Review Catch Up
- THE SKIN I LIVE IN – (2011)
Dir- Pedro Almodovar; Star- Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya
Plastic surgeon Banderas is an emotional wreck following the death of his wife and daughter, he channels his pain through a mysterious skin transplant patient locked in his basement, with whom he is quite obsessed. Writer-director Almodovar abandons the eclectic and vibrant flair of his previous work in this dark, creepy thriller, which despite its cool tones still overflows with vivacity and bold compositions meticulously constructed by a masterfully creative eye. Almodovar, himself a gay man, has always populated his films with homosexual and transgender characters (See: All About My Mother), tackling a wide range of themes evoking questions about gender rolls and the relations between males and females, or blends of the two. In The Skin I Live In he approaches transgenderism head on, constructing a character in the surgeon whose antagonistic behavior provides a grotesquely compelling framework upon which to consider the director’s ruminations on whether it’s the body or the mind that defines the person. Skin itself, the surgeon’s fixation and the object that lends the movie its title, acts as a trap for the soul or mind of the individual person, despite being what defines the person to everyone else on the outside. In doing all of this, through stunning progressions that we’ve come to expect from Almodovar, he manages to provide insight about being trapped by your body to heterosexual people. Of course this is all subtext, the film itself works as an exciting and bizarre thriller, but its these themes that Almodovar tackles directly and with a firm hand, rather than with flamboyance as a side theme interwoven with everything else, that makes The Skin I Live In a distinct highlight in Almodovar’s immensely accomplished oeuvre. It serves to show just how in command of the medium he is, where the story and the presentation meld seamlessly to further a theme or a question that causes the viewer to see the world from another point of view; this is what film is all about.
- CONTAGION – (2011)
Dir- Steven Soderbergh; Star- Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Marion Cotillard
Star studded pandemic scenario, following many characters across the world as a deadly virus spreads like wildfire, triggering panic and a global response from the CDC and WHO to try and halt its progression. It’s been done before, but not with this level of technical precision and scientific satisfaction, where the work of the epidemiologist is just as prevalent as the individual character’s struggle for survival. It also manages to cover many related economic, social, and political aspects associated with such an end of the world scenario, providing a well rounded consideration of the possibilities. It sacrifices some of its character’s human stories to tackle many of these other issues, but it doesn’t really matter because of just how exciting –and frightening it is. This is actually one of the scarier movies I’ve seen in a while, mainly due to just how plausible and real it feels; the world and all of the systems we live in are more fragile than we may think. It makes you think, it makes you fear, it takes you for a tense ride through a hypothetical apocalypse; Contagion is first rate disaster porn.
- PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 - (2011)
Dir-Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman ; Star-Christopher Nicholas Smith, Lauren Bittner
Paranormal Activity was one of the most profitable movies of all time, and boy do its producers know this. That’s why they keep making the same movie with ever greater integer suffixes, because they know people will still be frightened by the “found footage” home video set up, which has been used to make frightening situations seem more real. Of course, even if the whole concept didn’t seem old and tired, the film’s use of CGI and hoaky effects really diminishes its believability, defeating the whole point of making it appear to be just a bunch of home videos in the first place. This time around we get to learn about some sort of witchcraft plot, which I have to say isn’t very scary. The movie’s frights instead come from an endless series of anticipated shocks. You know, the ones you know are coming because of the long stretch of silence right before. I suppose these are scary, but what’s the point? This all boils down to scene after scene of a few minutes of dull normalcy followed by something unusual, creepy, or loud and then starting it all over again. Who needs a story or compelling characters any more? This is manufactured, assembly line horror, like Stephen King’s writing, where the audience goes in, gets shown a series of things that they’re supposed to scream at, and then comes out begging for a sequel, except without the rabid Cujo dog thing. Seeing this in a theater packed with high school students was worthwhile, however; their reactions and commentary, as well as their delight at having fooled the rent-a-cop checking for under age movie hoppers outside the door, was far more entertaining than what was on screen.
- CRAZY, STUPID LOVE - (2011)
Dir- Glenn Ficarra, John Requa; Star- Steve Carrell, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore, Emma Stone
Divorced, middle aged Carell meets suave Gosling at a bar where he tries to learn how to start up his dating life again. Somewhere in there some stuff happens, which I don’t really remember, leading to a particularly amusing climax where all the loose pieces come crashing together like in the superior City Island. In the end I felt that this was a pleasing comedy with adult overtones, that is neither terribly funny or satisfyingly emotional, but it was entertaining nonetheless.
- BAD TEACHER - (2011)
Dir- Jake Kasdan; Star- Cameron Diaz, Jason Segel, Justin Timberlake
Cameron Diaz is a junior high school teacher who doesn’t really want to be, but she sticks around because she needs money to pay for breast implants. It’s as stupid as it sounds, which would be perfectly fine if it was funny, but it isn’t.
- MIDNIGHT IN PARIS - (2011)
Dir- Woody Allen; Star- Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams
Romantic writer Wilson is in Paris looking for inspiration when he stumbles upon a car that takes him every night to the 1920′s where he can hang out with the modernist writers of the Lost Generation like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, who give him inspiration and advice on his life and writing, while during the day he returns to McAdams, his increasingly angry fiance. He quickly becomes consumed by his fantasy which merges with reality. Wilson is great, both neurotic and sympathetic like the bumbling Woody Allen of yore, pulling us into his dream world which is disarming and whimsical. This is one of Allen’s most warm spirited forays; an enjoyable and literate fantasy.
- COWBOYS AND ALIENS - (2011)
Dir- Jon Favreau; Star- Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford
Aliens invade the wild west, humans must make them go away, Daniel Craig is a cowboy with some alien technology that may give them a good chance. This was an intriguing concept that screamed awesome at first, but after ten minutes I think everyone in the theater was wondering why they were there. This would fail as either a cowboy movie or a sci-fi movie, and as both it’s pretty terrible, with no characters that really make you care. It’s a lot of flash and explosion, which one would certainly expect from a movie titled Cowboys and Aliens. This movie is kind of like the Kool Aid Man, big and boisterous; it makes you say “AW yeah!” when you consider how awesome it could be, but then he trips and shatters against the hard desert floor, spilling his good movie juice everywhere as soon as you realize how stupid this is, which is rather quickly.
- SOURCE CODE - (2011)
Dir- Duncan Jones; Star- Jake Gyllenhaal, Vera Farmiga
Gyllenhaal is a soldier who wakes up on a train and realizes he’s going to get a bunch of chances to stop a terrorist bomb threat, because he’s really somewhere else in some sort of high tech machine that lets him try again after he fails and the train blows up. It seems like a cool idea at first but it’s really contrived and makes very little sense; especially the final twist which falls far short from the “oh my god” reaction it was shooting for, which was quite disappointing. It’s annoying when a movie thinks it’s more clever than it really is, (See: Inception, The Prestige, The Dark Knight), and Source Code is no exception.
- WIN WIN - (2011)
Dir- Thomas McCarthy; Star- Paul Giamatti, Amy Ryan, Alex Shaffer
Struggling lawyer Giamatti becomes legal guardian for an old man to receive the government checks, and decides to look after his troubled grandson when he shows up. The grandson is also a good wrestler, and Giamatti coaches the school wrestling team. A very human story conveyed well by the actors, especially Giamatti, but not so much Shaffer (the grandson) who clearly lacks acting experience. I wanted to slap him after a while because of his annoying monotone grunts. Regardless, this is both funny and very dramatic without ever feeling overly heavy. A rewarding movie.
- CEDAR RAPIDS - (2011)
Dir- Miguel Arteta; Star- Ed Helms, John C Reilly, Anne Heche
Naive insurance salesman Helms goes to a convention in Cedar Rapids where he’s introduced to the idea of advancing in your career by being corrupt and sinful. Helms’ enthusiasm is very amusing, as are his exploits in the adult world of selling insurance, but in the end it doesn’t add up to much. Charming but predictable, a good diversion. John C. Reilly has always and still does annoy me.
