Foxcatcher (2014)

  I hated every second of this movie.  It was an absolute slog to get through with no reward.

Olympic gold medalist Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) is contacted by millionaire philanthropist, sport enthusiast and whack job John E. duPont (Steve Carell) to start a training facility on duPont's estate.  Thanks to a combination of daddy issues and an inferiority complex large enough to sink the Titanic, Schultz agrees.  His older brother, an all-around better person, Dave (Mark Ruffalo), doesn't join up initially because he has a wife and family but changes his mind after duPont throws a ton of money at him.  This strains Mark and duPont's relationship to the breaking point.

This is based on a true and very tragic story.  If it is even halfway accurate, duPont was a delusional maniac and deep in the closet.  By all rights, duPont should have been facing life in prison without parole for first-degree murder, instead of murder in the third degree but money has always been more eloquent than any lawyer.  Real justice aside, this was a terribly boring movie which rambled on for over two hours.  I loathed every frame.

The Invention of Lying (2009)

  I'm surprised that in a movie with so many comedians, The Invention of Lying isn't very funny.  It mostly squanders a decent premise by being an overt attack on religion.  I think poking fun at religion is fine, all of them have elements that are ripe for satire, but I don't think it should be mean-spirited or go so far as to say that all religions are for gullible suckers.

Mark Bellison (Ricky Gervais) lives in a world where no one lies.  The entire concept is unfathomable.  It's also a world where basic courtesy doesn't exist and people blurt out every thought in their heads, no matter how rude or inappropriate.  After being fired from his job, Mark makes a singular discovery:  he has the ability to tell people things that are not true. He uses this gift to try and improve the lives of the people around him, and also to win the heart of his dream girl, Anna (Jennifer Garner).  By lying, Mark is able to transform the world, because they have also never heard of logic.  Things snowball out of his control, however, when he tries to ease his mother's (Fionnula Flanagan) passage into death by telling her that there is a man in the sky who will take care of her forever.  Now an unlikely prophet, Mark has to balance all the lies he has told in order to keep Anna from marrying his rival (Rob Lowe).

I was really hoping that this would be a good movie, but it's not nearly funny enough to justify being called a comedy, or serious enough to be considered a drama.  It mostly just falls through the cracks.  Life is too short, with or without an afterlife, to waste on middling quality movies like this.  Skip it.

Inuyasha: the Movie 4 (2004)

  I don't typically watch a lot of anime, not because I don't like it but because there's so much out there it's a little overwhelming.  Fortunately, the server Rob left me has a couple of hundred different series on it.  Unfortunately, the only InuYasha was this, the fourth movie so I knew nothing about the characters, back story, or setting.  But I'm going to review this anyway because I can.

So there's this island that only appears about every fifty years.  It used to be full of happy little half-demons and their respective parents, humans and demons that overcame their differences to live in harmony.  But all that changed when the Fire Nation attac--  Sorry, wrong show.

These four demons came to the island and overwhelmed it with force.  They marked all the children with scratches that prevent them from ever leaving and demand a sacrifice every fifty years.  The youngest half-demon, Ai, hasn't been marked yet, so the other children send him (I thought it was a girl based on the character voice, but IMDb says it's a boy so that's what I'm going to go with.) out into the world to get help.  Ai immediately runs into InuYasha and his merry band of a couple who ride a flying raccoon-kitty with viper fangs, a school girl with a bow and arrows, some sort of fox(?) demon who turns into a pink balloon, and the title character himself in his signature red pajamas.  They agree to help, mostly because InuYasha got marked by the bad demons the last time they showed up and wants revenge.

There was also some other dude named Sesshoumaru and his little party but I have no idea who they are and they don't really contribute to the main plot.

It might have added to the experience if I had known who the hell all these people were and why they were following some dude with kitty ears wearing MC Hammer pajamas but it wasn't necessary to follow the movie.  I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it's probably more rewarding to see movies 1-3 at least before this one, but I don't know.  It's anime.  They might not have anything to do with one another and you'd have to watch 600 episodes of the TV show plus read all the manga before it makes true sense.  I'm just kind of winging it here.

The Insider (1999)

  Michael Mann certainly knows how to craft a beautiful movie.  It was a little dry for my tastes, but it is based on a true story so I suppose there's only so much artistic license one can take before that label no longer applies.

As a producer, Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) is responsible for developing news stories for the TV program 60 Minutes.  He sets up the interviews for anchor Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer), vetting them and making sure that the interviewees are comfortable telling their stories.  When Bergman receives an anonymous package of information relating to practices conducted by a tobacco company, he thinks it's just another story.  He reaches out to a former executive, Jeffery Wigand (Russell Crowe), to help him decipher what all the technical information means, not knowing that this decision would impact both men's lives irrevocably.

Even now, when everyone knows that smoking is terrible for your health and the health of those around you, cigarette manufacturers wield insane amounts of power over legislation and judicial findings.  I can only imagine what it would have been like to stand up to them back in the 90's when this movie took place.

In recent years, both Pacino and Crowe have been phoning in their careers so it was great to look back and see both actors taking a real interest in the script and the characters, rather than just playing themselves on screen.  This film was nominated for seven Oscars, but it didn't win any.  1999 was a tough year competitively.  This isn't one I would own, but I'm glad I saw it.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

  It's always a little bittersweet to revisit an actor's work after their death.  RIP, Leonard Nimoy.  This is also one of the very few roles I've ever seen him in where he was not Mr. Spock in some incarnation or another.

Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) works for the Health Department and is desperately infatuated with his co-worker, Elizabeth (Brooke Adams).  So when Elizabeth begins expressing concerns that her boyfriend (Art Hindle) has somehow changed overnight, Matthew is more than willing to help her investigate.  Unfortunately, the problem goes a little beyond personal matters as Matthew, Elizabeth, and a couple they know (Jeff Goldblum and Veronica Cartwright) discover that spores from space are colonizing the Earth and growing replacement people from pods that look exactly the same but are devoid of all human emotions.  They name these creatures...Republicans.  No, not really, but wouldn't it have been funny if they had?

Anyway, Matthew and friends must find a way to stop the invasion before the entire world loses its humanity.

I've never cared much for Donald Sutherland as a leading man.  His eyes are too sad and they remind me of a basset hound.  For those of you who can get past that, he is very good in this.  Also, as I mentioned, it has classic Leonard Nimoy, young Jeff Goldblum and Veronica Cartwright.

L.A. Confidential (1997)

   It took me a long time to finally see this movie.  I will be honest, I didn't love it.  It's a good film; it just didn't blow me away.

Three L.A. cops with wildly different approaches to police work find themselves drawn in by a particular crime scene - the Nite Owl cafe shootout.  Bud White (Russell Crowe) lost a partner there, but found a connection to a Veronica Lake look-a-like named Lynn (Kim Basinger).  Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) uncovered a business card for a high-priced escort service called Fleur-de-Lis, whose claim to fame is prostitutes who look like movie stars.  Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) earned a medal for shooting the three perpetrators of the crime, but suspects that he was manipulated into covering up an even bigger one.  The three cops have to find a way to put aside their innate distrust of one another if they are to see true justice done.

I would put this in the same category as Chinatown if I were into classifying movies that way.  Gritty, dark, and sleazy with a strong current of corruption.  The only real difference is that one has a pessimistic ending and the other optimistic.  I guess my only real complaint is that Kim Basinger won an Oscar for this role, which seems insane to me given how little her character does.

The Invasion (2007)

   Ugh.  This was not a good movie.  As I continue my little odyssey through the cloned server that Rob gave me, I'm sure there will be other missteps along the way but not this one.  I deleted it immediately.

Dr. Carol Bennell (Nicole Kidman) is a divorced mother and a psychiatrist on the side.  When one of her patients (Veronica Cartwright) says that her abusive husband has completely changed his personality, Carol nods wisely and prescribes medication.  What she doesn't know is that a recent space shuttle crash has brought with it an infestation of alien spores that begin to infect the local populace, conveniently beginning with her ex-husband (Jeremy Northam) who is due to take their son (Jackson Bond) for his share of custody.  Already upset at the thought of parting from her child even for a moment, Carol becomes increasingly suspicious of her ex who has undergone a dramatic personality shift of his own.  She confides her concerns to her boyfriend, James Bond (Daniel Craig), and he enlists his friend and contemporary, Felix Leiter (Jeffery Wright), to help figure out the problem.  Felix discovers the truth about the aliens and goes to mobilize the military while Carol and Bond track down Carol's son, who is conveniently immune to the spores.

The original Invasion of the Body Snatchers and its subsequent remakes were about being stealthily invaded by a hostile force, which makes sense at the beginning of the Cold War when everyone was terrified of Russian sleeper agents and anyone could be a Communist.  This "remake" completely ignores those themes and focuses instead on a helicopter parent who will stop at nothing to ensure that her special snowflake is the one to save the world.  Which is scary, sure, but not riveting.

Maleficent (2014)

My friend Kayla just got back from a deployment.  She was gone for most of the year so she missed a good number of movies.  Fortunately, between Christy and myself, I was able to present a huge array of choices.  She decided on Maleficent, which was good because I hadn't seen it since the theatrical release and I wanted to know if it stood up to a second watch.  Holy shit, this is a gorgeous movie.  It looked spectacular.  If you are a fan of visual effects and digital artistry at all, you owe it to yourself to check this out.  I really hope the other upcoming live-action films are as good as this one.  Original post:  6/7/14  You knew I was going to see this.  Don't lie.  It's practically my biography.

Once upon a time, the kingdom of Man and the kingdom of Faerie bordered each other.  Maleficent (Isobelle Molloy) is just a little faerie when she meets a human boy named Stefan (Michael Higgins). Despite their differences, the two bond but Stefan's ambition to become king eventually overcomes their friendship.  Angered and embittered, Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) curses Stefan's daughter to fall into a deathlike sleep on her sixteenth birthday.  The child is taken to the woods to be raised by three pixies (Imelda Staunton, Lesley Manville, and Juno Temple) who are woefully unprepared for the task.  Maleficent begins watching over the girl just to make sure she makes it to her curse, with the help of her raven, Diavol (Sam Riley).  Meanwhile, King Stefan (Sharlto Copley) grows more and more paranoid about her evil scheme.

The one adjective I keep coming back to when people ask me what I thought of the movie is "pretty".    The animated landscapes and faery creatures are beautifully rendered, in fact, everything in this movie is lovely to look at.  As far as plot and character development go...well, it's no Wicked.  Don't expect an in-depth look into Maleficent's psyche or some deep theme about lost love or betrayal.  This isn't that movie.  This is a fun story about a faery and a princess and a curse.  It makes a nice bookend for the original Disney Sleeping Beauty and was an enjoyable outing to the theater.

If that sounds like I'm damning it with faint praise, it's not intentional.  I just want people to manage their expectations.  It's not some grand sweeping epic, although it does have several nice action pieces.  I found that the best moments are the smaller humorous interactions between the characters.  Angelina Jolie is perfect in this role, imbuing a dark humor into Maleficent's expressions. This could easily have been campy but Jolie emotes so well you'll believe she was actually turned into Maleficent.

Yes, of course, I'm going to buy it when it comes out.  This is my favorite Disney villain of all time.  I've actually been restraining myself from buying all the tie-in merchandise because I am an adult, dammit, and I do not need an entire line of MAC makeup just because it has Maleficent on it.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a completely unrelated Amazon order to place.

Whiplash (2014)

Nominated for:  Best Supporting Actor (winner), Best Film Editing (winner), Best Sound Mixing (winner), Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture      Finally got to watch the last Best Picture nominee from this year.  J.K. Simmons completely deserved that Oscar and might be my new favorite villain.

Andrew (Miles Teller) is a young man with only one dream:  to become the next world-renown jazz drummer.  He is a first-year student at the prestigious Shaffer Conservatory and catches the eye of the school's most notorious jazz conductor, Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons).  What at first seems like a fast track to stardom becomes a nightmare as Fletcher systematically breaks him down psychologically in the aims of creating a genius.

I cannot stress this enough.  J.K. Simmons gives the most evil performance I have seen all year.  It's worse because it's so realistic.  These people exist and would love nothing more than to destroy those around them.  They cannot be trusted.  They will use any information you give them against you.

That warning aside, holy shit this is a great movie.  I might have to own it just so I can watch Simmons again.  The man spews insults like a gatling gun.  Oh, and Paul Reiser is in this.  Remember Mad About You?  My mom loved that show.  I barely recognized him until he started talking.  If you like jazz, this will probably mean more to you.  I've never played an instrument so I can't say I really "feel" the struggle this character goes through but I understand the concept of living and dying for your art.  

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)

  I am not generally a masochist but I did force myself to watch this third installment of the Fast and Furious franchise.  It is commonly considered to be the worst of the bunch but Jason Lin has done something remarkable with this series and this was the first one he actually directed.  He has stated that this is the sixth chronologically in the series, with the events here occurring after the events in Fast 6.  It will be interesting to see how those elements are used in the later films.  It also means they will be bringing back the only good character to life, which I am very excited about.

Navy brat Sean (Lucas Black) has always felt like an outsider.  He has bounced around from state to state, never there long enough to make real friends.  His only solace is racing cars, an activity that has contributed to him being forced to move out of town more than once.  His mom (Lynda Boyd) is tired of his crap, especially after he is looking at jail time resulting from a race against the local rich asshole (Zachary Ty Bryan).  Sean's only option is to leave the U.S. and go live with his father (Brian Goodman) in Tokyo.  The Japanese capital offers many new distractions, however, such as Neela (Nathalie Kelley), a fellow student and car enthusiast,  and Twinkie (Bow Wow), the local facilitator. Whatever you need, Twinkie either has or knows where to get it.  He introduces Sean to the underground race scene and incidentally to Neela's boyfriend, DK (Brian Tee).  DK is the undisputed champ around these parts and also tied in with the Yakuza.  Sean challenges him, like an idiot, and is sponsored by DK's second, Han (Sung Kang).  After he proceeds to trash Han's car, Sean finds himself in the man's debt, forced to do all manner of things to pay what he owes.  In return, Han teaches Sean how to drift.

Lucas Black is pretty, right up until he opens his mouth.  His accent has got to be the thickest I have ever heard and I am also from Alabama.  Every scene with him in it (i.e. most of them) was like nails on a chalkboard.  Conversely, Han was an unexpected gem.  Sung Kang is great at what he does and I have enjoyed him in every role of his I have seen.  I would have been totally okay if this had been a Han-centric movie, but it was not.  Instead, I got Mush-Mouth trying to woo a cardboard cutout of a female character while also parading around a cornucopia of suped up compacts.  Still, it also had martial arts legend Sonny Chiba and you can't really go wrong there.

Erin Brockovich (2000)

  I had seen this movie before but it must have been a decade ago.  Christy said she had no idea what it was about when she bought it.  From the cover, she thought Julia Roberts was playing a prostitute.

Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts) is a struggling mother of three.  After losing a court case over a motor vehicle accident, Erin browbeats her attorney, Ed Masry (Albert Finney) into hiring her as a file clerk.  Despite having no legal background, Erin gets interested in a pro bono case Ed has taken involving a woman named Donna Jensen (Marg Helgenberger) and Pacific Gas and Electric.  Ed lets her investigate further, and Erin discovers that PG&E has systematically poisoned the groundwater of the small town of Hinckley, causing the residents to experience numerous health issues.  She pushes Ed to pursue the maximum amount of legal action against the corporate giant.

This is a decent biopic.  Roberts sheds her girl-next-door cuteness to play the abrasive but good-hearted Brockovich and I don't think that Albert Finney has ever made a bad movie.  Plus, Aaron Eckhart is in it, playing a biker.  That's worth a rental right there.  And also it shows how guts and determination will overcome adversity and blah blah inspirational stuff.

Ice Age 4: Continental Drift (2012)

  It's not that I've actively avoided the last installment of the Ice Age franchise.  I just really didn't think there was anywhere else to go with it.  I have to say, though, this is probably my favorite yet.

Scrat the squirrel-thing is still desperately trying to hold on to his acorn and accidentally causes a cascading chain reaction of tectonic shifts which affects the land mass where all the characters from the first three movies live.  Manny (Ray Romano) the mammoth, Sid (John Leguizamo) the sloth, his granny (Wanda Sykes), and Diego (Denis Leary) the sabertooth end up on an ice floe caught in a current, while Manny's wife Ellie (Queen Latifah) and daughter Peaches (Keke Palmer) are trapped on land that is being crushed under the weight of a sliding mountain range.  Before they are separated, they plan to meet at a land bridge to safety.

Manny and the boys drift until they are targeted by a motley crew of pirates, led by Captain Gutt (Peter Dinklage), an ape, and his first mate Shira (Jennifer Lopez) a sabertooth.  Gutt intends to press-gang the heroes into his service but they escape by capsizing his iceberg.  Shira is separated from her villainous crew and taken prisoner/rescued by the heroes.  Gutt swears revenge.

There were several elements of The Odyssey that were put to good use here, from the lotus berry that paralyzes Sid to the Sirens that try to lure them to their deaths.  The voice cast is incredibly impressive and the animation is very well done.  According to IMDb, Ice Age 5 is in production for a 2016 release but those have a habit of shifting around.  I normally don't push for a cavalcade of sequels but if they're all as well done as this one, I'm okay.

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2014)

Nominated for Best Animated Film    Sadly, I didn't get to see this before the Oscar ceremony but it wouldn't have affected my pool.  While it is lovely to look at and interesting to see a Japanese folktale, as opposed to traditional American ones, it clocks in at almost two and a half hours and that was just far too long to hold my interest.

Once upon a time, an old bamboo-cutter (James Caan) sees something magical:  a stalk of bamboo glowing in the forest.  As he watches, the stalk grows and flowers.  Hidden within the petals is a tiny princess.  The bamboo-cutter picks her up and takes her home to his wife (Mary Steenburgen).  The tiny girl soon grows into a human-sized child.  The bamboo-cutter subsequently finds a bamboo filled with gold and another of rare silks.  He decides that Heaven has sent him this child so he can raise her to be a princess.  He constructs a mansion, moves his family to the capital, and sets about training Kaguya (Chloe Grace Moretz) to be a perfect lady.  She doesn't really want anything more than to be free amongst the bamboo-cutters but she tries to be a dutiful daughter.  She cannot keep her secrets forever, though.

I don't know if the movie was released with a Japanese voice cast or not.  It's Studio Ghibli, so they have a partnership with Disney, which means that they're able to assemble a stunning voice cast of celebrities.  Also recognizable were Darren Criss, Oliver Platt, and Dean Cain as well as Lucy Liu, James Marsden, John Cho, and Daniel Dae Kim.  The disc automatically played in English and I am not planning on sitting through it again to find out if there are nuances I missed because it wasn't in its original language.

Also, I'm not sure if anyone cares but there is animated breast-feeding and animated naked baby butt. You don't usually see that in American animation, so if you're one of those people who wants to screen things for your kids, there's a head's-up.

The Equalizer (2014)

I bought this as soon as it came out.  Normally, I would wait at least a year to re-post a review but I haven't seen anything else since Friday, hence no post yesterday.  It's one of those things where I got way behind on my TV DVR because I was trying to watch the Oscar nominees so now I'm playing catch-up.  The good news is that I just bing-watched seven episodes of Elementary, which has become a show I very much enjoy.

There's not much to add to my original impression of The Equalizer.  I still love Marton Csokas's character, especially his suits.  He never looks disheveled or out of place, despite having pretty much his entire job go to shit on him.  Also, he breaks out an American accent halfway through that is as glorious as it is unexpected.  These are two titans going head to head and it is awesome.  Original post:  09/28/14  I went to see this yesterday, hoping that it would be good and betting on mediocre.

It was fantastic.

Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) is just a guy.  He works at a big box home improvement store by day and reads in a diner by night.  He's friendly and always willing to help people who ask.  But when working girl, Teri (Chloe Grace Moretz), ends up in the hospital after her Russian mob pimp (David Meunier) beats the shit out of her, Robert cannot stand idly by.  The Russian mob is not known for turning a blind eye, however, and sends their fixer, Teddy (Marton Csokas), over to Boston to straighten things out.

This had all the goodness of Man on Fire only without the guilt.  Robert is not a guy who feels sorry for himself.  He is a guy who makes positive changes on the world.  Sometimes those changes are made in blood, but he never shrinks, never hesitates once he decides on a course of action.

Of course, a good hero needs a good villain and Csokas is as good as it gets.  He's so cool, so controlled, so matter-of-fact.  I'm not going to lie.  I might have a tiny evil crush on his character now.