Saturday, February 23, 2008
Way cooler than I thought
So a couple weeks ago in one of the 15 times I check slickdeals.net I noticed a posting informing all of us cheap people that AMC theatre's was going to be running all 5 best pictures nominee's in a row for only 30 bucks. I did the math in my head (or on Window's calculator) I quickly and astutely observed that 5 x 9.75 > 30 ... basically I was in. Plus this is something that me and the Mrs. love doing, getting out and doing something out of the ordinary, new and pop culture centered. But anyway I bought the tickets and was pumped, but as time wore on I started to realize that it was 12+ hours of movies and my enthusiasm started to wane. So we went today thinking if we make it through 2 or three movies we come out winners. But when we got there we were pleasantly surprised about how cool the atmosphere was. AMC started off by giving away some cool perks, most important was the free refillable pop corn and drink. Next was the fact they let you bring in any food you wanted with out having to hide it, which was funny seeing how we had a large purse full of sugar free chocolate and diet pop. But what I thought was the coolest part of it was the 300 people that were movie fans watching the movies with you. No little punk kids just trying to get out of the house, or teenagers looking for a dark place to make out it was a theatre full of people that wanted to see good movies. I thought it was cool, when they did trivia between movies I certainly did not feel as geeky as I usually do. But anyway, I thought I would tell you about the movies too.
Spoiler alert, I'm warning you that I am most likely going to give away key plot elements in this section, so if you think you're going to watch any of these movies in the future and want to be surprised you might want to skip this section.
Michael Clayton
I really liked this movie. For full disclosure I will share with the group that I can not tell you off the top of my head one George Clooney movie that I don't like (there are ones I think are stupid or pointless, see Peacemaker and the Perfect Storm), so he has quite a track record with me. But either way I thought there were many good performances in this movie besides George Clooney's that made it really good, most notably was Sydney Pollacks. His character was someone that just based on position you should dislike, you should want to hate him but it was hard. He played it as a hard ass that meant well and I found myself wanting to be on his side. Tom Wilkinson (who is one of those guys who you've seen in like 20 movies but never knew is name) was amazing, he just went for it and I bought it. The only real compliant I had was that I thought someone should have put an extra minute or two into explaining Tilda Swinton's character. She is the genesis of all that is wrong, but she's not played as someone that is evil so it would have been nice if I as the viewer could have pointed to a scene or a trait that would make her do such a thing. But it still worked, it was still good, I just think that would have taken the movie from an A to an A+.
There Will be Blood
I think I need to watch this movie at least one more time to really form a solid opinion of it. I know Daniel Day Lewis did a good job, that's not really an issue. I know there were stunning visuals in the movie that made me want to like it. I know that the subject matter, even though set in the turn of the century dealing with oil is something that could still be extremely topical to this day. I know that this movie did not blow me away either. And sadly I came in with no expectations on this movie. I heard it was good, I know Daniel Day Lewis has a good track record and I know that they started saying "I drink your milkshake! I drink it up!" on sports center ... but I came in giving it every chance to succeed. It just didn't do it, it never turned the corner for me. Some specific gripes 1) The score was played WAY too loud, it seriously detracted from my enjoyment of the movie. I think they were trying to use it to develop a pace and mood but they forced the issue a little too much. Often times the visual spoke for its self and didn't need a haughty soundtrack to take it to the next level. 2) Daniel Day Lewis' character was the same beginning to end, we never got a real sense of who is was and why he did things. We knew he hated people at the beginning and that didn't change. It was like the movie was 2 and a half hours about an asshole (pardon my french), there was no lesson taught, there was no message sent ... it was just the life and times of a jerk with no explanation of why. I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with that as a full explanation of the situation, but hopefully some one will read this, disagree with me and I'll have to distill my point down a little more.
Atonement
Out of all the movies on the billet I was least excited to see this, I mean seriously. I thought it was going to be Gone with the Wind set in WWII, over dramatic and big sweepy scenes that make me want to vomit in my mouth. To my surprise I didn't hate it a lot. It was well produced and had some neat ways that it went about breaking up the dramatics into palatable bites. I mean the story was as sappy as you think, but it had some twists in it that kept me from shutting down on it. However sometimes the production values kind of back fired on it, at the end it kind of got over stylized. I kind of felt it was like Jerry Brockheimer was trying to produce a tragedy. But I mean I guess it was ok ... I can certainly see why no one is talking about it winning best picture.
Juno
Goodness I don't know what to say about Juno, it's such a good little movie. Like really this was the second time I've seen it and I had to look for something to think they did wrong (which I found, I think in the beginning they push Juno a little hard at you, like they try to make her super quirky right off the bat instead of letting her find her stride which she doesn't marvelously). But seriously, tonight I realized also that there really wasn't one character that I thought didn't "bring it" on their performance. I thought J.K Simmons and Allison Janey who really haven't been mentioned in the press or awards did such an amazing job in this movie. I guess it's fair to say that I have problems with Dwight from The Office being in anything but the office, so that was weird. I just want him in everything I see him in to be just Dwight, which I'm sure he loves. But other than that I think that movies was so spot on with so many things. I'm pretty sure whenever it comes out on DVD I'll be buying it the first day.
No Country for Old Men
... you'll have to wait on this one. We just couldn't do it, we wanted to leave on a high note and we thought we would rather go out feeling happy for Juno than leaving at the end of the night horrified with the violence from this. It is coming out on NetFlix in like 3 weeks, so I'll have to wait for that and deep you guys posted.
But if anyone reads this you should totally do this next year if it's in a city near you. I'm pretty sure I'll be back in the Natti doing it again next year if anyone wants to join me.
Spoiler alert, I'm warning you that I am most likely going to give away key plot elements in this section, so if you think you're going to watch any of these movies in the future and want to be surprised you might want to skip this section.
Michael Clayton
I really liked this movie. For full disclosure I will share with the group that I can not tell you off the top of my head one George Clooney movie that I don't like (there are ones I think are stupid or pointless, see Peacemaker and the Perfect Storm), so he has quite a track record with me. But either way I thought there were many good performances in this movie besides George Clooney's that made it really good, most notably was Sydney Pollacks. His character was someone that just based on position you should dislike, you should want to hate him but it was hard. He played it as a hard ass that meant well and I found myself wanting to be on his side. Tom Wilkinson (who is one of those guys who you've seen in like 20 movies but never knew is name) was amazing, he just went for it and I bought it. The only real compliant I had was that I thought someone should have put an extra minute or two into explaining Tilda Swinton's character. She is the genesis of all that is wrong, but she's not played as someone that is evil so it would have been nice if I as the viewer could have pointed to a scene or a trait that would make her do such a thing. But it still worked, it was still good, I just think that would have taken the movie from an A to an A+.
There Will be Blood
I think I need to watch this movie at least one more time to really form a solid opinion of it. I know Daniel Day Lewis did a good job, that's not really an issue. I know there were stunning visuals in the movie that made me want to like it. I know that the subject matter, even though set in the turn of the century dealing with oil is something that could still be extremely topical to this day. I know that this movie did not blow me away either. And sadly I came in with no expectations on this movie. I heard it was good, I know Daniel Day Lewis has a good track record and I know that they started saying "I drink your milkshake! I drink it up!" on sports center ... but I came in giving it every chance to succeed. It just didn't do it, it never turned the corner for me. Some specific gripes 1) The score was played WAY too loud, it seriously detracted from my enjoyment of the movie. I think they were trying to use it to develop a pace and mood but they forced the issue a little too much. Often times the visual spoke for its self and didn't need a haughty soundtrack to take it to the next level. 2) Daniel Day Lewis' character was the same beginning to end, we never got a real sense of who is was and why he did things. We knew he hated people at the beginning and that didn't change. It was like the movie was 2 and a half hours about an asshole (pardon my french), there was no lesson taught, there was no message sent ... it was just the life and times of a jerk with no explanation of why. I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with that as a full explanation of the situation, but hopefully some one will read this, disagree with me and I'll have to distill my point down a little more.
Atonement
Out of all the movies on the billet I was least excited to see this, I mean seriously. I thought it was going to be Gone with the Wind set in WWII, over dramatic and big sweepy scenes that make me want to vomit in my mouth. To my surprise I didn't hate it a lot. It was well produced and had some neat ways that it went about breaking up the dramatics into palatable bites. I mean the story was as sappy as you think, but it had some twists in it that kept me from shutting down on it. However sometimes the production values kind of back fired on it, at the end it kind of got over stylized. I kind of felt it was like Jerry Brockheimer was trying to produce a tragedy. But I mean I guess it was ok ... I can certainly see why no one is talking about it winning best picture.
Juno
Goodness I don't know what to say about Juno, it's such a good little movie. Like really this was the second time I've seen it and I had to look for something to think they did wrong (which I found, I think in the beginning they push Juno a little hard at you, like they try to make her super quirky right off the bat instead of letting her find her stride which she doesn't marvelously). But seriously, tonight I realized also that there really wasn't one character that I thought didn't "bring it" on their performance. I thought J.K Simmons and Allison Janey who really haven't been mentioned in the press or awards did such an amazing job in this movie. I guess it's fair to say that I have problems with Dwight from The Office being in anything but the office, so that was weird. I just want him in everything I see him in to be just Dwight, which I'm sure he loves. But other than that I think that movies was so spot on with so many things. I'm pretty sure whenever it comes out on DVD I'll be buying it the first day.
No Country for Old Men
... you'll have to wait on this one. We just couldn't do it, we wanted to leave on a high note and we thought we would rather go out feeling happy for Juno than leaving at the end of the night horrified with the violence from this. It is coming out on NetFlix in like 3 weeks, so I'll have to wait for that and deep you guys posted.
But if anyone reads this you should totally do this next year if it's in a city near you. I'm pretty sure I'll be back in the Natti doing it again next year if anyone wants to join me.
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