The Other Guys

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Plot: Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell) is a nerdy accountant, who is also a New York cop, and his parter is Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg) a normal guy who is ashamed to work with Allen because he is too nerdy, clueless and not macho enough. Allen and Terry stumble upon a financial scandal, and fight the bad guys. There are many subplots involving Allen's strange attraction to women, and the back story of each detective.

Review: The is a strange and ridiculous movie. It is funny because it is relentlessly ridiculous -- very funny at times. 


Will Ferrell is the star. His Alan Gamble character is pitiable, but not quite pathetic. The plot is simple, but it keeps the comic set-ups coming, and the jokes follow.


The special effects are showy and punctuate the jokes, but they seemed to be tacked-on to awe the audience not to advance the story. 


Mark Wahlberg is a great straight-man, and he is likeable enough. I expect it is harder to be a straight-man than it seems; still I was not overly impressed.

The Other Guys is all for fun, and it has no serious side. Just a mindless August movie.  Mindless or not, I was glad I saw it.


Cast: Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Michael Keaton

Directed by: Adam McKay

Rating: 2.5 flasks; Really funny at times, but not a top quality comedy.


More: This is one of the funniest movies of 2010. What are the funniest? Date Night and Take Him to the Greek are the best funny movies. The Other Guys and Hot Tub Time Machines are laugh-out-loud mindless fun.

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Despicable Me

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Plot: Gru is a supervillain who needs to steal the moon to gain approval from his sourpuss mother. As part of the scheme he adopts three orphan girls, who turn his life upside down.

Review: This was a surprisingly like-able and fun movie. Even though Gru was a supervillain, he was sympathetic like Scrooge in Dicken's Christmas Carol. The Minions were clever and cute; they stole most of the scenes they were in.

More than the plot or the characters, it was the tone of this movie makes it comic and likeable. The directors deserve credit.

It was great when the Evil Bank turns out to have formerly been Lehmen Brothers.

You need to stay through the credits to test the limits of 3D technology. The roller coaster scene is great 3D too.  Pretty cool.

Directed by: Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud

Rating: 3.0 flasks; too fun to be just 2.5 flasks.



More: Gotta love the Minions.

DESPICABLE ME: Meet the Minions,, .

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Salt

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Plot: Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is a CIA agent who is accused by a Russian informant of being a Russian agent on a mission to kill the Russian President. Once accused she runs, and keeps running right to the end of the movie. There are several twists in the plot to keep interest up.

Review: I enjoyed Salt perhaps because I did not expect much. This was fast paced fun that I liked. Stop thinking that it could never really happen.

The first third of the movie where Salt is running from the CIA is enjoyable and solid, and the middle part ending with a big explosion is very clever -- less fun but smart. The third part with the President is the weakest. People who demand realism from action-adventure movies should stay home. This is summer-time super-heroine action where a skinny girl's kicks and karate chops immobilize soldiers twice Salt's size, and no bad guy can shoot a gun straight.

There is a point in this movie where you realize, she must be a bad guy since it looks like she is killing all the good guys. Is she a double-agent? Is she a triple-agent?

Cast: Angelina Jolie, Lev Schrieber

Directed by: Phillip Noyce

Rating: 3.0- flasks I liked it. It is mindless entertainment, but I still liked it. So what if it could't really happen?  Superman can't really fly, either.


More: The Russian spy affair in Washington seems eerily like Salt. Who could have predicted real Russian deep cover agents would be discovered right before this film is released.

More: Who thought up the name "Salt"? And why?
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Inception

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Plot: Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) makes money by interogating prisoners in their dreams and stealing their secrets. He uses drugs and a science-fiction machine to create an elaborate fictional world to convince them into talking. Cobb is himself a fugitive, and becomes involved in a risky corporate espionage scheme involving planting memories. As the movie unfolds, we learn Cobb has emotional problems of his own involving his wife Mal (Marion Cotilliard), and these complicate completing the espionage. He forms a team with Arthur (Joseph Gordon Levitt) and Araidne (Ellen Page.)

Review:  Inception is a clever and original movie that mixes action sequences and a spy story with an emotional love story that occurs in flashback. It has a complicated plot, which was easy enough to follow in broad-strokes, but I'd need to see the movie another time to get in detail. I thought that the plot made sense by end of the movie, though I did not follow it as it spooled out.

The relationships between the characters especially Cobb and Araidne carry the movie, and Ellen Page does a nice job. Mal's scenes were played with great intensity by Marion Cotilliard, and they helped carry off the science-fiction premises. I don't usually like Leo, but he was non-objectionable in this movie -- even above average.

I liked the movie. It was fun to watch, and had some clever messages about the realness of life. My wife liked to relate this story to the teachings of mystical religions or The Course in Miracles, which teach that all the world is a dream.

I liked the ambiguous ending. When you have seen the movie, check out the discussion on the meaning of the last scene, here.

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio,

Written and directed by: Christopher Nolan

Rating: 3.0+ flasks; maybe it should be higher certainly others are giving it great reviews. I thought it was strong, more in the range of Kick-Ass, Ironman 2 and Alice in Wonderland -- not as good as Dragon Tatoo or Toy Story 3. I reserve the right to raise this to 3.5 if I see it again, and I am interested in seeing it twice. Just that I want to see it again says something.
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More: Ariadne (the namesake of the Ellen Page character) is a figure in Greek mythology who helped her boyfriend get out of a maze by giving him a thread. It is thus appropriate that she was concerned with mazes and guiding Cobb through the maze.

Obviously, Mal is supposed to be bad -- a little too obvious. I can't figure out the reference to Cobb. His full name is Dom Cobb.

Even More: Check out this comic prequel on the Cobal job, which the movie begins with.

The Girl Who Played With Fire [Flickan som lekte med elden]

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Plot: This is a sequel and the movie spends time rebuilding the story from the previous film including how Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) is blackmailing her guardian. This film's complicated story involves a drug/prostitution ring and police corruption. Salander is accused of murdering two and then three people, and the police, her friend Bloomkvist and the criminals are all out to get her.

Review: The first half of the movie was too plot heavy and not very enjoyable, but it led to a dramatic confrontation at the end that was intense and made the whole worthwhile. The scriptwriter (Jonas Frykberg) simplified the story in the novel, but it was too complicated to follow anyway, and the richness of the characters was compromised.  Lisbeth should have been smarter and more troubled. I would like to have seen some Monk-like physical ticks.

If this movie is evaluated as a free-standing work, then it fails as it is too complicated to follow without the novels or at least the first movie as a guide. If it is evaluated as part of the larger whole, then it stands up better. The character development in this movie is not strong enough alone to provide interesting characters. The complex story of the novel is probably unfilmable, but it did provide interesting situations for the characters to enact.

Noomi Rapace had some excellent scenes especially at the end. Michael Nyquist who played Bloomkwist was not interesting and none of his scenes were interesting.

The book was all about the exploitation of the woman in the human trafficking ring, but that was barely a sidelight here. This took away emotional intensity.

Cast:Noomi Raplace, Michael Nyquist

Directed by: Daniel Alfredson

Rating: 2.5 flasks


More: I liked the warpaint makeup Lisbeth wore in this interrogation scene. Great visual. Creepy.

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Winter's Bone

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Plot: Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) is a 17 year-old from an outlaw family in rural America, probably Missouri, and her Dad has skipped bail. The bail bondsman is going to claim the farm, and kick Ree, her two siblings and her mentally-ill Mom on the street. Ree goes in search of her Dad, but instead finds an extended family of strange and scary relatives.

Review: Ree's character is very strong and well-drawn. She is noble in her suffering and tireless in her quest. Her task is so unfair and so hopeless that we are sympathetic with her throughout the movie. All the strengths of this movie come from the Ree Dolly character and its portrayal by Jennifer Lawrence. Jennifer's acting is great -- from the first scene she seems like a real girl with a world of burdens on her.

The rest of the movie is not so good. The other kids are just placeholders. Her creepy uncle Teardrop (John Hawkes) is colorful, but not interesting. He just seems scary and unpredictable to me.

The only other excellent character is villainous matriarch Merab, played by Dale Dickey -- she is practical, tough, complicated and squeezed by her obligations to her even tougher husband.

I saw this movie yesterday, and today I like it better. Even though it was bleak and not fun, the Ree character is so memorable. I wondered why her relatives were not more helpful. In my view outlaw families are usually close, and Ree's Dad would have had friends, but the story demanded the Ree be all alone, and so she was.

I find myself wondering what I would have done in her situation. Her heroism makes the movie worth seeing.

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Dale Dickey, Garret Dillahunt, John Hawkes

Directed by: Debra Granik

Rating: 2.5 flasks


More: The sound effects were disturbingly poor. One should never notice that the sound of the footsteps are wrong.

Even more: Winter's Bone starts off with kids playing with a lullaby in the background. It is bad sign when a film starts with sleepy music.

The Karate Kid

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Plot: A boy, Dre (Jaden Smith), and his Mom (Tariji Henson) move from Detroit to Beijing, where Dre is picked on by the local kids, and where he meets a girl, Meiying (Wen Wen Han). After he gets beaten up, a local man, Mr. Han (Jackie Chan), teaches him Kung Fu. After he learns Kung Fu, he fights in a big tournment.

Review:  You really can't trust movie reviews for kid's movies. This film had great reviews, and it was bad.

The beginning was like an afterschool special; everything was so stereotypic and so unlikely that I couldn't bear to watch. The first hour was especially bad. The ending was especially predictable.

The flirty romance and the Chinese travelogue made the movie bearable. The training scenes dragged on forever. Mr Han (Jackie Chan) was unrealistic and odd. I suppose they were attempting to make him quirky and tormented, but that did not work for me.

I liked Jaden Smith and the smiley young girl Wen Wen Han. All the other child actors were wooden.

I can't figure why the rest of the audience liked this movie. There were some good songs though.

Cast: Jaden Smith, Jackie Chan

Directed by:  Harald Zwart

Rating: 1.5 flasks. Some scenes aspire to be 2 flasks, but they did not overcome the unbearable parts.


More:  Karate is Japanese (Okinawan) not Chinese. It should be the Kung Fu Kid. The film was partially produced by Sony, so I am sure they thought it was OK. Apparently, the first syllable of Karate means Chinese.

Even more:  I liked the Detroit Lions and Detroit Tigers T-shirts

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