Movie opposites: Winnie the Pooh and The Others

Last week I watched two movies that were from opposite ends of the general movie-interest spectrum.

1. Winnie the Pooh, 2011, dir. Stephen J. Anderson and Don Hall

Super cute. I mean, what else do you expect from Winnie the Pooh? The plot this time around was that Eeyore lost his tail and everyone was trying to find a new one for him, along with a subplot about a monster called the Backson and our friends' efforts to capture him. You might be slightly thrown off by the fact that all the voices aren't exactly the same as they were when you were a kid, but I thought all the performances were winning. It's also full of my favorite Pooh element, which is the interaction with the text of the book (e.g. letters sliding across the screen as the characters bump into them.) There isn't anything particularly new about this movie or compelling to adults, even, other than that it's a pure, sweet kids' movie, which I suspect was great for parents, and huge doses of nostalgia all around.  Watch it when you want a smile.

2. The Others, 2001, dir. Alejandro Amenabar
I actually remember seeing this in the theater in high school with my friends.  I remember thinking it was both good creepy fun and also just plain strange--my friends and I often quoted the out-of-nowhere ridiculous line from the husband, "Sometimes I bleed."  My teenage assessment still rings true, pretty much.

In this movie, Nicole Kidman plays a mother who lives in a giant spooky house with her two kids who are "photosensitive," meaning that the movie is very dark all the time, which is a great concept.  Her husband is off at war, and she's looking for some domestic help.  A trio of helpers (including the old woman from Lost!) show up on the door and say they used to work at this house in the past.  Thus the scary scene is set, and we start to see the evidence of ghoslty presences around the house and how the two kids are dealing with it all.

Kidman gives a great performance, endowing her character with good doses of hardass, heartbroken, and terrified all at once, and the director does a nice job with the setting and mood.  There are some good startle-scares and other thriller tropes (creepy kids, drop cloths on old furniture, lots of fog), but it's not gory or cheap-feeling like many scary movies.  It does have some bizarre moments (like the aforementioned interaction with the husband) and unravels a little slowly, but overall, it works.  Watch it in the dark and try not to jump.

Trailer review! The Hunger Games

I don't usually enjoy movie trailers. I find their grandiosity that producers must deem necessary to attract audiences repetitive and irritating. So this morning I found myself surprised to be completely captivated by the new (first) Hunger Games trailer. (Check out my take on the books at this post.)

Full disclosure, I'm completely biased by the fact that my friend Sash of http://www.sashandem.com/ is an extra in the movie. But I don't think I'm off-base in saying that this movie looks AWESOME.  Casting fell into place perfectly, world building looks great so far, and they definitely nailed the anticipation for the start of the games without spoiling anything that happens!  I'm impressed that they built in so much tension by showing only things that happen before the games.

I'm going to see Breaking Dawn soon and, even though I am a big fan of the movies generally (don't argue about this with me now, not the point), I'm not even excited about it because that book is so terrible.  So, thank you, Hunger Games, for providing me with a dose of good ol' YA-book-to-film-adaptation happiness.

Bite-sized review catch-up! Tron Legacy, The Misfits, Drive, State of Play, Dune

Someone's been slacking on review writing lately, and that someone is me.  So here is a mini-review of each thing I've taken in recently, things which I may or may not expand upon in a full review later (let's be honest, probably not).

Tron: Legacy
Film, 2010, dir. Joseph Kosinski

This is a pretty awesome-looking movie that has few other redeeming qualities.  You don't really need to know what it was about beyond seeing the preview.  It probably was sweet in IMAX.  See it for the nifty new motorbike-thingies, see it for the Matrix-y fight scenes, see it for the aging technology on Jeff Bridges.  See it if it's free on your Netflix and you feel like a no-thinking kind of night.  Otherwise, don't bother.  The story doesn't make any sense and the dialogue is stupid.  Oh, I should mention I never saw the original Tron, so maybe that makes a difference in how much you appreciate the story, but I kind of doubt it.

The Misfits
Novel, James Howe, 2003

A good YA (that's young adult, my friends) book, one that I would have recommended to some of my former students.  It's about a group of outcast friends in middle school who decide to try to shake things up by running for student government on the platform of stopping the name-calling all around them.  It's got a very heavy "everyone is special and you can change the world" theme going, a theme that became too obstructive of some interesting character potential for this adult reader.  (For example, the main character is an overweight boy who works in a department store with a cold, lonely boss so that he can bring home a few extra dollars for his reformed drunk widower father.  So much potential that gets sidetracked for the quick resolution!)  But it's quickly digestible and lots of fun, so if you run across it, recommend it to your young teenage relatives.

Drive
Film, 2011, dir. Nicolas Winding Refn

Here's another rare gem for this blog--something you can still see in the theaters!  But honestly, don't.  Well, maybe do.  But not before you read this warning: it's gross.  Horribly gory violently gross.  The thing is, it was a totally normal movie for the first half an hour or so, and I was thinking, hey, I'm glad Jamie wanted to see this even though I didn't know anything about it.  Then someone's (I won't spoil whose) head gets blown off by a point-blank shotgun.  And there's more where that came from.  Ok, warning over.  Horrifying violence aside, this was a really interesting piece of art, which is I think why reviewers seem to love it.  Ryan Gosling plays "The Driver," who gets mixed up in driving a getaway car for the wrong crowd.  It's a unique story and avoids cliche at every turn.  Gosling pulls off his character surprisingly well, and there are some nice performances by the supporting cast as well--Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, and Albert Brooks, to name a few.

State of Play
Film, 2009, dir. Kevin Macdonald

This movie won't be one of my all-time favorites, but I liked it, and I'd see it again.  Ben Affleck plays a politician whose staffer died in suspicious circumstances on the Metro tracks here in DC.  Russell Crowe and Rachel McAdams are the journalists digging around in it, and Robin Wright Penn is Affleck's pretty if mostly plot-irrelevant wife.  Oh and Helen Mirren's in there too, also in a non-interesting role.  That cast list is mostly why I Netflixed this one, and because I like movies about politics.  The mystery was interesting if not totally groundbreaking and the script and acting were good.  The thing I enjoyed most, though, was identifying each scene as "I've been there, that's totally DC!" or, "NO WAY that is totally NOT DC!"  Side note for those who also live here: You see the soon-to-become-a-metro-delay staffer walking through Adams Morgan before she gets to the Metro, but all of a sudden she's on the platform in...Rosslyn!  Amazing!  (Non-DCers, that's a jump all the way across town--in fact, into Virginia.)

Last but certainly not least...
Dune
Novel, Frank Herbert, 1965

I'm running out of steam here, and out of the five mini-reviews here, this one is most likely to make it into a longer review later, so to keep it extra short: A science fiction classic that didn't disappoint.  I found the writing to be a little opaque at times, but the story was exciting and complex, and I was left wanting to read the sequels even though I already decided I wouldn't since I've heard they're not worth it.





And that's it for now!  I'll try not to be a slacker in the future (that's what I always say...), and I promise to consider giving Dune the attention it's worth.