Inception (Review/Essay)

Warning: This post contains spoilers for multiple movies.

I've put off writing this review because I think this movie is causing a lot of knee-jerk reactions. Whether from Nolan disciples who have been slavering for it for a year and a half loving every second, or people on the other side of the aisle who either genuinely hate the director or are just being anti-populist. Personally, when the movie was announced, my reaction was "wow, what a cast, but I'm not all that fussed." Then the trailer came out and my reaction was "wow, what a cast, but I'm not all that fussed." Then I saw the movie and my reaction was "wow, what a cast, but I'm not all that fussed." After letting it stew and thinking about it for a few days, that opinion hasn't changed. I'm not rushing out to see it again, nor will I, nor am I picketing the movie theater because I hate it so much. I have good things to say about the movie, and negative things, and I present them here.

Summer Movies (Essay) (Discussion)

On the cusp of endless cycles of boogie-boarding shorts and bonfires, the movie industry's offerings this summer look to provide on the same level as previous years, with 3D and hopefully a new interest in catching quality up with quantity as the exceptions.

Familiar faces represent the season’s offerings for comedy fans. Writer/director Nicholas Stoller must have liked he and Jason Segel’s enormously sub-par 2008 film Forgetting Sarah Marshall so much that it deserved a spin-off. Get Him to the Greek stars Jonah Hill as a hopeful record label intern assigned to make sure rock god Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) arrives on time to a show at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles.

Their debauchery-laden journey must survive a series of hiccups before coming to a successful close, no doubt providing the flavor of comedy popularized by Judd Apatow (who produced the film) and his merry band of offspring. The film is due out June 4.

Check out msureporter.com for summer movie picks!

How It Should Have Happened

The MunkeeMovies team, unhappy with the Academy's decisions this year, has formulated their own list of nominees and winners.

Nate's picks will appear on the left, Jake's on the right. When they match, the film is only listed once. Winners in bold.

Best Animated Feature

Coraline (J)

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Ponyo (N)

Mary and Max | The Princess and the Frog

The Secret of Kells | Up

V-Day Movies (Essay)

Here is a list of the best movies for V-Day. ...So if you missed it last Sunday, this could get you out of a jam.

In no specific order...

1. Love Actually (2003): Although set during Christmas fever, this film provides a handful of love snapshots that pack an emotional punch heavy enough to have you nuzzling closer to your significant other, mustering up the courage to spill your heart out in front of your crush, or both!

2. Lars and the Real Girl (2007): A good V-Day movie with Ryan Gosling that isn't The Notebook? Yes. This film is touching and genuine, and will make you jealous of a mannequin.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (Review)

Some movies need but an open mind and open arms to achieve something memorable. While The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a flighty and, at times, lost example of one, it is indeed one of those films.

Crafted by co-writer/director Terry Gilliam, whose noticeably French-influenced style of filmmaking makes him particularly interesting to keep track of, Parnassus will keep you as confused and insecure as its subject matter: a traveling sideshow headed by the immortal Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer).

The only thing consistent about the film is its inconsistency, caused perhaps by the death of its lead (Heath Ledger, as the sideshow's newcomer, Tony) mid-shoot, which resulted in a complete retooling and the casting of Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell as Tony's other selves; but to shrug off what becomes the film's critical feature—an askew universe that ties both the characters and viewers into knots—as a mere happenstance would be a nearsighted and lacking departure.

When In Rome (Review)

Recipe for When in Rome: Take 1 bland, expressionless leading lady, 1 male counterpart so average it hurts, a handful of trite, obnoxious supporting characters, mix them all together in a bowl of exploitative, sexist, depressing, repressing and suppressing ideology, and send it to hell to bake for 91 minutes. Congratulations director Mark Steven Johnson, it came out perfectly!

More disgusting and disturbing a film than any torture-porn out there, When in Rome is a vile retreat into gender stereotypes and male worship, a film that stitches together every one-dimensional character, every flat, overplayed joke, and every pig-headed idea of love that the movies have ever provided us into something truly terrible.

Beth (Kristen Bell) is a working girl who just can't seem to get love right. In Rome for her sister's wedding, Beth steals a variety of coins from a magical fountain in spite of romance and happy-endings, unknowingly cursing those whose coins were picked to fall in love with her.

Legion (Review)

Film is a reliable place to look when seeking out our own weaknesses. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951, not 2008) assures us it’s our own trigger-happy nature that will do us in. WALL-E has the human race complacent and consuming, our globe rendered one giant dust bowl. Al Gore is practically banking on the ice caps melting.

Humankind loves to predict our own end. And, whether it's by nuclear annihilation, global climate change or good old-fashioned sinning, we love it the most when it's our own fault.

The Lovely Bones (Review)

The Lovely Bones is not a movie; at least not in the sense you and I think of one. It has no coherence, no idea of what it's doing, what its purpose is. It barely has a plot. I'm still not sure if it has any scenes, whatsoever.

What The Lovely Bones does offer, however, is a tangled marsh of unfocused emotion, unclear characters and uninspired dreamscapes, all of which sum up to make a moving picture, yes, but a movie? No.

Avatar (Review)

NOTE: Like most things I write, I'm not very happy with this; but, the ideas I'm presenting, I believe, have some substance to them. I'd love to go off specifically about each one, but, alas, there are not enough hours in the day. And, although I am basically reviewing the film, this piece is more of a string of thoughts about the film in which I'm not necessarily judging it per se. with that in mind, read on.

Watching James Cameron's Avatar, one starts to understand how its main character, Jake Sully, must feel when splitting himself in two. Just as Mr. Cameron has his protagonist jacking into a new world, a place he could never experience to the fullest without this link, he has audiences plugging into their own separate reality: a new type of cinematic experience.

A film made strictly as a catalyst for the 3D movement, Avatar was destined to be either the messiah of a new wave or the biggest Nelson-style “haha” to the technophiles of the film industry of all time. Now nearly a month after its release, Cameron's Avatar has grossed more than $1.3 billlion worldwide, making it the second highest grossing film of all time. Sorry Nelson.

Best of the Decade (Jake) (cont.) (Essay)

3. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004): Contrary to what history books might tell you, some of the greatest films are also the most modest. Having only a brilliantly written screenplay by the highly celebrated Charlie Kaufman and the direction of Frenchman Michel Gondry to its name, Eternal Sunshine looked to change our minds about hurt feelings and serendipitous (or defeatist?) lovers and managed to become one of the best films of the decade. Its topsy-turvy, discombobulated approach made the film hard to follow through its first run; like one of those patterned images that relates a 3D object in time, if you tried too hard to see this film, you never could. The story of a man, Joel Barish, portrayed marvelously by the still untapped Jim Carrey, who decides to erase all of his memories of his ex-lover, Eternal Sunshine is a showcase of masterful editing, as the film weaves in and out of Joel's past, memories being unburied and erased with Joel fighting it all the while. Jon Brion's original score was sullen and deep, accenting the film's roller-coaster of emotions perfectly when garnished with tracks from The Polyphonic Spree. Eternal Sunshine was not an epic by all means, nor did it have epic success at the box office, but almost six years later it remains to be an unforgettable example of great film. Why this film was important: Unique in its style and approach, this film is one of the greatest portrayals of love and hurt exhibited in movie history.