50/50

How do you make cancer funny? How do you make any sort of terminal disease or disorder funny. I think that humor can be found in almost anything, and this film certainly tested that out. Inspired by a real story this film examines a persons struggles as they learn they have cancer and how they deal with it.

Adam plays things safe, he stays in perfect shape, he doesn't drive (to dangerous) he won't even cross the street until the little light tells him he can. So when he doesn't feel well, and goes to the doctor he is shocked to find out he has cancer. Over the course of the rest of the film it deals with all the stages of acceptance; anger, denial, etc. Of course though that is not enough, so a relationship dysfunction is added with the girl friend, and the parents. Road blocks are tossed in the way of the narrative to keep things interesting, and to make the story less about the cancer and more about Adam as a person, and not about the cancer inside him. He needs to change, because even before the cancer he wasn't really living.

I thought that the writing was strong, but much more so after the first 20 minutes. The beginning feels disjointed and hurried. Trying to get the characters introduced and developed and then introduce the cancer is difficult, it just felt like there were holes towards the beginning, and perhaps they didn't get past the cutting room floor. (I don't know what the deleted scenes were because Netflix DVD's wont let me watch that, super lame) At the end of the day though I do need to applaud the hard task of making cancer funny, and I laughed plenty in this, but more important to me, they didn't gloss over the devastating reality of what a situation like that can be like. I certainly welled up with some tears towards the end, the acting on all accounts seemed real, it felt authentic.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt puts in a strong performance as Adam, keeping the story grounded, and with his face reminding us that life is sad. When he looks sad, the whole world looks sad. Seth Rogen plays his cards much closer to the chest in this role. There is a lot less absurdity in his role, and a lot more reflection. I'm not going to go as far as to say that Seth Rogen is a good actor, I find him funny, but does he act well? Meh. This showed me that I think he could take on a more serious role and get away with it. Anna Kendrick as Katherine, the therapist is adorable. She seems to be type cast though as someone who is very smart, but naive. I don't know if that's good for her or bad. Other performances that made the film were Anjelica Huston, who only has a few scenes but makes her mark, and Bryce Dallas Howard who is so easy to hate in this movie.

It was shot in the same vein as a Judd Apatow production. The lighting and cinematography were strong, so it feels like a drama, there is no flat lighting, no dumbing down of the visuals to make it more palatable.

Overall it was a strong film, it had a few problems with making the writing feel complete, but a minor complaint in an otherwise very well made, and well told story. A good movie to watch if you're healthy, if you're sick, might hit a little to close to home. 8/10 stars.

Director: Jonathan Levine

Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, Anjelica Huston, Serge Houde, Philip Baker Hall

One Day

I had stopped writing for a while on this blog. I had lost interest combined with bad luck with watching movies. I had gotten a long stream of shitty movies that I didn't care about writing a review for. I watched "One Day" this morning, and it was just what I needed to make me feel like doing this again.

I enjoy being pleasantly surprised by a film, I also like it when a film absolutely destroys me, and that is exactly what this film did. Dexter and Emma are graduating from College, drunk and feeling in the mood they head back to Emma's flat. They don't sleep together but instead become friends. The film checks in with them on July 15th of each year as they grow closer together and then apart.

This is not a love story, this is a story about mistakes and the definitive nature of life. Things are not now, or will ever be perfect. Dexter is a mess, it's part of his personality, he puts his stock in the wrong things in life and can't bring himself to face up to the realities that surround him, bitter as they may be. Emma on the other hand is reserved, a slow burner, she has her thoughts and feelings all in a line, but she keeps them so down, so hidden it's hard to get a clear read on her. Only later in their relationship through the years do we find out just how much she has cared for him. She makes her mistakes, but the blame of their intersecting lives seems to fall squarely on Dexter's shoulders.

Anne Hathaway is wonderful in this, she has been America's new darling for the last few years, taking roles that are both mainstays in the industry, as well as gambles such as this. She makes you fall in love with her from the first moments. Her life story speaks to many people who don't have things handed to them, who end up in bad jobs, bad relationships, and feel stuck. Jim Sturgess plays a type of character I've seen him play before, and I don't mean that in a negative way. he was a good choice for the role, because it's writing that suits him.

The writing is what makes this story come alive, they are characters that are easy to like, easy to root for. Even as they mess up, you are on their side. Perhaps it's also that Emma and Dexter are common, you can see yourself in them, as well as in the lives they lead. This is a story that is not extraordinary, it's the story of two people who want to be with one another.

The Cinematography is beautiful, moments of quiet and stillness cut together with the fast pace of real life. This is very much a slice of life film. I loved and hated this film. I loved it for all the beautiful moments, all the little details of how two people speak to one another when they love each other. I loved it for it's honesty, which is also why I hated to watch it. It made me cry, and not silent tears, I was very upset. I embrace emotion of all kinds, even that of sadness, but this made me very upset, because it's something that happens everyday, and to everyone. This film is the beautiful sadness that is life. Other films recently have done this, and done it well; "The Tree of Life", "Melancholia" and "Happily Ever After" are good examples, but this film, for me, outdid them.

This was a fantastic film, it truly spoke to me. it made me sad, it made me angry, in the wrong hands could certainly make someone very depressed. I would recommend this film to anyone who doesn't mind being challenged, who doesn't want to watch the next Michael Bay movie. This is what I want to see more of in American Cinema. 8/10 stars.

Starring: Anne Hathaway, Jim Sturgess, Ken Stott, Patricia Clarkson, Rafe Spall

Director: Lone Scherfig

Rabbit Hole

I think that Nicole Kidman has fallen into a strange rabbit hole. One where she is only able to play frigid, at times bitchy women who have a problem in one way or another and make life hell for everyone around them. That's not to say I don't like her or respect her, I just hate all of her characters.

Becca and Howie lost their son in a car accident a few months ago. They are drifting apart more and more everyday as they find their own outlets to deal with the pain and guilt. What works for one doesn't for the other. They start to keep secrets from one another, they aren't trusting each other as they should.

Becca is played by Nicole Kidman, and does a very good job with the role, so much so that she was nominated for an Oscar because of it. I will say now though that it was a pointless nomination, she brought nothing more to this role than she would have for anything else. It's not that I wasn't impressed, or that she did a bad job, it was merely what I expected. Howie is played by Aaron Eckhart who I thought did a much better job with his role. His role required more of the spectrum, instead of just sad we also see in him happiness, desperation, anger, confusion. His role was much better written than Kidman's and it's a shame no one recognized that.

Miles Teller plays the teenager Jason who is responsible for the death of Becca and Howie's son. His story was interesting, but they only scratch the surface, he's working on a comic book that is helping him deal with the guilt of the death on his hands which is the name sake of the film. His role was quiet and reserved, with so much emotion brimming under the surface, which is how the role should have been played, he as well as Eckhart were not given enough credit for their performances in this film.

In the relationship between Howie than for Becca I felt more for him, and it goes beyond the acting, the role that Kidman was given is a role that I'm sure a lot of people hope to land in their career but is in itself a fluffed up melodramatic role.

I thought it was shot very well, they relied on a lot of close ups, and intimate lighting choices to convey the isolation that they are both feeling. Towards one another, towards family and friends. They are alone in this cage, and their partner isn't making the stay any less difficult. I respected that they kept the story on track, there aren't any explosive scenes, or scenes that break the characters ultimate arc, they are always working towards an end.

As a whole the film is merely a strip of time in their relationship, in so many films they try and work in it all, they meet, fall in love, have a kid....have trouble, and so on. In this we only see a small few week period where they are at their worst, when their paths are veering away from one another, and are possibly to weak to rejoin. The script itself isn't original, or even interesting enough to break it apart from the pack of films about this very subject. It was the actors, notably Eckhart who made the film stand out. Without the Oscar nods this film could have easily gone unnoticed and faded away as a little indie they worked on that is a good vehicle to further others careers.

Directed by John Cameron Mitchell I'm a little surprised and happy with the lack of sexuality in the story. His films to me drip with sexual undertones and overtones, not to say they aren't good. If you go to far into that direction, or any other theme you risk becoming a one note wonder. He is very talented and I wouldn't want to see him fade away because he keeps remaking the same movie over and over again.

Overall it was a good film, I cant say that I would recommend it. It didn't stand out enough for me to tell people to go out of their way to see it. If you strip it down it is a very basic story, and stays safe. 6.5/10 stars.

Director: John Cameron Mitchell

Starring: Aaron Eckhart, Nicole Kidman, Dianne Wiest, Tammy Blanchard, Miles Teller

A Film Unfinished

One of the many strange things that the Nazis were fascinated by and put lots of money into was their film industry. They burned through millions of feet of film capturing every aspect of their Third Reich that they could, to preserve their "Feats" forever in images.

This documentary is an interesting find, discovered in an underground bunker filled with old Nazi propaganda films was a can of four reels of film, no other copies of it amongst all the other reels of known films. There were no credits at the start or the end, nothing written on the can other than "The Ghetto." When viewed it shows an amazing contrast in the propaganda that the Nazis were creating, and the reality they so viciously wanted proof of.

On one hand they show "rich" Jews walking around in the Warsaw ghetto past the poor, and malnourished, but interestingly enough there are multiple takes of these occurrences. They were staged, and rather well because at first glance they appear to just be a cameraman catching a deplorable show of indifference. On the flip side to showing how well the Jews were being treated in the ghetto was footage of all the atrocities that were occurring. In one hand they wanted to show people a lie, that the Jews were happy in the ghetto and flourishing, and then on the same reel showing what was really happening, because they loved it, they found great pleasure in capturing these images. Himmler kept a photo album on his desk filled with photos from the ghettos that showed how people were slowly starving to death, rotting on the street, etc. He liked to show it to people who would come into his office, he took great pride in the things that he and the Nazis were doing.

The documentary shows this long lost footage with a small amount of narration explaining what was happening at the time. There are excerpts that are read from peoples secret diaries who lived in the ghetto, who all were sent to the camps to die. Hundreds of different peoples accounts of what the reality of the situation was. The footage is also shown to people who were there and lived through it, we see their reactions and hear their stories through the footage. They also were able to track down one of the cameramen who worked on the film, and were able to get pieces of information out of him about what he had been doing there, and who had commissioned the film.

It's on the lighter side of holocaust films, and by that by no means do I mean there is any levity to it, it's just the images are tamer than those of other holocaust documentaries I've seen. That does not mean that there aren't terrible things shown in this. As a film by itself it understood what it could and could not accomplish in an hour and a half, so the narrative sticks to what we can see in the old footage, and not try and fit the whole awful occurrence into a small amount of time. It was quiet in its depiction, and respectful, it didn't over dramatize things, or play them down, they let those who had died, and lived though it tell their stories of what the Warsaw ghetto was actually like.

It was beautifully sad, I got chills several times. It was a well made and modest documentary, I can't say I enjoyed it, I don't think anyone could. I would recommend it as a introductory film when learning about the Warsaw ghetto before jumping fully in. It's a good primer, but there is so much more to know from what happened there. 8/10 stars.

Director: Yael Hersonski

Monsters

I am so happy when I discover a movie like this one. On a night that I could have watched just about anything, it didn't really matter, I took a gamble and picked a movie on Netflix Instant that honestly didn't have the best sounding description, or for that matter a great picture to represent it. This is the perfect example of a movie understating itself to a fault, and then blowing me out of the park.

Six years ago NASA had a probe returning to earth that had been looking for signs of life within our solar system. It crash landed in Mexico near the border to the U.S. The probe brought back with it something alive. Now the area along the border has become the infected zone, it is off limits and the U.S. doesn't seem to be helping out the Mexicans very much. This is where the story starts, Andrew is a photographer down in Mexico taking photos for a publication. He takes a call from his agent, he needs to go get the Boss' daughter who is down there, injured, and he has to bring her home. A fairly basic story, man and woman traveling together, trying to get home.

How this film got no press is beyond me. Its like a much cheaper version of "Cloverfield" with out the shaky camera that was making so many people sick. The cameras they shot on were decent enough prosumer cameras. Not the shitty camcorders they sell to families, not quite professional grade. But what they do with it is very impressive. As I watched I was time and again taken aback by the impressive Cinematography. Even more so when I found out that the crew consisted of two people. TWO! One guy on camera, the other...I'm guessing running sound..?

The effects as well were amazing knowing how little they made this on, 800,000, and only making back a little over a quarter of that. It's a shame that this wasn't picked up by a larger company for distribution. So I will try and spread the word for them now.

It's gritty, its surprisingly poignant. It takes a lot of risks by not throwing action in all over the place, even more so by playing down any sort of sex angle they could have. There was almost no script from what I've read, they let their only two actors just sort of go...and almost everyone else in the movie was just people who happened to be around at the time that were either unaware they were being in a film, or were added in, and just told to go. My assumption would be that this sort of tactic would backfire, but it doesn't. It works so well.

These filmmakers understand so much that some Hollywood mainstays don't. I know it sounds like I'm not really critiquing the movie, but I cant really put my finger on anything that was wrong with it. It was a very well made indie feature that more people should see.

I wish I could make this review longer, perhaps its because I haven't written anything on here in a while, and I'm just out of practice, or maybe its just that this movie really did it for me. I have nothing more to add other than rent it. If you have Netflix, then you can watch it on Instant. I'll say this much, I intend to buy it. 9/10 stars.

Director: Gareth Edwards

Starring: Whitney Able, Scoot McNairy

The above poster is not the one they used on Netflix, but it should be.

TRON: Legacy

When at the theatre to see "Black Swan" I was waiting for the person I was seeing it with to show up. As I waited I noticed a table set up with a few people sitting behind it, just giving away tickets to TRON. As I am a fan of free stuff I couldn't pass it up. (especially since a single ticket at that theatre is $12.50, fuck that!)

Having never seen TRON I didn't really know what to expect from this sequel. I knew there were motorcycles in it, that The Simpsons and Family Guy had both made fun of it, and that it was all just special effects.

Kevin Flynn was a computer programmer twenty years ago, and a video game maker. He disappeared right on the verge of a break through, something big enough to change everything about our world and solve its problems. His son (Sam) now an orphan is left to watch the company his father started become everything he was against. After a page comes his way from a number long disconnected he looks into it. That's when he accidentally transports himself into the world of TRON.

There's not much to say for the story, its basic, easy to follow, and leaves the narrative open to have tons of action and special effects battles to keep everyone entertained. That though was part of my problem with it, we get into this virtual world much to quickly. The story of Sam being an orphan and fighting the system was interesting, enough to keep the movie afloat with just that. But they rush it so then they can get into the "bread and butter" of what people came to the theatre to see.

When seeing a coming attraction for this my interest was piqued. Not so much in the story, I could care less, or the action, how much different could it be? No, I was interested in the lighting. Their suits although mostly dark latex or leather is contrasted by the lines of literal light they have going over them, they are lighting themselves. In a world that has no sun that makes their suits vitally important. When alone in a room its darker than if there are fifty people, interesting, and fun to play with. Sadly they don't push it hard enough, they don't use it to its full potential. In a world that is an ideal virtual world it doesn't have the room to be gritty, everything is slick and even. Which itself was really cool, every surface is polished and clean.

The acting is incidental to the story, it doesn't really matter, and Kevin Flynn, Jeff Bridges playing the character he did in the original is just having fun with the role. After winning an Oscar, and playing the U.S. Marshal in the up coming and for me very highly anticipated Coen brothers film "True Grit", I say let him have a little fun. Sam, played by Garrett Hedlund is adequate, he doesn't have to do much but be good looking, look confused most of the time, and then kick a little ass, but mostly watch other people do it. For me the real star of the movie was Olivia Wilde, for no other reason than she is gorgeous, and looks so in this movie. They must have had to pour her into her costumes. She also kicks a lot of ass, she does more fighting than anyone else in the movie, and was good at.

The effects at parts were pretty awesome, and seeing it in 3D, the second film I've seen in 3D in the last twenty years (The other being Alice in Wonderland) was interesting. I am not a fan of 3D for the most part, for to many reasons to start listing in this entry. But the 3D fit this well, and for the most part didn't mess with my eyes to much other than a few shots that were strange to have in 3D. Another problem I had with the effects was that there is a character called CLU, he is a computer version of Bridges, but hasn't aged at all since his creation. So he is basically a complete computer creation (funny right) since Bridges is to old for the role now. But his skin looked waxy, his lips didn't seem to move right, it was just generally a bother to watch him since I could tell so much that he was fake, surrounded by real actors.

The landscape of the virtual world was also problematic, instead of letting us see it for as it was, they just hid it behind mist. Mountains, oceans, everything but the city was obscured by this mist, and since there's no sun, and the light never changes, neither does that. Perhaps I'm putting to much expectations on a movie that's merely meant to be a spectacle, and a movie I didn't really care if I saw anyway. I can say that I was entertained for the most part, so I guess it worked and did the job it set out to do.

My few complaints aside I was amused while watching it. This was not meant to be much, cringing at the dialogue and throwing my hands into the air when the plot didn't make sense is merely a side effect of expecting it to be as good as other movies I've seen, its not going to be. Turn your brain off, stare at the pretty lights and girls and just enjoy it for what it is. 6/10 stars.

Director: Joseph Kosinski

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde

P.S. Either have TRON be a main character, or at least important, or don't have him at all. He was a tacked on character that didn't make sense. With a story arc that was as bad and short as I've seen in some time.

Talhotblond

This will make you think twice about who you talk to online, maybe even make you think three or four times about it. We've all seen "To Catch a Predator" this is.... not that, the damage done here goes so much deeper.

I don't want to give away to much about this documentary, but I'll do my best to explain what it is. A man named Thomas Montgomery is bored with his life, his middle aged wife and two daughters, he works at a factory making guns. There is not much exciting about his life, that is until he meets a girl in a chat room, shes 18 and looking for an escape from the little town she lives in, in West Virginia, her screen name, Talhotblond, who says her name is Jessi. Thomas becomes Tommy, a fellow 18 year old, who's a sniper in the Marines, and they fall in love. When Montogomery's wife finds out she sends a letter to Jessi telling her the truth.

An online fight ensues, but they end up talking again. Jessi now is talking to a coworkers of Thomas' a younger man in his early twenties. She is stirring up a jealousy and hatred in Thomas. He ends up killing this younger man, like a sniper would, and a man hunt begins as more secrets are revealed and the stakes become clear.

This is the real story of three people who had a love triangle with the two men never actually meeting the girl. They became so enthralled with their own online story they killed for it. It is a very well made documentary, it looks good, and keeps up a nice pace. They got access to people involved with this story that I wouldn't have thought they would have been able to pull off.

Its a scary thought that there are so many people out there who do this sort of thing, they build up these fantasies in their minds that they think it's real. Thomas actually thought that if he wished hard enough he could reenter youth, become 19 again, even have a bigger penis. Disturbing in so many ways, and so sad. What makes a person so delusional that they start to believe that sort of thing? Because of two peoples actions, someone ended up dead, lives in two different families were ruined, and for nothing, for absolutely nothing. They never met each other, how could they become this enraged, this homicidal from a chat room, from reading some misspelled writing scrawled in an IM window. Even taking into account this went on for months it still doesn't explain it all.

They do run into a few problems in how they have to tell the story, they need to have the conversations from online for us to see, there's no audio, just at times words coming up on the screen telling us what they were saying to one another. It was what they had to do, and they couldn't help it, but it still bothered me after a little while.

An interesting and sad watch. I wish that there weren't people out there like this, to many people that seem normal have this deep rooted psychosis, and its scary to me. 8/10 stars.

Director: Barbara Schroeder