica Houston doing in this?" She is above this, way above this. She is a fantastic actress and yet she does this? She is not bad, though she doesn't have much to do. All the other players are pretty awful, but I blame that more on the writing and directing. I wouldn't call it a mess, but it was extremely unpolished. There are films that you can tell the filmmakers took the time to make sure they have a quality product, whether it turns out good or not, and then there are those that seem like they just threw it together to get it out and make some money already. This is an example of the latter. I had low expectations going in and they weren't even met. This is definitely a January dump film. Just something that the studio had as filler in the times after awards rush and before anything good ever really comes out. It did have one or two funny parts though.

The story is pretty corny: a woman who loves her job more than the possibility of love goes to her sister's wedding, meets a handsome guy who she starts to fall for, but because she takes coins from the fountain of love, she is led to believe all the men that start following her, proclaiming their love for her, are only doing so because of a curse. Pretty lame story if you ask me, but where it really fails is in the execution. There was some bad editing. Too often things went on for too long or were even completely unnecessary and irrelevant inserts that were basically just filler to make it long enough. The highlights include the blackout dining date, which was very funny until it was ruined by the story of the film, Bobby Moynihan, who was funny in a very small role, and Kristen Bell. Her acting was not top notch, but she was gorgeous as always. Pretty much everything else was either meh or worse.

Nick (Josh Duhamel) is quite typical and cliche, and the host of other guys following Beth (Bell) are too caricatured too actually be funny, or add much to the proceedings. These guys include Dax Shepard, Danny DeVito, Jon Heder, and Will Arnett. What surprised me about this project was the star power. Somehow they managed to get decent names signed on for a project like this. Houston, DeVito, even a cameos by Efren Ramirez, Shaq, and Lawrence Taylor, each of whom have no business being here. Ugh, I'm just so annoyed by what just happened. I would have to say a definite pass on this one. I thoroughly regret agreeing to go see this.

Rating: *1/2

2009 In Review

The year is over, there are still a few films out there that I want to see, but here is the way the films fell in my eyes over this past year. The year 2009 in review:

****
1. (500) Days of Summer (Marc Webb)
2. Avatar (James Cameron)
3. The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow)
4. Up (Pete Docter & Bob Peterson)

***1/2
5. An Education (Lone Scherfig)
6. The Brothers Bloom (Rian Johnson)
7. Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
8. Bright Star (Jane Campion)
9. A Serious Man (Joel & Ethan Coen)
10. Up In The Air (Jason Reitman)
11. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (David Yates)
12. Where the Wild Things Are (Spike Jonze)
13. Whip It (Drew Barrymore)
14. Public Enemies (Michael Mann)
15. The Soloist (Joe Wright)
16. Brothers (Jim Sheridan)
17. Adventureland (Greg Mottola)
18. Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson)
19. Funny People (Judd Apatow)
20. A Single Man (Tom Ford)
21. Nine (Rob Marshall)
22. Away We Go (Sam Mendes)
23. 9 (Shane Acker)
24. Sin Nombre (Cary Fukunaga)
25. Two Lovers - 3.5 (James Gray)
26. The Girlfriend Experience - 3.5 (Steven Soderberg)
27. The Princess & the Frog - 3.5 (Ron Clements & John Musker)

***
28. Moon (Duncan Jones)
29. I Love You, Man (John Hamburg)
30. Sugar (Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden)
31. Star Trek (J.J. Abrams)
32. The Merry Gentleman (Michael Keaton)
33. Whatever Works (Woody Allen)
34. District 9 (Neill Blomkamp
35. Lymelife (Derick Martini
36. 17 Again (Burr Steers)
37. You, the Living (Roy Andersson)
38. The Young Victoria (Jean-Marc Vallee)
39. Food, Inc. (Robert Kenner)
40. Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” By Sapphire (Lee Daniels)
41. Sunshine Cleaning (Christine Jeffs)
42. Knowing (Alex Proyas)
43. Zombieland (Ruben Fleischer)
44. It's Complicated (Nancy Meyers)
45. Julie & Julia (Nora Ephron)
46. Paper Heart (Nicholas Jasenovec)
47. Invictus (Clint Eastwood)
48. A Christmas Carol (Robert Zemeckis)
49. Crazy Heart (Scott Cooper)
50. World's Greatest Dad (Bobcat Goldthwait)
51. Humpday (Lynn Shelton)
52. Law Abiding Citizen (F. Gary Gray)
53. Visioneers (Jared Drake)
54. The Taking of Pelham 123 (Tony Scott)

**1/2
55. State of Play (Kevin MacDonald)
56. The Hangover (Todd Phillips)
57. Goodbye Solo (Rahman Bahrani)
58. Hannah Montana: The Movie (Peter Chelsom)
59. Year One (Harold Ramis)
60. He's Just Not That Into You (Ken Kwapis)
61. Extract (Mike Judge)
62. Angels & Demons (Ron Howard)
63. Land of the Lost (Brad Siberling)
64. Night at the Museum: Battle at the Smithsonian (Shawn Levy)
65. Amelia (Mira Nair)
66. Sherlock Holmes (Guy Ritchie)
67. The Proposal (Anne Fletcher)
68. The Informant! (Steven Soderberg)
69. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Michael Bay)
70. Il Divo (Paolo Sorrentino)
71. Duplicity (Tony Gilroy)

**
72. Coraline (Henry Selick)
73. Sorority Row (Stewart Hendler)
74. Taken (Pierre Morel)
75. The Uninvited (Charles Guard)
76. Fast & Furious (Justin Lin)
77. Bruno (Larry Charles)
78. Tulpan (Sergei Dvortsevoy)
79. Is Anybody There? (Jon Crowley)
80. Taking Woodstock (Ang Lee)
81. Monsters vs. Aliens (Rob Letterman & Conrad Vernon)
82. My Sister's Keeper (Nick Cassavetes)
83. Arlen Faber (John Hindman)
84. Thirst (Park Chan-wook)

*1/2
85. The Lovely Bones (Peter Jackson)
86. A Perfect Getaway (David Twohy)
87. Drag Me To Hell (Sam Raimi)
88. Watchmen (Zack Snyder)
89. Terminator Salvation (McG)
90. The Time Traveler's Wife (Robert Schwentke)
91. Observe & Report (Jody Hill)

*
92. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li (Andrzej Bartkowiak)
93. S. Darko: A Donnie Darko Tale (Chris Fisher)

Food, Inc. (2009)

Directed by Robert Kenner
Written by Robert Kenner, Elise Pearlstein & Kim Roberts

I have never been inclined to watching documentaries, though I find, depending on the subject matter of course, that documentaries I do watch are always relatively entertaining, informative, and interesting. Food, Inc. was one of those. Although clearly manipulative and biased (but sometimes that is what is needed for the subject matter, and sometimes that can be all you have to work with), the film works and accomplishes its goals. It sets out to paint a picture of the American food industry and the ideals for which it strives. What we soon learn is that the industry is a business that operates based on how much money it can make. It draws from Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation and Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma.

I know that the food industry is a business; I get it. Major corporations have borderline, and in some cases straightforward, monopolies in the food business. It sucks. These companies are producing food at such a high rate and for so cheaply that they are able to make a ton of money. We live in a capitalist economy and these corporations are part of it. It is their right to do what they do and to make the money that they do. What comes into question in the film is are they allowed to do what they do, the way they do it? What I found to be the main focus of the film was to point out all the wrong doings and inequalities of the business. For instance, Kenner shows, on multiple occasions, conditions in factories and chicken houses. They are oftentimes and almost uniformly, with the exception of Joel Salatin (pictured above), atrocious. They are made up of overcrowded, dark, dank, and unsanitary prisons. It is awful to witness.

The problems that are raised in the film is not only the conditions in factories for animals, but for workers too. These workers are subjected to some of the worst working conditions in America. They are paid low wages and as a result are stuck in the cycle of living in small towns, being of a low income demographic, and oftentimes of illegal residence. These major corporations have the people, the workers, and the government seemingly right where they want them. The food laws in this country, as presented by the film, are atrocious as well. Something seems to need to be fixed, that is all. Due to the growing globalization of Earth and the general growing overpopulation, it is near impossible to envision a world where food is grown and distributed in the manner in which Mr. Salatin does business. It is ideal, but not plausible in my eyes. There are too many people, and quite frankly, too many poor people to be able to afford to operate in that manner. Thus, I find the solution in the FDA and USDA doing a better job of regulation. One statistic given in the film was that in 1972, over 50,000 inspections were conducted by the FDA and that in 2008, less than 10,000 were conducted. Much of this may be attributed to the decline in number of producers and manufacturers as monopolistic big business has grown, but something must be done to better regulate.

As a college student, while I appreciate, and generally agree with, the sentiment presented here, it is not, at this time, realistic for me to shop and eat the way that they want me to. There are many people out there like me. I know it, you know it, and the filmmakers know it. That is their idealistic goal, but what they really wanted to accomplish here was to get the information out there to the general public, for people to realize what the options are, and in the end to get things changed, especially politically speaking. Whether that happens remains to be seen in the coming years, but as they said in then end of the film, things are already starting to change, even if just slightly. In that respect I feel that the film succeeded.
Rating: ***

Leap Year (2010) & Youth in Revolt (2010)

Leap Year

Directed by Anand Tucker
Written by Deborah Kaplan & Harry Elfont

I didn't have any expectations of this being anything but average and by the end of it it wasn't anything but average. I was supremely worried for a better part of it. The writing and directing were pretty bad for the first two acts. Everything was just so bland and predictable. Look, I love Amy Adams, and I still do. She was not the problem with the film, but her character, along with all the other characters were written so horribly that I didn't like or care about any of them, except maybe Declan (Matthew Goode) a little bit. The performances were fairly typical. Adam Scott as Jeremy was awful as was Kaitlin Olson as Anna's friend Libby. They were both annoying. I could watch Amy Adams watching an infomercial and be entertained and Goode was decent as well. The third act saved this. It finally came around and tied some things up and made decent strides to being a respectable film. There is even an amazing shot near the end, that they have shown a little of in the trailer, where Amy Adams is standing on a cliff looking out. All in all very forgettable and very average, but because of Amy Adams and the third act, I don't entirely regret having seen it.

Another thing was that the theater was quite crowded, not really for this one, but there were long lines for tickets and concessions. It surprised me on a Saturday morning but it was nice to see. Maybe people were going to the movies this morning since the Bengals game is at 4:30.
Rating: **1/2



Youth in Revolt

Directed by Miguel Arteta
Written by Gustin Nash

Look, I love Michael Cera. He, to me, is very funny. What I find so funny about him is his vocabulary and his delivery. Both are great and both are on display here. There are some genuinely hilarious moments in this film. The story itself is kind of nice, but nothing to knock your socks off. Other than Cera I found the film to be rather average to be honest, nothing really that memorable other than when he flips the cereal bowl, I lost it at that. But I feel like when I wake up tomorrow I will have moved on to bigger and better things and will have forgotten about the majority of what I saw tonight.

I have not read the novel on which the film is based, and after seeing this I have no desire too, not that I don't feel it could be entertaining but because I was underwhelmed by what I saw. The idea of Francois is great, Cera, who is normally great, is only good here and the character of Nick is someone I find somewhat uninteresting and, frankly, unoriginal. The French film references are fun, I especially loved the scene with Fellini's La Strada in the movie store near the beginning.

I don't feel that I have wasted the time I spent watching this movie, but I do feel that if I were to watch it again I might be pushing my luck.
Rating: **1/2

Extraordinary Measures (2010)

Directed by Tom Vaughan
Written by Robert Nelson Jacobs

My buddy from work had free passes and since I was on the fence in wanting to see this, I accepted. I'm glad I did. Not because it was a great film, or even a terrible film, but because it was a film of the moment. What director Tom Vaughan (What Happens in Vegas) has brought to the table early on in this new year of film is not something significant, not something that will be remembered by the end of the year, but something that is also not bankrupt. Although Vaughan himself brings very little to the table in way of direction (there are maybe one or two interesting things he does throughout the film), Extraordinary Measures is a film with heart.

The story consists of a father of three children, two of which have the debilitating and soon fatal disease of Pompe, of which I know very little about. John Crowley (Brendan Fraser) is an executive at Bristol-Myers Squibb who researches and hears about revolutionary research being conducted by Dr. Stonehill (Harrison Ford) at the University of Nebraska. He pursues him and, with him, does all that he can to find the cure for this terrible disease that his children regrettably have. The performances are generally fairly bland. Brendan Fraser is the worst of the bunch. The performance he turns in here might likely be the worst of 2010 when all is said and done. I love the dude. He is so much fun and at the same time so much bad. He should stick to the fun, campy, adventure stuff. Harrison Ford is solid, but I think the best performance was from Keri Russell and her limited screen time. She plays the wife of Crowley, Aileen. Although nothing to write home about, she is nice to watch and turns in a solid performance.

As far as some of the things going on in the film, there was some wasted time, especially early on in the film. I felt like the camera just lingered and there was too much set-up to a scene when time could have been spent expanding other pieces of the story that could have been valuable or cinematic. There is even a scene where Dr. Stonehill briefly describes the disease to John. I get why it's there, for the audience to learn, but clearly John already knows all about the disease. There are a handful of scenes like this that make the film as average as it is. But what I found interesting was the character of John Crowley. The film is set-up to make him the hero, but he isn't the traditional hero. He has two children with a terrible disease and on their deathbeds, so what can he do? He has two options: spend what time his children have left with them, living every moment just to love them and be there with them. His other option is the one less traveled and the one he eventually took. That option is to do everything he could to find a cure and save his children, so that they might have the rest of their lives together. This was a very risky choice because the chances of finding that cure, and in enough time, was minuscule and it also meant being away from his wife and children, working around the clock.

John Crowley was, and is, a man who can be championed for his heart and desire to save his children. But at the same time he played the system somewhat. He was a little bit selfish, but who can blame him? If anyone of us were put in his situation, with our children close to death, wouldn't we do everything we could, even if it meant maybe being selfish? I don't blame him because while being selfish, he was selfless, doing all he could for his children and, eventually, all children with Pompe, and their families. If you didn't want to see this, you probably still don't. If you wanted to see it, I say see it. And if you're on the fence, I'd say if you are prepared to see some bad things, just for the payoff of the heart of the film, then see it. Otherwise, it is a film that can be skipped because, honestly, by the end of the year it will seem very middling. But for now, it's not, at least to me.

Rating: **1/2