The Guard (2011)

  This is one of the funniest movies I have ever seen.  It's one of those films that's so quick, I'll have to watch it a couple more times just to make sure I heard all the jokes.  At one point, I had to pause it because I was laughing so hard I though I was going to miss the entire rest of the scene.

Sergeant Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) is an Irish policeman with what can best be described as "an unconventional attitude".  He straight up does not give a fuck.  He's rude, racist, and doesn't care about authority.  When FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) comes to Boyle's town to try and catch a drug smuggling ring consisting of three wanted criminals (Liam Cunningham, Mark Strong and David Wilmot), he immediately takes a dislike to the offensive cop, but can't deny Boyle's talent for uncovering a mystery.

Have you ever met somebody who was so over-the-top offensive you couldn't actually be offended by anything they said?  That's pretty much who Gleeson's character is.  Cheadle is here to play the straight man, a fish out of water American who just wants to do a job and go home.  But the real shining star here is Mark Strong, who just has to be one of the all time greatest English villains to ever be on film.  He is so good at pretending to be professionally evil, and also, put out by other people lack of evil professionalism.  No wonder they got him for those Jaguar commercials.

If you can find this one, get it.  Well worth the money, in my opinion.

Chariots of Fire (1981)

  This might have one of the most iconic theme songs of all time, but it has to be one of the most boring movies I have ever seen.

Based on the true story of British Olympic runners Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross) and Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson), the movie chronicles some of the obstacles both men faced to get to the ceremonial Games.  Abrahams, a Cambridge scholar with a chip on his shoulder, runs to combat the rampant anti-semitism he faces from staff and society, while Liddell, a devout Evangelical, struggles with putting his training ahead of his missionary work.

Two and a half hours of people talking about running.  That's what this movie is.  I thought watching golf was boring, but this....It's enough to make you pull out your hair.  And it won Best Picture.  Against (*checks Wikipedia*) Raiders of the Lost Ark?!  Are you fucking kidding me?  I am now retroactively angry about something that happened before I was born.  Ugh.

I guess if you're really into the Olympics or track and field events, this movie might hold some appeal.  I just don't get it.

Charade (1963)

  This movie almost fails as a thriller because it's just so cute.  How are you supposed to be paying attention to finding a killer when Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant are trying to out-charm one another?

Regina Lampert (Audrey Hepburn) is a widow.  Worse yet, she discovers her late husband may have stolen $250,000 and no one can find out what he did with it.  Three very unsavory men (James Coburn, George Kennedy, and Ned Glass) begin to harass her all over Paris, convinced that she knows more than she's telling.  Only Mr. Joshua (Cary Grant) seems remotely trustworthy but a man at the U.S. Embassy (Walter Matthau) warns Regina that Joshua is not who he seems. 

I love this movie.  It's a nice palate-cleanser after watching something weighty, like Breaking Bad.  Sometimes you just need a break, you know?  The only thing that ever remotely bothered me about Charade was the May-December romance line between Hepburn and Grant.  I've never seen the appeal in dating someone two decades older than I am, but I recognize that it's a thing that happens.  Plus, I've never found Cary Grant particularly good-looking, even when he was young.  But that's some personal nitpicking, not a real criticism on the movie.

The Grey (2011)

  When I was a little girl, I was obsessed with White Fang by Jack London.  I had entire passages of that book memorized.  This movie reminded me so much of the opening part, before it switches to the wolves' perspective.  

A bunch of roughnecks' plane goes down in the wilds of Alaska.  A handful of survivors, led by Ottway (Liam Neeson) must find food and shelter or risk freezing to death.  But blizzards aren't the only killers out there.  A pack of wolves have closed in, deeming the men a threat to their den.  Ottway knows they have no hope of rescue before the wolves get them, so he leads the men on a desperate run to the treeline, praying that they will find some way of defending themselves.

Rob said he found this movie depressing, but I had the opposite reaction.  This movie is about survival, but more, it's about never giving up.  Even in the face of certain death, especially in the face of certain death, never give up. 

Caveman (1981)

  This is one of Rob's favorite movies.  I'm not sure what that says about him.  I had never even heard of it before. 

Atouk (Ringo Starr) is a small, weak caveman who desperately wants to fuck Lana (Barbara Bach), an impossibly hot cavewoman.  Unfortunately, Lana is the main squeeze of the tribe leader, Tonda (John Matuszak).  After an unfortunate incident involving some prehistoric roofies, Atouk is cast out of the tribe.  He and his friend Lar (Dennis Quaid) try to come up with a plan to get Tonda killed so Atouk can have Lana.  Along the way, they encounter other outcasts like Tala (Shelley Long) and Gog (Jack Gilford) and start to form their own tribe, based on skills and brains, rather than brute strength.

I can't decide if this was a very clever satire of creationism or just an 80's farce with a dumb premise.  Not only are men and dinosaurs existing together, the jump from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens is depicted as simply bad posture, not evolution.  It's played for laughs, in the broadest sense.  There are drug jokes, fart jokes, and poop jokes aplenty.  They even try to make light of the attempted rape of a drugged cavewoman by showing the main character bungling it. 

Obviously, it wasn't to my taste.  I wouldn't go so far as to say I was disgusted or appalled by it, I just didn't think it was very funny.  It seems more like a historical artifact itself, frankly.

Green Zone (2010)

  This was not a terrible film.  As a political thriller, I've seen worse.  The problem is that it's a thriller that no one cared about.  

Set during the major phase of operations in Iraq, Army Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) and his team are tasked with using intelligence garnered from an extremely sensitive source to locate weapons of mass destruction.  But every site they check is empty.  Frustrated, Miller tries to confront the White House lackey, Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear), and is given the brush-off.  Poundstone's rival, the Middle East expert from the CIA, Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson), scoops up Miller and sets him on a different mission:  find the source of the intel, codenamed Magellan, and get the truth. 

Here's the thing, by the time this movie came out, everyone already knew that we were never going to find any WMDs in Iraq.  The outrage over the idea that our government deliberately misled us with falsified analysis had already run its course.  Frankly, by 2010, no one cared anymore.  We had a completely new administration and the time for finger-pointing was over.  Is it fucked up?  Probably.  But that's the way the world works.  If this movie had come out in 2004 or 2005 it might have had more of an impact.  It could have whipped up the muttering populace into a frenzy and forced change.  Coulda woulda shoulda. 

Knowing all that, this movie feels completely toothless.  It's anchored by solid performances and just reeks of earnestness, but it won't make you care about something that happened over a decade ago.  It was old news before it even started production.

Devdas (2002)

  I am not as up on Bollywood films as I probably should be.  In fact, I think this is my first legit one, since I don't think Slumdog Millionaire should count.  It's also my first exposure to Aishwarya Rai, who may be one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen.

Devdas (Shahrukh Khan) and Paro (Aishwarya Rai) were neighbors and childhood friends until Dev is sent away to England for ten years.  In that time, Paro kept an oil lamp burning for him to return.  When he gets back, he plans on marrying Paro, which thrills her mother, Sumitra (Kirron Kher).  However, his bitchy sister-in-law (Anaya Khare) wants the family's focus to be on her and begins telling his mother (Smita Jaykar) that the people next door are of so much lower social standing that it would be an insult to let her son marry into it.  Dev's mother humiliates Sumitra in public, causing her to curse their family and vow to marry Paro to someone even wealthier, knowing that it will break Dev's heart.  Sure enough, Devdas runs away to live in a brothel with Chandramukhi (Madhuri Dixit) and becomes an alcoholic.  Meanwhile, Paro learns that her new husband (Vijayendra Ghatge) has only married her to be a foster mother to his three children and manage his estate; he has no intention of actually consummating their marriage because he is still in love with his dead first wife.

There were several things that seemed odd to me, probably because I am largely unfamiliar with Hindu customs.  This is a gorgeous film, regardless, with vibrant color, tons of sparkly costumes, and several huge dance numbers.  Those aspects I like.  The Romeo and Juliet storyline I don't care for, no matter what language it's in.  The only thing of technical note was that the subtitles were missing for a bit during the final act, just before he boards the train.  I'm hoping that was just an error on the DVD I was watching and not a widespread one, but there's a head's-up just in case. 

Catwoman (2004)

  I watched this on purpose.  I saw it in theaters, knowing nothing about it, and walked out so angry I couldn't see straight.  That was ten years ago.  I thought that maybe I had just blown the incident out of proportion.  It couldn't be that bad, could it?

Indeed it can.  Rob and I looked for a Rifftrax version but they haven't done one yet, which saddens me.  If ever a movie deserved to be lampooned, it's this one.

Patience Phillips (Halle Berry) is an ad designer for a cosmetics company.  She learns a secret about the toxicity of a new product and is killed to keep it quiet.  Then a cat named Midnight resurrects Patience to be a catwoman, which involves an aversion to dogs, a penchant for theft, and probably the urge to chase mice. 

The movie portrays Patience as having a crisis of identity but it could be said to suffer the same.  It can't decide if it wants to be a comic book movie, a romantic comedy, or a thriller about a poisoned cosmetics line.  Here's how I imagine the conversation went:

Someone at Warner Bros.: "People want a Catwoman movie.  Let's do one, but we'll set it somewhere that isn't Gotham City and has no relation whatsoever to Batman or any other DC characters."
Someone else:  "Okay, but how is that still a Catwoman movie?"
Warner Bros. person:  "We'll tie it to mythology.  Get a lot of pictures of masked women holding cats."
Other Guy:  "Ok, so it's an origin of the mythos?"
Warner Bros. person:  "No, we'll make it a mystery!  About makeup!  Women love makeup."
Other Guy:  "Okay, that's half the population.  What about the men?"
Warner Bros. person:  "We'll get someone really hot to walk around in black fetish gear and make cat puns.  Problem solved.  Now pass me that bucket of cocaine and call in some more hookers."

Featuring cringe-worthy dialogue, horrendous CGI, and lacking even the most basic character development, Catwoman is a total mess and should be avoided at all costs.

Oculus (2014)

  Before I describe this movie, which I quite enjoyed, let me tell you my accompanying theater experience.  As many of you regular readers know, Rob and Christy despise watching horror movies with me.  When I brought up the topic of this movie, I got a resounding chorus of "No!".  During a going away party for a co-worker on Friday, a couple of people mentioned that they were going to go see it and would I like to join.  Hell yes, I would.  

The person to my right covered her eyes for a solid three-quarters of the movie and legit screamed once.  The person to my left kept telling me I was a sick person for laughing.  That's when I realized that I apparently cause Rob and Christy behavior in other people. 

While Tim (Brenton Thwaites) has spent most of his life in a mental institution coming to grips with the fact that he shot his father (Rory Cochrane), his sister Kaylie (Karen Gillan) has devoted her time to obsessively tracking down the antique mirror she believes is actually responsible.  Tim is released the day she finally finds it.  She plans to objectively prove that the mirror is haunted before destroying it for good.  Tim doesn't want to jeopardize his newfound mental health but cannot deny there is something dangerous about the glass. 

The human brain is an amazing thing.  Everything you see, you touch, you experience is created by your brain.  Everyone has their own personal reality, a microcosm in their skull.  So when something messes directly with the brain, it affects everything else about that person.  This movie skillfully blends together memory and delusion in the characters, forcing them to question what is real and what is a projection.  The theme of coping with childhood loss by confronting the supernatural has been done before, as has the bending of reality, but Oculus handles both elements adroitly.  The ending is sadly predictable and takes away from the movie as a whole but everything up to that point is very entertaining.

Gone Baby Gone (2007)

  Remember when everyone was talking about this movie?  It was Ben Affleck's first turn behind the camera and people lost their minds raving about how good it was.  Maybe a bunch of you saw it then.  I didn't so I appreciate that no one spoiled it and I could watch it unbiased.

Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) are Boston Private Investigators.  They mostly handle missing persons in the form of drug-addicts and other people who just slip through the cracks.  But when they have the opportunity to augment police presence on the abduction of four-year-old Amanda MacReady (Madeline O'Brien), Patrick jumps at the chance.  Angie doesn't want to run the risk of finding a dead or abused toddler but can't say no to the impassioned plea of the girl's aunt (Amy Madigan).  The mother, Helene (Amy Ryan), is a known drug-user and party girl, and it's not long before her version of events that night starts to unravel.  Patrick and Angie team up with Detectives Poole (John Ashton) and Bressant (Ed Harris) in order to pull the story apart and find out what really happened to Amanda. 

It's not really a high-octane thriller, despite the number of shoot-outs.  It just sort of creeps along, slowly gathering dread and grime.  The ending drags on a bit, once you get past the big reveal.  Personally, I would have cut it there but I get why Affleck wanted to show more.  **POTENTIAL SPOILERS in white.  Mouse over to see**  Christy came in about twenty minutes before the credits and asked me if I would have called the cops and returned the girl to her birth mother.  I didn't even have to hesitate.  Absolutely not.  I would have shook his hand, said "Have a good trip, sir," and been on my merry way, because I don't value being right as much as I value being happy.  Blood isn't the only thing that makes a family.  **END SPOILERS**  Overall, I thought it was a very well-done movie that raised a lot of questions about morality and how far people will go to do the "right" thing. 

The Cat Returns (2002)

  This is one of the lesser known films from Studio Ghibli and for good reason.  It lacks the magic of Spirited Away or the imagination of Nausicaa.

Haru (Anne Hathaway) is a shy young girl who seems to lack direction.  However, after she saves a cat from being hit by a car, she finds her direction is straight to Crazytown when the cats start talking to her.  It turns out that she had saved the Prince (Andrew Bevis), and the cats are so grateful that they decide to shower Haru with gifts, before telling her that she will have the honor of becoming his bride.  Desperate to get out of this deal, Haru seeks out Baron (Cary Elwes), a cat statue miraculously given life.  This is not explained in any detail.  Apparently, it's a character from an earlier movie called Whispers of the Heart.  Anyway, Baron and Haru have to escape from the cat kingdom before Haru turns into a cat herself.

I'm sure this is based on a book or manga and it probably makes a lot more sense there.  This just feels like a highlight reel, instead of a full story.  The characters don't feel fleshed out and the story isn't very engaging.  You could probably give it to young children but I don't know that even they would enjoy it.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

  I would have posted this earlier but I went to the ballet Saturday night.  I AM MORE THAN JUST MOVIES!

No I'm not. 

This movie was awesome.  I talked to a lot of people at work who told me that Captain America is their least favorite of the Avengers because he's such a goody-goody.  Well, some of the shine gets rubbed off that big boy scout face this time around.

When he's not trying to figure out Thai food or the whole Berlin Wall situation, Captain America (Chris Evans) works for S.H.I.E.L.D.  He and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) have an easy working relationship, despite their vast life experience disparity, until her super-secret spy ways put a mission in jeopardy.  He complains to Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and is told that this is how the world is now and S.H.I.E.L.D needs to be on the front line of the fight, even if that sometimes means a pre-emptive strike.  Today's enemy isn't so cut and dried, like the Nazis were back in the day.  Then Fury begins to unravel a plot that seems to be within S.H.I.E.L.D itself at the same time a legendary assassin called the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) shows up and starts wrecking D.C.

If you saw Marvel's TV special "Assembling a Universe", you'll know that the powers that be within the company have made a point of making each film a different genre, to prove that superheroes function just as well in larger contexts, not just superhero movies.  This film is in line with political thrillers from the 70's like Three Days of the Condor and pretty much every other movie Robert Redford was in during that decade.  Which is good because they also got Robert Redford to be in this one.  It is a little slow to get started but once the action starts it does not let up.  I wanted to immediately rewind the film and watch it again because I was sure I hadn't seen all of the choreography in all of the fight scenes.  This definitely works as a standalone and as part of the overall Marvel universe.  In fact, it has far-reaching implications for everything that comes after it. 

Don't forget to stay through the credits for the Avengers 2 tease in the middle and the short post-credits clip, as well.  It's not as important or revealing but it's a nice coda to the story. 

Captain Phillips (2013)

  I'm sure pretty much everyone by now has heard of the true story behind this movie.  Captain Richard Phillips was taken hostage by armed Somali pirates and rescued by U.S. Navy Seals.  There was some controversy afterwards, when the movie was released.  The crew sued the production, claiming that it was factually inaccurate and that it painted them in a negative light.  That's for the courts to decide.  Based on seeing the movie, however, they may have a point.

Captain Phillips (Tom Hanks) is running the cargo ship Alabama around the Horn of Africa when it is attacked by pirates.  He orders the crew to disperse and hide in the engine room.  The pirate leader, Musa (Barkhad Abdi), is under pressure from his warlord boss to bring back a big score, either in ransom money or cargo.  Phillips uses every Home Alone trick he can think of to keep the pirates separated, off-balance, and distracted to stall for time while their distress signal is handled by the authorities.  Musa, however, is not just a thug.  He knows that Phillips is trying to hose him but, for him, violence is the very last resort.  When the crew finally manages to counter-attack, Musa is clever enough to grab Phillips while his three-man crew boards a lifeboat.  Unfortunately, the heat, the ignominy of having to run, and rising frustration that they are going home nearly empty-handed starts to work on the other pirates, whipping them into a frenzy.  Still hoping for some kind of payday, Musa tries to negotiate with the Navy, but once the Seals show up (led by Max Martini, as the quintessential tough guy) it's pretty much all over but the crying.

This got nominated for a bunch of Oscars this year (six, if you're counting) but didn't take home a single statue because 1) Gravity blew people's minds and 2) this was the most unlikeable character Tom Hanks has ever played.  Phillips shows almost prescient abilities, able to drop coded clues to his men, anticipate every step in the Navy playbook, and psychologically analyze the pirates for maximum disruptive effect.  I'm sure cargo crews have extensive training courses on how to handle the rampant piracy issue but Hanks' character maintains his cool to an almost superhuman level.  It didn't feel real, and for a true story, that's bad.

Cat Ballou (1965)

  I don't know about a "she-bang to end all she-bangs" (what does that even mean?!) but this is a really cute Western comedy-quasi-musical.  I say quasi because the songs do not further the plot, merely provide a charming addition to it.

Catherine Ballou (Jane Fonda) returns home from graduating schoolteacher college to find her father (John Marley) being harassed by the local railroad.  They want the land his ranch is based on and are willing to go to extreme lengths to get it, including hiring tough guy Tim Strawn (Lee Marvin) to intimidate the Ballous.  Cat does her level best to protect her father, bringing around wanted criminals Clay (Michael Callan), and Uncle Jed (Dwayne Hickman), as well as sending off for dime-novel hero and gunfighter Kid Shelleen (also Lee Marvin).  Unfortunately, Clay and Jed are cattle rustlers and Shelleen is a near-useless drunk.

Lee Marvin won an Oscar for this, I will be charitable, fluff over Richard Burton for The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Laurence Olivier for Othello.  This was clearly some sort of consolation prize for having missed out on a previous film since his performance here isn't even as good as he was in Paint Your Wagon.  Lee Marvin's body of work overall is extremely impressive and I'm not saying the man didn't deserve an Oscar, just not for this.  If he was going to get one, I'd say it should have been Best Supporting Actor for The Big Heat in 1953.  That's my two cents.

The movie isn't art by any stretch of the imagination, but it is fun and the songs, sung by Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye, are catchy.  Sometimes that's all you need/want.

Glory (1989)

  This was just a war-movie weekend, apparently.  Not a genre I'm particularly fond of, but these are some sterling examples. 

Moving back from WWII, Glory takes us to the Battle of Antietam where we meet young Captain Robert Gould Shaw (Matthew Broderick).  Shaw is a scion of Boston's elite and is afterwards tapped to head a new regiment, the 54th Massachusetts, the first black unit in the Army.  It is intended as an honor, but Shaw knows that he will face significant challenges.  He pulls his friend Cabot Forbes (Cary Elwes) to be his aide-de-camp and sets about to make a unit he can be proud to lead.  Most of the volunteers are young and idealistic, like Shaw's childhood friend Thomas (Andre Braugher), even in the face of outright hostility from members of their own Army. 

Everybody in this movie is so young!  Denzel Washington still has a baby-face while Andre Braugher is so skinny he's almost unrecognizable.  Morgan Freeman looks pretty much the exact same way, but with less gray hair.

Rob and I were recently in the National Gallery of Art so I could do research for a paper I had to write and he pointed out the relief that was sculpted in honor of the 54th Mass, mentioning that it was featured in this movie.  At the time, it meant nothing to me since I hadn't watched it yet but it is shown through the ending credits.  It is an excellent piece for conveying the inherent dignity and responsibility of these men, who were trying to do right by a country that didn't even really claim them.  That takes an extraordinary amount of courage.

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957)

  I wanted to make sure this went out today so you guys didn't think I was just re-posting the same old shit because I was lazy.  

Corporal Allison (Robert Mitchum) washes up on a South Pacific island after his unit is bombed by the Japanese.  He finds it uninhabited except by Sister Angela (Deborah Kerr), a nun.  Together, they must try and survive the Japanese occupation until they can be rescued by Allied Forces. 

This movie mostly involved hiding, now that I try to write a description.  They have to hide in a cave for most of the film's run time but it never feels boring.  That's a hard thing to pull off.  It reminded me of The African Queen, also directed by John Huston, except Mitchum's character is much less curmudgeonly than Bogart's.