Letters to Juliet

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Plot: Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) goes to Italy with her boyfriend, while site-seeing she goes to Juliet's house -- the Juliet from Romeo and Juliet. In the movie, as in real life(!), women send letters to Juliet asking advice. In the movie, Sophie finds a letter hidden for fifty years, and tries to answer the letter -- as if she were Juliet. In time, she hooks up with the now elderly Claire (Vanessa Redgrave) who brings her grandson Charlie (Christopher Egan) to Italy. They crisscross the Italian country-side looking for Lorenzo  (Franco Nero). In time Sophie begins to like Charlie, but she goes back to New York with her boyfriend, but wait --- the movie ends with a happy Hollywood ending.

Review: The story is the lightest fluff you could want, but it has beautiful Italian travelog photography, and vivid performances from Amanda Seyfried -- who carries the movie. Vanessa Redgrave carries off her part with dignity, but she is really to lovesick and idealistic to be believable. The whole reason this movie is not intensely awful is Amanda.

There is real chemistry between Christophen Egan and Amanda though, and this makes the first two thirds of the movie pleasant.

The movie gets stomach-wretching syrupy sweet at the end, but the characters are likeable so I wanted them to get the fairy tale ending destiny intended.

Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Vanessa Redgrave, Christopher Egan

Directed by: Gary Winick (written by male writers Jose Rivera and Tim Sullivan)

Rating: 2.5 flasks


More: If you can believe it, Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero actually were a couple in 1966, and they have a child together.

Iron Man 2

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Plot: Ironman and Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) have gone fat and soft. Tony has become egotistical, and the US government is trying to get Ironman's secrets from him. Meanwhile Russian Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) is puts together another Ironman suit, and ambushes Tony during a car race. Ivan brings Tony down to earth, and business rival Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) steps in to help Ivan develop Ironman suits for the Pentagon.  Tony flirts with a cute young lawyer (Scarlett Johanson), and lets secretary Pepper Potts (Gwynth Paltrow) run the company. Guess what? In the end there is a big fight. 

Review: Ironman 2 is the Rocky 3 story of the young hungry underdog beating up on the fat and soft champion. The dynamic between Pepper Potts and Tony Stark carries the movie with old-fashioned chemistry and clever dialog. Mickey Rourke's Ivan has manic intensity and an epidermis full of tough guy tattoos. He gives the movie its intensity.

The Scarlett Johanson character produced some good fight scenes, but did not seem worthwhile. I wonder if there other plot twists left on the cutting room floor.

Cast: Robert Downey Jr, Mickey Rourke, Gwyneth Paltrow

Directed by: John Farveau

Rating: 3.0 flasks; Fun-to-watch, but not fun enough for 3.5 stars. The characters were interesting, but there was no deep hidden meaning or character study here.


More: Where was the Stan Lee cameo? I missed it. 

The Losers

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Plot: Five special ops soldiers are double-crossed on a drug raid in Boliva by a trigger-happy rogue CIA agent, Max (Jason Patric), and they are left for dead. Their leader, Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) leads them to a Bolivian city where they meet Aisha (Zoe Saldana) who bankrolls their return to the US to get revenge on Max. In the US, they have a series of missions leading up to their confrontation with Max at the end of the movie.

Review: The Losers was a solid, pleasant movie going experience. It is not great because the story is pretty thin, and the character-based action is not strong enough. There are a few scenes that are humorous and campy, and a few scenes play straight for action. The director, Sylvian White, tries to set up chemistry between the characters, and this begins to work, but not quite well enough.

Jeffrey Dean Martin does a nice job as the lead actor. Zoe Saldana play a good tough action hero, but the chemistry just begins to work.

A little more creativity in choosing and motivating the bad guy would have helped.  The movie works best if you don't ask why, and just eat the popcorn.

Cast: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Zoe Saldana

Directed by: Sylvian White

Rating: 2 flasks


More: It is completely conventional for action movie heros to be fighting rogue US government villains. It was so generic here that it just seems funny. 

Date Night

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Plot: Boring New Jersey couple Phil and Claire Foster (Steve Carell and Tina Fey) go out to dinner and are mistaken for criminals by corrupt cops. They are chased around town until they make a bizarre plan to save themselves.

Review: The is a smart comedy with many good laughs -- most of the laughs are about anatomy and sex with a few pointed jabs at suburban married life. I really enjoyed watching Tina Fey, who was funny and likeable. Steve Carell has some good scenes, but too many are the kind of cringe-worthy scenes where I can hardly bare to watch.

There is one car chase scene that is creative and funny.

Cast: Tina Fey, Steve Carell

Directed by: Shawn Levy

Rating: 2.5 flasks; almost three stars.


More: Tina Fey mostly plays single women, so it is interesting to see her take on married women -- as she is married herself.

Even more: I saw this movie with my wife, does that make it a date night? She did not like it. So the satire about suburban married women did not work, at least with her, although she said it was the over-abundance of sex jokes she disliked.

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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

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Plot: Joel (Jim Carrey) calls in sick and goes to the beach on a cool day to relax. There he meets Clementine (Kate Winslet), and they become friends. They spend some time together, but then Clementine forgets all about him, and Joel finds that she had her memories erased. Joel decides the only way he can live is if he also erases his memories. There are strange interior dream scenes where Clementine's memory runs from image to image in Joel's head.


Review: I saw this movie when it was new, but I was jetlagged, and slept through most of it. Wife Jenny read a review that claimed this movie has metaphysical insights, so we got it at the library.


I was looking for a DEEP HIDDEN MEANING, but I have decided that the most important meaning is the superficial one, which is that forgetting about the past can romantic relationships better. This is opposite of Freudian fixation on the past.


During the film, I was convinced that Joel (Jim Carrey) was insane, and all the characters were made up by his insane mind. Clementine (Kate) is a schizophrenic personality that the doctor is trying to disappear. The director does not end the film in a way that is compatible with that interpretation.


Jim Carrey give a competent performance. Kate Winslet had some moments early in the movie, but generally her character was so disjointed it was hard for her to have authentic emotion. The minor characters were strange enough to be interesting, and that contributed to the overall strangeness.


Cast: Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet


Directed by: Micheal Gondry


Rating: 3 flasks - It is not very fun to watch. I has some internal puzzles in it that keep you going, and it (may) take on substantial issues. Probably deserves a 2.5



More: I prefer to think there was a non-Hollywood ending on the cutting room floor somewhere, where Joel simply forgets Clementine, and the movie ends. Not very happy but artistically authentic.

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Kick-Ass

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Plot: Kick-Ass (Aaron Johnson) is a high school boy and wanna-be Superhero, who falls in with more seasoned superheroes Big Daddy and Hit Girl. Kick-Ass has many embarrassing adventures chasing low-lifes around the Bronx. He makes up an excuse to hide his secret identity, and soon a pretty girl befriends him because she thinks he is gay. Later, they take down a local Mafia lord, and there is a big fight at the end.  Child hero Hit Girl does most of the killing.


Review: Very entertaining. The film has a voice over narration and a light comedic feel that make the plot's high body count acceptable. While there is a lot of violence, it is comic action with people dying from single blows, and very little blood. Some of the worst violence is off-screen.


The movie is carried by the character of Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz) who is an eleven year old, that fights like Trinity from The Matrix, and who says "cunt," "fuck" and all the words your Mother disapproves of. Moretz, who delivers her lines with great earnestness, has made many TV episodes.


The script is the biggest star. The story is well told, and is a crowd-pleaser. I also liked the high school soap opera plotline. I liked the incorporation of YouTube and streaming video into the story.


The movie is fun enough for a 3.5 or 4.0 star rating, and you have to love the fight scenes were Hit Girl chews up busloads of bad guys. The acting from Cage and from Johnson don't measure up, and girlfriend Katie Deauxma (Lyndsy Fonseca) is not good. The movie is strictly for fun, and has no serious message of any sort. 

I have three favorite scenes. The first is a parody of Darth Maul twin bladed light saber in Phantom Menace, where Hit Girl does the same moves with a double-tipped spear. The second when Hit Girl does a parody of Trinity and Neo passing the security guards in The Agent's headquarters in The Matrix. The third is also from the Matrix where Neo shoots the agents from a helicopter, and I don't want to give too much plot away.


Cast: Aaron Johnson, Chloe Moretz, Nicholas Cage


Directed by: Matthew Vaughn, based on the comic book by Mark Millar and John Romita


Rating: 3 flasks; The funnest movie of the season.

More: There should be a Hit Girl Sequel.

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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Män Som Hatar Kvinnor (Men who Hate Women))

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Plot: This is a complicated cold-case, murder mystery set in Sweden that starts with a girls disappearance forty years ago, and ends with a series of grisly murders of women. The title character is Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Repace), who is a thin, goth hacker that has a violent history. Mikael Bloomkwist (Micheal Nyqvist) is a washed-up reported paid to investigate the cold-case, and who eventually teams up with Salander.

Review: The best part is the Lisbeth character who is compelling and mysterious. They keep teasing us with more details from her complicated past. She is well played by Noomi Repace, who portrays Lisbeth along the lines of the novel. The script fits in most of the complicated story, and I liked how they got the essential scenes into the movie without making the movie too long or too hard to understand.

There are some violent scenes, but they are essential to the edgy-ness of the movie.

This is a satisfying movie that I enjoyed watching. I think I liked it better since I had read the book.

Cast: Noomi Reace, Micheal Nyqvist

Directed by: Niels Arden Oplev; based on the novel by Stieg Larssen

Rating: 3.5 flasks; It was fun to watch, but not higher because it was subtitled, and because the plot was a bit complicated. It  has a theme of violence against women, but was not a message film.


More: I am going to read the sequel.

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Even more: Lisbeth Rocks!
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