I honestly didn’t like this movie all that much. And I wasn’t so impressed with Kate Winslet here. I thought Revolutionary Road was better, as a movie and for Winslet’s performance. I didn’t think this movie was as nuanced. I suppose it should be applauded for playing it straight, but it got kind of boring.

The last 10-15 minutes of this movie were terrible. Just terrible. And didn’t make a ton of sense. If the prison was so worried about Winslet’s character that they reached out to Fiennes before Winslet was released, wouldn’t they call him before he came to get her and tell him that she’s dead? Or at least “something’s happened, please come to see us” etc.? Fiennes is definitely the king of slow, quiet, go nowhere, but not necessarily bad movies.

[Blu-ray | DVD]

This movie reminded me of “The Negotiator”. Only with great character actors taking the parts played by Sam L. and Spacey. I am a big fan of both Don Cheadle and Guy Pierce and thought they did good work here. Pierce did an okay blown out Southern accent. I thought Cheadle was great showing nuance of emotion throughout. Saïd Taghmaoui I guess is the go to guy to play Arabic characters. It’s a wonder he wasn’t cast in The Kingdom [Blu-ray | DVD]. But he does a good job always. He should get some roles outside of this kind of movie though.

There wasn’t too much surprising about this movie. No big twists and turns, save kind of one. I didn’t really expect Cheadle’s character to engage in terrorism, so I didn’t expect his end bombs were real. But they were.

I don’t think the cat and mouse between Cheadle and Pierce was as grabbing as Sam L. and Spacey, but it was still very good.

[Blu-ray | DVD]

This wasn’t a great movie. It was not bad at all though. How I felt about this movie kind of changed as the movie went on. I liked it, but just okay, but then liked it more and more and then a little less and less and ended up in the middle. In a way I kind of got a Tarantino vibe off of it. Not so much the look or dialogue, but in as much as he took another genre and put it into a different context. This movie is basically a samurai/noir movie, but set today. David Mamet didn’t go the full on Tarantino and use the same style of dialogue from other movies, but the vibe was there. It’s basically one long morality tale, which I suppose most movies are.

Mamet really just dropped you into a story without much back story. You just have to go with it. And it’s pretty rewarding to do so.

I can’t say enough how much I love Chiwetel Ejiofor. He’s great. In everything he’s in. Though I caught a tiny bit of the British English in his speech once. Does Ricky Jay ever play a straight man any more? Always a bit of con to him.

I don’t think I posted a review of Slumdog Millionaire. I thought it was alright, but nothing amazing. I thought it was a visual spectacle for the most part click for more. The story was kind of trite, the performances were okay. But here’s what John Gruber of Daring Fireball had to say:

I’ve seen Drivers Ed. movies that were less predictable and more engaging than “Slumdog Millionaire”.

I can’t say I disagree.

– John Gruber on Slumdog Millionaire  

[Blu-ray | DVD]

This movie wasn’t at all what I thought it was going to be. Well I knew it was going to be a monster movie, and in a cave, but I thought it was going to be a traditional kind of dumb, pretty college girls get preyed upon on by the monsters.

This played out a little, but not the character part. Well the characters were kind of stupid.

I thought the ending bits were kind of interesting. Visually I thought it was nice. Having to work with the dark and color casting with the lights was nice work. That’s about all I could say about it.

[Blu-ray | DVD]

This is a pretty straightforward dirty cop movie. I think everyone gives a pretty basic performance, but given by a slew of good actors, so it was better than average. It was really like 2 movies I guess. The bad cops movie (with the obligatory redemptive cop) combined with a family cop drama (with the obligatory almost slapstick brother fight) why not try here. The women of the movie are pretty stereotypically completely shallow and pushed to the side in this movie. It’s alright. I don’t think I’d watch it ever again though.

Oh my big note, damn that guy who was Jim Carrey’s friend in “The Truman Show” is skinny now.

[Blu-ray | DVD]

This movie was absolutely terrible. Some okay fight scenes, NO great driving scenes. The acting was almost as bad as Gran Torino.

[DVD]

So this movie came out pre-Obama, but they are using iMacs for the receptionists. This movie predicted the future!

Okay, so this is a pretty typical all-sides-are-good-but-all-sides-are-bad kind of movie dealing with terrorism. As per the norm, I think it paints the terrorist side a little worse than the other side, but I thought Rendition did an okay enough job of explaining why the character might be a terrorist.

I wasn’t so impressed with any of the performances, though there were a ton of great actors in this movie. It wasn’t great, but I wouldn’t say it was terrible. Though if I had to pick between “great” and “terrible,” I’d say terrible.

Oh another thing that stood out to me was how oppressive the score was. Very heavy handed.

This documentary on Pixar is pretty straight forward. There isn’t anything really surprising about the Pixar story, there aren’t any real twist or turns, no real revelations. What makes this movie worthwhile is the same as Man on Wire or other documentaries on people doing a job they love, the sense of passion and mission. It’s always kind of inspiring to see that kind of passion and dedication. Honestly it makes me jealous that I’ve not found something to pursue that I’m all that passionate about. It’s fairly entertaining.

[DVD]

Okay, I watched this movie via Netflix Watch Instantly, which means I didn’t give it the full attention it deserved. Even though I’ve never seen most of the movies in my Watch Instantly queue, I can never seem to give them full attention. So Man on Wire was mixed with catching up on my feeds and then prepping dinner. Take that for what it’s worth in reading this review.

This movie was pretty excellent. It’s a documentary, but more like movie than many documentaries. It’s basically the talking heads telling the story with a few reenacted scenes to help the visual coupled with real pictures and video from the event. Oh yeah, so it’s the story of a man who tightrope walked between the Twin Towers in 1974.

Because of the interviews of the principals involved you really get the sense of excitement, need, wonder, and whimsy they had when planning and executing their plan. The archive video footage showed these people, especially the protagonist, were the same guys then as they were now. And they were really understood they were part of something special.

The movie plays with caper movie tropes. It is suspenseful and gripping, even though you know how it’s going to play out. Very impressive. A good watch.