Yeah, digital hand held definitely offered some great shots that you wouldn't have gotten otherwise. But darn was that jogging camera scene a mistake.

Funny! We're carrying on one conversation in two separate threads. The jogging scene may have been a mistake. Maybe. It's not a perfect film but I don't believe it reached for the same heights as The Great Movies. Whatever the hell they are and whatever the hell I know. Berardinelli said ***1/2 and that's what I would have typed if I'd been in his position.

The Social Network (2010):
A dramatic telling of the ownership and the rights of Facebook which was the result of a large boom of a social mediasite created by a Harvard grads in the early 2000s; their success would lead to a fallout of money, fame and women. All of the performances are very good, but it's Andrew Garfield who leaves the biggest impression on the audience. You follow this young kid and feel his emotion as this trail of success would lead to sorrow. Armie Hammer is very good playing both roles of the Winklevoss twins, who believe that Facebook was their original idea that was stolen. Jessie Eisenberg is receives the main praise as Zuckerberg, one half of the owners of Facebook. He's more along the side of good veering to very good; I felt his performance was more one note with a help of a great screenplan by Sorkin. If this movie isn't four stars, then it's damn near close to it. 3.5*/4*

Black Swan

It finally made it up my way, and all I can say is that this is a hell of a film. Natalie Portman, playing a dancer cast in the lead role of a ballet company's production of Swan Lake, finds that just as in the ballet, the light and dark sides of her personality begin to clash with each other...and her increasing paranoia makes it harder and harder to keep a grip on reality and sanity.

This is a claustrophobic film through and through, and Portman really throws herself into her role, playing a part that is equally dark and light, requiring major shifts in tone throughout. She pulls it off fantastically, and she's definitely a shoo-in for a Best Actress nomination (she may win the damn thing outright).

I would compare Black Swan to the best work of Roman Polanski. Additionally, I think Black Swan is an interesting companion piece to The Wrestler. Darren Aronofsky has established himself as one of the finest filmmakers of his generation, and I can't wait to see what he does next.

I'll give it this much: it provoked me with its steadfast refusal to provoke much of anything, which is a new moviegoing experience for me.

I did admire this sequence.

I was prepared to evaluate the film as a collection of images designed not necessarily to have a unified point, but to throw sparks from one another. That said, I simply found too many images to be inert. This could be refined down to one hell of an abstract short film.

I don't think it's either one of those things. It does raise the theme of misogyny, but to an effect that either doesn't materialize or is too obtuse to achieve much of anything.

There is also something to be said for movies that refuse to stake out a cogent position, but instead present conflicting views in the hopes of having something for everyone. This approach can work. It does work in movies ranging from Patton to The Dark Knight. But, again, the evidence for any one viewpoint is so scant in Antichrist that it didn't mean much to me.

I posted my review elsewhere, and one particular respondent (who apparently liked the movie but preferred to take issue with me as a person rather than my review) suggested that I read a lengthy essay that decodes the imagery and references of Antichrist. I ignored it for a couple reasons--one being that I just don't give enough of a crap, and two being my own custom version of Ebert's rule: if you have to do lengthy research to get what a movie is supposed to symbolize, it didn't.

It also fascinates me that in spite of mostly agreeing with the points I've raised, you view them to be positives. An object lesson in the uniqueness of cinematic priorities and the meaning that individuals make from movies.

Ghost Writer

This is a clever thriller that doesn't reinvent the wheel, but doesn't threaten the increasingly jaded audience with tiresome cliches, either. It was a lot more fun than I expected, given its critical reputation and the fact that the most recent Polanski film I saw was the ultra-heavy The Pianist.

Pierce Brosnan is the former British PM. He is writing his memoirs, but his ghost writer has died under mysterious circumstances. Enter the fresh-faced young author Ewan MacGregor, who intends to fill the breach while washing his hands of any political implications of his job. The way he goes from dispassionately uninvolved to unwillingly involved to obsessed is smoothly carried out by this well-crafted film. It's not life-changing cinema, but it is a page-turner.

One peculiar thing, though: there are numerous instances of badly synced dialogue where the sound editors clearly put soft curse words in place of harder ones. While this doesn't tremendously impact the film, it is distracting. Movie financiers gotta catch that PG-13 rating.

Mary and Max (2009)
Claymation animation tells the story of 2 social misfits, one a pre-teen girl living in Australia, the other a middle-aged man living in New York who has trouble connecting to people in the world's most populated city. They become unlikely pen-pals in the mid 70's and their story is told over the span of 20 years. Very touching film with strong vocal performances from Toni Collette, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Eric Bana and narrated by Barry Humphries. The animation is very good (in the Wallace & Grommit vein) and the story and characters compelling.

3.5 / 4.0 (available on Netflix instant)

Bend of the River (1952)
Anthony Mann-directed Western starring James Stewart as a former outlaw turned scout for a wagon train. Glorious landscape photography and well-executed action scenes make this a good and entertaining Western. 7/10

Le Boucher/The Butcher (1970)
A psychological thriller in the truest sense of the word by former French New Wave director Claude Chabrol, which could be summed up as “I fell in love with a serial killer”. The suspense is purely based on the relationship between a small town schoolteacher and the local butcher, but the final act can rival Hitchcock at his best. Great camerawork adds to make this a very good movie with depth. 8/10

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
Spencer Tracy stars a one-armed stranger arriving in a hostile desert hamlet with a dark secret. A highly regarded noirish thriller, which suffers from badly motivated villains of the moustache-twirling kind (Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin). Above average, but not quite good. 6/10

Professione: Reporter/ The Passenger (1975)
Of the four movies by Italian art house director Michelangelo Antonioni, this is the first one I liked and which justifies the director’s languid style without being totally pretentious and boring. Jack Nicholson is a reporter in Saharan Africa, who, apparently on a whim, fakes his own death and assumes the identity of the only other European guest of his hotel, who has died from a heart attack. It turns out that Nicholson's character has assumed the identity of an international arms dealer and he is soon on the run across Europe from government agents as well as the reporter’s wife and friends, who want to know more about the apparent death of the reporter. It sounds like a spy plot, but is really a very good road movie about depression and midlife crisis. 8/10

Crash (2004)
A large cast of characters’ lives intersect in L.A. in (anti) racism-themed vignettes. Although some of the stories are actually very good and would have merited their own movies, overall this is a hopelessly contrived and portentous movie, which commits fatal errors in making all of the characters’ motives somewhat race-related and in using Hollywood stereotypes on race. Below average 4/10

The Haunting (1963)
The prototype of a haunted house movie, which is (wrongly) described as “one of the – if not the – most frightening horror movies of all times” in the normally reliable book “1001 movies you must see before you die”. Apparently, the author of the quote is frightened by internal monologues delivered in grating voiceovers. A researcher and three companions stay in a supposedly haunted house in order to research the paranormal. One of them is a slightly unhinged spinster, who soon appears to be the primary target of supernatural forces. After an expository opening, the movie takes a turn for the worse, but gets better towards the end, although it is only a bit creepy rather than truly frightening. At least, the impressive production design, innovative camerawork with odd angles and the crisp black and white compositions make this worth watching. A generous 6/10

While I agree with Ken that ‘Antichrist’ doesn’t really hold up if you are looking for a message or, indeed, any sense, I think that it works very well if simply taken as a horror movie. I was truly frightened and shocked by this film, which is very rare.

Agree with you completely here. Don't know why this has generated a "classic" reputation

Great cast and great atmosphere. I agree that it's a bit overrated and it could definitely be stronger given the depth of talent involved, but Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, and Spencer Tracy sharing the screen?

Waitress(2007) is a nice little movie. It doesn't aim particularly high, but what it does, it does do well (apart from some tonal problems). There's not a lot to complain about here: virtually all of the performances are charming (except for the poorly written husband character) and as an added bonus the film has some delightful food preparation clips (a weakness of mine). I made the customary post-movie trip to imdb afterwards and was surprised to discover that the actress who played one of Keri Russell's waitress friends wrote and directed the film. Tragically, she was murdered in her own home while putting the final touches on post-production leaving her young daughter (who plays Russell's daughter in the coda) behind. 7/10.

Universal Soldier: Regeneration (2009) has attracted quite a cult following and some have called it better than the original (faint praise?) and the best direct-to-dvd action film that exists. It strikes me that both those claims are exaggerated, but not by as much as I thought. The original Universal Soldier was my favourite film when I was around the age of 10 so this one would need to be very impressive to improve upon the original (truth be told I love the original out of nostalgia more than anything. I haven't seen it in over 15 years and am fairly sure that I'll find it terrible). This instalment of the Universal Soldier franchise wisely ignores the completely terrible sequel and take us to Russia where a showdown is taking place at Chernobyl. The plot isn't at all impressive, but the direction really is. There's some quick cutting and shaky cam in the opening but thereafter we're treated to action that's pretty easy to follow and camera work that you don't normally find in this type of film. As one might imagine from a Van Damme picture there's a fair bit of decently choreographed hand-to-hand combat. I won't recommend this to everyone but fans of Van Damme or Dolph Lundgren should definitely take note. There a better DTV actioners out there (Blood and Bone, The Tournament) but US:R is a good entry. Hell, it's certainly better than The Expendables. 6/10.

Postscript: the straight to DVD effort had a budget of 14 million. A sequel has already been greenlit.

I also caught Fritz Lang's Destiny (1921) but I'll add more about that in the Great Movies section shortly.



I saw this last night and agree with most of what you've said Corey. Garfield struck me as the standout too, but then the film clearly wants us to empathise with him. I liked Eisenberg more than you though. It's easy to characterise his performance as one-note, but I think the are a number of subtle touches that prevents the character from coming across as an unfeeling automaton. My impressions of Zuckerberg were very negative coming into this movie and I was very suprised to find myself grudgingly respecting the man. He's still made some horrible choices but he's far from the devil I thought he was. Fincher added a few nices touches too, but I must say that this felt more like a Sorkin film than a Fincher film to me. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing, it's just that I don't see the directors fingerprints in the same way that I usually do. Overall it's difficult to find fault with the picture (the score is really good too. Seems like a good year for scores, no?) and it's deservedly found its way onto a number of year-end lists. However, it's probably not as great as the critical reaction made it out to be (Citizen Kane? Really?) and I expect a backlash if it wins a lot of prizes. But again, a really, really good picture. Is it great? I think time will tell. 8/10



I understand most of your criticisms and you've expressed why the movie didn't work for you. That said, I cannot at all agree with your (and, by proxy, Ebert's) statement. What's so wrong with doing post-movie research? Not every movie has the time to explain everything. And, even if it does, explaining things to the audience can often be belittling. I'm perfectly alright with films that only a small percentage will understand without additional research. Don't talk down to the audience. Make them come up to you.



I'm in total agreement with the author of the quote because The Haunting is one of the very few films that genuinely scared me. It does this not by showing us scary images, but by creating a relentless sense of foreboding. A good example of how sound can combine with the camera to unsettling effect.

Unless an audience member is exceptionally ignorant or not well-versed in the subject of a movie with a specialized topic, the movie should be readable as a complete text without the need for additional research.

That isn't to say that a movie can't be expounded upon, fleshed out, or otherwise enhanced through outside sources. That's basically the central benefit of criticism. But if those sources are necessary to make heads or tails of what the filmmakers are trying to convey through their film, then the film is incomplete.

A Touch of Class (1973) ***1/2

A mostly-forgotten Best Picture nominee, this amusing and engaging romantic comedy tracks the extra-marital affair of two intelligent, if insecure, middle-aged people with (interestingly) not a shred of guilt over what they're doing. Recommended.

Blue Valentine (2010)

It's been a few weeks since I ventured out to a theater. Had my sights on seeing True Grit this weekend but I opted, for reasons unknown, to see Blue Valentine instead. I was not disappointed. The film is depressing but well acted and edited and assembled all together (even the end credits are worth a mention). While I do not relish in the misery of others it's nice to see a film that strays away from conventional Hollywood relationship flicks. Despite the overall sad nature, Blue Valentine is not without it's happy and heartfelt moments. The song and dance scene as shown in the trailer sticks out as one of my favorites from the film. At least I walk away with one happy image from this film. Not to be viewed if you're looking to uplift your spirits but spot on for your money if you're looking to see top notch performances. Well worth a trip to the theater if it's playing anywhere near you. Hell, it's worth a 30-45 minute drive if that's what must be done.

3.5/4

Exit Through the Gift Shop

Amazing documentary about street art that turns into an "Is this real?" discussion that evicerates critics, art, and anyone who finds any kind of value in art. Ironically, it's made by an artist. If this is real, it means art is a complete joke. If it's fake, it means you can't trust anything an artist tells you, so where is the value? Also, it's absolutely hilarious. One of the best 2010 releases.

Blue Valentine

Simply put, the best movie released in 2010 I've seen. I'll be heading to the designated thread in a bit for some discussion, but this is one of the more affecting films I've seen (I cried...a lot). It's remarkable just how much there is to digest considering how understated and subtle the entire production is. This might not be a 4 star film, but it's close. Damn close.

The Fighter

We've all seen this movie before, but this one is still effective and a solid overall film. All the performances are good-to-great and, aside from one or two small instances, the story doesn't veer into the melodramatic. The boxing scenes are filmed with a realism that I'm not sure has been seen before on film. A few times you can tell these guys aren't professional boxers, but the look of a professional boxing match is always there.

Don't forget set design. If you're going to use a stationary camera, you need to be very careful how you set up the sets. That and framing was what I especially noticed in Tokyo Story, because I was looking for it.

The Browning Version - 1994

I was a bit wary of this version as neither JB's or Ebert's reviews were particularly complimentary. I found it moving and touching and thought Albert Finney's performance was subtle and powerful. The supporting performances were not quite so impressive, but Greta Scacchi was wonderful. She seems to have disappeared from the A-list radar, but according to IMDB she is still working regularly.

Agreed to 95% effect. I generally form no opinion on end credits but the entirety of those credits for Blue Valentine are a must -- great stills, fireworks and that great song.

Hopscotch

Walter Matthau plays a CIA agent who's relegated to a desk job. He's pissed off about it, so he decides to go rogue and publish a book detailing all of the agency's dirty secrets. Ned Beatty plays his blustering, bumbling boss who goes from wanting to bring him in to just wanting to kill him. Hopscotch is dryly humorous, and it's a great pleasure to watch a veteran like Matthau really sink his teeth into a role. This isn't a truly great film, but it's pleasant entertainment, and anyone looking for good entertainment is well served by it.