Movie Short Takes

After a summer traveling abroad I am back in New York and catching up with movies. Here are tiny reviews of movies I saw recently:  

The Dark Night Rises : Overpraised and very loud. I saw this on a lovely sunny day in Wales - there are so few of these - and I regretted leaving the sun to see it. Anne Hathaway was good and its always a pleasure to see Joseph Gordon Levitt but I had several problems with the movie. The politics were very muddled while trying to be topical; is the movie really against the Occupy movement? Christian Bale was doing the same tortured hero he always does; nothing new to see there. Tom Hardy was undermined by the mask covering half his face - really Chris Nolan you hire the biggest sexiest lips on a man in the movies and then hide them, really?

The Amazing Spider Man - Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield are very charming together. I totally bought their romance and the chemistry was combusting. The rest of the movie was just blah.

Magic Mike - In my mind the best movie I saw this year to date. It was very refreshing, amid the summer glut of super heroes; to see a character driven movie. Who would've thought this would be it? And I liked that it didn't glamorise striping; the ugly underbelly of drugs and self loathing was all there on screen. Channing Tatum proved his current omnipresence is justified with a charming, understated natural performance. Matthew McConaughey does what I think is a riff on his perceived public persona is wining and probably his best performance ever.


Ted - Opened the same weekend as Magic Mike as the above meme attests and it is perfect counter programing. I remember laughing a lot but can't remember any of the jokes or performances now. Apparently entertaining but not memorable.

Bachelorette - Another very funny movie. But more memorable. This movie about a trio of mean girls attending their fat friend's wedding carrying along years of resentment and dashed hopes is caustingly funny. Its also not afraid of honestly portraying its protagonists in all their loathsome qualities. While Kirsten Dunst is funny and brittle as the main mean girl, Lizzy Caplan steals the movie with an all out funny performance full of pathos as the girl who refuses to grow up lest she face her teenage demons.

More shorts takes coming soon about Fall movies The Master, Hello I Must Be Going and End of Watch.

Final Oscar Predictions in All Categories

For the very first time in a long time I'm not passionately invested in any of the nominees this year. With exception of 2; Viola Davis in Best Actress because of her eloquence so far at acceptance speeches and TV appearances. But mostly because of her emotionally piercing performance that elevated a movie that had no right being this good.

The other nominee is A Separation, the best movie of 2011 bar none. Hopefully it will win Foreign Language and my day would be great if it rightfully wins Best Screenplay. I believe that screenplay is the most brilliant in bringing in new narrative structure since Pulp Fiction 17 years ago.

The best films of the year, in my opinion, were Drive, Shame, Weekend and of course A Separation. Of course the Academy ignored almost all of them. I'll be watching hoping for some funny moments and great speeches but apart from the 2 I mention above I don't care who wins.

Finally here are my predictions in all categories. I plan to win that pool this year!

Picture : The Artist
Director : Michel Hazanavicius - The Artist
Actor : Jean Dujardin - The Artist
Actress : Viola Davis - The Help
Supp Actor : Christopher Plummer - Beginners
Supp actress : Octavia Spencer - The Help
Org Screenplay : Midnight in Paris
Adapted Screenplay : The Descendants
Foreign Language Film : A Separation
Animated Feature : Rango
Original Score : The Artist
Original Song : Man or Muppet
Art Direction : Hugo
Cinematography : The Tree of Life
Costume Design : The Artist
Makeup : The Iron Lady
Documentary Feature : Paradise Lost
Sound Mixing : Hugo
Sound Editing : Hugo
Visual Effects : Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Editing : The Artist
Animated Short : The Fantastic Flying Books
Live Action Short : Tuba Atlantic
Doc Short : Saving Face

Summer Movies

I don't much care for summer movies. They tend to be dominated by my least favourite genre, superhero and/or big action movies. I admit some superhero movies are OK, The first X-Men , The Dark Night. But most are just intolerable. And the last Michael Bay film I saw was Bad Boys.

So for this summer 2 movies excite me. Bridesmaids and One Day. I guess I dig chick flicks.

Bridesmaids just looks so funny. I laugh out loud through the trailer. Watch Kristin Wiig's reaction when she's told she's "the worst bridesmaid". Priceless. Or when she says "I'm ready to parrrrty". I bet you are doubling down laughing.There is another trailer that I couldn't find in which John Hamm appears, and any movie with the dapper Draper is one I can't wait to see.



As for One Day, my anticipation stems from the fact that I loved the book on which it is based. No wonder these rights were swept up so soon, the book begs for cinematic interpretation. Reading it I could imagine a movie easily as it was written very cinematically. And the writer David Nicholls wrote the adaptation. Plus Lone Sherfig, who had such a sterling debut with An Education, is directing.Finally the lovely Anne Hathaway is starring. So yes count me in.


What are you most loking forward to this summer?