“He’s Just Not That Into You,” 15 June 2009 (2008), airplane. Mediocre chick-flick about wealthy white 30-somethings decoding love and language. Nice acting by a group of hot gen-y-ers but the film is largely irrelevant unless you’re still a true believer in the lies young people tell one another to avoid a second date or…
Author: Village Vidiot
The Greening of Southie
“The Greening of Southie,” 22 April 2009 (2008), DVD. This was an interesting documentary on the pluses and minuses of building/working on Boston’s first real ‘green/environmental’ building, a luxury apt building in Southie, Boston. Good takes of workers, contradictions of local and global inputs.
Who Killed the Electric Car?
“Who Killed the Electric Car?” 5 April 2009 (DVD). Well meaning documentary about the short-lived electric cars of California. They were killed by the companies, the oil firms, the state board (chaired by someone committed to hydrogen), the feds, and consumers who didn’t leap to buy a commuting car. Interesting, a bit clunky, but…
Flash of Genius
“Flash of Genius,” 3 April 2009 (2008), DVD. We all (B, b, and I) liked this painful but very interesting study of Robert Kearns (Greg Kinnear), the engineer who successfully developed the intermittent wiper system only to have it stolen by Ford and used by every other manufacturer. He is obsessive and not an…
Be Kind, Rewind
“Be Kind, Rewind,” 29 March 2009 (2008), DVD. Silly and, in parts, very funny comedy with Jack Black and Mos Def about a Passaic, NJ video store. In depressed Passaic, Black becomes magnetized and clears all the images in the store’s video. Def, the clerk, and he set out to satisfy customers by making their…
Changeling
“Changeling,” 21 March 2009 (2008), DVD. This rough film from Clint Eastwood stars Angelina Jolie as a mother in 1928 whose son disappears. She is desperate to get him back. The police substitute another kid. Indeed, the institutional corruption of the police is a key theme in the movie and is handled very well….
Wall-E
“WALL-E,” 8 March 2009 (2008), DVD. We all liked this interesting Pixar animated film about a robot become sentient after seven hundred + years of trash compacting on the now deserted, polluted, trash laden earth. The citizens have gone off into space (at least those who could). A new bot, EVE, comes to…
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army
“Hellboy 2: The Golden Army,” 5 February 2009 (2008), DVD. Sad to say, nowhere near as interesting or playful as “Hellboy”. This sequel didn’t have the verve or intensity. Skip it.
Juno
“Juno,” 18 January 2009 (2007), DVD. We both enjoyed this story about a 16-yo girl. (Ellen Page) who gets pregnant on the first time with Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), a sweet, loving, genuine, nice, smart, track-running kid. They have a punk band as well. Very well acted, crisply written. Oh, I wish all kids…
The Third Man
“The Third Man,” January 17, 2009, DVD. Set in early post-war Vienna, this noir tale of corruption and deceit stars Joseph Cotton, a young Trevor Howard in a great role as a British army MP Lt, and an astounding performance by still beautiful Orson Welles. The scene on the Ferris wheel where Cotton and Welles…
The Savages
“The Savages,” 10 January 2009 (2007), DVD. I liked this dark comedy with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney more than Bronwen did. A brother and sister, he a professor of drama (Brecht specialist), she a struggling playwright, are called to Sun City to retrieve their 80+ yo father (Philip Bosco) as he declines…
Breach
“Breach,” 30 December 2008 (2007), DVD. We watched this somewhat conventional spy thriller down at my mom’s in NJ. It’s certainly watchable: Chris Cooper is intense as Robert Hanson, the FBI agent/spy who caused incalculable damage to US security interests in the US and overseas because he could, Ryan Philippe as the young…
Dreamgirls
“Dreamgirls,” 6 December 2008 (2006), DVD. We both enjoyed this Broadway musical come to the screen (and I don’t like many). Wonderful singing from Beyonce,. Jennifer Hudson, Jamie Foxx, and Eddie Murphay as standins for Motown by any other name (Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, Barry Gordy, and Marvin Gaye). We follow them from the…
Lars and the Real Girl
“Lars and the Real Girl,” 29 November 2008 (2007), DVD. We both really enjoyed this offbeat indie film starring Ryan Gosling, Emily Mortimer, and Patricia Clarkson. Lars (Gosling) is a socially isolated young man in Minnesota who lives in his brother and pregnant sister-in-law’s garage. Folks try to reach out to him and…
The Sting
“The Sting,” October 17, 2008, (1973), DVD. We wanted b to see this Paul Newman-Robert Redford classic con flick. We loved watching it again. Newman and Redford have amazing chemistry, Robert Shaw as the villain is fantastic, Charles Durning as a corrupt cop is really a pleasure. The film making is relatively primitive and…
The Counterfeiters
“The Counterfeiters,” October 15, 2008 (2007), DVD. We finally got to watch this excellent German film about the German plot to counterfeit American dollars and British pounds and destroy the allied economy during WWII. . They relied on Jewish concentration camp inmates to do this, including a renowned counterfeiter. Quite an amazing story made…
Touch of Evil
“Touch of Evil,” 6 September 2008 (1958), DVD. B slept through this classic film noir with a difference from Orson Welles featuring Charlton Heston, Welles, Janet Leigh, Akim Tamiroff, Dennis Weaver, Marlene Deitrich and Zsa Zsa Gabor. What a weird, surreal, study of corruption, cruelty, violence, racism, deception, and much more comic in moments most…
La Vie en Rose
“La Vie en Rose,” August 17, 2008 (2007), DVD. We enjoyed this rather traditional biopic about Edith Piaf starring Marion Cotillard in a marvelous performance. Excellent side work by many including Gerard Depardieu, who has truly learned how to subordinate his ego to his craft. Cotillard ages in breathtaking and horrifying manner as…
The Dark Knight
“The Dark Knight,” 9 August 2008, theater. With B and b at camp, I went to this violence festival with Dan Stone. Why is this rated PG-13? The whole rating system is horrifyingly screwed up. And why would parents bring their much littler kids to this? There were 8-11 year olds there in abundance….
Dial M for Murder
“Dial M for Murder,” 6-7 August 2008 (1954), DVD. We both enjoyed his Hitchcock chestnut. I’d never seen it. A washed up English tennis star (Ralph Milland) hires a hit man to kill his straying wife (Grace Kelly) who’s ex-boyfriend, Robert Cummings, a mystery writer, is in town Sophisticated banter and a light touch,…
The Darjeeling Limited
“The Darjeeling Limited,” 5 August 2008 (2007), DVD. We watched this odd Wes Anderson brother/buddy travel pic on our 18th anniversary. Hurrah to us!. Three brothers (Owen Wilson, Adrian Brody,. Jason Schwartzman) travel to India at the behest of one to reconcile after being alienated following their father’s death. It is a journey of…
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
“Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” 26/27 July 2008 (2007), DVD. Wow, this is the goriest Sondheim imaginable. I prefer the stage vision of the murders to this bloodfest from Tim Burton. Johnny Depp stars as Benjamin Barker aka Sweeney Todd, returned from transport to find his wife and daughter or take his…
I’m Not There
“I’m Not There,” 25 July 2008 (2007), DVD. We liked but were also perplexed by this Todd Haynes (Superstar, Far From Heaven, Safe, etc) movie about Dylan that featured 6 Dylans, including Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger as bobbie/Robbie/the band, Richard Gear as bobbie/Billy the Kid, and Christian Bale as Jack the Christ who…
Alexander Nevsky
“Alexander Nevsky,” 5 July 2008, on airplane. Very big and rather boring Russian story of their great hero. No, not the Eisenstein but the more recent one of the hero who does no wrong but defends the glories of the Orthodox world. Look out world, old mother Russia’s comin’ back!
There Will Be Blood
“There Will Be Blood,” 17 June 2008 (2007), DVD. We both were fascinated by this brutal Paul Thomas Anderson character study of greed and falsehood based very loosely on Upton Sinclair’s “Oil”. Starring Daniel Day Lewis in a brilliant star turn (Oscar, 2008, Best Actor) as the obsessed oil man, Daniel Plainview, the film…