Category Archives: Movies

Last night I watched Jeff Nichols’ 2011 suspense Take Shelter and it blew me away. Michael Shannon gave a tremendous performance as a small town man named Curtis who is plagued by dreams of eminent danger to himself and his family. Jessica Chastain plays his wife who struggles to adapt to Curtis’ gradually declining sanity. I can’t say enough about how much I love her.

This movie feels like a modern version of Noah’s ark from the Bible. Curtis often appears insane and everyone around him certainly thinks so. But as the viewer you really want to believe him and you’re often uncertain if you should. I of course won’t ruin the ending, but I have to express my love of the final scene. It’s definitely a cliffhanger, but it is so beautiful.

Jeff Nichols and Michael Shannon appear to have a really good thing going a la Neil LaBute and Aaron Eckhart. They worked together in a the well-received Shotgun Stories and will also collaborate in 2013′s Mud. Keep an eye out, and check out Take Shelter; it’s one of the best of 2011.



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The Tree of Life has divided film critics and it certainly has been polarizing in my household. My roommates thought it was heavy-handed, boring, pretentious, and I’m pretty sure they wanted to gouge their eyes out. I, on the other hand, thought it was a lovely, impressionistic film about ordinary moments in the context of all existence. I left the movie feeling better about how our “nothingness” compares to the grandiosity of the universe. Other than the BBC television series Planet Earth, I don’t think a movie has ever made me feel that way before.

The story ultimately follows the universe from its creation to its destruction. The central plot focuses on a man, Sean Penn, who reflects upon his upbringing. In regards to this upbringing his father, Brad Pitt, represents nature and his mother, Jessica Chastain (who I love), represents grace. The flow of the story is vague, dark, and at times confusing, but you’re never totally lost. Cinematographically, this movie is very beautiful. It feels like “stock photography” sometimes, but it is still lovely.

Now I totally understand how this movie rubs people the wrong way, and on a different day it might have done the same to me. But the more I was able to remove myself from a typical moviegoing experience, the more I was able to feel like I was watching a work of art unfold. A lot of this movie didn’t make much sense. One doesn’t see all of the details or hear all of the words of the story. In many ways it is like watching a Renoir on screen, faces disappearing, voices whispering, colors blending into the landscape, and all that you’re really left with is an impression of what happened. When I think of The Tree of Life in that sense, then I think it is a beautiful and successful film.

I imagine there will come a time to watch and appreciate this movie. It may not be today, but one day when you really feel like it, check it out.

I thought this short-animated film was pretty cute.

Check it out.

I’ve been meaning to blog about this movie for a long time. A few weeks ago I watched Mary and Max, a 2009 animated film by Australian writer/director Adam Elliot and I thoroughly loved it.

Mary is a lonely, bullied little girl living in Melbourne, and Max is an equally lonely, anxiety-ridden, forty-four-year old man living in New York. The movie follows their random introduction as pen-pals and the development of their tender, lifelong friendship.

This tender movie often brought tears to my eyes and it was so cute. Check it out when you need to have a cry. It is so sweet.

Watching Mike Leigh’s Another Year felt like warming myself in my grandma’s homemade quilt sipping tomato soup from a mason jar. This 2010 film was so sweet, raw and seemed almost unscripted much like Leigh’s 2008 treasure Happy-Go-Lucky. I love Mike Leigh because he effortlessly captures the nuances of everyday life, without melodrama or heavy-handedness. He doesn’t make caricatures of people, but he creates subtly normal, affectionate characters who demand empathy, flaws and all.

Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen play Tom and Gerri, a highly functional, loving, and intelligent couple that appear to have it all. They love gardening, reading and family times. Lesley Manville steals the movie as their friend, Mary, a horribly needy woman who is constantly drunk and on the prowl for the perfect, non-existent husband. Her sadness and desperation are easily applicable to us all, and her pathetic final scene will haunt you for days.

Check out this enriching film today. It changed my life.

I watched Paul Mazursky’s 1974 film Harry and Tonto the other day and I wanted to recommend it. Art Carney earned an Oscar for his role as Harry Coombes, a crusty widower who becomes evicted from his New York apartment and then travels across the country with his cat, Tonto.

This movie reminded me of one of my all-time favorite movies, David Lynch’s The Straight Story in which Alvin Straight, an old, similarly crusty, World War II veteran, decides to ride is thirty year-old John Deere lawn mower 240 miles to make amends with his dying brother, Lyle. Easily the most sweet and subtle work of Lynch’s, this movie was rated “G” and received a Palme d’Or nomination at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival.

Harry and Tonto didn’t quite connect with me as much as The Straight Story but I still really liked it. Check it out!

I expected Scre4m to be an entertaining, semi-sleazy homage to the three previous Scream films, as well as a self-aware, fun, gory romp à la Wes Craven. On Saturday, I finally watched this movie with my friends Jacob and Kristen, and I’m happy to report that this movie was exactly what I expected. (Although, I didn’t expect Mary McDonnell’s face to be as scary as Ghostface, but what are you gonna do?)

Roger Ebert raised this thought in his two-star review of Scre4m, “The characters are almost preternatural in their detachment; if you were embedded in events like these, wouldn’t you be paralyzed with panic?” and this is a question anyone who watches the film will likely ask while exiting the theater. Kristen, Jacob and I did, asking a series of “why” questions while we drove home. Like: “Why is everyone acting so normal when people are getting murdered by a madman? Why do they always answer their phones? Why would you go grocery shopping at 10 PM? Why would you sneak out of the house to go to a stupid party? Why are Courteney Cox’s lips so much bigger than they used to be?”

The reason I like to watch movies like Scre4m is that the characters don’t always act rationally. The Scream series, in particular, is cynical, scary, funny and chock-full of people with unreasonable, even delusional behavior. I’m constantly calculating what I would do in every situation and judging the poor decisions of each careless victim. These movies are entertaining because they turn a movie-going experience into a sort of survival game for the willing viewer, and that can be really satisfying.

What makes the Scream series stand out from other slasher movies is its cast. Neve Campbell (hasn’t aged a bit), Courteney Cox (weathered but sexy), and David Arquette (dorky cute) are easily the best part of the Scream series, and they effortlessly make this latest installation extremely enjoyable. It’s clear that the entire franchise would severely suffer without them.

Check it out!

The Bad Seed is a surprisingly startling 1950′s thriller à la The Night of the Hunter with Robert Mitchum. Since I am so desensitized and unafraid of most modern scary movies, it was an unexpected relief to discover such a great horror flick by looking back 60 years. I also appreciate it when the Academy Awards honor scary movies because it seems like a rarity. The three main actresses, Nancy Kelly, Eileen Heckart and Patty McCormack, were all nominated for Oscars for their roles in this movie and rightly so. They were magnetic.

The story follows a young girl named Rhoda who is highly intelligent and well-mannered, but also highly competitive and evil. She turns into a monster when things don’t go her way and her mother finds herself in many sticky situations. This movie didn’t scare the bejeezus out of me like Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte, but it was so well written and well acted that I just had to mention it here on my blog.

Check out this gem!

I haven’t been keeping a very good blog lately. I’ve been so busy with work and my dog’s giardia that I haven’t been able to sit down and write about all the fun things I do like wipe my dog’s ass. But I did recently watch Rango and since I loved it, I thought it deserved some love on my blog.

Screen It! is a website that reviews movies’ content for parents and it cracks me up how much detail they get into. The site says about Rango, “The characters in the town of Dirt are meant to mimic classic Western characters. So, in the saloon, there are a couple of tarted-up lizard characters that are likely the town prostitutes. Although nothing overtly sexual happens with these incidental characters, they are seen in the background throughout the movie and one displays what can only be described as ‘lizard cleavage.’” So I guess if you don’t want to expose your kids to lizard cleavage you might want to steer clear of Rango. But if you’re like me, you love lizard cleavage and will definitely want to see this movie!

Check it out!

I watched Cat on a Hot Tin Roof yesterday morning and it was a perfect rainy day movie. I love it so much. If you haven’t yet discovered this 1958 classic starring the two most gorgeous people to have ever walked the earth, Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor, then go watch it right away. They are both magnetic and beautiful, especially Elizabeth Taylor who ignites the screen with every lip quiver and sassy quip. She’s strong, sexy, and amazing in this movie.

I try not to spoil a movie’s ending here on my blog, so I apologize if this is a spoiler, but I just have to say that in the film’s final moments when Paul Newman looks to Elizabeth Taylor and says, “Lock the door” I honestly thought I was going to die. It is easily the most romantic, sexy, and gorgeous climax to a film that I’ve ever seen. I’m on fire just thinking about it.

Check out this classic gem today, and even if you’ve already seen it maybe this post can just serve as a reminder to watch it again.

I’d been kind of wanting to watch Robert Rodriguez’s 2010 exploitation film Machete since I first saw the trailer almost a year ago. And when I saw that Lindsay Lohan was going to be in a movie with Robert DeNiro, Cheech Marin, Jessica Alba, Steven Seagal, Michelle Rodriguez and Don Johnson of course my first thought was, “What the hell kind of G.D. movie is this gonna be?!”

Well last night, my friend Kristen and I decided it would be our weekly grilled-cheese-tomato-soup-movie-night feature film and it was fun. It wasn’t Rodriguez’s best film (which I would say is arguably Sin City) but it was a’ight.

With that said, Rodriguez continues to come across as a sort of poor man’s Quentin Tarantino, who I LOVE. I appreciate the stylized violence and the cheesy sequences paired with great music, but Rodriguez doesn’t do it as well as Tarantino no matter how hard he seems to try.

I’m blogging about this movie because it was fun. It made me laugh and it was entertaining. I would recommend it to fans of Rodriguez (and even fans of Tarantino), but don’t expect it to outshine the competitors because it won’t.

I watched Danny Boyle’s latest film 127 Hours the other night and I loved it. To be honest, I had huge reservations about a movie based on Aron Ralston’s intense ordeal. I once heard Aron tell his story at a book signing in Salt Lake City and I honestly didn’t see how it could make a good movie. I was wrong because it was really good.

I’ve actually heard a lot of negative criticism about Aron: websites and blogs where commentators call him “stupid”, “idiot”, “asshole” and “retard.” While Aron is likely the first person to admit that he screwed up by climbing alone and not telling anyone where he was going, I really don’t think he deserves that much negative criticism. He’s not claiming to be a “hero” or “courageous” but he did survive a horrific incident and it’s a fascinating story to tell. So to all the haters, cut him some slack.

And check out this awesome movie!

I watched the gripping 2010 Australian crime drama Animal Kingdom last week and I was genuinely blown away. Jacki Weaver has been getting a lot of just recognition for her role as Janine “Smurf” Cody, the steely matriarch of a family of criminals that has begun to unravel.

This movie never missed a step. It was perfectly effortlessness and poignant. So when you’re bored, looking for an fresh film to watch, check this one out. It was easily one of my favorite films of 2010.

Also, Quentin Tarantino listed it as his #3 favorite movie of 2010 and I have to agree with everything he does.