The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008)

  This was a much harder movie to enjoy than the first one.   I'm a little surprised this didn't kill the franchise but I haven't seen the third one yet.

The Pevensie children are finally starting to adjust to life back in mundane old England when they are summoned once more to Narnia.  However, what has been a year for them has been over four centuries for the land they once ruled.  Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson) has not been seen in all that time and the Narnians have suffered a number of invasions by the neighboring country of Telmarine, with the intent of wiping them all out.  Prince Caspian X (Ben Barnes) is heir to the throne but his plotting uncle and regent Miraz (Sergio Castellitto) wants him dead.  When Miraz's wife gives birth to a son, Caspian flees to the woods.  He blows a hunting horn, Susan's (Anna Popplewell) to be exact, which is what summons the ancient queens and kings.  The Pevensies aren't exactly the same as they once were, either.  Peter (William Moseley) in particular has been chafing at the restriction that goes with not being royalty in his real life.  He practically jumps at the chance to lead an army again. 

As I said, this is a much more slight effort with no real attempt to pull together the depth of character found in the first film.  I found Ben Barnes' accent to be atrocious and it really took me out of the moment whenever he opened his mouth.  If it weren't for Peter Dinklage and Warwick Davis, I would say skip this one entirely.  Dinklage has one of the most emotive faces I have ever seen, even covered completely in fake hair.  He provided the film's only real humor or humanity.  Warwick Davis played a more menacing character than the villain himself, which was difficult with all the scenery-chewing Castellitto was doing.

Jack Reacher (2012)

I don't care what anyone tells you, this movie was sorely miscast.

I am a big fan of Lee Child's Jack Reacher series.  I've read all the books and I had a lot of trepidation when I heard that Paramount had optioned One Shot as a movie, seeing as it's not the first in the series and no one has done a movie on this character before.

Then they went and cast Tom Cruise and I lost all interest whatsoever.  I have nothing against the man, he is just not what I pictured in my head when I think Jack Reacher, a man described as 6'5", 240 lbs, blond and blue-eyed.  We're talking Chris Hemsworth bulked out like The Rock. 

Taking that aside, it's not a terrible action movie.  It's just a lousy Jack Reacher movie.

A sniper shoots five random people from a parking garage, then flees.  The police scour the area and find a thumbprint on a quarter in a meter belonging to James Barr (Joseph Sikora), a former Army sniper.  They arrest him and offer him a choice between life in prison and the death penalty if he will confess.  He says only "Get me Jack Reacher."  Reacher (Tom Cruise, sadly) is a former Military Police officer who roams the land, dispensing justice.  He sees the case on the news and immediately heads for Pittsburgh to confer.  But he's not there to clear Barr's name.  Due to a previous incident that was hushed up by the military, he is there to put Barr down for good.  Only a plucky young attorney (Rosamund Pike) can convince him that all is not as it seems with this case.

I found it unfortunate that the movie could not manage the same level of intelligence and suspense as the novel.  They compensated by adding more humor and a car chase.  Werner Herzog is underused as the villain, also a shame since I think he would have been super-creepy if we could have seen more of him.  Conversely, Robert Duvall's part was expanded a bit, if I remember the book correctly.  I can't really complain about that too much, though, since he was effortlessly charming.  As a matter of fact, I really liked the rest of the cast.  I just couldn't help myself from mentally replaying scenes with someone else in the lead.

Les Miserables (2012)

Nominated for:  Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Costumes, Best Make-up, Best Original Song, Best Production Design, and Best Sound Mixing    I actually saw this on Christmas Day with Christy but I haven't had a chance to sit down and post about it. 

I have been guardedly optimistic about seeing this movie.  You know I love me some musicals but after getting burned by Nine three Christmases ago I tend to be more cautious.  I am happy to report that this is way better than that Daniel Day-Lewis mediocrity.

Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) has served a 19-year prison sentence for stealing a loaf a bread to feed his starving nephew.  He gets released on parole but the guard, Javert (Russell Crowe), is a real prick about rules and puts him on the tightest leash he can.  Unable to get a job, Valjean steals some silver from a church but the priest (Colm Wilkinson, who played Valjean on Broadway) not only refuses to give him to the cops, he gives him more silver to take.  Moved by such charity, Valjean decides to give his life to God and skips parole, reinventing himself as a factory owner and mayor of a small town.  Fantine (Anne Hathaway) is one of his workers, but a fight with another woman puts her out onto the street.  She has a daughter named Cosette (Isabelle Allen) whom she boards with a shifty innkeeper (Sacha Baron Cohen) and his wife (Helena Bonham Carter).  Now jobless, Fantine drifts through the cracks in society, selling everything she can --including her body-- to pay for her child's upkeep.  When he learns that her fall from grace was partially due to his own negligence, Valjean promises to find Cosette and raise her as his own. 

Cut to eight years later, Valjean and Cosette (now Amanda Seyfried) live in Paris during one of the most politically charged periods following the Revolution.  The young men of the city are planning a protest of their rampant poverty and ill-treatment, led by firebrand Enjolras (Aaron Tveit) and his friend Marius (Eddie Redmayne).  That is until Marius catches a stray glimpse of Cosette and falls madly in love.  They're French; it happens.  Bad news for Eponine (Samantha Barks), the girl who desperately wants Marius to love her.  She knows exactly who Cosette is, too, because she is the daughter of the innkeepers Thenardier, who now run a gang of theives.  Rather than let her father break into their house, she screams a warning.  Valjean thinks the cops have finally found him and decides to make a run for it with his ward. 

Jesus, a lot of stuff happens in this movie.  There's more but you can go see it for yourselves.  Block off your schedule, though, and take tissues.  You'll be crying or close to it for three hours.

They used live singing for this movie (meaning that they filmed the actors singing in takes, rather than lip-synching to a pre-recorded soundtrack) which I liked because it felt much more organic and real.  Unfortunately, they really only filmed them singing.  There are a lot of close-ups during songs, rather than actors singing as they move through scenes.  On the one hand, this drags down the action, but on the other, it really allows them to emote the hell out of what they're singing.  As far as the quality of singing, I'd rate it as high.  Christy thought Eddie Redmayne sounded a bit like Kermit the Frog in some parts, but as the only one who didn't have a background in singing or musical theater, I thought he did a fine job.  "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" was probably his best song.  The surprise stand-out for me was Aaron Tveit, a Broadway performer who stole every scene he was in. 

I will probably buy this when it comes out but I probably won't get the soundtrack.  Call me a purist, but I'm happy with the original cast album.

Scrooged (1988)

  The Christmas streak continues. Sometimes you just get tired of all the cute, feel-good Christmas movies and you want to watch something more...you.  This is that movie.

Frank Cross (Bill Murray) is a TV executive trying to put on a live adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic Christmas Tale.  He is a total asshole to his subordinates including his poor put-upon Assistant Grace (Alfre Woodard).  This is probably why he gets a visit from his dead former boss (John Forsythe) warning him that three other ghosts are coming for him:  Christmas Past, Present, and Future.  Christmas Past (David Johansen) takes him back to his childhood, where all his favorite memories happened on TV, and then to the day he turned his back on his sweet, charitable girlfriend (Karen Allen).  Christmas Present (Carol Kane) takes him to his brother's house, whose invitation he blows off every year, and to the subway exhaust grate where the homeless man he ignored (Michael J. Pollard) has frozen to death.  Meanwhile, a disgruntled employee (Bobcat Goldthwait) breaks into Frank's office and threatens him with a shotgun.

It's very 80's (he drinks Tab and vodka!) but the story is timeless.  Bill Murray is at his best when he plays an asshole and the supporting parts are very well-cast.  The stand-out for me is Carol Kane.  She's just so cute and violent!

Honestly, there's no reason why you shouldn't already have this movie and this is the perfect time of the year to watch it.  I know, I know, Christmas was yesterday.  That's ok.  It just keeps giving.

Obligatory Year-End Post (2012)

Well, okay, it's not obligatory but it certainly is ubiquitous.  I scroll through my favorite movie news sites and it seems like everyone and their brother is posting some sort of "Best Movies of the Year" or "Top 10 for 2012".

I can do that.  Hell, according to that little counter on the right, I've watched over 200 movies this year so far.  I can put together a bitchin' list. 

Number 10:  Prometheus -- Yeah, you can sit there and pick it apart but where's the fun in that?  It's like seeing a Monet by microscope.   

Number 9:  Wreck-It Ralph -- Sugar-sweet and visually stunning.

Number 8:  Man with the Iron Fists -- I was totally surprised how much I liked it.  It was cheestastic fun.

Number 7:  Skyfall -- Good story, great interaction with the cast, and a creepy memorable villain. 

Number 6:  The Dark Knight Rises --  Probably should have been higher on my list but that middle part is a real slog of depression to get through.

Number 5:  Looper -- This had a great sci-fi premise and some of the best use of make-up I've seen all year.

Number 4:   Lockout -- I don't care what anyone says. This movie was fun.

Number 3:   Pitch Perfect -- I had no expectations going into this and I loved it. What's a little surprising is how much critics seemed to love it. I really expected this to be one of those movies you're embarassed you admit you like but it got made legit so raise your heads high, aca-bitches! 

Number 2:  The Avengers -- Ok, the only reason this one is second is because I knew I would love it.  I walked into the theater expecting to be wildly entertained and I was.  And that's why..

Number 1:  Cabin in the Woods -- Best film of the year.  I knew nothing about this film except that people were losing their tiny minds over it.  Now, I think I could watch it every day for a year and not get tired of it. 

So there you go. 

In other news, Merry Christmas, everyone!  I just finished opening all my presents and I can say that the Nail Polish Fairy has definitely visited me.  I'm going to need to be irradiated so I can grow more fingers and toes just to put these colors on!

Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005)

  Wednesday night I had to do a lot of baking.  I tried to just put this movie on as background because I'd seen it before but I realized just after the opening credits that wasn't going to work.  I hadn't seen it since maybe the year after it first came out in theaters and, while I do have some issues with it, it deserves to actually be watched.  So I turned it off, baked my cookies, and picked it up again on Thursday.

I remember thinking this movie wasn't all that great when I first saw it.  I think battle scenes without blood are silly and I found the story to be badly dated. Those things are still true with the second viewing but I minded them less.  Maybe it was finally seeing them on blu-ray.  The colors looked amazing and the detail was good without being oh-my-God-I-can-see-every-pore-on-their-faces. 

The four Pevensie children are sent out to the country to avoid the London Blitz attacks.  Lucy (Georgie Hensley), the youngest, discovers a magical portal through the back of a disused wardrobe into the world of Narnia.  She tries to tell her siblings but they don't believe her until her next oldest brother Edmund (Skander Keynes) follows her because he's a snot.  Once in Narnia, Edmund falls into the hands of the White Witch (Tilda Swinton) who preys upon his snottiness by promising him the ability to rule over his brother and sisters if he will lure them to her castle. 

Eventually, the two oldest children make it through the wardrobe and into Narnia.  Edmund bails as fast as he can to the Witch's castle while Lucy and the other two meet Beaver (voiced by Ray Winstone) and his wife (voiced by Dawn French) who tell them of a prophecy that the four children will one day become the kings and queens of this land and winter will be banished.  The great lion Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson) is waiting for them with an army.  Peter (William Moseley) wants to stay and fight but is torn by the duty of keeping his little sisters and brother safe.  Susan (Anna Popplewell) is a wet blanket.  She doesn't really do much of anything except bitch.

The source books were essentially Christian dogma for children and the symbolism gets a bit heavy-handed but that shouldn't necessarily put you off from seeing this film if you're not Christian.  I will say that the age window for really enjoying this film is quite small, maybe 10-14.  I can't imagine anyone younger than that caring about the plot or anyone older being satisfied by the action.  Still, it's a very pretty movie and shouldn't simply be dismissed out of hand.

Moonraker (1979)

  This falls under the Dumb But Cute category of Bond movies.  Just because your movie is set in space doesn't mean you can get all slap-happy with story and plot.

Bond (Roger Moore) is put on the case of the missing space shuttle, Moonraker, and flies out to California to visit the shuttle manufacturer Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale), who reeks of villainry.

Seriously, it's like he went to a Kim Jong Il's tailor.  Anyway, Drax allows Bond free access to his facilityand sends his manservant to quietly kill him.  Meanwhile, Bond meets astronaut and head scientist Dr. Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles) and giggles like a schoolboy over her name.  Forget the fact that the woman is a highly-trained member of an incredibly select sub-group of scientists, let's chortle over her name sounding dirty.  After Bond learns nothing at Drax's place, he wanders over to Venice and discovers a glassblower's shop that doubles as a lab.  He also bumps into Dr. Goodhead again and, surprise, she's working for the CIA.  Drax gets fed up with Bond nosing around and hires Jaws (Richard Kiel), the metal-toothed giant from The Spy Who Loved Me, to get rid of the MI6 agent for good.  Jaws catches up to them in Rio but manages to meet a sweet pig-tailed blond (Blanche Ravalec) and fall head over heels.  Then space happens.  Bond and Goodhead (ugh, I hate typing that) uncover Drax's cunning plan to fly a bunch of hot people into his space station --hidden by radar, of course-- and hit the redo button on Earth by launching globes filled with nerve gas onto the planet. 

This is Rob's favorite movie of the series, just for sheer silliness.  I was less amused but I did like that they fleshed out Richard Kiel's character.  He's much more entertaining here and even gets a line of dialogue.  You can definitely see some Star Wars influence with the laser guns and the astronaut battle but it comes across as very dated and campy now.  Not the best of the Bond series by any means, but at least it wasn't horribly offensive.

Secret Agent (1936)/Champagne (1928)/Blackmail (1929)

  Much like The 39 Steps, this movie makes use of the suspense-filled world of international espionage.  War hero Brodie (John Gielgud) is recruited to British Intelligence and sent to Switzerland to eliminate a German spy.  To help him, he is assigned two partners:  the General (Peter Lorre), a mercenary to actually pull the trigger, and Elsa (Madeline Carroll), to pretend to be his wife and handle all the administrative tasks.  But when things start to get complicated, Elsa ad Brodie begin to rethink where their loyalties lie.

This is one of the more well-known films in this collection and there's a reason why.  The star power is good, the dialogue is snappy, and the plot is twisty for the time.  The ending is a little pat but you can't have everything.
  This one took almost three days to get through.  I don't know why but it just did not grab me.  And not for being a silent film, either, since I generally like those.  This one I kept trying to place the score against various pieces from Fantasia.

Betty (Betty Balfour) is a socialite who runs off on a cruise to elope with her boyfriend (Jean Bradin).  Her father (Gordon Harker) thinks that he's a gold-digger and pulls out all the stops to keep his daughter from marrying.

Seriously, he goes to his only child and tells her that he lost his entire fortune, forcing her to live in squalor.  When she remains upbeat and even gets a job, he has a family friend (Ferdinand von Alten) basically stalk her to keep her from going back to her boyfriend.  I would probably sue my dad if he tried to pull that kind of crap. 


  Even though this was made only a year after Champagne, it's a talkie, one of the first to use a double-track for dialogue and score. 

Hitchcock's weird sense of morality is on display here as well.  Alice (Anny Ondra) has a fight with her cop boyfriend (John Longden) and decides to go home with an 'artist' she met at a restaurant (Cyril Ritchard).  He turns out to be a rapey sort of artist and, in the course of the assault, Alice stabs him to death with a kitchen knife.  Terrified (and traumatized) she runs instead of calling the police.  Thanks to a staggering amount of evidence left behind, her boyfriend quickly figures out that she's the murderer but he's willing to help her out.  Then some shady dude (Donald Calthrop) shows up, also with evidence from the scene and tortures Alice and her boyfriend by holding it over their heads.

Here's the thing:  you don't want Alice to go to jail because she's basically a nice girl but she did in fact kill a man (in self-defense) and clearly feels horrendously guilty as a result.  Hitchcock plays with that guilt, framing the blackmailer --who, I must stress, is NOT a murderer-- as worse than the person who committed the crime and the person who is helping to cover it up.  That puts a rather different spin on things, doesn't it?  Does he deserve to go to jail in her place just for being an asshole?

The Santa Clause 2 (2002)

  So it turns out that although I don't own any Christmas movies, Christy owns plenty.  Packing those gift bags took almost six hours so we had plenty of time to watch another film in our theme.

I remember seeing the first Santa Clause movie back in the late 90's when I still lived at home but I never caught any of the sequels.  This one wasn't as bad as I was anticipating. 

Scott Calvin (Tim Allen) has been Santa for going on eight years when his faithful elves Bernard (David Krumholtz) and Curtis (Spencer Breslin) spring the second "clause" on him:  if he doesn't find a Mrs. Claus within the month, he loses all his magic and goes back to being a regular guy.  Why this would suddenly occur 8 years later, no one knows.  Meanwhile, Scott's son Charlie (Eric Lloyd) has been busted for repeatedly tagging school property and winds up on the Naughty List.  Curtis comes up with the bright idea to clone Santa as a toy to manage the North Pole while the real Santa straightens out his kid and tries to find a date.  Unfortunately, Toy Santa turns into a horrible despot with an army of tin soldiers and the woman Scott ends up falling for is Charlie's icy principal, Carol Newman (Elizabeth Mitchell). 

It skews a little young for me and relies heavily on you having seen (and remembered) all the jokes from the first movie, but these are easily surmountable obstacles to enjoyment.  Would I run out and buy it?  No.  But if you have a family, it's not a bad franchise to own.

Gremlins (1984)

  Christy decided to be a good litle elf this season and volunteered to put together gift bags full of candy for the patients at the hospital where she works.  Then, of course, she got horribly sick for three straight days so she guilted me into helping her. To get us into the festive spirit while we were stuffing bags full of candy, she wanted to watch a holiday movie.

No shit, this was the closest thing I had to a Christmas movie.  I know I don't normally do any sort of theme here, like 25 days of Christmas movies or whatever, but bear with me. 

Randall Peltzer (Hoyt Axton) is a terrible inventor but a loving, if slightly doltish, father.  While in Chinatown, Peltzer comes across a strange little creature called a Mogwai.  He finagles it away from the shopkeeper's grandson and takes it home to his son, Billy (Zach Galligan), as a Christmas present.  Now this is not what you would call a low-maintenance pet, as the Mogwai comes with a lot of restrictions.

1.  No bright lights.
2.  No water of any kind.
3.  No feediing after midnight.

Still, Gizmo is an adorable addition to the household and totally worth all the rules.  Until one of the neighbor kids (Cory Feldman) spills water on him, causing a bunch of little Mogwais to pop out of his back.  The new batch are just as cute, if a little more mean-spirited, until they manage to get some late-night snacks and morph into green scaly little bastards who wreak havoc on the sleepy town.

I love that even after almost 30 years, the animatronics still hold up today.  The gremlins are still as creepy and hilarious and gross as they were back in the 80's.  This is a great combination of horror and comedy and should probably be in your holiday rotation. 

A Christmas Carol (2009)

  Purely coincidental tie-in to the holiday season.  I'm up to C-H-R in Rob's server. Next is some anime series I think.  

I can't be 100% sure, since I was never a huge Dickens fan, but this seemed like a really faithful adaptation of the book.  An old miser named Scrooge (Jim Carrey) is visited by three spirits on Christmas Eve to show him what was (Jim Carrey), what is (Jim Carrey), and what will be (Jim Carrey) if he doesn't stop acting like a total douche to everybody on Christmas.

The whole thing is motion-capture animation (or mo-cap) because it was directed by Robert Zemeckis who was deep in his "mo-cap is totally the way of the future, you guys" stage.  Some of the backgrounds are pretty but all of the faces are pure, uncut nightmare fuel.  It's very much the Jim Carrey Show as well, with some random moments of Colin Firth, Bob Hoskins, and Gary Oldman thrown in.

There are so many variants of this story to choose from, there really is no reason to pick this one.  Do yourself (and your kids) a favor and find a different version.

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

  This is definitely the best Moore-as-Bond film.  It cut a lot of the camp and replaced it with an actual plot that almost made sense.  The only really shitty part of this movie was the editing.  John Glen did the editing for On Her Majesty's Secret Service too, which also had some problems in that regard.

Anyway, this adventure sees Bond (Roger Moore) teamed up with his Russian counterpart, Agent XXX (Barbara Bach).  She can't emote worth a damn, but that's okay because she might have the best rack --shape, not size-- of all the Bond girls so far, although Diana Rigg's were pretty amazing. 

I might be slightly drunk right now.  I can neither confirm nor deny. 

So, a Russian and a British nuclear sub go missing.  Agents 007 and XXX are sent to Cairo to investigate.  They figure out that the evil mastermind behind the plot is Karl Stromberg (Curd Jurgens), who wants to build an underwater paradise for people to live by making the surface all radioactive.  Really, he's a humanitarian.

He has two main henchmen, Sandor (Milton Reid) who dies too fast to care about, and Jaws (Richard Kiel), a 7-ft tall giant with metal teeth.  I kind of wish he had gotten his own spin-off movie.  But really, a guy who can be in both Cannonball Run II and Happy Gilmore is all right in my book.

I digress.  Stromberg, underwater city, nuclear warheads, blah blah blah.  There's a submarine car and did I mention Barbara Bach is freakin' hot?

Rich and Strange (1931)/The 39 Steps (1935)

  Or its alternate title:  East of Shanghai.

I have not seen the new movie Hitchcock, with Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren, yet but thanks to reading about it I know that Hitch's wife was Alma Reville.  Now I've started looking for that in the credits of his movies. 

The title here comes from a quote from The Tempest and the story is from a novel by Dale Collins. 

Fred Hill (Henry Kendall) is bored with his life of drudgery and longs for adventure on the high seas.  Miraculously, a rich relative decides to give Fred and his wife Emily (Joan Berry) an early inheritance by sending them on a trip around the world.  This is basically the equivalent of a monkey's paw.  Fred is immediately laid low by seasickness, leaving Emily in the company of dashing Commander Gordon (Percy Marmont).  Finally feeling better by the time they hit Egypt, Fred rejoins his wife...for about a minute.  Long enough to get hit in the eye by a Frisbee on deck.  But it's a Frisbee thrown by a princess (Betty Amann), so there's that. 

This rivals some of the National Lampoon vacations for sheer travel hell. 

  This is one of his more famous films.  It's been remade several times, in fact, on the basis that you can never have too much of a good thing.

Canadian Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) is at a music hall in London when he meets a mysterious and beautiful woman (Lucie Mannheim) who tells him that she is a secret agent.  There are men who have stolen state secrets, preparing to move them out of the country.  She has a contact in Scotland who is to help her, but she is killed the same night.  Hannay decides to carry out her mission for her, not incidentally because he is being blamed for her murder.  Chased across the moors as a wanted man, Hannay runs across lovely but unsympathetic Pamela (Madeline Carroll), who doesn't believe a word of his claims that a foreign agent missing the last digit of his pinky (Godfrey Teale) will stop at nothing to see those secrets out of England.

It runs a bit long, especially when compared to modern spy films, but is still an excellent thriller. 

2013 Golden Globes Nominations

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
The 2013 Golden Globes nominations in a pear tree!

Can you smell it in the air?  It's award season!  Time for all good little cinephiles to gather round the glow of a computer monitor and bitch that their favorite didn't get represented.  So without further ado, I present the list:

Movies
Best Picture, Drama:
“Argo”
“Django Unchained”
“Life of Pi”
“Lincoln”
“Zero Dark Thirty”

Best Picture, Musical or Comedy:
“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”
“Les Misérables”
“Moonrise Kindgom”
“Salmon Fishing in the Yemen”
“Silver Linings Playbook”

Best Director:
Ben Affleck, “Argo”
Kathryn Bigelow, “Zero Dark Thirty”
Ang Lee, “Life of Pi”
Steven Spielberg, “Lincoln”
Quentin Tarantino, “Django Unchained”

Best Actress, Drama:
Jessica Chastain, “Zero Dark Thirty”
Marian Cotillard, “Rust and Bone”
Helen Mirren, “Hitchcock”
Naomi Watts, “The Impossible”
Rachel Weisz, “The Deep Blue Sea”

Best Actor, Drama:
Daniel Day-Lewis, “Lincoln”
Richard Gere, “Arbitrage”
John Hawkes, “The Sessions”
Joaquin Phoenix, “The Master”
Denzel Washington, “Flight”

Best Actor, Musical or Comedy:
Jack Black, “Bernie”
Bradley Cooper, “Silver Linings Playbook”
Hugh Jackman, “Les Misérables ”
Ewan MCGregor, “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen”
Bill Murray, “Hyde Park on Hudson”

Best Actress, Musical or Comedy:
Emily Blunt, “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen”
Judi Dench, “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”
Jennifer Lawrence, “Silver Linings Playbook”
Maggie Smith, “Quartet”
Meryl Streep, “Hope Springs”

Best Supporting Actress:
Amy Adams, “The Master”
Sally Field, “Lincoln”
Anne Hathaway, “Les Misérables ”
Helen Hunt, “The Sessions”
Nicole Kidman, “The Paperboy”

Best Supporting Actor:
Alan Arkin, “Argo”
Leonardo DiCaprio, “Django Unchained”
Philip Seymour Hoffman, “The Master”
Tommy Lee Jones, “Lincoln”
Christoph Waltz, “Django Unchained”

Best Screenplay:
Mark Boal, “Zero Dark Thirty”
Tony Kushner, “Lincoln”
David O’Russell, “Silver Linings Playbook”
Quentin Tarantino, “Django Unchained”
Chris Terrio, “Argo”

Best Original Score
Alexandre Desplat – "Argo"
Dario Marianeli – "Anna Karenina"
Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek, Reinhold Heil – "Cloud Atlas"
Mychael Danna – "Life Of Pi"
John Williams – "Lincoln"

Best Original Song
Keith Urban – “For You” (Act Of Valor)
Taylor Swift – “Safe & Sound” (The Hunger Games)
Hugh Jackman – “Suddenly” (Les Miserables)
Adele – “Skyfall” (Skyfall)
Jon Bon Jovi – “Not Running Anymore” – (Stand Up Guys)

Best Foreign Language Film:
“Amour”
“A Royal Affair”
“The Intouchables”
“Kon-Tiki”
“Rust and Bone”

Best Animated Feature:
“Rise of the Guardians”
“Brave”
“Frankenweenie”
“Hotel Transylvania”
“Wreck-It Ralph”

TelevisionBest TV Series – Comedy
Big Bang Theory
Episodes
Girls
Modern Family
Smash

Best TV Series – Drama
Breaking Bad
Boardwalk Empire
Downton Abbey
Homeland
The Newsroom

Best Actress in a TV Series – Drama
Connie Britton, Nashville
Glenn Close, Damages
Claire Danes, Homeland
Michelle Dockery, Downton Abbey
Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife

Best Actor in a TV Series – Drama
Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire
Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad
Jeff Daniels, The Newsroom
Jon Hamm, Mad Men
Damian Lewis, Homeland

Best Actress in a TV Series – Comedy
Zooey Deschanel, New Girl
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep
Lena Dunham, Girls
Tina Fey, 30 Rock
Amy Poehler, Parks and Recreation

Best Actor in a TV Series – Comedy
Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock
Don Cheadle, House of Lies
Matt LeBlanc, Episodes
Louie C.K., Louie
Jim Parsons, Big Bang Theory

Best Actor in a Miniseries or TV Movie
Kevin Costner, Hatfields and McCoys
Benedict Cumberbatch, Sherlock
Woody Harrelson, Game Change
Toby Jones, The Girl
Clive Owen, Hemingway and Gellhorn

Best Actress in a Miniseries or TV Movie
Nicole Kidman, Hemingway and Gellhorn
Jessica Lange, American Horror Story
Sienna Miller, The Girl
Julianne Moore, Game Change
Sigourney Weaver, Political Animals

Best Supporting Actress in a TV Series, Miniseries or TV Movie
Hayden Panettiere, Nashville
Archie Punjabi, The Good Wife
Sarah Paulson, Game Change
Maggie Smith, Downton Abbey
Sofia Vergara, Modern Family

Best Supporting Actor in a TV Series, Miniseries or TV Movie
Max Greenfield, New Girl
Ed Harris, Game Change
Danny Huston, Magic City
Mandy Patinkin, Homeland
Eric Stonestreet, Modern Family

Best Miniseries or TV Movie
Game Change
The Girl
Hatfields and McCoys
The Hour
Political Animals

So, see anything you like?  I can't say any of these really come as a surprise to me.  They're basically the same ones all the critics have been talking about, for better or for worse.  I don't do the same thing with the Globes as I do with the Oscars, where I watch as many as humanly possible, but I like to start loading my Netflix queue with them since they seem to be a decent bellweather. 

The Change-Up (2012)

  It's Freaky Friday with Ryan Reynolds as a man-child and Jason Bateman as a neutered husband seeking wish fulfillment instead of Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan.

Utter tripe.  Ryan Reynolds doesn't even get shirtless.

Avoid at all costs.

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

  Merry Christmas?  I guess.  It's a little early.  

This is a terrible movie as well, but not as bad as the last one.  I'm really starting to dislike Roger Moore as Bond.  I mean Connery had his moments but this Bond just sucks.

Renowned assassin Scaramanga (Christopher Lee) is after Bond so M (Bernard Lee) pulls him from active duty.  The tacit agreement is that Bond will use his free time to hunt Scaramanga and get to him first.  He accomplishes this by completely failing at everything he touches.  He is aided in failure by Agent Goodnight (Brit Eklund), a dumb blonde who is assigned the Far East branch of MI6.  Also, that horrible Southern stereotype character is back for some unfathomable reason, spewing racist diatribe in some misguided attempt at comic relief.

Trust me, the only relief is when the end credits roll.

The Cheney Vase (1955)/The Sorcerer's Apprentice (1962)

  This little number comes to us from the "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" show.  I remember catching old reruns on TV when I was a kid. 

Lyle Endicott (Darren McGavin, who played the Dad in A Christmas Story) gets fired from his job as Assistant Curator at a museum.  On his way out, he overhears one of the museum's benefactors mention that her live-in companion is leaving soon.  This particular lady, Ms. Martha Cheney (Patricia Collinge), is in possession of a priceless vase that she inherited from her father.  Endicott worms his way into her life in an effort to find the vase, making the infirm old woman a prisoner in her own home.

Seeing as this is Hitchcock, of course, this backfires on him in a spectacular way. 

Despite the recognizability of the cast, Hitch is the star of this show.  His lead-in and closing bits are warm, funny, and just the slightest bit dark.  Just the way I like it.

  I couldn't find a poster just for the episode "The Sorcerer's Apprentice".  It's only about a half hour long with commerical breaks.  This one I know I've seen before.

A circus magician's wife (Diana Dors) convinces a teenage runaway with a problem seeing the difference between reality and fantasy (Brandon De Wilde) to murder her husband, the Great Sadini (David J. Stewart).  This blows up in her face because crazy people are crazy and therefore unpredictable.  That's why they shouldn't have access to giant saws.

The Farmer's Wife (1928)/The Manxman (1926)

  Seeing how much you guys liked the last collection of films I did, I thought I'd try it again with the Alfred Hitchcock Legacy Collection.  This is a much more manageable number, though, with only 20 movies instead of 50.  They're all Hitchcock, mostly his super-early stuff.  I already saw The Lady Vanishes through Netflix so I skipped it and went for the second one.

The Farmer's Wife is about a widowed farmer (Jameson Thomas) who decides to remarry.  He wanders around his village, proposing to the unmarried women.  However, he finds the prospects to be an exercise in humility as he is turned down again and again.  Finally, he realizes that his best bet is his housekeeper Araminta (Lillian Hall Davis).

Frankly, this was a snoozefest.  It's not particularly clever or funny and it drags on for far too long.  There is very little of the signature wit and a lot of reliance on British country stereotypes.  Give this one a miss.

  This was a much more lively and engaging story, even if I'd seen some variation of it before. 

Two best friends are in love with the same girl.  Pete (Carl Brisson) decides to work his passage to Africa in order to make his fortune.  Before he leaves, he wrings a promise from Kate (Anny Ondra) that she will wait for him.  He asks his best friend Phil (Malcolm Keen) to watch over her while he's gone.  Phil and Kate spend hours and days in close proximity and then, deliverance.  They get a telegram saying that Pete has died.  As sad as they are to have lost a friend, they're also happy they can finally be together.  Except, of course, Pete isn't dead.  He comes back none the wiser about the two of them and Phil convinces Kate to stand by her promise and marry the guy. 

And he's a great guy, that's the shitty part.  If he was an asshole or beat her or humiliated her in public, they would have had no problem declaring their love for each other and telling him to shove off.  But he's not.  He treats Kate like a queen, is good-tempered, and a good provider.  He's even over the moon when he finds out Kate's knocked up.  Apparently they don't teach math in the Isle of Man.

This is much more in line with Hitchcock's later works, being funny in a darkly sad sort of way and having a strong moral bent.  It puts duty over love, the ultimate "Bros before hos" with dire consequences for failing to adhere to that code.

Live and Let Die (1971)

  This is the worst Bond film yet.  Worse than the yellowface incident.  Just awful.

And it could have been so awesome!  That's the really sad part.  It had voodoo and heroin smuggling, a really smooth villain, and a beautifully ethereal leading lady.  Squandered.  You had Punjab from Annie running around in skull make-up and you choked!  This movie sucked so bad it actually made me like the theme song a little less.  And it's one of the better theme songs of the whole series!

Bond (Roger Moore) goes to New York in order to spy on Kananga (Yaphet Kotto), the ruler of a small Caribbean island that is not Jamaica.  Kananga doesn't make a move unless his pet Tarot reader Solitaire (Jane Seymour) tells him it's okay, so Bond immediately sleeps with her.  Now robbed of her second sight, Solitaire joins him on the run. 

There's an absolutely useless scene at an alligator farm, a too-long/stupid boat chase through the bayou and a villain "reveal" that is absolutely ridiculous.  Not to mention the introduction of a character that is such a vapid Good-Ole-Southern-Boy cliche I nearly turned off the movie. 

The whole film is cringeworthy.  Rob called it "Bond's Blaxploitation Movie" and he's not wrong.  Horribly offensive.

Pump Up the Volume (1990)

  When Christy found out I'd never seen this movie she almost shit a brick.  Apparently, I have been remiss in my knowledge of the oeuvre of Christian Slater.  My bad.  I own Heathers and consider it to be the apogee of his cinematic achievement (with Robin Hood:  Prince of Thieves at the other end of that scale).

This one doesn't suck, though.  It is very much a product of its time, however, and perhaps rides the coattails of John Hughes' Breakfast Club just a little too much.  But it's still not bad.

Shy NY-transplant Mark (Christian Slater) hates his new Arizona high school and misses his old life.  He manifests this by turning into Happy Harry Hard-on, an unlicensed radio operator railing against the oppression of his life.  Mark is comfortable in his anonymity but when the populace starts to revolt against the tyrannical principal (Annie Ross), it takes a poetry-writing stalker (Samantha Mathis) to convince him that one voice can make a difference.

This movie is very high school and very 90's.  The soundtrack is decent and overall the movie isn't terrible, as I've said.  You just have to ignore that twitch in your eye every time you see a stonewashed denim jacket or rat tail on screen.  My advice:  drink.  It's even more enjoyable.

Gojira (1954)

 That's right, it's the often imitated, unmistakable, original smash-Tokyo movie.  When a monster has been on film pretty much constantly over 60 years, you know it's got to be good.

This is the gold standard for non-supernatural monster movies.  Sure, it's horribly dated and the production values sucked but it is a bonafide classic and you just can't argue with that.

There is a plot to it involving a scarred scientist, a dainty woman, and a scrap metal salvage specialist in a love triangle but who gives a good goddamn about any of that?

GODZILLA!  That's the star of the movie and that's who you're waiting to see.  And wait you do, my friends.  First he teases you with some wrecked ships and glowing water, then there's a footprint and some trilobites.  You have to be committed to this movie before it lets you take a peek under its skirts. 

The monster goes through a sock puppet phase before evolving into what is clearly a man in a suit and yet somehow manages to be charming instead of irritating.  The end is complete shit, though, with the biggest deus ex machina "solution" you've ever seen.  It makes about as much sense as a chocolate tea kettle.  But that's part of what makes it a masterpiece.  Even though you know it's crap, it still captures the imagination.  This is a great idea let down by the production values of the time.  That's why they're still churning out sequels and why Godzilla has changed from Scourge to National Hero.  He may have started out as a metaphor for nuclear disarmament but the Japanese knew they were on to a winner and we can all be grateful for that.

Beauty and the Beast (1946)

  Well this was interesting.  In case I've never mentioned it before (which is entirely possible.  I forget to mention stuff all the time), I have never had any sort of film education.  I like watching films and I like reading about them but that's as far as I've gone.  I've never taken any sort of film class where you would learn about things like German Expressionism and French New Wave.  I just read websites run by people way more knowledgeable than me and then load up my Netflix queue.

Lots of movie-smart people raved about this one.  It's on TCM all the time and was accepted by the Criterion Collection, which distributes "important classic and contemporary films".  So I figured what the hell, I'll see what all the fuss was about.

Story-wise, it's pretty much spot on the original fairy tale.  Man loses his way in the forest and winds up in a mysterious manor.  He takes a rose from the garden for his daughter (Josette Day) and is accosted by a horrible beast (Jean Marais) who tells him that he is going to die unless he can get his daughter to take his place.  The girl moves ino the castle and eventually overcomes her fear of the Beast's ugliness to fall in love with him but not until he's almost dead.  Then he's transformed into a handsome prince.

This version manages to go a little nutty with the visuals.  First off, the Beast's make-up is remarkably thorough, even if he looks a little like a felt lion.  The costumes are yards and yards of sumptuous fabrics, so much that people look like they're swimming in wool and satin.  Then there are the sets. 

  Those are actual arms stuck through the walls.  The overall effect is very trippy and surreal, accentuated by some random slo-mo to make Belle look like she's gliding dream-like up the stairs. 

I was hesitant to watch this initally because the words "Art House" make me nervous that I'm not pretentious or snobby enough but this was so fascinating to watch that I forgot to pretend I didn't like it. 

Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

  This is the silliest adventure yet for Bond.  

Ok, so Sean Connery is back.  Apparently, he decided not to do another one after You Only Live Twice because he kept having fights on set with the producers.  Hence why they then hired Australian model George Lazenby for the next one.  But George didn't have a good time making the film either and refused to come back.  So they paid Connery a boatload of cash to come and make this one. 

Things got a little confused because I watched them out of order but this is supposed to be right after his wife died at the end of On Her Majesty's Secret Service.  Maybe because it happened to George Lazenby, Connery doesn't seem to give two fucks about canon.  Character development?  Psh!  What's that?

Anyway, Bond manages to kill Blofeld (this time he's Charles Gray) in the first third of the movie and then spends the rest of the time chasing after smuggled diamonds.  He picks up the trail in Amsterdam, hooking up with red-headed hottie smuggler Tiffany Case (Jill St. John).  Get it?  Tiffany as in little blue boxes full of sparklies.  Bond gets the diamond shipment over to L.A. in a coffin and gets driven to Vegas with them by a bunch of wise guys.  Because it's Vegas in the 70's.  Bond notices that everything seems connected to reclusive kingpin Willard Whyte, and begins snooping around.  He discovers that SURPRISE! Willard Whyte is Blofeld who is alive and has a perfect duplicate, even down to the signature white cat.  Blofeld is using the diamonds in a satellite array in order to focus a laser so powerful that it can blow up submarines.  Because that's how lasers work.  Bond and Tiffany work together to try and switch the master control tape to disable the satellite.

It's very silly, as I said before, but not horrible.  At least it's not trying to take itself so seriously. 

Also, Rob and I had the theory that since Blofeld has changed into at least four different people, he's just a smokescreen and the cat is actually the mastermind.  That's why it doesn't matter how many times Bond kills him, he always comes back.

You Only Live Twice (1967)

  Bond!  In Japan!  With ninjas!

Apparently, this was supposed to have been watched before On Her Majesty's Secret Service but I didn't get the disc until way late.  It doesn't really matter, since there isn't a lot of continuity but it still irks me that they were out of order.

Ok, let's get straight to it.  Bond (Sean Connery) fakes his own death in Hong Kong and is buried at sea, only to be picked up by a submarine.  M (Bernard Lee) tells him that the Russians and the Americans are about a bikini strap away from going to war over their astronauts being abducted...from space.  The British traced the signal of the unknown kidnapping craft to somewhere near Japan, so that's where Bond goes.  After his first contact is killed, 007 tracks the attackers back to the Osato Factory, a chemical manufacturing company.  He also links up with M's Japanese contemporary, "Tiger" Tanaka (Tetsuro Tanba) to make use of local resources, especially the lovely Aki (Akiko Wakabayashi).  They learn that an Osato ship made an overnight stop at a nearby island so Bond decides to infiltrate it.  To do this, he must attempt to be as Japanese as possible, which isn't very. 

No shit you guys Sean Connery makes a terrible Japanese person. 

After applying some prosthetics and a wig, Bond-san acquires a fake wife named Kissy (Mie Hama) and goes to the island.  What happened to Aki, you ask?  Well, it's over an hour into the movie so she had sex with Bond and then died.  I think his dick has killed more women than the Hanta Virus.

Back to the island.  Inside a hollowed out volcano, SPECTRE's leading man Blofeld (Donald Pleasance, who gets a major upgrade to Telly Savalas in the next movie) is holding the astronauts captive until war is declared.  Somehow the end game is $100M but I'm not really sure how that was supposed to work out.  Doesn't really matter though because Bond.  And ninjas. 

I have to say, the most unintentionally hilarious moment of this movie was when Donald Pleasance is trying to flee.  He's still holding his signature white cat when an explosion goes off.  The cat was clearly not prepared for the stunt and you can see it trying like hell to bolt free from Pleasance's grasp. 

  Look at its little face!  I laughed my balls off. 

Overall, this was a very weak effort with some utterly baffling moments. I would give this a pass.

Rise of the Guardians (2012)

  Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving and you didn't kill too many of your relatives.  Rob, Christy and I went over to her friend Christina's house for a veritable feast of turkey, ham, and sides made even more amzaing by the fact that they were cooked (perfectly!) by a vegetarian.  That kind of blows my mind.  I took over some cinnamon-chocolate cigarette cookies as a chaser and then the five of us (me, Rob, Christy, Christina, and Christina's husband Frank) went to see Rise of the Guardians.

This has been a great year for animated movies.  I don't know about for regular ones but for animation, it's definitely been a "more is more" kind of year.  Dreamworks Animation has been getting considerably more polished since Kung Fu Panda and are really emerging as a quality alternative to Disney.

Jack Frost (Chris Pine) is a fun, happy-go-lucky spirit of winter until he is captured by Santa's (Alec Baldwin) yeti and told he is being made a Guardian in order to fight the Boogeyman, Pitch (Jude Law).  Jack is not enthused by the idea but when the Tooth Fairy's (Isla Fisher) realm is attacked, he bands together with Tooth, Santa, the irascible Easter Bunny (Hugh Jackman) and the surprisingly powerful Sandman to stop Pitch's Nightmares from robbing all the children of their belief.

This was an incredibly fun holiday movie and my only criticism (and it's a minor one at that) is that I felt like it skewed to a younger demographic than I would have liked.  It was beautifully done, visually, and the voicework was top-notch (especially from Hugh Jackman and Alec Baldwin) but I would have liked to have seen a bit more wit and a bit more bite to the script.  I have no doubts that it will be beloved by many families on its home release, I just don't know if it'll have the staying power of some of the more age-inclusive holiday classics.

Addicted to Love (1997)

  Add this to the category of Romantic Comedies I Don't Hate. 

Remember when Meg Ryan was adorable?  I've never found Matthew Broderick to be handsome, he's always had a very forgettable face to me, but I remember Meg Ryan's heyday like it wasn't 15 years ago.

She's super-adorable in this.

Sam (Matthew Broderick) is a small-town astronomer who gets dumped by his girlfriend Linda (Kelly Preston).  Devastated, he drops everything to move to New York City.  His plan is to change her mind but that gets scrapped when he sees that she's moved in with French chef Anton (Tcheky Karyo).  He decides to start keeping tabs on the happy couple by moving in to the condemned building opposite and building a camera obscura in order to spy on them better.  He would probably be there forever, if Anton's jilted love Maggie (Meg Ryan) hadn't decided to set up her own base of operations in the same building.  Where Sam just wants Linda back, Maggie is out for blood.  Together, they conspire to destroy the couple's relationship.

Doesn't that just give you the warm and fuzzies?  I love it when two people can bond over their mutual hatred. 

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Vamps (2012)

  Do not let anyone sucker you into seeing this movie.  It is candy-coated poison.

Goody (Alicia Silverstone) and Stacey (Krysten Ritter) are vampires living in the modern world.  They're too soft-hearted to live off people, so they eat rats caught doing their exterminator jobs and take night school to appear normal.  Goody was made back in 1841 but pretends to have only been a vampire as long as Stacey has (since the 1980s), even though she finds the technology of today to be absolutely incomprehensible.  Still, she muddles through until Stacey starts dating Joey Van Helsing (Dan Stevens), whose father (Wallace Shawn) is a noted vampire hunter.  When Stacey gets pregnant --because that's a thing that happens-- Goody realizes that the only way for her to keep the baby is to kill their Stem, the vampire that sired them, because then they'll turn human again.

I can't even begin to number the ways this movie tried too hard.  It crammed in pretty much every single vampire trope, too many guest stars, and random clips from far better movies like The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, Metropolis, and the original Nosferatu. I thought Sigourney Weaver was the one shining stand-out in this whole gloopy mess.  She doesn't get the opportunity to do comedy very often and she went for it here, as the campy scenery-chewing Cisserus. 

If this movie had come out in 1999, when Alicia Silverstone was still relevant, it might have been more palatable but as is, it's too syrupy, too haphazard, and too whiny.  Half the movie is spent complaining about how the character doesn't feel connected to the world anymore because of the prevalence of social media.  This is not news.  It's not timely and it's not funny.  The movie's tagline might as well have been "Wah!  I'm old!"

Twilight: Breaking Dawn (2011) (2012)

 I couldn't find a single poster for this movie that didn't make me want to gag so here's a picture of a kitten instead.

You're welcome.

I have now been forced to watch the entirety of the Twilight series (at least until October) and I have to say, this is the worst of the lot.  They stopped even trying to pretend anyone who wasn't already a Twilight fan would be interested in these movies.  Nobody is introduced, random people speak lines and then are never seen again (Maggie Grace?  Really?) and it's supposed to create some sort of dramatic tension.

In a word, baffling.

It starts with the wedding of Sparkles McFangface to Stick Girl.  Chief No-Peeing-on-the-Carpet is very upset by his invitation, presumably because he wanted to be the flower girl and not an usher.  He turns into an orange marshmallow wolf and runs away to lick his own genitals since it's clear now (like it hasn't been for the last three movies) that Stick Girl is never going to do it for him.  Tough break, kid.  Next time, be a director.

Yeah, I went there.

Little Wooden Doll is very happy because she's finally going to get to be a vegetarian vampire (ugh) like her sparkly smooshy-bear.  For his part, Fangface whisks her away to a private island so they can have some alone time...to play chess and engage in the most awkward wedding night since Liza Minnelli's.  I will say that, when she is not doing her flycatcher impersonation, Kristen Stewart is actually quite pretty.  Unfortunately, those moments are few and far between. 

But that's okay, because once she finds out she's spawning a miniature fake-bacon vampire, the focus shifts from her "how do I get my obviously gay husband to look at me now that he's performed his nuptial duties?" dilemma to Chief Barks-at-Passing-Cars.  He is shocked that two people who went on a honeymoon would come back when one of them gets pregnant.  Shocked and appalled, because ew!  She's huge now.  Due to the length of the average Twihard's attention span, the development of the fetus is sped up to ludicrous levels and Stick Girl turns into Lumpy Spawn-Carrier in about ten minutes.  Puppy Breath runs and tells all his doggie friends that Stick Girl is expecting and they lose their collective doggie minds, declaring war on the vampires.  Seriously, one of these two groups needs to just move.  They are the worst neighbors.

Anyway, Stick Girl is being eaten alive by her stupid progeny and gets almost skinny enough for the cover of Vogue before the fetus karate chops her spine in half and Fangface has to do an emergency C-section...with his teeth.  I had heard that part in the book was incredibly graphic and I was curious how they were going to handle it in a PG-13 manner.  It was very tastefully done, with lots of blurring and seizure-inducing flashes of darkness.  The creature is born and from the first moment Dogboy sees her, he knows his red rocket won't fly for anyone else.  Which is gross because she's like a minute old.  Stick Girl dies despite being shot with Fangface's "venom" in pretty much every limb.  But she's not really dead because there's a part two of this movie coming in October.  "But what about that whole 'war against the vampires' the werewolves declared?" you ask.  Well, kiddies, since Dogboy chose Baby Vamp as his soulmate, the werewolves can't harm her or they risk breaking their most sacred law that no one had ever heard of or mentioned prior to this movie.  And that's what we in the writing biz call "Getting Out of a Corner You Painted Yourself Into". 

I'm sure Christy thought I was just being a hateful bitch (which I usually am) when I asked if this movie had a plot, but I was genuinely curious.  The wedding and the honeymoon bits lasted fucking forever and served absolutely no purpose as far as I could tell.  Rob called it fan service.  I call it two hours of my life I'll never get back. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm just going to roll up my review of the second part like I did with Deathly Hallows.  Christy dragged me to the theater to see the final half of this final movie.  I was not pleased.  Consider this your SPOILER warning.

When we last left Little Wooden Doll, she was being turned into a vampire.  Yay for her.  She adjusts to her new abilities a lot better than she adjusts to the news that her faithful doggie companion Jacob has claimed her offspring.  Guess she was really hoping to get rid of him after he realized she was actually married to the other guy. Personally, I would have just waved a stick for him then thrown it off a cliff.  Fetch!  Because Stephanie Meyers is lazy, the baby grows at an exponential rate and within 15 minutes of the movie, she's an actual child.  A different vampire named Irina (Maggie Grace) sees the little abomination and thinks the worst:  that the Cullens have turned a child into a vampire like Kirsten Dunst in Interview with a Vampire.  Clearly, Irina is worried about what the exposure to Tom Cruise in a blond wig will do to this fledgling, so she runs off to Italy to tell the real vampires all about it.  Plot-hole-filler Alice (Ashley Greene) tells the Cullens that the Volturi are coming to massacre them so they put out the word to their tastefully ethnically diverse friends around the world.  Not to finally show those uppity Dracula wannabes what-for, no, it's so they can talk it out.  Diplomacy!  That's what's going to work here.  The two sides face off over a convenient snow-covered field.

Here's where it gets awesome.  That's right, awesome.  Psychic plot-hole filler shows up and goes to reason with Aro (Michael Sheen), the main Volturi dude, but she can see that no matter what she tells him, he came there for a fight and he's not leaving without one.  Big ass battle happens.  The super-blonde father figure Cullen (Peter Facinelli) gets his head ripped off.  I was not expecting it since Christy told me none of the main characters die in the book.  I laughed so hard when that happened I thought I was going to get stabbed by some Twi-hard.  It was amazing.  Then some shitty CGI werewolves die and Christy gasps next to me like they were her flesh and blood.  I'll be honest, until I saw her react I didn't even know I was supposed to recognize them as real characters.  The actual actors got no face time.  None.  It was CGI werewolves all the way.  Still, the more dead characters the better.  Sparkly Wooden Doll uses her newfound powers to defend her weak-ass husband and together they manage to defeat Aro, popping his head off his shoulders like a gothy Ken doll. 

And then pan out, everybody is exactly where they were and Alice is saying "...and that's what will happen if you don't leave." 

Yep, all of that was her bullshit vision.

And that perfectly encapsulates everything I hate about this series.  It is sophmoric and lazy, set in a world with zero consequences.  You're a teenage girl in a dangerous situation?  Don't worry, a man will save you.  You almost die from a risky pregnancy?  Don't worry, you'll just become a vampire and never have to worry about age or disease ever again.  Your werewolf buddies find your child to be an abomination?  Don't worry, one of them will have been destined to be her soulmate and all is forgiven.  Other vampires hate you?  Don't worry, some psychic will show them a vision of their future so terrible they'll just give up and go home.  That's not life, that's suspended animation.  It's a child's wish for the world.  They might as well have coated every character in plastic or pinned them to the walls like a collection of butterflies.  Beautiful, but frozen and lifeless. 

Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

Nominated for:  Best Animated Feature (Wreck-It Ralph), Best Short Animated Feature (Paperman)    This was the cutest fucking movie I have seen in a long time.  It was almost unbearably adorable.

First, it started with this beautiful short called Paperman, about a guy who meets a girl on a train platform when the wind blows one of his papers into her face, leaving a perfect lipstick impression on it.  They share a giggle, but then she boards a train before he can talk to her.  At his boring office job, he sees the same girl in a building across the street but he can't call out to her without drawing attention from his boss.  So he makes dozens of paper airplanes, launching them across the way to try and get her attention. 

Super super cute.  The whole thing is black and white in that gorgeous hand-drawn style with red lipstick as the only point of color.  It's already qualified to be on the shortlist for the Best Animated Short Oscar category, which isn't a guaranteed nomination but it's a step in the right direction.

On to the feature.  Ralph (John C. Reilly) is the antagonist of an arcade game called Fix It, Felix, Jr.!  Every time a quarter is put in, he runs out and starts wrecking the apartment building while Felix Jr. (Jack McBrayer) fixes it with his magic hammer.  When the player wins, Ralph is thrown from the top of the building into the mud.  But this callous treatment doesn't just end when the game is over.  Reviled by the people of Niceland, Ralph lives in the dump while Felix gets the penthouse.  At their 30th anniversary, Ralph tries to make nice but is told in no uncertain terms that he is unwanted.  He decides to give up being the bad guy and see if he can win a medal as a hero in another game.  He joins Hero's Duty as a space marine under the command of super-tough chick Calhoun (Jane Lynch) battling space bugs that morph into whatever they eat.  He manages to score a medal but winds up with one of the newly hatched psy-bugs in his escape pod.  He crashes into Sugar Rush, a game that's kind of like Candyland with Go-Karts.  The bug disappears into the taffy swamp.  But Ralph has a new problem:  precocious Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman), a glitch who desperately wants to be a racer.  She steals Ralph's medal to buy her way into the line-up race.  Initially furious, Ralph starts to feel bad when he realizes that Vanellope is treated pretty much the same way by the other racers as he was by the Nicelanders.  They band together to try and win the race.  Meanwhile, Felix Jr. is frantically trying to find Ralph before their game is declared unplayable.  He runs into Calhoun who tells him that the psy-bug will multiply and destroy whatever game its in if it isn't stopped. 

This was seriously one of the best movie experiences I've had in a long time.  It was fun for pretty much any age, whether you play video games or not.  There are a ton of appearances from famous arcade characters and games that even I recognized.  The animation is beautiful, especially in Sugar Rush, and all of the voice actors are fantastic.  This is almost a shoe-in to get a Best Animated feature nod and I would say that it's even better than Brave.  It's one of the best films of the year that I've seen so far.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

  Bond is back, except now he's George Lazenby instead of Sean Connery.  This is not a good trade.  It's especially worse since this is one of the best scripts I've seen from the Bond movies so far.  There was a lot of room here for genuine pathos but it's mostly squandered by Lazenby.

James Bond is driving around when he sees a woman trying to drown herself in the ocean.  Not wanting the world to be bereft of hot women, he jumps in and saves her.  For this he is attacked by random dudes and the girl runs off.  He sees her again at a casino and is again set upon by these henchmen.  They take him down to the basement and he meets with mob boss Draco (Gabriele Ferzetti) who explains that the hot chick is his daughter Tracy (Diana Rigg) who has been super-depressed.  Draco wants Bond to woo Tracy out of her funk and give her something else to focus on.  He offers Bond a million dollars but Bond wants information.  Specifically, the location of Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Telly Savalas), the head of SPECTRE.  Tracy insists on not being used as a prize and forces her daddy to just give Bond the information without any strings.  Blofeld is holed up in the Swiss Alps at a super-private allergy research center.  Bond starts dating Tracy anyway, because why not?  He also travels to Switzerland under the ruse of validating Blofeld's hereditary title.  He finds the allergy center populated exclusively by hot women from around the globe.  Once again, his wandering dick gets him into trouble and his cover is blown.  From that point, it's pretty much non-stop action.

This is where it gets spoilery so be ye forewarned.

Bond marries Tracy at the end of the movie, but just as they are driving away, Blofeld and his sidekick Irma Bunt (Ilsa Steppat) fire on the car.  Bond is fine but Tracy dies.  Out of all the previous Bond films, this is the most punch that's been produced from the death of a female character, because it feels tragic and random and thus more like real life.  It speaks to a deep fear in all of us that happiness is fleeting and death is always waiting just around the corner.

Adam and Eve (2005)

    This was one of the worst movies I've ever seen.  It's completely devoid of humor.  Not even frat-boy dick and fart jokes humor.  It has nothing.  It is poorly written, terribly acted, and an utter waste of a DVD.  Of course it's Christy's, but here's the thing:  she doesn't even like this movie.  In fact, she called it the worst movie she's ever seen (and that's saying something).  Why does she own it?  Who the hell knows.

Adam (Cameron Douglas) wants to have sex with his girlfriend Eve (Emmanuelle Chriqui) but she's waiting for the "perfect" moment.  His retarded frat-brothers make fun of him for holding out.  That's all there is.

They drag this out over a year.  A year.  I'd have dumped her frigid ass within a month.  Not that I'm saying you should get your V-card punched by the first person who asks, but if you're still on the fence about sleeping with a dude after a year, cut him loose.  You're not doing anyone any favors.  His friends are sick of hearing about it.  Your friends are sick of hearing about it.  Mount him on your wall or release him back to the wild. 

The End.

Thunderball (1965)

  I really don't have an intro for this one.

James Bond (Sean Connery) is always on the job, no matter what he's actually doing.  Whether it's escaping from a manor house by jet pack or relaxing at a spa, he's always got an eye out for danger.  And easily coerced female spa employees.  This serves him well when M (Bernard Lee) puts him on the case of two missing nuclear warheads.  Their old nemesis SPECTRE is back up to nasty little tricks, demanding millions of dollars in diamonds for the return of the warheads.  Henchman #2, Emil Largo (Adolfo Celi), has the warheads safely hidden in the Caribbean, he thinks, but he also has a hot mistress named Domino (Claudine Auger) and as everyone knows, Bond can sniff out beautiful women like a shark can sniff out a wounded fish.  It's this weakness that fiery assassin Fiona (Luciana Paluzzi) is counting on.

This movie spent about half its running time underwater and there are some great shots of wildlife and reefs interspersed amongst the scuba fighting.  Plotwise, there are a number of elements I could have done without but it's not too bad.  I just think a "less is more" approach would have been better here.  I will say it was nice to see where exactly Mike Meyers got the inspiration for Robert Wagner's character in The Spy Who Shagged Me.  As soon as I saw the eyepatch, I was sold.

The Raven (2012)

Happy Veteran's Day!  Here's a completely unrelated movie!    When I first heard about this movie, I was very excited.  John Cusack playing Edgar Allen Poe in a murder mystery?  That's like Godiva truffles stuffed into Lo Mein and wrapped in a pepperoni pizza.  But like some favorite things, these elements were better off separate. 

Edgar Allen Poe (John Cusack) is on his way to being a complete alcoholic when he is picked up and questioned for a murder of two women in a locked room.  A situation eerily similar to a story Poe had published years ago.  Detective Fields (Luke Evans) enlists Poe's help as a consultant when it becomes clear that the murderer is using the various stories to strike ever closer within Poe's circle of acquaintances, until finally kidnapping Emily (Alice Eve), the poet's girlfriend. Using Emily as a hostage, the killer taunts police with clues on each subsequent victim, pitting his genius against Poe's. 

There was no reason why I should have disliked this movie.  It's competently acted, if a little shout-y, by good actors, dependable actors.  The mood, the cinematography, the set dressing, the music all came together.  It had an adequate number of thrills with a decently thought out plot.  It's not the greatest or most innovative but it told a story and told it thoroughly. 

I still didn't like it. 

But I can't put my finger on why I didn't like it.  That bothers me more than anything else.  It's one thing to say I didn't like Water for Elephants.  Sappy romances just don't do it for me.  That's acceptable.  What is not acceptable is to not know why you didn't like something.  How can I avoid these things in the future if I don't know what the warning signs are?  This movie looked like it had everything going for it.  Favorite actor?  Check.  Gory, gruesome deaths?  Check.  Cat and mouse game between the forces of good and evil?  Check.  Maybe it just really is like the favorite food abomination I described, a sum worth less than its parts.

Goldfinger (1964)

  I think this marks the point where the Bond movies started to slide into stupid puns and Swiss cheese plots. 

James Bond (Sean Connery) is back in action, on the trail of smuggler Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe).  Unfortunately, it seems all those shaken martinis have pickled James' brains since he pretty much blunders through the investigation, getting caught time and again by Goldfinger's goons Oddjob (Harold Sakota) and Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman).  First, there's his hamhanded antagonizing of Goldfinger when Bond catches him cheating at cards, using the lovely Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton) as a spotter.  When Jill is killed by the application of gold paint (instead of just saying she was smothered then covered in paint, they make a point of telling the audience that the paint caused "skin asphyxiation"), Bond puts his personal feelings aside and goes after Goldfinger again.  He manages to get Jill's sister Tilly (Tania Mallet) killed as well before falling directly into Goldfinger's pudgy hands.  The crime lord is all set to bisect Bond with his shiny new industrial laser but Bond successfully bluffs a man so bad at poker he has to hire an escort to help him cheat.  High bar there.  Afraid of what Bond might know, Goldfinger ships him off to his main headquarters in Kentucky.  There, in between trips back and forth to his cell, Bond discovers that Goldfinger plans to nuke the gold reserves of Ft. Knox, disrupting the world economy and making his private reserves invaluable. 

Honestly, if you needed the best example of how extraneous Bond is to the plot of his own movie, look at the bomb diffusion scene.  After being handcuffed to the device and killing bad guys for almost all of the 5 minute countdown, Bond manages to get the case of the bomb open.  He starts frantically grabbing bundles of wires and is about to just yank out a random handful when one of the American scientists walks in, calmly moves him out of the way, and turns off the device.  Radioactive disaster averted, no thanks at all to IQ 007. 

The roles for women in this film continue to be paper-thin.  I had some hopes for Honor Blackman as Goldfinger's personal pilot.  She seemed like a morally ambiguous to downright cold-blooded character but all it took to sway her was a sweaty roll in the hay with our hero.  Because women's minds are so weak, a good hard dicking is all you need to jar that moral compass in the right direction. 

Here's hoping the next one in the line-up tries a little harder.

The Man with the Iron Fists (2012)

  This movie was awesomely, gloriously, stupidly violent.  And I mean that in the best possible sense.

Saturday, Christy and I went to see Vamps but it wasn't actually playing at the theater we like.  Somewhat disappointed, we just decided to see whatever was playing next.  And, lo, the heavens did open up and a voice spake "Thou shalt see The Man with the Iron Fists".  And it was good.

I'm not sure what the other people in the theater thought this movie was going to be.  From the opening credits, which are freeze frames of battle scenes in the most cheesetastic 70's style font and colors, to the dialogue, which is exactly what you would expect from a movie written by Wu Tang Clan founder RZA, it is balls-out crazy.  And everybody knows that's my favorite kind of crazy.  It's not a particularly well-acted movie.  Jamie Chung in particular should have known better.  But it's an instant B-movie classic and, for that, I will own it.

Thaddeus the blacksmith (RZA) is trying to save up enough money to elope with Lady Silk (Jamie Chung) and buy her out of her contract at Madame Blossom's (Lucy Liu) brothel.  At the same time, the Lion Clan has had a change of leadership when Silver Lion (Byron Mann) conspires with assassin Poison Dagger (Daniel Wu) to kill Gold Lion (Kuan Tai Chen) so they can steal a shipment of gold headed north.  Gold Lion's son, the X Blade (Rick Yune) hears about the murder and comes to town to avenge his father.  Silver Lion hires Brass Body (Dave Bautista), a brawler with impenetrable skin, to kill the X Blade. 

This film really is a love story to the old style of low-quality Chinese and Japanese martial arts films from the 70s.  There's a whole Enter the Dragon sequence with a hall of mirrors, and some of the Hyena Clan reminded me of the bandits from Lady Snowblood, plus hosts of others I'm sure.  People spurt blood like firehoses and sport impractically beautiful clothing and weapons while zooming overhead on wires.

In short, it is absolutely amazeballs and you should go see it.