Accidents Happen (2009)

It tries to be funny, but it really isn't. Some tragedy mixed with 80s sitcom level humour. No one who watched this with me thought this was remotely enjoyable.

Gnomeo and Juliet (2011)

I had to try and keep my eyes open for this predictable and not very funny animation. They started with a title and built a film around it (a la Snakes on a Plane).

IMDB

Dreaming of Julia (2003)

This is not an especially compelling account of the revolution in Cuba. It's told through the eyes of a boy from a middle to high class family who watches the adult scandals pre-revolution and the ultimate disintegration of his family during and after the revolution. I would be more sympathetic if it weren't so boring! The characters try too hard to be colourful and the dialogue is flat.

Beware! It also goes by the name Cuba Libre.

IMDB

American Flyers (1985)

Pure cheddar! And the American patriotism drips off of it like butter on corn. Pretty hilarious to watch. Two brothers attempt a gruelling cycling race in Colorado, one of them hiding a bad illness. They've both got sexy girlfriends and there are 2 villains - a former racing partner and the Russian competitor - scary!

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Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008)

I hate to use this word, but this was boring. The music was ok, but the characters were uninteresting and the plot goes no where fast.

Two high school students discover what is actually important in a relationship (not physical lust and comfort). The point of the film has merit, it just doesn't deliver very well.

Official Site | IMDB

A Broken Life (2008)

This is a poorly written drama about a guy planning to kill himself and the full day leading up to it. When placed next to a film like A Single Man this one is terrible. It's just way too melodramatic and reeks of amateur film.

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Angels & Demons (2009)

This is Dan Brown, Ron Howard and Tom Hank's follow up story to the controversial title The Da Vinci Code that takes the viewer into another mystery at the heart of the Vatican. Full of outrageous clues and an insane plot, the film is a barrage of incoherent information, gruesome murders and fast camera movements. It's hard to know how the actors kept a straight face during the shoot.

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The Invention of Lying (2009)

A little moral fable from Ricky Gervais falls flat on its lying face. In order to show the value of telling the truth and also the value of some discretionary truth hiding, The Invention of Lying creates a world where no one lies (and no one even has even an idea of God and there is no such thing as fiction).

Gervais plays a screenwriter for the only kind of movie there is - historical spoken word documentaries. Because of everyone's brutal honesty, he knows exactly where he fits in society - at the bottom. Something snaps in his brain and he is not able to make stuff up - easily becoming wealthy and famous.

It is hard to know what the film wanted to be more - a moral tale or a comedy. Neither works. I did laugh though. Twice. Not a funny film. There is the great idea that you can lie to yourself without actually knowing it. But the ideas that religion is completely made up, that fiction can not exhibit truth, that telling the truth can only be expressed brutally and selfishly, etc. are simply very inaccurate premises. The idea that only liars can have discernment is also deeply flawed.

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Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922)

This is the first silent film that I am reviewing on this blog. They have a hard time competing with speaking films I guess. As I saw Herzog's remake of this classic Nosferatu, I thought it would be cool to see how it built on this one. The stories are virtually identical - some divergence at the end.

The film is full of clues as the real estate agent travels to visit Count Orlok, a vampire and as he returns to find his town overcome by the plague.

A note if you do watch this, check out the various audio tracks at the beginning of the show. I found watching it in double speed helped with the super slow pacing and phrase panels.

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Last Days (2005)

Gus Van Sant's take on the last couple days of grunge icon Kurt Cobain, except that it's all made up and the lead character is some Blake guy.

Blake walks around a semi-abandoned estate that is very rundown. A few junkie friends lurk around the mansion. That's pretty much the movie.

This could be one of the most boring films I have ever watched. No character depth. Virtually no dialogue (except for when some Mormons come to the house - a highlight). No story arc. Nothing. We don't even get to see Blake kill himself.

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Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)

This film is vaguely similar to Hitchcock's 1941 comedy of the same name. Both are about a married couple with secrets who toy with the idea of divorce. This one is more violent.

7 or 8 years after marrying one another and all the while maintaining secrecy about their jobs as assassins, they discover the other is working for a rival firm. The firms pit the two against each other and lots of murderous techniques are employed. The stars look as sexy as they can while they "try" to kill each other.

What is disappointing is the fact that there is really only a faint and obvious message: honesty is good in marriage. Senseless violence is glorified. One-liners abound.

Official Site | IMDB

Eye of the Beholder (1999)

This is not a great movie. A secret service agent becomes obsessed with a serial killing woman while he's haunted by his missing daughter. The film moves very slowly and the situational drama is laden with dry sap. The writer probably had a message, but it's too contrived to bother with.

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The Aristocrats (2005)

This film takes forever to get where it wants to go. Or, it arrives in the first 10 minutes and you're left lingering for another hour.

This is a documentary about the dirtiest joke of all time, or so it is heralded by the filmmakers. We then get 100 versions of the joke told to us by famous comedians, some history, and some explanations about the joke.

While I appreciated the explanation of the mechanics of joke telling, I didn't actually laugh a lot during the film. The joke in all of its incarnations is very, very filthy. The film is well edited, but it should have been a short-subject doc.

Truth: Sometimes a joke is funnier to the teller than the hearers because of the reaction he can draw from the crowd.

Official Site | IMDB

Southland Tales (2007)

Big waste of energy. I understand what writer director Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko) is trying to do with this, but it's like a vomit fest that won't end.

The film is a convoluted mess of B-actors, cheesy lines, mediocre special effects, and lines from the Book of Revelation. The end of the world is nigh and what is important is promoting a porn star's new line of products - an allegory for how the world is more keen on entertainment than the really important events that are happening around us.

The plot takes us into a sci-fi world of televisions, elections, and guns in modern day Los Angeles. We are given an introduction that essentially says Big Brother is watching, something corrupt is going on, and the apocalypse is on. It's an interesting premise, but anyone who wants to spend hours dissecting the mess is crazy - there are several much better films on the subject that are worth much more consideration.

Truth: Our minds are being fed crap and are therefore too full and busy to consider reality.

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The Invasion (2007)

It seems that starting with a classic story, big time actors, and a big budget doesn't necessarily equate a good movie. By trying too hard to earn good ticket sales, the film is hollow; this remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a flop.

An alien virus takes hold in the world, but we get the inside scoop on the center of the universe, Washington D.C. The virus only manifests itself after the carrier sleeps. The infected then show no emotion and join the army of zombies trying to infect the masses by vomiting in their drinks (or faces). The story rides on a series of coincidences and illogical sequences with a perky Nicole Kidman trying too hard to show emotional restraint.

There is a hint of allegory in regards to people being asleep to the realities and horrors of the world because of government control, but it fades pretty quickly behind story repeats that we've seen before in War of the Worlds and 28 Days Later among a multitude of other movies.

Truth: Human nature is to be cruel and at the same time resist cruelty; indifference should not reign.

Official Site | IMDB

License to Wed (2007)

Watching this is one is like watching a series of Saturday Night Live skits blended with Spy Kids with a sharp turn towards sentimentality at the end. Not a great piece of work.

I laughed. There were some funny lines. I also sat straight faced for most of the escapades that seemed to be geared towards 15-year-olds despite much of the subject matter being geared towards adults. Knocked Up achieved far more relevance.

The cast has four actors from The Office (Jim, Kelly, Angela, and Kevin - all of them in Office character) plus a typical Robin Williams and the lovely non-actress Mandy Moore. Seems like a recipe that a lot of recent comedies are trying to follow rather than being ingenious.

The worst part of the film involved the two main characters who have gone through a hellish episodic pre-marital course explaining the virtues they have learned in the course. We don't see a transformation as much as we get a lecture on what tools are necessary to keep a marriage healthy. In essence, don't worry about trying to figure anything out in this film, it's handed to you on a silver platter.

Official Site | IMDB

Uncommon Valor (1983)

I guess I had high hopes for a film starring Gene Hackman (Mississippi Burning and The Royal Tenenbaums). And to be fair, he isn't that bad.

The bad involves a story laden with poor acting (thanks to a young Patrick Swayze mostly) and an A-Team script (believe me! it even has a Mr. T type character) and a plot that is extremely linear leaving little room for character development beyond "I'm part of a team again" for Vietnam vets. What I do find quite humourous was the use of one of the characters played by Randall 'Tex' Cobb in the Coen bros. film Raising Arizona - he carries a hand grenade on his body and dies from a grenade blast in both films.

It's really too bad. I choked up in the first five minutes as Hackman is shown watching American POW soldiers on TV return from Vietnam years after the war while his son is still missing in action (MIA). The story steadily loses momentum following this as this grieving father puts together an elite team of his son's friends (ranging from a hospital administrator to a BMX pro) who were in Vietnam to go back and find a couple MIAs in Laos.

The makers of the film are trying too hard. They want us to feel sorry for the vets so they share some trauma. They want us to believe it's possible for civilians to go and attack a POW camp and rescue prisoners so they assemble ridiculous facts like having helicopters available to steal just kms away from the camp in Laos and a millionaire father of an MIA to finance the mission. It's too Magnum P.I.ish (it even has a black helicopter pilot!).

Oh, and the Asians in the film are about as developed as a 2 month old fetus.

IMDB

Being Julia (2004)

A thorough disappointment. Considering how many different people funded this project, it is clear that no one wanted to get behind it 100% - too risky.

The problem with this film is that it is really boring. It tries too hard to be funny and charming. Ultimately, we could care less about the characters because they don't care about themselves or each other. This is Annette Bening's virtuoso film and she was not a sympathetic character, so watching her giggle throughout the movie gets quite tiresome.

The overarching theme they try to communicate is identity. Bening plays Julia, a successful and aging stage actress in who performs her life as though she is on stage. Her life fizzles of course and we get to watch her regain consciousness. There's nothing like watching a rich person flop around like a dying fish.

A couple performances were OK, but not worth watching the movie for.

Official Site | IMDB

Millions (2004)

What a disappointment. I didn't think Danny Boyle could make a boring film, but now I'll be more wary.

The trailer of this film really sold me: cute British motherless boy discovers heaps of money and has dilemma on what to do with it while being visited by saints. Hmmm? Original. I wonder what the message will be. The problem is that the movie left me with the exact same sentiments and questions.

The acting in the film seemed geared towards children, though some elements in the film don't led itself towards children (though I don't recall any bad language). The entire film lends itself towards the unreal - especially the final scene set in Africa (yikes! heavy, well groomed Africans in a desert village just receiving a well? Casting and costuming, you're fired.).

Boyle has a distinct style full of timelapse photography and quick camera work, and while it's pretty cool photography, it really doesn't work in this film. The whole time all these cool effects are flashing around, you're still left wondering when the real purpose of the film will reveal itself.

The faint efforts to show how materialistic we are don't ring very well. Of course we know we are selfish westerners, what does this movie have to say that is new or convicting on the subject. The use of quirky saints was also quite weak as was it's notion of the miraculous. Sorry kids, watch something a little more realistic or a little more fantastic if you're looking of inspiration and conviction.

Official Site | IMDB

Music and Lyrics (2007)

I did not go into this film expecting very much. Any film that tries to convince me that 50-year-old men belong naturally with 30-year-old women is pushing its luck.

Again, we have Hugh Grant in character as Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore as Drew Barrymore. The two should really pursue films that allow them to emote more than their stereotypical egos (like About a Boy and Riding in Cars with Boys respectively. So we get to watch them fall in love under exotic circumstances: writing a song for a teen pop icon chick.

This film tries so badly to make a mockery of everything "pop" that it ends up becoming farce - an odd match for a romantic comedy, though it was done with moderate success in The Wedding Singer, but that one had a real comedian in it. Sure, this one made me laugh, but it made me groan too. The opening 80's music video, butt shakes and continuous references to 80's one-hit-wonders were the main source of these.

I can't tell if they purposefully chose a bad actress to play the Britney-Lindsay-Christina character or if they wanted her to seem as blunt as a CD-case. Barrymore's cute-neurotic-creative-naïve girl given about as much depth as the 80's love songs had. I guess the purpose of the film wasn't to generate pathos as no-one I know can identify with a has-been star nor a would-be prodigious writer. I wish romantic comedies would stick to normal people.

Musically, there was some promise, though I'm not a pop-rock fan. The ballad that the film centred on, "Way Back into Love," was stuck in my head until I listened to something else on my iPod later that night.

Official Site | IMDB