Hold Me Closer, Tiny Mama

Early this evening, M and I hit the AMC to see Céline Sciamma's (Portrait of a Lady on Fire) latest film, Petite Maman, which finally hit American theaters nearly a year after it was first released in France.

Clocking in at a brisk 72 minutes, Petite Maman is a wonderful little exploration of parent-child relationships.  8-year-old Nelly's grandmother has just passed away, and Nelly is helping her parents clean out the house where her mom grew up.  In the woods nearby, Nelly makes a new friend -- Marion, a young girl, also 8.  Marion just so happens to be Nelly's mom's name, and she just happens to live in the very house that they are cleaning out...

The many scenes of Nelly and young Marion (played by real-life sisters) playing together sparkle with joy, and although the story plays with themes of grief, loneliness, and depression, it's an altogether heartwarming experience.  I don't have any kids, but one of the things that the movie puts front and center, is a need for parents to share their humanity with their children.  Remember what it was really like to be a kid.  Tell stories with as much color as you can about your own childhood.  Build bridges of trust and understanding.  Your children aren't your equals, but that doesn't mean you always have to resort to preaching and teaching.

Decker Director Series

Back in the summer of 2014, Meaghan and I started a weekly event series with some friends.  Here's how it works:

• Pick a movie director who's made at least three feature-length films.
• Put that director's movies in order chronologically and make a weekly viewing schedule.
• For each week, pick a potluck dinner theme that corresponds to that week's movie or director in some way.
• Get together with friends, eat good food, and watch good movies.
• Repeat.

Three years later, we're still going strong.  So far, we've watched all of the movies of Darren Aronofsky, Sofia Coppola, Lenny Abrahamson, Frank Darabont, Ridley Scott, Ben Stiller, Ang Lee, Sarah Polley, David Lean, and Lynne Ramsay.  We're currently working on both Hayao Miyazaki and Woody Allen.

If any of our directors puts out a new movie after we've completed their filmography, we organize a "field trip" to see it in theaters, usually on opening weekend.  I'm bringing all of this up now because the director that we started this whole thing with, Darren Aronofsky, has a new movie in theaters this weekend, mother!  We're going to check it out this afternoon, so hopefully I'll be able to put some words together about it tonight or tomorrow.  It's supposedly a pretty difficult film; I'm looking forward to exercising my brain with it.

If you have any suggestions for directors we should check out in the future, or want to share some fun things you've been doing with your friends, feel free to comment.

For Kim, Part 5/5

I know the suspense has been killing everyone, but now after a month's delay I'm finally ready to reveal who my 5th and final male actor is. Drumroll please...


It's none other than Paul Rudd.

Rudd first came to my attention back in 1995 when he played Cher's "total Baldwin" of a stepbrother in Clueless. He was the cute, charming straight man in an otherwise highly stylized and over the top teen comedy. This launched a brief period of popularity back when I was in high school where he most notably acted alongside Leo DiCaps in Romeo+Juliet, but none of that is why he makes this list.

In 2003, Meaghan and I were on our first vacation together in Winnipeg. (Don't knock it until you try it; it's a great city.) When on vacation, we often try to find some time to catch some movies in the theater wherever we are. On that trip, we decided to see Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things, which happened to star Paul Rudd as the bamboozled Adam. This dark exploration of how we all shape each other in our lives (intentionally or not) still ranks among my favorite movies of all time, and it catapulted Rudd back onto my radar screen.

He followed this up with a notable recurring role in the final seasons of "Friends" and a series of roles in Judd Apatow's comedies (The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, among others). Most recently, I've seen him in 2009's I Love You, Man alongside Jason Segel ("How I Met Your Mother", "Freaks and Geeks"), which was easily amongst my favorite comedies of the last few years. He plays the funny everyman so well, it makes me think that he's the kind of actor I would be if I were a giant movie star. Looking at his IMDB page, I can safely say that I'm looking forward to seeing how Rudd brings the funny in 2011 & 2012.

I'll leave you with this rather silly (and ultra-specific) celebration of Rudd's career.

The Lazy Bachelor

So I wish I could say I had a good reason for the recent hiatus. In fact, I thought I would have loads of time to build up a big buffer of prepared posts. Well, I have had loads of time...

You see, right after the end of the school year back in the 2nd week of June Meaghan left the country and I've been living the bachelor life ever since. It turns out I'm apparently really lazy when I'm all alone, or maybe just demotivated from doing things -- not sure which.

Why is Meaghan gone? Remember that German teacher exchange? Well, she got to go to Düsseldorf to visit Cordula for the 2nd half of the program. In fact, she'll be staying in Europe for the better part of a month. She co-sponsors a writing-based trip at her high school. Last year, she took about a dozen kids to London, Paris, and Rome. This year the trip size is up to 20 and they're going to Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and England. What am I saying? We're going to those places. 20 was the magic number that they needed to hit for me to go along as a chaperone. I leave Monday, and am starting to get amped up for the trip. Hopefully, not too many of the teens give us grief.

So what have I been up to for the last couple weeks? Good question. I've attached a couple small pieces below along with a teaser for the series that will hopefully keep you company while I'm gone -- assuming I can get them all written before I leave. Enjoy!

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Before Meaghan left the country, we went to see another movie at one of our local art house theaters. This probably deserves its own post, but I'm probably not eloquent enough to do it justice. The film was Terrence Malick's new work The Tree of Life. Like all of his films, it was beautiful and strange if not lacking a little bit in coherency. For those not familiar with Malick, despite the fact that he directed his first movie back in 1973 this is only his 5th full-length feature. I've only seen the two previous to this: The Thin Red Line and The New World.

It's a largely autobiographical story about his childhood growing up in Texas in the 1950s. Depicting his father as a violent force of "nature" and his mother has a beautiful force for "grace" (nature vs grace is the dichotomy set up in the opening narration, hence the quotes), it's essentially a series of related vignettes showing their interactions, their troubles, and the events that shaped him into the person he is today.

My childhood was not nearly as contentious as Meaghan's (she's compared us to the Cleavers on more than one occasion), so I didn't relate to the actual story elements as much as she did, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a beautifully made film. And oh yes, there are dinosaurs!

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Last year when Meaghan was in Europe, I spent a lot of time watching the World Cup, so it's only fitting that this year I've been keeping my eye on the Gold Cup. What? You didn't know that North America's largest soccer tournament has been going on in our country over the last two weeks? I'm shocked.

Wait, no I'm not. Apparently this is the year that I spend all of my sports-related energy on the sports that Americans just don't care about. The finals are tonight, but the only places you can see it are on FOX Soccer (who knew that existed?) and Univision (in español). Predictably, the USA is facing off with Mexico. It's not been an easy road to the finals for the US, so I'm expecting them to get pasted by "El Tri". We'll see what happens.

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Lastly, I spent a lot of time on an unexpected journey that I'll be sharing over the next two weeks. It started with me questioning my sanity, and then I thought I'd completely lost my taste. In the end, though, I came to grips with reality and learned how to stop worrying and love the tween.

New School, Same as the Old School

This weekend Meaghan and I kicked off the summer blockbuster season by going to see the brand-new X-Men prequel/reboot X-Men: First Class. With James McAvoy as Professor X and a Rotten Tomatoes rating up above 80%, we had high expectations. Did it meet them?


In a word, yes. Although it continues to play in the same thematic pool as X2, it does so with enough skill to easily wipe away the bad taste left in my mouth from the horribly flawed 3rd and 4th entries in the franchise. From its setting (1962's Cuban Missile Crisis -- of sorts) to the surprising turn by Kevin Bacon (I had no idea he was even in it) as Sebastian Shaw, villainous leader of the Hellfire Club to the slam bang action sequences, First Class makes a lot of right moves. And with director Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass) at the helm, that's not completely unexpected. The acting is competent, the effects are good, but what has always made the X-Men movies worthwhile (or not) are the ideas.

At its heart, as in most of the first movie trilogy, First Class is an exploration of what it means to be different. It uses its two main characters, Charles Xavier (Prof. X) and Eric Lensherr (Magneto), to present two differing viewpoints. In the film, the existence of evolved humans (mutants, if you will) is just becoming known in some circles. Charles, a child of privilege, believes that mutants can and will be integrated and accepted into human society. Humanity will flourish as a result of the unique things these individuals can do. Eric, a Jewish child of the Nazi death camps, knows from his personal experiences that humans are ugly beings that persecute others for their differences. It's a kill or be killed world, and Eric knows that in order to survive mutantkind is going to have to go it alone and be ready to defend itself.

The beauty of X-Men is that neither viewpoint is necessarily painted as right or wrong. Although Xavier is clearly intended as the moral center of the story, you can understand and accept what informs the opposing arguments. Also, mutants can be used as a cipher for many of the issues that are debated in the world today: gender, race, sexuality, etc. Even though it feels to some extent like we're stuck circling around the same ideas as the previous films, no one can deny how much they resonate, and the climax of the film sets us up nicely for further exploration in this space. Planned as the first in a new trilogy, hopefully First Class will make enough at the box office to allow us to see more.

If you're a fan of previous X-Men movies, particularly of X2, I don't think you'll be disappointed.

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Djokovic Watch != 44

You won't be seeing any more tennis updates from me for some time. As feared, Novak Djokovic's win streak was stopped at 43 as he fell in four sets to Roger Federer in the semifinals of the French Open on Friday. That leaves him tied for 3rd longest streak of all time. If he (or anyone else) starts another one, I'll let you know when they get up around 30. Until then...

For Kim, Part 4/5

For your viewing pleasure, our next contestant on my list of top 5 actors is one Sam Rockwell.



This is probably the actor that I've watched the most out of the ones on my list, yet no one really knows him by name. He first came to my attention in college with his two roles in 1999, first as the sadistic "Wild Bill" in The Green Mile and then his hilarious turn as Crewman #6 in the excellent Star Trek satire, Galaxy Quest. Anyone who can do drama and comedy with such ease was surely someone to be watched. And I haven't been disappointed yet, 12 years later.

He quickly followed this up with notable roles in the camp classic Charlie's Angels, Charlie Kaufman's Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and Matchstick Men. He continued with several roles in critically acclaimed movies, none of which I've actually seen yet with the exception of 2009's Moon. In a role written specifically with him in mind, Rockwell explores the depths of loneliness and what it really means to be human in this story about a lunar miner nearing the end of his 3-year contract; it's a fantastic little picture.

There are few actors that you can be sure will bring something memorable to each of their roles, but Sam Rockwell is one of those. It's almost enough to make me want to see Cowboys & Aliens. Almost...

For Kim, Part 3/5

#3 in my list of favorite celebrity males is Guy Pearce. Who? Here... does this help?


Pearce is not only on this list because he's a talented actor, but because he stars in two of my favorite movies of all time. In 1997's L.A. Confidential, he plays Ed Exley, the one cop in all of L.A. who is incorruptible. Although it's an ensemble film, Pearce's journey from naive rookie cop to hardened veteran provides the backbone that supports the entire story.

After laying low for a couple of years, Pearce re-emerged in 2000 as brain-damaged Lenny in Christopher Nolan's brilliant Memento. If you haven't seen it, you absolutely must. It is the only movie I've been compelled to see three times in the theater. Pearce's performance was enough to elevate him to leading-man status for a little while, and he starred in such films as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Time Machine. When those didn't do particularly well at the box office, his star dwindled a little.

Through the years, he's continued to produce quality work albeit mostly not in mainstream projects. Most notably, he played Colin Firth's pompous twit of a brother, King Edward VIII, in The King's Speech. Looking at his IMDB page, I can see a lot of projects that are in development. A true chameleon, I look forward to what Guy Pearce will do in the future.

For Kim, Part 2/5

Coming in next on my list of five favorite male actors is late addition James McAvoy.

First off, he's a Scot. There's nothing more entertaining than listening to a Scottish accent. Second, it helps that he's actually a good actor. He'd primarily been in British films and TV until breaking through back in 2005 with his role as everyone's favorite patsy, Tumnus the faun, in the first Chronicles of Narnia. Say what you want about that movie series (I happen to like it), but McAvoy's portrayal of the bumbling, nervous Tumnus was note perfect. He followed that up with a couple bravura performances over the next couple years.

In 2006, he played the lead in The Last King of Scotland. Forrest Whitaker got all the credit (as well as an Oscar) for his portrayal of Idi Amin, but McAvoy provides the heart and soul, flawed though it may be, that drives the movie. Watching his struggle to escape the trouble that he creates for himself is riveting. He followed this up in 2007 with another great performance, this time opposite Keira Knightley and Saoirse Ronan, in Atonement. As a completely unrelated aside, if you liked Atonement you should go see Hanna, in theaters now. It also features Saoirse Ronan and shares the same director, Joe Wright. If you haven't seen Atonement, you should. It is a beautiful and tragic film.

After that, I'll confess that I haven't seen anything with McAvoy in it, but I'm eagerly awaiting his next great role. He starred in Wanted, but I've had a strong aversion to Angelina Jolie ever since Tomb Raider. He's also in the recent Lincoln assassination movie The Conspirator and he'll be playing Professor X in the forthcoming X-Men: First Class. I'm looking forward to catching both of those.

Stay tuned for next Friday's update when I reveal #3...

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Hot off the presses, fans of Chuck can celebrate. For some insane reason, it's been renewed for 13 more episodes next year. Word has it that this will be its final season, and looking at its ratings you can understand why. However, since this is NBC, where everything gets lousy ratings, anything is possible.

For Kim, Part 1/5

In the 3rd season of the sitcom "Friends", there's an episode (The One with Frank Jr.) where Ross infamously crafts a list of five celebrities that he's allowed to sleep with should he happen to run into them. Every guy who's ever seen it has carefully crafted their own list to share with their significant other. This is not that list.

Instead, this is the post that I promised Kim over at HarrisWorld I would make when I made a return to blogging: my list of five celebrity "guy crushes". After careful consideration, I've assembled this list of the 5 male actors that for whatever reason really make me interested in seeing a movie or TV show. [Note: Clive Owen was not allowed to be on this list, as I'm told that girls actually like him.] Without further ado, in no particular order, here is the first of them:


Nathan Fillion -
I'm not the world's biggest Joss Whedon fan, but Fillion's funny and nuanced performance as Captain Mal Reynolds in "Firefly" makes it an exception well worth watching. Believe it or not, other than 2007's criminally unseen Waitress, I've never seen anything else that he's in. His inclusion on this list means that I certainly want to make the time to watch Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog or his current TV project "Castle" some day.

Project: Disney

We're going to Disney World... again! This time we'll be celebrating the Christmas holiday there with Meaghan's family. In honor of this trip, we've decided to do the unthinkable and attempt to watch all 50 of the Disney animated "classics" (plus the Disney/Pixar films as time allows) prior to leaving on our trip. Not only are we watching the movies themselves, we're also enjoying the special features on the DVDs.

Our progress so far:
1) Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) - the first feature-length animated movie ever. When you stop to consider that Disney went from Steamboat Willie to Snow White in less than 10 years, this is truly a remarkable film. It helps that it's still entertaining to watch all these years later.

2) Pinocchio (1940) - I hadn't seen this in years, but it's regained a position high in my list of favorite Disney films. Three things of note, if you happen to see this again:
- The music in this is fantastic; it actually won the Oscar for Best Score.
- There is an amazing shot about 25 mins into the movie that takes place the morning that Pinocchio is about to head off to school. It involves a lengthy panning zoom down from a bell tower to Geppetto's front door. They had to set up special equipment just to get it on film.
- Lamp-wick's transformation into a jackass on Pleasure Island is one of the most horrific scenes in a movie ever.

I'll keep you up-to-date on our progress or lack thereof over the next few months.

Up next: Fantasia (1940)

So... How Were Those Movies?, Part 1

If you're a long-time reader here at the Tower you'll know that my first instinct upon watching a movie, a TV show, or reading a book, etc. is to compose my thoughts into a lengthy piece. That's fun for me, but as a consequence it means that I rarely ever get anything into print in a timely manner (if at all) to aid people in their decisions of what to see. So instead, I'll try to give some quick thoughts on the four movies from last week's list that we've seen so far. In short, they're all quite good and all worth seeing, but for very different reasons.

127 Hours


Directed by Danny Boyle (28 Days Later, Slumdog Millionaire, Trainspotting)
Starring James Franco (Milk, Spider-Man, "Freaks and Geeks")

127 Hours is a retelling of the true-life tale of Aron Ralston who got his right arm trapped by a large boulder while climbing alone in a slot canyon near Canyonlands National Park in Utah. Because he hadn't told anyone specifically where he was going, he was ultimately forced to amputate his own arm after being trapped there for the titular 127 hours.

Danny Boyle's direction is a little over-the-top at times. It's such a simple story that he must have felt the need to jazz it up with some camera tricks. Unfortunately they're for the most part distracting without adding anything useful to the film. Add in an overwrought score by A.R. Rahman (he did the Bollywood-infused Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack), and you have a potential recipe for disaster.

Considering that the majority of the movie consists of Aron trapped by himself in the canyon, you'd better get an enjoyable acting performance out of your lead. I'm pleased to say that James Franco is up to the task. Equal parts gritty, touching, and humorous, Franco's performance overcomes the rest of the movie's faults and is the main reason to see this. Even if you're not a fan of anything that you've seen him do in the past, there's a good chance you'll like this.

For all of the faults in the direction and music, they both come together wonderfully in the climactic scene where Ralston is forced to hack his arm off. If you are at all squeamish about blood, you may want to close your eyes here. For those of you with iron stomachs, enjoy 127 Hours at its best. Recommended.


The King's Speech


Directed by Tom Hooper ("John Adams")
Starring Colin Firth (Love Actually, Bridget Jones's Diary, "Pride and Prejudice"), Geoffrey Rush (Pirates of the Caribbean, Shine, Elizabeth), Helena Bonham Carter (Fight Club, Harry Potter's 5, 6, & 7, Sweeney Todd), Guy Pearce (Memento, L.A. Confidential, The Hurt Locker)

Who would have thought that you could make a compelling movie about a British royal and his st-st-stuttering speech impediment? I'm pleased to say that The King's Speech is an outstanding piece of film-making. With so many great actors in one place, it's almost inevitable that this would be good. It doesn't disappoint.

Colin Firth's speech patterns are simply amazing as he slips into the tightly wound persona of the man who would become King George VI. It's difficult to portray royalty with any degree of sympathy, but Firth does it here with aplomb. The tension as he prepares to deliver his pivotal speech signalling the start of Britain's involvement in World War II is gripping. Hooper does a smart thing here and takes a back seat, unlike Boyle in 127 Hours, letting Beethoven to do much of the work for him.

For me, the real star here is Geoffrey Rush as the King's unconventional speech therapist, Lionel Logue. It's good to see Rush get back to real quality acting, as opposed to just acting like a pirate. He delivers a performance that balances both the assertiveness and obeisance that one would need in order to work with a royal at a personal level.

If you have any misgivings about the subject matter because you think it would make for a boring movie, forget about it. I had very little in the way of expectations going in, and it completely blew me away. Highly recommended.

It's Oscar Preview Weekend!

As we do every year, this coming weekend is our annual Oscar preview movie watching blitz. We typically hop on a bus to a theater-rich part of town and watch 3 or 4 movies in one go. Does anybody have thoughts on more movies we should add to our list of options?

Our current list is:
127 Hours
Black Swan
The Fighter
The King's Speech
True Grit

All of the above are currently receiving an 8.4 or higher on IMDb, which would easily place them within the Top 250 of all time should those numbers hold. Granted there is a skew toward movies from the Internet age since people don't have a tendency to go back and rate older films, but that's still impressive.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

From the second the Universal Studios theme rolls on screen, you know that Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is not going to be your normal, everyday movie viewing experience. With the video game generation (we'll say the 35 & under crowd) firmly in his sights, director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) has created an audio/visual masterpiece detailing a 20-something's struggle toward adulthood. Based on the Scott Pilgrim series of graphic novels by Bryan Lee O'Malley, I recommend this film to anyone with a sense of humor.


Scott (Michael Cera - "Arrested Development", Juno, Superbad) is your typical driftless 22-year old: unemployed, living off of his well-to-do roommate, hanging out with his high school-age "girlfriend", Knives. Don't worry, he's not really a cradle robber, they mostly just play video games (particularly a great looking mashup of DDR & Street Fighter) and talk about music. Like every good slacker, Scott also plays bass in a band. His band, Sex Bob-omb, sucks but has aspirations of hitting the big time. One night, Scott dreams of a mysterious pink-haired girl on roller blades. When he sees her in real life the next day in the library it starts him down a painful journey of self-discovery that might just end in true love.

The movie is absolutely steeped in pop culture references: all of the bands are named after NES games (Clash at Demonhead, Crash 'n the Boys), many scenes visually reference specific video games, there's even a scene that borrows the music and laugh track from Seinfeld. Yes, it probably helped my enjoyment that I got a lot (but by no means all) of these references, but it's certainly not necessary to understand them to like the movie. I would go into more detail about some of this stuff, but I think this is definitely one of those movies that the less you know going into it the better it's going to be. On top of this, it's full of funny performances and intricately choreographed action sequences that don't require any specialized hipster knowledge. Don't take my word for it though. Check it out for yourself and let me know what you think.

Inception

Dom Cobb (Leonardo Dicaprio) is the leader of a crack team of thieves. Using the latest military-grade technology they can extract your deepest, darkest secrets directly from your mind. How? Abduction, sedation, and infiltration of your dreams. When a job goes awry, to save their bacon Cobb's team is forced to accept the impossible job. Instead of extracting secrets from someone's subconscious, they have to perform inception, the act of implanting an idea in someone's mind. The difficulty being that the target has to believe that it was their own idea.

That's a general summary of the plot of "Inception", but to say that's all the movie is about would be a gross understatement. Equal parts heist movie, Bond homage, and philosophical dissertation, it is the latest masterwork from the mind of Christopher Nolan ("Memento", "The Prestige", "The Dark Knight"). One of the more interesting aspects of the film is the well-thought out set of rules that explains how dreams are structured and function. I'm not going to list them all here, but in short, there can be multiple nested layers of dreams and it's easy for the dreamer to lose sight of where or what reality is. In order to leave the dream, one must either receive a "kick", the sensation of falling that I'm sure everyone of you has felt that snaps you out of your sleep, or be killed. Your dream can be populated by anyone you want, but unless it's someone that has joined you in a shared dream, they're really just aspects of your own subconscious.

Cobb's dreams are constantly troubled by the presence of his wife (Marion Cotillard - "La vie en rose", "Nine"). It's not really her, as something has happened in reality that keeps her from being part of Cobb's life, but rather an aspect that Cobb inadvertantly brings with him into the dreams. Never nice, she does everything she can to foil the task at hand. What has really happened between her and Cobb is one of the questions left for the viewer to decipher the answer to.

At its core, "Inception" explores some of the most basic philosophical questions about the nature of perception and reality. At times it's difficult to tell if what we're watching is "reality" or one of Cobb's (or his team's) dreams. In the end, it doesn't really matter as we're left to think about our own lives and how the baggage we carry around colors our own experience.

You can even extend the model the movie presents to questions beyond its immediate scope. If you're killed in a dream, you escape back to reality. What happens when we die in reality? Is there some higher order of reality that we escape to? Is this what we perceive as the afterlife? Any movie that can continue to percolate in the viewer's mind weeks after they've seen it is good in my book. I highly recommend that you check it out.

Note: If you see this, please do so with curbed expectations and you'll probably enjoy it more. There's a lot of hype surrounding this movie, so much so that it's currently ranked #3 all time on IMDB. It's definitely good, but it's certainly not that good.

(500) Days of Summer

Meaghan and I went to see (500) Days of Summer a couple of weeks ago in the midst of all of our moving preparations. It was inevitable that we'd see it eventually as it stars two of our favorite young actors, Joseph Gordon-Levitt ("3rd Rock From the Sun", Brick, Mysterious Skin, The Lookout) and Zooey Deschanel (Elf, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Bridge to Terabithia) as Tom and Summer, two star-crossed lovers... or not.

(500) Days is a romantic comedy. Tom lives in LA and has a degree in architecture, so naturally he writes greeting cards for a living. He hates it, dead end job that it is, but it's a living so he sticks it out. One day, his boss gets a new assistant named Summer and his life will never be the same, but not in the way you think. Unlike almost every other rom com ever committed to celluloid the guy doesn't get the girl this time. Instead, the film simply documents the 500 days that Summer is in Tom's life. Don't worry, I'm not giving anything away. We find out that Summer breaks up with Tom in one of the early scenes since the movie jumps around and time, clearly delineated by clever interludes labeled "Day 364", etc.

Along the way we see the highs and lows of their relationship, encouraging the viewer to try to piece together what went wrong, and what they each could have possibly taken away from the experience. Despite the premise, and the ultimate outcome, (500) Days is hilarious and uplifting throughout. Some of the high points include not one, but two scenes featuring drunken karaoke and the best use of split-screen in a movie since The Rules of Attraction. I was lucky enough to see it at a mostly full theater in Uptown, and the audience was in good form. It's always best when you watch a funny comedy with people willing to laugh.

I highly recommend (500) Days to anyone with a pulse. If nothing else, it'll make you reflect upon the landscape of failed relationships that has brought you to the place you are today. Oh, and I'd recommend viewing The Graduate prior to seeing this. Just saying.

The Brothers Bloom

Meaghan and I went down to the Uptown last week to catch writer/director Rian Johnson's new con man film, The Brothers Bloom. If you're not familiar with Johnson, he's responsible for 2006's brilliant high school noir Brick. If you have seen Brick, leave your preconceptions at the door as this movie is nothing like it.


Brothers Stephen (Mark Ruffalo - Zodiac, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and Bloom (Adrien Brody - The Pianist, The Darjeeling Limited) were foster children. Bouncing in and out of homes during their youth, Stephen quickly discovered that the only way to cope with his life was to write it for himself. He would concoct elaborate plans (complete with flow charts) and Bloom acted out whatever part the plan called for.

Over the years, with the help of the enigmatic Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi - Babel), the brothers become the best con men in the world. They have it all: money, women, fame. But Bloom doesn't have the one thing he wants more than anything in the world: an unwritten life. He's been playing roles in Stephen's schemes for so long that he doesn't know where the role ends and he really begins. At the top of their game, Bloom walks away to find out exactly who he is.

Two months later, Stephen tracks Bloom down for one last big con. If all goes well, they could walk away with millions, and Stephen will promise to finally leave him alone. Enter the fabulous Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener, The Fountain) as the unwitting and completely eccentric million-dollar mark. The rest of the film, which I won't detail here, is the story of the final con of the Brothers Bloom.

Equal parts mad-cap comedy, action flick, and touching character piece, The Brothers Bloom walks the tightrope well somehow managing to balance all of its disparate moods. Quirky and stylish, at its heart you're still able to feel Bloom's pain and the love that the brothers have for each other. Even though the acting is superb throughout (the 3 principals are among my favorite actors working today which never hurts), the real star of the film is Johnson's sparkling script. Scene after scene leaps off the screen until the bullets from Chekhov's gun are finally fired in the final act.

In a world full of poorly written work, it's always a joy to find something so well done. I highly recommend you track this down in the theater, or at the very least add it to your queue.

#95: Schindler's List

I'm going to keep this short and sweet because I'm way behind on 1997 movies here. If you're like I was and you've never seen Schindler's List before, stop what you're doing now and add it to your Netflix queue. There's a reason it's on everyone's "Top 10 Movies of All-Time" list.

The acting is superb throughout, but then what do you expect when you put Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, and Ben Kingsley together in the same film? It manages to be emotionally affecting without dipping into Spielberg's usual bag of tricks to manipulate the viewer. Thankfully, he understands that you don't need to add any pathos to the Holocaust to make it a truly horrible thing. When he chooses to play things straight like this, he really can be a brilliant filmmaker.

The movie actually came out in 1994, so you might be wondering what it's doing as part of this project. When it made it's much ballyhooed TV premiere in 1997 it was as a "Director's Cut", so that's what I watched here. From reading on the Internets, there doesn't look to actually be anything different in the Director's Cut other than an extended closing credits sequence in which cast members and Schindler survivors place stones on Schindler's grave in Jerusalem. Nevertheless, I'm glad I continue to make exceptions like this. If I didn't, I probably still wouldn't have seen this remarkable piece of work.

Coming up hopefully soon as I've already watched them:
#96: Marvin's Room
#97: Strays (written and directed by Vin Diesel? It's true)
#98: Enchanted Tales: Hercules

Kersplat!

Right... so... Watchmen? Now that you all have pretty much seen it, it seems like a good time to talk about it again, right? Right? Ugh.

As a reader of the book, I suppose I don't really have anything useful to say about the movie. It's an interesting experience to watch something that hews to its source material so closely (up until the last reel anyway), unlike most modern Hollywood adaptations. Nothing is surprising, but there's a kind of voyeuristic joy in seeing something you know well played out on the screen. It was fun to watch, but a somehow shallow experience.


Perhaps it's that some of the characterization is lost amongst all the superfluous slick action sequences that have been added to the film, or maybe it's just that a film of this scope doesn't really have time to let the characters breathe. Let's take Rorshach as an example. He's an uncompromising S.O.B., a bit of a cross between Travis Bickle and Batman (Christian Bale, not Adam West). Morally reprehensible, but someone who deserves your respect. In the movie though, he's our cool action hero. We love him, or at worst pity him. Maybe we aren't given enough time to actually stop and think about the things that he's doing. Maybe we're so desensitized to "heroes" doing criminal acts in pursuit of the greater good these days that it washes over us as no big deal.

I can't help but think that if this movie had actually been made right away back in the mid-80s that it would have a greater impact. Not only would the setting of an alternate Cold War America on the brink of nuclear annihilation have been more socially relevant, but the characters would have felt different, too. Think back to 1985 for a second. Superheroes were popularly portrayed as either dorky goody two-shoes, campy crusaders, or roid-raged green guys. A bunch of morally ambiguous anti-heroes dressed in spandex would have seemed a bit more novel.

In the end, while Watchmen is probably a great superhero movie, it's not a great movie. If you're into that sort of thing, then check it out. If you like the movie, then I recommend the book. If you're interested, I have a copy waiting for you on my shelf.

Watchmen Expectations

It's official. I just purchased tickets for tomorrow's 1:10 showing of Watchmen on the IMAX at the Minnesota Zoo. In preparation for the experience, I finally got around to reading the acclaimed Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, From Hell) comic that it's based on. It's every bit as good as all of the hype suggests. However, if you're going to see the movie and have only seen the various trailers and commercials, you're being misled.

Despite its appearances, Watchmen is not your typical slam-bang, action-packed superhero story. The movie is supposed to be pretty faithful to the source material, so let me issue some warnings now. At its heart, Watchmen is a whodunnit. You shouldn't know the who until sometime in the 2nd half, and you won't know the why until very close to the end. Most of the time the bad actors are well established going in (Look, it's Magneto! Hey, there's the Joker!), but that won't be the case here. Instead, you'll be presented with five heroes with very different world views. In the end, you'll have to decide which one you agree with most.

There are a lot of characters and an alternate timeline to deal with, so I thought I'd assist by giving a brief, spoiler-free primer. If you want to go in completely blind, feel free to skip this part. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to this movie.

Most of the timeline changes will be covered in a montage during the opening credits, but here are a couple high points:
- Masked heroes first appeared on the streets in the 1940s
- The US won the Vietnam War
- Masked heroes were outlawed by the Keene Act in 1977
- The year is 1985, it's the height of the Cold War, and Richard Nixon is still President

The story is likely to jump back in forth in time from present-day (1985) to various points in the past, but the main heroes fall into two main waves: the Minutemen from the 1940s and the Crime Busters (Watchmen in the movie) from the 1960s.

Minutemen:
- Hooded Justice: Identity unknown. The original masked vigilante, disappeared under mysterious circumstances during the McCarthy era.
- The Comedian: Identity unknown. Active employee of the US government; went to Vietnam.
- Nite Owl: Hollis Mason. Retired, owns a car repair shop. Wrote a memoir about life as a superhero.
- Silk Spectre: Sally Jupiter. Typical sexpot superheroine, very commercial.
- Captain Metropolis, Silhouette, Dollar Bill, Mothman - not important.

Watchmen:
- Dr. Manhattan: Dr. Jon Osterman. The one true superhero with powers. Due to an accident at a US government lab, he gained the ability to manipulate time and space at the subatomic level. Works for the US government; is the reason Vietnam was won and is a one-man nuclear deterrent in the Cold War.
- Ozymandias: Adrian Veidt. "Smartest Man Alive", he retired from the hero business before the Keene Act. Is now a successful businessman.
- Nite Owl: Dan Dreiberg. Inspired by the original Nite Owl, was forced into retirement by the Keene Act.
- Silk Spectre: Laurel Juspeczyk. Daughter of the original Silk Spectre, trained for the job at a very young age, forced into retirement by the Keene Act. Works for the government as Dr. Manhattan's "companion".
- Rorshach: Identity unknown. Still active despite the Keene Act, known for his brutal methods, former partner of Nite Owl.

I'll try to post again tomorrow after I've seen it with a brief review.

It Was All Personal

Meaghan and I were back in the Roch for an extended weekend and decided to cash in some free movie passes at one of our old haunts, the Chateau Theatres. Being smack in the middle of the annual winter dead zone of bad movies, we opted for a good old-fashioned action flick, Taken. If it doesn't involve a DC superhero of some kind, we typically don't see this sort of thing on the big screen. It was getting an 8.0 on IMDB and hey, it was free so it seemed worth the risk.

Before I get into the movie itself, it just wouldn't be a post here at the Amber Tower without me rambling on for a bit about something first. If I had done some research first, I would have realized that we had nothing to worry about because Taken has a good pedigree. Co-written by Luc Besson (Leon: The Professional - which if you haven't seen is a must. Natalie Portman in her first feature film; she's always better in edgy roles [see Closer, Garden State]) and Robert Mark Kamen (they co-wrote The Fifth Element which features this sublimely silly action sequence among others), it was bound to be entertaining. Throw in Liam Neeson, who is almost always good, and you're guaranteed a success.

On its face, Taken is a run-of-the-mill action flick. Neeson is a former government agent whose teenage daughter is kidnapped while on vacation in Paris. His mission, should he choose to accept it, is to go to France and get her back. There's a little bit of a "ripped from the headlines" feel to the story as it turns out that the culprits have nabbed her for the sex slave trade. Unfortunately, if this movie was made to raise awareness of the issue I'm afraid it gets a bit lost amongst all the action.

It rises a bit above the run-of-the-mill in its staging of the action sequences. In your typical film, our invincible hero blasts his way through the movie on little more than his sheer badassery. In Taken, the filmmakers have taken care to show how and why Neeson is such a badass. When infiltrating the bad guys' HQ you can see him taking note of how many men are lurking about and how they're armed. When he goes to jump on to a moving boat, he literally pauses for a few seconds to look before he leaps. Our man of action is cautious and studied, but incredibly lethal.

The fight scenes are quick and to the point. No need to waste time with endless choreography (like any Hong Kong action flick) or thousands of bullets (Rambo), our man can disable a room full of baddies in under 30 seconds. He even has time to deliver some clever (but not snarky) one-liners in the process. I don't think it would be spoiling anything to tell you that our antihero saves his daughter and leaves a trail of bodies in his wake.

In the end, it's enough to make you wonder what the world would be like if everybody in law enforcement took such a personal interest in all of the victims of crime. Would the world be a safer place? Would human rights be violated in the process, or does making an omelette require the breaking of a few eggs? Taken offers no answers, but it is good fun.