Movie Round Up, 2009

Slumdog Millionaire 3/01
An excellent film. The acting is a bit raw and natural, the story is well told and the pacing is superb. I love how certain questions the protagonist doesn't know at all, but the other questions he knows because of the story elements shown the audience. Definitely deserved the accolades it received and was one of last year's best.

The Wrestler 3/05
Another excellent film. This is a smaller scope picture, and that works. Rourke, an actor I actively dislike, was excellent as the aging, down on his luck wrestler just trying to get it right and live his life. I loved the behind the scenes footage of how the wrestling world works, much of it using real wrestlers. I'm not sure about the ending, still; it works, but I would have liked to see the story take a different direction at the end.

Watchmen 3/06
I think this film was made before its time. As the years go on and people come back to it, I have a feeling it will gain in popularity with both comic book geeks and movie watchers in general, much like Blade Runner did (which was a commercial flop at the time of release, but has a huge following now and is considered genre-defining today). It may be too faithful to the graphic novel it stems from in some ways, which turned off mainstream audiences.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine 5/03
Not a bad film, per se. Rather, a film that did nothing new and really taught us nothing new about the character, Wolverine, or the world he inhabits. Way too dependent on special effects and told "too big" of a story for the character. Wolverine, like Batman, is a character that needs smaller, more personal stories, to stay in the shadows, and use his feral nature and "bad-assery" in a natural and not very heroic way to do heroic things. This movie made Wolverine less feral and less bad-assed, so it becomes a failure. And, frankly, it had way too many super-powered people in it to manage. We were watching "Wolverine" not the X-Men; don't include all those other paranormal individuals, wasting time on their stories and making them interesting. Focus on your main protagonist and his story, dammit.

Star Trek 5/12
I found this to be an awesome new addition in the Star Trek and sci-fi genres. I liked nearly all of the casting choices, believe that JJ Abrams brought something new and exciting to the well-known universe of Star Trek, and that they now have a lot of interesting directions they can go with the series. However, that being said, I didn't like some of the choices they made. Anyone who reads my blog regularly knows my huge dislike of time travel; it is too trite, over-done, and winds up creating too many self-defeating paradoxes. I felt that destroying Vulcan was unwarranted. I found it odd that Captain Pike, who stated early in the film that he studied Kirk's father's incident, didn't recognize anything going on as extremely similar to the events of that previous incident. I absolutely hated the entire set up of Kirk getting jettisoned to the ice planet, meeting up with Spock Prime, and then running into Scotty. That being said, this was a rousing good time to watch, hit mostly all high notes, and is an excellent sci-fi movie. I look forward to a sequel.

Angels & Demons 5/20
I finished reading the book for this movie just prior to its release. It was an exciting story, told in a visual style that would translate to film easily, and I thought it could be a much better film than The Da Vinci Code turned out to be. If I had gone into the movie with no knowledge of the book, I likely would have been much more entertained than I was. As it is, I found myself wondering aloud why they completely changed and lost some characters, changed important plot points, screwed with the pacing, and eliminated the bookend story elements that led up to the big reveal. In the first film, they took a story that needed visual, action elements and instead filmed them as boring non-action oriented conversations. This book had all the excitement and interest one could want in a movie, and they chose to take many of them out, completely change the plot, and dumb it down.

Lastly, Dan Brown is so anti-Church (and especially the Roman Catholic Church) that it isn't even funny. His books, and now the movies based on them, seem to only exist to show how petty, stupid, murderous, and greedy the church is. I'm not fan of the church, but it has done a hell of a lot of good in its time, too. This kind of obvious, biased hatred should be exposed for what it is.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen 7/09
The first Transformers movie was stupid, loud, action-oriented fun. A great popcorn movie. This second installment is just loud and stupid. The plot makes little sense. The characters act against type and without thinking. You've got military people proclaiming first that Optimus Prime is the best of the best, and then in the very next scene a helicopter unceremoniously dumps his lifeless carcass about 100 feet to the ground. You've got gigantic evil robots that would be perfect for destroying a pyramid that needs destruction instead fighting against two racially stereotyped good robots and two human beings that shouldn't be able to hurt it. This movie is simply a mess and didn't deserve to make $400 million domestic.

Harry Potter: Half-Blood Prince 7/17
I'm an HP fan. I've read all the books more than once and I've seen all of the films more than once. I like both; they are very different products with very different goals, but I find value in both. Going into this film, I was excited-- this book, I felt, had the most action and would need the least bit of editing of many of the books as they were turned into films and made to focus primarily on Harry. The end result, however, is a film that is farthest from the plot of the source material of any of the HP book/movie combos. They changed so many things so dramatically that I honestly don't know what to expect from the concluding "movie" (I put that into quotes as they are filming the last book as two movies, to be released in the spring and fall of next year). I recently re-watched the film on DVD and it got worse with a repeat viewing; more questions about where they are going to go and how they are going to fit the new elements introduced out of the blue in this film with the existing elements that should be in the next film(s).

Julie & Julia 8/20
I enjoyed this "chick flick" quite a bit. However, it has one part that is an A+ movie (everything with Meryl Streep and about Julia Child) and one part that is, at best, a C (everything with the Julie character and Amy Adams). I like Amy Adams, but the material for her half of the film didn't give her a lot to work with, the conflict in it was superficial and unneeded, and just wasn't very interesting. Everything about the Julia part was fascinating, humorous, dramatic without being forced, and fun to watch. I left the film wishing that it has been entirely about Julia Child and her life becoming the first "domestic goddess" we had on TV.

Where the Wild Things Are 10/17
This is a dark, realistic portrayal of a boy coming to grips with and understanding his darker emotions. I felt it was one of the top three movies I saw this year, and makes my top 10 list for best films of the decade, for sure. That being said, I had two problems with the film version:

1. The boy in the film is not a prankster; he is a mean, nearly sociopathic punk that a) needs a spanking and b) likely some medication intervention for his issues. I'm not sure his mother would be so forgiving of the film's child as she is of the book's child; the film's child needs some serious counseling.

2. In the book, the boy is sent to his room for his bad behavior and the world of the Wild Things springs forth out of his closet. It is obvious to the boy and the reader that this was a make-believe place. The film makes it seem like the boy actually goes to a place in our world where these creatures, which represent both his own emotions and elements of people in his life, really live and breath.

However, these are relatively minor quibbles with what is otherwise an awesome achievement -- a film that doesn't talk down to children about their emotions and needs, and doesn't pander to the adults. I cannot wait to get this on DVD and rewatch it.