Trolls

A new review from The Movie Snob.

Trolls (C). This animated feature came highly recommended by The Borg Queen, and I did get a couple of chuckles out of it, but on the whole I thought it was just OK. In this fantasy world, trolls are these happy little creatures reminiscent of smurfs, but they’re multicolored (painfully so) and more into glitzy parties and elaborate dance numbers set to pop tunes (like Earth Wind and Fire’s irresistible “September”). Instead of Gargamel, we have a race of ugly beings called Bergens (who actually look like trolls) who want to catch and eat the trolls. Yikes! When a Bergen finds the trolls’ secret village and captures some of the delicious little guys, it’s up to trolls Princess Poppy (voice of Anna Kendrick, The Last Five Years) and gloomy Branch (voice of Justin Timberlake, Trouble With the Curve) to go to the Bergen town and save their friends. Lots of vocal talent turned out for this one, including Zooey Deschanel (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) and John Cleese (Monty Python and the Holy Grail), but I still found it pretty meh.

Our Idiot Brother

A new review from The Movie Snob

Our Idiot Brother (C-).  I really wanted to like this movie, but it just didn’t work out between us.  Paul Rudd (Clueless), whom I usually like in just about anything, plays Ned, an amiable doofus who lives on an organic farm with his horrible girlfriend and who spends a few months in the slammer after he sells marijuana to a uniformed police officer.  When Ned gets out of the pokey, he finds he’s no longer welcome back at the farm and has to go sofa surfing with each of his three sisters in turn.  There’s unhappily married and unbearably frumpy Liz (Emily Mortimer, Match Point), tightly wound and unbearably witchy Miranda (Elizabeth Banks, The 40-Year-Old Virgin), and free-spirited lesbian-but-not-always Natalie (Zooey Deschanel, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy).  Ned’s utter lack of guile and penchant for saying exactly what he thinks causes all sorts of angst for his sisters, and I imagine the actors had fun playing these extreme types.  But it’s not that entertaining, and certainly not very funny, to watch.  And of course, being an R-rated comedy, it’s very and unnecessarily crude and vulgar.  I don’t think I laughed once until they started playing some blooper reels during the closing credits.

Your Highness

The Borg Queen transmits this DVD review.

Your Highness – F

If there were a grade lower than F, I would give it to this awful film that epitomizes much of what is wrong with society today.  The opening, gory scene glorifies and mocks rape, which unfortunately sets the tone for the remainder of the film.   In fact, the whole movie is about the “prince” saving his virgin bride (Zooey Deschanel, Our Idiot Brother) from being raped by some evil wizard – an event that somehow will create a dragon that he can control.   Scene after scene is all about masturbation, rape, molestation, sex with dwarves, bestiality, and women existing solely to please disgusting penis-and-breast-obsessed men – and joking about each and every one of those topics, as if that is okay.  The fact that people even made this movie is appalling.  The fact that people even think these are topics to joke about is disturbing.  Having forgotten the trailer I once saw for this film, I watched it because it features Natalie Portman (Annihilation), who is one of my favorite actresses.  She appears about a third of the way into the film.  Up until then, I was hoping that at least Queen Amadala’s, I mean Ms. Portman’s role would not be tarnished by the plethora of disgusting, indecent scenes plaguing the movie.  Unfortunately, that was not the case.  In the scene wherein Ms. Portman enters the film a bunch of bare-breasted, painted women are cheering on a disgusting fat man controlling some snake-like monster trying to kill the main characters in a fighting ring.  She also appears in a scene in which a minotaur is raping a court squire – and then proceeds to appear in the rest of the movie wherein one man wears the bloody penis of the minotaur around his neck.  This is far and away the most disgusting, awful, offensive movie I have ever seen.  I simply can’t think of enough negative adjectives to describe this movie.   I should get a medal for even finishing it.  When this movie was made, the world became a worse place.  My only hope is that no one else will ever watch it – ever.

(500) Days of Summer

DVD review from Nick at Nite

(500) Days of Summer

500 Days of I am a Little Sad and Bored. I really wanted to see this movie, so much so that I put it off for nearly a year. Reason. None. I think it was destiny. Like our protagonist, I was “destined” to see this movie – well after it had been released to the theaters, on DVD, pay per view, and your local cable provider. Here is my beef. I like quirky. I am even known to tolerate a romantic comedy. However, I am usually not too happy to invest an hour and a half in a movie that is not some sort of an escape. This movie was quirky. It was not romantic comedy. Perhaps it is the inner teen in me lashing out over failed relationships, but I really do not need to see another one on the screen. It is just too true. This is why I hated The War of the Roses and What About Bob? (I know What About Bob? is not a romantic comedy – it still makes me angry). If I want to see something serious, I’ll watch a biopic or catch shark week. If I want to watch people fall out of love, I’ll follow couples to the mall. It is faster and less painful. I give (500) Days a Summer a “B” for bummer.

The Movie Snob’s 2009 Year in Review!

Happy New Year, and welcome to my annual movie round-up. If I saw a movie in the theater in 2009, I consider it fair game for this column, even if it was technically a 2008 release. I saw 62 movies in the theater last year, and these are the most worthy of your attention.

Movie of the Year: My pick is The Hurt Locker, a taut thriller about the Iraq War that has a strong documentary feel to it. The actor who carries the movie, Jeremy Renner, does a heck of a job as a bomb-defusing expert. I think the movie recently came out on DVD, so check it out.

Runner Up: The number 2 spot goes to a 2008 release, The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke. He should have won the Oscar for his moving portrayal of a washed-up professional wrestler. The scenes in which he tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter, played by Evan Rachel Wood, are especially moving, but the whole movie is excellent.

Best Action/Adventure Flick: And my pick for the 3d best movie I saw this year would be District 9, the out-of-nowhere sci-fi movie about a shantytown of extraterrestrials living outside of Johannesburg, South Africa, and the clueless bureaucrat whose job is to push all the aliens into an even more remote concentration camp. I’m crossing my fingers for a sequel to this one! Honorable mention goes to J.J. Abrams’s reboot of the Star Trek franchise, even if he rewrote Trek history in the process.

Best Animated Feature: With the caveat that I haven’t seen The Princess and the Frog yet, I’ll go with the obvious choice of Up, in which a grumpy old man ties enough helium balloons to his house to fly all the way to South America. But except for the awesome opening montage that tells the whole story of the man’s life in just a few minutes, I didn’t think Up was really all that great.

Best Comedy: I’ll stretch this category a teensy bit and pick My One and Only, a winsome little movie that is supposedly based on episodes in the life of George Hamilton during his teen years. The redoubtable Renee Zellweger plays George’s mother, a hapless Southern belle searching for love in all the wrong places. I’m probably exaggerating its merits, but I really liked it at the time. Same goes for Management, a romantic comedy starring Steve Zahn and Jennifer Aniston. It involves a totally impossible romance, but the leads are so likable I just had to like the movie. In the category of crude yet funny, I liked I Love You, Man.

Best Documentary: Let’s go with the obvious choice and pick Disney’s Earth. Who doesn’t love a good nature documentary? I love ’em, and I’ll go ahead and mention Under the Sea 3D as being worthwhile too.

Best Drama: Or maybe it belongs in the comedy category, but either way I really enjoyed Up in the Air starring George Clooney and directed by Jason Reitman. It’s still in the theaters, so get out there and see it! Another movie that straddles the dramedy line is the quirky (500) Days of Summer, starring the quirky yet adorable Zooey Deschanel. While you’re at it, check out the CD she sings on, under the name She & Him. I was also grabbed by the 2008 release The Reader, although I still don’t know quite how I feel about that movie. It’s a strange one.

Best Foreign Film: I don’t think I saw too many foreign films this year, but I liked A Woman in Berlin, about the Russian conquest of Berlin in 1945 as seen through the eyes of one German woman. It was brutal without ever feeling exploitative. I also recommend the book, which I think is still listed as authored by “Anonymous” even though the woman’s identity is known. Another good one was The Class, or Entre les murs, about a French teacher trying to deal with a very fractious and multicultural classroom. Also, Summer Hours, a French movie that’s just a simple little family drama, well-told.

Honorable Mentions: I have a bunch of them. There’s Wendy and Lucy, a little movie about a sad, down-on-her-luck young woman played by Michelle Williams, and her beloved dog. Adventureland is a good little coming-of-age story starring Jesse Eisenberg of Zombieland fame. Moon is a thought-provoking little sci-fi movie. In the Loop is a funny look at the run-up to a fictitious (?) war as seen through the eyes of low-to-mid-level American and British government staffers. The Informant! is a straight movie about a bizarre guy; you just can’t help asking, “Is this really based on a true story? No, really?” Ellen Page scores again in the roller derby movie Whip It. The Coen brothers ask unanswerable questions in A Serious Man. And finally I will mention, based solely on the strength of their visual effects, Disney’s A Christmas Carol and Avatar. See them in 3D, I insist!

First seen on video this year: I haven’t done this before, but I’ll go ahead and recommend a few movies I saw on video this year. The animated feature Bolt is a cute one, about a dog who thinks he has super powers — kind of like a canine Buzz Lightyear. The original version of The Day the Earth Stood Still is still surprisingly good, and the 1963 version of The Haunting is still surprisingly scary. I also enjoyed the little-seen Luke Wilson movie Henry Poole Is Here, the classic Western The Gunfighter starring Gregory Peck, and the classics From Here to Eternity and To Have and Have Not.

So that’s my 2009 in a nutshell. Please post your comments and voice your own opinions!

(500) Days of Summer

A second opinion from Movie Man Mike

(500) Days of Summer (B). This movie gives you a pretty good picture of the highs and lows of relationships. After watching it, I had to see if it was written by a male, and yes, it was (Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber). The movie definitely presents the point of view of Tom Hansen, a young 20-something guy who gave up his dream of being an architect and went to work for a greeting card company. There, he met Summer Finn and fell head-over-heels for her. The story is full of charm and wit. Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Looper) has great comic timing as Tom Hansen and Zooey Deschanel (Yes Man) plays an intriguing and mysterious Summer Finn. It’s this mysterious part that caused me to wonder if the film was written by a male. We never really see what it is that motivated Summer Finn and her actions seem almost too mysterious, as if the writers didn’t quite understand her themselves and didn’t know how to write her character. I have no doubt that some of the mystery is intentional on the writers’ part because there’s a convenient story overlay to explain it, but I also wonder if they based the character on someone they met and couldn’t ever figure out. In any event, it’s an entertaining film and worth the price of admission. If you’ve had a recent breakup, I am not sure this is the film for you, but then again, it might be just the ticket to help you move on.

(500) Days of Summer

From the desk of The Movie Snob

(500) Days of Summer (B+). I enjoyed this independent romantic dramedy starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Stop-Loss) and the ever-quirky Zooey Deschanel (Yes Man). If you’ve seen any trailers or read any reviews, you can’t be too surprised by how the plot unfolds, but I’ll err on the side of caution and put a spoiler alert.

SPOILER ALERT *** SPOILER ALERT *** SPOILER ALERT

The story is not told in chronological order, so you learn really quite quickly that things are not going to work out between the ardent romantic Tom and the doesn’t-believe-in-love Summer. The pleasure lies in watching how it doesn’t work. The tale is told from Tom’s point of view, and we know from the start that he is committed to the belief that happiness is attainable, but only if you find The One You Are Meant To Be With. When Summer takes a job at the greeting-card company Tom works for, it’s easy to see why he decides she’s The One. But she’s honest with him: she’s looking for something casual, nothing serious. He must proceed at his own risk, and he does. To me, the movie generally felt real–the first pangs of infatuation, the giddiness when the early going goes well, the pain of loss are all well handled by Gordon-Levitt. And you can’t really hate Summer when things stop going well. She warned him. And she’s just so darned cute.

Yes Man

From the desk of The Movie Snob

Yes Man (C). I am not the biggest Jim Carrey (Disney’s A Christmas Carol) fan in the world, but I went ahead and saw this movie — even paid full price! As I gathered from the previews, Carrey plays some ordinary, middle-aged schmoe who says “no” to everything until something happens that makes him do a 180° on that policy. Personally, I’m an ordinary, middle-aged schmoe who says “no” to pretty much everything, so I thought I should see what I’m missing. The movie unfolds pretty predictably — almost as predictably as if Carrey had continued to say “no” to everything, in fact. A bright spot is Zooey Deschanel (Elf), not because she turns in a particularly great performance, but just because I think she’s as cute as a button. But she’s also like 20 years younger than Jim Carrey, so that’s kind of hard to believe, maybe even a little creepy. Anyhoo, nothing special about this one, and some crude humor that should make parents take the PG-13 rating seriously. (Fionnula Flanagan of The Others should be ashamed of herself!)

The Happening

New review from Nick at Nite

The Happening

Went to the dollar movie last night. Went without knowing I would get the Tuesday night special where they reduce the price of the movie to fifty cents. Given that it only cost me fifty cents, I’d say I got my money’s worth. This is easily my least favorite of M. Night’s films. The writing is hokey. The acting is less than good. And the climax – the twist – comes too soon. The Happening, which is M. Night’s first rated “R” film, follows a small group of people as they try to escape an unknown menace that is causing people to lose their minds and kill themselves. Marky Mark – without the funky bunch – plays a school science teacher that is trying to figure out what is going on using the scientific method. Zooey – the cute girl from Elf – plays Marky Mark’s wife. A few other characters matter, but not enough to get mentioned. This is not a bad movie. It would be better as a short. There is just not much to the story. I will give M. Night a pass on this one because I like his other stuff so much. I expect more from him. I give this movie a “C.”

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; The Interpreter

From the desk of The Movie Snob:

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (B-). Unless you are a fan of Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker series of books, I cannot imagine that you would at all like this movie. I was a fan, way back when, and I would say that I appreciated the effort that went into the project more than I enjoyed the result. The plot is thin, just as it was in the books. Arthur Dent, a British everyman, is fighting to keep his house from getting bulldozed for highway construction. Little does he or any other Earthling know, that very day the entire Earth is also slated to be demolished for the construction of a galactic bypass, whatever that is. But Arthur lucks out—his friend Ford Prefect is actually an alien, and together they hitch a ride on one of the spaceships carrying out the demolition order. From there they experience a series of improbable adventures involving among other things, a fantastic spaceship that has been stolen by the President of the Galaxy, a depressed robot named Marvin, and a legendary planet that just might contain the key to life, the universe, and everything. I remember the book and its first sequel, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, as being extremely clever and funny, but their absurdist humor is very hard to translate to the big screen. This is probably about as well as it could be done, but it made me smile more than it made me laugh.  On the plus side, it does have Zooey Deschanel (Elf) in it….

The Interpreter (C+). Nicole Kidman (Aquaman) plays Silvia Broome, an emotionally scarred woman from Africa who works as a translator for the United Nations. Sean Penn (Fast Times at Ridgemont High) plays Tobin Keller, an emotionally scarred agent in the U.S. Secret Service. Their paths cross when, a few days before an African dictator is to arrive in New York to address the U.N. in person, Silvia overhears a conversation suggesting that an assassination attempt is in the works. Keller is assigned to the case, he quickly gauges that Silvia’s not telling the whole truth, and the sparks fly. Or at least they are supposed to. The movie didn’t really work for me. I guess the thriller aspect of the movie was reasonably well-plotted and acted, but the fact that the assassination target is clearly a brutal dictator and possibly complicit in genocide weakens the tension. Worse, I found the scenes in which Silvia and Tobin are supposed to forge their inevitable bond strained, if not downright painful. Still, although saddled with clunky dialogue in those scenes, the stars turn in decent performances, and Nicole looks fabulous. (For a humorously scathing review of this flick, click here.) I’m already looking forward to Bewitched, and not because Will Ferrell is in it.

Freaky Friday; Elf

From the desk of The Movie Snob:

Freaky Friday. (B+) I saw this movie with, and at the instigation of, my younger cousin Diane. From this fact, you might reasonably infer that Diane is about 13, but in reality she is a young-hearted 27. Still, I remembered reading good reviews back when this flick first came out, and I have never seen the original, so I was game for it. It was indeed a very good movie, and although I suppose it was aimed at the young-adolescent crowd I found plenty to enjoy. Jamie Lee Curtis (Knives Out) plays a stretched-too-thin mother of two who is just a couple of days from getting married, and Lindsay Lohan (A Prairie Home Companion) is her unhappy fifteenish daughter. They magically switch bodies, and each has to cope with the other’s various crises while simultaneously trying to figure out how to switch back. Curtis was rightly praised for her portrayal of a teenager trapped in a middle-aged woman’s body, but I thought Lohan also gave a fine performance, especially in one hilarious scene near the end. If you missed it in the theaters, check it out on video.

Elf. (C+) I must regretfully dissent from the more strongly positive reviews previously posted by my brethren on The Movie Court. This flick started out amusingly enough as Will Ferrell (Blades of Glory) plays a human being raised by elves in Santa’s workshop at the North Pole, and I liked the homages to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Then Ferrell sets off for the Big Apple to find his real father, a crusty hardcase played by James Caan (The Godfather). Once Ferrell got to New York, his elf-out-of-water antics wore on me pretty quickly, and in the last thirty minutes or so the movie tries to evoke all sorts of holiday cheer without really earning it. On the plus side, Zooey Deschanel ((500) Days of Summer) is cute, and I was also glad to see Bob Newhart (Legally Blonde 2) in action as the head elf who is also Ferrell’s foster father. Harmless enough diversion, but frankly you’d probably be better off watching A Christmas Story for the umpteenth time.

Elf

A review from new Court member Movie Man Mike:

Elf (B+)

I went to this movie not expecting much. I thought it was going to be one of those movies filled with school yard humor and offensive bodily noises. I was pleasantly surprised. The cast is really quite colorful, with Ed Asner (TV’s The Mary Tyler Moore Show) in the role of Santa Clause, Bob Newhart (Legally Blonde 2) in the role of Papa Elf, James Caan (Mickey Blue Eyes) in the role of the father, and Mary Steenburgen (Stepbrothers) as the wife to Caan. Will (The LEGO Movie) Ferrell’s portrayal of a human raised as an North Pole Elf, who is suddenly thrust into the midst of humanity as he seeks his origins, makes for some great comedy. Zooey Deschanel (Our Idiot Brother), a Christina Applegate look-alike, plays the love interest of Ferrell with convincing disinterest. This cute little story started out like a Christmas classic, then it switched gears and went into its sitcom mode, and it finished a bit like a Christmas classic–so much so that it brought a tear to my eye. I recommend it for anyone looking for a lighthearted, funny film.

All the Real Girls

From The Movie Snob.

All the Real Girls. (B-) This romance is set in a tiny town somewhere in flyover country. Paul (Paul Schneider, Elizabethtown) is an amiable slacker in his early 20’s who spends all his time working on trucks, goofing off with his guy friends, and sleeping with (and then alienating) every single woman in town. The standing order of things is upset when Noel, the younger sister of his best friend, moves back to town after being away at a boarding school for several years, and Paul quickly falls in love for the first time in his life. The movie plods a little bit, and there are a couple of unnecessary arty montages, but there are enough twists and turns to keep it generally interesting. Zooey Deschanel ((500) Days of Summer), who I thought was very good in small parts in The Good Girl and the lame Tim Allen vehicle Big Trouble, doesn’t quite pull off the pivotal lead role of Noel, but still and all I thought this was a decent movie.

Shanghai Nights; Old School; The Good Girl

These reviews are courtesy of John. John is the oldest member of our Movie Court, and we sometimes affectionately refer to him as “The Grade Inflater.” But he was surprisingly rough on this latest batch of movies….

Shanghai Knights. (C+) The follow-up to the surprisingly entertaining Shanghai Noon, starring Jackie Chan (Rush Hour) and Owen Wilson. This time, they’re in England chasing down the . . . yada yada yada. Mildly amusing but more of the same. I like Owen Wilson (ex-boyfriend in Meet The Parents) enough to make it worth a matinee, but am uncomfortable making a recommendation.

Old School. (B) I laughed out loud a few times, mostly at Will (Talladega Nights) Ferrell’s idiotic hijinks. There was enough funny stuff to keep me entertained and at least a semblance of a plot, albeit completely unrealistic, to officially qualify it as a top-notch guy flick, for what that’s worth. A relative lack of the gross-out Austin Powers Goldmember-type humor was a positive.

The Good Girl. (D+) I rented what I believed to be some basic chick-flick feel-good movies. I got this one wrong (maybe I’ll actually read the box for a description of the movie next time). Jennifer Aniston (The Switch) plays a hapless check-out girl at a generic dept. store who’s discontent with her bland life. John C. Reilly (Chicago) plays the likeable but simple underachieving devoted husband. Jennifer meets a Holden Caulfield wanna-be and her life becomes even more of a struggle. Aniston is a reasonably good, as is Reilly, but the movie is just a depressing bag of turmoil (works well with geraniums). I thought it sucked, frankly, though there were a few humorous scenes involving a female co-worker (Zooey Deschanel, The Happening).

Finally, with due respect to the Queen, I liked Undercover Brother. No way that’s an F. I agree fully with the One Hour Photo review.