2010 Reviews #72-#76: "Let Me In", "Frozen" and More!

Once again...I got myself way behind in reviewing movies! I have 5 more I have to do...so again...this will be a list of short reviews!

#72: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. This is the foreign language film that is the first in a trilogy. Based off novels of the same name, this film is in the Swedish language but yes, is subtitled. It is currently available on DVD and instantly on Netflix. Hollywood has already gotten it's greedy little hands on this gem of a film and is remaking it and will be released in 2011. Why can't we just think up our own original films instead of taking other countries ideas and making them our "own". I am not a fan of remakes (until you read my next review). Anyway...this is a fantastic crime thriller. I got so incredibly invested in the story unfolding that the 2 hour and 20 minute run time flew on by and the fact that I was reading the movie completely went right past me. I didn't know where it was going, and for that I love how the whole thing concluded. Sometimes it's hard to tell if a performance is good in a movie like this...because I don't speak their language. But Noomi Rapace came off as what I believe a very strong performance and she stole the movie! I don't know if she really was that good...but from what I could read from her performance...she was excellent! I cannot wait for the next chapter of the film, The Girl Who Played with Fire. Critics Grade: 87%. My Grade: A-.

#73: Let Me In. Well here we have a Hollywood remake of a Sweedish film called Let the Right One In. This is the exception to my disgust of remakes...because this is one hell of a good movie! Not a perfect remake, I still like the original better but they stay fairly true to it's source material and doesn't try to dumb this down for American audiences. It's a deep film, it has a slightly disturbing tale. It has very vague similarities with Twilight...but those films are nowhere near the brilliance of this movie. Let Me In is dark and slow in pace. It doesn't try to dazzle us with vampire related visual effects. It tells a story between two lonely children (well one of them is a child...the other is sorta a child) who befriend each other. There aren't any big moments that will really entertain the younger audiences. This is a vampire type film that's more for adults or at least mature teenagers, and young twenty somethings. It's almost an artsy like film. It has a wonderful story, and some AMAZING direction and cinematography. The main stars of the film, the two children...are just phenomenal leading this film. Both are worthy of award attention. They play kids like kids are supposed to played. Not all fancied up and smart talkin' like they make so many kids in movies these days. You feel bad for this little boy. I don't know...this is a GREAT movie. Not 100% as good as the original film...but still a very very worthy remake. Critics Grade: 87%. My Grade: A-.

#74: Frozen. Won't spend much time on this one. Frozen is a film about 3 college aged friends who go skiing...long story short...they end up stuck on a ski lift way up high with no one else around and the ski lodge has closed for the week. So now they must find a way to get down, while avoiding the harsh cold and the wolves below. This movie COULD have been kind of cool but in actuality...I really didn't like it. The main girl was just painful to listen to most of the movie. One of the characters makes a really stupid decision and ends up getting ripped to pieces. Then we have to sit there and listen to the other two bitch and moan the rest of the movie and it's just so hard to listen to. The movie is really disgusting at times and not at all tense...at least it was not for me. Maybe for others, just...I was kind of bored. A movie like this, if done right, could have been suspenseful...but no. It actually has a pretty cool premise, it just never lives up to the promise it had. Needed a better cast, slightly bigger scale, and just more thrills. Not a truly terrible movie in my eyes...but I really didn't care for it just because it swung and missed at a great chance to be quite cool. Critics Grade: 61%. My Grade: D+.

#75: The Winning Season. This is a small film that I barely even heard about...thank you Cox on Demand. It was released early in September in a select few theaters but is also playing on Demand under the "In Theaters" section. I thought this is a nice little gem of a film. It has independent written all over it. It's by no means perfect and the whole movie isn't as engaging as maybe as it could have been for me...but overall I thought it was a charmer of a movie. It's about a washed up dad who is coaching a high school girls basketball team (not his daughters) and has to whip them into shape to be good. Yeah...cliched of course but the writer and cast at least try to be fresh with this idea. Led by the amazingly underrated Sam Rockwell...how he hasn't at least been nominated for an Oscar is beyond me. He won't get one for this film, but he shows his talents well in this role. I liked the chemistry between him and these girls. It was real and believable. It had moments of being kind of funny but overall it's dark comedy. I thought it was pretty good. Not great, but definitely worth the 2 hours I spent watching it. Critics Grade: 53%. My Grade: B.

#76: She's Out of My League. This comedy came out way back in the beginning of 2010 and I'm just now watching it on 2010. I rented it through Netflix...kind of expecting to not like it very much. Well I can't say that I loved it, but I was just slightly pleasantly surprised by the movie. It's riddled with cliches....nerdy guy get's the hot girl. A story that I'm sure so OFTEN happens in real life. But that's why it's a movie storyline. Movies aren't reality. I thought the film had a pretty good cast and there were more than enough moments that I chuckled. I never really laughed out loud at anything but it had some very amusing parts. But in the end...it's just another campy cliched romantic comedy that we see at least....5 or 6 of these a year. For me...it was just OK. I had a good time watching it...wouldn't really sit through it again...but as a one time viewing it was entertaining enough. Critics Grade: 57%. My Grade: C+.

2010 Review #71: The Social Network

The Social Network

Directed By: David Fincher
Written By: Aaron Sorkin

Starring:
Jesse Eisenberg
Andrew Garfield
Justin Timberlake

Rated PG-13
2 hours

Critics Grade:
98%

My Grade:
A+

Storyline:
A story about the founders of the social-networking website, Facebook. About the legal battles and the broken friendships.

My Review

If you asked me a few years ago what Facebook even was, I wouldn't have been able to give you a correct answer. Much like a lot of the country. Skip ahead a few years and now everyone and their grandma (literally) have a Facebook account. Millions of people each day post random pointless facts about their daily routines "At the store" or "I'm bored" for all their friends to see. Some people are tagging their friends in pictures or bombarding their friends walls with their stupid Farmville updates. At this point if you don't know what Facebook is...you probably lead a very sheltered life...even if you don't actually have a Facebook account. This is not how Facebook started. This kind of thing was meant for the now basically dead social networking site, Myspace (please don't make a Myspace movie...no one will see it because they are all watching the Facebook movie). Facebook (originally THE Facebook) was meant only for Harvard students. You were required to have a Harvard e-mail to even sign up. It was a hit, then spread out to 29 other large colleges across the country. Then before you knew it...it was a worldwide sensation and now you don't even need to go to any school to have an account. It all started one night when young nerd Mark Zuckerberg got drunk and created a site called Face Smash. A site where you compared hot women with other hot women. Now I'm only basing this off the movie story, it is said that the screenplay has been puffed up and fictionalized from real life events. But it doesn't matter. His face smash site was a hit within hours. A couple of students at Harvard had an idea for a social site for Harvard students and they wanted to enlist Zuckerberg to help do the coding and what not...one thing led to another...and Zuckerberg ran with the idea on his own. Legal battles would soon follow. And now we have our film: The Social Network.

Like I mentioned before, the storyline for this film has been tweaked from actual events to make the movie more appealing and thrilling. This has been publicly announced by the creators of the film. But the screenplay is so freaking well written that you would never know the film story has been changed (how much - I don't know if anyone really knows). How they could write a film that on paper would seem to be really slow - come out to be as thrilling as this film was...is beyond me. It should be a slow paced boring movie. Thing is...it IS slow paced but you never actually realize that. I got so immersed in this story and so invested in these characters it was as if I was watching the true events unfold before my eyes. Aaron Sorkin, who wrote the film, doesn't try to trick the audience by inflating anything about the people involved. These are real people, these are true events. He may have slightly fictionalized the actual story, but he doesn't throw Hollywood in our faces. The actions are all completely believable.

Some people may think this is a movie ABOUT Facebook. Well...it is but only to a certain extent. For instance it doesn't really go into the effects it has on culture and society. We don't see the viewpoints of many Facebook users and how it effects their every day lives. You don't really see much of the actual Facebook interface either. We never even see the transition of Facebook for college use only to Facebook worldwide sensation. That's not what the story is about. This is a story about a young man who has no friends and is so incredibly socially awkward he creates a social networking website and by chance becomes increasingly popular. Even with everyone knowing who he is...he still has almost no real friends. Sure he has people who admire him or use him but friends? Actual true friends? Well he had one...and he inadvertently destroyed that friendship because he let the power of his creation take him over. There's a lot that goes on here, so no...it's not just about the actual Facebook site. So far...the best written film of 2010.

This is also one of, if not THE best looking movie of the year. Inception is brilliantly crafted to mess with our minds and looks stunning at every turn. But here with the Social Network, we have a real life story. They could have easily given us bland camera work and only focused on the story. But in a lot of films, the camera work, the cinematography IS part of the story. It captures the characters at their highest point as well as their lowest point. I don't think a film has pulled this off as well as The Social Network in the past few years. The film has a fairly "dark" storyline, there isn't a whole lot of happiness going on and David Fincher does a BRILLIANT job showcasing that overall mood to us as an audience and it really gets us invested in the story and characters.

One of the best aspects of this movie is the incredible characters who are all of course, based off real people. We have three main players: Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin (the two co-founders of Facebook) and Sean Parker (the founder of Napster - and the man who drove Zuckerberg and Saverin to the eventual destruction of their friendship). I don't know who exact the characters are to their counterparts in real life but these are some pretty interesting people. So you have to have them played by some very good actors to make them convincing. I'll say this right now: as of this point of 2010...hands down the best acted film of the year. I've never been a big fan of Jesse Eisenberg but man he is incredible in this film. Zuckerberg is a troubled young guy and Eisenberg was the PERFECT choice to play him. The performance of his young career...the one that may define him as an actor. Right now he would be on my list for Best Actor of the year. Andrew Garfield (the new Spiderman!) plays his best friend and co-founder of Facebook. I saw him a couple years ago in a movie called Boy A...and he was fantastic in the film. Here is no different. I thought for most of the film this guy was amazing and worthy of some Oscar consideration. So what about Justin Timberlake? Well I don't follow his music...but I think he has found himself a nice little niche in film. When he was on screen (and not a TON of screen time) he stole the show. In my opinion, and not just because he's nice to look at (what?!?!). He gives such a charismatic performance and I think he has found his calling (as if his music career wasn't already his calling).

The Social Network is more than a movie about a worldwide phenomenon. This is a movie about human nature. This is a movie about how we as humans crave friendship. How we desperately need to be heard and listened to and cared about. A lot of us, like Zuckerberg, never truly get that complete feeling and so we are left feeling empty. Some of us make poor life decisions (like unknowingly screwing over a friendship) to putting ourselves out there to get attention. It's funny because a site like Facebook makes us all feel so popular. "Look I have 200 friends". But how many of those 200 are people you actually would spill your heart and soul to? How many of those people know anything about you? Who do you think really cares about half the crap you post on Facebook every day? No one...but we all do it. It's in us as humans to crave that need for attention. Some of us have plenty of friends, some of us don't. One of us created a website to feel connected to all of our so called "friends". Funny thing is...he is a man, who at the time, had no real friends even after he created the site. That's why this movie is so brilliant to me...I can relate a lot to this guy (at least the movie version). We all can. This isn't a movie about Facebook. This is a movie about you and me.

Hey...Facebook me.

2010 Review Extravaganza! "You Again", "The Tilman Story" and more!

OK so I have 6 movie reviews do to because I have been buy these past 2 weeks....mainly watching movies! And today I'm going to probably go see "The Social Network" and "Let Me In" so I wanted to bust out these 6 reviews so as I don't get to far behind. Now I don't have the time now to write long reviews for these movies so I'm just gonna do the bare minimum this time, my apologies!

#65: You Again. A new family comedy starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Sigourney Weaver. Yes...also has Betty freaking White! I love Betty White don't get me wrong...but I don't get this crazy hooplah over her right now. But whatever. She can't save this train wreck of a movie. No one could. It was awful, almost painful to sit through. One of the worst movies I've seen this year so far. It wasn't funny to me at all. A story that could have been potentially decent was ruined by bad screenwriting, to much physical comedy, and ridiculous musical score and no heart whatsoever. Some bad performances thrown in and this, to me, was a piece of crap movie. Some people may like it...but not me. Not me at all. Critics Grade: 15%. My Grade: F.

#66: Fred: The Movie! I have a confession to make: I've seen most of Fred's YouTube video's. He is the YouTube sensation that has a lot of followers and a lot of video views. No one knows why this kid is so popular but kids seem to love him. All he does is quick 3 minutes videos of him in (sometimes) funny situations and he changes his voice to make him sound like a chipmunk who just sucked some helium. I'll admit...I laugh sometimes at his videos, but for the most part they are pretty stupid. But my niece wanted me to record this movie (which debuted on Nickelodeon) and so...I decided to watch it on my own one day when I was bored. This will not qualify for my top or bottom 10 lists or any of my main category awards, as this is a straight to TV movie. It pains me to say...that I laughed about 7 or 8 times while watching this movie. The kid sometimes has good comedic timing. He's "good" at what he does. The movie is silly, but kids will love it. They also tone his squeaky voice down a tad which is nice and easy on the ears. I don't know...I didn't really like this movie much, but I laughed and at times the story was kinda "sweet"...so I didn't hate it like I thought I would. No Critics Grade. My Grade: C.

#67: The Virginity Hit. A fake documentary told through the lens of a crappy digital video camera. That's supposed to add to the realism...and I suppose it's effective. This whole movie is like a faux documentary ripoff of "Superbad". That movie was much more funny and had a much better story to tell. Obviously. It was me and like 5 other people in the theater, which just made me feel weird to begin with. The whole movie was pretty awkward and pretty sexual. The idea behind the whole movie (following an 18 year old boy trying to lose his virginity) is a bit disturbing to begin with so everything that happens in the movie just adds to that. I mean it wasn't a terrible movie. It had some believable performances, you actually believe these to be real just out of high school kids. It had some funny moments. But overall it just wasn't all that good to me. It just left me feeling strange for having watched it. To me, it wasn't a bad movie but it's definitely completely forgettable and one that I think can be skipped over. Critics Grade: 29%. My Grade: C-.

#68: Temple Grandin. This is a true story of an autistic woman who became popular in the 60's and 70's. She doesn't interact well with people and doesn't understand a lot of things. She can see everything in pictures and can memorize a page of a book after just looking at it for a few seconds. She designed a method to create a calm environment for cattle as they are being led to slaughter. This movie follows her journey and what an interesting tale it was to watch. This is an incredible woman and I'm happy they made a film to show us her life. Such a well made movie (by the way it's another made for TV movie on HBO - now on DVD) in every which way. Great performances from the whole cast. Claire Danes gets lost in this character of Temple. You don't see Danes at all. It was a brilliant performance and one to be remembered. This was just such a great film! It won a handful of Emmy Awards not to long ago including Best Actress and Best Made for TV Movie. No Critics Grade. My Grade: A.

#69: The Special Relationship. I was on a roll with made for TV movies. This one also was on HBO. It tells the story of the bond between President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair. A lot of the movie focuses on the Monica Lewinsky time line. There is also some political aspects thrown into the story of course (which unfortunately I always have a hard time following - I'm never been into politics). I think overall this was a solid movie, not one I really liked but overall it was enjoyable. I think Dennis Quaid does a great job portraying Clinton. The rest of the cast is also very good and all deserved their Emmy nominations a month ago. Not much more to really say. It was a good movie, but I personally didn't love it. Good though. No Critics Grade. My Grade: B.

#70: The Tillman Story. This is a documentary that chronicles the story of the Pat Tilman tragedy. The Arizona Cardinals football player who turned down a big NFL contract to enlist in the military. A few years later he would be killed by friendly fire that was initially covered up by the military and Government. His family, led by his fantastic mother, would never back down until the truth finally comes out. The fought and fought to get the military to admit what actually happened. To this day, they don't have the whole story. I won't go into detail about everything, that's why you need to see the documentary. But this was a FANTASTIC documentary that was very informative. I knew what was going on as it was going on, but I never kept following the story so now I'm all caught up. What I liked was that this documentary didn't not try to pull at the heart strings of the people watching. It chronicled the family's anger, disappointment, confusion and feeling of emptiness. We all know how tragic and sad this was, but we are supposed to feel pissed off over the cover up. That's what I got from this movie. I mean this movie was just amazing. It really captured this family's journey to the truth quite brilliantly I thought. Just see the documentary...it's really good! Critics Grade: 91%. My Grade: A-.

2010 Movie Reviews: "Solitary Man" and "Easy A"

#63: Solitary Man. Starring Michael Douglas. Rated R. 1 hour 30 minutes. Critics Grade: 82%. My Grade: B. This is a movie about an older man whose going through his mid life crisis a bit late and it spiraling downwards towards his own self demise. This is not a depressing drama though, more of a seriously dark comedy. While watching the movie I was honestly a bit annoyed by the story and the character. This character isn't exactly likable. But I think that was the point of the film. We are there to watch this guy ruin himself slowly. To see him alienate himself from his family and sleep around with girls three times younger than him. To me the story was all sort of familiar and kind of bland. I mean it was well written, but I've seen this kind of story before. This is the kind of story and movie that has to rely on an excellent performance, and it get's that. Michael Douglas is brilliant in this movie. He makes this character believable and you hate him a lot of the time, but you really do feel for the guy. Douglas carries the film on his shoulders with one of the stronger performances I've seen from him lately. Good small performances from Susan Surandon and Jenna Fischer. A decent movies that works so well with a great lead performance.

#64. Easy A. Starring Emma Stone. Rated PG-13. 1 hour 32 minutes. Critics Grade: 85%. My Grade: A+. There's a lot of physical references to 80's teen comedies in this film, mainly John Hughes films. The movie deliberately tries NOT to be one of those movies, the main character even says "this isn't one of those stories...sort of". Truth is, it ends up being similar to a lot of present day teen high school sex comedies. I mean honestly you can't really make this genre of film a whole lot different. There's only so much you can do with the actual story element. But this movie does TRY to be different. In the end, the director breathes some much needed fresh life into this particular teen flick. The writing is fantastic, and the characters are awesome! I've never paid to much attention to Emma Stone and her acting career, but man alive she is one hell of a solid actress in this film. She carries this film on her shoulders and then some! In terms of characters, she was a much needed change to the lead character of this kind of film. She was funny, she was charming and sweet. THIS is THE best female performance so far of this year. She was amazing! Not to mention the brilliantly funny performances from Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as her parents. This was a unique family to say the least. If I had any say, I would nominate Emma Stone and Stanley Tucci for Oscars this year! Not since Mean Girls has their been such a fantastically amazing and fresh high school genre film. I loved every minute of this movie. It was hilarious. It has a dark storyline, but it's well told and fun to watch. If I had a top 5 list to put our right now...Easy A would be right there in it! A GREAT movie!!

2010 Reviews: "Diary of a Wimpy Kid", "The Town" and "Devil"

#60: Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Starring Zachary Gordon and Robert Capron. Rated PG. 1 hour 34 minutes. Critics Grade: 55%. My Grade: C+. Honestly, I can go either way with this movie. I was a bit surprised that I actually found myself enjoying the movie as a whole. I thought it had a pretty good story, and one that is fairly realistic. This is almost how a real junior high is, and almost exactly like what real junior high kids act. I thought the funniest part of the movie was Robert Capron, the pudgy best friend of our main character. He had some pretty funny lines, obviously this is kid humor though so it wasn't hilarious for an adult per say. I liked the random supporting actors that popped up, there's a few big names in here I wasn't expecting to be in a movie like this. I thought the main star, Zachary Gordon carried the movie rather well on his shoulders. However, he's not exactly a likable character. Honestly, this kid is a little piece of shit who thinks he's God's gift to earth. I wasn't a fan of the character, but Gordon delivered an overall good performance. But the main character in a movie like this should have redeeming qualities...but my God he was a little turd. Overall I was happily surprised by this film. It has a good message in the end, although the message just kind of pops up last minute so it doesn't really resonate. Pretty good movie for the kids. For adults...it's a decent one time viewing.

#61: The Town. Starring Ben Affleck and Jeremy Renner. Rated R. 2 hours 5 minutes. Critics Grade: 93%. My Grade: A+. Ever since I first saw the preview for this movie, I was pumped to see it. Affleck directed the film Gone Baby Gone a few years back and that was one of the best films of that year. Now with The Town, Affleck has absolutely found his calling. I've never been a fan of his acting but his directing is top notch! However he also delivers quite a great performance here. He should direct himself more often! The Town is a brilliant heist film with a fantastic group of characters. It has a great and believable love story in the middle that is not your average tale of two lovers. The movie is so well written and has a great deal of tense scenes. The robbery scenes are filmed very well. Although there is a LOT of gun fire and barely anyone ever gets shot. That's always a common cliche in movies like this I just wished Affleck would have been more gutsy in that regard, but oh well no big deal. But yes, the writing is amazing. The story moves so smoothly and rarely ever gets boring. You kind of root for these characters, even though they are kind of scum. It also has another side story of the FBI agents trying to capture this criminals, and is led really well by John Hamm of TV's Mad Men. Like I said earlier, Ben Affleck probably delivers the best performance of his career. His character is troubled and wants to get out of this business. He falls in love with one of his robbery victims and she has no idea who he really is. His character is believable and you like him. There is also a supporting performance from Blake Lively (from Gossip Girl apparently) that was surprisingly good! I think she was supposed to the Amy Ryan type character (from Gone Baby Gone) and she does well with it, not nearly as good as Ryan's Oscar nominated performance however. The best performance comes from last year's Best Actor nominee Jeremy Renner. The guy plays a loose cannon and he is pretty nuts. It's a far cry from The Hurt Locker, but man this guy can act! I don't think he will get any Oscar credit this year, but he is certainly deserving. This movie is smart. This movie is high octane fun. It's entertaining. It's a brilliant, nearly flawless film that at this point...might very well be my favorite movie so far of 2010. But there's always Inception so....grr, I don't know. This movie is a must see, it's amazing! Go see it!

#62: Devil. Starring Chris Messina and Logan Marshall Green. Rated PG-13. 1 hour 20 minutes. IMDB Member Grade: 66%. My Grade: B+. Devil, for me, is the surprise hit of the year so far! The preview made the movie look cool, but M. Night Shymalan's name was spread across the ad's for this movie and honestly...I was expecting the movie to be a total shit fest. Well I'm happy to report that I was super wrong! I loved Devil. It's one of the better horror movies I've seen in recent years. It's light on the gore, and heavy on the mind screwing. 75% of this movie takes place in the small confines of an elevator (something I have a great fear of) and the cast is a group of relatively unknown actors so you don't know who to trust. We know from the ad's, and from the title...that one of these people is the devil. That's no surprise. Finding which one of them is the devil and which one is killing these people off is the tricky part. Also interesting is the reason why these people are together in the elevator and why the devil is going after them. On the outside, a police detective is trying to piece together who of these 5 people are killing everyone. All he has is a video monitor to watch them and can only communicate one way. So he has to figure out who each person is and what their dark past holds. He has a troubled past himself. When each person dies the lights in the elevator go out and so we as an audience don't know who is killing everyone as well. It's like a game of Clue that involves the devil. The story (the only part M. Night had any part of) is very simple and very easy to follow. It's a horror movie that uses a story element over shock, gore and tons of violence. It's a pretty damn tense movie, mainly for me because I HATE elevators! I loved the mystery aspect. I also enjoyed the fact that there weren't any stupid characters like we see so often in horror movies. Everyone does things that makes sense. The cop doesn't believe the idea the devil may be doing this for most of the movie which makes his story believable. The dialog is well written and there really isn't anything cheesy about anything these people say or do. This is a horror movie that is tense and creepy. I was really into the whole movie and it never got boring or ran off course. The movie is only 1 hour and 20 minutes long so it goes by fairly quickly. A horror movie should be short and simple. By the end, it did not disappoint. I thought the final act of the movie was perfect and did not go down a typical "dumbed down" horror movie road. I haven't seen many horror movies this year, but this is certainly one of the best. The Last Exorcism is probably going to be my favorite horror movie this year, but Devil is not very far behind. This may not be a common opinion about this film, but for me...I loved this movie! It was a great surprise and I think fans of horror films will enjoy it as much as I did. I highly recommend it!