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Plot: Martin Harris (Liam Neeson) is in a taxi accident and when he leaves the hospital, another man has assumed his identity, and his wife (January Jones) has forgotten him. He finds the taxi driver Gina (Diane Kruger) to help retrace his steps, and soon killers are after both of them.
Review: Unknown starts like a high concept movie with a man whose identity was assumed by someone else, and no one can tell. Just when I decided that maybe this was a Bertolt Brecht story with surrealist idea of identity, the films reveals its true identity as a mindless action movie, and omniscient thugs arrive to start killing people.
There are chase scenes and explosions. Lots of Liam Neeson being outraged.
The plot twists into a pretzel, and the movie ends in a stupid and unsatisfying way. If the ending had been better I might have liked this movie.
Most of the movie fun enough to watch until the end at least. I was not very fond of Liam Neeson, but I liked January Jones.
Cast: Liam Neeson, Duane Kruger, January Jones
Directed by: Jaume Collet-Serra
Rating: 2.0 stars, edging closer to 1.5
More: The German in the movie was pretty easy, and the accent was easy to understand.
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Plot: Hired assassin Arthur Bishop (Jason Stathum) is hired to kill one of his friends, and after doing so undertakes to teach the friend's son, Steve (Ben Foster), how to be an assassin because he feels obligated. The two assassinate some guys, and blow up some stuff. Someone double crosses Arthur, then Arthur and Steve hunt that guy down.
Review: This movie was fun to watch while I was watching it. In the theater I was thinking that the violence was stronger than average, and followed the story easily. The killing was bloodless, but the killers were cold-blooded -- killing without morality.
After I left the movie, I started thinking about how little of the movie made sense. All Action movies are like this, but The Mechanic is worse. It glosses over a million details. Some action movies have a who-dun-it element, and it is interesting to follow the twists of the story and guess what will happen -- we don't get that here.
Arthur is far more interested in Steve than any woman. Arthur does not have a girl friend, just a regular prostitute who does not even know his name.
I liked the Jason Statham character, and he is the only likeable character even though he kills people for money. The fact that he was likeable is a tribute to the acting and direction.
There were good quality special effects and good art direction. Bland soundtrack.
There is a homosexual element in the Arthur and Steve relationship and it is made more obvious by the Steve's homosexual bait assassination plot line. [VAGUE SPOILER] That assassin is just like Arthur, and Steve kills him. It foreshadows the end of the movie.
Cast: Jason Statham, Ben Foster, Donald Sutherland
Directed by: Simon West; based on the story by Lewis John Carlino (originally filmed in 1972)
Rating: 2.0 stars; Fun to watch; Just accept that most of the action scenes make no sense. Probably deserves to be 1.5 stars based on merit, but it was enjoyable anyway.
More: I like the cool looking tube amplifier. It looks cool even though anyone who prefers tubes to transistors must be an idiot. It is like a Steam-Punk Music system.
No way would I want to lovingly clean dust off vinyl records before I played music.
Yes, I know tubes are different because they distort more, why would want distortion to listen to classical? Maybe for distortion guitar rock or electrified Pop, but I don't get tubes for classical. .
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Plot: Emma (Natalie Portman) and Adam (Ashton Kuscher) were childhood friends, and then meet as adults. Soon they are regularly hooking up for sex, and agree to just be friends. They even break-up, and see other people to create some distance. But one thing leads to another, and soon No Strings Attached is off to romantic comedy utopia.
Review: The premise of No Strings Attached is two busy adults having sex regularly with no strings attached -- or no other commitments. This weak premise is not enough to build a movie around, but three things save it , supporting characters, sex-talk dialog, and Natalie Portman's acting.
The minor characters included alternate love interests for both Emma and Adam, the best of which is Lucy played by Lake Bell - she was so funny as the nerdy, artsy assistant and Adams 2nd love interest. Kevin Kline as Adam's father has some interesting sitcom scenes.
There are a lot of jokes that are only funny because of their vulgarity and the frank way that the characters deliver them. Some were pretty funny, and none were actually offensive to me. The movie affects coolness by how frank and open it is about sex.
I liked Natalie Portman a lot in Black Swan, and she is good here in a much different role. We occasionally see the great facial acting we saw in Black Swan.
The film is actually a romantic comedy, but it takes a while to realize that. This makes the movie more likable since for a while we don't know where it is going.
Cast: Natalie Portman, Ashton Kuscher, Kevin Kline, Lake Bell
Directed by: Ivan Reitman, who has a cameo as the director of the Glee-like TV show within the movie
Rating: 2.5 stars; Probably would be 2.0 if I were more objective. It was surprisingly good based on the low expectations that I had going in.
More: I was sure that No Strings Attached was written by a man, and that Emma -- the female sex fiend hottie -- was just a male writer trying to projecting the girl he would be if he were a girl -- that is actually a guy in a girl's body. It turns out that the real writers are two people, a woman and a man, Elizabeth Merriweather and co-author Mike Samonek. Of course, the character Adam is a writer, so he is clearly channelling one or both of them.
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Plot: A young man enters a computer world where his father was imprisoned years before, and battles computerized enemies to escape, with a girl he met there, to the real world.
Review: It is interesting to think about what it is like to live in a mathematical computer world, and Tron imagines a story there -- with a plot line and villains. The story only makes sense in a Science Fiction way, but it keeps our characters moving. There is a strong good guy/bad guy element to the story. Very little time is spent on the motivation for the villains.
The visuals are interesting, much better than the trailer, which did not do a good job of showing off some of the art direction. There were a few excellent scenes like Zeus' disco, and some of the driving sequences.
It is escapist fun, and I don't this there is a central morale, although one could write a thesis on all the threads of meaning. Clearly the importance of the father/son relationship was there, and a basic battle between organic life and computerized perfection. Although organic life is the good side, the movie's Sci-Fi fanbase are going be rooting for the computer. There were multiple yoga references in the film, and as with The Matrix, in that the world is not actually real.
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Oliva Wilde
Directed by: Joseph Kosinski
Rating: 2.5 stars -- maybe just a little better than that.
More: Quorra is the main the romantic interest for Sam, and she is both really cute and a computer program. To keep Quorra and Sam's relationship from being creepy -- like falling in love with a sex-bot -- she needed to be 'Special.' The eight writers that Disney hired must have labored hard to fix this. Their solution is awkward and hard to explain, they created a class of computer being that springs organically from the computerized utopia that the elder Flynn created. It takes a long time to realize that Quorra is the last one of these computer-angel creatures, and therefore super-special.
Even More: See my other Blog for a Quorra action figure.
Yet More: What will the sequel be like? Will it be in the real world?
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Plot: Micky (Mark Wahlberg) is a prize-fighter, who he is coached by his troubled brother Dicky, (Christian Bale) and managed by his Mom Alice (Melissa Leo.) After losing for a long time, Micky meets a new girlfriend Charlene (Amy Adams,) who encourages him to break with his crack-addicted brother and get a new trainer.
Review: The Fighter is a family-drama with a boxing theme. The mother and brothers play out soap opera scenes intermixed with fight scenes. The most interesting part is the trouble character of Dicky and the relationship between the brothers.
[Minor spoiler] The fight scenes are predictable where Micky gets battered in the beginning of all the fights and then comes back in an unlikely way at the end.
I liked Mark Wahlberg's performance, and he was the best part of the movie. While some of the other roles may have been difficult technically, I was unimpressed.
This movie does not have the soul of the first Rocky movie, perhaps it is like Raging Bull -- another critical hit that I did not care for. This is based on the true story of Irish "Micky" Ward.
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams
Directed by: David O Russell
Rating: 2.5 stars; Good acting; predictable plot; not fun-to-watch.
More: Wished I had seen something else.
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Plot: King George VI (Colin Firth) of England who was King during WWII stuttered, and he engages speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) to help him.
Review: I love the Declaration of Independence. Thank God for Thomas Jefferson. I am so happy that our nation has nothing to do with an institution as worthless as the English Monarchy and especially the 1930's era monarchy with its world-wide empire.
The King's Speech has events which would be unremarkable for a high-school boy here in Southgate Michigan, but which have some ponderous meaning because it is the English royal family.
There is too much over-cute sitcom humor like -- Oh, should I bow or not? Look Lionel calls the Prince "Bertie" -- outrageous! Look! Its Queen Elizabeth and Princess Anne when they were little girls -- OMG! See how the Prince doesn't stammer when he is swearing -- Oh! Princes aren't supposed to swear.
The basic idea of this movie is bad. The stuttering is probably difficult acting for Colin Firth to perform -- a nice job technically but so what. Geoffrey Rush's floppy face is expressive, and I like some of his proletarian sentiments, which were probably a-historical. Helena Bonham Carter was a highlight though.
This film is way over-rated. I suppose Anglophile might like it more than I. There are a few entertaining parts, but generally the film is not fun-to-watch.
It tries to engage intellectually on the level of "Look a handicapped person can be King too." We all like to see underdogs overcoming and making good. This is absurd for the Royal Family since they are in every way the opposite of underdogs.
Cast: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter
Directed by: Tom Hooper
Rating: 2.0 stars
More: Who thought that this was a good idea for a movie? .
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Plot: Jules (Annette Benning) and Nic (Julianne Moore) are lesbian couple, and they have two kids through artificial insemination, 18-year old Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and 14-year old Laser (Josh Hutcherson. The kids look up their sperm donor father, Paul (Mark Ruffalo), who turns out to be a nice, likable, and eligible. Paul vies for the affection of the kids as well as the affection of the two Moms.
Review: It's the same, but different. It's the same because we have seen dozens of love triangles and family dramas, but it is different because we have not seen it played out with lesbian parents before.
It is a little better because Mia Wasikowska's Joni character plays a pivotal role in her breaking away from her Moms, and in inviting her biological Dad into the family at the same time. We have a more interesting dynamic between interloper Paul and the three women because we have the growing-up story with Joni too.
Annette Benning, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo and Mia Wasikowska all do a great job acting. It is like a newer Woody Allen movie with good dialog basically about feelings for the whole film. Director Lisa Cholodenko underplays the final scenes, and it produces a thoughtful feeling.
Is this any film any better because it was about a homosexual couple? Yes perhaps because no one has seen this before. I am not sure why we needed a sub-plot on male homosexual videos -- unless this for laughs.
Homosexual couples are presented as being as good or better than straight couples. There is one line where son Laser is told that he would be a better person if he were gay -- which I thought was in bad taste. The idea that homosexual parents would encourage homosexuality in their children is a classic argument against homosexual marriage. I was very surprised that director Cholodenko would put such a remark in the movie. Cholodenko was probably trying to stir a debate, but maybe that is what she really thinks.
A second interesting topic is whether human sexuality orientation is born or chosen. Jules says that human sexuality is complicated, and both Jules and Nic like watching sex tapes of men. Obviously Jules has some pretty spontaneous bisexual behaviors too. Clearly they were not born liking women only. On the opposite side, they were very interested in whether son Laser was having a gay relationship with his friend.
Cast: Annette Benning, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Mia Waskikowska
Written and directed by: Lisa Cholodenko
Rating: 3.5- stars; A 3.0 movie but after leaving the theater, the movie brings to mind issues that make it seem more substantive the second day -- so 3.5. It lacks the fun-ness necessary to be higher.
More: Mark Ruffalo should get some kind of lifetime achievement award for all of the excellent supporting role performances he has in arty independent movies.
Even More: I don't think that any 18-year old girl could sit at the dinner table with her parents talking about having sex with each other without turning green and vomiting -- lesbian Moms or not.
Yet More: I wonder how auto-biographical this film was for writer Cholodenko, who is a lesbian raising kids with her partner. One news article said her mannerisms and style are much like Annette Benning's Jules character.
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