We saw Black Swan (imdb | rotten tomatoes) last night. It was gripping and unsettling and typical Aronofsky and so, so good.
If Natalie Portman doesn’t win an Oscar I’ll be amazed.
Category: Movies
"F-f-f-…fornication?"
All of the Oscar buzz surrounding The King’s Speech (imdb | rotten tomatoes) meant I couldn’t pass it up. Obviously I knew what I was in for: light drama surrounding an historical figure who overcomes great odds to be a great leader / musician / athlete. And that’s precisely what I got. Colin Firth was good, essentially playing himself with a stammer. Geoffrey Rush was fine as well. Helena Bonham Carter alone was sublime, but then I expect no less of her.
I’m not trying to put the film down; it’s a very entertaining and inspirational story. I was just slightly disappointed that there was nothing new here. Not a thing. Well done though it may be, I find it rather unseemly when a film so obviously gussies itself up for an award.
I’ll put it another way: I could recommend this movie to anybody — regardless of their preferred film genre — but it was gone from my head ten minutes after we left the theatre.
Ten best films of 2010
One month ago I lamented my slim chances of watching all the major Oscar-contending films before the ceremony itself. While we have knocked a few off the list, I figure I can’t wait any longer to lay out what I see as the best films of 2010, even though I still haven’t seen 127 Hours, Black Swan, Blue Valentine, Buried, Exit Through The Gift Shop, The Fighter, Get Low, Incendies, Inside Job, The King’s Speech, Restrepo, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, A Single Man, Somewhere or The Tillman Story. Alas. Here’s the early list:
- Inception
- The Social Network
- True Grit
- Winter’s Bone
- 13 Assassins
- Let Me In
- The Town
- Easy A
- Kick-Ass
- Toy Story 3
No surprise with the top three, I think. The bottom of that list is clearly where things got light, but Easy A, Kick-Ass and Toy Story 3 were all comedies with depth, so they make the list.
Honorable mentions: Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage, The Kids Are All Right, Trust and Confessions.
"He's the master of space and time. He knows about black holes and shit."
Over the past few weeks I’ve watched a bunch of movies and just forgotten to talk about them…UNTIL NOW!!!!!1!!
- The Town (imdb | rotten tomatoes), exhibit two in the case for Ben Affleck being an excellent director and the great Pete Postlethwaite’s final curtain call.
- Toy Story 3 (imdb | rotten tomatoes) which — as with most Pixar films — I liked, but clearly not as much as most people.
- She’s Out Of My League (imdb | rotten tomatoes) which was funnier than I expected from a stupid, formulaic movie…though that was due almost entirely to the excellent Jay Baruchel.
- Unthinkable (imdb | rotten tomatoes), a TV movie (I think?) about the moral conundrum of using torture to stop a bomb. Formulaic and often dopey, but entertaining.
- Hot Tub Time Machine (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was pretty much as stupid as I thought it would be.
"Fill your hands, you sons of bitches."
Ever since seeing the trailer for the Coen Brothers’ remake of True Grit (imdb | rotten tomatoes) I’ve been giddy with excitement. Surprising, maybe, since I’ve never seen the original. But I’ll see anything the Coen Brothers make, and the idea of seeing a grizzled Dude yelling “I mean to kill ya today!!” had me hooked. So yesterday we went to see it.
How was it? Well, I want to go see it again RIGHT NOW, so that should give you a hint. Of course, there are too many other Oscar-contending movies we still haven’t seen so it’ll have to wait, but I daresay I’ll be buying this one when it’s out on Blu-Ray.
When we left the theatre I kind of wanted to see the original, but after watching this I’m not so sure.
"Roman is having an OK day and bought a Coke Zero at the gas station. Raise the roof."
Relaxing holidays lend themselves to movie-watching, and we did a bit of that last night. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps was rather crap, but Easy A was really good. Funny, well-written, smart and a showcase for the fantastic Emma Stone. Also, Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as her parents were hilarious. Highly recommended; don’t let the high school setting fool you.
Happy Christmas Eve everybody!
Seriously…Laser?!?
A few days ago I was looking at the list of new-release movies I’ve watched this year. It was alarming. There was a grand total of 16, 5 of which played at TIFF and — apart from Let Me In — haven’t even hit North American theatres yet:
- Date Night
- The Book Of Eli
- Green Zone
- Inception
- The Runaways
- Kick-Ass
- Trust (tiff)
- Blame (tiff)
- Let Me In (tiff)
- Confessions (tiff)
- 13 Assassins (tiff)
- Robin Hood
- The Social Network
- The Crazies
- Iron Man 2
- Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage
That’s not good. Apart from Inception, Let Me In, 13 Assassins and The Social Network (which were excellent) and Kick-Ass, Trust, Confessions and the Rush documentary (which were good) I’d done a shit job of seeing movies in 2010. I should also point out that I saw only three of those in a theatre.
But I read an article in Eye today called “2010: The Year That Wasn’t There” in which they suggested the movies on offer this year have been rather shit to begin with:
But here’s the thing: other than Inception—which was less of a pop-cultural event than The Dark Knight and frankly less of a mind-fuck than Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters—who can remember any of this year’s other big-ticket items? In a piece published this past July in The Wall Street Journal, critic Joe Queenan exercised his inner Comic Book Guy by asking if this was, cinematically speaking, the Worst. Year. Ever.
So maybe it wasn’t just me then. I’m gonna say…50% Hollywood, 50% Dickinson. Still, surely there’ve been films released this year worth seeing that I was just too busy to get to, and which will challenge for Academy Awards. Off I went to Rotten Tomatoes, who helpfully compiles lists of top-rated movies by year. And, from that, I created the list of nineteen movies which we’ll try to see before the Oscars, if not by the end of the year.
- 127 Hours
- A Single Man
- Black Swan
- Blue Valentine
- Buried
- Easy A
- Exit Through The Gift Shop
- Get Low
- Inside Job
- The Kids Are All Right
- The King’s Speech
- Restrepo
- Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
- Somewhere
- The Fighter
- The Tillman Story
- The Town
- True Grit
- Winter’s Bone
Yesterday we got started with The Kids Are All Right (imdb | rotten tomatoes), mainly because it’s available on demand and we’re lazy. It was okay, though a little too long, and I did think it was going to be funnier than it turned out. And then today we watched Winter’s Bone (imdb | rotten tomatoes) which was dirty and cold and gritty and realistic and excellent.
The way to gone
Before we dash off on another weekend excursion (Prince Edward County…yet another wine trip) I thought it prudent / inoffensive / who cares? to do a brain dump of recent consumption:
- The new albums by Best Coast, Swans and Junip are really quite good
- Speaking of Junip, I’m pissed at the internet for taking so long to tell me about Jose Gonzales‘ brilliant cover of “Born In The USA”
- The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was better than The Girl Who Played With Fire, but still wasn’t great
- Corin Tucker‘s new album 1,000 Years is quite something, especially “Doubt”. If Wild Flag‘s debut album is this good it’ll be almost as good as a Sleater-Kinney reunion
- Neil Young‘s new one Le Noise sounds like he’s trying to sound as loud as Neil Young & Crazy Horse all by himself. And I kind of like it.
- Iron Man 2 (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was okay.
- New albums by The Black Angels, Japandroids, Robert Plant, Sleigh Bells, Sharon Van Etten, Black Mountain, The Walkmen and Wolf Parade weren’t quite good enough for me to buy them, but I did pick up some excellent songs from each one.
Hej there, Lisbeth
Since I seem to be one of the few living, literate humans who hasn’t read Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, I decided to at least watch the movies. We watched the first two movies this weekend. The first one, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was really good. The second, The Girl Who Played With Fire (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was just okay.
"Did I adequately answer your condescending question?"
Yesterday we visited a movie theatre for the first time in three months (TIFF screenings notwithstanding) to see The Social Network (imdb | rotten tomatoes). Since I first heard about the film I’d been torn: the subject matter seemed ridiculous, but the team working on it — David Fincher directing, Aaron Sorkin adapting the screenplay, Trent Reznor scoring, Jesse Eisenberg playing Mark Zuckerberg — was an all-star lineup. So when early reviews came back extremely positive I was excited, but still a pit perplexed as to what I’d be watching.
I needn’t have worried though. The movie owned me from the first scene, with dialogue written in the same smart, rapid-fire manner that got me hooked on Sports Night and The West Wing, with the White Stripes‘ “Ball and a Biscuit” playing in the background. Fincher briefly took over with his shot of Eisenberg running through the Harvard campus, which was probably CGI but gave that feeling of supernatural realness that Fincher perfected with Zodiac, but generally just stayed out the way of the script. Reznor added some perfect color to a few scenes (the bar in New York where they meet Sean Parker) but, again, didn’t overwhelm the film.
It did drag a bit toward the end (I could have done with a little less Winklevii) but I was still liked it a lot. I don’t know if I’ll buy it when it comes out, but I could probably watch the first hour over and over again.
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 