True Grit

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Plot: Fourteen-year-old Mattee Ross (Hailee Steinfield) hires Federal Marshel Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to hunt down murderer Tom Cheney (Josh Brolin.) They are joined by Texas Ranger Laboeuf (Matt Damon) as they venture into Indian territory to find Cheney and the criminal band he is hiding with.


Review: Mattee Ross carries True Grit. It is her larger-than-life, poise, worldliness, and spunk that makes this movie fun. The traditional Western characters like Cogburn and Laboeuf are colorful, but not distinctive or memorable. Hailee Steinfield deserves recognition It is like Ellen Page's role in Juno -- the dialog is the star of the movie. 
The scene where Matee negotiates with the horse dealer should become a classic. 


Jeff Bridges plays Rooster Cogburn as a likeable tough-guy with a warm heart. Jeff Bridges is always a bit disgusting, but the disgusting parts are given only in small doses. Matt Damon was probably too prominent an actor to play Laboeuf because it always seemed like Matt Damon reading lines, and never like an actual character. 


True Grit was fun-to-watch, and surprisingly funny -- usually because of the dialog. There was some suspenseful action, but actually the characters were shallow - as in a comedy or action movie. 


True Grit is not a Western but rather a Black Comedy.  The film was well made and well acted. The movie is not really about anything -- it does not make any points about life or people or whatever.


Cast: Hailee Steinfield, Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon


Directed by:  Ethan Coen, Joel Coen


Rating: 3.0 stars, perhaps edging higher to 3.5

More: I want to read the book. 

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Black Swan

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Plot:   Ballet Dancer Nina (Natalie Portman) is the Swan Queen both in her local ballet company, and in her real life struggle with her Mom (Barbara Hershey), the old Prima Dona (Winona Ryder) and with rival ballerina Lily (Mila Kunis).  As the movie plays out, Nina becomes the dark Black Swan more and more. We don't know what is dream sequence, what is psychotic delusion, what is Magic, and what is real life. 

The movie retells the story of Swan Lake, which is based on a Germanic folk tale about enchanted girls who turn into swans. It has battles between the girls and their mothers, elders and with each other for suitors. 

Basically,  Nina is the White Swan and aspiring new Swan Queen, and she fights to break a magic spell by winning a "gentleman's heart", here the heart of ballet director Thomas (Vincent Cassel). She must force the old primary dancer into retirement and fend off her rival Lily, the Black Swan, who tries to impersonate her.


See how long it has taken me to describe the plot, some people will hate this movie for that reason. Read the Swan Lake Wikipedia entry for more info -- it really helps.  

Review: This is a top movie. Don't let the ballet theme fool you. It is really a story with big mythical themes, and you don't need to know much about ballet. The story gets darker near the end like a psychological thriller. 

The movie shows battles between Nina and the old guard and then her peers, as she grows up to be an independent artist. Nina needs to grow up and embrace her 'dark side'. Here this means breaking away from her mother's vision of goodness to become an adult, though it might mean drugs, bloody killing and lesbian sex.

Natalie Portman gives the best performance I have seen in 2010. Really Oscar deserving. Her facial acting when she learns she got the Swan Queen part was a master piece -- deserving of an Oscar by itself. I don't know how much dancing Natalie really did, and how much was a double, but her dancing looks realistic throughout.



I like the interplay between art and life, and how the two twist back and forth.  I like how the Magic/Dream gets stronger and darker as the movie progresses. The movie is not for people who demand linear story telling. 


Everyone likes it when Nina finally turns darker and darker at the end of the film. When she may not really be in control of herself, she is really most in control of everything else.

Cast: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel


Directed by: Darren Aronofsky; Screenplay by Mark Hayman

Rating: 4.0 stars: my favorite for best picture.

More: [Spoiler] The bold art movie ending is just what the movie needed. I choose to believe that Nina lives happily ever after -- whether in heaven or on earth. 


Even More: See my review for Natalie Portman in No Strings Attached.

Morning Glory

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Plot: Becky Fuller (Rachel McAdams) is a young TV producer who takes over DayBreak, a struggling national morning show. DayBreak has two anchors, the overly-serious Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford) and the catty Colleen Peck (Diane Keaton). Pomeroy thinks doing fluffy, frivolous stories wrecks his hard-news reputation. Peck is catty off-screen and glibbly friendly on-screen.

Becky struggles to get Pomeroy to cooperate, while she tries to spice the show up before it is canceled

Review: Morning Glory's strength turns on Becky, the Rachel McAdams character. She is a young 'every-woman' who is trying to get by in a strange world. The film is best when showing her in her strange modern sit-com situations, which she overcomes with her spunkiness, spiritedness, and directness.

Morning Glory is an update of the 35 year old Mary Tyler Moore Show, where a young producer tries to make a TV news show. In both shows, the cute female producers are not interested in romance, but instead want to make a career for themselves in television.

The movie is OK; it misses because Pomeroy, the Harrison Ford character, is too inhuman and stiff. The main relationship is between Becky and Pomeroy, and while it advances during the movie, Pomeroy is too weak a character to save the movie. The other supporting characters were even weaker. The Mary Tyler Moore Show succeeded because of the strong supporting characters especially clueless anchor Ted Baxter and tough newsman Lou Grant.

The sound track was good, but there is no soundtrack on iTunes -- all the songs are posted on this site. The story could have been told in a visual way, and at first I thought that it was adapted from a stage-play (but it wasn't.)

Cast: Amy Adams, Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton

Directed by: Roger Michell

Written by: Aline Brosh McKenna who also wrote the screenplay for similar themed
movies like Devil Wears Prada, and 27 Dresses

Rating: 2.5 stars; Actually a more substantive a film than it seems. It has its fun moments, but the sum total does not measure up to 3 stars.

More: This movie could easily be a television show pilot.

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Love and Other Drugs

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Plot: Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a slacker and hustler who is trying to break into the pharmceutical sales business. He meets artist Maggie Murdock (Anne Hathaway) who likes him, but does not want a relationship because she has Parkinson's disease. There are sub-plots involving Zoloft and Viagra, as well as Jamie's loser brother Josh.

Review: Love and Other Drugs starts out with two flirty, horny hoties, but then takes a turn through the medical world with sarcasm about anti-depressant sales. Toward the end, living with terminal disease, specifically Parkinson's disease, enter the story.

The two lead actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway have smart dialog throughout the movie, but all the other dialog is just sitcom set-up jokes. Director Zwick dips into one serious bit, flips back to a sex joke or topless scene, and them back to terminal illness. It seems calculating and contrived to keep the future cable-TV audience from drifting away.

It is a romantic drama about living and loving with disease, and then a lot of Viagra jokes. This is a better film than Hot Tube Time Machine for example, but it is schizophrenic too.

I liked the sarcasm with Pfizer, and I wonder how the producers managed to avoid being sued. I am sure their lawyers worked overtime clearing the script, especially with all the comments about Zoloft and Viagra that crept into the film.

The soundtrack was pretty good including some interesting uses of silence.

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway

Directed by: Edward Zwick

Rating: 2.5+ stars, edging toward three stars. The movie was good, but fell down in "funness", especially late.




More: I really loved Maggie's apartment. It did not have any walls, just wall studs and wiring, with big industrial windows, and rough concrete. Funky, arty, off-beat, and also a call-for-help.

Even More: [MAJOR SPOILER] I wonder how families live with late stage Parkinson's disease. It helps to be as cute as Anne Hathaway to get a caregiver.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1

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Plot: Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) grabs control, and seeks to kill Harry and his other opponents. Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermionie (Emma Watson), and Ron (Rupert Grint) take to the wilderness to hide, and to work on destroying Voldemort's Horcruxes. 

Review:  Deathly Hallows makes no pretense of bringing along non-fans who would undoubtedly be lost. The movie dispenses with silly spells, school-boy games, and father figures from the earlier movies. Here our heros are struggling adolescents who must rise to the challenge to save lives and save the world.

The best parts are the subtle interactions between our three heros, and the fighting is just a side plot. All of the main actors have matured and are good actors, with Emma Watson delivering some great lines and reaction shots.

The wilderness scenes were beautiful, but there were too many of them -- this section is too long in the book too.

The end was not satisfying; it needed cliffhanger or a major turn in the story to punctuate the ending.

I am sure the five hour combined version of this movie, when it is eventually done, will be more satisfying. I want to see it that way next summer when part 2 comes out.

Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint

Directed by: David Yates

Rating: 2.5 stars; This is a worthy effort. Enjoyable but it falls short in funness.


More: The opening sequence is unforgetable when Hermione, calls her parents, and then erases their memories of her saying "Obliviate."

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Unstoppable

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Plot: A big freight train with toxic chemicals is set to derail in a Pennsylvania town unless railroad veteran Frank (Denzel Washington) and railroad rookie Will (Chris Pine) can stop it.


Review: The video of the trains, bridges, rails, pick-up trucks were colorful and great. Director Tony Scott has a great eye for colorful and shiny machinery, however, some of the dialog was awful, and attention to detail sucked. All the dialog from the TV reporters, the daughters, railroad coworkers was bad bordering on stupid.


Happily the dialog between Frank and Will was good. They did a nice job of integrating the back-story with the plot. Denzel's acting was serviceable -- not great but competent and entertaining. Chris Pine was a more engaging. Rosario Dawson, as railyard master Connie, stole the show -- lots of good lines and reaction shots.


In summary, the main train story was action-packed and entertaining. The dialog between the main characters was good enough. The rest of the actors and story was embarrassingly dumb.


Cast: Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario Dawson


Directed by: Tony Scott


Rating: 2.0 stars



More: This is the first movie (that I have seen) with omniscient TV reporters. Rather than have a character or narrator explain the plot twists , a series of local Fox 43 News reporters do it. It informs the audience, but it was in no way realistic. I can forgive a little of this, as a story-telling device, but it got too distracting.


Even More: I was distracted by the endless "product placement" of the Rupert Murdock-owned Fox TV Network in this Rupert Murdock-owned Twentieth Century Fox movie.

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Conviction

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Plot: Kenny Waters (Sam Rockwell) is a low-life in rural Massachusetts, and he is accused of a terrible murder and convicted. His sister Betty Ann (Hillary Swank) is certain he is innocent. She gets her GED, her BA, and her JD -- then goes to work as Kenny's attorney to clear his name. The rest of the movie, which is based on a true story, is fairly predictable.

Review: This movie is a predictable drama, and about average in entertainment value. The story was engaging enough, but a few more plot twists would have helped.

Betty Ann Waters is a sympathetic character, but Kenny Waters is unlikeable. I could see why the police would want to lock him up. The characters get into a rut where they are always angry at each other or at the police. Anger was probably the proper emotion, but the audience gets worn out by it.  The subplot with Betty Ann's kids helps broaden the story out. Swank is a good actress, but the range of emotion required in Conviction was not-so great.

I liked Minnie Driver as Betty's law school friend -- she had some great facial expressions. It was interesting to have Barry Scheck, the real life DNA attorney from the the OJ Simpson case, as a character here.

In summary, a non-enthusiastic recommendation. A good drama for a rainy afternoon.

Cast: Hillary Swank, Sam Rockwell, Minnie Driver

Directed by: Tony Goldwyn

Written by: Pamela Gray, based on a true story

Rating: 2.0 stars


More: The film fails to mention that Kenny Water's died in a fall six months after being released from prison. His estate received $3.4 million from the state for wrongful conviction. It would have been gutsier to have ended the movie with the fall.

Even more: The sound editing during the dinner scene was awful. I never heard such gross-sounding Mac and Cheese. My wife and I both thought the sound of the spoon scooping the Mac and Cheese sounded like something vile from a Halloween funhouse -- like a bowl of gooey eyeballs or a tub of guts.

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