Jane Eyre

Movie Man Mike gives us his take on a new release

Jane Eyre (B). This 2011 film left me unfulfilled. Don’t get me wrong, I love Judi Dench, and she’s the reason I went to see this film in the first place. Her performance was spot-on, but certainly not the centerpiece of the film. I enjoyed the rich dialogue and the head-strong, principled character of Jane Eyre, played by Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland). I also enjoyed the performance of Michael Fassbender (Inglourious Basterds) as Edward Rochester. All-in-all I couldn’t help but to wonder if they’d cut some essential parts of Charlotte Bronte’s story from the film because I never really felt the characters’ motives as determined from their history, nor did I feel that the ending resolved the conflicts within them in a meaningful way. I was also perplexed by Eyre’s abrupt departure from the presence of St. John Rivers upon his insistence that Ms. Eyre should marry him and go to India with him. That scene didn’t ring true to her character, and we don’t really know enough about Mr. Rivers at that point to understand his motives other than him seeing Ms. Eyre as a good catch. I found this film captivating, but it left me unfulfilled.

The Death of Adam (book review)

Book review from The Movie Snob

The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought, by Marilynne Robinson (1998). Robinson was previously known to me only for a couple of acclaimed novels—Housekeeping, about a couple of orphaned sisters who are cared for by their odd hobo aunt, and Gilead, which is written as a long letter by an elderly Protestant minister to his very young son. She is a singular writer, and these essays reveal her as a singular thinker too. The main theme of these essays seems to be that John Calvin—yes, the founder of the school of Christian thought that goes by the name Calvinism—was neither the ruthless killjoy nor the proto-founder of capitalism that history generally makes him out to be. And it seems that Robinson herself is both a serious Calvinist and a serious liberal. It seems like an odd combination, but it makes for interesting reading. And it half makes me want to actually seek out and open Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion.

Battle: Los Angeles

A new review from Nick at Nite

Battle: Los Angeles

It has been years since I went to a movie on opening night. My life has conspired to keep me away from the theater. So it was a little miracle that I was able to go on opening night to see Battle: Los Angeles. I was only a little disappointed. Likely because I was looking forward to it a little too much. This is a fine popcorn film. It is not too original. It is not particularly clever. It is a little clichéd. It is fun. Stuff blows up. A city is destroyed. The good guys win. Basically, a bunch of mean, nasty, water-based aliens start attacking us (see Independence Day, SkyLine, E.T., Bees, etc …) and a group of hardened U.S. Marines must come to our rescue (Aliens, Predator, Heartbreak Ridge, Wall Street, etc …). Do not get too attached to any character. Do buy popcorn. Do feel a little nauseated by the herky, jerky camera work (Cloverfield).

I give it an “A.”

The Last Lions

From the desk of The Movie Snob

The Last Lions (B). Jeremy Irons (Dungeons & Dragons) narrates this National Geographic documentary about some wild lions in Africa. It focuses on a lionness dubbed Ma di Tau. In the opening segment of the movie, her mate is killed by an encroaching pride of lions wanting their territory, and she flees with her three young cubs. Survival is always in doubt as she tries to scratch out an existence in a swamp that also becomes home to a large herd of dangerous buffalo. It is rated PG with good reason, because there are plenty of bloody fights, and not all of the cubs survive. And the narration is way over the top in its anthropomorphization of the lions; much less would have been much better. But the movie’s point is both good and shocking: in the last 50 years, the population of wild lions in Africa has dropped from 450,000 to 20,000, so the species is far down the road to extinction. I hope that this film helps draw attention to that sad fact.

Lord of the Dance in 3D

New review from The Movie Snob

Lord of the Dance in 3D (B). Okay, I’ve been a big fan of Irish music and dance since visiting the Emerald Isle a few years ago, but this show is just a bit over the top. As everyone knows, it stars a hammy fellow named Michael Flatley, and he apparently was the guy who had the inspiration to make a rock-n-roll stage show out of traditional Irish music and dance some 15 years ago or so. This “concert film” of his show Lord of the Dance is actually a composite film shot during four different shows, but apparently most of the footage came from a show in Dublin. Anyhoo, the music and the dance are fun, and there’s no question Flatley can still dance even though he’s over 50. But “cheesy” doesn’t begin to describe this show. There’s a goofy gal in a jester outfit who shows up from time to time, mugging for the camera and pretending to play a recorder. There’s a plot of sorts about some evil dancers and some good ones (led by Flatley, of course). There’s a wholesome blond woman and a seductive brunette, and a troop of women dancers behind them that sometimes do tap and sometimes do more ballet-type things. In the middle of a big tap routine by the ladies, they unexpectedly and distractingly rip off their dresses and finish the number in outfits more like you’d see on “Dancing with the Stars,” i.e., barely anything there. The whole show seems more sexed-up and Vegas-cheesy than the live “Riverdance” show I saw a couple of months ago. But I can’t deny, I still enjoyed it pretty well.

Paul

A new review from The Movie Snob

Paul (B). Setting aside the extensive foul language, this is an amiable buddy/road-trip/chase movie in which one of the parties being chased happens to be an alien named Paul. Two nerdy Brits (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost from Shaun of the Dead) are vacationing in America, and after attending a comic-book convention in San Diego they set out in a huge RV to see the great UFO locations of the American West. Lo and behold, they encounter an actual alien in the desert, and although he looks pretty much like you’d expect if you’ve seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind, personality-wise he’s a slacker type like the Seth Rogen character in Knocked Up. (He also happens to be voiced by Seth Rogen (Knocked Up).) Government agents led by Jason Bateman (Hancock) are in hot pursuit, but the trio of fugitives has time to pick up a winsome fundamentalist Christian named Ruth (Kristen Wiig, Whip It) and an older woman named Tara (Blythe Danner, Gwyneth Paltrow’s mom). I enjoyed it, but the movie unnecessarily dumps scorn on fundamentalist Christians, not just for being creationists but seemingly for believing in God at all.

Carmen 3D

From the desk of The Movie Snob

Carmen 3D (A-). I guess I am earning my “snob” stripes with this one. I have never been to the opera, and I don’t know anything about it. But like everybody else, I know some of the tunes from Carmen (especially from that episode of Gilligan’s Island involving the musical version of Hamlet). So I figured this filmed performance of Carmen would be a good way to cut my teeth on opera. It was a good guess. I really enjoyed it. The cameras must have been pretty darned close to capture so much of the action, and with the help of the subtitles I had no trouble following what was going on. Actually, it is not too difficult a story to follow: a young man named Don Jose falls madly in love with the bewitching gypsy woman Carmen. Somewhat later, so does the dashing bullfighter Escamillo. Consequences ensue. I am not qualified to comment on the quality of the singing, but it sounded great to me. Of course, 3 hours is a long time; they could have cut the 20-minute intermission down some and shaved that time off the end. But like I say, I really enjoyed it, even if I did have that darned toreador song stuck in my head for the rest of the day….

The Big Uneasy

A new review from The Movie Snob

The Big Uneasy (B-). This documentary about the Hurricane Katrina disaster was written and directed by Harry Shearer (This Is Spinal Tap). I didn’t know that when I showed up at the movie theater, so I was afraid I had accidentally signed up for some fringe left-wing diatribe. Well, it is a diatribe, but the target isn’t FEMA or even George W. Bush—it’s the Army Corps of Engineers. According to Shearer and a small handful of people who investigated the causes of the disaster, the terrible flooding of New Orleans was not caused by a freak storm that would have overwhelmed any civil-engineering defenses (which was apparently the Corps’s position). The cause, according to these folks, was inadequate civil engineering and sheer incompetence on the part of the Corps. Because of that incompetence, the levees were structurally inadequate and gave way under pressures that properly built levees would have contained. There’s also a lot of complaint about a big ditch called MRGO, which was built for poorly explained reasons and turned out to be nearly useless and even dangerous by the time it was finished. Anyhoo, an interesting enough film, but ultimately I didn’t quite understand how all the pieces fit together.

Red Riding Hood

The Borg Queen transmits a review of a new release

Red Riding Hood – D

After seeing the promotion for this movie on American Idol, I was intrigued and decided to go see this moving starring Amanda Seyfried, whom I have liked ever since seeing Mamma Mia! Yes, the marketing ploy worked on me, I’m afraid to say. There were a number of familiar faces in this film, including Gary Oldman (Batman Begins), Virginia Madsen (The Astronaut Farmer), and Lukas Haas (Inception). And the acting was fine, but the story itself was rather bland. It is about a medieval village that has made a deal with a werewolf wherein the villagers would sacrifice an animal to appease the wolf so that it will not kill any humans. But, suddenly the wolf begins to attack again. The rest of the movie is about trying to figure out who the wolf is, why it is attacking now, and why the wolf has a fondness for Valerie—Amanda Seyfried’s character. A love triangle is also thrown into the mix, with Valerie in love with one man, but her parents have arranged for her to marry another man of more means. The movie is dark, but not really scary or particularly thrilling. I also did not find it too difficult to figure out who the wolf was, so I was not terribly surprised by the ending either. I give the movie some props for at least trying to be different, and I still like Amanda Seyfried. So, I’d say perhaps skip this one in the theaters, and wait for it on Netflix. It’d be better for a night in.

Gnomeo & Juliet

A new review just in from The Borg Queen

Gnomeo & Juliet – F

My little drone and I were having a “girls’ night out” and decided to go see a movie. I had already endured the Justin Bieber movie, which was not bad, but I was not up for watching that again. So, the only thing out at the time that was child friendly was this animated flick. I’m probably the only one in the universe to feel this way, but I just cannot stand the Romeo and Juliet story. It brings up bad high-school memories of trying to figure out what the heck Shakespeare was saying, and the story has been told so many times over, and over, and over again. Enough already. Anyhow, this is yet another reincarnation of the Romeo and Juliet story. But this time, it was a story about garden gnomes that come to life while the human owners of the houses are away during the day and asleep at night. The gnomes are animated to look like gnomes, so they don’t have any animated cuteness to them—they are plaster-looking gnomes, clinking around as they move. To put it mildly, I found them utterly creepy and not cute or amusing in the slightest. The story is basically the same: One yard of gnomes is blue and hates the neighboring yard of red gnomes—but the red girl gnome and the boy blue gnome fall in love at first sight, and the usual brouhaha ensues. The only thing that got me through this movie was the fact that I was in a dine-in theater and could order a couple of drinks. Otherwise, I was just waiting for the movie to end. My little drone, for some unknown reason, absolutely loved this movie and wants to see it again. I’m convinced that it is just because she knows how much I loathed it, and she thinks it is funny to want to watch it again . . . at least, that is what I’m telling myself. For me, this made my “one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen” list.

Rango

A new movie review from Movie Man Mike

Rango. (C) My expectations may have been too high for this film. It does star the voice of Johnny Depp (Public Enemies), after all. The story is a good one and it has a good message to convey to the kiddos. There’s an obvious attempt on the writers’ part to cross-market this to older and younger audiences. There are certainly “adult” jokes and language far too complex to be understood or followed by the kids. But then there is writing clearly meant to appeal to the toddler crowd as well. Overall, however, the jokes fell flat. I laughed only a few times, but wanted to laugh more. I had trouble discerning what animals all of the characters were supposed to be and I certainly question whether a young child would know what all the animals were. Perhaps the writers could have worked those explanations into the dialogue a little better. At the end of the movie, I was disappointed and felt that I had wasted my time and money, and I rarely feel that way about a film.

Barney’s Version

A new review from The Movie Snob

Barney’s Version (B). I sort of wanted to see this movie anyway because it features the lovely Rosamund Pike (An Education), and then Paul Giamatti (Sideways) won a Goldon Globe for his performance as Barney Panofsky, so I decided to go ahead and see it. It’s a pretty decent movie about a not-particularly-likeable guy. At the movie’s start, we learn that Barney is a sad older guy who’s apparently given to calling his remarried ex-wife Miriam in the middle of the night and saying rude things to her new husband. Most of the rest of the movie is a flashback, showing us how Barney reached this sad pass. Back in the 70s he was hanging out in Rome with some free-spirited artistic types, but somehow he wound up with a career producing a horrible Canadian soap opera. He smokes cigars, and he drinks too much. And a brief encounter with a detective early in the film tells us, intriguingly, that he is a suspect in a long-unsolved murder. But I have to say, although Giamatti gives his customary fine performance, Barney still came off as a bit of a cipher to me. Why would an elegant beauty like Miriam (played by Pike) fall for a schlubby, hockey-obsessed quasi-alcoholic like Barney? I’m not sure I get it.

Fifty Dead Men Walking

Movie Man Mike favors us with a DVD review

Fifty Dead Men Walking. (B) This was a movie I heard about or read about somewhere and put on my “to see” list. I now recommend that you do so as well. I will warn you that you will probably want to watch with subtitles turned on (assuming you have that option in your viewing format). The sound quality was not ideal (and kept it from being a B+), but more importantly, it’s set in Ireland and—get this—the actors speak with those silly accents that you can hardly understand. The story is a good one. It takes place in the 1980’s during the conflicts between the Irish Republican Army and Great Britain. Main character Martin (Jim Sturgess,  Across the Universe) is an up-and-comer in the IRA. The British police (represented by Ben Kingsley, Elegy) recruit Martin to provide intelligence on the bombing plans of the IRA. Things get very sticky for Martin as he advances up the ranks in the IRA while the Brits continue to press him for more information. The plot is exhilarating and well worth the time to watch. The story takes on a greater significance when it is revealed at the end that it is based upon truth and the main character is a real person.

Cedar Rapids

From the desk of The Movie Snob

Cedar Rapids (B). This movie has sort of a 40-Year-Old Virgin vibe to it. Ed Helms (The Hangover) plays Tim Lippe, an insurance salesman from the tiny town of Brown Valley, Wis. Although not as sheltered as Steve Carell’s Andy Stitzer was, Tim is still a bit of a fish out of water when he has to go represent his employer at an insurance-industry convention in the “big city” of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Some amusing moments ensue as he bonds with the buffoonish Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly, Chicago), the buttoned-down Ron Wilkes (Isiah Whitlock, Jr., TV’s The Wire), and the up-for-anything Joan Ostrowski-Fox (Anne Heche, Birth). The movie is unnecessarily vulgar (thus the R rating), but I still fairly enjoyed it. (The 87-minute running time didn’t hurt.) And am I crazy, or is Anne Heche really kind of attractive, in an unglamorous, unHollywood sort of way?