« Sketch Charlotte
Main
Recent Books »

I've been so busy lately that I haven't been keep track of the movies I watch recently. I've also been so busy that I actually haven't watched many movies to begin with so this list will be fairly short.

Brick: A This is a clever, well-filmed crime thriller set in a high school in which the usual investigator role is filled by a student trying to get to the bottom of who killed the girl he loves. His investigation takes takes him on a tour through his high school's various 'types': the snobby popular girl, the Brain, the druggies, the jock. He even finds himself in the role of snitch/man-on-the-inside for the Vice Principal. All of this is played seriously which makes it surprisingly dour but nonetheless brilliant in it's transference of crime cinema tropes to the high school setting. The dialogue especially is pitch perfect in its crime-noir rhythm.

Little Miss Sunshine: A Very funny and perfectly cast. A dysfunctional (read: typical indie movie) family travel from Arizona to California in a barely road-worthy VW bus so that their daughter (the very cute Abigail Breslin) can enter into a beauty pageant. Everyone in this movie from Greg Kinnear to Steve Carell to the scene stealing Alan Arkin are perfect in this. A smart, feel good comedy.

Miami Vice: C- I was not clamoring for a Miami Vice remake but I was still disappointed in this since it came from original series creator and usually brilliant director Michael Mann. The film starts out with Crockett and Tubbs trailing a drug dealer in a nightclub. This scene is quickly abandoned for the actual story and I kind of wished that I could have seen that movie instead. Mann disguises a very bland, typical drug-bust movie with indeciperable dialogue and some nicely composed cinematography. There was really no reason to care about what was going on here.

Talladega Nights: B+ The only thing that disappointed me about this movie was that the Charlotte location shots weren't really recognizeable. There are a lot of laughs here, especially when Sascha Baron Cohen is on-screen as Will Ferrell's French, Formula-1 nemesis. And you can't really say that the Southern stereotypes they play with here are inaccurate since many of the people in the Matthews, NC theater I saw this in audibly groaned and winced during the gay scenes with Cohen.

There were definitely some weird story structure things going on here. Both Amy Adams and Andy Richter, both talented actors, seemed like they must have had scenes cut from the movie because both were meant to be important characters but they only had a few minutes of screentime.

A Praerie Home Companion: D I've never listened to Garrison Keillor's radio show and I've never had any desire to do so either. I actually didn't have too much desire to see this film either and doing so didn't really change my mind about any of it. Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin were pretty enjoyable but otherwise I found this slow, silly and just not for me.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: A This however is exactly my kind of movie. A sexy, stylish crime thriller that doesn't take itself seriously at all. The best movie Val Kilmer has done in years.

Syriana: B+ As I expected this was a little hard to follow. I barely understood anything that happened with Jeffrey Wright's storyline. But, like with Traffic, I love Stephen Gaghan's 360¬? view of the problem here. Covering all the angles and showing you just what a big, complicated, maybe unsolvable problem the oil industry is.

Happy Endings: B A little hard to remember this one. Some good performances by Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Ritter, Lisa Kudrow and Tom Arnold(!) It consists of a few different stories whose characters intersect here and there. Some of the stories and their characters are more interesting than others.

Posted at August 31, 2006 12:52 PM