Sunday, January 29, 2012

A Movie A Week - Week 4: Red Tails

Theater: AMC Discover Mills 18
Snack: Hot dog and Coke

The critics have not been kind to this movie.  It's currently sitting at 35% on Rotten Tomatoes.  Maybe critics were looking for a weighty drama about the Tuskegee Airmen.  This is not that movie, but it is by no means a bad movie.  I found it to be a fun, if conventional, blockbuster-style film.  The dogfights, particularly, were exciting.  I thought the performances were generally pretty good, though whoever gave Cuba Gooding, Jr. that pipe as a prop probably regretted it.  The man could not stop playing with the thing and it was a very distracting whenever he was on screen.  Between actors and director, there were quite a few veterans of "The Wire" involved in this film, which is a good think as far as I'm concerned.

The story was fine, a good entertainment.  However, the dialogue was a bit on the hammy side.  To me, it also felt like this movie had a late-'80's/early-'90's vibe.  I can't put my finger on why, and it is neither a good nor a bad thing as far as I'm concerned, I just found it interesting.  I think the critics have been unfair to "Red Tails."  It's not a great film, but it is an entertaining one.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

A Movie A Week - Week 3: The Iron Lady

Theater: AMC Discover Mills 18
Snack: Hot dog and Coke

I had hoped, when I decided to go and see "The Iron Lady," that I would be seeing the story of the rise to power of a significant 20th century political figure.  Or maybe the story of a woman's rise in a traditionally male world.  These were not really the stories this movie was interested in telling.  Instead, a lot of time was spent chronicling the mental decline of Thatcher in her later years.  Between that and scenes from her marriage, there didn't seem to be much time left to spend on her time in government.  Unfortunately, I just didn't find the story that was told to be all that compelling.  Honestly, it played like paint-by-numbers Oscar-bait.  Margaret Thatcher was a controversial figure during her time in office who aroused both passionate opponents and equally passionate defenders.  Here, though, it was as if the filmmaker was not sure how she felt about Thatcher as a political figure and so chose to just gloss over that part of her life.

The acting was uneven in places.  Streep was fine, of course, but I found the performance of the actress playing young Margaret Thatcher to be a bit overwrought.  Problematic performances combined with an overblown musical score make the whole production seem rather ham-handed.  Surely there is much richer dramatic material to be found in the life and career of Margaret Thatcher, if only the filmmakers had tried harder to find it.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

A Movie A Week - Week: 2: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Theater: Regal Mall of Georgia 20
Snack: None

I've never read the John le CarrĂ© novel or seen the mini-series starring Alec Guiness, so I walked into this movie cold.  I think I may have benefited a bit from not knowing the details of the plot beforehand, I was learning things as the characters were and I was riveted.  I would be interested to hear the reactions of those who were familiar with previous versions of the story.  What I did know going in, was that it stars Gary Oldman (who is awesome) and that it's about Cold War spying (which is fascinating).  This isn't action-movie, James Bond type spying, this is the talk-y, think-y, spying-as-chess-game type of spying.  The story had my full attention for its entire running time.  The performances were fantastic across the board.  Particularly noteworthy were the were Oldman, of course, and Benedict Cumberbatch, who I mainly knew from the BBC's recent "Sherlock" series and who I almost didn't recognize thanks to the dramatically different look he sports in this film.  I also have to offer special praise to the filmmakers for taking such a complicated story and managing to fit it into a little over two hours without making it hard to follow.  I always felt like I knew how one scene connected to the next.  To sum up, "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" is a fine film with some great performances; well worth seeing.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

A Movie A Week - Week 1: The Adventures of TinTin

I have decided that I want to make an effort to see more movies in the theater in 2012. I was inspired by the comments of one of the hosts of the iFanboy podcast who had set a similar goal for himself last year. I feel like I've been getting a bit lazy about going to the movies. Oh sure, I'll be going to see "The Dark Knight Rises," "The Avengers," and "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" in theaters, but every year there are great movies that pass me by because I can't get myself out to the theater to see them and I forget about them by the time they come to Netflix. So, I've set myself the challenge of seeing at least one movie a week in a theater in 2012 (because, really, the theater experience is a different, and I think better, experience than the home viewing experience). Without further ado, on to week one:


Movie: The Adventures of TinTin
Theater: AMC Discover Mills 18
Snacks: M&Ms and a Coke

I have no preexisting connection to the TinTin comics to drive me to see this movie. It was the creators involved that made this movie so enticing. The behind the scenes creative talent links this film to such greatness as The Lord of the Rings trilogy (Peter Jackson, producer), the Indiana Jones films (Steven Spielberg, director), Doctor Who (Steven Moffat, writer), and Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright, writer). With that kind of pedigree, how could I not want to see this movie. Fortunately, I feel like the movie lived up to the expectation of excellence this creative team inspired.

I do have a complaint, and that is with the animation style. I am not a fan. Specifically, I do not particularly like the strange merge of animation and live-action that has been scene previously in films like "The Polar Express" and the Jim Carrey-filled version of "A Christmas Carol" from a few years ago. There's just something vaguely creepy about the look of the characters. It's not all the time, but every so often it pops up and is really distracting, particularly when you see the realistic hands and cartoony face on a character. I think I would have preferred a more purely animated approach to this uncomfortable hybrid. That said, this all bothered me less and less as the movie went on and I got caught up in the story, which was a lot of fun. There is not a wasted frame of film and the story moves along at a brisk pace with some truly inventive action sequences. I found "The Adventures of TinTin" to be a great time at the movies and well worth the effort to see in a theater.