Another movie where George Clooney plays a lawyer but all of the edge and darkness of Michael Clayton is exchanged for the sunny, laid back Hawaii. Clooney’s character, Matt King, narrates a lot of the film from his point of view. I found this a bit distracting at first because George Clooney’s voice can be associated with so many other things and I wasn’t sure Clooney was convincing me he was his character. By the end of the film I was convinced by all the emotional scenes the characters had gone through together, but I still think of the character as George Clooney. The movie is about him struggling to take care of his two daughters while his wife is in the hospital in a coma. There are funny moments but the film is definitely not a comedy. It is a very emotional picture with frequently uncomfortable scenes. The movie feels every minute of its 1 hour and 55 minutes with what feels like a very purposely slow pacing. In the middle of all this is the feeling of seeing Hawaii for a little more than the classic beach photos. I haven’t seen the other Alexander Payne movies, namely Sideways, so I can’t compare, but this is a very solid film filled with emotion.

Steven Spielberg is at it again. I went into this movie with absolutely no expectations and some fear as it is over 2 hours long. The first 45 minutes or so are a complete pain, stereotyped Irish people fill the screen, a boy gets a horse and the Black Beauty and National Velvet storyline begins. Can the boy tame this wild animal when obviously the whole reason for the movie is that they are meant to be together? The first twist came when the boy was riding the horse heading for the jump and they didn’t leap over it in a moment of cinematic triumph (scored by John Williams in this film) but the horse stopped short and the boy flew over. Now it is time for the horse to go to war and part with the boy. This part interested me because Benedict Cumberbatch (the new Sherlock Holmes) was the commanding officer of the mounted division and was great, except for the fact that he got his entire regimen killed or captured in their first battle. Swords are no match for guns, as Spielberg previously taught us in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Then the movie proceeds and you know what is coming. Obviously this is a movie for kids but I don’t know why you would want to take kids to see a grisly movie about WWI. Eventually we get to the scenes in the trenches and a long shot for shot Saving Private Ryan version of a charge out of the trenches (vs a landing on the beaches). So Spielberg has betrayed this supposed children’s story with his real desire, to make a visually stunning war movie and I don’t think those two genres are compatible. The children who would be young enough to not find the boy/horse relationship cheesy shouldn’t be seeing a war movie, especially with rats in trenches crawling over dead bodies. And the adults interested in Spielberg’s take on WWI won’t want to sit through the first 40 minutes. The only thing that could save this is the decisive message about how stupid of a war WWI was in the first place but instead we just get the message that through anything, the love between a boy and his horse endures.
I am aware that this was previously a hit play in Britain and before that a children’s book and knowing nothing more than that assume that Hollywood must have taken something decent out of the story. Spielberg did use quite a few shots that evoked the theatre and I found myself, probably for the first time ever wishing I could have seen the play instead of the movie.

When I first saw the trailer for this movie I thought, cool John Slattery is in a movie, but then he looked pretty typecast with his hat and man in a suit with skinny tie look. Also I like Matt Damon, but how many movies can we have where he runs around like Jason Bourne with mysterious people after him? Well this one at least, I guess. The cinematography is sharp and Terence Stamp is good. Matt Damon is his usual self, running away and then yelling tough questions, like the thinking man’s Nicolas Cage.

This was an immensely enjoyable film. I had heard it was good and really enjoyed the first (and only) Mike Leigh film I’d seen so far, Happy-Go-Lucky. This film seemed aimed a little deeper and slightly less of a comedy than that film but most of all it was brimming with brilliant acting, especially by Jim Broadbent. With the most hair I’d ever seen him with in a film, he was a character you always looked to on the screen, the way the other characters in the movie looked to him. This film follows a couple through a year of their life, deeply focused on how different people react to events good and bad. It made me realize that some people are just better at life than others and it can sometimes come to them to shepherd the less fortunate through difficult times with a grin and sometimes with a grimace. This is one of the best films I’ve seen in a while and also one of the most emotional.

This film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2011. It’s an epic in terms of scope but when it ends it still feels like a very intimate movie. Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain both do a fine job, I think Sean Penn’s character could have been played by nearly anybody, and that wild look that’s always in his eyes might detract just a bit from it. There isn’t much of a way to explain this movie, just go see it, and be glad you saw it on a big screen.

A Sofia Coppola film, with very little talking like most of her films. Enjoyable, but not a must see by any measure. Stephen Dorff is a movie star living in a hotel, driving a really nice Ferrari around L.A. His daughter comes to see him and they hang out, take a quick trip to Italy. The cinematography is quiet and wandering just like the main character, it is definitely the most appealing aspect of the film. There isn’t too much to say about this, I assume it draws some from Sofia’s own life with her father. It’s a little disappointingly cliché at the end, almost too dramatic for the nice quiet pacing of the rest of the film and took away from what had been happening throughout.