Eight down, one to go. My quest to see all nine of the Academy Award nominees is drawing closer to its end, and now I get to scratch Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close off the list. Based off the book of the same name by Jonathan Safran Foer, it's the story of a boy who is searching for a lock that fits a key he finds among his father's belongings after his father dies in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. I went into the movie expecting it to be a little dependent on its link to 9/11 and bracing myself for two hours of the emotional exploitation of a national tragedy, but I came away from it pleasantly surprised.
Don't get me wrong: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close really had no place being honored as one of the best movies of the year. It's good, but there were plenty of other films that had more going for them. This movie is all about playing your emotions like a fiddle and making you feel extremely sorry for the main character. Thomas Horn plays Oskar Schell, an eccentric boy who idolizes his father (Tom Hanks). When his father dies in the World Trade Center, Oskar tries to cope with his loss, and while looking through his father's possessions a year later, comes across a mysterious key to a lockbox and a single word written on the envelope. This launches a citywide adventure for Oskar, who uses the adventure as an opportunity to combat his own social awkwardness and connect with people from all walks of life. If that brief description doesn't scream "emotional roller coaster" enough for you, factor in a mute old man and a grieving mother as his accomplices and tell me that doesn't sound like one of the most bittersweet movies you'll ever watch. And I'll tell you you're right.
The saving grace in this movie is the acting. It's easy to ride the emotional wave of the story alone, but the actors in this film really do sell the movie and make it seem a little more real. Horn does an amazing job, especially since this is his first role in a feature film. Add in Tom Hanks as the father, Sandra Bullock as the mother, and supporting roles by Octavia Spencer, John Goodman, and Max von Sydow (who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role as the mute Renter), and you have a very strong group of talent that takes an otherwise forgettable movie and makes it something worth watching.
All in all, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is an okay movie, but not too much more than that. I see the appeal, and I compare the feeling you get from watching this to watching The Blind Side, but just because it made me feel warm and fuzzy inside doesn't necessarily mean it was great. It kind of drags, and the story just seems a little too warm and fuzzy to be believable. I recommend watching it, but don't get your hopes up for it being fantastic. I give it 6 1/2 heartwarming connections between racial and economic barriers out of 10.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
The Rum Diary
It seems a little odd, but sometimes I really love a movie even when it's not good. I'm not talking about so-cheesy-that-you-must-watch-how-bad-this-is movies, I'm talking about movies that are, on a critical level, not so great or so terrible, but at the same time they're so fun that you can't help but love them anyway. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was not, in my opinion, a great film, at least by many of the standards that I usually gauge movies with, but I had a blast watching the exploits of Captain Jack Sparrow anyway. The same goes, at least with me, for 2010's The A-Team remake or the Men in Black series. Well, The Rum Diary is definitely another film I can add to that group.
In Johnny Depp's second role in a film adaptation of a Hunter S. Thompson piece, he plays Kemp, a journalist based largely on Thompson's early career. Kemp is a struggling author who moves to Puerto Rico to work for The San Juan Star, and The Rum Diary is largely the story of all of the shenanigans he gets into during his short stay there. Sure, there's a story involving shady land deals by a sleazy land baron (Aaron Eckhart), a love affair with his fiance (Amber Heard), and the eventual climax of the movie involving real journalism and cockfighting, but honestly, you're not going to watch this movie for the plot. If you are, you're going to be sorely disappointed.
The good part is this: everyone, on and off camera, really sells this movie. It's incredibly absorbing. From the second he arrives in his dump of a newspaper office to the ending montage, I felt very drawn in to the world they were creating. The acting was solid, the scenery was beautiful, and the escalating amounts of trouble that Kemp finds himself in is incredibly fun to watch. Unfortunately, the story is an absolute pain to try and figure out. The film is set up to where we will see two or three different scenes, only one of which will actually be important to the plot later. The other two will be throwaway scenes involving Kemp and his associates getting themselves into trouble over some sort of cultural faux-pas or drunken misadventure. While fun to watch, it makes the flow of the story incredibly disjointed and hard to follow. Also, Amber Heard has the acting capacity of a cardboard box. Enough said about that.
I obviously cannot stress enough how much fun this movie is to watch. Yes, the flow of the story is almost frustratingly askew (and not in a good, Tarantino-ey way), but I almost didn't care at all. The Rum Diary is one of those movies that can, despite its glaring misgivings, still draw you in by just being incredibly fun, and that is what saved it from an abysmal score. I give it 7 misadventures involving Puerto Rican moonshine out of 10.
The good part is this: everyone, on and off camera, really sells this movie. It's incredibly absorbing. From the second he arrives in his dump of a newspaper office to the ending montage, I felt very drawn in to the world they were creating. The acting was solid, the scenery was beautiful, and the escalating amounts of trouble that Kemp finds himself in is incredibly fun to watch. Unfortunately, the story is an absolute pain to try and figure out. The film is set up to where we will see two or three different scenes, only one of which will actually be important to the plot later. The other two will be throwaway scenes involving Kemp and his associates getting themselves into trouble over some sort of cultural faux-pas or drunken misadventure. While fun to watch, it makes the flow of the story incredibly disjointed and hard to follow. Also, Amber Heard has the acting capacity of a cardboard box. Enough said about that.
I obviously cannot stress enough how much fun this movie is to watch. Yes, the flow of the story is almost frustratingly askew (and not in a good, Tarantino-ey way), but I almost didn't care at all. The Rum Diary is one of those movies that can, despite its glaring misgivings, still draw you in by just being incredibly fun, and that is what saved it from an abysmal score. I give it 7 misadventures involving Puerto Rican moonshine out of 10.
Friday, May 4, 2012
The Avengers
I just want to preface this by saying that it's really exciting to be up at 3:30 in the morning writing a review for a movie that I just saw the midnight premiere of. Now, on to the regularly scheduled review.
It's now May, and that means one big thing for moviegoers: summer blockbuster season is upon us. And this year kicked off with a bang: The Avengers. Since Marvel created its own studio and debuted with Iron Man in 2008, their pet project was tying together all of their subsequent movies (The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger) into one climactic mega-film that will generate a lot of hype, a lot of excitement, and a lot of cash. Well, their efforts have finally come to fruition, and, for all of the legendary hype surrounding it, it did about as well as anyone could expect.
It's very hard to live up to the expectations that The Avengers was burdened with. All of the aforementioned movies (with maybe the exception of Iron Man 2) were greeted with both financial and critical acclaim, and so a movie featuring all of these iconic characters was bound to have a lot of pressure riding on it. Well, I feel that it fell a little short of the mark, but it didn't miss completely.
Let's start with the good: The Avengers does not short you on laughs or action. The movies leading up to The Avengers had a trademark wit to them that made them much more enjoyable than many of the droll, terrible Marvel films that preceded them (I'm looking right at you, Daredevil). The Avengers kicked it up a notch, though, and I found myself laughing a lot more than I expected to at a superhero movie. It's not a comedy by any means, but it has enough witty one-liners sprinkled throughout to keep you on your toes. If the comedic timing doesn't keep you on your toes, however, the action sequences certainly will. As the Marvel superhero movie to end all Marvel superhero movies, The Avengers does not skimp on fight scenes. Every major character has his or her time to shine, and all of them rocked. As far as edge-of-your-seat action is concerned, this movie has some of the most spectacular and well-choreographed/animated sequences out there.
With the good highlighted, there must come the downsides of the movie. For starters, it's 2 hours and 23 minutes long, and the time isn't always put to good use. I would understand the long runtime if a lot of the time was spent developing characters past where we left them in the prequels. Instead, we get a little more development out of Captain America and Loki, and the rest is spent blowing things up and listening to Iron Man spout one-liners. While certainly entertaining, it grows old after a while, to the point of predictability. I was never expecting The Avengers to have an award-winning script, but I certainly wished that it had a little more originality to it.
Overall, The Avengers is certainly not a bad way to kick off a summer blockbuster season. With a few almost certainly terrible films on the horizon (i.e. Battleship, G.I. Joe: Retaliation), it's nice to start off with a movie that can be entertaining visually and not be an absolute pain to sit through. I give it 7 HULKSMASH's out of 10.
It's now May, and that means one big thing for moviegoers: summer blockbuster season is upon us. And this year kicked off with a bang: The Avengers. Since Marvel created its own studio and debuted with Iron Man in 2008, their pet project was tying together all of their subsequent movies (The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger) into one climactic mega-film that will generate a lot of hype, a lot of excitement, and a lot of cash. Well, their efforts have finally come to fruition, and, for all of the legendary hype surrounding it, it did about as well as anyone could expect.
It's very hard to live up to the expectations that The Avengers was burdened with. All of the aforementioned movies (with maybe the exception of Iron Man 2) were greeted with both financial and critical acclaim, and so a movie featuring all of these iconic characters was bound to have a lot of pressure riding on it. Well, I feel that it fell a little short of the mark, but it didn't miss completely.
Let's start with the good: The Avengers does not short you on laughs or action. The movies leading up to The Avengers had a trademark wit to them that made them much more enjoyable than many of the droll, terrible Marvel films that preceded them (I'm looking right at you, Daredevil). The Avengers kicked it up a notch, though, and I found myself laughing a lot more than I expected to at a superhero movie. It's not a comedy by any means, but it has enough witty one-liners sprinkled throughout to keep you on your toes. If the comedic timing doesn't keep you on your toes, however, the action sequences certainly will. As the Marvel superhero movie to end all Marvel superhero movies, The Avengers does not skimp on fight scenes. Every major character has his or her time to shine, and all of them rocked. As far as edge-of-your-seat action is concerned, this movie has some of the most spectacular and well-choreographed/animated sequences out there.
With the good highlighted, there must come the downsides of the movie. For starters, it's 2 hours and 23 minutes long, and the time isn't always put to good use. I would understand the long runtime if a lot of the time was spent developing characters past where we left them in the prequels. Instead, we get a little more development out of Captain America and Loki, and the rest is spent blowing things up and listening to Iron Man spout one-liners. While certainly entertaining, it grows old after a while, to the point of predictability. I was never expecting The Avengers to have an award-winning script, but I certainly wished that it had a little more originality to it.
Overall, The Avengers is certainly not a bad way to kick off a summer blockbuster season. With a few almost certainly terrible films on the horizon (i.e. Battleship, G.I. Joe: Retaliation), it's nice to start off with a movie that can be entertaining visually and not be an absolute pain to sit through. I give it 7 HULKSMASH's out of 10.
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