This Place Is a Stranger

The Road is an amateurly crafted movie that doesn't really capture anything about the book that I felt strongly about. As is typical, the child actor playing the Boy was annoying and mostly boring. It was otherwise well performed, but that doesn't make up for the voiceover which fell completely flat out of its original context in the book. The very few changes that were made from the story were to no greater effect. An extraordinary book, a lifeless movie.

The Nolan brothers played Modern Warfare 2 for five straight days, then passed out. Eighteen hours later, they woke up and said simultaneously: "I just had the weirdest dream." and "I just had an idea for a movie."

I forgot that we watched this awhile back. I forgot, because nothing happens in this movie.

There's a pretty great scene between Sandra Bullock and the kid's biological mother. Everything else ranged from inoffensive to bad:

Not everything has to be turned into a humorous montage. We expect at least one montage, since this is a sports movie about overcoming adversity. Short of that, not everything has to be artificially set up as a joke. But, John Lee Hancock flaunts all the rules.

That's why we start with a scene from later in the movie, without explanation, and then start earlier. And just like with the "jokes," all the information is unnaturally arranged to make up for all the drama a movie about a black kid playing football should have.

The movie makes a big deal of poaching an egg and boning a duck, and yet gives nearly no screen time to either. In fact the only food advice I remember is that dry meat browns faster than wet meat. Lexie tells me that Amy Adams lacked confidence with a knife so much that they had to accommodate her when framing the shots.

There is hardly any conflict, because the movie is based on a book that is essentially about how the book got published, and then about the life of Julia Child, who we know from the movie (if nowhere else) eventually gets her book published.

The movie is a long train ride through featureless scenery. How many dishes did she have to cook to complete her goal? And how many did we actually see on screen? Going back to the boning of the duck for one last metaphor: It's like if we watched Rocky train for seventy minutes, and then skipped the fight scene.

A horror movie that trades graphic violence for nuanced acting, empty sudden shocks for patient storytelling, and meaningless effects for unobtrusive cinematography. When you figure out what's going on, you realize it's too late. Finally, a movie that "pays homage" to a genre without being garbage.

Synecdoche, New York is a movie about nothing. A man I don't care about loses touch with reality and his family, puts on a giant play about people who are playing themselves (and remember, nobody is doing anything, so now we are watching people pretend to play people doing nothing) which will never be produced and performed in front of a real audience, which is the opposite of what I want: The play in the movie should finally be complete and performed for the world, but the movie Synecdoche, New York should never have been produced.

Pirating... a favorite past time of mine, and the advice of Jacob led me to Moon in 1080p.

This movie, to me, was pretty good. The visuals and perfect job they did recreating the atmosphere, which I only know from my frequent visits to the moon back in my drug days, were great.

The part of the movie that really lost me though, and this could be due to my preconceived ideals, was the message. I had predicted much more depth of character. A man losing his mind over nothing, a kind of Martyrdom.

Instead the clone wars mentality was a little more prominent, but it still had its moments.

A beautifully designed movie.

Trailer for the 1973 original after the jump.
More.

Sherlock Holmes was incredible. MEESTA Downey and his face give a strange quirk to any character I have ever seen him play.

I know that actors have a duty to make us feel as if the characters are real, but he does this perfectly in this movie. He made me feel like Sherlock Holmes had an unreal but real grasp on every detail I never see... as if it were actually true.

I walked away smiling.

Moon is terrifying, sad, and beautiful. More than any movie I can remember.