The Artist or...?

Is that David Bernstein?

Static

This 2008 sleeper is reallly fun! It's sci-fi, and it's got two things that will grab you!

First: The story, of which I will NOT give details, is truly mind-boggling (as you'll see, the pun is intended). Three inventive young people decide that dialing a cell phone by holding it is really old school! So they create a phone on a chip, implant the chip in their brains, and just say, "Phone ON" or "Phone OFF". Wow!

Second: Two of the three protagonists are really among the most attractive to hit the big screen. I won't speak for the ladies, but I think they will find Stephen Byer (above) quite the dude to look at! I found Kathleen Robertson (above) as pretty as any of the most dazzling starlets.

OK, there you have it: a fun plot and eye-candy actors.

Is there much else? I'd say yes! Of course, the inventors' plans go a bit awry with the phones in the brain....what else would you expect from good sci-fi? And there's a very evil person in the mix. Also, some good, well-placed violence! Even a bit of sex!

Yeah, not your high-brow movie. No sophistication. But not bad at all for an original, thought-provoking film.

Very entertaining. A- Grade.

The minus is for, well, one or two scenes where we must stretch our disbelief a little too much!

Equilibrium

Just came across a wonderful film that came out in 2002. Starring Christian Bale, who excelled in American Psycho and later The Fighter, the flick is a winner!

Quick plot overview: In the future, long after the nuclear apocalypse, a "leader" has deemed that mankind must no longer go to war. The solution: Feelings lead to anger, anger leads to war, so feelings must be taboo. Thus he creates a futuristic society where feelings are forbidden.

Nice premise!

Of course, in order to enforce this bizarre rule, totalitarianism is required. Every citizen must take a daily injection to repress feelings. An all-powerful police force must ferret out the folks who dare have a feeling!

Bale is a super-cop who enforces the no-feeling rule. He has been trained to shoot and kill better than any kung-fu master, and to wipe out all those who dare have an emotion....without feeling a bit of remorse himself.

Now what if the hardy Christian, the cop par excellence, gets a feeling or two himself? Haha! Therein lies the story!

NO SPOILER.... but just imagine the anti-hero turning hero! And what about Christian's son? Will he turn his father in? After all, little kids are trained to turn in anyone who feels!

Remember some of the creative shoot-em-up scenes in The Matrix? The shooting scenes in this film are way better! Watch the main protagonist use guns, swords, and knives like no one else!

Grade of A..... A thinking person's action/sci-fi film! Just wonder how viewers will FEEL about this creative flick!

Haha.

Downton Abbey Redux

I occasionally do a "redux" review when I just can't contain my enthusiasm! See below for my recent comments on this series. We just finished Season One, which consisted of seven episodes. How can I laud this program enough?

No spoiler, so thus no details. But the plotting, character shading, costumes, flavor, history, dialog....everything...absolutely dazzles!

The picture above shows the three sisters, who form only one of several plots, all decked out in the turn-of-the-century finery. Two of the sibs fight like cats and dogs. One is a great liberal in a very conservative family, who goes to protests and fights for the underdog.

WHAT FUN!

Golden Globes 2012

Poor Ricky Gervais! He's damned if he does, damned if he doesn't! I'm referring, of course, to his crassness last year and squeaky-clean act this year. Which Ricky do I prefer? The crass one! After all, this is evening TV, when the kiddies are not supposed to be watching.

OK, that issue aside. How were the awards? B-O-R-I-N-G! My spouse and I figured the three hours we watched were the longest three hours of our lives...and we fast-forwarded through the ads!

There was one good, genuine moment: It happened when Seth Rogen appeared next to the very dazzling Kate Beckinsale. He said he was trying to hide a "massive erection"! Poor Kate, not knowing what to say, simply started giggling. That was fun!

What really distinguishes a good awards show? The presenters, and the awardees, need pizzazz! I'm talking about great personalities. The issue is, however, that many actors don't have personalities at all! They are directed by the director to emote on screen, and we often confuse their screen personas with the real person.

Meryl Streep, a case in point: She is always so well spoken at the awards ceremonies. Why? Well, it would now seem she reads speeches. You see, this time, she lost her glasses, and all she could say was an expletive, followed by very common gibberish. Very un-Meryl-like!

And so on for the others. The comedians stand the most chance of being entertaining....but there are usually too few of them on stage and their lips are tied by censors.

Thus: A boring, dry show.

Alas!

The Wave

No,it's not a surfer movie, or a stadium crowd pastime flick. It is a most unexpected find in the foreign language department of Netflix.

We have made the switch to streaming on Netflix, and so far I am far from impressed. I had been warned that the inventory is not nearly as broad as the snail-mail method, but, honestly, I was hard pressed to find any film that was "primetime," well-known, and didn't look totally low-budget lame. I'll keep looking.

But in the meantime, we managed to find a gem.

In keeping with my aim to keep my posts brief - this is a German film about a high school teacher whose unwilling assignment to teach a one week course on autocracy goes terribly, terribly wrong. Aside from the language, one would swear it's American. Absolutely captivating in watching the vulnerability of teens as they're unwittingly sucked into the claws of ideology, reminiscent of Hitler's Youth. Chilling.

Excellent film. Watch it and we'll talk more.

Downton Abbey

Once again, our daughter, the philosophy professor, advised her ol' parents to watch what she called an amazing masterpiece. Downton Abbey is exactly that.

See the castle in the picture above? And all those folks? The people are the two "crusts" of society, the nobles and the servants. They live together, scheme together, gossip together, and most of all, create the most endearing relationships and soundbites to hit TV in recent years.

Downton Abbey was a huge hit in England and only recently got to the U.S. It's been the topic of so much buzz that it's apparently catching on like wildfire.

OK, I know what you're thinking...not another stuffy, British, hard-to-understand, starchy story of the rich and famous. No way. Not at all. It will take a few minutes in the beginning of each segment to tune your ear to the British accent, but once you do, you'll enter a world full of wonder!

Expect delightful acting, turns of phrase, plot twists, and characters. These people, both upper and lower classes, seem so darn real! I go to sleep thinking of them!

So RUN out and rent the series. First the complete series from last year. Then watch the new ones.

Wow! Grade of A+

The Descendants

Hey George, I'd look in the rearview mirror for scathing reviews if I made such a maudlin, repulsive film!

OH! MY! Am I speaking blasphemy? Do not the critics--and everyone--simply RAVE about this dog of a film? Yes indeed. Am I the only person alive (other than my dear spouse) who found this flick similar to the worst soaps on TV?

Rarely a spoiler, I will have to give away a bit of the plot to make my point. The film opens with George making sad eyes, sitting beside his vegetable of a wife, who is on life support and about to die. Gee, what a great premise for a film. NOT!

Now, once we've gotten the full tear quotient in place, off we go to see George misparent his two daughters. Gee, that's better. NOT! Is it supposed to be charming that his older daughter is on drugs, hates her mother, and mouths off to her father? Is it supposed to be charming that his younger daughter gets into trouble at school? NOT!

Oh, wait, the drama, or melodrama, gets worse! George learns two very unpleasant facts: His wife will most certainly die...and she was seeing another fella before going into a coma! Oh dear! Poor George! He of course must track down the lout who was romancing his dearly beloved. And he must tell his best friends his wife is gonna die!

Wow, what fun!

Great movie? Where? When? How? Great acting? Only by the young starlet, Shailene Woodley. George's acting? How hard can it be to act miserable and pissed off for two hours?

Have the film critics gone stark-raving mad? Or did I, after viewing this miserable excuse for a film, go mad?

Grade: F

Sorry Clooney fans. Go see George in something good, like the thriller The Peacemaker. Skip this loser of a movie. And don't listen to the idiots who call themselves critics!

Cowboys and Aliens

The picture says it all: The lady on the left is an alien in human form. The guy in the middle wears an alien wrist band that shoots special beams, but he's not an alien. The guy on the right? Just Harrison Ford being Harrison Ford!

I dig tongue-in-cheek flicks. I can even dig really over-the-top creative films. I can only dig a hole for this loser and take the entire reel and toss it away!

The premise: Back in the days of the west, say the late 1800's, an alien craft lands and sends out little predators that look, well, surprisingly like the little alien predators of nearly every sci fi movie. So we have cowboys, that is, bad dudes, mostly, fighting folks from outer space. Gee, what 's wrong with this picture?

Not sure why this film does not work. Could it be the lousy acting? Lousy script? Lousy plot? I want to be more articulate, but sometimes films just don't do what they're supposed to!

Good points? Nice action shots. Nice scenery. Nice computer graphics of aliens.

I'd avoid this mish-mosh of a flick: It's neither a solid western nor a solid sci-fi piece. It's....uh...well...cowboys and aliens!

Bummer!

Upcoming films for Valerie

So, these are a few I plan to see. How about you?

• Exceptionally Loud and Incredibly Close - LOVED the book. Trailer tugs at my emotions already. Hope it's a worthy translation.

• The Descendants Don't worry, David; I have never pined for G. Clooney. Just find him adorable - gay, straight (yea, right), whatever!

Sherlock Holmes

Loved the first one. Loved this one. SOOO clever, engaging. This one a bit darker. Go see it, then we'll talk.

We Bought a Zoo

[This blogster has decided that, for awhile, I'll just post a recommendation - or not - of movies I see, with the hopes that another will also and weigh in as discussion. So my posts shall stay quite brief.]

Matt Damon is in the very small, elite group of actors whose work I will always go see. But it is possible for Matt Damon to make a bleh movie. It is also possible to director, Cameron Crowe.

We Bought a Zoo. Good for you. No drama. No romance. No innovation. Everyone called it in.

Wanted to like it. Bored. Sigh.

Jason Bourne, I need you!

Eating Raoul

Back in 1984, a wonderful film came out that I sadly missed. It's called Eating Raoul. Oh my, what a fun tongue-in-cheek comedy!

What's it about? Well, the picture says it all: A very odd couple find themselves in need of money....so they use that little frying pan to bonk folks on the head, kill them dead (rhyme intended), and take off with their money!

In the style of grand farce, the film deftly maintains a tone of sobriety. The main characters never once appear less than earnest in their merry quest for bodies and money!

A third character, Raoul, provides extra spice to the plotline. He likes the pretty spouse and they do, well, something unusual. Now who will kill whom? Who is "good"? Anyone? Haha.

Great romp if you're in the mood for light fare. By the way, note the pun on "light fare."

Bon appetit!

PS: NOT gruesome like Sweeney Todd. NOT humans with fava beans either.

Warhorse

If you look far and wide at this reviewer's comments on this site, you'll note that he rarely pans a film. I tend to be quite positive, seeing the good in most films, if at all possible. Gotta really stretch to say anything laudatory about this dog (horse?) of a film!

Guess my dear spouse and I were fooled by the hype. See the yellow headline in the picture above? Yeah, it's a Spielberg production. So stupid us, thinking, well, if it's Spielberg, it must be good, run out and see the Warhorse! We left about 5/6 of the way through the film.

What's the film about? No spoiler, of course. It's a two part deal: In the first two thirds of the film, the story is about a boy and his horse (see the pic above?). A boy and his horse? Isn't that sort of a kids' theme? PRECISELY! See, the boy lives on a farm and he loves his horse, and only he can make the wild thing obey. They make eyes at each other, that horse and boy, for at least an hour and a quarter.

Then, when you think you can't take another minute of this maudlin, soapy, unctuous plot, there is a shift in the story: Suddenly, the horse is off in the middle of WWI! Poor horse! Suffering amidst human misery. OH: Don't let the kids see this part...it's gory, gritty, violent, and, well, meaningless.

Guess it's all a question of honesty in advertising. This film should have been touted as follows: Take the kids to a boy-and-his-horse story, but leave before the violence starts!

Haha!

Oh, Steven, you can do so much better! I remember ET, and Jaws, and Schindler's List, and so many other masterpieces.

Will the real Spielberg please stand up?

OK, one redeeming value: There are wonderful outdoor panoramas of landscapes. Yeah, the camera work is good.

Grade of D-.... Don't go near this loser of a flick!

The Artist

Berenice Bejo, the star shown above, is the standout in this very unusual, and very laudable, film. She charms her way into the viewer's heart. She even tap dances like a pro. I'm guessing we'll be seeing a lot more of her. The French love their cutesy actress, witness Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Bejart, and Audrey Tautou.

What's the film about? Essentially, it's a silent that pays homage to the old silent films of the 1920's. Personally, I've never been a fan of silents. I've found the big eyes and exaggerated grimaces way too annoying to get into the genre. Fellow film critics tend to laud the old Chaplin films: I have never seen one in its entirety.

So, given this basic dislike of the silents, it would take quite an amazing silent film to please me. And please me The Artist does! Wow! What a wonderful piece of filmmaking! Of course, with 21st Century 20/20 hindsight, it's not too hard to improve on the original genre. And it does not hurt to have modern cameras "create" the old effect.

The storyline is simple, and I can mention it without giving away anything of substance: An idol in his late 30's, who resembles Douglas Fairbanks to a T, is a great star of the 20's. Will he continue his success in the 30's? A young fan, pretty, delightful, Berenice Bejo, enters Hollywood in a most unlikely way by his side. The two fall in love. Can their love sustain the ups and downs of Hollywood?

There's more, of course, but I won't be a spoiler.

I would divide the film into two parts. The first part is so charming and witty that you wonder if you've ever seen a more adorable, upbeat film. Part two is more dour, quite long, and sort of spoils the mood of the first half.

Overall, what an original, heartwarming piece of filmmaking!

Grade of A+++! RUN out and see this one!