Got on the plane that would take me to Miami. A tiny plane. One of those puddle jumpers that has two seats on one side of the aisle and one on the other. Tiny. But at least it had jets and not propellers. I got to my seat to find a man sitting in the seat beside mine and a young boy in the single seat. The man said the boy was his son and if I wanted the single seat the boy could take mine. Score! Of course I agreed, so I got the two- hour Miami flight in relative comfort. Time to do some writing and read a book. I’m reading “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins. Excellent book.

So we land in Miami. Easy, smooth flight. The plane to Rio is an hour behind schedule, so at least I don’t have to rush to get to the plane.  I grab some overpriced pasta from the little Pizza Hut and just as I sit down to eat it, they announce a gate change. So I truck down to the new gate, pasta and carry-in in tow. Turns out there really wasn’t any reason to rush. We sat at that gate for another 45 minutes, so the flight actually ends up 90 minutes late.

But we finally get on the plane for Rio just before 10 pm. Hooray. This is a big plane, a nice 767, so it’s going to be fairly comfortable. But then things get better. I’m in the center row, with three seats, and no one else shows up to sit in the row. I have it all to myself. Another score. So after dinner (chicken and rice, which was decent for airline food) I stretch out in the row and actually get some sleep, something very unusual for me on an airplane.

We get to Rio at around 8am and this is where the words of the agent in Charlotte return to bite me, although I don’t know it. I should have been more alert. The signs were there, but I had just finished an overnight flight and so wasn’t at the top of my game. Plus the flight delay left me with less than an hour to get my flight to Porto Alegre (or so I thought). Went to passport control which took about 30 agonizing minutes to get through, so now I’m having to book it to get to my next flight. I go through customs, which is a breeze, but I should have noticed other people taking luggage. No, I’m in too much of a hurry. I get to the checkout counter, where there is a line, but an agent asks for people going to Porto Alegre and takes us to the front. I check in, and the woman seems surprised I had no luggage. Second clue, and it was here I began to get a little suspicious, but I seemed to remember seeing a tag on the bag that said Porto Alegre, so I hope. Silly me again.

Once more, on the flight to Porto Alegre, I had a row all to myself. I certainly can’t complain about ever being crowded on the trip. We arrive at the airport and I go to baggage claim. As you know by now, that was a silly waste of time. I speak to the baggage agent and he explains that I should have claimed my luggage in Rio and rechecked it. As I’ve sort of worked this out for myself, that is not very helpful. But he takes my information and says they will deliver the bag either that evening or in the morning. As  I write this, it’s 10:30 the next morning and still no bags.

But, that aside, things have been pleasant . My hosts, Joao, Nicolas, and Filipe, are all very gracious and accommodating. I have had some wonderful food so far, and the screening went well. My hotel is nice and spacious. People seemed to enjoy the movie and asked a lot of good questions. They taped the session, which is something that hasn’t happened before, so I’m hoping I can get a copy.

So now it’s the next morning and I’m waiting for my hosts to arrive. We are supposed to go to the public market today and then Joao is having a barbecue for us tonight (there are other producers and directors here, but so far the only one I’ve met is Italian horror director Luigi Cozzi, a very nice man.) It is raining though, so I’m not sure how much that is going to change our plans. But so far it’s been an enjoyable trip. I do wish my luggage would show up though. I’m wearing a Fantaspoa shirt that was a gift, and two day old socks and underwear. It’s not pleasant.

More later.

This is an interesting and original take on the vampire tale (and those are getting harder and harder to come by). It starts with a priest who is losing faith in his ability to help people. He volunteers for an unusual experiment involving the search for a cure for the EV virus.  The experiment is a “failure and the priest “dies” but then immediately comes back. He soon discovers that in order to keep the disfiguring symptoms of the disease at bay, he must drink human blood.  He finds himself in a moral quandary, which is further tested by his desire to seduce the wife of a childhood friend.

From that point, things spin quickly out of control.  If you’ve seen Oldboy, you have a pretty good idea of how strange this movie becomes. If you haven’t, saying much more would ruin the surprise. Suffice to say, the lesson becomes be careful what you wish for.

I found this movie enjoyable for the most part. Nicely directed and acted, with some nice, very graphic special effects, a few of which actually made me wince (but then, I have a thing about fingernails. We’ll leave it at that).  The only real downside was I thought it could have been about 10-15 minutes shorter. At 2:13, it’s a little long for the type of movie it is. A few places the director was obviously going for tension didn’t quite work and just seemed drawn out. But overall this one is worth a watch, especially if you are a fan of the director’s other work.

7/10

Breakfast at Tiffany’s – What can you really say about this one? It’s the granddaddy of romantic comedies, starring a radiant Audrey Hepburn and a handsome George Peppard (yes, the leader from A-Team).  Hepburn plays Holly Golightly, the “real phony.” Holly is a woman who ran away from her life (and marriage to a much older Buddy Epsen) to come to New York and reinvent herself. The only problem is, she doesn’t really know who her real self is. She is terrified of commitment, so much so that she won’t even name the stray cat she has found, only calling him “Cat.” Then she meets George Peppard and commences on a love/hate relationship with him. Anytime he gets too close, she does what she can to drive him away. This being a romantic comedy, the ending is a foregone conclusion, but the trip in getting there is a great trip indeed.  All the acting is superb, down to all the supporting characters. The one exception is Mickey Rooney, who plays (overplays) an agonizingly stereotypical Asian.  It’s all buck teeth and mispronounced L’s.  It’s cringeworthy in the extreme. I’m sure all of this isn’t Rooney’s fault. It’s Blake Edwards’s direction coupled with the times (the movie is 50 years old), but it could have disappeared from the film and not been missed.  That aside, this is well worth seeing if you like well-written trotting down a (by now) familiar path. It should be required viewing for anyone attempting to write a romantic comedy.  8/10

The Taking of Pelham 123 – This Tony Scott directed film is based off the 1974 film starring Robert Shaw and Walter Matthau.  The original was a laid-back, stylish thriller with doses of comedy (and stereotypical Asians too. I just realized that) that had a somewhat anticlimactic (but typically 70′s) ending.  This new version, as typical of Tony Scott, is amped, ramped, and pumped up for an MTV (or I guess now it might be Twitter) generation.  There’s more profanity, more explosions, more chases, and a much more dramatic (and violent) ending. The story concerns Walter Garber (Denzel Washington) who works at the central station of New York’s Metro Transit Authority.  Things are going fine until Ryder (John Travolta) and his cronies hijack a subway train (The Pelham 123 of the title) and demand a million dollars in an hour or they start killing passengers. From there it’s the tension of Garber trying to keep Ryder from doing anything stupid, while the city’s leaders work to put the money together in time. I enjoyed this film. It was a fun thrill ride with some pretty good back and forth between the two main characters.  Travolta went a little overboard at times, especially when he was trying to be “ghetto tough,” but Washington did a wonderful job. The action scenes, as per any Tony Scott film, were top-notch. Lately, Scott has has a tendency to go overboard with “style,” using filters and camera moves and whip fast editing to tell his story. It could get distracting. Fortunately, he holds himself back this time (except for a dose in the opening credits) and that helps make it a much better film. He could have easily screwed this one up (just watch Domino for an example of how).  All in all, this a fun ride. Certainly more fun than actually riding a New York subway. 7/10

Man on Wire – This movie tells the true story of Phillipe Petit, the only man to ever walk a tightrope between the towers of the World Trade Center. Using actually footage, recreations and modern day interviews with the participants, the movie shows the planning that went into pulling off this daring (some would say insane) escapade. Using a small team of people, Phillipe sneaks into the still under construction towers, sets his line, and then walks between the towers for 45 minutes. The film is intriguing, showing some of Phillipe as a young man (recreations) and then showing the tension involved in trying to plan such a feat. The really amazing thing is how much the people involved filmed of what they were doing.  Overall, this is an interesting film. I think it could have been served being 15 minutes shorter, but it becomes riveting when they talk about the night they pulled it off, and the pictures of Phillipe actually between the towers are breathtaking. Just the thought of even attempting something like that can give you the willies. Another thing that would have been nice is to get their thoughts on the destruction of the towers, but I suppose it really wasn’t important to the subject of the movie.  Check this one out when you get the chance. 7/10

I’m going to start trying to post about each movie after I see it, instead of grouping them together like this.  I can’t promise anything though.

That’s not what I got. Instead, I got a fairly interesting look at a bomb disposal expert (the excellent Jeremy Renner) who likes to live by his own rules and may or may not be borderline psychotic. I was promised an action movie and I got a drama interspersed with occasional action scenes. Director Katheryn Bigelow knows action, and the action scenes are well-done and incredibly tense, but when we weren’t getting that, what we got was fairly bland.  There really isn’t much to the characters. We have Renner, who, as I said, may be crazy, but we never really get into what makes him tick (no pun intended). Then we have Sgt. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), who is little more than a counterpart to Renner’s insanity, and the last member of the trio, Specialist Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) who has his own (somewhat cliched) stress issues to deal with after the loss of the first team leader.

The acting was top-notch and the action (what there was of it) good, but I found the story very disjointed (being mainly just a series of vignettes with little thought to any overarching storyline) and I wanted to know more about the inner life of the main character.  Is it worth seeing? Certainly, if nothing else for the nail-biting tension in the bomb-defusing scenarios. Is it the Best Picture of the year? Not to me.

6/10

The Hangover (absurd) – I had heard from many people that this was an extremely, gut-bustingly funny movie.  I’m always leary of that claim, because my humor doesn’t always jibe with others.  (I hated Old School, and refuse to watch Borat) However, I found this movie quite chuckle (and outright laugh) worthy. I can imagine it would have been even more fun to watch in a crowded theater with lots of other folks laughing.  The plot is simple. Four friends go to Las Vegas for a last bash bachelor party, one of them puts a drug in their drinks, and they all wake up the next morning with a tiger in the bathroom, a baby in the closet,  a trashed hotel room, and one of their quartet missing.  The rest of the time they spend (hilariously) finding out exactly what happened to them and where their missing friend is.

Zach Galifinakis is the stand out of the four, as a dim-witted, perverted lout who nonetheless has a Rain Man like ability with counting cards (which comes in handy when they have to come us with some quick money) Another standout (in a minor but important role) is Ken Jeong as a gay (I’m pretty sure he was gay) Asian gangster who our heroes run afoul of. His introduction scene had me almost falling off the couch.

The only real problem I had was that the missing friend’s location would have easily been figured out by the hotel staff long before our heroes did, but that’s a minor problem when you’re having this much fun. It’s a crude movie, full of some raunchy humor, and definitely not for the kids, but it was a good time.

7/10

Sherlock Holmes (light) – This is the Robert Downey film directed by British action director Guy Ritchie. The plot is convoluted (more than it needed to be) but involves a Lord Blackwell’s attempt to essentially take over Britain on his way to ruling the world, all by using “magic,” which turns out to have a little more logical explanation.

This is a light-hearted film, despite the somewhat grim, perpetually cloudy look of Victorian London. Much of this is due to the whimsical nature of the relationship between Downey’s Holmes and Jude Law’s Watson.  I just wish these enjoyable characters could have been in a better movie. It’s not bad, it’s just over-produced and over-plotted. By overproduced, I mean they seem to have scenes in there just because they had lots of money to spend, the most notable being a fight between Downey and a huge man with a sledgehammer that ends with an under construction ship being unmoored from its drydock and sunk.  Guy Ritchie can do action, but he’s better with edgy, independent fare, and he had to play this one safe. To make up for it, he took the action to 11. It’s loud and busy, but not necessarily effective.  Overall, this movie was a noisy, not all that intelligent summer blockbuster masquerading as an above average Christmas film. I wish I would have deduced that before I went to see it.

5/10

World’s Greatest Dad (dark) – When you have Robin Williams in a film directed by Bobcat Goldthwait, you know you’re in for something unusual, and this movie didn’t disappoint. Williams plays a poetry teacher and aspiring (but failing) writer who has a perverted, foul-mouthed, completely hateful 15-year-old son. The father’s life is miserable, his classes are poorly attended, and his sometime girlfriend may be cheating on him. He’s a pushover who hates his life and his son.

But then something happens (a major plot point that I’m not going to give away.  And if you rent it from Netflix, don’t read the synopsis. It’s a major spoiler.) which completely changes everyone’s life, mostly for the better.  The rest of the film deals with the characters’ reaction to what happened.

I really enjoyed this film. It’s definitely a dark kind of movie, with biting humor and a few not very likable characters, but it was always intriguing. It wouldn’t be for everyone (you have to be willing to accept the idea of a porn-watching, chronically masturbating 15-year-old, for starters) but if you can handle the subject matter, you might find it worth a watch. Bobcat called it a “comedy of the awkward” and I think that works.  The few problem I had were that I would have liked a little backstory as to why the character of the son (played with evil perfection by Darryl Sabara) was so hateful.  And, as much as I love Robin Williams, I had a little trouble accepting him as this character, since many of the lines came out like they could have been delivered in one of his stand-up routines.  He was calm in this one though, and I like calm Robin Williams better than manic Robin Williams.

7/10

That’s it for now. See you next time I watch something.

Buck Howard is the story of a law student (Colin Hanks) who doesn’t enjoy being a law student and decides to do something else. So he becomes the assistant to a magician (John Malkovich) who was once somebody and now lives in a state of delusion about his popularity. The film follows the two characters as they learn to work together.  There is also a PR person (Emily Blount) who comes in as a love interest to Hanks’s character.  After a particular illusion, Buck again gain a moment of notoriety, his fifteen minutes of fame, and then quietly fades again into obscurity, which, in the end, may be exactly the way he likes it.

This was an okay story, but the biggest problem is that it was about the wrong person.  It was about the Colin Hanks character and the change he goes through, but I wanted to know more about Buck, who was certainly the far more interesting of the two. I wanted to know what made him tick. Why was he so difficult to get along with, why was he delusional? Did he have any idea of what was going on in the real world.  This would have made a great story.  As it was, the movie should have been The Okay Buck Howard.

5/10

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is the story of Nick (Michael Cera) and Norah (Kat Dennings), both of whom are seeing other people, but as we know, are actually intended for each other. They discover this over one long night as they spend it trying to track down a rave party with beloved local band Fluffy (or Where’s Fluffy, I never was quite sure)  The story follows the usual predictable route, but is saved by the charms of both Cera and Dennings. There are also several secondary characters who are a lot of fun, including Nick’s gay bandmates and Norah’s best friend, who gets drunk and acts hysterically. Hats off to Ari Graynor for making the character a lot of fun.

I did have a few questions about the movie, such as exactly how high school age students could get into the clubs they did and also drink like they did.  There were also a couple of coincidences that seemed a bit much.  Overall, this was a fun, lightweight movie that won’t leave much of a lasting impression, but is enjoyable while you’re watching it.

5/10

So, I was putting up the Christmas tree tonight and drinking some fine Scotch and thinking about Avatar and the fine folks here on the RT forums.  Here is why I think Avatar will continue to do well and rake in lots of money and maybe even take Best Picture.  Know at the outset that none of this is meant to insult anybody or take sides. They are just my thoughts.

We here on the RT forums tend to forget that, although we are vocal, we are a minuscule portion of the movie-going public. If the movie going audience was a dog, we would be the tinest flea gnawing on its ass. There are maybe forty people who come in to these debates, and only 10 or so with any regularity.

We like to think we are tuned to a higher sensibility, and perhaps we are. The arguments we have over CGI realism is driven (I’m pretty sure) by a desire to see the art form move forward, and to force the talent behind it to be the best they can be, to wow us and show us things we don’t normally see and make them as real as possible.

We also want a better story. We want to hear lines we haven’t heard before, watch plots that aren’t derivitive, and see things told in a new way.

But you know what?  THE AVERAGE MOVIE GOER DOESN’T CARE ABOUT ANY OF THIS.  They want to be wowed and they want to be entertained and they want familiarity. The reason Transformers and Transformers 2 did so well is because it wowed people with cool robots and explosions, had the familiarity of being a childhood memory, and had a story that, while it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, provided the basic elements and had what people wanted.  It’s no secret I didn’t like the movie, but several of my friends enjoyed it very much. That’s fine.

People like to see justice done. They like to see the good guys win and the bad guys taken down. Transformer 2 (and Transformers) had that.  And just for the record, I liked the first Transformers.

New Moon is another good excample. It had the familiarity of being a best-selling book, and the story itself is little more than a vampiric variation of Romeo and Juliet.  Again, it’s familiar. People like things they’ve seen before. That’s why they buy DVDs and watch them over and over.  Familiarity equals comfort.

And so we come to Avatar.  The special effects are extraordinary. There are some who argue differently, and that’s fine. Again, they are tuned to a higher sensibility, but to the average moviegoer, the FX are jaw-droppingly beautiful and astoundingly realistic.  As I walked out of the theater both times, all around me people were buzzing about what they saw. The friends I took proclaimed it the best thing they’ve ever seen. These are people who don’t watch “Science at the Movies” or read articles about how it’s all made. These are average moviegoers. John Q. Public.

The same holds for the story. Yes, it’s derivitive of Dances With Wolves and Ferngully and Battle for Terra and Aliens and even a little bit of Apocalypse Now thrown in there.  But the average movie-goer doesn’t care.  Again, good guys win, bad guys punished.  People want to know what’s going to happen. In a grand entertainment, they like feeling one step ahead.

Filmmakers and scriptwriters are in a “damned if they do, damned if they don’t” position. If they make something too predictable, they are accused of being formulaic. If they make it too esoteric, nobody wants to watch it, becuase they don’t understand it, and thus are not entertained by it.  James Cameron had a bit of a straight jacket on him.  He spent $300 million dollars.  If he made the story too high-brow, too science-fictiony, it would have been a niche film, appealing to a very limited audience (Think about Donnie Darko or Mulholland Drive. Great movies, but limited audience appeal)

Therefore, he had to go with a familiar story, and he follows the classic three-act structure beatifully. He’s giving the audience exactly what they want. Wow factor + familirity = hit movie.  It scored 83%, which means four out of five critics liked it.  I’m guessing the audience reaction is following pretty much along those same lines, so people will tell their friends to see it, and they’ll tell their friends.  And Avatar will continue to make money. Will it beat Titanic? Doubtful.  Will it be in the top ten? Most likely.

Cameron has done exactly what he set out to do. Titanic also had the wow factor plus familiarity motif, and it won 11 Oscars and became the all-time box office champ.  And the Academy has already had a favorable screening, so don’t be surprised if, come March 2010, we see Cameron walking up to accept a gold statue. After all, it’s something we’ve seen before, and people love a familiar story.

Some people have complained that the story is simple, or just a rehash. But you know what? Star Wars was a simple, familiar story too, and that seemed to work. After all, an old story told in a new way is still a new story. And this story is perfectly suited to the real star of the show, which is the special effects. And special is the key word here.  This is hands down the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen put on screen.  Yeah, we’ve seen computer generated vistas before, but not like these. And sure, we’ve seen motion captured people before, but not with this sense of realism.  There are close up of the Na’vi’ (the alien race) that are simply astounding in their details. You see veins, you see translucency in the skin, you see dirty, ragged fingernails.  Before too long, you forget you’re seeing computer images and just assume they are tall actors in makeup.  If you really let your imagination go, you can think Cameron just took some 3D cameras to another planet and shot his movie with native actors.

The planet itself is a wonder of ecology, with vibrant creatures, large flying lizard that bond with the natives (shades of Dragonriders of Pern), and living plants that react with bioluminescent displays when people approach. It’s obvious Cameron was influenced by his time underwater.

The acting, which some have complained about, is perfectly fine. This isn’t a movie that’s meant to win acting Oscars. All the people play their (admittedly somewhat 2 dimensional) characters perfectly fine.  I also didn’t have a problem with the dialogue that many seemed to have. The military guys have a few corny lines, but they’re the kind of cliches you could picture military guys saying, so it worked.  There’s a ecological message here, but it isn’t preached at us like it was in The Abyss. It’s just there to take if you want, or not. Some have complained that it’s about Iraq and is Anti-American, because the military are the “bad guys.”  I choose to see it more as an indictment of human nature throughout the ages, anytime a technologically superior culture comes upon a more primitive one.  It’s happened in the past, and Cameron is saying it’s certain to happen in the future.  It’s a bleak message if you choose to take it that way, but this is far from a bleak film.  Quite the opposite.

It’s a wonder to behold. The closest I can come to describing it is the first time I saw Star Wars when I was 12.  It’s that same sense of wonder all over, and I can see this movie inspiring many up and coming teens to want to make their own amazing stories. See it as soon as you can, and by all means, pay the extra couple of bucks to see it in 3D. I personally plan on seeing it at least two more times to catch everything I missed the first time.

Rating: 10/10

From there the story spirals into a huge conspiracy involving crooked bankers, Libyan warlords, and weapons manufacturers. And it spirals, and spirals. And therein lies the big problem with the movie, it spirals out of control of its own plot.  There are too many people involved from too many angles and it eventually bogs down and turns from a well-paced, fairly suspenseful film (the first half) into an inert mess (the second half). Clive does a serviceable job as always, but Naomi is pretty bad, and plays a character that seems to be there only so Clive could have a female partner, in an attempt to attract a female audience. She’s very supportive, but she never actually DOES anything to speak of.

There’s a great shootout in the Guggenheim Museum, but that’s about it for action.  So what we’re left with is an action movie without much action and a thriller without enough thrills.  It’s a grand conspiracy that ends up not meaning a whole lot in the end.  Speaking of the ending, it’s a giant cop-out and ends up with nothing really resolved (although there were some newspaper clippings during the end credits that may have “resolved” things. I don’t know, I didn’t bother to watch them.)  It was a grand disappointment, especially since I enjoyed Tom Twyker’s other movies (Run Lola Run and Poison). But this time the excitement just wasn’t there.

4/10

I am a big fan of Wes Anderson movies, and this one is no exception. Whimsical and offbeat, this movie had me smiling throughout, chuckling many times, and laughing out loud quite a few. And I suspect it’s a movie that will reveal more on multiple viewings, since there were many nuances in the backgrounds.  The stop motion is crude but serviceable and actually adds to the film’s charm.  In this day of ultra slick computer animation, it’s nice to see something handcrafted and even sort of sloppy. You can see hairs moving about even when the creatures are still, as if the animators didn’t take the time to keep thing consistent. But knowing Anderson’s quirks, this was probably intentional.

The voice acting is uniformly excellent, with quite a cast, including George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman. Cooney was perfect for the role, since Mr. Fox is basically an animated version of the rogue Danny Ocean from the Ocean’s films. I almost wish they could have had someone else do the voice, since it was sometimes tough to separate the voice from the action on screen, and I occasionally has flashes of Clooney in the voice booth doing his thing.

But that’s a minor quibble for what is a delightful film with great dialogue, fun situations, and even some beautful camera work. Be sure to check this one out when you get a chance.

8/10