2009 Film List (Reviews, Discussion & Tracking) (1 Viewer)

[Adam_S]

That's how I feel, having Kloves back made an enormous difference and the film feels more like Goblet of Fire (still the best of the lot. ) I do think some of the problems from the fifth film are still evident in this film (lack of pacing internally within the scene, for example), but their much less hampered because the rest of the film is strong. Some of it was frustratingly inane though. :-p

 

[Michael Reuben]

Latest:

Bruno: I laughed. I didn't care what was and wasn't staged.

Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg: Truly fascinating documentary about Gertrude Berg, the woman who invented the TV sitcom as writer, producer and star. During her long career in radio and TV, she single-handedly wrote 12,000 (yes, twelve thousand) scripts. She was also the first winner of the Emmy for best female lead in a comedy. Today no one remembers her, because, at the height of her popularity, she refused to fire a blacklisted co-star, and that was enough to get her show canceled. I Love Lucy took over the time slot, and Gertrude Berg, and her TV alter ego, Molly, were history. The blacklisted co-star, Philip Loeb, whose chief offense was successfully helping to organize the Actors Equity union, committed suicide. The character that Zero Mostel plays in The Front is loosely based on him.

Transformers 2: How badly will my credibility suffer for saying that I enjoyed this? It's a comedy. It's a very silly comedy. Even the robot scenes are comedies. (When Tony Todd brings out that ripe theatrical voice as the Fallen, who can be expected to keep a straight face? When Sam gets tossed on the bed by every college freshman's wet dream, who turns out to be a killer robot, I was almost on the floor!) Now, admittedly, I bring a skewed perspective to all of this, because Julie White, who plays Sam's mother, is one of my favorite comic actresses, and she can crack me up with the flick of an eyebrow. And John Turturro was one of the best things about the first film ("The man's an extortionist!"); I practically cheered when he showed up on screen.

Bay has always understood that movies like this have to be funny. Sometimes he does a better job than others, and I agree with Adam_S that the big robots in 1 were funnier than those in 2. But then you get one that Mikaela puts on a leash, who pretty much behaves like Leo Getz in the Lethal Weapon films. The big robots may be dull, but the little ones are pretty funny.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

An old friend of mine is moving out of state at the end of the month, so a few of us got together and drove down to the Hi-Way Drive-In in Coxsackie for I Love You, Beth Cooper. It proved to be a more fascinating experience than I'd expected. While the set pieces are about as cardboard cut-out as you can get, it's one of the few high school one last hurrah comedies that treats its characters as people rather than archetypal props. It also notices how parents shape who we become. As the protagonist Denis Cooverman, Paul Rust is as nerdy as we've seen on the big screen since Eddie Deezen, the type of creature seemingly genetically doomed to nerdom. But his parents are caring, firm but not overbearing, functional and still very much in love. Alan Ruck and Cynthia Stevenson rein in their usual eccentricities to be the kind of parents some of us were lucky to have, and the rest of us wish we had. Beth Cooper is the goddess of Buffalo Glen High School, but she is the product of physical passion at a KISS concert. Both Denis and Beth are smart, perceptive, complex teenagers. But Denis is going to Stanford in the fall, and Beth has a vague interest in community college. After a life of hell, Denis sees a bright future opening up before him. After a life atop the social hierarchy, Beth is perceptive enough to see a future of banal mediocrity unfolding before her. Like most head cheerleaders, she has a pair of lackeys in tow. Unlike most head cheerleaders, she doesn't abuse them and they don't lack for their own aspirations. One is smart and cultured, a fact that she doesn't hide but strategically doesn't emphasize. The other is responsible for the best one liners of the movie; stupid isn't quite right, she's something stranger. The movie could be about the geek trying to get into the beauty's pants, but it isn't. After a while, sex is entirely beside the point. It's a movie about the unlikeliest pairing in the graduating class getting to know one another and finding something they'd given up hope in. Beth Cooper teaches Denis how have fun and start living. Denis gives Beth Cooper something deeper. As Beth Cooper says good bye to Denis at the end of the film, she hugs him and he hugs back with a gentle warmth that she seizes on. Beth Cooper, so desired by so many, has never felt really loved by anyone until Denis. We see her face but Denis doesn't, as the confident facade cracks and Hayden Panettiere conveys just the right balance of surprise and longing. If, down the road, Beth Cooper is the beautiful wife of millionaire nerd Denis Cooverman, she will not be with him for the money. Their children will be lucky to have the kind of upbringing Denis himself was lucky to have.

 

[Steve Christou]

Originally Posted by Michael Reuben /forum/thread/280808/2009-film-list-reviews-discussion-tracking/60#post_3585751

 

[Michael Reuben]

I wish you'd posted that review in the Transformers 2 thread it would have made all the difference. There's so much negativity in those threads, that people who enjoyed the film were either embarrassed or scared to post something.

This thread is like a personal journal, and I really enjoy that.
Edited by Michael Reuben - 7/27/2009 at 12:15 pm GMT

 

[TravisR]

Originally Posted by Steve Christou ">[/url]

There's so much negativity in those threads, that people who enjoyed the film were either embarrassed or scared to post something.

 

[Steve Christou]

I forgot to include The Hurt Locker in my 2009 film list, directed by Kathryn Bigelow the film follows an elite bomb squad in Iraq. The film has a documentary feel thanks to the use of mostly unknown actors. There is plenty of tension as the squad goes about its dangerous business defusing roadside bombs, watched by people who wouldn't care a jot if the bombs blew up in the soldiers faces. Recommended.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Added 500 Days of Summer, a film I'd already had plans to see upon release here when I got an email from Fox Searchlight a day or two back with free passes for an advanced screening. One of the few films that delivers exactly what its trailers promise, exactly as well as you were hoping it would. The last time I saw Joseph Gordon-Levitt was his breakout performance in 2005's Brick. Here he cements his status as non-traditional leading man material. He doesn't match our perception of masculinity, but he carries himself with masculine confidence. Zooey Deschanel's performance is a bit of a cypher; Gordon-Levitt's character never quite gets underneath the beautiful, strange and charming persona the Deschanel has perfected over the course of her relatively short silver screen career. It is as well-rounded a portrayal of love as I have seen, capturing the soaring highs and miserable lows that embodies. We see events as Gordon-Levitt's character sees events; what is presented is emotionally true but certainly not literally true; with love, when is that not the case? The 500 days span from the first moment he lays eyes on Summer to the day when he's finally able to move on from her. Summer is frustrating, beguiling, even at times unconsciously cruel to him. But she is, in her own way, honest with him. As the narrator warns at the beginning, this is not a love story. It is, however, a celebration of love and the very act of living.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Added Judd Apatow's Funny People, which is simultaneously more rewarding and less rewatchable than the director's previous two works. An invisible line separates them: 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up are essentially raunch comedies with better developed and more empathetic leads than you'd usually expect. Funny People is hilarious at times, and comes fully stocked with plenty of raunch. But from the acting to the rythym of the editing to Janusz Kaminski's melancholy cinematography, you can't escape the feeling that Funny People is a film while its predecessors were merely great movies. Our protagonist is Seth Rogan's gullible but well-intentioned comedy writer Ira Wright (Weiner), but the picture's lead is of course Adam Sandler's character, George Simmons. Simmons is a parody of Sandler, down to the riddiculously awful PG-13 movies. The film opens with a camcorder video over the main credits of the real Sandler making prank phone calls in his twenties. That side of Sandler, the side that thrived on SNL in the early 1990's, is evident in George Simmons. But he approaches George like his characters in Punch-Drunk Love and Reign Over Me. From our first moments with him, we sense something is profoundly missing with him. Not repressed like Barry Egan nor emotionally tramatized like Charlie Fineman. The movie hints at possible sources for his problems, but by the time we meet him, the damage or disfunction has already festered into a manner of living. A health scare prompts him to reconnect with his ex-flame, but the events that unfold make the case against George. As Ira notes near the end of the picture, George is the only person he's met that's learned nothing from his near death experience; he got worse. The supporting cast is equally terrific. Jonah Hill continues to polish his established persona as Ira's roommate, which is just fine with me. Rounding out the living situation, Jason Schwartzman thrives as a sitcom star that loves to lord his newfound success over them. Apatow's wife Leslie Mann plays George's old flame, and her real life children are again along for the ride, just barely fictionalized: Preteen Maude plays Mabel, and her younger sister Iris plays Ingrid. It's fascinating in the Harry Potter sort of a way seeing them change from Knocked Up to this movie along with the rest of Apatow's stable of actors. Maude in particular is entrusted with a more sophisticated role this time out; Mabel is a precocious modern kid, but she shares a scene with George where she expresses the universal fears of a 10-year-old worried her parents are going to get a divorce. Ira, who is the product of a divorce, clues in on this from the moment he is made aware of the situation. George, who is the product of a couple that probably should have divorced, appears to think Mabel should suck it up. There's a lot of angles to take with this film, and it's definitely an announcement that Apatow is a talent to be watched on the silver screen. After all, it took Woody Allen seven movies to happen into Annie Hall.

 

[Steve Christou]

TV Host: What's the baby's name?
Brüno: I gave him like a traditional African name: O.J.
African-American Lady: WHAT?

I cringed, I squirmed, I laughed out loud and I cringed again. Bruno's not a film I'd watch again in a hurry but it did have some hilarious moments. My favourite bit was the least offensive - Bruno "the most famous gay Austrian since Arnold Schwarzenegger" wants to be an actor in Hollywood and his agent gets him on the tv series "Medium" as an extra, Bruno somehow ruins take after take and gets kicked off.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Added Orphan, which features an absolutely brilliant and chillingly realistic first half that has fun subverting the standard horror movie bag of tricks -- think The Good Son only with a much better young lead. The whole movie revolves around Isabelle Fuhrman, and like Lina Leandersson in Let the Right One In it can be said that she gives a real and complete performance. Through the first half of the film, she's right up to the level of the film, playing every beat exactly right. In the hackneyed, increasingly ridiculous second half, she's better than the film even as she's called upon to bring less and less to the table. Vera Farmiga also does a terrific job as the mother whose troubled past robs her of credibility at crucial moments. Unfortunately, she has the misfortune of almost looking like a lot of other actresses, so I spent most of the movie trying to figure out if she was Maggie Gyllenhall with colored contacts or maybe Julie Delpy with brown hair, etc. Meanwhile, Peter Sarsgaard plays the world's most clueless and casually cruel husband. All in all, I can think of a half-dozen better ways to end the picture than the way it actually ended.

 

[Michael Reuben]

Latest:

Lorna's Silence: I'm still warming to the style of the Dardenne brothers, but their latest film has the advantage of a truly gripping central performance by Arta Dobroshi as the Albanian immigrant, Lorna, who is caught up in an elaborate scheme of false marriages (yes, plural) to establish citizenship. Part of what makes the film interesting is the way you're dropped into scenes and only gradually get the information to make sense of them. The criminal enterprise in which Lorna finds herself trapped is never thoroughly delineated -- my wife and I spent a long time trying to piece it together, and finally gave up -- but that's part of the point. Lorna's just raw material for this machine, and the film sticks to her point of view. We never see more of the machine than she does.

Julie & Julia: Another stunning transformation by Meryl Streep, who not only conveys the sheer exuberance of Julia Child, but also the iron will required to get her through many years of revision and rejection before she became the national institution that, in retrospect, she seems always to have been. Unlike many critics, I enjoyed the contemporary portions of the film with Amy Adams playing the failed novelist trying to reinvent herself as a blogger, but that may be because I think Adams can do no wrong. My biggest complaint: Adams and Chris Messina (as her husband) should have been a lot fatter at the end of the year-long project to cook and eat all of Julia Childs' recipes from her influential French cookbook. But they're professional actors; so, of course, they look like their svelte selves. Nora Ephron's best film in years.

Adam: Could have gone wrong in so many ways and doesn't. The film is anchored by Hugh Dancy's remarkable performance as the title character, a high-functioning young man with Asperger's Syndrome smitten by his new neighbor, Beth, a school teacher and aspiring children's book author played by Rose Byrne. Exceptional supporting work from Frankie Faison (as Adam's older friend) and from Peter Gallagher and Amy Irving (as Beth's parents, who have their own issues). If you think you know where the film is going, you're probably wrong.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Added:

District 9, a strange little confection of a movie that never quite resolves what it wants to be. Is it an Apartheid parable? An alien shoot-em-up? A tolerance story? A freakish transformation story a la The Fly? Things are made stranger by the choice of protagonist: a happy-go-lucky, Murray Hewitt-esque mid-level flunky in a multi-national conglomerate (called, unimaginitively enough, Multi-National United) with businesses that include arms manufacturing and the administration of refugee camps for the 1.8 million strong alien population in South Africa. The first half of the film is far superior to the second half, where the stakes have been reduced to survival at all costs. The parallels between the slums of District 9 in this timeline and the slums of District Six in Capetown are fairly straight forward. After a preliminary examination of the starving population inside the spaceship hovering over Johannesburg, it is decided that all on board are worker drones -- the leadership appears to have mysteriously disappeared. Once settled on the surface, the MNU officials treat the aliens (called prawn for their Crustacean-like appearance) as worker drones, barely worth their contempt. The aliens were run into are no more or less violent than any confined human refugee population. Midway through, however, we are introduced to a few aliens from the leadership class and they are, for lack of better wording, more human than the rest. This portrayal is counterproductive, because it seems to affirm the assumptions of the South African regime. Since the movie is presented in a loosely mockumentary format, though, perhaps that is the point. The ending is neither the worst nor the best possible ending based on the information we have been presented.

Race to Witch Mountain, a 2009 film now out on DVD, which was far more frustrating than I expected it to be. When I Redboxed it out of nostalgia for the earlier film, the reviews has led me to expect something awful. It was not. Dwayne ("The Rock") Johnson does a terrific job carrying the film, making scenes work even when both the script and the editing are working against him. AnnaSophia Robb is also great, carrying the bulk of the load for the two alien siblings with a performance that it is both rigidly alien and emotionally compelling. You believe that she's a brilliant extraterrestrial and terrified child. Cheech Marin and Garry Marshall also pop up with fun cameos. The frustration comes from the tension between the movie's themes and ideas and its strict adherance to the PG family audience. Both the 1975 Escape to Witch Mountain feature and the 1995 TV remake felt completely natural as family movies. But this film has violent mob gangsters, Men in Black style federal agents, and alien assassins. The audience just doesn't fit given the pieces with which it was assembled. Carla Gugino, who managed to be dangerous and seductive as well as warm and maternal in the family-focused Spy Kids series, is here stripped of all the tools that makes her such a compelling screen presence. Every scene with her in it is less compelling than the scenes without her. Most frustrating is the lack of faith in the audience; some really compelling science fiction ideas are introduced but quickly dropped for more pedestrian subtitutes. The most interesting comes in an early scene where Robb's alien girl has just demonstrated telekinesis for Johnson's cab driver. That's impossible, he declares, to which she responds: "No, it's quite possible. On our planet as well as yours. You don't do it, because you haven't learnt to use your full brain capacity." More interesting than Superman-esque aliens that look identical to us is the idea that the species the children actually come from a different branch of the same human tree that was split off and seperated at some previous point in time. I know I would have been more interested in a movie where young technologically and intellectually superior humans come into contact with their primitive genetic forebears for the first time and find that we have something to bring to the table too. It would have made the journey one of discovery of the alien twins as well as their Earthing companions, in the way that the orphans slowly piecing together their heritage was in the original.

 

[Justin_S]

The Collector - At the very least I had hoped for a pleasant diversion, but it was better than that. They really did alot with the budget they had. The film has a unique look and sound design. Solid use of music as well. It's fierce, it's visceral and it's nasty, but the atmosphere created here is what sets the thing apart from others. That and the collector himself, a wicked villain who goes after his victims with an intensity that I found refreshing. No slow slasher walk here. The eyes were a nice touch too, reflective like those of an animal. The security system from Hell is an intriguing twist on your typical home invasion setup. It certainly makes for some unique situations. There's a different trap around every corner, so no running at full blast to make an escape and you'd better watch where you fall. The boyfriend's fate is the film's best setpiece, almost Grand Guignol in it's execution. There are some suspension of disbelief flaws in there, but I enjoyed the ride too much to really mind in this case. It's a mean horror film that is strong on mood and takes itself seriously. Hard to believe it's from the guys behind various "Saw" movies, as I can't stand any of those.


A Perfect Getaway - While I was able to correctly guess the identity of the killer's just from watching the trailer, I still had a great time with this. The performances are really strong. I've heard others say that Zahn and Jovovich aren't a believable pairing. I've seen several instances of stunning women with less attractive guys, so that's nonsense. Aside from that, they're terrific together. It's a dialogue-heavy film with several amusing character moments thrown in, and the actors nail them, Olyphant being the standout. The humor actually works, the quirkiness adds to the picture. I also thought the b&w exposition scene was well-done, better than most scenes of it's ilk. These types of scenes are generally frowned upon, but here it winds up being a highlight. The Puerto Rican locations (subbing for Hawaii) are quite lovely, though the dangers of the trail aren't played up as much as I'd expected. They're not needed, however, as I found it plenty suspenseful as is. I'd say director David Twohy has more hits than misses, and this clever slice of pulpy horror continues that trend.

 

[Michael Elliott]

After watching the ten Universal classics at the theater, I told myself I needed to go to the movies more often so I'm going to try and go see at least one a week. Since making this deal with myself last Saturday I've seen four so here goes:

Orphan (2009)

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Completed a much-needed overhaul of the first post, which involved reformatting the text for the new software, updating the links to the induvidual lists to their new locations, pruning out links to placeholder posts that were never fleshed out into lists, and adding a link Steve Christou's list.

Also, added the 16-minute IMAX 3D preview for Avatar, which will go down as one of the most memorable moviegoing experiences of the year for me.

 

[Steve Christou]

That's nice of you Adam, that link is useful. Clicking on the email notification link takes you to the first post of a thread instead of the newest which btw adds to my suspicion that the Huddler company has had little experience with forums in the past. Anyway in this instance its useful because the list links are in the first post.

There is a terrific twist in A Perfect Getaway which I didn't see coming, but the film as a whole was underwhelming and dully directed by David Twohy who did such a grand job with the underrated sci-fi thriller Pitch Black.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

No problem, Steve! I should have added you a long time ago, but I wanted to wait until things were looking settled before I relinked everything.

Originally Posted by Steve Christou /forum/thread/280808/2009-film-list-reviews-discussion-tracking/90#post_3598609

I'm glad I requested people post when they update their lists, because it keeps the thread near the top of the forum and prevents it from being static like previous Film List threads have been. But I think Michael's navigating the same tension the rest of us are: on one hand, the whole point of posting when you add films to your lists is to put down your thoughts about it; almost like, as Michael Reuben stated, a journal of your year in cinema. On the other hand, the forum does have Official Review Threads, so there's a hesitation to post a full-throated review here. So the style that has sort of evolved has tended toward one paragraph reviews, and some movies inspire longer paragraphs than others.

However, there's no hard-and-fast rule about any of it. I appreciate everyone that contributes, because sometimes their thoughts steer me to a film I otherwise wouldn't have bothered with.

 

[Michael Reuben]

Inglourious Basterds: I wasn't bored, but I didn't think much of it. Anything more, and I'll say it in the official threads.

World's Greatest Dad: Usually these days, when a film stars Robin Williams, you want to see anything else. This is the exception, because writer-director Bob Goldthwait (yes, "Bobcat") has made the funniest dark comedy since at least Election. Williams is a high school English teacher and frustrated writer with perhaps the most unlikeable teenage son ever portrayed on film. Williams tries to be a good father, but you can tell that he's been a pushover all his life. Then, about 40 minutes into the film, something happens that really tests him. You'll probably see it coming, because it's clearly foreshadowed, and as a result, some critics go right ahead and give it away (though the trailer wisely doesn't). I won't, and I advise skipping the reviews, because what develops from that point on in the film is so sick and cringingly funny that it's better to encounter it without any previous knowledge. Williams gives one of his rare restrained performances where everything happens inside, and in those moments where it threatens to break through his character's carefully maintained surface, it's both nerve-wracking and exhilarating. One Hour Photo was a good performance in a disappointing film; this is a great performance in a film that has the courage of its convictions to the bitter and satifying end.

 

[Michael Elliott]

Originally Posted by Steve Christou

/forum/thread/280808/2009-film-list-reviews-discussion-tracking/90#post_3598609