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Reviews
To Rome with Love (2012)
Beyond simply bad - it's irritating
Hope springs eternal. You see his name on a movie. You think back nostalgically to "Annie Hall". You ignore how much you hated his last movie. You try to be optimistic that this will be better. You think the movie can't be worse than the last. But it always is. Woody Allen becomes more irritating with each new movie: the bumbling persona that hasn't been funny for 25 years , the pretentiousness, the pseudo-intellectual fantasy mumbo jumbo, etc etc. wore out their welcome long ago. And yet he persists in making yet another version of the last movie he made. He never grows. He never changes.
I've reprogrammed by DVD zip control. I now have to fast, very fast, extra fast and Woody Allen movie. Next time I'll e prepared.
I gave 1 point for the shots of Rome. The rest is a dead loss.
Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
Proof That Ratings Are Meaningless
You instantly know that you are in trouble when the lead characters bond during discussion of psychotropic meds that they've been taking for their various mental disturbances. This is a new low in cute-meet, rom-coms. Since the main characters don't supply enough psychosis, there is the father with OCD for good measure. Maybe other people find mentally disturbed, erratic and violent characters a cute, but I don't.
It is hard to pinpoint whether Bradley Cooper's dreadful acting excesses were due to his lack of talent or, heaven-forbid, were exactly what the director wanted. In either case, I wanted to reach through the screen, grab him by the neck and tell him to shut up. As if this wasn't annoying enough, there was Robert De Niro's as his father to add two more forms of mental disturbance. He is an Eagle's fan and has OCD. Which is the worse mental illness is debatable, but enough is enough. There is hardly a quiet sane moment in the film. De Niro, by far the most overrated actor of the last 40 years, is his usual grumbling self. Since he said "This is this" in the Deer Hunter in 1978, he has been said every single line exactly the same. Jennifer Lawrence was the least annoying character, but she had her moments.
You can't help wonder why such a movie as bad as this gets such positive reviews. There is a apparently a large, devoted audience for maudlin, feel-good romances involving annoying people. As long as the couple ends up together, that seems to be all that matters. Steal a subplot from "Shall We Dance" for good measure and, voilà la, we have a winner.
There must be a strong self selection process in who goes to see such movies. The people who chose to see them are the kind of people to whom such sentimental trash appeals, so they are naturally likely to give it a good review. I saw it on an airplane for free because there nothing else but "blow em up" action and scifi movies and kid's stuff. Next time, I'll take a good book.
Margin Call (2011)
A Story About Personal, Not Financial crisis
Margin call has a great cast and tells a compelling story with an oddly cold and chilling mood, as stories set in office buildings at night often do. The story is set during the financial meltdown of 2008, and they throw around financial terms like "MBS", "VAR" and "swaps", without explaining them to the audience. But never mind because the financial events are only a backdrop for the real story: people trying to cope with their world turned upside down, the choices that they must make and the consequences they must accept. There is no need for the audience to be concerned with mortgage backed securities, value at risk or credit default swaps.
All the audience need know is that a quant at an unnamed investment bank (probably modeled after Goldman Sachs) looks at financial data passed to him from a fired risk manager (Stanley Tucci) and discovers that the market is about to tank. His firm is sitting on potential losses greater than the value of the company. What to do? The choice is stark: go bankrupt or survive by selling the toxic securities as fast as possible to clients who haven't yet caught on and live with the consequences - they will be lepers in the financial world.
Many reviewers have projected their own preconceived opinions about Wall Street on to this film and have not really paid close attention. This movie happens on Wall Street but it isn't "Wall Street", and it isn't about greed, villainy or blame. While greed paid a major role in creating the financial crisis, this movie has nothing to go with Wall Street greed. Instead, the movie is about survival and its costs. The only mention of greed occurs when Will Emerson explains the root of crisis is the greed of all those people so borrowed mortgage money they could never pay back so that they could live beyond their means.
One of the most impressive aspects of the movie is that there are no villains. It would have been easy to turn characters like the self-centered Seth Bregan (Penn Badgley), the slick Jared Cohen (Simon Baker), the cold (Sarah Robertson) and the superficial Will Emerson (Paul Bettany) into villains, but the movies does not. These are all reasonable people acting in reasonable ways given the crisis they face. There is no underhanded maneuvering, no lying and no backstabbing. At several points characters ask whether they are going to be fired and every time they are told the truth. The salesmen are told in no uncertain terms that their careers will be in tatters when they dump the toxic asests. No lies. No sugar coating. Just the straight facts.
The easiest target would have been the head of the firm John Tuld (Jeremy Irons), but he is no Gordon Gekko. He is not a conman, double-dealer or venal. He is just pragmatic. At one point, he clearly states his philosophy: the only 3 ways to succeed are to be smarter, to be first or to cheat. He says he won't cheat, and every bank has smart people so he is going to be first - the first to dump these securities. To him, what he is doing is nothing new. Market crashes have a long history as he shows y reeling of the dates of the many previous ones in many countries over many centuries. Human nature is what it is.
Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey) is the only character is might be seen as sympathetic. He has real qualms about what they are doing, although he is a lot more broken up about his sick dog. This does not keep him from going along with the plan and even giving rousing speeches to his traders, however. And it doesn't keep him from changing his mind about quitting because he needs the money. Just like everyone else in the film. He is the only hypocrite in the group.
Lewis: Intelligent Design: Part 1 (2013)
The End Has Been Long Overdue
Inspector Lewis has always been more sizzle than steak. They certainly get an A for effort, but at best a C for execution. They have good lead characters. They try very hard to be intelligent, making "Intelligent Design" an ironic name for the last episode. They have nice music. But the stories are terrible and make very little sense.
It is possible to make such a formula work, as the early Jesse Stone episodes showed. You didn't notice how bad the stories were because Stone was such a compelling character. It doesn't work on Inspector Lewis for two reasons. First, neither Lewis nor Hathaway are quite as interesting. There is no Morse here. Given Lewis's low key, you get the feeling that show called "Inspector Hathaway" might have worked better. Second, also don't focus enough on the lives of the lead characters to make it work as a character-driven show. Instead, they fill up a lot of the time with rather boring college student angst. The secondary characters are not that interesting. The show has never been the same since without Max.
Like most people, I initially expected very little from a show about Morse's dull sidekick when it started, but was pleasantly surprised how well it worked. Then the effect of low expectations wore off. Week after week, you keep hoping for more because there is so little adult TV that you desperately want it to work. It never did. Well, it has lived off being a Morse sequel long enough.
I won't miss it but I will miss what I hoped it would be.
Poirot: Elephants Can Remember (2013)
Tusk Tusk. Time To Close Poirot Down
It's time to put Poirot to bed. The show has gone downhill badly over the last couple of seasons, but it really hits the wall now. David Suchet is looking old, tired and, worse, bored in the first of the new season's Poirot episode, "Elephants Can remember." He is just going through the motions, using a series of canned tics and smiles with no energy behind them. It is also obvious that the producers cut down on Poirot's screen time by using mystery writer Ariadne Oliver as a fill in. Suchet just doesn't really want to be there.
The story itself is mind-numbingly complicated. The implausibilites mount one after the other and the relationships among the character become more and more tangled. The final explication scene where Poirot explains what happened in detail, even though neither he nor anyone else was there to see it, goes on and on and on. For the climax, he pulls out the trite old standby - the relative to disappeared to Canada as a child! So, much as it pains me, I must say farewell to Poirot. Thanks for the fun and the many great stories, but it's time to stop now.
Moneyball (2011)
It's Not A Basebal Movie; It's A Michael Lewis Movie
Judging from some of the reviews, many viewers did not get this movie. It isn't a movie about baseball any more than "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" is a movie about gold mining. The baseball is just a canvas that Michael Lewis used to paint his familiar themes that he has more commonly expressed in stories about Wall Street.
Anyone who has read Michael Lewis's other books, "Liar's Poker" and especially "The Big Short" and who has seen his extraordinary 2012 Yale commencement on Youtube address will have found the same themes running throughout his work; that people are often mis-valued because of luck and circumstances outside their control; that people are too easily fooled by appearances; that "convention wisdom" is often no wisdom at all; that it takes an outsider to see through the arbitrariness of "conventional wisdom; that the outsider going against the tide will be ignored or treated as a fool; that it takes an unusual person driven by some personal flaw or demon to stand apart from the unthinking mob and to persevere against the opposition. It is this last theme that is the real focus of his work what makes his stories so compelling.
The story of Bill Beane personifies all these themes. He is another version of the oddball lot in the 'Big Short", Mike Burry, Steve Eisman and the Boys from Cornwall capital who saw through the facade of the big Wall Street Banks went all in against them, and even the story of Lewis himself, who walked away from a sure multi-million dollar Wall Street career because he thought that it was all nonsense and would rather find a new "senior thesis." Billy Beane is another oddball outsider with the character flaw. Billy was a great high school talent, 6-4 the perfect picture of a baseball player. but was missing something that kept him from being the star that he was supposed to be. (The book explains much more of this when contrasting him with Lenny Dykstra, a small, 13th round draft pick who managed to make it big). At age 30, when still in his prime as major league player, albeit a fringe one, he quit and asked for a job at a scout, shocking just about every one from players to management. What character flaw leads a person to trade the wealth and fame of playing in the majors, the dream of players, fans and management, to become a bush league scout? It's easy to see why Lewis fell in love with the story.
Billy knows that appearances deceive because, after all, he was the perfect example. He was everything a star player was supposed to be in the eyes of the scouts - except he wasn't. He has suspicions about conventional baseball wisdom, but he himself has been baseball too long to completely come free of them. Then he meets a real outsider, Peter Brand, a Yale economics major who never played baseball and doesn't look like he ever could. Brand confirms Beane's misgivings about traditional wisdom when he explains precisely why appearances are so often wrong and why scouts and their conventional wisdom are based on a superficial understanding of what matters in winning. It all boils down to what Beane later describes as "selling jeans" - finding the right body, even the right face. Judging by appearances and ignoring real performance. Better yet, Brandt offers an alternative, using one of Lewis's other themes, they players are often mis-valued because of luck or other irrelevant circumstances, they pitch funny or they hang out at strip clubs, etc. Beane buys in, partly because of necessity and partly it confirms his suspicions. He not only selects players based on Brandt's ideas, over the vehement objects of old guard scouts, but he also goes so far as choosing a new head scout precisely because the man never played baseball and was untainted by conventional wisdom.
Then comes the next phases of Lewis's storyline, the scorn, laughter, and conflict with the insiders who see their position and self worth being questioned. Finally, there is eventual, if not complete, vindication. This leads to the film ending in two wonderful scenes. The Jeremy Brown video scene and his daughter's song both captured the spirit and the message of the film in a graceful ways.
In sum, it's a very nice movie of ideas. It certainly isn't about baseball. It's about how our view of the world and our judgment of other people and even ourselves is so often based on the wrong things, the surface things.
Note added: Most of the ideas that Beane used to select players in the movie had been learned from his predecessor as GM, Sandy Alderson, who is never mentioned in the movie. Alderson got them from reading Bill James, the godfather of the new statistical analysis who was contemptuous of standard baseball thinking. He wrote some really interesting and philosophical books on the subject of statistics and baseball while working as a night security guard at a pork and bean factory. He is also mentioned once, although Peter Brand is presumably meant to represent James+Paul DePodesta.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
Better Than Expected
After seeing Hollywood massacre Tinker , Tailor, last night, my expectations were very low going into another remake. However, this was a much better effort. Taken in its own right, the Hollywood version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is a pretty good thriller - until the last 25 minutes, which where clearly tacked on to pave the way for the next installment. Still, the story moved along with a nice brisk pace. Sometimes too brisk. The other obvious problem is the failure to make the tangled Vanger family tree clear. Most of the time, I had no idea how the various family members were related. It was very confusing.
As Hollywood remakes go, it was good try. But they just could help selling out. I guess they assume that the US public couldn't take someone as edgy and threatening to middle class values as the original Salander. Compared to original version, the movie suffers badly because Hollywood took a lot of the edges off Lisabeth Salander. They kept most of the surface features, but underneath she was a very different character than the Lisabeth from the original. In the original, she was clearly a hacker. In the Hollywood version, she portrayed more socially acceptably as a researcher, who, by the way, could get around computer security. This was minor compared to the character transformation. The only shot of her in the spiked hair is in the beginning of the Hollywood, in what you might call a half spike. You never see the full Lisabeth punk look. They completely gilded her menace, and most of all, her strength, independence and her "I don't care" attitude. The final scene was 100% contrary her nature in the original. It was a classic Hollywood sell out. They just couldn't handle the Lisabeth from the original.
Part of the problem was Rooney Mara, who seemed like a nice girl from the suburbs in a costume and not a like a feral survivor who would set her father on fire and extract violent revenge on whoever crossed her. Try as she could, she just wasn't believable when she says "I'm crazy." Her features are too regular. She looks too normal. In contrast, Noomi Repace has those angular features that make her look like she's ready to taser you any moment.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Oldman Terrible In Dismal Movie
Why do producers do remakes of excellent previous movies? All they can do is screw it up. TTSS is another example. It is a very dismal version of the much better series. I mean dismal literally, in like the photography is dark and grainy. Like most remakes, they simply don't understand what made the original so effective.
I knew it would be bad when I heard that Gary Oldman would play George Smiley. And I was right. Oldman is completely wrong for the part. George Smiley is an tired-looking, older , overweight man who looks as harmless as a fly, all the while disguising his razor mind. Oldman looks like trim 50 year old business man. The script doesn't help him since he has barely a word to say and Oldman simply isn't a good enough actor to communicate with the audience nonverbally through gesture and attitude.
The movie also has virtually no character development. You never learn a thing about any of the 5 possible spys. Connie Sachs has been almost completely written out of the story. There are huge gaps in the story. Prideaux is shot and assumed dead. He then reappears with no explanation, until much later. The movie shift back and forth in time with no warning and it is often hard to tell which time period is being portrayed. I'm sure some people think this artsy. I just found it confusing.
The biggest problem with the movies it it misses the point of the original. This is a story about betrayal: a man betrays his country and also his best friend. Which betrayal is greater? In the original, it's the personal betrayal that carries the power and moves the viewer. This remake so completely misses this that the key relationship in the story between Prideaux and Haydon is barley mentioned.
In sum, this movie is two hours of empty atmosphere. It doesn't understand whst the story is really about. It haspoorly developed characters, almost no story with large gaps, and a very weak ending compared to the way it plays out in the original series and book.
We Bought a Zoo (2011)
All heart, no head
This is the kind of movie that used to be marketed with the ad line, "The feel-good movie of the year." If you like such movies you will probably like this. If you expect more from a movie, like plot and coherent character development, plausible scenes, etc. the your response will likely be somewhat mixed.
This movie came straight off the assembly line with the full compliment of audience manipulation gimmicks. Grieving inconsolable widower. Check. Rebellious son who bonds with his father. Check. Cute, preconscious little girl. Check. Cute animals are risk. Check.
The movie's message, repeated many times over, is that everything turns out good in the end. If it isn't good, then it's not the end. I hate to tell the writer, but we don't get top decide when it's the end. But that's the kind of movie this is. All heart, no head.
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011)
Better in concept than in execution
The theme of the movie is, of course, second chances. And Who wouldn't love a story about second chances, especially among a bunch of exiled seniors, and especially when the seniors were the likes of Maggie Smith, Judy Dench, Bill Nighy, etc. Unfortunately, the story was better in concept than in execution. Or perhaps it was just that my expectations were too high.
The first half of the movie develops fairly slowly. Then things change quickly in the 20 minutes. I hope that Maggie Smith, and some of the other cast members did not get whiplash from having their characters change direction so sharply in the last 20 minutes. I've never seen a characters change direction so fast so quickly as Lillete Dubey and Penelope Wilton (playing a character even more annoying that the one on Downton Abbey) in the blink of eye. I've never seen to many plots so many subplots tied up so neatly, so quickly. The real fun of the movie was watch Dev Patel do his optimism shtick, but much of the rest was fairly mundane.
Lastly, the movie certainly failed at one level. I certainly didn't convince me that India was a place that I would ever want to go.
Lewis: Fearful Symmetry (2012)
It Just Keeps Getting Worse
I really want to like Inspector Lewis. I really do. There is so little in TV or movies that at least tries to have some intellectual content. This is doubtless why such a really terrible program can draw positive reviews. But this episode is the final straw.
This show has gone downhill badly over the last few seasons and Fearful Symmetry is really the pits. The first hour + is completely meaningless as they pull out a deux ex machina in the final 10 minutes to resolves the story in way the was arbitrary and completely divorced from everything that came before. And they did it in the worst, most clichéd, most overused and unimaginative way - a sexually obsessed psychotic. The final scene was beyond laughable. It was pathetic. The producers and writers are doing it paint-by-numbers now. No attempt at developing the characters, making the plots psychologically plausible, etc. They've obvious run out of steam. Actually, they ran out of steam three seasons ago.
I mean this was really the absolute pits. Time to put Inspector Lewis out of its misery.
State of Play (2009)
Liked The Movie Better
State of Play is a good thriller that cleverly (whether intentionally or not) plays on a very strong view expectation. Everyone who goes to the movies knows that Hollywood always despises big business and usually despises the military and generally makes them the villain. When there is a murder and a big corporation is featured in the movie, the audience it automatically going make the connection. This makes the surprise ending quite effective because they are not behind the murders after all. The audience it genuinely surprised, and that doesn't happen too often.
I am likely in the minority who prefer this movie to the original miniseries. The BBC version was far too complicated, had far too many plot lines and far too many characters, even for 5-6 hours of running time. The movie running at 2 hours time simplified the plot, and eliminated unnecessary characters and scenes. Scenes of many secondary characters like the Collins's secretary, the policemen, most of newspaper staffers, Foy, and Baker's roommate are reduced or eliminated with no loss at all. Eliminating the romance with Collins's wife was a good move, as it wasn't the slightest bit believable in the series. Neither was the plot twist of having the government know that Sonja Baker was a spy, right from the start. The movie wisely eliminated this as well. I missed Bill Nighy, but Russell Crowe was a big improvement over John Simm.
Perhaps most importantly, the BBC series blundered badly by killing off the hit-man in the middle of the series. He was the main source of tension and the key to the suspense. The movie wisely keeps him in play until the very end. This gives the movie a big edge overall.
Religulous (2008)
Even A Twit Can Get It Right
I've never liked Bill Maher much, but I get this movie. A lot of the previous reviewers don't. So perhaps the best way to comment on this movies is the context of previous reviews.
Most of the interviews follow a simple routine. Maher interviews religious believers and asks them questions about their beliefs. He then points out 1) how ridiculous their answers are or 2) that they are contradicted by the teachings of their own holy books. The interviewee usually simply ignores the contradictions or else parrots some fatuous answer based on faith, I . e., an untestable assumption. Maher may press them a bit to examine what they have just said, but of course they don't. Maher ultimately laughs that can't they face the obvious irrationality and circularity to their beliefs.
Apparently, a lot of reviewers seem to think that this is being mean or smug. On the contrary, it is the ideal ways to demonstrate the irrationality of religious believers: ask them questions and point out the irrationality of the answers. They spout the absurdities themselves. Maher didn't make them say anything.
A lot of reviewers complain that is goes or the easy joke and does not engage in rational debate. I agree that he is a comedian so he will always go for the easy joke. But the charge of avoiding rational discourse is absurd. First, this is precisely what he is doing when he points out the irrationality of most answers. But it is obvious a waste of time in the film as it is in real life. Second, the interviewee responses to his questions confirming the obvious: religious belief is not a matter of rationality. As someone once noted, believing in religion is like being in love. No one is going to talk you out of loving your girlfriend by debating the merits of her big nose, bad breath and is missing teeth. It is a waste of time.
A lot of reviewers also complained that he picked easy targets and avoided more sophisticated theologians. This criticism is misguided because the easy targets are by far the majority of believers. It doesn't matter what a few intellectual elites who don't believe in the literal interpretation of the bible think. They are a small minority. It is what the majority, the man in the street and the people who run the government think that matters. As the interview with the Vatican astronomer, moreover, the easy targets generally often don't even know the teachings of their own religion. Surveys of religious knowledge also show that most adherents have very little knowledge of their own religions. These are precisely the people who should be interviewed: people whose belief is based on a few simple-minded notions that they never question. As Maher notes, it is what the majority, the enablers, whose beliefs justify the extremists who carry the bombs and who may decide the fate of the world.
A few reviewers have complained that Maher attacks mostly Christians and Muslims and lets the Jews off too easy. There are and 1.5 billion Muslims, about 2 billion Christians and about 14 million Jews. Gee, and Jews, .04% of the three religions, are the problem? If the time spent in the movie were allocated based on these numbers, Maher would have spent 2.16 seconds on Judaism.
In sum, the movie's approach is perfectly sound: reveal the absurdities, hypocrisies and dangers of religions asking the believers to answer simple questions about the beliefs. On the other hand, the movie is marred by Maher's inability to avoid the cheap, easy laugh. I still don't like Bill Maher. He is a snotty, arrogant twit.
Miracle (2004)
OK, but nothing special
It was another Cinderella sports story, the same kind that we've seen a zillion times before. It may have been better than most, but that doesn't change the cookie-cutter feel.
One jarring note, however, was the choice of Noah Emmerich as Craig Patrick. After taking so much trouble to have Kurt Russell look and act some much like Herb Brooks, why did they go out a pick Noah Emmerich to play Craig Patrick? Emmerich looks and acts nothing like Craig Patrick. It is jarring to see the plump guy with lots of hair playing a thin guy with no hair. It really was an irritation through the movie. The director said that Emmerich was a friend of his, so that's obviously the reason. Too bad he picked friendship over making the best possible movie.
The best actor in the movie was the guy who played Mikhailov. His smirk when he first lined up against the US team was absolutely priceless.