50/50

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Plot: Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is 28 and he gets spinal cancer right at the beginning of the movie. 50/50 is his chance of dying. His best friend Kyle (Seth Rogen) his Mom (Anjelica Huston,) and his girl friend Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard) try to help as he starts chemotherapy. Soon he meets cute counselor Katherine (Anna Kendrick,) and they flirt as they talk about his feelings.

Review: 50/50 is 50% medical drama and 50% comedy alternately Bro-mance and Rom-Com. Most of the actual jokes are delivered by Seth Rogen who plays a larger-then-life best friend who is obsessed with sex and getting high. Rachael and Katherine are the Rom-Com girls who are perky & cute because of the dialog and facial acting.  

The movie is more about being sick than about dying with hospital scenes and getting bald being prominent  There are some scenes with older cancer payments that address preparations for death. The film's advice on threat of death is to get high and scream.

The performances were all great especially Howard, Kendrick, Gordon-Levitt. Rogen is a bit of a cartoon character, and Huston did not have a big part. Perhaps the dog could have played a bigger role in consoling Adam.

Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, Anjelica Huston

Directed by: Jonathan Levine; produced & written by Will Reiser; Will Reiser is a cancer survivor.

Rating:   3.0 stars: Engaging and entertaining, but not inspiring. It is thought-provoking, and the characters are well done. It is worthwhile, but you can't expect a movie about cancer to be fun-to-watch. 

More: Everytime I saw Katherine and Adam, I kept thinking that the ethics board would not like what they were doing.

Even more: Writing a good comedy about death instead of about being sick is hard. When I went to the theater I was hoping for a more ambitious film, but this was still good.

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Moneyball

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Plot: Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is general manager for the relatively poor Oakland A's, and he hires chubby statistics geek Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) to help remake the team on a limited budget. Peter and Billy use obscure statistics to trade for cheap, unconventional players, and trade away their stars. Manager Art Howe (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and everyone else is skeptical. There is a sub-plot with Billy confiding with his daughter Casey (Kerris Dorsey.)

Review: Top story telling turns this unlikely plot into a tense, feel-good drama. I liked this movie a lot once it got moving. The characters are engaging, and the story has built-in drama. There is enough development of Billy's homelife to get into his head, and enough baseball to provide drama. Predictably the A's lose and then start winning, and director Bennett Miller creates all the suspense he can. 

The performances are all good, and the directing is snappy. Moneyball starts slowly, but the characters get more involved and the dialog gets better. Only great writing and directing could make a winner out of such an unlikely story. A best adapted screenplay Oscar should be in the bag already. I'd like to see an Oscar nomination for Brad. 

The visuals are strong, and twelve-year old Kerris Dorsey's song was great, but the rest of the soundtrack was forgettable. 

Cast: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Kerris Dorsy, Phillip Seymour Hoffman

Directed by: Bennett Miller

Rating:   4.0 stars: A strong movie, strong performances, and a nice pro-technology message. Best movie of the year so far.  

More: Yeah, nerdy geeks with Excel spreadsheets are Heros! Why wouldn't I love this movie?

The Real Billy Beane

Even more: Here is a picture of the real Billy Beane.

Yet more: Someone should apply these principles to running the government.

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Drive

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Plot: "The Driver" (Ryan Gosling) does Hollywood driving stunts, fixes cars, and drives the occasional get-away car. He meets his cute neighbor, Irene (Carey Milligan), but soon her husband, Standard (Oscar Isaac), comes back from prison. "The Driver" tries to helps them out by helping Standard get out of debt by robbing a store, but that does not go well, and soon we are meeting thugs and mob bosses. The violence is brutal and hard to watch, but brief.

Review: Drive is a classy movie with understated dialog and underacting -- all the dialog and emotions are dialed way back. Only the bad guys have emotions everyone else is stony-faced. The under-emoting helps the viewer enter into the experience better, but it does not let the actor show you how to feel, instead, the audience paints the emotions on the blank screens of Gosling and Milligan's faces. 


It could not be more different from Fast Five.  It is supposed to be an updated Film Noir, although  the images are not dark and smoky.


"The Driver," the character, starts out being a regular guy, but as the movie progresses he gets becomes a more stereotyped tough guy and more and more violent. Perhaps this is because of the circumstances he is in, but perhaps we just are getting to know him better. The Driver is like an experimental film since its style is so dominant. The soundtrack is good too.


I was glad to watch it because it is different. On the other hand, different does not make it good. 

Cast:  Ryan Gossling, Carey Mulligan

Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn, based on the book by James Sallis.

Rating:   2.5 stars:  I am tempted to give it 3 stars because it was pretty edgy. On the other hand, it was not that fun to watch, and not as engaging as Contagion that also got 2.5 stars. To me the underacting was too great, and there was no social or moral message in the Drive.

More: The character "The Driver" does not have a name; he is always "Driver," or "Kid."

Even More: I like how the only* beverage in the film is water; this fits with the visual minimism. (*I have been corrected, Driver drinks coffee in the diner.) 

Yet More: Irene's husbands name is "Standard." "The Driver" is supposed to be the "Deluxe;" check the titles in the soundtrack album. 
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Contagion

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Plot: A woman (Gweneth Paltrow) carries a flu bug from Hong Kong to Minneapolis infecting people on the way and then she and her son dies. Her husband Mitch (Matt Damon) get quarantined, and his daughter Jory (Anna Jacoby-Heron) is distraught. The CDC and WHO jump on the case including CDC Chief Cheever (Laurence Fishburne) and investigators Drs. Meers (Kate Winslet) and Orantes (Marion Contilliard). Meanwhile blogger and busybody Alan (Jude Law) hawks a homeopathic cure.

Review: Contagion is a fast moving story that is always interesting. There are a lot of characters, but the plot is easy to understand, and the biology seems completely plausible. 

The best part is that it really could happen, and that makes it a little more scary. The worse part is that we never engage with individual characters. The characters are always in a hurry, and the spreading disease is more important than building the backstory. 

One subplot that worked was how daughter Jory couldn't see her boyfriend, but the dance scene was a too saccharine for me. Kate Winslet and Marion Contilliard gave good performances as driven doctors. The cinematography and art direction was uninspired. 

Cast:  Gwenth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Anna Jacoby-Heron, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet, and Marion Contilliard. 

Directed by: Steve Soderbergh

Rating:   2.5 stars; it is pushing three stars, but it lacks emotional engagement. It gets points for telling a warning story that might inspire people to stockpile canned goods and ammunition.  My DW liked it: because it was interesting and not stupid.

More: I liked the barnyard epilogue at the end. Nicest visuals in the film.

Even more:  Those ribbon structures of virus protein binding looked simplified to me. 

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Crazy, Stupid Love

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Plot: Emily (Julianne Moore) is divorcing Cal (Steve Carrell,) and Cal tries to bounce back by hitting the bar scene. Cal meets Lady's Man and pick-up artist Jacob (Ryan Gosling,) who tutors him on picking up girls at the bar including a make-over. Meantime Cal's son (Jonah Bobo) is hitting on his babysitter (Analeigh Tipton.)

Review: The divorce happens right at the beginning, and basic story is Cal learning how to pick up girls from Jacob, and this plot line is entertaining. Cal is not believable at all, but Ryan Gosling's Jacob is the best character in the movie, and they have good rapport. 

The plot twist with the likeable Emma Stone is a plus too. 

On the negative side, Julianne Moore was a nothing for the whole film. The chemistry between Cal and Emma is just not there, and that is why this movie fails. 

There is an elaborate subplot around the babysitter, and this is cute. It sets up the best scene in the movie where the whole cast meets at Cal's old house, and all the secret relationships are revealed -- pretty funny.

There were some interminable parts too. The scene with the speech to middle school was so awful. I wished the earth would open and swallow me up, so I could get away. Bad. The ending was terrible too.

Cast: Steve Carrell, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore, Emma Stone

Directed by: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa

Rating:   1.5 stars; Just not very fun to watch, not very funny, with characters that I don't care about. 

 

More: This is really a buddy picture between two guys. It looks like a romantic comedy, but it isn't a love story.

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The Debt

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Plot: In the sixties, three Mossad agents attempt to abduct a former Nazi Doctor. It does not go as planned, and this leads to the movie's surprise, which is revealed in flashback by the older versions of the characters.

Review: The Debt is sloppy and fuzzy -- meaning the pacing and editing is sloppy, and the images and cinematography are dull and fuzzy. The younger characters are not engaging, and the older characters mostly sit around and talk about being young -- except for the closing scenes, which pick up a little. 

The Debt takes itself very seriously. The film should have shown how evil the Nazi doctor's crimes were to motivate how badly the  secret agents treat the poor doctor as they beat-up and maltreat him.  

There were no smiles in the whole film except the kids playing. No love-making, just sex to relieve the mental stress and boredom. 

Cast: Helen Merrin, Jessica Chastain, Tom Wilkinson, Sam Worthington

Directed by: John Madden

Rating:   1.5 stars: The tracking down Nazis plot has been done before and better.  Depressing to watch, and there is no uplifting moral message at the end. 

More: This seems to be a fictional story. There does not seem to have been a real Nazi doctor hiding under the name of Vogel. 

Even More: The Nazi doctors did some terrible stuff. 

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The Help

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Plot: In the early 1960's the civil rights movement is just starting, and college grad Skeeter (Emma Stone) moves back to Jackson, Mississippi. She wants to write a magazine feature about black women who work as maids. The maids are not paid well or treated well, while segregation and discrimination are wide-spread. After a long time Skeeter recruits Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minney (Octavia Spencer) to tell their stories for her book. The most interesting part of the movie is the dynamics between the housewives who employ the maids  like Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard) with each other and with the maids.

Review: Without over-analyzing the movie, it is a good story, and interesting through out. It is easy to sympathize with Aibileen and Minney about their conditions, and with Skeeter in her efforts to write about them. It is also interesting to watch how tough and mean the housewives are.  

If I think about the movie too much, then I'll nitpick about dialog that sounds like 21st Century words pasted in the 1960's mouths of the characters. Of course, Mad Men is no different. The white housewives are the villains of the movie, and they are wrenches. Some of that is for comedy, and the comedy conflicts with the documentary aspect of the film.

I expected the movie to be a lot preachier about race relations, but I didn't think it was a problem. It was a good movie with a moral message that did not seem too simple or overbearing.

I thought the performances were strong, and Emma, Viola and Octavia all had a few good scenes. I am not sure we have a best actress Oscar here, but The Help should get a SAG for best ensemble cast. The group of actresses had great chemistry. That is a tribute to the directing too.

Cast: Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard

Directed by: Tate Taylor

Rating:   3.0 stars: pretty fun to watch and well-acted with a good moral message. 

More: Here is a YouTube video about making the film in Jackson, and especially the old cars. I really liked the shiny old cars.