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!!