FunBlog

Salt is a bleak and violent spy thriller. It has a competent cast and a steady stream of special effects, but I didn’t enjoy it much.

Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is a CIA super-spy who is accused by a Russian defector of being a Soviet mole. At the same time her husband is kidnapped. So she goes on the run with her former CIA colleagues in pursuit, trying to rescue her husband and foil a dastardly plot.

Plausibility is not the movie’s strong suit. Most of the story revolves around an elaborate scheme, like something out of Mission Impossible, but much more elaborate and much more dependent on coincidences and uncontrollable events. Any hope of suspension of disbelief is further undermined by the movie’s jarring lack of concern for getting the details right. (What the heck is a “NATO uniform” supposed to look like, anyway? The movie shows us the answer, but why?)

Worse from a story-telling standpoint is that none of the characters seems particularly sympathetic, not even the heroine. This is a big problem for me. If I cared about the characters I might be willing to overlook the other flaws in the story, but if I don’t care about the characters I have nothing to do but look for plot holes, which are to be found in abundance.

As a final annoyance the ending is sort of inconclusive, as if they wanted to be sure to leave room for a sequel.

The move supplies generous helpings of crashes and explosions. If these are what you are looking for, you may find it satisfactory.

I have mixed feelings about Dinner for Schmucks. On the one hand it is pretty funny, and I’ve said before that I’m prepared to forgive a lot if the movie is funny enough. On the other hand the humor is on the sick side, and none of the characters are particularly likable.

Tim Conrad (Paul Rudd) is an analyst at a sleazy private-investment firm who is desperate to wrangle a promotion in order to impress his girlfriend (Stephanie Szostak) enough to convince her to marry him. He gets a chance but it depends on getting at good score at the top brasses’ secret monthly “dinner for idiots.” Each executive is required to bring a person who is…er…eccentric. The guests will be treated with a show of seriousness and at the end of the dinner the one considered most idiotic will be given an award, while the executives secretly share a laugh at his expense. (Sort of reminiscent of the “pig dinners” that used to be an annual hazing ritual at some fraternities and military academies.)
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Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a surreal comedy based on a series of graphic novels by Bryan Lee O’Malley. Much of the action seems to take place inside the head of the protagonist. It may not be to everyone’s taste, but I enjoyed it.

Scott (Michael Cera) is a 23-year-old video game addict and would-be rock star. He’s dating a 17-year-old girl with the unlikely name of Knives Chau (Ellen Wong). She’s bubbly and innocent and they haven’t really done anything because he’s too much of an insecure nerd to try to take advantage of the situation.

But then Scott meets a really cool girl named Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and falls head-over-heels for her. Surprisingly she also seems interested in him. Meanwhile, he hasn’t told Knives about the situation. (Yes, Scott is more than a bit of a jerk.)

Unfortunately if he wants to date Ramona he will have to defeat her Seven Evil Exes, all of whom are much cooler than he is and have super powers. All of this is very metaphorical unless we accept that in this universe every figure of speech is literally true and all the silliest conventions of comic books are as common as breakfast.

I found Scott pretty annoying at first, but he more or less redeems himself at the end. Also the movie is very funny, and as I’ve said before. I’m prepared to forgive just about anything if it’s funny enough.

Solitary Man is a Michael Douglas tour de force. He completely dominates this movie. No one else can do does such a gleefully spot-on depiction of the charming evil alpha-male.

Ben Kalmen (Douglas) used to be one of the best-known businessmen in the Greater New York area, famous for his string of BMW dealerships and ubiquitous television commercials. But he bent the rules and got into trouble. Now he’s trying to claw his way back up the ladder.

Ben is not, to put it mildly, the most reliable guy in the world. You shouldn’t buy a car from him, and you definitely shouldn’t marry him, but he would be fun to hang out with if you were careful. In fact you might learn quite a lot from him, at some risk to your immortal soul.

Unfortunately he is not quite as quick on his feet as he used to be, and the consequences of a life lived close to the edge are starting to catch up to him.

This is a splendid and believable portrayal of a certain type of individual. Unfortunately they partially spoil it for me at the end with a too-pat explanation for his behavior and a too-pat upbeat ending. Even here though I can rationalize it by remembering that we really only have Ben’s word for the explanation, and he is very, very good at telling people what they need to hear.

The Kids Are All Right is the sort of movie that I admire more than I enjoy–in this case a very well-acted soap opera.

Pet Peeve: when I first tried to look up this movie online I first found a 1979 documentary about The Who called The Kids Are Alright. As far as I can see, the title of the current movie means “all of the kids are right,” which doesn’t really make much sense.

In any case this movie involves a lesbian couple (Annette Bening and Julianne Moore) who have two great kids (Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson). For some reason they named the boy “Laser” which seems cruel, but never mind. The kids decide to track down the sperm donor who was their biological father (Mark Ruffalo). Everyone gets along wonderfully until two of the characters decide to do something stupid, hence the soap opera. Everything more or less works out in the end.
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Inception seems to be doing quite well at the box office. I think it deserves to; it’s a fascinating movie and beautifully constructed. Nevertheless I’m a bit surprised that it is being so well received, for reasons I will get to below.

Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an industrial spy with a unique sci-fi modus operandi: he steals information from people by entering their dreams and prying the secrets from their subconscious. He is approached by an industrialist named Saito (Ken Watanabe) who wants him to plant an idea in a rival’s mind, making him think it is his own. This is an extremely difficult task and Cobb initially refuses, but agrees when Saito offers him the chance to be reunited with his children.

Following the standard formula of a heist movie, Cobb recruits a team of experts to help him carry out the scheme. But most of them don’t know that Cobb is bringing his own personal demons into the dream, and this could imperil them all.
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Knight and Day has a premise that will seem very familiar. An ordinary woman (Cameron Diaz) gets mixed up with a handsome, super-competent secret agent (Tom Cruise) who is fleeing from some bad secret agents. Of course the bad secret agents claim that they are really good and he is bad, but we are pretty sure that the romantic lead can’t be the bad guy, right?

This is a common premise, and of course it is pretty implausible. My problem is not that the premise and all the events in the movie are implausible. Most movies are implausible. It is the job of the writers, the director and the actors to take an implausible or impossible premise and make you believe it. In this case they aren’t even trying.
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1995′s Toy Story was like the original Star Wars: one of those rare breakthrough films that creates or redefines an entire genre of movies. It is hard to remember now what a revelation it was. Computer-generated animation had not previously been considered a genre in itself. It was more of a special-effects technique to enhance traditional hand-drawn animation or live-action movies.

Toy Story astounded viewers. The toy characters looked like real toys! (Unfortunately the human characters also looked like toys, which was sort of disconcerting, but they weren’t on screen much and in the excitement of the moment it was easy to forgive.) But the movie’s success had more to do with the clever writing which made it as enjoyable for adult viewers as for children.
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The Karate Kid (2010) is a remake of the popular 1984 movie of the same name, this time using kung-fu. (The studio apparently considered releasing it with the name “The Kung-Fu Kid” but changed their minds.)

You’re probably wincing already, but maybe you should give the remake a chance. It stands up well on it’s own. It’s a fun movie, lightweight but well-made.
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The Secret in Their Eyes (El secreto de sus ojos) won the 2010 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. It’s a crime drama that features a brutal killing, dim-witted police work, corrupt government officials, a long quest for revenge, and finally a love story of sorts.

Benjamín Espósito (Ricardo Darín), a retired Argentine court officer, wants to write a novel based on a crime committed in 1974, just before the last military Junta seized power. The story is told in flashbacks as he interviews various people involved in the investigation. Of course he really hopes to find a way to bring the killer to justice after all these years–and perhaps he is also looking for an excuse to spend some time with the beautiful supervisor (Soledad Villamil) whom he once secretly adored.

The film has a rather old-fashioned feel. It doesn’t try to overwhelm us with special effects; instead it is low-key, thoughtful and melancholy.

via Don.

X what you’ve seen
O what you saw some but not all of
Bold what you particularly liked
Strike-through what you hated
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I wrote a capsule movie review of Ponyo back when it was released in American movie theaters. Now that I have had a chance to examine the DVD version I am going to write an updated review.

A movie review necessarily gives my first impression after viewing it once. Having a DVD allows me to examine the work in detail, which often changes my impression of it–sometime for the better and sometimes for the worse.
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Please Give is one of those quirky, character-oriented comedies; the sort of thing that’s amusing to watch even though nothing particularly earth-shaking happens.

The characters are all the sort of Manhattanites who hardly ever leave the city and think it would be a great adventure to drive north and see the leaves change. Kate (Catherine Keener) and her husband Alex (Oliver Platt) have a business that involves buying the furniture from dead people’s apartments and selling it at a huge markup at their upscale store to the kind of people who think nothing of paying thousands of dollars for used furniture that they know nothing about.

Kate feels terribly guilty about this (indeed she feels guilty about just about everything.) She tries to make up for it by handing large bills to random homeless people, much to the annoyance of her teen-aged daughter (Sarah Steele).

To add to her guilt, Kate and Alex have bought the apartment of the nasty old lady next door (Ann Guilbert) and are waiting for her to die so they can knock down the wall and start remodeling. In the meantime, of course, they have to befriend the old biddy and her two granddaughters. One granddaughter (Amanda Peet) is self-centered and thoughtless. The other (Rebecca Hall) is shy and unassuming. Neither seems to have fully recovered from the experience of being raised by their grandmother.

The movie contains no real surprises, but it could be an entertaining way to spend 90 minutes.

I’ve posted before about the unfortunate side-effects of 3-D movies, such as their tendency to cause headaches and nausea in some viewers. However there is one side-effect that I never would have predicted.

According to this story, a U.S. serviceman came back from a tour of duty in Iraq and found that his wife was pregnant. She denied having an affair and explained that she got pregnant from watching a 3-D porno movie.

The husband seems willing to believe her, saying “I see it as suspicious. The films in 3D are very real. With today’s technology, anything is possible.”

(OK, I admit that this story is probably entirely bogus. TechEYE doesn’t strike me as the sort of publication that does rigorous fact checking, and they don’t give any source for the story. What can I say? Some stories are too good to check.)

Like a lot of sequels, Iron Man 2 is passable but not quite as good as the original.

As the movie begins, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is acting even more obnoxious than usual, but secretly he is under a lot of pressure. He has revealed his identity as Iron Man and put himself in the uncomfortable position of guarantor of world peace. A business rival (Sam Rockwell) is dissing him, the government wants him to hand over his power suit, and the reactor in his chest is slowly killing him. Can he find a way to save the situation?

I find it hard to get excited about CGI special effects these days. The movie’s main strength is in its humor. Robert Downey Jr. is as amusing as ever as the narcissistic billionaire hero, but the best parts come from some of the secondary characters. Sam Rockwell is hilarious as Justin Hammer, the smarmy CEO of a rival defense contractor. Gary Shandling is equally funny in a small role as a dim-witted Senator. And Scarlett Johansson is very watchable as Black Widow, a superhero (and occasional villain) who is likely to have a big role in future movies.

Greenberg is an interesting but frustrating movie. It is well-acted and smartly-written, but ultimately you’re spending a lot of time with an unpleasant and self-destructive person.

Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) is a middle-aged loser, an unemployed carpenter who has recently spent time in a mental institution after some sort of breakdown. Now he has come to Los Angeles to house-sit for his much more successful brother. While there he reconnects with some old friends, all of whom he has treated badly, and begins an affair with a much younger woman (Greta Gerwig) who seems to have a compulsive need to take care of someone less competent than herself.

Roger’s forte is writing ascerbic letters to corporations that have offended him in some way, usually about some trivial matter. He is easily offended. Whenever he starts getting close to someone he always finds something to get mad about and reacts in a hurtful and insulting manner.

From the previews I had some idea going in that he was like this but I was hoping for something a little more entertaining. Perhaps I was hoping for something like As Good as It Gets, in which Jack Nicholson plays a somewhat similar character. Nicholson’s character is nasty but funny, and he ends up taking decisive action to turn his life around.

Ben Stiller is a reasonably talented actor, but he doesn’t have anything like Jack Nicholson’s presence and charisma, and the character he plays never seems particularly funny, just sad. This is probably more realistic, but it is far less entertaining.

The premise may not sound like anything special, but Date Night turns out to be an extremely funny and rather sweet screwball comedy.

Phil and Claire Foster (Steve Carell and Tina Fey) are a typical boring couple from New Jersey. They decide to hire a babysitter and go into New York City to have a nice dinner at a fancy restaurant. Due to an improbable sequence of events they end up having a hair-raising adventure involving gangsters, dirty cops and a variety of New York City lowlifes.

I’m going to resist the temptation to give any more details. Everything in this story is absurd and hilarious. See it and be surprised.

Fey and Carell are two of the greatest comic talents in the movies today. Their portrayal of an ordinary couple who turn out to have unexpected depths of resourcefulness (and craziness) is what makes this movie work.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid is funnier than the last 99 “family comedies” that preceded it. Actually it is funnier than most of the adult comedies of the last couple of years as well.

I should probably say that it will seem funny to adults with good memories and kids who are at least as old as the characters in the movie. The younger children in the audience seemed to sit through it in a state of silent incomprehension.

Greg Heffley (Zachary Gordon) has just entered middle school (which in his district apparently begins with the sixth grade.) He is confident that with his talent and intelligence he will easily become the most popular kid in his class. His only worry is whether his chubby and dim-witted best friend (Robert Capron) will slow him down.

Unfortunately Greg is the sort of screw-up whose best-thought-out schemes usually end in disaster.

This is the sort of comedy where the depiction of early-adolescent life rings painfully true. For such a young actor, Zachary Gordon shows some real comic talent. We may be hearing more of him in the future.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (a.k.a Män som hatar kvinnor) is a gripping thriller for people who don’t hate subtitles–and who are prepared to watch some very dark and disturbing stuff. Those who have read the original novel by Stieg Larsson will know what I am talking about.

Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), a muckraking Swedish financial reporter, has just been sentenced to 3 months in jail for libeling a powerful industrialist. Before his sentence begins he is contacted by another industrialist, this one old and retired. Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube) wants him to try to solve a long-forgotten mystery: the disappearance in 1966 of his beloved niece. Vanger believes that she was actually murdered by some member of his extended family, which includes some ruthless and unsavory characters.

In order to solve the mystery, Blomkvist finds that he needs the help of a most extraordinary character: Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), a young punk-goth researcher and computer hacker with some server social-adjustment issues.
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I’m still thinking about why so many movie and television adaptations of Alice in Wonderland have been unsatisfactory (including, in my opinion, Tim Burton’s latest attempt.) But perhaps the more important question is why the original books by Lewis Carroll continue to be beloved after so many years, even though, as I pointed out before, there isn’t much of a story there.

I think there are 4 main reasons why they are so popular, and the failures of the adaptations have a lot to do with their failure to measure up in these areas.
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Alice in Wonderland is the latest in a long line of movies and TV shows based on Lewis Carroll’s books. There probably have been over 100 of them, and generally they have not been very successful, either critically or commercially. Still, people keep trying.

I think the problem, or at least part of the problem, is that a successful movie needs a strong story, and that is not to be found in the original source material. Both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass are accounts of dreams. One scene follows another with no real logic or continuity. Eventually there is some sort of climax, at which point the protagonist wakes up.

What makes the books enjoyable are things that are not terribly cinematic: word-play, logic games, political and social satire. (What was probably the most delightful part for the original audience was the wicked parodies of the inane moralistic poems that Victorian children were required to memorize and recite. These produce mostly puzzlement today, since the original poems are long forgotten.)
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The Last Station is an interesting, well-acted and poignant film about the last year in the life of the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy.

In 1910 Count Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) is perhaps the worlds most celebrated writer. He is also the guru of a movement called the Tolstoyans whose members believe in the abolition of private property, pacifism, vegetarianism, sexual abstinence, dressing like peasants and living in rural communes where they work the land with their own hands. The movement’s chief organizer, Tolstoy’s friend Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti) is a dapper fellow who prefers nice suits and the city life for himself. He is dedicated to spreading Tolstoy’s ideas, but his foremost concern at the moment is to make sure that the old man leaves his valuable copyrights to the organization, thus effectively disinheriting his wife and children.

This earns him the enmity of Tolstoy’s wife Sofya (Helen Mirren), a smart and strong-willed woman who thinks that Tolstoy’s more radical ideas are a bunch of hooey. (Their marriage has been passionate but contentious.)

Chertkov recruits Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy), a naive and idealistic young Tolstoyan, to serve as Tolstoy’s private secretary and instructs him to spy on Sofya and help undermine her influence on Tolstoy.

Valentin’s experiences lead him to question his faith. Tolstoy turns out to be a friendly and charming old man (though sometimes cantankerous and confused) who freely admits that he is not a very good Tolstoyan. He seems much more nuanced than his humorless followers. Valentin finds himself feeling increasing sympathy for Sofya in spite of her obstructiveness. Worst of all he falls in love with a pretty, free-spirited young woman (Kerry Condon), an embarrassing problem for someone who believes in sexual abstinence.

The ultimate message seems to be that love is more important than ideals, or at least that it should be.

Whew–try to say that title without pausing for breath!

Some people say that Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief is a second-rate imitation of Harry Potter. That seems unfair. There is no way this movie can qualify as “second rate.”

J.K. Rowling is no Shakespeare but she is a competent storyteller. The Harry Potter movies are state-of-the-art professional efforts which are often visually amazing. This movie, on the other hand, is notable for its uninspired story, cheesy dialog, wooden acting, and unconvincing special effects, which it tries to disguise with murky cinematography.

The story is based on Greek mythology, a body of material that has inspired some of the world’s greatest poets and artists. I guess there’s no reason it can’t inspire the less talented as well.
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An Education reminds me a little of those comedies where teenagers spend most of the movie doing dumb things, yet everything works out all right in the end. The difference is that this is a lot smarter and more believable.

The story (loosely based on an autobiographical essay be British journalist Lynn Barber) begins in London in 1961. Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is a 16-year-old schoolgirl. She’s clever and talented and bored with her life and the people around her.

She is thrilled when she meets David (Peter Sarsgaard), a charming and good-looking (though somewhat oily) older man. He takes her to places where she has never been, to a sophisticated world of concerts and fancy restaurants and nightclubs. She watches with bemusement as he cons her parents (Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour) who are ambitious but rather dim.

Jenny is not dim, and she can see that David is dishonest, but she doesn’t care. She’s caught up in the thrill of it all and impatient with suggestions that she may be jeopardizing her future. In fact she gets few warnings since most people are charmed by David.

Still this is basically a comedy and things don’t end as badly as they might have.

Crazy Heart is a well-made film with a really good performance by Jeff Bridges, but somehow I can’t get too enthusiastic about it.

Bridges plays “Bad” Blake, a boozy old country singer, once a big star but now reduced to singing in bowling alleys. The remaining fans who show up to hear him need to be very forgiving, though he occasionally shows flashes of his old charisma.

He agrees to be interviewed by Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a free-lance reporter and single mother. Somehow they end up falling love. (What is she thinking? He’s not just older than she is; he’s downright decrepit!)

This is, of course, mostly a story about alcoholism. Part of my problem with it may be that the combination of alcoholism and country music reminds me too much of Walk the Line, a much more compelling movie.

Crazy Heart tries hard and has it’s heart in the right place. Like many such movies it seems torn by the question of whether to have an overly pat, cheerful and crowd-pleasing ending, or an ending that is more believable but depressing. It eventually compromises in a way that is sort of satisfactory.

It is probably fair to say that Queen Victoria saved the British monarchy, mainly by NOT being a national embarrassment, unlike her immediate predecessors. She also presided over the British Empire during the time when it grew to its maximum power and extent. This all makes her fascinating to the sort of people who like BBC dramas.

The Young Victoria is not a BBC production but it is still a typical offering in the “Masterpiece Theater” genre: serious, elegant and very British. If you like that sort of thing you will probably like this one.

The young Princess Victoria (Emily Blunt) was raised in near-isolation by her overbearing mother, the Duchess of Kent (Miranda Richardson) and her slimy advisor Sir John Conroy (Mark Strong). They hoped to keep her dependent on them so that when she inherited the throne they could rule England in her name, but she stubbornly resisted.

She was aided at first by Lord Melbourne (Paul Bettany) the good-looking but devious Prime Minister. Later she found a more reliable ally in her cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (Rupert Friend), whom she married. Albert was young, handsome and straight-laced, but also an idealistic social reformer whose influence was to leave England a more humane and democratic place.

Naturally the movie focuses on the romance between Victoria and Albert. In the history of a royal family that has had more scandals than happy marriages, theirs is certainly the most impressive love story.

Nevertheless if you are interested in the history of the period you would probably do better to rent the 2001 BBC TV series Victoria and Albert which was a bit stricter about maintaining historical accuracy. The Young Victoria mostly sticks to actual historical events, but it is not above rearranging and exaggerating them for dramatic effect.

…maybe you shouldn’t see Avatar. The Register describes some overreactions by deranged fans.

Millennium Actress is something of an overlooked gem. The movie won all sorts of awards in Japan and was widely praised by critics, but its American release sank without a ripple. This supports the general rule that an animated film that doesn’t even pretend to be for kids has no chance in America. For anime fans it is worth a second look.

The movie is reminiscent of Citizen Kane, though it is less political and more romantic. The basic structure is the same: an investigator explores the life story of a public figure, seeking some key insight that will explain the life and give it meaning.
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The trailers for Up in the Air do their best to suggest that this is a formulaic romantic comedy about two people who initially hate each other but end up falling in love. It isn’t anything of the sort. Nor is it a cynical black comedy like Office Space, as one might guess from the premise. It’s something different, a bit smarter and subtler than either.

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) works for an outplacement firm, and what with the current economy he is very busy flying from city to city to companies that have layoffs scheduled. Mostly his job consists of firing people whose managers are too cowardly to do the job themselves. In between he gives motivational speeches in which he preaches a Zen-like avoidance of attachments and commitments.
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Avatar, James Cameron’s first movie since Titanic (1997), is a solid science fiction story, probably a classic. It is a visually stunning extravaganza which seems to have required the contributions of just about every CGI effects studio on this planet.

A lot of people are saying that while the movie is visually stunning the story is weak. I wouldn’t call it weak; I found it exciting and rather affecting. It is certainly very derivative and rather predictable, but that seems to be true of just about everything that comes out of Hollywood these days.
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The Princess and the Frog is something that we haven’t seen in a long time: a traditional hand-drawn animated film from Disney. The last one was 5 years ago. (It was called Home on the Range and it’s understandable if you don’t remember it.)

After Home on the Range flopped, Disney announced that they would not make any more hand-drawn films, and would instead use computer rendering for all future animated theatrical movies. Apparently they changed their mind, and I think that is worth celebrating.

The Princess and the Frog is not quite as good as the best of the classic Disney animated films, but that’s holding it to a very high standard. It has a solidly entertaining story, and much of it looks very good. If you care about animation, you should probably see this, if only to encourage Disney to keep trying.
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When I saw the trailer for Fantastic Mr. Fox my initial reaction was “Wow, that’s pretty bad animation!” This was quite unfair.

My reaction was based on an unconscious assumption that this was an example of computer-generated animation, the approach used in most animated movies today. In fact, if you are an animation fan Fantastic Mr. Fox may be worth seeing because it may well be the last major motion picture ever made using the much older technique of stop-motion animation. The sad fact is that today’s computer technology can create a very similar look with more realistic motion, all at a much lower cost.
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The Blind Side is a mostly-true biopic. It tells the story of Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron), a homeless, functionally-illiterate teenager who ended up winning a football scholarship to the University of Mississippi; made the honor roll in college; and recently signed a $13.8 million contract with the Baltimore Ravens.

The movie is so sweet and upbeat that my cynical side wishes I had a good excuse to trash it. However the truth is that I had a good time. It avoids the trap of excessive sentimentality; in fact most of the time it manages to be quite funny. It’s a good approach. The director is smart enough to realize that the story inherently has enough emotional punch that there is no need to indulge in mawkish tricks.

Sandra Bullock, who plays Oher’s adoptive mother, is the heart of the movie. Her warm-hearted but tough-minded character dominates every scene she is in (which is most of them) and as often as not has the audience rolling on the floor.

Twilight, the original movie, was cheesy fun. The sequel New Moon is not as much fun, in fact much of it is rather tedious.

The sequel picks up where the original left off (and does nothing to bring you up to speed, so forget it if you didn’t see the first movie.) To begin with Edward decides to leave Bella (for her own good of course.) Bella gets depressed and mopes around for a loooooong time. She takes up risky activities and hangs out with Jake, the nice hunky Native American boy, whom she leads on and treats rather badly in my opinion.

It’s not until half-way through the movie that the werewolves finally appear. This is a great relief since the werewolves are good hokey fun, but we don’t see enough of them. The part of the movie that isn’t about Bella moping is perhaps one-third about werewolves and the rest about the emo vampires.

This is too bad since I like the werewolves better. I’m sick of hearing the vampires whine about what a dreadful curse it is to be eternally young and beautiful and rich. The werewolves are working-class monsters. They have a less-privileged life, but they are proud and good with their hands and generally don’t complain as much. Bella prefers the vampires, but that just shows her poor taste.

In 1966, a time when British performers were revolutionizing popular music, the British public had surprisingly few ways to listen to them. The BBC had little interest in broadcasting rock n’ roll, so British fans tuned their radios to “pirate” stations broadcasting from ships anchored in international waters.

(There was a somewhat similar phenomenon in America at about that time. The government did not own the radio stations, but it limited their number and regulated their content. Fans of cutting-edge music tuned to powerful stations broadcasting from Mexico, where the government was inclined to let broadcasters do as they pleased.)

Pirate Radio is a good-natured nostalgic comedy that takes place mostly on “Radio Rock”, a fictitious pirate radio ship. (Claims that the move is “based on a true story” are overblown, though some of the characters are very loosely based on real people.)
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Ewan McGregor

“More of this is true than you would believe.”

The Men Who Stare at Goats is an offbeat comedy that gains a certain edginess by making us wonder how much of it is based on fact. I doubt that there is much truth in it, but it is still hilarious.

Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), a down-and-out reporter, is waiting in Kuwait in 2002, hoping to get an “embedded” position with a U.S. military unit. He meets Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), a hard-bitten ex-soldier who claims to be a “Jedi Warrior”, trained in paranormal fighting techniques in a top-secret U.S. Army project. Ignoring the telltale signs that Cassady may be totally nuts, Wilton agrees to accompany him on a secret mission into Iraq.

During the trip we gradually learn the story of how back in the late 1970s and early 80s, the Pentagon, worried about Soviet psychic research programs, allowed the charismatic Lt. Colonel Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) to form a top-secret unit called the “New Earth Army”, in which soldiers were trained to be “warrior monks” using an eclectic mix of New Age techniques. However the experiment had tragic results due to machinations of a malicious recruit named Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey).

The movie claims to be a work of fiction based on a non-fiction book. The book is apparently totally serious but the movie takes a whimsical approach to the question of whether the program ever existed, let alone whether the soldier ever developed deadly psychic powers.

Amelia, a biography of aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart (Hilary Swank) is interesting but curiously unengaging. It is reasonably historically accurate (at least by biopic standards) and may be worth watching if you want to learn about the life of this remarkable woman. However as entertainment, as story-telling, it isn’t very successful.

Surprisingly little time is devoted to the dramatic flights that made Earhart famous. The move seems more interested in her personal life, particularly her relationship with her husband and manager, publisher George Putnam (Richard Gere). Yet it doesn’t really succeed as a love story either. Much of the time it just seems to be checking off the significant events in her life.

The only part of the move that achieves much dramatic tension is the final sequence depicting her doomed last flight.

Before that we are treated to a long conversation between Earhart (in New Guinea) and Putnam (in California). Even though they are speaking over short-wave radio, they somehow manage to get a perfect fiber-optic-quality connection, allowing them to whisper endearments to each other instead of shouting over the static. This is probably a good indication of the movie’s commitment to technical accuracy.

Wow! Ethan and Joel Coen must have been in a really dark mood when the made A Serious Man. It is a very, very dark comedy, essentially a retelling of the Book of Job, with no sugar-coating.

Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is the Job character, a physics professor at a small Midwestern college in the late 1960s. He’s an ineffectual nebbish who tries earnestly to do the right thing, though he isn’t sure what that is. The people around him tend to push him around and take advantage of him, while Fate deals him one nasty blow after another. (I use the term “nebbish” advisedly. The story is set in a mostly-Jewish community and has a strong Jewish sensibility.)

The move is painfully funny. I found myself laughing quite a lot, and when I wasn’t laughing I was wincing. You can choose to see this as a bitterly comic commentary on the human condition. If you can’t see it that way, it will probably be like watching a kitten being tortured. Not for every taste, in other words, and you need to be in the right mood to enjoy it.

The Informant! is an offbeat, funny movie based on a true story. It imitates the visual style and musical score of a 1970s crime caper movie, perhaps because that’s what the protagonist thinks he’s involved in.

Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon) is one of the top executives at agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). He is under pressure to figure out why the new lysine factory is failing to produce enough lysine (an agricultural feed additive.) He tells them that he has been contacted by an extortionist who says that the plant is being sabotaged by an industrial spy.
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District 9 is a violent and disturbing science fiction thriller. It is also thoughtful and clever, and probably worth seeing if you have a strong stomach.

The premise is that back in 1990 a giant alien spaceship appeared over Johannesburg, South Africa. The ship was disabled and filled with half-staved alien refugees. The government reluctantly took responsibility for resettling them in a refugee camp called District 9, a squalid shantytown that quickly became a crime-ridden hellhole.
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