Last weekend, I broke my long hiatus from going to the movies with RED. And man, did I pick the right one (I wavered between RED and Social Network). I can’t deny I’m a total sucker for graphic-novel adaptations. Though you might expect something like Sin City from the illustrious cast, RED is a completely different animal. It makes no effort to be artsy or classy, and as we know from Shoot ‘Em Up, awesome things happen when a movie knows exactly what it wants to be. It’s emphatically not another Die Hard, though Bruce Willis plays yet another old man who refuses to retire. The screenplay is impressively non-cliche and the acting is superb – they could not have casted this movie more perfectly from John Malkovich’s Marvin and Helen Mirren‘s…stone-cold crazy grandma killing machine. There is no trace of any CIA-related cliches, like ex-agents knowing exactly how long it takes to trace a call and hanging up right before it completes. Nope, not in this movie. From start to finish it’s a powerhouse of adrenaline (pumping alarmingly slower in the old characters), and garnished with colorful supporting characters played by Brian Cox and Richard Dreyfuss. It will be totally worth buying the DVD so I can pop it in when I’m bored or knitting. I don’t really knit, but it feels appropriate to do while watching a grandma pump rounds of machine gun ammo into cars. Someone has to switch roles with her.

The movie runs three parallel plots, jumping in and out of all three until the end. Virginia Woolf, in her manic-depressive self, writes her famous Mrs. Dalloway while Moore’s character is inspired by it to attempt suicide, while Streep’s character is somewhat of a real-life version of Mrs. Dalloway. As always I’m going to stop myself here before I bore myself describing the plotlines, but the movie is chalk-full of metaphors, parallelisms and concurrent motifs – it is a great thinking movie. Every line is painfully meaningful, and when the movie finished I had to devote a good amount of time just thinking about all the elements. It is a wonderful refreshment for all of us who feel like we were forced into lives quite different from our desires; obligations and responsibilities that the adult life represents. In the face of death, one can appreciate life so much more, and the themes are well-contrasted in the three plotlines, each in its own social frame.

I forgot all about Nicole Kidman winning an Oscar for her role in this, but all acting in this film is superb. All the requirements of a great movie are there: script, acting, cinematography, and score. The eerie, Danny-Elfmanish music runs consistently through all three plotlines, and gives otherwise neutral images a somber air. A must see, and I’m glad I got to.

I was down in St. Louis last weekend and because that city does not have enough things to do/see over a 4-day weekend, decided to go see Prince of Persia.  Coming from Chicago, I couldn’t really pass up paying mere $ 6.50 for it. Anyway, I had been extremely disappointed with how this “summer of blockbusters” was turning out to be after seeing Iron Man 2 and Robin Hood. The latter was my mistake, I probably should’ve accepted how bad it looked, and not seen it. But I did and after the 2+ hours of boobless, anachronistic, culturally-confused wannabe epic, let’s just say I have a newfound appreciation for “relatively well-made” movies. Prince of Persia turned out to be one of these.

Being a Disney film, its protagonist Dastan severely lacks the badassity all of us who have played the video game were looking for. That and it’s played by Jake Gyllenhaal, who Heath Ledger would’ve agreed is prettier than his sister. His onscreen brother – the future king of Persia – looks so Scottish he belongs in Braveheart. With all the Disneyesque suspension of disbelief aside, this film is entertaining for sure. The action sequences are not cliche, and faithfully reconstructs techniques and styles from the video game (fortunately not the one pictured above). The exotic nature of all things Persian (not the weird shit they showed in 300) kept me engaged throughout the movie, from the Scimitars to the gorgeous CGI scenery of ancient cities.

See, this is why I can never be a film critic, because I don’t know how to provide a synopsis of the plot without giving things away. There’s so much to make fun of in this movie – like how ugly the “princess” was and how everyone seemed to be denying it – but before I know it, I’ll be spilling the beans on how the sands of time sends Dastan back in time to kill his evil uncle or how the best scene in the movie is when he’s climbing up the walls as his minions make him steps with crossbows.

I wonder how much the creator of the game got paid for this? I remember playing it for the first time on my cousin’s 386 computer. The original is a tough game, much more difficult than the new ones on Playstation. No dagger of time to cheat death with if you miss a ledge and fall onto white impaling spikes. Revolutionary game, though, and I’m glad it’s gotten the credit it deserves. At least the movie kicked the Mario movie’s ass.

Worth $ 6.50 for sure. Now if all the other movies for the rest of the summer didn’t suck camel balls…

I recently watched Paris, Je t’aime through Netflix because my girlfriend is a Natalie Portman fanatic and insists she watches every film she has ever been in. While I expected a sappy chick flick, I was pleasantly surprised to find it a rather pleasant collection of classy short films, all directed by very reputable directors with an all-star cast, including aforementioned Portman, Steve Buscemi, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Elijah Wood, and more.

All of these short movies take place in Paris, yet determinedly leave the viewer with an open ending. Most follow highly eclectic characters through the plots’ rising action, starting without any set-up and ending without resolution. You would think this would drive you nuts with curiosity, but the beauty of this film is that you will have a good time imagining what “might have happened.” A couple segments expand on the classic American tourist vs. crazy French people conflict; I would not advise watching it with an already-judgmental Francophobic friend. Then again, the French people aren’t nearly as weird as Elijah Wood in this film.

The indie feel, relative obscurity and heartwarming plots on the universal theme of love make this movie a fantastic choice for post-dinner-date invitations.

It took me shamefully long to blog about this awesome film. As an avid classic rock fan, Pirate Radio hit all the right notes for me. The very minimal plot line – a bunch of music fanatics struggling against the government – holds up with interesting subplots that never bore, but honestly, who could resist such an awesome soundtrack? The opening sequence is set to the Kinks’ classic “All Day and All of the Night,” which could not be more fitting, as the Davies brothers are the true pioneers of rock who are often credited with introducing the distorted guitar sound to the genre (the myth has it that Ray Davies took a knife to a poor amp, shredding the speaker cones to create that crunchy riff). The opening is very classy even from a designer’s point of view, with well-timed cuts and simple graphics.

While the entire movie is set to a commendable catalog of early, foundational rock bands such as the Turtles, the Yardbirds and the Who, they do stretch the plotline a little bit by never explaining exactly how they evade the government plots to destroy them. The ending credits did include a Taylor Swift album cover, a blasphemy in my opinion to include among actually great albums like the Who’s Tommy and Queen’s A Night at the Opera, but I liked the film so much that I decided to let it slide. Go see it! Oh, and it will make you wanna smoke cigarettes.