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(500) Days of Summer (2009)

just okay

not bad, but I never felt involved in his film. Maybe it's the lack of an attractive leading woman, or that they barely filled out her character beyond "quirky". Really, it's hard to understand why he's so in love with her with what I saw in the film. Seems like many of the best lines were in the previews.

At times it also felt like many scenes were just pop tunes and scenery. I did like the happy scene where he dances with people in the street and the bluebird of happiness shows up, that was good.

Overall, though, it felt a little contrived to me. Also, why does every guy in the movies now have two friends who give him advice about relationships? Is this now a rule of comedy that 3 guys have to get together throughout the film and talk about relationships?

La fille de Monaco (2008)

lightweight ad then...?

this is a lightweight comedy that is implausible on many fronts. The lawyer is successful, but way too old for the girl, so it's not clear why she is interested in him. The lawyer is taken in by her (she's stunning), but he throws all caution to the wind and does many things that are out of character, really stupid things. The movie is lightly entertaining with the comedic elements, and with the amazing looks of the girl, who flaunts her body and looks in every scene she's in.

SPOILER: Then the movie decides to get serious and it lost me completely. the two men in the film can't resist her, but they both think she's dangerous - "a witch". I won't tell you what happens, but you could easily see this film as a caution against female sexual freedom with the two men punishing her in the end. When it gets away from the comedy, it's a mess.

The Dark Knight (2008)

this movie sucks

well, it looks to me like the industry people got on IMDb and wrote glowing reviews of this film. Some problems with this movie:

• everyone in it is miserable. Is it too much for a story based on a comic book to have a little lightness in it?

• The Joker isn't funny, he's just sick. Why bother to have the Joker if he isn't funny? You may as well have some regular psycho. Ledger does a great job with the character, but it's not written well. - like the last Batman movie, the action sequences are long and things whiz by when you can't really see or tell what's happening. Also like the last movie, there are a huge number of explosions and big special effects, yawn. - There really isn't much to root for here. Bale is dour and boring as Bruce Wayne/Batman and the only halfway likable character in the film is the character played by Maggie Gyllenhal.

Atonement (2007)

boring and overdone

everything about it screams overdone. the music is ever-present and substitutes for dialog throughout much of the film. Characters spend a lot of time staring at things while a loud soundtrack plays. The set-up is OK, but then it turns into yet another WW2 story. I don't read romance novels and didn't like watching one on the big screen. If your girlfriend drags you to this, be ready to fall asleep. I wouldn't keep going here but IMDb has rule that we must have 10 lines of text so I'm writing this to fulfill the obligatory space requirement. repeat:I wouldn't keep going here but IMDb has rule that we must have 10 lines of text so I'm writing this to fulfill the obligatory space requirement.

No Country for Old Men (2007)

confusing

Let me say that I'm a Coen Brothers fan. Loved Fargo, Barton Fink, O Brother, Blood Simple. I enjoyed this movie for most of it, although to me it was a less successful film than Blood Simple which has a similar feel.

The big problem is the final act. The main character dies and it isn't even shown and is barely implied. I was confused in the theater when I saw it because I didn't know what happened to the Josh Brolin character. When the movie ended, several people in the audience were mumbling about the movie ending the way it did - inconclusively. The killer also kills the guy's wife at the end, but they don't bother to show that either. The sheriff has the bad guy cornered at one point in a hotel room, and the guy mysteriously disappears through an air vent.

The movie goes along and is setting up a confrontation between the two adversaries and instead of showing it, we get Tommy Lee Jones musing about life and how crazy the world has become. Then the killer wanders off at the end after a random car accident. The real problem is that you apparently need to read the book to know what happens in the film, which makes it an interesting failure in my mind.

Little Children (2006)

Baffling

I fully expected this movie to be great based on the build-up before I saw it. What I saw was a movie with remarkable inconsistencies (the voice over gives it a kind of Desperate Housewives feel).

With that said, where is the character development? Winslet's husband is in maybe 3 scenes to establish that he's a jerk and is basically a cartoon character who conveniently disappears whenever the script doesn't need him. The two romantic leads are brainless dreamers. The movie flips back and forth between cynical observation of suburban life to material which seems to be outside the depth of the film. The treatment of the child molester character was pretty clumsy when compared to the Kevin Bacon movie the Woodsman.

Foreshadowing in this film seems to consist of a character mentioning something may happen in one scene and in the next scene it does.

I haven't been this bored at a so-called great art film since Magnolia.

The Departed (2006)

Scorsese is overrated yet again

This was a pretty good film, but it's mostly because it has a really great cast. Marty Gore-sese has yet another film with blood splattering all over the place and at some point in the film you know that everyone is going to be shot except for a lucky one or two.This creates a domino effect with the scenes for the final 40 minutes or so - one down, who's next? This device in screen writing is very mechanical and has been used many times (see Road to Perdition for a recent example) The music, while adding atmosphere and excitement, substitutes for dialog and is overused in my opinion. The female psychiatrist who is involved with Damon and Dicaprio is pretty lightweight for the role; she's too important to the story to be just average.

-spoilers, don't read if you have not seen the film - Once you think the story is over and the bad guy has won, the character they conveniently removed from story comes back and kills him... all the central characters die. Is that the point, no one wins these wars between the cops and the criminals?

Hard Candy (2005)

Swimming With Sharks of pedophilia

since there are dozens of glowing reviews here covering the story and great acting jobs, let me offer some criticisms while saying I enjoyed the film.

1) Hayley is far too mature for her age, at least as she gives her age in the film (14).She's completely analytical and plans every step without allowing emotion to cloud her judgment. Maybe she could have been portrayed as being a little older, or as posing as younger than she is, but it's not at all believable to me that this girl is 14.

2) There are too many reversals where Jeff is tied up, gets loose and then is recaptured by Hayley. This is one of the few ways for the story to have action after the pedophile character Jeff is bound, but once would have been enough for me. It might have been more interesting if Jeff had regained the upper hand at some point and then lost it, but he never does.

This film is interesting as it plays on our sympathies, slowly revealing more and more about the characters. We hope for Jeff to escape until we realize the depths of his character and past actions. The revenge plot really reminded me of two films - Swimming with Sharks and Audition. If you haven't seen Audition, check it out as long as you're prepared for the shockingly overdone horror elements; otherwise it's a fascinating art film about a girl taking revenge on a man.

Fight Club (1999)

Vastly overrated film

This movie is so dreary and pretentious it's difficult to sit through, at least for me. Spoiler: I can see that a character could convince himself that he's someone else or that a fictional character could exist in his mind. I find it completely implausible that all the people around him would be fascinated and inspired by his delusion while watching him beat himself up in a parking lot, or that he would be able to inspire these same people to help him cover up his own fictional character's non-existence, and that they would go out and blow up buildings for him. The screenplay asks you to believe this. A friend of mine compared this film to Memento which has a similar belief by the main character, but his self-made reality isn't encouraged by anyone else except in cases where they can exploit him. Fight Club has some interesting ideas but I'd call it a mildly interesting failure.

The Wings of the Dove (1997)

Great film!

This is one of my favorite films of the 90's. Great cast, fantastic screenplay, simply an incredible telling of a compelling story. The movie moves along in organic fashion, never feeling contrived or manipulative (probably because the story comes from a good novelist). The characters are well developed and make the choices you believe these characters would make. Helena Bonham Carter, Linus Roach and Allison Elliot are all excellent, and Charlotte Rampling is always good. I also like the contrast set up with the dreary English settings vs. the romantic and elegant Venetion scenes. I think this movie is vastly underrated and should be seen by any serious film fan.

The Big Picture (1989)

Overlooked classic

I've watched this many times, and feel that this ranks with the best work of Christopher Guest. Kevin Bacon is outstanding as the idealistic young director Nick Chapman, who falls prey to the jaded Hollywood lifestyle - long before he can afford it personally or financially. Martin Short's role as Nick's agent is hilarious, and other good performances are turned in by Jennifer Jason Leigh, Terri Hatcher, and many others. This is Spinal Tap for the film industry, and well worth a look.

Gangs of New York (2002)

Worst film of the year

This film is so bad I almost walked out of the theater before the end.

While the historical setting and circumstances are interesting, the cartoon characters that inhabit the script are laughable. Daniel Day Lewis as Bill the Butcher is so ridiculous that it is impossible to take the character seriously. I think that the press is too impressed by Scorsese's resume to give him a bad review on this film. If this material was shown as a documentary, or in a slightly less gory and unrealistic way, then you'd have a fascinating film, not "Gladiator" set in old New York.