AMC Oscar Nominees Night Part I
Everybody needs a co-pilot.
Once again, AMC theatres are showing all of the Oscar nominees. This time, though, since there are 10 of them, they have to stretch it over two weekends.
Pussies.
Anyway, they showed a few previews before Avatar because it’s still playing and we just watched the movie the way everyone who paid a normal price was seeing it.
PIRANHA 3D–Ok, ok. I guess I’ll go ahead and see this. It looks like total crap, but I’ll check it out. BUT it wasn’t filmed at Aquarena Springs, so I’m not sure if I care.
ROBIN HOOD–I don’t care if this is the 4,984th version of the Robin Hood story. It’s Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe and it involves action instead of pure romance. AND it looks to be more realistic than a guy running around in tights or a couple of foxes. I’m for it.
SHREK FOREVER AFTER–Sigh. I will always give this series a chance, although I haven’t officially seen all of the third one. What I saw of it was almost funny, but not so great. This time, Shrek is plunged into a world where he and Donkey never met, Fiona is an outlaw and Puss is fat. I’ll see it at some point. Just not sure when.
KNIGHT AND DAY–Damn you, Tom Cruise, for choosing interesting projects. I so like hating you, but I always want to see your movies. Here he plays a mysterious dude who shows up in Cameron Diaz’s life, shooting people the whole way. Is he a secret agent? Or is he a terrorist. Oh, yeah. It’s a comedy that actually looks to be pretty funny. GODAMMIT!
SALT–Angelina Jolie is accused of being a Russian spy by a Russian defector. Wait…the Russians? We still care about them? Does this take place in 1984? It doesn’t look like it. But Angelina is hot (brunette AND blonde!) and there’s lots of action. It looks pretty interesting. I’ll take a look.
AVATAR (a second look)
Directed by: James Cameron
Written by: James Cameron
I know that I’ve already reviewed this one, but I also kind of wanted to see it again. I kept falling asleep during my first viewing (it was BNAT, after all) and I knew that I had missed some things.
Sure enough, I did miss some things…like the entire beginning of the film. I don’t remember ANY of that.
Basic story rundown, just in case you don’t know anything. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is headed to a new world. He’s a paralyzed Marine who is taking over for his dead twin brother. The brother was going to “drive” and Avatar on Pandora, a planet that is nothing if not completely hostel to humans. Unfortunately, it also has an element that we need called wecantfinditum…or theresnotenoughofitum. Wait, no. It’s called unobtanium. I’m not kidding.
Pandora is peopled by tribes of Navi. They are very tall blue creatures who live like Native Americans and have a very strong connection to everything on the planet. They don’t full understand that the “sky people” will kill them for something that means nothing to them. Grace (Sigourney Weaver) has been trying to educate them and study them. Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) and Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) just want the unobtanium. Killing the Navi means nothing to them.
Oh yeah, the Avatars. Those are bodies that Grace and her team have developed for the humans to link into so that they can a) survive in the environment of Pandora and b) blend in with the Navi. Jake’s DNA is just like his brother’s, so he’s able to drive his Avatar. He goes out onto the planet, gets lost, finds Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), falls in love with her and goes native.
Chaos ensues.
I liked the movie better the second time around, but it’s still Dances With Ferngully. My main problem with it is Cameron’s strange disability to create villains. Avatar and Titanic both have the same problem: their main villain isn’t human. A friend of mine says that he knew guys like Quaritch in the military, but I like to think better of humans. This guy is a sociopathic Terminator. It’s not that he’s driven to do his job. It’s that he enjoys killing. He wants to destroy and nothing less. Even when everyone else (including Selfridge…nice name, by the way) looks like they can’t believe what they’ve done, Quaritch is drinking coffee and celebrating a job well done. Childrens’ blood on his hands? Meh. All in a day’s work.
He is a terrible person and I think that if he had had even two dimensions he would have been more interesting. As it is, he was hard to watch and made me actually dislike the movie. He’s FAR worse than Billy Zane’s over dramatic Cal Hockley in Titanic.
Of course, the visuals were amazing and the 3D worked perfectly. I think that District 9 looks better, but we’ll get to that movie next week.
Let’s move on to the first film that I hadn’t seen.
Directed by: Jason Reitman
Written by: Jason Reitman/Sheldon Turner
Based on book by: Walter Kim
Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) really digs being alone. He never wants to get married, have kids or have any real connection with anyone. All he really wants to do is collect millions of frequent flyer miles on American Airlines.
That is, until the reason for his constant flying is nearly taken away. You see, Ryan fires people for a living. He flies from place to place letting people go. He travels almost 300 days out of every year. The time he spends at “home” in Omaha is, he feels, time wasted. His true home is in the air.
Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) ruins all of that. She’s a young girl who comes into his firm and tells his boss (Jason Bateman) that they could save money by doing everything over video chat. Ryan, of course, tells him that the job needs the personal touch of an actual person being there. So Ryan ends up taking Natalie on the road with him to show her exactly why this is true.
Enter Alex (Vera Farmiga). Or, rather, Ryan enters Alex. (Hehehe. I’m 12, by the way.) The two of them have a bit of a tryst before Natalie joins Ryan and plan on meeting up again…and again….and again.
Will Ryan finally decide that he needs to start making real connections in his life? Will Natalie learn what it means to need to be there with someone? Will Ryan go to his younger sister’s wedding?
This was probably my favorite movie of the day besides Inglourious Basterds. Reitman is great at mixing humor with deep seated human emotions, pulling us into these strange peoples’ lives and then showing us how we’re all really just like them. Strangely, he makes us at once want to travel and settle down at the same time with this one.
Clooney is his normal charming self here, but there’s a depth to this character that I haven’t seen from him in a while. He’s kind of unlikeable, but I felt some true sympathy for him. Anna was the same way. She has a stick so far up her ass that it’s almost hard to like her until something bad happens to her and we finally see some emotion…and she loosens up a bit.
Definitely one of the best films of the year. My only complaint is how much of an American Airlines commercial it seemed to be, but I guess a guy like this would probably have loyalty to one airline, so it only makes sense.
By the way, this is the first movie of the day to feature Young MC’s “Bust A Move.”
Directed by: Lee Daniels
Written by: Geoffrey Fletcher
Based on book by: Sapphire
I refuse to keep calling this movie by its full name: Precious: Based On The Novel Push By Sapphire. What the fuck? Why would they name it that? Why not just call it Push?
Anyway, Precious (Gabourey Sidibe) is a young inner city girl who has no future. It’s 1987, she’s poor, black, 16, fat, nearly illiterate and pregnant. Not only is she pregnant, but she’s pregnant with her dad’s baby…the second child he’s given her. Her mother, Mary (Mo’Nique), is a complete bitch who keeps telling Precious that she stole her man from her. She verbally and physically abuses her daily. She’s not too nice to her Downe’s Syndrome granddaughter, either. Even her own mother is scared of her.
Precious ends up being sent to an alternative school and is taught to read and write by Ms. Rain (Paula Patton). Also on her side are her social worker Ms. Weiss (Mariah Carey) and, eventually, Nurse John (Lenny Kravitz).
This is pretty much the most depressing movie ever made. Precious’ life is so fucking bleak that it’s hard to imagine anyone getting out of the hole that she’s in. She manages to escape in her own fantasies where she is a huge star and has a good looking guy staring at her all the time. But these are fleeting and typically end with Mary throwing water on her face or someone hitting her.
Of course, this doesn’t make it a bad movie. It’s a really fucking good movie with some amazing performances. (Who the hell told Mariah Carey that she was allowed to suddenly be able to act. It’s crazy, but she’s actually really good!) Gabby and Mo’Nique deservedly were both nominated for Oscars. It would be pretty cool if they both won, but I bet they’ll just pick one of them.
It would be great if we could be told that this sort of thing doesn’t happen anymore, but the whole reason for the book and movie is to let people know that this sort of thing happens all the fucking time. Harlem, Detroit, LA, Memphis, wherever. Young girls are being abused into believing that they are worthless, horrible people. Fuck that. Things need to change…but how do we change them?
This is quite possibly the only good thing Tyler Perry has really had anything to do with besides Star Trek…and I barely count that as something he had a damn thing to do with.
Directed by: John Lee Hancock
Written by: John Lee Hancock
Based on book by: Michael Lewis
Really? This was nominated for Best Picture? Wow.
Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron) is a young inner city boy with no future. It’s the mid 00s and he’s poor, black, 17, fat and nearly illiterate. His mother is a drug addict who has lots of kids whom she barely knows anything about and can’t keep track of whose father is whose.
Wait…didn’t I just see this movie? The Blind Side is the same fucking movie as Precious! Why am I watching this again?!
Ok, it’s slightly different. This time, the way out isn’t necessarily alternative schooling (although Michael does get enrolled in a Christian school because he’s athletic), but football and a nice white couple. Spitfire mom Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock in what is probably her best role ever) takes Michael under her wing and makes him a part of her family. Her husband Sean (Tim McGraw) is just kind of along for the ride. She really does wear the pants. He just bankrolls everything. Their two kids SJ (Jae Head) and Collins (Lily Collins) get close to Michael pretty quickly, especially SJ who starts calling him his big brother right away.
Eventually, they find a way to make this gentle giant good at football and the rest, as they say, is history. It’s a true story of a guy who still plays for the Baltimore Ravens.
The Blind Side is a really good Lifetime movie of the week, but with MUCH better acting and slightly better writing. Other than that, I have no idea why it’s among the 10 best films of the year. It just doesn’t make much sense, especially since there’s already a much better movie just like it. I guess they just needed something to lighten to load of Precious.
To be fair, though, the acting is really good. Sandra is way better than I would ever expect her to be and Quinton is great. He doesn’t talk much, but he says a lot. (Apparently, the real Michael Oher was a little annoyed that he was portrayed as such a pussy who knew nothing about football. He was already playing before he was enrolled in the new school. Oh well. I guess it made for a better movie? I dunno.) The little moppet that they got to play the little brother was really funny, too.
Not great, but decent. Worth a look if you’re looking for an inspirational sports drama that’s better than Rudy.
Also, this is the second movie to feature Young MC’s “Bust A Move.” What’s up with that song this year?
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
Directed by: Quentin Tarantino
Written by: Quentin Tarantino
Based on: every war movie Quentin has ever seen
I’ve reviewed this one, too, but I can’t resist saying something about it again. I loved, loved, loved this movie. It’s a fun movie about torturing Nazis and helping Jews get their revenge.
One thing I noticed this time out was the great big smile Eli Roth got on his face when Brad Pitt said the word “torture” during his big introduction speech. Torture porn lover.
That’s actually all I’m going to say about this one. My original review pretty much covered it and I’m really fucking tired.
So, I’ve basically knocked two movie out of the running. Avatar and The Blind Side do not belong. Next week I’ll let you know what my final decision is on which five should have been nominated and which five should have been completely ignored by Oscar.
See you at the theatre! I’ll be right behind you.
