Movie Reviews – June & July 2008

About this set of reviews. The first thing you’ll notice is that this blog entry is for two months worth of movies and not one. I have been neglecting my duties as a blogster in not writing these reviews as I went along. So a lot of these will be simple summaries and not reviews per se. It’s also possible that some of the movies we saw in the theater I haven’t reviewed because I wasn’t being careful about recording them in this blog. I have a record of the Netflix movies we watched.

Here is what we saw:

Here are my reviews:

Juno

Juno, a slightly alienated teenage girl, decides to have sex with her nerdy boyfriend. Of course she gets pregnant and doesn’t have much direction. She decides to give the baby up to a yuppie couple, but it’s obvious that their marriage has problems. Juno was a very likable character and so the movie gets a fairly good rating.

Netflix – 3 stars

August Rush

A Juilliard trained concert cellist and a rock musician meet, fall in love, have a one night stand, and conceive a child. The girl’s father doesn’t want her to have anything to do with the rock musician, and makes her believe the baby was stillborn. The baby’s father never did know there was a baby. They both love each other and remember their time together fondly. The boy, raised in an orphanage, believes that he will someday find his parents. In school he exhibits tremendous musical talent and is, himself, sent to Juilliard. He writes a symphony and the school decides to perform it in Central Park in New York. This is exactly the neighborhood where the two parents first met and fell in love. The girl has not performed in many years but is chosen to be on the same program that her unknown son is going to present his symphony. In the meantime the boy has run away and fallen in with a “Fagan” type character who puts talented runaways on street corners to earn money by busking. For some reason the father is also in town, sees the girl’s name on the poster for the concert, and tries to meet her. He has also unknowingly run into his son playing in the park. They all get together again in the end. Hurray. Kind of a sweet movie.

Netflix – 3 stars

Copying Beethoven

In the early 1800s a talented musical student is sent to transcribe Beethoven’s works when all her predecessors have been run off by him. Apparently he is terrible to work for. She doesn’t put up with this guff. As he sinks deeper into deafness and as the deadline for the premiere approaches she gets the work done. But Beethoven insists he is going to act as the conductor of the concert. By this time he is so deaf that there’s no way he can actually do it. In the end he realizes this and while he has had a fight with the young woman, he asks her to help him. She sits in front of him below the level of the musicians and is therefore unobserved by the audience and conducts the orchestra through Beethoven himself who is visible. This is a nice period Costume drama.

Netflix – 3 stars

The Homes of Frank Lloyd Wright

While the title of this video is not incorrect it gives the viewer a false impression of what this show was about. One would think it is about all the wonderful houses that Frank Lloyd Wright designed. In fact it is about the two or three houses that he designed for himself. This is one episode of the “America’s Castles” documentary series. It was a bit of a disappointment because they didn’t show the houses that I wanted them to show; the Robie House, the Dana/Thomas House, or the Meyer/May house. But it was kind of interesting in a low-key way.

Netflix – 3 stars

Fracture

A rich guy discovers that his wife has been cheating on him with a police detective. He murders her, pretends he is holed up in his house creating a hostage like situation, and when the detective comes to do the negotiations, the murderer pulls a couple of brilliant plot twists which are not fully revealed until the end of the movie. He willingly goes to jail but insists on defending himself at trial. When the detective is on the stand he accuses him of having had an affair with his wife and of altering the evidence because of it. the defendant is acquitted. After this there are a couple of other plot twists. The movie is tense and exciting and I liked it quite a bit.

Netflix – 3 stars

Origin of the Rings

This was a documentary supposedly about J.R.R. Tolkien and his writing of the Lord of the Rings. Yes, it did cover those topics but it did so in about 10 minutes. The rest of the show was junk filler. Most of that was some team doing computerized graphics of the main characters, and not very well at that. When you discover that the recent trilogy was made about the same time as this documentary but had not been screened by anyone connected with the documentary, the show becomes doubly bad.

Netflix – 2 stars

The Notebook

An old man reads a book to a lady with Alzheimer’s who lives in the same care facility as he does. It turns out it is some sort of diary and it seems clear that the woman in the book is the woman who is being read to. What isn’t clear is who wrote the diary. She had two loves in her life and the book could have been written by either one of them. The man who is reading it is almost certainly one of the two characters but you never know exactly which one he might be. And until the end you don’t know which of the two loves she chooses. Very heart warming.

Netflix – 3 stars

Wall-E

Pixar never stops making great movies, except Cars. Even Cars wasn’t too bad. This movie is set a couple of hundred years in the future. Wall-E is the last operational trash compacting robot on Earth. All the people have left centuries before, having polluted Earth to such a point that it was no longer livable there. They seem to live in some sort of huge luxury spaceship quite a distance from their home planet. All their needs are taken care of and they have allowed themselves to become fat and lazy. From time to time the spaceship sends a probe back to Earth to see if it is safe to return. Apparently they will know this when they find plants living there again. Coincidentally, Wall-E has run across one such plant in his scavenging. From time to time he picks up items of interest but since he is a robot he does things like throw the diamond ring away and keep the velvet case. The plant is a one-off deal. When the probe arrives at Earth it eventually discovers Wall-E’s plant and makes a beeline back to the spaceship. Wall-E tags along but is sadly out of date compared to the robots from 400 years into the future. The animation is complex and exquisite. The fact that the movie has the predictable happy ending makes no difference.

Theater – 4 stars

PU-239

Our hero, a poor Russian, works in a weapons grade plutonium processing plant and when there is a problem he receives a massive dose of radiation. He is told that he received a hundred rems but in fact he has received 10 times that. It is clearly a fatal dose and he only has a few days to live. When he goes back to the factory to try and make some provision for his wife and son he is told that he caused the accident and that there will be no help forthcoming. In desperation, he steals a flask of plutonium and heads to Moscow. In the meantime we have another story line developing in Moscow itself. Three low grade hoodlums have screwed up and put the strong arm the wrong shop owner. They have caused a lot of damage and the gangster who protects the shop owner wants revenge. They don’t work for this guy though, they work for his competitor. So their boss demands that they repay the money that it’s going to cost to fix up the shop. They only have a couple of days to do it and then they’re going to get knocked off. Our hero shows up in Moscow at this time and says that he has the plutonium for sale. From then on it is kind of a sad comedy of errors. This is a lot like the ineptitude portrayed in “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels”. Everything is kind of gray and hopeless here, but I have to say I liked the movie

Netflix – 3 stars

Kit Kittredge

While we were on our vacation in Racine we took Rachel to see this movie. It had the same sort of feel as the Nancy Drew movie we saw a couple months ago. Kit Kittredge is a product of the American girls doll series. The movie is set in the Depression and when Kit’s father loses his job the family is in jeopardy of losing their home. The father goes out of town to find work and the mother takes in boarders in order to make ends meet. There are many hobos at this time and people generally seem unsympathetic towards them. When a series of robberies occurs, Kit’s friend is accused of having committed them. Kit has been paying attention to clues that the police department hasn’t, and knows her friend can’t have done it. Of course she solves the crime, writes the story, and is a publishing success. I’m not in the age group this movie was directed at, but I have to say I thought it was kind of sweet and it was fun to watch as well.

Theater – 3 stars

Hancock

Hancock is a superhero that seems to have fallen on hard times. It’s like he just doesn’t care. He still saves people and that kind of thing but often he ends up causing more damage than if he had just left the situation alone. But one day when he saves a man from having a train crash into him, the man decides that he is going to help Hancock polish up his image. As a PR man he starts giving Hancock hints about how he might do things better. For instance, he should tell the police who he is assisting that they are doing a good job. The man invites Hancock to dinner and there turns out to be some sort of strange chemistry going on between Hancock and the man’s wife. People are so mad at Hancock for the stunts that he pulls, that he voluntarily submits to going to prison. It isn’t long however before the officials need Hancock to help them out with a particular crime. Hancock saves the day of course but the business with the wife needs to be resolved. It is and with a clever little twist.

Theater – 3 stars

Hogfather

This is the first movie I’ve seen that tries to jump on the Harry Potter bandwagon; the background music, the general set dressing, and the outrageous characters. Loosely, someone wants to have Santa Claus murdered. In this universe however he is called the Hogfather. The plot to get the job done is far-fetched and the acting is pretty bad. This was a two-part movie but we only made it to the intermission.

Netflix – 2 stars

I’m Not There

This movie sort of tells the story of different chapters of Bob Dylan’s life. He is portrayed by five or six different actors and each of their sections deals with a different period of his life. The sections weave in and out of each other so there are flashbacks and other cinematic devices. The funny thing is, it isn’t really Bob Dylan’s life that they are acting. Each actor portrays a character who is like Bob Dylan but has a different name in each segment. A little black kid plays him when he is young and Kate Blanchet even plays him at one point. Since they do not call the main character Bob Dylan, you really don’t know how accurate each section is. Is it really biographical or is it just fiction? I really wanted to like this movie, but it was kind of a hard slog.

Netflix – 2 stars

Fool’s Gold

Fools Gold is a reworking of The Deep. A young married couple is hunting treasure in the Caribbean. What seemed exciting at first has become humdrum for the wife and she is in the process of divorcing the man. In fact the divorce actually does become final. But a last-minute find of treasure brings them back together in a race with the bad guys to find the sunken galleon. Also in the race is a millionaire who backs them, his ditzy but delightful daughter, and the rap star/gangsta who owns the island where the wreck is and his two goons. Nothing too earthshaking in this movie, a little adventure and a little romance.

Netflix – 3 stars

In Bruges

This show reminded me of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels too. Two Irish hitman are sent to Bruges by their boss to hide out after one of them has killed a small boy in one of his hits. The boss, who was delighted with Bruges when he was a boy has sent them there as kind of a treat. The assassin, Ray, hates Bruges. In fact he thinks it’s hell on earth. The plot starts to thicken about two thirds of the way through. There is lots of bungling because, for the most part, these are not particularly intelligent people. This is pretty gory, so be forewarned.

Netflix – 3 stars

10,000 BC

The plot of 10,000 BC is more or less the same as Apocalypto. Our hero is a stone age hunter and the son of the chief who had gone off many years previously to try and save the tribe. Unfortunately, most of them think the chief abandoned them. A prophesy comes true and the tribe is attacked by four-legged demons (horsemen). The men are captured and marched back to “civilization” where they will be slaves building a pyramid. Our hero and a couple of the remaining hunters who did not get captured give chase and have adventures during the trek. When they arrive at the city they create a rebellion and save the day. It was a little cheesy. There were giant carniverous birds, a saber tooth tiger the size of a rhino and mammoths the size of a brontosaurus. This movie was kinda corny but I liked it anyway. It was much better than I thought it was going to be.

Netflix – 3 stars

Penelope

Christina Ricci plays Penelope, a girl the suffers the burden of a curse put on her third great grandfather. After the grandfather slights a serving girl in his household, the girl’s mother, a witch, condemns the man’s first born female descendant to be born with the face of a pig. All his heirs were men till the current generation. Penelope’s mother is obsessed with breaking the curse. She keeps Penelope a prisoner in the house and arranges matches with suitable young blue bloods, because to marry one of her own kind is to break the curse. All run away shreaking. One doesn’t run away but he refuses to marry her because of personal reasons. She thinks he is like all the others but it is a different matter entirely. There is a bit of a surprise and the movie ends happily. This isn’t a big movie but it was nice.

Netflix – 3 stars