The Cinema Category Archive

Welcome to the Cinema archives. The posts are listed in chronological order. Click the post title to read more.

December 16th, 2010

Double-Dose of Afflecks

Affleck Double Feature last night.  Not sure why Ben is the “famous” one.

I’m Not Here — I was incredibly dissapointed when Casey announced that this film was not actually a documentary before I had been able to see it.  In my mind, I thought it had already ruined it.  Now that I’ve seen it, I think it made it better.  The most interesting parts of this movie were not found in the voyeuristic self-destruction of a person (as it would have been if I believed it were real) but instead in the act of the spotlight being turned on the media and the consumers of “celebrity culture.”  The character of Joaquin Phoenix seems equally interesting as it’s impossible to try and figure out where he and his character overlap.  Is P Diddy real?  If not, give him an oscar because this is the best acting the “rapper” has ever done.  Other things worth noting: Ben Stiller being actually funny (briefly) and the way that people standing near Phoenix can’t help but get into his musical performances.  9/10


The Town — I should have just re-watched Heat.  I do think that Ben Affleck is a better director than I want him to be — but seriously, where did he find this terrible script?  It lost 6 of my 10 points in the last 5 minutes of the film.  Honestly one of the worst endings I’ve ever experienced.  Watch the movie until it starts to get corny and then turn it off before you smash your TV.  4/10

July 16th, 2010

Sarcastigate at the Cinema: Inception.

Inception is great.  It will make a billion dollars.  Chris Nolan is going to have an even blanker check for the next film that he writes/directs and it showcases that he can, in fact, still write.  I enjoyed it greatly and will watch it again when it comes out on BluRay.  There are some major problems with it (or at least things that irritated me), though.

- It’s dumbed down.  Following in the footsteps of other big-dollar, mainstream, intellectual, recursive thrillers, Nolan takes some short cuts.  I watched the film once, late at night, and it all made painfully perfect sense.   The characters spend a lot of time explaining things to each other that would be criminally obvious for anyone in their shoes.  The explanation is clearly exclusively for the audiences benefit.  Ellen Pages character serves as an extremely laughable outsider and an excuse to hold the audiences hand even tighter.  There may be better precedent for this but the 2004 film Primer serves as a better example in how to challenge the audience through recursion interference (see also Solaris, Following, and even portions of the Matrix series.)  Nolan didn’t have to take it to Primer extremes but he also didn’t have to rewrite this down to an elementary level.  As a result, I’m not sure it merits the chronic rewatching that other recursive thrillers have leveraged into cultural phenomenons.  But it will make a billion dollars.

- Skiing/shooting action scene.  Has this ever been done well?  Ever?  Did Nolan think he could pull it off?  As soon as I saw them near the skis I absolutely cringed.  The only thing saving this entire ”level” is that they didn’t have Ellen Page strap on a snowboard.  I thought for sure it was headed that way.  Ouch.  Truly awful.

-  The effects.  Some of them were incredible.  Some of them were downright cheesy, though.  CGI has come a long way since the Matrix but I still don’t think that this movie is going to age very well.  In 20 years it’s going to look like a cartoon.  I think it’s fine to be ambitious with your screenwriting but don’t assume you can build worlds from scratch.

- The heavy handedness of Leo’s familial faithfulness.  Come on… give me a break….   the only thing driving him was his love for his kids and his wife?  He’s really just a big softie that enjoys the game of experimenting in other peoples brains?  Buhgaw.

You want to know all the good about the movie?  Read another review.  They are all covering it pretty well and I agree that the good stuff in this movie is REALLY good.  The score is phenomenal (and Nolan didn’t allow the composer to see the movie before he scored it!!), the sound amazing.  The cinematography and the set design are astounding.  The fight scenes are (mostly) brilliant.   Leo is going to be up for many awards.  Did I mention that this movie will make a billion dollars?  It will.  You’ll love it.

My last prediction, though: Contrary to what so many critics are trumpeting this week… this will be nowhere near the best picture nominees come 2011.  It just doesn’t have the legs.

Rating: 8/10

Postscript: The lucky gal I was watching this movie with was dozing on and off throughout the movie.  It wasn’t because the movie was boring, it’s because it was LATE.   While I was watching the movie I was actually thinking about how unnerving it would be to half sleep through… to wake up and feel like you hadn’t really missed anything (or had you?)  I can’t imagine that experience.  I wonder if it was pleasant or terrifying?

December 12th, 2009

Sarcastiage at the Movies: It Might Get Loud

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Jack White > Jimmy Page > The Edge

Documentaries With Conflict > Those Without (which is why this one is an interesting failure.)

Also not sure why they chose The Edge — his style is without doubt different than the other two, but during the jam session he just looks lost.   Jack White astounds.

Rating: 5/10

December 1st, 2009

Sarcastigate at the Movies: Ballast

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This one has me conflicted.  It’s beautiful.  It’s stark.  It’s well acted by a cast of Alabama locals that basically improvised the script.  The hand-held cameras do an unbelievable job of masking how much work must have gone into every shot.  It’s sad.  It’s so sad that it hits me RIGHT THERE.

Add up all of those and you’ll get a movie that I’ll love.  A movie that I’ll rave about and tell you to watch.  A movie I’ll sit through again just because the Blu-Ray copy looks so DAMN good for an indie film.

And then I’ll tell you that I won’t recommend this movie to you.  That I found myself just a little too bored for too much of this film.  Curious of where it was going but finding myself uncaring about where it could have ended up.  I didn’t predict any endings.  I didn’t call out any characters as “changed” or “fixed” or “better.”  I just watched it.  And it ended.  And that was that.  I went about my day much like the characters must have.  And therein lies the problem: it was just too much like real life.  Sure, Ebert loved it.  Sure, critics raved about it.  Sure, it wasn’t at all about MY life…  but it was about real life and the way we all spend so much time finding ways to struggle.  And, in the end, it was so beautiful, and so sad, and so “life-like” that I just wanted to get back to life.  Take from that what you will.

Ballast, 2009

5/10 (but as close to a perfect 5/10 as you will ever find.)

August 10th, 2009

Sarcastigate at the Movies: Sugar

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Probably one of the best movies I have seen so far this year.  Yes, it’s about baseball.  No, that doesn’t make it any less beautiful, touching or genuine.  It’s shot really well by the pair that made Half Nelson.  It has a breakout performance from a former dominican baseball player that has never acted before.  It was a summer night well spent.

It even gets bonus points for making you think the emotional climax was going to be a montage with the Buckley cover of Hallelujah.  I laughed when it flipped it on me.

Rating: 9.5/10

May 12th, 2009

Sarcastigate at The Movies: The Girlfriend Experience

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Soderbergh > Soderbergh

Economy Allegory > Economy Apathy

Freedom Tickler > The Moldy Peaches

Grey > Blue

Rating: 9.2/10

May 5th, 2009

Sarcastigate At The Movies: Vicky Cristina Barcelona

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The grass over there > The grass right here.

The Direction (AMAZING.) > The Narration (AWFUL.)

Idealism > Materialism…. or is it?

Vickys’ > Cristinas’ (as a general rule.)

Javier Bardem >>>>>

Real Life < The Inherent Honesty of Every Character in This.

Rating: 8.9/10

April 23rd, 2009

With 100 Years of Practice I’d Still Be 100 Years Behind

March 16th, 2009

Sarcastigate at the Movies: Synecdoche, New York

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Charlie Kaufman is, without a doubt, one of the most creative and ambitious writers working in the world today.  Though this movie is ultimately a miserable failure, his ambition and gift still allow me to understand how it was elevated to numerous top-10 lists for 2008.

First, and most notably, the ambition of it all.  This movie did not reveal itself to me as much as a  movie as it did an experience akin to waterboarding — not in the tortuous sense but in the sensory.  I was completely sucked in, seduced by the developments of the characters and the incredible furtherance of metaphor.  The beauty in the character development may have only been eclipsed by the profound sadness and the pronounced misery that was in the screenplay.

The same unraveling that exists in the fictional Cadens’ work is exactly the cause for the movie to result in incredible failure.  Cadens theatrical work sprawls and expands and overflows and just grows to be too damn big to ever be possible.  Spectacular stories and relationships exist as disconnected (but never really so) from each other and from the “outside world.”  In the same way, Kaufman begins with an idea for a movie, then 2 movies, then 100 movies, and then every movie ever created that will ever be created.   In typical Kaufman fashion, the viewer is never quite sure where the film and the meta-film and reality truly overlap (and in my case, the continuation of the film into my Kaufman-edited dreams.)  The problem, however, is that this movie is finished.  It’s a complete representative of a work that will never and can, by definition, never be complete.  It’s not the happy medium between Cadens’ unfortunately enormous work and Adeles’ unfortunately small.   It’s failure.  It’s surrender.  It’s reality — or, at least, some trippy representation of the limitations of cinema.  (Or, at the very, very least — a trippy representation as Kaufmans failure as a director.)  And yes, I understand, that’s exactly what the literary allusion in the title refers to.  A piece representing a larger whole.  My head continues to hurt.

I’d love to be able to rewind the entire experience and allow Spike Jonze to more deftly steer this.  As a directorial debut it was just too much, too much, too much.

March 3rd, 2009

Apparently, People Don’t Steal As Much Porn in Utah

s640x480A study by a Harvard Business School professor shows that Utah outpaces the more conservative states — which all tend to purchase more Internet porn than other states.

Online porn subscription rates are higher in states that enacted conservative legislation banning same-sex marriage or civil unions and where surveys show support for conservative positions on religion, gender roles and sexuality, according to an analysis published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. [...]

Utah has the nation’s highest online porn subscription rate per thousand home broadband users, at 5.47, while the nearby states of Idaho and Montana showed the lowest rates of 1.98 and 1.92, respectively, according to the study.

Full Article at The Salt Lake Tribune (via KFB)

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