So The A-Team was pretty much like Prince of Persia: not a great movie but entertaining. I laughed for two hours and everything blew up. Also like Prince of Persia, The A-Team had criminally bad marketing. Based on the advertising, I suspected The A-Team would be a shitty and ridiculous action movie that I would love anyway because it’s just so preposterous, which it was, but who knew it was that funny? Who knew, going off the ads, that The A-Team was a comedy? A real comedy, like they set up jokes and punchlines on purpose, not just achieving unintentional comedy through the badness of their movie? The A-Team was a bromance comedy (bromcom?) with guns and dynamites. Why didn’t they sell it that way?Continue reading “Bradley who? It’s all about Sharlto.”
Category Archives: Movies
Somebody please give Jake Gyllenhaal a deserving franchise
I have two separate reviews of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The first is that, as a vehicle for Jake Gyllenhaal it succeeds 100%. I was worried about Gyllenhaal as an action star, not because he can’t act–because he can–but because, despite his good looks, I’ve never seen him as a viable action hero. I should have remembered Jarhead. Gyllenhaal has an amazing physicality and he isn’t modest about stomping around half-nekkid for our entertainment. I was expecting his accent to drive me crazy, but despite what the few spots of dialogue in the trailer show, he actually does a credible job with a lower-class English accent. And the hair wasn’t as bad as I expected either, since most of the time it was either sweat-soaked or flying around his head during an action sequence. It looked a lot less flat-ironed in the movie than it did in still shots from the set. Combine his willingness to go beefcake with his very real acting talent, and Gyllenhaal definitely has what it takes. He can sell cheese and his abilities both latent and physical get him through some pretty bad dialogue. Lesser actors have been hugely successful action stars–I’d like to see the genuinely talented Gyllenhaal succeed in this role rather than, say, the barely-evolved Channing Tatum.Continue reading “Somebody please give Jake Gyllenhaal a deserving franchise”
Was Iron Man 2 too much?
Don’t get me wrong, I liked Iron Man 2. I laughed, I was engaged, I was entertained. I would see it again. I would invest in the DVD. But…was it maybe a little too much? The thing about sequels is that they’re generally everything that was good about the first film plus 1000 (recent exception, The Dark Knight, which stands on its own as a superb film). As much as I liked Iron Man 2, I can’t help but feel like they took the best elements of the film and said, “Give me ten more minutes of that.” Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t.Continue reading “Was Iron Man 2 too much?”
I should have just gone to see The Wolfman.
It was a holiday weekend so I did what all good Americans do on a holiday weekend. I went to the movies. Specifically, I went to see Valentine’s Day. (I also saw Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief, but more on that later.) I knew going in that Valentine’s Day was not going to be great. It was too clearly a Love Actually knockoff, and knockoffs are by their very definition never as good as the original. So already Valentine’s Day was looking at being second-best.Continue reading “I should have just gone to see The Wolfman.”
Crazy Heart: Anatomy of an Oscar-winning performance
Sorry for the week-long break. Real life called. But now I’m back and it’s time to talk Oscars (see the nominees here). A month ago I picked George Clooney to win the Golden Globe for Best Actor (Drama) for Up in the Air, and said that an equally deserving candidate was Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart, and this is where we’ll be at with the Oscars in four weeks, too. It will be down to Clooney and Bridges, with Bridges taking the front-runner’s position this time. Why? Let’s break it down.Continue reading “Crazy Heart: Anatomy of an Oscar-winning performance”
A spoilery review of The Runaways
This movie is going to be big. I pegged it for a sleeper hit, especially if it debuted strong at Sundance, and thought if the reviews were good enough it could even break out into the mainstream. The Runaways premiered at Sundance last weekend to overwhelmingly positive reviews. And after seeing it for myself this week, I have to say–
This movie is going to be BIG.Continue reading “A spoilery review of The Runaways”
Top 10 Movies of the Decade: 2000-2009
What do we call the past decade? The Zeroes? The Aughts? “Glad it’s over; surely the next one can’t be that bad?” Whatever. Here are my top movies of the decade just gone. Once again, this list is in alphabetical order. Also, I realized I didn’t annotate anything in the decade’s top 10 post, I just assumed people would know who I was talking about. I will try to remember to do so in future.
Amelie (2001, Miramax Films)
The little foreign fil
m that could! Remember Amelie? How good it made you feel? How happy you were at the end? Romantic, shy Amelie Poulain is the heroine we could all root for, and Audrey Tautou embodied her perfectly. Strikingly reminiscent of another Audrey—Hepburn, that is—Tautou is at once whimsical and practical, beautiful and plain, bold and introverted. Beautifully directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Alien Resurrection, A Very Long Engagement) and photographed by Bruno Delbonnel, the Montmartre district of Paris is bathed in sunny yellows, rich greens and bold reds. This is reality slightly left of center, and Amelie’s rich inner life is brought to life through innovative moments of magical realism. If you haven’t seen Amelie recently, give yourself a treat and revisit, or watch it for the first time. Few films will leave you so happy and in love with love.Continue reading “Top 10 Movies of the Decade: 2000-2009”
Cinesnark 