Posts Tagged ‘review’

With Christian Bale being selected to play John Conner in the new Terminator movie, I figured it was time to do a top ten list for this rising actor. For years, Bale has been on the fringe of fame and popularity, and it appears that he is finally breaking into the A-list. If you look back on his career, you’ll realize that Bale chooses his films very wisely for the most part (neither Harsh Times or Captain Corelli’s Mandolin were very good, though).

The movies are ranked on a combination of his performance, the size of his role and the quality of the film overall. Without further ado, here are the top ten movies of Christian Bale’s career:

1. American Psycho
   This satirical drama put Christian Bale on the map as a man obsessed with appearance and reputation, and with killing people in very brutal ways. While some people were put off by the not-quite-literal movie, no one can deny that Christian Bale turned in an Oscar-worthy performance.
2. Batman Begins
   The combination of Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale, along with a cast where every single major player had been nominated for an Oscar other than Katie Holmes, revived the Batman franchise and is arguably the best, if not at least one of the best, comic book adaptations ever. Between Nolan and Bale, the character of Bruce Wayne has never been more realistic or deep.
3. The Prestige
   It took me a second viewing to really appreciate this film, but The Prestige (directed by Batman Begins‘ Christopher Nolan) is a great character study set against a revenge/murder plot. Bale is terrific, and while it was not the kind of movie that would evoke awards, it shows his taste for smart, edgy films.
4. Rescue Dawn
   Few people have seen this war drama as of yet, but Bale is excellent as a real-life pilot who is captured in Vietnam and held in a prisoner’s camp for several years. Funny and powerful at the same time, Rescue Dawn is one of the best movies of 2007.
5. The Machinist
   The movie isn’t completely extraordinary, but the transformation Bale put himself through to become the tragic protagonist shows his dedication to his movies: he lost a record 63 pounds down to a startling 120 pounds. His performance is also quite memorable, too.
6. Newsies
   A lot of you may not realize that Bale is the lead actor in Newsies, the 1992 film about turn-of-the-century kids who sell newspapers. This was one of my favorite films as a kid, and is still a quality musical that stands the test of time.
7. I’m Not There
   Still out in theaters, I’m Not There tells the story of Bob Dylan in a very odd way. While Cate Blanchett overshadows for her portrayal of the artist, Bale, in a lesser role, is also quite good. At the very least, the movie is one of the most unique films ever made, and shows Bale’s capabilities in identifying as such.
8. 3:10 to Yuma
   A classic western made in 2007, 3:10 to Yuma has Bale up against Russell Crowe. While Crowe steals the show, Bale still is a solid edition and is one of the main reasons audiences were lured to theaters. The movie is pretty good, too.
9. Equilibrum
   One of the best action movies to never get a major theatrical release, Bale stars as an assassin in a future, Big Brother society who decides to turn on his handlers and join the rebellion. Spectacular visual effects and direction have Equilibrium rivaling The Matrix, which is not an easy task.
10. Shaft
    A pretty good reimagining of Shaft that never got the recognition it deserved, some may forget that Christian Bale played the ruthless villain in the movie. His character here is not unlike his rich-but-vicious character in American Psycho, but that’s a good thing.

Other honorable mentions are Reign of Fire, a surprisingly good dragon movie that also didn’t get the recognition it deserved (watch it a couple times and you’ll see what I mean), Howl’s Moving Castle, a movie you can’t really credit to Bale even though he did do voice work for the American version and The New World, my Best Movie of the 2005. The only reason The New World isn’t on the list is that Bale has a smaller role and I had completely forgotten he was even in it.

We’ll ignore the fact he did voice work for Pocahontas, my most hated cartoons ever.

I’ve spent the weekend writing movie reviews for a slew of films that I’ve seen over the past week or so. In total, I’ve written eleven movie reviews over the last 48 hours, and I’m definitely looking forward to not writing anymore for a couple of days. The reviews include: Day Watch (2007), Hairspray (2007), License to Wed (2007), We Are Marshall (2006), Lars and the Real Girl (2007), Waitress (2007), Talk to Me (2007), The Nanny Diaries (2007), First Snow (2007), Stardust (2007) and I Know Who Killed Me (2007).

Coming soon… High School Musical 2 Extended Edition, and a DVD review of Lost: Season 3.

I’m not going to post them all at once so as not to overwhelm you all, so here are the four reviews I’ve made public thus far:

Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

The only theatrical release of the eleven reviews, Lars and the Real Girl is a surprisingly good and entertaining film that is both sad (it’s about a delusional young man who falls in love with a sex doll) and funny (it’s about a delusional young man who falls in love with a sex doll). Starring Ryan Gosling, the movie is terrific and boasts a great but relatively unknown supporting cast. There are plenty of laugh-out-loud scenes, and overall the picture is very heartwarming and engaging. While I doubt it’ll get much Oscar recognition, it certainly is one of the best movies of 2007. Read the full review…

Day Watch (2007)

The sequel to Night Watch, Day Watch is a Russian film that boasts absolutely spectacular visual effects on a budget of – brace yourself -only $4 million. The visuals are enough to make it worth it, but unfortunately the story is so convoluted and weird that it’s hard to figure out exactly what the director was intending. Add on the fact that the movie isn’t nearly as exciting or action packed as it should have been, Day Watch really isn’t anything special. Read the full film review…

Hairspray (2007)

A funny and lighthearted musical starring John Travolta, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken, Amanda Bynes, Queen Latifah and others, Hairspray works as an entertaining piece of work that balances goofiness and social commentary relatively well. The real star of the show is… the star of the show, Nicole Blonsky, who has never been in a feature length movie before. Read the full film review…

The Nanny Diaries (2007)

Coming to DVD this Tuesday, The Nanny Diaries stars Scarlett Johansson as a young woman who foolishly takes a job as a nanny for an uber-rich woman (Laura Linney) and her husband (Paul Giamatti), who are only referred to as Mrs. and Mr. X respectively. The parents, engrossed in their fortune and social “responsibilities”, complete neglect their child, and Johansson is afraid that if she quits, the son will be lost forever. The comedy and the drama work well together, and the result is a relatively lighthearted, funny and cute picture.  Read the full film review…

From the guy who brought us the awesome Donnie Darko, one of my favorite films of all times, comes Southland Tales, a movie with a few similar themes but one big difference: it sucks big time. Here’s a snippet of my full movie review…

Wednesday night. Eight people. Only four survivors. The emotional toll for those who endured was almost too much to handle.

The situation: Southland Tales, the two-hour, forty-minute Richard Kelly follow-up to the classic Donnie Darko. It was a massacre if I ever saw one, where fifty percent of the audience was shot down, their lives destroyed in an instant. Only it wasn’t an instant. One man, popcorn still in hand, didn’t make an hour, and the three large young ladies who had to sit down right behind me, most likely just to annoy me by talking the entire time (though as it turns out their commentary helped get me through the rough patches), left just before the scene where one SUV humps another SUV. I’d never seen so many people walk out before, but I don’t really blame them: Southland Tales is a mess, and not the fun mess Kelly was shooting for.

I am a big fan of Donnie Darko, and in terms of theme, Southland Tales isn’t that far removed. There are wormholes, time travel and distortion of reality, but how all of that is delivered is so absurd and unruly that it’s nearly impossible to enjoy. Southland Tales is like one of those movies you see in another movie, where some low grade director is trying to make an epic, and when he sits down at the premiere he watches in horror as everyone falls asleep or gets up and walks out. The movie is an epic; it’s just an epic that doesn’t find its identify and isn’t able to engage the audience. It has a message, but without interesting characters or an entertaining plot, Southland Tales falls apart at the seams.

Read my full Southland Tales movie review.

Midnight Eagle, a Japanese import about two journalists who get caught up in a race to retrieve a nuclear bomb, opens today in New York and later in the year in Los Angeles. Overall, the movie is quite good, albeit with a few plot holes.

After an American Stealth Bomber crashes into a Japanese mountain, two journalists set out to discover exactly what happened. With a blizzard brewing, the journalists make their way up the mountain, only to find that they have walked themselves into the middle of a war between Japanese and North Korean soldiers, who want the bomber’s cargo for themselves. All but cut off from the Japanese government, the two men have to face the realization that they may not make it back alive – and that it may be up to them to save millions of Japanese civilians.

Read the full Midnight Eagle movie review…

Has it really been ten years since Titanic hit theaters? Oh yeah, no one was counting. I thought Titanic was great when it came out, but now I realize just how overblown this film was. It’s still a good movie, but an Oscar powerhouse, I think not. Titanic is just a bit too mainstream for its own good, and any movie that can’t get an Oscar-worthy performance out of Leonardo DiCaprio has a few issues. That being said, no one can fault James Cameron for making one of the most critically and financially successful films of all time.

But that’s not what this article is about. Titanic: 10th Anniversary Edition is coming to DVD on Tuesday, November 20, 2007, and I have a copy of the two-disc collector’s set. For those of you who don’t own Titanic, the Best Picture winner is certainly worth owning, but what about all of you who already own it? Is it worth buying a new version, especially when the DVD format is going to be obsolete in a year?

The answer is a clear no. The movie is split across two discs, which is annoying enough, and it’s probably split across two discs because the movie has three different commentaries (one by James Cameron, another by Kate Winslet, Gloria Stuart, Lewis Abernathy, Jon Landau and Rae Sanchini, and a third, historical commentary by Don Lynch and Ken Marschall, whoever those people are) and behind-the-scenes featurettes built into the flow. Unfortunately, I’m not much of a commentary guy (and I would probably only listen if Leonardo DiCaprio was involved), and I am definitely not a big fan of special features that I can only access when I actually watch the movie. If I’m watching the movie, I want to watch the movie; if I want to watch special features, I want to watch special features… I don’t want to do one to do the other, and vice versa.

The historical commentary might be interesting.

The only real interesting part of the DVD set is an alternate ending that looks more at the modern day cast and wraps their stories up a bit more. Since no one cared about Bill Paxton’s character or anyone outside the scope of the narrative, it’s no surprise that a lot of this stuff got cut. In addition, the actual ending and the way the old woman (Rose) tosses the diamond over the side of the ship is a lot cheesier here, as she does so in the presence of most of the other characters. Paxton goes off his rocker in a rather goofy way, and the fat comic relief guy takes away any dramatic impact of the scene.

While I was never a fan of any of the modern day sections in Titanic, the version that actually appeared in the theatrical release is much better. Still, it’s interesting to see what might have been.

Overall, if you really like feature commentaries, Titanic: 10-Year Anniversary Edition might be for you, but otherwise, it will be a complete waste of money. In reality, the DVD doesn’t have many special features whatsoever.

How is J-Lo so popular? She has rarely done a good movie, and her music isn’t very good, either. Yet here she is in yet another role, trying to prove that she can do gritty when she clearly cannot. In El Cantante, she plays the struggling girlfriend/wife of Latino singer Hector Lavoe (played by Marc Anthony, another guy who probably shouldn’t be acting). El Cantante is okay, except it’s not, because not only is it boring, uninformative and… boring… it is the exact same story we see in just about every singer’s story from the 1970′s (read: drugs, depression, AIDS or some combination of the three).

Read my full El Cantante movie review. El Cantante is now out on DVD.

I’m not a classic movie kind of guy. It’s not that I don’t appreciate or like the classics; it’s just that I spend so much time watching modern day films that I rarely have a chance to sit down and watch the ageless ones. Such is the case with It’s a Wonderful Life, a movie that has been around for over 60 years, a movie I had never seen. It’s a travesty, I know.

Now out on a 2-Disc Collector’s Set, It’s a Wonderful Life includes both the original black and white version, the colored version, a making-of documentary and a “special tribute to Frank Capra, narrated by his son, Frank Capra Jr.” You never know with these classics if they’ll be able to stand the test of time – some greats fifty years ago just don’t hold up well these days. Thankfully, It’s a Wonderful Life stands up beautifully; it’s captivating, entertaining, funny and depressing all at once, and is a true masterpiece.

James Stewart stars as George Bailey, a man who has always dreamed of being someone and going somewhere. Though he has had his mild successes and is well respected within the community, every time he tries to go somewhere else, he finds himself drawn back in to his town for one reason or another, whether it is to help his dying father or his struggling neighbors. He lives a life of pure selflessness, but he wants to live for himself. It’s not until an angel shows him what life would be like had he never existed that he truly realizes just how important he is.

Stewart is terrific in the lead, delivering a heartwarming, down-to-earth character who can make us laugh and cry interchangeably. Of course, I didn’t actually cry, but Stewart’s performance, coupled with a terrific screenplay Capra’s direction, touches a chord that few films do these days. The movie can be somber and depressing without shoving it down our throats, and at times leaves you desperate waiting for the next scene in hopes that things get better. Just when things are looking up, something happens to bring us back down to earth, and the reality that all good things come to an end – but it doesn’t mean that more good things can’t follow.

There’s not much else to say. It’s a Wonderful Life is a great film the whole family can enjoy. Touching and enthralling, It’s a Wonderful Life is truly a timeless classic.

I actually watched American Gangster over a week ago, but due to mitigating circumstances (changing day jobs, trying to get a date with this one young woman, traveling to Florida for a weekend and so on and so forth), I forgot about (a.k.a. put off) writing a movie review for the picture.

Interestingly enough, I had just watched Mr. Untouchable, a documentary that interviews Nicky Barnes, one of the drug kingpins depicted in the picture (played by Cuba Gooding, Jr.). American Gangster isn’t about Nicky Barnes, but it is about another drug kingpin who gained tremendous power a few decades ago but who thanks to a dedicated cop finally had his empire destroyed. American Gangster is about two men, the cop (Russell Crowe) and the gangster (Denzel Washington), who square off, even though they rarely share a scene together or even know the other one exists.

Director Ridley Scott has once delivered a solid picture, and some critics are suggesting early Oscar buzz. While I would say that there have been better movies this year, American Gangster has the stars, the dazzle and the box office success to be a serious contender. Hear what I have to say by reading my full American Gangster movie review.