Summer 2010 has been a dead zone for entertainment. I'm usually willing to turn my brain down a few power settings and enjoy some explosions, but first the movie has to rope me in with a concept or a megawatt star, or both, and in that, this summer has been especially vacant.
I haven't written for awhile, so I'm going to sum up the last bunch of movies I've seen. Some of them you will have never heard of, and those are the ones you should see.
First of all, I saw Twilight: Eclipse through no fault of my own. (A sad thing that often happens to projectionists.) I'll have to say, it is about as funny as the first film, and has a classic scene that Abbot and Costello could not have performed better. It happens somewhere near the end of this lugubrious piece of crap with its sub-par special effects that make the werewolves look like Disney cartoons. It involves Jacob and Edward and Bella (I'm amazed, at this moment, that I was able to remember all their names.), who are, for some reason I cannot remember, hiding out in a tent on the side of a mountain during a blizzard. Bella is cold, and her teeth chatter, and she basically acts like a little wimp. Edward wants to warm her, but he's cold-blooded because he's a vampire, so he can't. So Jacob mans up, slips into the sleeping bag with her, and warms her with his muscular torso. Another reason to join Team Jacob: He can keep your girlfriend warm.
Get Him to the Greek had some side-splitting laughs in the un-PC category Judd Apatow and his minions specialize in, and is as funny as any of the other Apatow productions. As usual, its characters have dramatic as well as comedic problems, and in this film, they are dealt with in an unlikely but hilarious confrontation that ends in a three-way. Sean Combs, of course, delivers the best performance, and steals the show in a sequence where he goes bananas on a drug concoction called a "Jeffrey," beats the shit out of several people, chases the protagonists out of a Vegas casino, and ends up getting hit by a car. Best rap star actor of all time.
The best movie of the year so far is The Human Centipede, which I have already reviewed. But I'm kind of a sick twist, so I doubt anyone else will think so. The second best film of the year is Toy Story 3, which I didn't think was going to make me cry. But it did, right at the end. That's two in a row. For awhile there, it was only Rain Man and Field of Dreams that could make me cry, then Up comes along, and now Pixar's third adventure with Buzz and Woody, which is full of adventure and color, supports 3D rather than exploiting it, and has laughs, drama, scares, more creepy toys, and ends on a perfect note. It even bothers to develop Andy, the boy who owns the toys, now a college-age teenager, and brings him in for a conclusion that tugs at the heart strings. Barbie and Ken steal the show, however, in an amazing subplot that gets inside Barbie's Dream House, and displays the full scope of Ken's wardrobe.
Jonah Hill has another movie out this summer called Cyrus, in which he plays Marisa Tomei's mentally unstable son. Marisa Tomei keeps getting better with age. She is amazing. I just can't believe it. Cyrus is a strange film, half-comedy, half-psychological thriller, half-character study. It centers on John C. Reilly, who is a divorced loser who is inept with women, and makes a fool out of himself wherever he goes. He is invited by his ex-wife to a party, makes a fool out of himself, as per usual, but ends up endearing himself to Tomei, and she takes him home. From there on out, the film is about the collision between Reilly and Hill, and each delivers a surprisingly substantial performance. The laughs disappear, but I stayed for the characters. This is the first film by the Duplass brothers that has big name stars in it. It is still shot in a mumblecore manner like their old films, which basically means they do everything handheld, and they use the zoom button just like you would in your home videos, but it's definitely a step in the right direction.
Knight and Day, the new Tom Cruise vehicle, is fun but disposable. It made me like Cameron Diaz again, which I haven't done since There's Something About Mary. These two superstars, with their Pepsodent smiles, are genuinely charming in this film, and I only wish the filmmakers had toned down the explosions and action sequences and constant traveling to increasingly scenic locales, and just made the movie a spy-thriller in the Charade vein so I could enjoy Diaz and Cruise having fun, instead of constantly having to duck when something exploded behind them or someone was shot. In the tradition of James Bond films, the film takes place in at least six countries. They show up in Spain so they can run with the bulls. They show up on a tropical island so our two stars can be in bathing suits, which isn't a bad thing. They show up in Germany, or Russia, or maybe it was Bulgaria ... I can't remember. They go all over the place for no reason at all. But it's fun, for the limited amount of time you will remember it.
Casey Affleck channels Robert Ford once again as a sociopathic sheriff in 1950's Texas in The Killer Inside Me, based on Jim Thompson's deeply disturbing first-person novel. Affleck plays Lou Ford, who gets away with murder on several occasions, and because of his position, is able to muddle the facts and misdirect the law. Affleck's portrayal so closely resembles his portrayal of Ford that The Killer Inside Me becomes almost a companion piece to the Jesse James film. Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson co-star as Affleck's lovers, whom he pummels on a regular occasion, whenever the switch flips from nice guy to not-so-nice guy. It is interesting to see these sirens in such an unflattering light. Just to warn you, there is a scene in this film of such sudden and brutal violence that it actually made me flinch. And it goes on and on and on. I had read the book and knew it was coming, but it still shocked me. There is something affecting about this film that most supposed "film noir" of late fail to capture, and that is that it is told from the point of view of the bad guy. And Lou Ford is as bad as they come.
I had never seen a film by Nicole Holofcener, but if any of them are as good as Please Give, then I'll have to backtrack. The reason I saw Please Give is that Rebecca Hall is in it. If she were in The Last Airbender, I would go see it. I remember the first time I saw her in the trailer for Starter For Ten, I immediately had a problem with the movie, and I hadn't even seen it yet. The problem is that the main character ignores Hall in favor of some blonde girl. I just couldn't buy that. When they finally get the next Bond film off the ground, Hall needs to be the good bad girl. Or the bad good girl. Doesn't matter. Please Give revolves around several characters who live in the same building. A couple, played by Oliver Platt (who needs to act more) and Catherine Keener (who I finally like again, thanks to this film), are waiting for the old lady next door to die so they can expand into her apartment. The old lady's granddaughters are played by Hall and Amanda Peet, and the film is about the relations of these characters. It's simple, and full of witty, honest dialogue. Not all of the characters are nice. Some of them are mean. Some of them are assholes. It's rewarding when not all of the characters in a film are cute.
Winter's Bone reminded me of a novel I read once called Twilight. Not the one you're thinking of, but a different one. A far more stark and realistic Twilight. Winter's Bone has probably the best performance by an actress in it that I will see all year. I had never seen this actress in anything before, but I hope to see her in more films like this soon. Her name is Jennifer Lawrence, and if she doesn't get nominated for an Oscar, I'm going to be pretty pissed. Winter's Bone is the story of a seventeen year old girl caring for her mother and her two younger siblings after her father gets sent up for cooking meth, then skips out on his bail and disappears. The police arrive with some startling news. The father put the house up as collateral on his bond, and unless he is found in a week, the house will be taken away from them. Lawrence says she'll find him, and sets off on an odyssey across the shitty squalor of southern Missouri. This film is so authentic, there is never the sense in which you are watching actors. The locations put you right there with the white trash. The antagonists, when they arrive, are so threatening in a friendly neighbor sort of way that the truly violent and shocking denouement caught me by surprise. Find this film and watch it.
There are really only a select few movies I'm looking forward to the rest of the summer. Predators, The Girl Who Played With Fire, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Inception, The Expendables, Piranha 3D. Some of these movies will suck, but I have a vested interest in certain aspects of them. I want to see Dolph Ludgren on the big screen again. I want to see blood and guts and severed limbs in 3D. Scott Pilgrim has Mary Elizabeth Winstead in it, and I would go see The Last Airbender if she was in it. I'm still waiting for that four star movie that will come out of nowhere and give me faith in Hollywood again. Where is it? I'm getting bored over here.
I went into this one expecting to be served up a generous portion of laughs and heart, but what I got instead was a plate full of cringe-worthiness. I am sure that there are plenty of people out there that find this kind of comedy amusing. I am not one of those people. I have grown so tired of films where constant ineptitude and annoying mannerisms are meant to be played for laughs. Films where the lead idiot wrecks the life of the straight laced square, doesn't even realize he is doing it, and then is given a sob story so you can feel sorry for him instead of angry. The first and pretty much only time that formula has worked on me was in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.
-like accuracy required for the scheme to work) and some of the execution (that goofy 
manly-mask, 
elevator hopping) makes me think that I might be able to sell one of my many wacky movie ideas someday. Like that one about the unicorn born without a horn who kills all the other unicorns out of spite and envy, and then retires peacefully to a horse farm in Texas until he is found out by the CIA, who want to use his unicorn-genes to create an army of unicorn soldiers. In the end, the big twist will be that the non-horned unicorn is not actually a unicorn, but was a horse all-along, and the CIA will look like idiots.
outside of Old Joliet Prison!
, 
, 
, 
, and pretty much any of the 
and 
, 
)
director Matt Reeves.
