Movie week at my house

Last week I was alone. (Well, the cat was there too. But he is terrible at conversation.) The silver lining of E being off at the cottage with the kids was that it allowed me to catch up on a variety of movies I've been meaning to watch for quite a while; movies that E has either already seen or has no interest in seeing.

Machete
I know it's intentionally campy and there is a time and place for camp, just like there is a time and place for gore and a time and place for gratuitous nudity. But I found myself wondering about every ten minutes or so who in their right mind would have paid good money to see this movie in a theatre. Admittedly I have basically no standards when it comes to selecting movies, so who am I to complain? But there's a huge risk when a movie aims for "so bad it's good" - often it turns out merely bad. Would this movie have been improved by a theatre full of enthusiastic like-minded viewers? Preferably drunk ones? Probably. But on its own merits, there is not much here to recommend.

Moneyball
With a little bit of cynicism on my side, I can see why this movie is so highly rated on Rotten Tomatoes: it's a fairly solid story with all the trappings of America's favourite pastime. Brad Pitt is nothing to write home about here (in fact I don't think any of the acting really stood out). Yet it still works, perhaps mostly in its story than its film making. But it's hardly unique. Kevin Costner's For Love of the Game wasn't nearly the same commercial or critical success, and I'll happily acknowledge Moneyball was the better overall film, but I've never really forgotten the experience of seeing the Costner movie while I'm pretty sure I'll forget about Moneyball before I'm done writing this post.

The Descendants
I confess I knew next to nothing about this before I saw it, and it's probably just as well. I was not prepared for the sadness of the main plot points, though it was softened considerably by some Hollywood-friendly lighter moments. (Like seeing George Clooney trying to run angrily in flip-flips.) There are quite a few young actors in this film and they are the standouts - this role was not a big stretch for Clooney. I don't mean it as an insult: He's proven over the last few years that he can pull off some serious drama when he needs to. Sometimes I see a movie like this and get annoyed with the movie makers for being manipulative. Other times I have to acknowledge that if I felt anything, they've done something right.

The Amazing Spider-Man
OK, this one shouldn't count because I didn't see it at home. This is a retelling of the same Spider-Man origin movie we saw ten years ago with Tobey Maguire. The big difference this time around is the Emma Stone is a thousand times less cloying than Kirsten Dunst (my second least favourite actress behind Julianne Moore). There's not actually much to choose between the 2002 and 2012 versions of this story: Today's is slightly less cheesy with the jokes but all in all one does have to wonder if we're only encouraging the big studios by actually showing up for all these "reboots" of familiar franchises. (Though I am totally down with the rebooted Bond movies. Oh, and Batman. So maybe I shouldn't be so quick to complain.)

Senna
I had been hearing about this movie for quite a while. It had the seal of approval from my mother, who has more than a passing interest in Formula 1 given our family's connection to the sport, and also from Jeremy Clarkson, who raved about it on Top Gear. And while I share the interest, albeit at a slightly lesser level, I had been hoping it would stand up as a solid documentary in its own right. There is a wealth of fascinating footage in this movie and it's not all about his death, though of course that's where it culminates. But I still question whether anyone who isn't interested in the first 45 minutes of gawking at F1 celebrities could find it in themselves to enjoy the movie as a whole.


Did I just slag your favourite movie of all time? Tell me about it in the comments!

Movie: Submarine

Eddie Marsan isn't in this movie,
but don't worry, I'll explain.
(Photo from gdcgraphics on Flickr)

This is the kind of movie where you know what you're going to get right from the very beginning, but sometimes that kind of movie just works. Sure, it's simple, but it's also sweet. I was already fairly predisposed to liking it, knowing it was directed by Richard Ayoade, whom I knew only from the IT Crowd.


And honestly, it was just so nice to see Sally Hawkins in another film after spending all of Happy-Go-Lucky hating her "Poppy" character so much I was contemplating stabbing out my own eyes with the straw from my drink. She doesn't do anything special in Submarine but her scenes with Noah Taylor form an entertaining subplot.

And while we're on the subject of Happy-Go-Lucky, I would really be interested in seeing a short film made up of just the drivers' ed scenes from that movie. Eddie Marsan was just so perfect in that it almost redeemed the whole movie, kind of like how Christoph Waltz's scenes in Inglourious Basterds were the only ones worth watching.

So there you have it, my thoughts on a movie that are pretty much entirely about movies and a TV show other than the one I was supposed to be talking about. I wish I had a dog; then I could write about that too!

Movie: Midnight in Paris

Recognize this? You should,
because the movie starts
with hours of this stuff.
(Photo from wlappe on Flickr)

And the Oscar for longest, most annoyingly monotonous B-roll intro goes to...

I actually quite enjoyed this film. It has to be one of Woody Allen's most accessible stories and I liked the escapist narrative. It's a lot easier to identify with the characters compared to, say Vicky Christina Barcelona, where I hated pretty much everyone in the movie. My biggest complaint, which on the whole is really a very small complaint, is that I felt pretty dumb every time I missed an obvious literary or cultural reference. And they are all obvious. You know when you are missing the joke.

A central theme is that everyone romanticizes some past time period as the golden age. So no matter how much you idealize a particular point in the past, people who lived then thought some even more previous time was better. I find this intriguing because I really don't idealize any of the past. As a society, I don't have any romantic notions of those days when cholera was a big deal, or when we didn't have the internet, or routine bathing.

On a personal level I don't think back fondly at any of my past as being better than what I have now. I suppose you could chalk that up to having an amazingly fortunate life, one that keeps getting better all the time, but so many people I know really do think of their childhood or high school or university as the best times of their lives. I look back on who I was and what I was doing for pretty much every phase of my life up to being married and having kids with total body-shaking cringes. So self-absorbed! So awkward! So unsocialized!

It's know that just because you idealize a previous part of your life doesn't mean you want to go back to that time. But in my case, I'd "rather just forget" all of it. Wipe the slate clean and pretend it never happened. So for me, the here and now is the golden age.

ps I had totally forgotten Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams had been in Wedding Crashers together.

Movie: The Debt

I really don't know what I'm going to do with this blog, so I'll start with something that I've tried in the past: putting down thoughts on the movies I see. I tried using the Flixster app on Facebook for this a few years ago - in fact I managed to write a review of every film I saw in theatres for quite a long time. But the arrival of a certain someone in my life really slowed down my moviegoing habits and then we had two certain someones and I know that's just not going to happen. So most of these movie posts are going to be about the movies I saw over the Christmas break. It was a bumper crop this year: The Debt, Submarine, Margin Call, The Trip, Midnight in Paris and Crazy Stupid Love.

(If people blathering on about movies isn't your thing, don't worry, I've got other things in mind for this space.)

Does this woman look like she could
take down a guy in a fight?
(from Helen Mirren News on Flickr)

A lot of times I will watch a movie and think "the idea for this story is fantastic but they are really screwing it up." I can't quite put my finger on why I thought The Debt was misplayed. The underlying story is actually pretty powerful stuff: regret, revisionist personal histories, retribution. And the performances are pretty good, too. But something was missing and I can't put my finger on it.

Maybe it's that there's just too much going on. There's a love story subplot (more on that in a second) that seems almost like an afterthought, not to mention the stretching a little too far of credulity with an action sequence featuring Helen Mirren. She's a great actor but she's no spring chicken.

And can I just make one really catty remark with regards to a plot point that I'd say is probably a spoiler? Let's put it after the break just in case you don't want to know.