Movies

#140RVW: You Only Live Twice (1967)

Roald Dahl’s bizarre script turns Bond Japanese for no real reason while Pleasance births decades of parodies. Best Bond title song & score.

#140RVW: Eight Men Out (1988)

There have been many great baseball films. This may well be the best, the truest & most thought-provoking. Top shelf acting, plus, Johnny C!

140 Character Movie Review – #140RVW

Wonderful & honest film. Avoids being too proud of itself with winning performances by all. Pacing is uneven. Nearly forgot multiple plots.

Spoiler-free Movie Review of Crazy, Stupid, Love.:

(#140RVW published 9/10/2012; full review published July 12, 2014)

The success of this movie shouldn’t be surprising. All of the leads are very good and genuinely likable actors. Any one of them could have anchored this film. The script is fantastic, with excellent dialogue by screenwriter Dan Fogelman.

Although nearly all of the characters are interesting, the movie focuses on Carrell’s Cal Weaver, separated from his wife Emily (Moore) and miserable. After humiliating himself repeatedly at a local singles bar, he is taken under the wing of lothario Jacob Palmer (Gosling), who attempts to mold Cal into a player. The scenes with Jacob & Cal are among the film’s high points.

Another story involves Jacob’s increasing fascination with Hannah (Stone), an unfiltered woman causing him to rethink his approach. A further story involves Emily trying to make it work with David Lindhagen (Kevin Bacon), with whom she had an affair that ended her marriage. And then another storyline has Cal & Emily’s son falling for his babysitter, while she pines for Cal. And then another – forget it. You can see the problem; there is a lot going on here – maybe too much. All of the pieces are great, but there may be a few too many threads, which leads to a long run time.

Crazy, Stupid, Love is an awful lot of fun and one I’ve stopped on while flipping more times than is probably healthy. Recommended.

Poster:

Trailer:

Bechdel Test:

Fail

The Representation Test Score: C (5 pts)

(http://therepresentationproject.org/grading-hollywood-the-representation-test/)

[schema type=”movie” name=”Crazy, Stupid, Love” description=”A middle-aged husband’s life changes dramatically when his wife asks him for a divorce. He seeks to rediscover his manhood with the help of a newfound friend, Jacob, learning to pick up girls at bars.” director_1=” Glenn Ficarra” director_2=” John Requa” actor_1=”Steve Carrell” actor_2=”Ryan Gosling” actor_3=”Julianne Moore” actor_4=”Emma Stone”]

Main Cast	Steve Carell Cal Weaver, Ryan Gosling Jacob Palmer, Julianne Moore Emily Weaver, Emma Stone Hannah
Rating	PG-13
Release Date	Fri 29 Jul 2011 UTC
Director	Glenn Ficarra, John Requa
Genres	Comedy, Drama, Romance
Plot	A middle-aged husband’s life changes dramatically when his wife asks him for a divorce. He seeks to rediscover his manhood with the help of a newfound friend, Jacob, learning to pick up girls at bars.
Poster
Runtime	118
Tagline	This Is Crazy
Writers	Dan Fogelman (written by)
Year	2011

#140RVW: The Black Hole (1979)

Last saw in theater in 1979. So inappropriate for kids in retrospect. Disney aims for Star Wars but instead Kubricks 20,000 leagues to 2001.

X-Men: First Class (2011)

140 Character Movie Review – #140RVW

Great acting, story, execution: the complete package. Quite long but earned the screen time, which makes it practically unique…

Spoiler-free Movie Review for X-Men: First Class

(#140RVW published 9/8/2012; full review published June 20, 2014)

Wow, an X-Men movie not featuring Wolverine? Sign me up. Don’t get me wrong, I love the character – nearly everyone does. But enough already. In fact, we’ve probably seen enough of all of these actors’ versions of the characters. Time for a reboot…

That’s not what’s exciting about X-Men: First Class, though. While previous films have had scenes set in the past, this is the first period film. What’s more, it takes place in the 1960’s, which gives it the interesting feel of being in the same rough timeframe that some of the early comics inhabited.

Personally, I can’t get enough of modern films using for their setting the past 50 years. Period movies that go back further than that in time are great, but hardly rare. It’s much more interesting to me to duplicate a much more recent time period. Particularly for a franchise picture. I harbor hopes that one day they’ll (re)adapt the original James Bond novels but leave them set in the 1950’s & 60’s.

(Very) loosely taking it’s premise from the comic series of the same name, this picture came about after plans for a Magneto origin movie in the vein of X-Men Origins: Wolverine were scuttled (thank goodness).

Bryan Singer, the director of the first two X-Men films developed this and was on board to direct until conflicts with finishing Jack the Giant Slayer kept him from being able to helm First Class. With that they turned to Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake, Kick-Ass), who ran with the Bond-ian feel for the 60’s. He even employed other 60’s film techniques, such as split screens. It’s a very different look for a comic book movie and suits the story well.

The cast is marvelous, with Michael Fassbender & James McAvoy particularly standing out. The relationship between Charles Xavier & Erik Lensherr is absolutely the anchor of the film.

As for the rest of the mutants, it’s kind of a crapshoot. Sort of depends on your level of interest in the comics.

Jennifer Lawrence is wonderful as Mystique, although I’ve never found the character remotely interesting and I’m concerned that with a big-name actress in the role Mystique will get Storm/Wolverine screen time.
Nicholas Hoult as Dr. Hank McCoy/Beast: I think this character kind of steals the show, although I’m not sure about the look of the makeup.
Caleb Landry Jones as Sean Cassidy/Banshee: What a foolish character.
Lucas Till as Alex Summers/Havok: Cool…
Edi Gathegi as Armando Muñoz / Darwin: We’re starting to get into lazy comic writer territory here. “Hey, he can change into anything he wants – that’ll save some trouble.”
I’m not even going to go into the Hellfire Club mutants: Azazel, Riptide, Emma Frost, Angel (how many characters are there named Angel, anyway?). These aren’t characters, they’re plot devices. You need to solve a story problem, you create a new mutant that can miraculously do whatever you need for that scenario. It’s lazy and cheap without any plausible scientific explanation and why I never read the X-Men books.

X-Men: First Class is so enjoyable. Shattering the look of these comic book movies is so welcome as it was getting very tired. What sounded like another layer of superhero wallpaper turned out to be a well-thought out and executed breath of fresh air.