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Internet Movie Database
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05 Jan

The Painted Veil

Grade: A

“The Painted Veil” is a beautiful movie – the cinematography is spectacular.  The acting is wonderful – Naomi Watts and Edward Norton star and also produce.  The story, set in 1925, is that Edward Norton’s character is a scientist specializing in diseases and he falls in love with Naomi Watts.  Naomi doesn’t love him, but marries him anyway to get away from her parents.  When she has an affair, Edward freaks out and volunteers for a job helping out with a cholera epidemic in China.  He insists that Naomi come with him.  Of course she’s miserable there, but the experience, and the people, have a profound effect on her.  And as these two people are forced to live and work together for their own survival, they get to know who they really are, and what they really love about each other.  Mesmerizing, romantic.
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05 Jan

The Other Boleyn Girl

Grade: B

The Other Boleyn Girl is a historical drama about King Henry XIII (Eric Bana), and his relationship with two very different sisters.  Younger sister Mary Boleyn (Scarlett Johanssen) is the sweet married one who, in duty to her country and king, must set aside her husband and become the king’s mistress.  She ends up having his child, but the king dismisses her for Ann.  Ann Boleyn (Natalie Portman) is the one who teases him, who convinces him to break away from the Catholic Church in order to annul his marriage and marry her instead.  She is ambitious, and conniving.  All of this is history, but a part of history we may not have been privy to previously.  It’s a historical soap-opera!  Nice performances, great costumes – a fun escape.  Heavy duty, if you can remember how this story ends – so be prepared to discuss the choices made with teens.
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05 Jan

The Odd Life of Timothy Green

Grade: B+

The Odd Life of Timothy Green is a beautiful story about how one child can change the lives of those around him.  Jennifer Garner stars as the young wife given the news that she can never have the children she so desperately wants to have.  She and her husband manage to, somehow, miraculously, conjure up a mysterious 10 year old boy who becomes “theirs.”  I love all that this movie says about family and relationships and how love grows.
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05 Jan

The Night Listener

Grade: The Night Listener is billed as a thriller, but I didn’t find it very thrilling.

The Night Listener is billed as a thriller, but I didn’t find it very thrilling.  It’s interesting, partially because it’s based on real events – and I think life is way more interesting than anything anyone could make up!  It’s also interesting to watch because the actors are so good.  Robin Williams stars as a radio host who befriends a teenage boy over the phone.  Rory Culkin plays the boy, or does he?  There’s a mystery here, and the multi-faceted Toni Collette has a hand in it.  Her character is the boy’s guardian, and through a series of events she becomes suspect.  I’m always fascinated by relationships, and there’s an interesting (there’s that word again!) relationship here with the radio host and his boyfriend, or former boyfriend, played by Bobby Canavale.  The film is rated R, for some graphic sexual content played as flashbacks.
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05 Jan

The Nanny Diaries

Grade: B-

Scarlett Johanssen stars in the movie version of the popular chick-lit novel, “The Nanny Diaries.”  The premise is simple – college grad finds herself at a cross-roads and opts for a job as a Nanny rather than jumping into a career she feels unprepared for.  Along the way the young anthropology student studies and learns, about life, people, and herself.  Laura Linney plays her upper-Eastside employer, a stressed society mom who in turn learns from the one she employs.  Alicia Keys is the wise and funny best friend.

Cute movie, but nothing amazing or original.
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05 Jan

The Namesake

Grade: B+

Beautiful movie directed by one of my favorite directors, Mira Nair.  The story follows a young man from India, who moves to the U.S. with his new wife to start a new life. They have a son, Gogol, named after the man’s favorite author, and then a daughter, Sonia.  The children grow up as Americans, and must learn to reconcile their Indian culture and heritage with their very western environment. “The Namesake” is really Gogol’s story, how he learns and grows and changes from the experiences in his life, how his father influenced him, and how he forges a life for himself that brings together all of the elements that make up the man he has become.  The characters are all richly drawn, the location scenes are incredible.  I cried when the family visited The Taj Mahal.  Wonderful movie, definitely worth seeing.
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05 Jan

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Grade: D+

The first two Mummy movies weren’t bad.  They should have just stopped there.  In this third installment the story has been run into the ground.  We start out with Brendan Fraser and Maria Bello (stepping in for Rachel Weisz) newly retired and bored.  Their college aged son has dropped out of school and gone on an archeological dig all on his own.  Then the couple gets called on for one more “mission” and they run into their sun and are surprised that he’s uncovered such a big find – the tomb of the dragon emperor.

The story is just like the Hellboy story – the emperor is basically “frozen” because a witch cast a spell on him, and his army is frozen as well.  And the bad guys want to bring him back to life – I say “bad guys” because it’s never really clear who these people are or what they really expect to accomplish with all this.  So of course, pandemonium ensues, there are tons of fight scenes, special effects, on and on… yawn.  Then as some forced comic relief, the brother gets into silly scrapes and it’s all very slapstick.

Which audience would appreciate this kind of a movie.  I’d guess pre-teen boys.  Any younger and they’d be scared.  Any older and they’ve seen it done before, and better.
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05 Jan

The Monuments Men

Grade: B+

The Monuments Men is an entertaining film based on a real life story. George Clooney directed the movie, co-wrote and co-produced it, and he stars as the leader of an unlikely group of older art experts who join the service in order to save some of Europe’s most precious pieces during World War II. Even though The Monuments Men is set during war time and and there are war scenes, there is also some humor, and wonderful relationships among the men in this motley crew. Cate Blanchett brings some elegance and gravitas to the group. Worth seeing.

  • Plot summary:  Based on the true story of the greatest treasure hunt in history, The Monuments Men is an action drama focusing on an unlikely World War II platoon, tasked by FDR with going into Germany to rescue artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and returning them to their rightful owners. It would be an impossible mission: with the art trapped behind enemy lines, and with the German army under orders to destroy everything as the Reich fell, how could these guys – seven museum directors, curators, and art historians, all more familiar with Michelangelo than the M-1 – possibly hope to succeed? But as the Monuments Men, as they were called, found themselves in a race against time to avoid the destruction of 1000 years of culture, they would risk their lives to protect and defend mankind’s greatest achievements. From director George Clooney, the film stars George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville, and Cate Blanchett. The screenplay is by George Clooney & Grant Heslov, based on the book by Robert M. Edsel with Bret Witter. Produced by Grant Heslov and George Clooney.

    – Written by Sony Pictures Entertainment
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05 Jan

The Matador

Grade: B+

This is Pierce Brosnan like you’ve never seen him before. He’s scruffy, uncouth, socially inept, awkward, but not so dislikable that we really dislike him. His character is a hit man, good at what he does and proud of it, yet burned out in his work to the point that he’s having a kind of crisis of conscience. He befriends his polar opposite, Greg Kinnear, and they form an unlikely bond. Months later, when Pierce appears on the doorstep of Greg and his devoted wife, the friendship is renewed, and tested. It’s an interesting story, complex, and dark, and definitely original.
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05 Jan

The Master

Grade: C

The Master stars Joaquin Phoenix in a role that earned him an Oscar nomination for best actor.  His character, Freddie, is an alcoholic Navy veteran, out of control and lost.  He stumbles upon a kind of evangelical figure in “The Master” – aka Lancaster Dodd, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who also got a nom for his role.  The Master is charismatic, certainly unorthodox in his methods, and probably crazy.  There are many parallels and comparisons to L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology.

 

Amy Adams plays Dodd’s devoted wife.  Paul Thomas Anderson directs.

 

While interesting, the characters are all unlikeable, so it’s hard to root for anyone.  It’s kind of a no-win situation, between the manipulative and the stupid.   I can see the art in the filmmaking, but the story was unsettling, dark.
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