Matt, Jared, Dusty, Dustin(rip), Cody(rip), Jorge, Myself, Tye

When I was 19 years old my two best friends were killed in a car accident. They were more than friends though, and it seems cliche or overly sentimental but from the time we were 5 years old, we were all brothers. We grew together, we played together, we discovered, we fought, we loved, and they died. You are probably saying to yourself, “Paul, how is this a review for ‘The Tree of Life’?”  Well, Terrence Malick opens his film with the grim news that a child has died, we see the impact of this news on the child’s mother, father and older brother. One of the great tools that Malick uses in all his films is a detached, whispery voice over detailing the most inner thoughts of the characters in the film. In this film you wonder if the characters even know what they are thinking themselves, but alas we find out that the child that died was 19 years old. It immediately made me think of Cody and Dustin, our friends, and their families. I’m pretty sure that memory is entirely the point of “The Tree of Life”,  you see it’s not a film with a narrative structure even worth following in the traditional sense. We see the birth of the cosmos, we see dinosaurs roaming the earth, and we meet a family in Texas in the 1950′s. It’s the relationship between the father(Brad Pitt), the mother(Jessica Chastain) and their three boys that make up the bulk of the narrative. Does it even tell a story though? I guess somewhat, but the most important thing about this film is the way it connects you to your past, to your thoughts and dreams, to your faith and beliefs, and finally to why and how you are. Sounds heavy, and it is, but like most great films you don’t leave thinking about the movie, you leave thinking about how the movie made you feel, the images it conjured up in your own mind. I went to see this movie with two friends and we spent 45 minutes after the movie not really talking about the film, but basically talking about our childhoods. I can’t recall another movie that made me vividly remember myself as a 5-12 year old boy, both the good and the bad, in such a strong and emotional way.

The movie is beautifully shot, and there is at least 45 minutes of ocean, space, volcano, nature, and God only knows what else images. They are so strong and miraculous that I spent some time thinking about how it all was done. A lot of it would make some of the best Ominmax or Imax movies jealous. Malick goes for the most grand impact that he can muster and I’m about 99% sure he achieved it. The one draw back of this movie is the ending, which I can’t really spoil because nothing really happens it just ends. I can say that it gets a little artsy and pretentious in the last 10 minutes and it will make you scratch your head, but after thinking about what comes before it I’m not exactly sure how you could do it any other way. Brad Pitt is phenomenal and so is Jessica Chastain as the mother. Maybe I had a similar childhood to Malick and that’s why the movie connected with me in such a strong way, I’d like to hear from others that maybe didn’t grow up in a small rural community about how this movie made them feel, or if it made them feel anything at all. I woke up this morning almost wondering if everything I had witnessed was a dream because the movie is shot like a dream, you don’t really hear what people are saying the images wander all over the screen, soft and unfocused. We see sun flowers, then the ocean, then Brad Pitt boxing with his boys in the front yard. The camera looks up at hammer head sharks swimming overhead and then you see boys busting out windows in an old abandoned house. There are a lot of connections and parallels between human life and the dancing life of the stars and the universe. This movie will make you feel puny, when the mother in whispery voice over laments after the death of her son “who are we to you?” You really start to think about just how small you are compared to the rest of the universe, or to God which is who I believe she is asking. After watching this movie I have to believe that Terrence Malick is a believer in God or at least something greater than himself because the imagery at the end leaves no doubt.

  I highly recommend you see “The Tree of Life” and I really would love to know what any or all of you (all ten of my readers) think about this movie. It really is one that allows deep discussion and I think that is it’s greatest achievement. Yes it’s deep, artsy, and pretentious but it’s also earth shattering if you let it in. Most of my favorite movies are the ones that dig deep into my soul and challenge me at the core, “The Tree of Life” is definitely one of those films.

When I’m 70 years old and quite possibly sitting in a hospital waiting-room as my grandchild is being born, Cody and Dustin will still be 19 year old kids. The destruction of time will have started to take it’s toll on me and my memories of them will be distant images of summer days riding horses, playing tennis, fighting, discovering, and growing. The tree of life reaches out, producing new branches that grow and flourish and others that whither and die, the beauty and pain of human life is that we have the ability to step back and watch it all happen.

BEAUTIFUL GIRLS

There I was, standing on my high school’s theater stage, 16 years old and awkward as hell. I was a little nervous at first but the words rolled off my tongue, my hands gesturing with the words as they came fluidly from my mouth. I paced back and forth on stage staring past the high school drama teacher, keeping my focus on the dirty back wall of the theater,

“Supermodels are beautiful girls, Will. A beautiful girl can make you dizzy, like you’ve been drinking Jack and Coke all morning. She can make you feel high full of the single greatest commodity known to man – promise. Promise of a better day. Promise of a greater hope. Promise of a new tomorrow. This particular aura can be found in the gait of a beautiful girl. In her smile, in her soul, the way she makes every rotten little thing about life seem like it’s going to be okay. The supermodels, Willy? That’s all they are. Bottled promise. Scenes from a brand new day. Hope dancing in stiletto heels. “

“What the hell was that?” Mr. Strong, the portly high school drama teacher asked.

“My monologue, I thought you said we…” I didn’t quite know what he was asking.

“What’s it from?”

“A movie, Beautiful Girls, it’s a movie.” Repeating myself for some reason.

“That’s great, I wanted you to do one from one of the assigned plays, but I think that it’s wonderful.”

It was about a year earlier that my folks had come home from the movies raving about the film they had just seen, “Beautiful Girls”. It was rated R and of course they gave the “it’s not really one we feel comfortable taking you to,”  speech.  As soon as it came to VHS though they bought it, and it only took one sick day from school for me to pop it in and digest it myself. I believe I was 15 and my love for all things film was still in it’s infancy. Yes, I had seen “The Godfather” and I enjoyed old Howard Hawks westerns, but I didn’t understand it as an art form, as a means of communication, or even something deeper. It was still very much just entertainment to me, but I’d like to think on that sick day it all changed a little bit for me.

As the years have gone by “Beautiful Girls” continues to connect with me on a personal level. The film itself deals with something I’m experiencing this year, the 10 year high school reunion. The main character in this film, Willy, is coming back home for his ten year reunion. His mom has been dead for some time and his little brother and dad both seem to be one piece short of a pie. The family drama is merely an undercoat to a beautifully painted picture of a pivotal time in a person’s life. There are two female characters that have a strong impact on the trajectory of the film, they also happen to be mirror  images of each other. Natalie Portman is Marty, “not short for Martha, just a girl named Marty” and she basically steals the film as a Lolita type of figure, a ghost of memories past, perhaps? She is a like a picture of Willy’s childhood, yet at the same time a wise matriarchal figure that looms over Willy’s decision making process. That process for Willy  is I think something we all face, do we continue to chase those high school dreams, in Willy’s case being a pianist and professional musician, or do we “grow up” get an 8-5 and join the status-quo of our society? The other female in the film is a  grown up version of Marty,  Andera played by Uma Thurman is like the embodiment of what Marty promises to be. She is a guardian angel of the ideal of chasing dreams. She’s a beer swilling, cursing, fishing, beautiful female, she doesn’t really exists. Yet here she is, the same can be said for Marty, she’s this beautiful, smart, wise beyond her years little girl that apparently has no parents and is like a little angel sitting on Willy’s shoulder.

The other characters that make up the film are also little pieces of the roads we all travel. There is Mo(Noah Emmerich), Willy’s best friend and family man. Mo is the anchor of the film, he exists to prove that it’s ok to settle down, to have a family, to get an 8-5 and provide yet he encourages Willy to keep going after his dream. Tommy(Matt Dillon), is the former high school quarterback who is still obsessed with high school. He is still chasing, and having an affair with his high school girlfriend Dorian(Lauren Holley) , who you guessed it, was the captain of the cheer team. He snow plows for a living and has a girlfriend Sharon(Mira Sorvino) who loves him to a fault. Paul(Michael Rappaport) is the guy who doesn’t know what he wants, he wants to marry his girlfriend, but she wants stability and a more promising future. She waits tables and he plows for Tommy neither are great prospects for the good life. A large portion of Paul’s arch is comedy relief aimed at his disbelief that his girlfriend would leave him for a meat cutter, she’s a vegetarian.

The film is made up of  all these slices of life, and I think we can each relate to a little of all of them. I, for 4 years after college, chased a dream that I am only now achieving all the while having a family and working an 8-5 I didn’t care for. I have friends who still party every weekend, wait tables, and don’t care that they didn’t go to school, a worthy cause that I’m not demeaning, be young while you are young.

Going back to the film at my age now I find it funny that all the characters are right around 28, because in retrospect none of these actors are even close to being 28. A small gripe about a wonderful film that I’ve always loved. A reviewer famously said about “Beautiful Girls” that “nothing happens”. Which I guess is somewhat true, what happens is all internal to the hearts and minds of the characters.  The dialogue in this film is absolutely amazing, I could sit and read this script like a book and be completely and utterly satisfied and enthralled. Rosie O’ Donnell has an amazing monologue about how God made fat women with big beautiful tits and little girls with “tiny niddlers, if you don’t like it call him!” Willy and Andera have an amazing dialogue about love and relationships in an ice fishing cabin and Marty and Willy share the most amazing moment of the film over ice skating at a park.

Marty: So, gonna marry that girl in New York City?
Willie: I don’t know, why?
Marty: I don’t think you should.
Willie: How come?
Marty: You should wait ’til you’re ready. You should wait ’til you meet someone who excites you.
Willie: Yeah, well you know she may not be out there.
Marty: It’s like the Wizard of Oz, William. The whole time it was right in your own backyard.
Willie: What do you mean?
Marty: You. Me and you.
Willie: Really?
Marty: Yep. You don’t think?
Willie: Well, we have a little age problem.
Marty: I know. We’re as star-crossed as Romeo and Juliet. It’s a tragedy of Elizabethan proportions.
Marty: If your feelings for me are true…you’ll wait.
Willie: Wait?
Marty: Yep. Wait five years. I’ll be 18, we can walk through this world together.
Willie: You know in five years, you won’t even remember me.
Marty: William.
Willie: I’m formed and you’re not and you still have changes to go through. You’ll change, then I’ll be Winnie the Pooh to your Christopher Robin.
Marty: No literary references left uncertain. How do you figure, Pooh?
Willie: Well, Christopher Robin outgrew Pooh. That’s how it ended, he had Pooh as a child and as he matured, he didn’t need him anymore.

He had Pooh as a child and as he matured he didn’t need him anymore. We all have hang ups, ideals, dreams, movements, revolutions, loves, hobbies, and emotions that die out as we grow up. Some become more formidable, some define our lives and in some cases destroy them. “Beautiful Girls” is one of my favorite movies not only because I’ve grown with the film, gravitating to certain portions of it over the years, sections of it becoming more poignant and meaningful as time goes by. But also because it’s a story about life, about me…about you. It’s a story where “nothing happens”, only everything changes.

Visoneers didn’t get much time in the forefront of people’s minds; in my inner circle of friends, the movie is completely unknown. In those regions that are more-heavily populated by hipsters and film snobs (east coast, west coast, anywhere except New Mexico), I’d wager a guess that  it got some attention, but I’m not a resident of any those areas, so I can’t say for certain that it did. Regardless, it was never a film that millions of audience members were dying to see. Nor should it be. Why would a Ranger IPA of a movie spend Bud Light advertising dollars?

I mentioned last week that my lasting memory of a film is almost always framed by the words I utter at its conclusion. I’m going to skip ahead to that part right now, and tell you, that when the credits rolled on this bad boy, I had nothing to say. Granted, it was very late (for me) and no one was around, but the inability of my brain to come up with something, ANYTHING, got my attention. Did I hate the film or did I love it? Was it a movie everyone should see, or a movie that everybody should avoid at all costs? Would I watch it again?

The answer to all of those questions:  I don’t know.

Here are a few things I can tell you:

This is one quirky film: I don’t want to spoil it for you (although the movie did come out in 2007 so I would be perfectly within my rights to do so) but elements of this film are so zany that I was literally shaking my head at times. Galifianakis’ character (George Washington Winsterhammerman) is a descendant of the nation’s first president, who lives in the Washington family mansion, and drives (I kid you not) an old mini-van, with wood paneling, rims, and an alarm system.

The company for which he works, The Jeffers Corporation, is your classic big-business, crush the souls of Guatemalan coffee-farmers, people mill. They preach productivity as the key to happiness, and the offices of the employees are barren, unwelcoming stations of gloom.  Every minute, employees hear an announcement on how many minutes of productivity are left in the day, which makes for an annoying first ten minutes or so.

The corporation very-much resembles the Orwellian government of 1984 and The World State of A Brave New World on crack, or some other blend of psychosis-inducing narcotics.  The Jeffers salute (which all employees are mandated to use) is nothing more than flipping the bird. Co-worker walks in: flip them off. See a picture of Mr. Jeffers: flip it off.

Good Morning Mr. Jeffers

At a particularly tense time in the world, when people are exploding from too much stress, the Jeffers Corporation purchases each employee a large stuffed bear to help them cope with the ups and downs of life. How should one use the stuffed bear to cope with his or her anxiety? I’m glad you asked: By engaging in sexual relations with it. (I wish I was kidding).

I could spend three pages on how Visoneers is a film version of the craziest person you’ve met, but you probably don’t care that much/wouldn’t believe me.

If you are anything like me, one emotional state of mind isn’t going to cut it as an audience member:  I went into this movie with almost zero expectations, and I am glad I did so. Had I made the mistake of saying to myself, “Self, this is a comedy and you will laugh heartily” I would have been disappointed. Had I chosen to label it dystopian before it was over, I would have been wrong. It’s five million (obviously an exaggeration) emotions wrapped into one. Unfortunately, we don’t have a name for that one yet. If we did, I would have saved myself a few sentences.

The ending left me wanting more. I’m not saying it was a bad ending, or even a mediocre ending. For all I know, it could be a great ending to all those seasoned audience members who have the ability to “get it.” I’m just not one of those people, and when I’ve dedicated nearly two hours to something, and my brain is fuzzy with summer ales, I need something concrete.

I just watched Inception (cue Paul Hunton insult) and even that ending gave me more than this one. At least I knew what the director was doing. At the end of Visoneers, I felt like that girl in high-school probably felt when I told her I wanted to be with her forever, than schtupped her best friend on a band trip (just kidding, I’m a virgin).

I wasn’t mad at the film…I just didn’t get it.

I’m not going to waste anymore of your time reframing that idea. I’m not going to tell you to definitely watch this movie, and delight in the brain moisty it gives you. I’m not going to tell you to skip this film because it sucks hard. I’ll simply say this: Watch this movie if you get a few hours free, and if you can explain the last ten minutes or so, send me an email. I have a hypothesis but I need other opinions to verify it. If you choose not to watch the movie, more power to you. I don’t think the world will be any darker as a result.

I’ve yet to introduce a rating system for my reviews so I will do so now.  It’s a very original system. Try your best not to be jealous of my creativity.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I give this movie a 6.3. I doubt that helps, but if it does, you’re welcome.

Lukas’ Delorean: Gnomeo and Juliet

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Hi I'm Lukas and I discovered Twin Peaks in 2011.

When I asked the very-awesome Paul Hunton if I could write a weekly article on his blog, I did so with a few hopes. I wanted to expand my writing horizons and see if I could share an interesting story without excessive use of the F word and jokes about male genitalia. I wanted to see if I could write about film, because I’ve never been a big enough fan of  the medium to think that I could share something interesting or new in the critiquing realm,  and I’ve certainly never had the time budgeting skills to ensure that I see new movies, and write about them in a timely fashion. I wanted to write about something that actually exists, because all of my other efforts have morphed into pseudo-fiction/satire. I wanted a guarantee that he would not judge my novice level observations on an art form that he has loved for years. We brainstormed, and here I am.

So here’s the content disclosure: I’m going to write about whatever I happen to watch on Netflix that given week. Paul hopes that one day I will review Birth of a Nation, and to be honest, I probably will, but first I have to convince myself to sit through something that looks so terribly, terribly boring. I am a laughably uncultured film watcher, and half the movies you snobs out there have on your “must see” list are films I have judged by their cover and bypassed.  Some of the first questions I will ask you when you recommend films are: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate the breastiness of this film?” and “Will I have to read subtitles?” If the answers to those respective questions are “10” and “No” you will have my attention.

I’m quite sure I’ve reached the level at which your patience can take no more, so I will now actually review a film…sort of.

I love my kids. I really do. I relish the opportunity to do something special for them like cut the crust off of their sandwiches, or take them to the front porch for an extra popsicle. They make my life better, and they are wise beyond their years… for the most part. You see,  my children suffer from a serious affliction known as “Tendency to Watch Terrible Movies and Television Shows.”  I have seen far too many episodes of iCarly, SpongeBob Squarepants and any other Disney/Nickelodeon abomination you can name. I am forced to endure Barbie movies the instant they’re available, and not just once, oh no! I have to watch them until the five-year-old has almost every aspect of the movie memorized.

Lukas' Children Declared Barbie Fairy Tale the next Citizen Kanes

I am emasculated on nearly a daily basis with the garbage my young ones deem “entertainment.”

So, when the ladies came home from an outing to the movies and informed me that “Gnomeo and Juliet” was one of the greatest movies ever, I had my doubts. I pretended to be interested in their retelling of the story, but I was watching a Kung Fu when they came home, and I can’t help it that David Carradine (RIP) is more interesting than two little girls. I am not advocating ignoring your children, but in this particular case, it paid dividends, because…

What did the little red envelope treat me to this weekend? You guessed it…”Gnomeo and Juliet.”

I saw the trailer for G & J when my children were torturing me with another movie, and I remember thinking to myself, “Awesome, another retelling of this story.” (Sarcasm font hasn’t been invented yet, but when it is, OH BOY!!)The animation was cute, but at base level how could it ever be anything more than another Shakespearian rip off?

The Flamingo Is AWESOME! Trust me!

To be completely honest with myself, after having now seen the film, it really is another Shakespearian rip-off, minus some of the morbidity that made us all despise the story as angsty high-school sophomores.

However, honesty would also require that I admit how much I truly loved this film. I laughed genuinely, not just to keep the little ones’ glaring eyes of off me. I cried like a hipster at an Arcade Fire concert, and hid under a Bambi blanket if the girls looked at me, because, you know, little kids shouldn’t have to know what poon tangs their dads are. I knew what was coming the entire time, and so did every other adult who watched this film; but this story was so far from stagnant, so full of the little things, so engaging, that I didn’t care and I bet the same could be said for others.

The cast of voice actors for this film is amazing, and if you don’t believe me, go check out the IMDB page. Director Kelly Asbury, a well-known artist and two-time director (Shrek 2 and Sprit: Stallion of the Cimarron)steered the ship magnificently, adhering to the original story and characters as much as possible, and adding enough spice to keep it fresh.

If I was to compare G&J to food, I’d call it a casserole, designed by a master chef. On the surface, it appears to be nothing more than recycled traditionalism, nothing special or out of the ordinary, something that has been done many, many times before.  Yet, once you dive in, once you break the surface, you begin to see that the dish is not so much about the outside presentation, as all the delicious inner parts working together beneath the crust.

Is “Gnomeo & Juliet” as original as, say, “The Incredibles” or “Monsters Inc.”? Absolutely not, and anyone who says otherwise is batty. Is

We're not in Gnomeo and Juliet but You'll Enjoy it Anyways

the art or animation style revolutionary? It’s good, but it didn’t take my breath away. Aside from the impressive voice acting, is there anything spectacular about G& J? Again no, but believe me when I say, I don’t think any of those things make it a less enjoyable story.

Too often in these criticism, writers, much better than myself, fall too-heavily in love with their fine tooth combs, and miss that one thing that films are supposed to give us: that sometimes pleasant, sometimes unpleasant, sometimes confused, sometimes angry swelling of emotions that hits us when the credits roll. Cerebral flicks are great, and I love the rush of sitting for two hours after a movie is over, trying to “figure it out,” but one can only take so much of that. Every once in a while, I need a movie that hooks me for two hours and then leaves me the hell alone.

My strongest impression of a movie is almost always in direct correlation with the words I speak as the credits roll. In the case of Gnomeo and Juliet, I believe I said, “Well, wasn’t that surprisingly great?”… And then I told my daughter to go get me a beer.

He would have died for our sins, had he not been carrying the Boston Celtics that season.

Those nine people were picked ahead of him, and he motivated himself every workout.
It’s a list that exhibits so many NBA stereotypes — the “bust drafted first because you don’t pass up seven-footers” in Olowokandi, the “next Jordan” who wasn’t in Carter, the guy who was worth more as an expiring contract than a player in LaFrentz, the “latch onto a contender for your ring” in Bibby and Williams, and Traylor and Nowitzki in the lopsided trade that launches one team into relevance — rounded out by a Pierce, a Hall-of-Famer who stayed with one team and won a title with the proper help. While you can still pick a handful of those guys over Pierce, hindsight makes his No. 10 slot laughable.
My story has a two-fold purpose. First, to get Paul interested in anything, it helps to bring up the Boston Celtics. Second, it touches on an idea we discussed after a Film Frame post where he waxed poetic on the fantastic year in film that was 1999.
Professional sports drafts are hardly the only example of laughable selection. The Oscars are basically Hollywood’s way of giving movies, directors, actors and actresses the Mel Kiper treatment.
Well, sometimes Kiper’s wrong. Just like Pierce’s low draft number defines him, “The Shawshank Redemption” is defined for its ’0-for-7 performance at the 1995 Academy Awards. Just like Olowokandi was overrated for his height, “The King’s Speech” gets overrated because it’s about nice British people. And each is full of hidden gems — I equate “Swingers,” which never even sniffed a Golden Globe nomination, to Nick Van Exel, a second-round pick who helped catapult the Lakers back into relevance.
But back to Paul’s post. I commented, “With every passing year of cinema, I wish more that we could do a ‘five years later’ Oscar-type awards. That way, there’s no campaigning, no momentum; best movie with the greatest impact wins. There’s no way ‘Forrest Gump,’ ‘Shakespeare in Love’ or ‘The King’s Speech’ get best picture. Actually, that would be an awesome post, and I’d be happy to help.”
Paul agreed, and here we are. First off, this idea’s not original. Bill Simmons discussed this in a podcast months ago. But it’s too simple a concept to copyright, anyway.
We won’t be discussing “Kings Speech” versus “The Social Network” yet, because it hasn’t reached the grace period. And I don’t think we’ll get to “Shawshank Redemption” versus “Forrest Gump” because we’ve got to go back 16 years to do it. To save time, we’ll just call that one, “Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan.”
And that brings us to …
2006: This is the first year we can judge on the “grace period” law. “The Departed” beat out “Babel,” “Letters from Iwo Jima,” “Little Miss Sunshine” and “The Queen.”
History has been clear. This is the Maybelline of the Oscars, the make-up call for the ones Scorcese should have gotten in years past. I can only imagine what went on in voters’ minds:
• “There’s a photo of a rat, and somebody just got killed because he was a rat. It’s genius. Give him an Oscar.”
• “Well, they killed off everybody, so we don’t get a sequel to lump awards together like we did for that Peter Jackson asshole.”
What should have won? It’s a tough year, because nothing’s outstanding. I like “Little Miss Sunshine” a lot, and movies are supposed to be entertaining. “Dreamgirls” and “Blood Diamond” also get consideration. “Volver” wasn’t nearly the film that “Talk to Her” was, but it still beats most of the nominees.
If you have to pick a different winner, my heart goes to the “The Last King of Scotland.” I’ve always held the belief that Forest Whitaker’s performance was worth two Oscars, and it was enough to lift the film to the top in an otherwise pedestrian year.
But this is the equivalent of a ref missing a “toe on the line” 3-pointer in the first quarter. I’d be fine if “The Departed” still won. Your thoughts, Paul?

We will never know if these two could have made cinema magic!

PH: In 2006 I was living in Santa Fe working for 20th Century Fox on what would have been the Funniest movie of 2007. It was called “Used Guys” and it was going to star Jim Carey along side Ben Stiller, it was a hilarious script. In the future men have become impotent and marginalized, so a giant company builds different “models” of android men, think Jude Law in “AI,” to sell to women. As years go by men are bought and sold like cars and Jim Carrey and Ben Stiller have both been traded in as “Used Guys.” The budget hit 100 million and Fox pulled the plug. Unfortunate, but thank God some really great movies got made that year, none of which won any awards.

I like Kevin’s pick, it’s sensible and “Last King of Scotland” will definitely continue to hold up as a great film. Looking back, here would have been my nominees. “United 93,” “The Fountain,” “Children of Men,” “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “The Departed.” “Children of Men” would win my revisionist Best Picture Award. ’06 was a surprisingly amazing year, you also had “Last King of Scotland,” which Kev described nicely, as well as “The Wind That Shakes the Barley”. We also got 2 movies about 9-11, “U93” and “World Trade Center,” and two films about magicians, “The Illusionist” and “The Prestige.” Weird. We also got a great Spike Lee film in “Inside Man.”

Stop crying, this terrible movie will be over soon!

2005 on the other hand was a disaster, not because there were crappy films, no, but rather because the crappiest of them all won best picture. The nominees that year were “Crash,” “Brokeback Mountain,” “Capote,” “Good Night, and Good Luck,” and “Munich.” Instead of choosing the film that actually broke down barriers for a minority, “Brokeback,” Hollywood showed us its true colors and gave the award to the film that is the movie equivalent of your grandmother saying “I’m not racist, but…” followed by calling Mexicans lazy and black people criminals. They gave the award to “Crash.” If a revision has ever needed to be done it’s 2005. So here goes, my nominees would have been: “Pride and Prejudice,” “A History of Violence,” “Walk The Line,” “Syriana” and “The New World” with the award going to “A History of Violence.” Cronenberg really flipped the script with that one and Viggo Mortensen, Ed Harris and William Hurt put in some amazing performances. I fixed ’06 and ’05 but doing so stripped Scorsese of what was basically his lifetime achievement award. The reason I was comfortable doing so was because they should have got it right in ’04, but don’t worry I’m here to help…

Who Will Save the Cheerleader?

KW: Cronenberg also gave us the best non-Hayden Panettiere cheerleader scene of theyear that matched the rest of the movie and Cronenberg’s graphic-no-apologies style. And to top it off, he had made a film called “Crash” 10 years earlier where he chose to forego racist cops for graphic sex and an NC-17 rating. Hmm, I’d rather watch “Xistenz.” The 2005 “Crash,” which I’ll refer to as “Non-Porn Crash,” was a good movie that gave us a second helping of Terrence Howard, nominated for Best Actor in “Hustle & Flow” the same year and regarded as “a rich man’s Don Cheadle” when “Iron Man 2” was finalized.
But “Non-Porn Crash” was a good movie, and nothing more. I’m fine with “History,” but I’m keeping “Good Night, and Good Luck” in the nominees. It holds up in any era, whether it’s a rebuke of current leaders or past leaders, and the supporting performances of Reed Diamond and George Clooney were top-notch. “Non-Porn Crash” is gone from the nominees, because it’s six years later and we’re unaffected by the distributors overproducing the DVD to make it appear popular. “Syriana” is out too, because we have to make way for “Spiderman 2.” Wow, Reed Diamond makes two of the Best Picture nominees. Great job, Detective Kellerman.

Have you seen the movie about you? "No, but I hear it's great!"

Which brings us to 2004, a year I like to call, “Failure of the Major Studio.” The Best Picture winner, “Million Dollar Baby,” and nominees “Ray,” “The Aviator,” “Sideways” and “Finding Neverland” were all turned down by major studios were passed on by many major studios. Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times noted this while contrasting Columbia’s willingness to finance “Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo.” The episode touched off a firestorm with an angry Rob Schneider, and Roger Ebert finished the argument with one of his funniest, most eviscerating reviews to record
(http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050811/REVIEWS/50725001).
Given another chance, no studio passes up on these films. But given another chance, I uphold most of the 2004 picks. In a stronger year, maybe Hilary Swank doesn’t get Best Actress – I liked her in “The Black Dahlia” much more – but I don’t have anybody who overtakes her. Jamie Foxx’s win for “Ray” is justified, though Paul Giamatti deserved a nomination for “Sideways.”
Whenever I see “Ray,” I’m reminded of the joke by Dov Davidoff, who said Ray Charles was amazing, because “Ray Charles beat his wife, and she could see.” “Ray” would have won 2005, but “Million Dollar Baby” does beat it out in 2004.
And my spell-check tried to turn “Panettiere” into “Pantyliner.” So did I, spell-check, so did I.

PH: That’s interesting about the major studios, I did not know that. Not surprising as they were too busy promoting “White Chicks.” Also, throwing “Spiderman 2” into the nominee list might be the best decision made in this entire thing.

2004 is an interesting year for me, I believed, and still do, that “The Aviator” was far and away the best film of that year, but I also believe

Right before Leo started looking like a James Cameron creation

“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” was a masterpiece. “The Aviator” is an amazing, underrated film, it’s top tier Scorsese, up there with “Raging Bull” and “Taxi Driver.” Yes it’s glossy, yes it’s Hollywood, but so is the subject matter. Leo gives a performance for the ages, one of those timeless, epic, maddening performances like Daniel Day Lewis as Bill The Butcher, Denzel as Malcolm X, and Ben Kingsley as Ghandi. Scorsese must have LOVED this story, there is so much kindness and care put into everything, from using the two strip technicolor process for the time span in the film, relative to the actual use of that process, to having Hughes line up bottles of urine going mad watching daily’s from Hell’s Angels. “ESOTSM” is the opposite of The Aviator, instead it tells a little story that is deep within the hearts of every person. It’s theme? Memory, love, laughter, and living. It’s whimsical yet dark, touching delicately on what it means to be a human for better or worse. So here is what I would do, the nominees would be “The Aviator,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “The Passion of the Christ,” “Spanglish,” and “The Notebook,” (NO I’M NOT JOKING YOU READ THAT LIST RIGHT!!!!!) With Best Picture going to “The Aviator” and Scorsese winning Best Director. If I ever get time I will  prove to all of you that “Spanglish” and “The Notebook” are two phenomenal films, just you wait!

Then you give Scorsese the award when he actually deserves it, and you don’t have to give it to him for a lesser effort for “The Departed”. Other notables of ’04, include “Anchorman,” “Mean Girls,” “Napoleon Dynamite,” the first Bourne film, “The Terminal” (Spielberg WAS ON FIRE from ’01-04), and I guess “Ray” is pretty good too. I wish I had more time to devote to Clint Eastwood’s comedy “Million Dollar Baby,” but alas…

2003, the nominees were “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King,” “Lost in Translation,” “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,” “Mystic River,” “Seabiscuit” and “Dooney and Burke: The Search for the Handbag From Hell.” I made that last one up, but man what a year for long titles. Of course the biggest make up Oscar of all time went to the least deserving of the LOTR trilogy, Return of the King sweeping the Oscars. Talk about giving the wrong movie an award. I’ve seen “Fellowship” 100 times, “Towers” 50 times and “Return” once. What a stinker, my nominees would look like this: “Kill Bill Vol. 1,” “Matchstick Men,” “Seabiscuit,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,” and “Mystic River.” My Oscar would go to QT for “Kill Bill Vol. 1” and for Best Director. In my opinion the first “Kill Bill” is the perfect mix of everything QT has ever tried to do done with excellence – great dialogue, wonderful character, exciting action and a good story to boot. “Kill Bill, Vol 1” and “Inglorious Basterds” are QT’s twins. They both are genre pictures done with great love and perfect tone. ’03 is notable also for “Old School,” “Elf,” “Bad Santa,” “Bad Boys 2,” and “Finding Nemo.”

KW: Before I bore you, two quick points. To back up Paul, Sparks’ works, chick-flickian from the start, actually make for a decent film. He’s the Stephen King of sap. And No. 2, I still remember the voicemail I left for my dad after watching, “The Bourne Ultimatum.” “Hey Dad, it’s Kevin. I’m not sure what you’re doing since you didn’t answer, but you need to stop it and go see ‘The Bourne Ultimatum.’ That is all.”
Back in junior high, I was a big fan of “What About Bob?” It was a great combination of laid-back Bill Murray, Richard Dreyfuss freaking out and making light of mental problems. During a walk home with the doctor’s daughter, mental patient Bob Wiley (played by Murray) said there are two people in the world: Those who like Neil Diamond, and those who don’t.
I think the same way of “Lost in Translation,” the first regarded step towards Murray as a serious actor … though he was a serious actor in comedies like “Ed Wood” and “Wild Things” (yes, it was a comedy). I am known for saying, “There are two types of people: Those who like

watch us wander around Tokyo ailmlessly for two hours.

‘Lost in Translation,’ and those who don’t.” Now I know Paul and I are two different types of people.
But we are the same in some ways. When Paul decried the 12-Oscar make-up call given to Peter Jackson and said, “Return of the King” wasn’t even the best LOTR movie, I agreed. More on that later.
I’m not a Tarantino fan, based on his adherence to violent which ushered in what I like to call “torture porn” (the blood’s on his hands for the “Saw” movies). However, he is the best choice for director and best film.
However, I can’t give the nod to to “Seabiscuit” or “Mystic River.” I’ve never needed to see either of those movies again (even though I have “Seabiscuit” on DVD and think the Pimlico scene is amazing). My other nominees include “Master and Commander,” “Lost in Translation,” “Matchstick Men” and “Curse of the Black Pearl.”

We now move back to 2002, where “Chicago” beat out “Gangs of New York,” “The Hours,” “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” and “The Pianist” And now, it’s, “later.” I still remember the end of “The Two Towers,” knowing the horrific things that awaited Sam and Frodo, yet still amazed at the Peter Jackson was drinking George Lucas’ milkshake. Lucas had spent decades selling the same three movies over and over again (re-release, VHS, special edition, special edition VHS, special edition DVDs, original edition DVDs, and upcoming releases of Blu-ray and Blu-ray 3D … oh, it’s coming). And he had all of the momentum for the prequels. By taking two years between each prequel, Jackson was able to push his entire trilogy out while Lucas put out one prequel movie … and boom, momentum is gone when it should have been about Yoda’s light saber fight and the tolerable “Revenge of the Sith.”
Regarding the LOTR trilogy, “Towers” was the best of the trilogy, and the best of those super-long extended DVDs. The Farimir-Boromir story is worth watching the extended DVD on its own.
I move “Two Towers” to best picture. Its competition is “Talk to Her,” “Chicago,” “Gangs of New York” and “Spirited Away.” But, Kevin, there are already categories for animated and foreign films. Kevin don’t care; those are the best.
I keep Adrian Brody in “The Pianist” for best actor, but I add Tom Hanks in “Catch Me If You Can” as a nominee and add “Most Horrifying Nude Scene” for Jack Nicholson in “About Schmidt.” Two other changes: Christopher Walken gets best supporting actor for “Catch Me If You Can,” and Almodovar wins best director for “Talk to Her.” At the very
least, we avoid beating around the bush on, “Our best director award winner could not be here; he is currently out of the country hiding from a statutory rape charge.”

PH: I own all those Star Wars releases, many Star Wars toys, books, and other crap. I’m so mad at George Lucas for what he did to my

"didn't read, LOL"

childhood. That’s another post entirely, moving on.

2002, the year Roman Polanski made his autobiographical film entitled “The Penist.” I hated that movie, still do, I can’t remember if it was in “Truffaut’s Day for Night,” Fellini’s “8 1/2″ or just a quote by Jean Luc Godard, but whoever said, “If you want to win an award make a movie about the Holocaust” was absolutely right. Was Adrian Brody great? Yes, but that doesn’t excuse a terrible film. I agree with Kevin, if you want to give a Best Picture to a LOTR movie, give it to “The Two Towers,” a great movie! But my Oscar would go to “Catch Me if You Can.” It’s top-tier Spielberg, in fact it may be his best film. It’s the type of film that can be debated in film classes for eternity, but also will make you stop and watch hours of it on TNT.
Christopher Walken, Tom Hanks, and Leonardo DiCaprio all put on award worthy performances. Spielberg was on a tear, and out of “A.I.,” “Minority Report,” “Catch Me if You Can,” “The Terminal” and “Munich”(a hell of a run mind you) “CMIYC” deserves an Oscar. If I had another 20,000 words I would tell you about my love for “Road To Perdition” but I need to move on to our final year, 2001…
In 2001, “A Beautiful Mind” beat out “Gosford Park,” “Fellowship of the Ring,” “In The Bedroom,” and “Moulin Rouge.” This was also the year that Oscar reared it’s ugly racial head again and gave Denzel an Oscar for being a drug addicted crooked cop, and Halle Berry an Oscar for being totally ravaged by Billy Bob Thornton. Do you hear that, black America? If you want to win an Oscar, don’t portrait a hero like Malcolm X, be an immoral police officer, Hollywood will love you!!! Don’t take the part of someone like Rosa Parks, make someone named Billy Bob, “make you feel good.” This would be my list keep “Beautiful Mind” and “Fellowship of the Ring,” add “The Royal Tenenbaums,” “Ocean’s Eleven,” and “Super Troopers” with “Super Troopers” winning! Oh I just negated all my opinions and everything I’ve said up to this point? I call Shenanigans on you! Kevin, take us home!

Kevin Wilson holds back the rest of the cast in "Moulin Rouge"

KW: Yay for us. We’re Hollywood, so colorblind we’ll give Denzel Washington an Oscar for what might have been his fifth-best performance; I’d rather see any Spike Lee joint with DW. But I do disagree with Paul’s dismissal of Halle Berry. Bottom line, if you make it with Billy Bob, the universe owes you an Oscar. Yep, especially Lauren Graham … and, “Fuck me, Santa” shoulda been her Oscar clip. Oh, spoiler alert: This blog is NSFW.
I think the second-best leading actor was … not even on the list. To stand out in that ensemble cast and keep the story in line took a giant effort from Clooney. He doesn’t win — Ian McKellan does – but this builds momentum to the Oscar Clooney should have won for “Up in the Air.” But more on that in 2015.
Nicole Kidman wins best actress, just so I don’t feel sorry for her and go see “Cold Mountain.”
Best picture: I keep Paul’s list, meow, but “Super Troopers” has to go. It gets replaced with “Moulin Rouge,” which loses to the dramatic, hilarious and totally re-watchable “Ocean’s Eleven.” Maybe all parties involved would have had some pride in the sequels if they had an Oscar standard to uphold. Did one of those movies REALLY bank on the “this character, played by Julia Roberts, looks like Julia Roberts.” And they would have had to give the Oscar back, just like Berry should have been required to do when “Catwoman” stunk up the joint.

In closing, everyone’s got different ways they’d revise history. But this is one of the goals here at The Film Frame — to make you consider the movies you love and why you love them.
And I think it was Abraham Lincoln who said Holocaust movies win at Oscar time. But just like everybody who passed up Paul Pierce, we could be wrong.

I'm trying to look like him too, maybe I should kill him and wear his skin as a coat!

“Super 8″ did not make me feel like a kid again, it didn’t remind me how I felt when I watched movies way back when and the only reason it made me think of movies like “E.T.” , “Close Encounters”, “Gremlins”, “Stand by Me”, “Monster Squad”, “Goonies” even a little “Lost Boys” and “Back to the Future”, is because it directly ripped off the style, and even some exact moments from those films. Sorry if it sounds like I didn’t like “Super 8″, no, I loved it! It’s a great movie, but I feel like I needed to address a major problem with it. You see, in directly paying homage to those films Abrams and his team have taken on the challenge of walking that fine line between paying tribute, and ripping off. For instance, if I were to sit down to write an epic book about Russian aristocracies during the French invasion of Russia you would all cry foul that I was ripping off Tolstoy. Had I said, I am going to pay homage to Tolstoy, change a little here and there and throw in Anna Karenina for good measure, I would still be ripping off Tolstoy. Does any of that matter? Not necessarily, those who felt like they had drifted off to a magical land of movie nostalgia can continue to feel that way, I just want to review the movie for what it actually is, and sometimes the best way to do that is to also explain what it is not.

So there you go, what “Super 8″ does accomplish is entertaining the audience for 2 hours. It tells a great story, with great action set pieces, and some wonderful acting from a stellar, mostly under-age cast. Joe Lamb(Joel Courtney) is a young kid who just lost his mom, how Abrams shows you the mom’s death is brilliant and simple. If you are paying attention you can also deduce who is responsible for her death in the opening scene. Joe doesn’t have a very good relationship with his father, and they both struggle in their own way with the loss of a mother and wife, Jackson, Joe’s father escapes into his work, and Joe in a way does too. Joe is trying to help his best friend Charles (Riley Griffiths) make a zombie movie and he and all their friends make up the rag-tag film crew. I loved all the film making parts, Abrams obviously loves his craft and he elevates the kids above their actual skill level but it adds to some of the funniest scenes. Charles, the director, is constantly talking about story, learning lines, production value, makeup, focus pull, pyrotechnics and other things most 12 year old filmmakers would never even know about. Did he learn all this from a Super 8 filmmaker magazine? Maybe, but it doesn’t matter because it’s some of the best parts of “Super 8″. Soon, Charles decides he needs a wife for his main character so the audience will “care about what happens to them”, so he enlists Alice Dainard(Elle Fanning), a girl he has a crush on to play opposite his lead. They go to a train platform and all hell breaks loose. A train approaches and Charles gets excited thinking he has just upped his production value, unfortunately a pick up careens out of control head on with the train! As the train cars derail for what seems like an hour the Super 8mm camera continues to roll. What mysteries this train crash reveals fling our cast of kids into a great adventure story that propels the remainder of the film. After this scene I leaned over to my 10 year old son and said “you can not survive a head on collision with a train, that man would have been smashed into mush!” Which in retrospect is funny because later on I didn’t lean down and say “You will never survive a face to face meeting with an alien, don’t try to reason with him like Dr. Phil, just run.”

 What this movie succeeds in doing is telling a compelling story with characters you care about. I can’t tell you how great all these kids are, they are wonderful. If you stay after the credits you’ll get to see the zombie movie they are working on throughout the film and it’s very funny. To me, “Super 8″ will be one of those movies that I watch a few times a year and notice things I missed the first time. One technical gripe I have is J.J. Abrams has to get over his obsession with lens flares. In “Star Trek” it was fine, it kind of gave it a futuristic feel, but in this movie it just feels…distracting. I can’t recommend this movie enough, you will really enjoy it, it’s probably the most enjoyable film I’ve seen this Summer, “Super 8″ is a very a good movie. I’ve read on message boards that people are upset with the ending and that it leaves a lot of questions. That is fine with me, the last time I demanded questions from J.J. Abrams I ended up with a golden shower.

Some of the films in 1999 were no good, “The Phantom Menace” was great for me at the time, Darth Maul still is, as are all the Jedi who were cast, unfortunately the little boy who played Anakin as well as a hodge-podge story that tries to explain the mythology of the Star Wars world lacks a lot to be desired. I won’t even mention Jar-Jar Binks.  In fact, all of the prequels very much remind me of “LOST”, we as an audience demand answers and then hate the ones we get. I watched “Bicentennial Man” starring Robin Williams at the Y2K party in Clovis where I was really hoping to win a mustang, that movie sucked. Andrea, Jared Sisneros, and myself skipped school and drove all the way to Lubbock to watch “The Blair Witch Project” only to be told we were to young to get in. We bought tickets to “The Iron Giant” and snuck in anyways, only to leave shaking our heads wondering what we had just witnessed, garbage. Turns out “The Iron Giant” was a much better film and was the start of Brad Bird’s career in feature length animated direction.

Many other directors made a huge splash in 1999, and ushered in a new group of auteurs. Spike Jonze directed “Being John Malkovich”, Sam Mendes directed Oscar winner “American Beauty”, Alexander Payne directed “Election”, David Fincher directed “Fight Club”, Paul Thomas Anderson directed “Magnolia”, and while it wasn’t his breakout hit, it established him as the auteur who would have Daniel Day-Lewis screaming “I’ll drink your milkshake” ten years later. The brothers Wachowski directed “The Matrix”, Mike Judge mostly known for “Beavis and Butthead” directed his classic “Office Space”, M. Night Shamalamadingdong directed “The Sixth Sense”, David O. Russell directed “Three Kings”, Sofia Coppola directed “The Virgin Suicides”, and Julie Taymore directed “Titus”. That list is absolutely staggering, the quality of work of that “freshman” class is one for the ages. Other more established directors had something to say in 1999 as well.

Martin Scorsese directed “Bringing out the Dead”, Stanley Kubrick, the master of all masters, would debut his final film posthumously, “Eyes Wide Shut”,  Anthony Minghella directed “The Talented Mr. Ripley”, a film I still love and think is very underrated. Tim Burton directed “Sleepy Hollow”, Spike Lee directed “Summer of Sam”, Roman Polanski directed “The 9th Gate”,  Jay Roach directed both “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me” as well as “Mystery Alaska”, Milos Forman directed “Man on the Moon”, Steven Soderberg directed “The Limey”, Luc Besson directed “The Messenger”, Michael Mann directed “The Insider”, Jim Jarmusch directed “Ghost Dog”, Kevin Smith directed “Dogma”, Oliver Stone directed “Any Given Sunday”, Norman Jewison directed “The Hurricane”, Trey Parker and Matt Stone directed “South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut”,Frank Darabont directed “The Green Mile”, Clint Eastwood directed “True Crime” and Harold Ramis directed “Analyze This”.  Again, staggering.

There were also great popcorn flicks, chick flicks, and comedies in 1999. Not your run-of-the-mill either, some of these most definitely have stood the test of time. “American Pie”, “10 Things I hate About You, “The 13th Warrior”, “Big Daddy”, “Blast From the Past”, “Bowfinger”, “The Bone Collector”, “The Cider House Rules”, “Cruel Intentions”, “Detroit Rock City”, “For Love of the Game”, “Galaxy Quest”, “Fantasia 2000″, “Girl, Interrupted”, “The General’s Daughter”, “The Green Mile”, “Go”, “Idle Hands”, “Jawbreaker”, “The King and I”, “Life”, “Never Been Kissed”, “Payback”, “Runaway Bride”, “She’s All That”, “Stuart Little”,”Notting Hill”,”A Midsummer Nights Dream”,”Varsity Blues”, “Toy Story 2″, “The Mummy”, “8mm”, and “The World is Not Enough”.

You would be hard pressed to find a better single year in film. I must have almost bankrupted my parents because I saw a lot of these in theaters, and I see a lot of these over and over every year. I don’t know what happened in 1997, when most of these films were being written and 1998 when most of these films were being filmed, but it must have been something spectacular, or not. Maybe it was the luck of the draw, a mix of the right situations at the right time. We could remember it as the year of Jar-Jar Binks, when millions of “Star Wars” fans marked their line in the sand with the series, but then we would be missing 1999′s glory. We could call it the year of “The Matrix”, a time when all things were possible, when the world of cinema and storytelling were flipped on their heads, CGI, special effects, as well as superb craftsmanship of story all coming together in a perfect storm. Whatever it was, it has never been repeated, 1999 remains a “golden” year in the annals of cinema history. I hope this leads you to seeking out movies you’ve never seen, or revisiting some classics you love.

If you are a faithful reader you may recall me questioning the potential of “THOR” in my post “The Comic Book Conundrum”, “The Mighty Thor” was always a boring comic book, the production photos looked silly, and introducing a Norse God’s story into the Marvel Avenger’s storyline seemed impossible to me. Well there is one person you should never doubt, and that’s director Kenneth Branagh. He is probably THE ONLY director who has adapted Shakespeare with wonderful effect. Like Mel Gibson making movies about sociopaths “THOR” fell right into Branagh’s wheelhouse and he hit it out of the park. A lush world, multiple dialects/accents/cultures, great kingdoms, betrayal, love, and fantasy enough to make most filmmakers choke on their own insecurities, Branagh handles all of these things with gusto and professionalism, you can almost sense him smirking at how well he manages this picture. The Realm of Asgard is one of the most beautiful worlds ever put to screen, I was lucky enough to see this film in 2D, the way it was shot, and I was so thankful not to lose the clarity and brightness of the astral magnificence of Asgard. The art design is ostensibly classical, it looks like “Flash Gordon”, Richard Donner’s “Superman” and 1987′s “He-Man: Masters of the Universe”, yet it’s undeniably modern with Asgard’s “rainbow bridge” acting and looking like a computer processor.  The cosmos have never shined brighter on film than they do in this world, and yet we aren’t even to the story.

Thor’s story has a surface of Shakespearean quality, an orphaned child looking for acceptance, a prince banished from his birthright, magic, betrayal, honor, comedy, and love, although none of these things are studied with the depth and grandeur like that of say “Hamlet”.   No, most of these things are but window drapes to scenes of great action and heroics, zeal and posturing but that is fine. A movie like “THOR” would never succeed as high brow art and a great deal of credit should go to Branagh and his crew for not trying to reach those heights. Like “The Fellowship of the Ring” we are brought into a world we do not want to leave, I feel as though there were hundreds of stories within this movie that would make fine films all by themselves, for instance it would be interesting to see how Heimdallr (pronounced him-doll) became the gatekeeper, and the war with the frost giants and how Odin lost his eye would all make for fantastic movies. Maybe I want more because in the 5th grade  I found a Norse Mythology book and was the only 11 year old who could name all the Norse God’s and listed Leif Ericson as a personal hero, but alas I think after you see the film you will agree, there is a lot to this world.

The acting is phenomenal and there are great comedic moments when Thor comes to Earth and has to deal with mere mortals. Natalie Portman is as beautiful as ever, Chris Hemsworth is a fine Thor and finds the balance of arrogance and pity the character calls for. Tom Hiddleston as Loki finds the perfect balance of pathetic creature, conniving son, and evil misanthrope. Anthony Hopkins has been waiting to play Odin his entire life it would seem, he only had to wait for the right age.  There is this thing I do when a scene isn’t working or is too corny, I shift in my seat, I look around at other people and I basically avert my eyes from the screen. I only did this once in “THOR” and it involved the hokey love story between Thor and Jane, which is a finer coupling than when she dated Tarzan.

“THOR” is great, grande, and wonderful. I almost want to call it a masterpiece of the comic book movie form, but then again that form is always changing and evolving. I guess I will leave it at this, “THOR” is way better than it ever deserved to be, and will probably be on my “Best of 2011″ before it’s all said and done. It’s a day later and I’m already scheming in my head to go again, to put it bluntly,  Whosoever sees Thor, if he be worthy, shall have had a great time! And what more do you want?

The opening fifteen minutes set up what is essentially an action/thriller/revenge drama with hi-tech noise provided by the Chemical Brothers, and lavish/stylish camera work and editing helmed by director Joe Wright. I hate to call Hanna “essentially” anything because it is better than that, but I recommend it highly enough that I hope you find out for yourself. I have to be honest, I didn’t realize who Joe Wright was as I watched his name come across the screen at the end. I had assumed, wrongly, that it was a first time director making an overly artistic euro action flick throwing as much style across the screen as possible to win his next job. Joe Wright however, is the director of such superb films as “Atonement” and “Pride and Prejudice” two films I admire greatly. Joe Wright, as well as lead actress Saoirse Ronan show great range and depth with “Hanna” and I look forward to both of their future works.

A lot of movies throw a lot of flash on the screen for no other reason than to throw flash on the screen, and at points in “Hanna” I felt it  crossed the line, but it mostly stays true to it’s style and projects the plot foward without distracting from it’s main themes. There is a thread throughout the film of Hanna’s coming of age, and like a lot of coming of age films there are great comedic moments as well as light hearted fun. Don’t get me wrong though, because the film is multi-layered even during the fun parts there is a sense of impending doom and dread that weighs heavily on the screen. I held my breathe several times as any and all characters could meet their doom at any moment. There are quirky killers chasing Hanna, one that a friend pointed out very correctly, looks/acts/dresses like Elton John(he loves track suits). There is a british family that Hanna travels with and mum and dad argue over how a child should be raised, with great independence or greater freedom. This family supplies fantastic comedic relief in an otherwise bleak and dark film. Cate Blanchett plays a CIA agent opposite Eric Bana as a red headed femme fatale with a southern accent that comes and goes, but she plays the character as a great force and adds another great performance to an already superb group.

At points I was reminded of “Leon” or as many of you know it from it’s American version “The Professional”, but “Hanna” lacks the emotional depth and gentleness of that film. At other times,  I was reminded of “Taken” a film I highly enjoyed that was as action packed and no less bleak. Like “Taken” there will no doubt be a rated-R version coming to Blu Ray, and I very much look forward to that version. Not because I want to see the violence but you could feel something just slightly off about this version. No doubt a studio hedging it’s bets that “Hanna’s” audience lie somewhere in between, tween and action nerd. I’m guessing the same studio that thought it needed to subtitle Grimms Fairy Tales from German to English because the big bright Red Riding Hood images weren’t enough for us to figure it out on our own. I guess the great thing about “Hanna” is although it’s by the numbers of many genres and previous flicks, it pulls from them all and creates it’s own sort of unique and original collage. It reminded me of Picaso’s quote “bad artists copy, good artist steal” “Hanna” seems to steal all the right things from all the right movies and leaves the scraps for the birds. “Hanna” is like free-jazz, you might not always understand what’s going on, you just know you love it! I can’t think of a higher compliment.

Wolverine wants to stop feeling like it's groundhog day

I’m a bit of a sucker for the comic book movie. In fact I would go so far to say I’m a homer, a fanboy, a nerd, etc. The list of comic book films I love is long, and the ones that I thought sucked is very short. Growing up comics were my escape, I still have a pretty vast collection, and my twin brother Matt can tell you the story of the one time he got water on them(it wasn’t pretty). As critical as I can be about film, for some reason when the credits roll on a comic book movie I giggle like a child and float away to a time in my life when the only care I had was sour patch kids and dunkaroos. I remember in Jr. High when the rumor was that they were making an X-Men movie and that Arnold was going to play my favorite X-Man, Colossus, I was thrilled! Sadly, I remember little else from Jr. High. I wonder though, if like 3D, the studios have over extended themselves here. “The Dark Knight” in my opinion is the high mark, and somewhere around Daredevil, Catwoman, and Elektra is the low.  The comic book movie has now become the “go-to” production for printing money, but the idea stream is drying up. Not that they are running out of great comic books and graphic novels, no. Rather, instead of reaching out to some of the deeper, more character driven graphic novels that reside on the fringe of the culture, they choose to go with what  brought them to the dance. A great business strategy, a terrible thing for art. For instance in 2011-2012 we get re-boots of “Judge Dredd”, “X-Men”, “Spiderman”, “Superman” and I just know in my heart that after Nolan wraps “The Dark Knight Rises” a Batman re-boot is a year away. With this culture of reboots, remakes, and retreads of proven products I can only imagine 2013′s “Inception” remake.

This summer we also get “Captain America” which I guess you could consider a re-boot because of the awesome 1990 “Captain America”

As a lover of comic books, and comic book movies, I think it’s great to see all the different worlds and characters I grew up with come to life. The problem I have, is like a fat man on an airplane the overflow is spilling into my comfort zone and I’m not sure how much longer I can take it. I think 3 is enough of any famous series(except Spiderman, yuck), and the more nuanced long form graphic novels belong as stand alone films ie “Watchmen” or as television series, see “The Walking Dead”. This trend of “rebooting” franchises that aren’t even 5-10 years old is ridiculous and much like 3D I know audiences will tire of it. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing and we have approached that line and probably gone over it. Hollywood will never learn it’s lesson, so until “X-Men 20 in 6D reboot the reboot” happens I’m sure us comic book nerds will have plenty to be happy about and plenty of sensory overload. At that point I’m sure I’ll feel like Radioactive Man tied to the center of a nuclear facility as radioactive waste comes pouring out of the screen, “The goggles do nothing!”

When I began writing this post on Monday 3/28 the Batman “re-boot” wasn’t even a rumor, I must have jinxed it because today 3/30 WB announced that they will be re-booting the Batman franchise ONCE AGAIN after Nolan finishes his trilogy. Good God, make it stop.