Greenberg

Finally, we get to see Ben Stiller play a character that has a little depth and substance. Well, sort of.

In Greenberg, a New Yorker moves to Los Angeles in order to figure out his life while he housesits for his brother, and he soon sparks with his brother’s assistant.

This movie seems to want to tell a simple story focused on dialog and the relationships of the characters. The camera-work is simple and basic, the screenplay isn’t complicated, and the music fits the style pretty well. I think that they got the style that they were looking for in this movie, but it was all in vain.

Greenberg is just too bland for me. The characters aren’t very interesting, despite one of them [Stiller] supposed to be pretty messed up and intriguing, which he isn’t. I don’t really know what else to say, other than I could assume [most of the time correctly] what would happen in the movie, and the “artsy” aim of the film wasn’t appealing to me. At all.

There was a lot of potential in this movie and in the cast, I thought, but the plot seems to lack, well, a plot. It just gets boring at times.

Maybe I just don’t “get” this movie. Many people have really enjoyed the film, and think very highly of it in their own review. I’m not one of these people.

My Rating [See it, Rent it, Skip it]

Despite the new role for Stiller, which I was excited to see, I am giving this a Skip it.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

One of the world’s most popular novels right now is Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, along with the other two books that complete a trilogy. Larsson actually passed away in 2004, and he left these three books unpublished, and they are now all catching fire posthumous, which is pretty cool.

Anyways, as far as the movie goes, The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo is a foreign film [Swedish], as the book was written by a Swedish author. There are subtitles, no dubbing, which leave the movies in its pure form for us English speakers, and reading what they say isn’t really all that much of a hassle. The plot: Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family. He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the tattooed, ruthless computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate. When the pair link Harriet’s disappearance to a number of grotesque murders from almost forty years ago, they begin to unravel a dark and appalling family history. But the Vanger’s are a secretive clan, and Blomkvist and Salander are about to find out just how far they are prepared to go to protect themselves. [Written by Music Box Films]

I came into the movie assuming that it wouldn’t live up to the book, as most movies don’t do so when originating from a novel. There is a lot of stuff in this book, none of which can really be left out, hence the two and a half hour run time of the movie. The movie follows the book pretty precisely, but in order to do so, it has to progress quickly, so it is a little hard to really connect to the characters and the story.

The cast does a pretty good job overall, Noomi Rapace playing the tattoo-ed Lisbeth Salander, a pretty strange character, very well, worthy of some recognition. Other than that, there is really nothing that jumps out at me in this movie as being worthy of recognition. Don’t take that the wrong way, though. While this probably won’t [and hasn’t already] won any major awards, there is also nothing that jumps out at me in a bad way. A very solid movie all the way through, very well put together.

If you’ve read the book, I think that this movie will be slightly better to watch as opposed to those who haven’t read the book. It is a good representation of the book, and compliments it nicely. It does it a pretty good justice.

Let me warn you, however, some scenes get pretty graphic and unpleasant. So for those of you that don’t like the idea of non-consensual sex, be prepared.

My Rating [See it, Rent it, Skip it]

Considering that this movie has already come out, I give this a Rent It. But I would read the book first if I was you. It really is a great book, and I can’t wait to read the rest of the series.

Taking Requests!

Hey guys, I’m looking for more movies to write about, and I’d love to do some requests! It’s a good way for me to both see new movies and continue writing, two things I love to do.

Respond with whatever movie you’d like me to review and suggest to other people or just anything you think would be fun to watch and write for!

Thanks

Inception

The summer blockbusters are finally here, along with a movie I have been waiting for since mid-2009, Christopher Nolan’s Inception. The concept is Cobb [DiCaprio] is the most skilled person in the world at stealing ideas from people’s dreams via extraction. He is offered a job with the promise of being able to see his kids again after allegedly having committed murder. The movie is about this job to plant a memory into the son of a major energy company’s president in order to break up the company after the president dies.

In case you haven’t already guessed, that summary I just wrote up does literally nothing to tell you what the movie is about. The actual motive for these people to be going on this mission is probably the last thing that you’ll be thinking about while watching this movie. It’s also time for me to start saying what I actually think about it. I’ll do it in one word.

mind=blown [That’s one word if I don’t use spaces, right?]

Never in my life has any form of media presented such an intriguing and fresh idea, and coming from Christopher Nolan, who has been writing this for apparently about 10 years, there is no doubt in my mind that this has become an instant classic and will remain in people’s top 5 list of movies of all time for decades and decades [and decades]. It has been compared a lot to The Matrix, and I can agree with the comparison, but let me tell you why this movie is better than The Matrix. The Matrix gave us a mind blowing thought and example of our world being fake, actually being a computer program, our bodies residing in little containers connected to tubes and such run by crazy robots. That movie was also an incredibly fresh idea and so well made, but in Inception, the idea that they are presenting seems 100% possible and can be related to by anyone who has ever had a dream. So often we have been amazed at the world of our dreams and the capabilities, and this movie puts that into cinematic glory. The rotating hallway fight scene, which involved absolutely zero special effects, was enough to satisfy my mind’s explosion for the entire movie, but luckily I was given more than that. Shifts in gravity, creation of paradoxes and complete control of all physics and physical objects in the dream world is all shown with stunning camera work and visual effects. If you are seeing this movie, see it at the IMAX. I can not imagine seeing this movie in a regular theater. If you have any respect for imagination or creativity, you will see this in the IMAX.

As fat as the movie goes, I have trouble finding flaws. The cast was great, with Nolan sticking to some of his favorite actors from the past [Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy, Michael Cane], and lead by a complete package in Leonardo DiCaprio, giving a pretty damn good performance as the damaged goods hero. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a like-able, fun sidekick, and the same goes for Tim Hardy. Ellen Page, in a role that we have not seen from her before, is not bad at all, either. If nothing else, it’s an attractive cast to the eye, and that alone is probably enough for people to see it. You can add that to the stack of thousands of other reasons for seeing it.

I loved the score of the film, especially the extra base-y sound effects that is popular with Nolan [i.e. Batman movies]. The cinematography is done by the same guy from the Batman movies, so there are a lot of similarities, which is great, because Batman Returns, The Dark Knight and Inception all have incredible shots to see from great set locations. It is also just as long as The Dark Knight, and that was somewhat of a bad point for TDK. It tended to drag on a bit at points, and put some people to sleep. That is not the case in Inception. Not once do you want to avert your attention to something else, and not once can you afford to do so. If you do end up dosing off like you did in The Dark Knight, the idea that Inception is the greatest movie you have ever seen will just put planted into your mind via inception. The ending of the film is also so incredibly thought provoking that I almost just want to yell it at the top of my lungs and spoil it for everyone. But I wouldn’t do that. *cough*everyonedies*cough*

Christopher Nolan is quickly occupying spots in my top 10 movies list [Momento, Batman Returns, Dark Knight, Inception], and I still have a hard time believing that he has produced, written and directed all of his own movies. Absolutely crazy to think about that, and I don’t understand why I don’t hear his name very often in the talks of the best directors and writers. Well, if this doesn’t put him in those talks for the next 20 years, I don’t know what will. Actually, the next Batman project will, which I am 95% sure will be just as good or better than The Dark Knight [That 5% being the loss of Heath Ledger and its effects on the next movie].

I have been trying to decide which movie I like more, The Dark Knight or Inception, and at this point in time, it has to go to Inception. The Dark Knight was just simply awesome, perfect. This movie was something that I and many others have never seen before, but have only thought about after a night of heavy dreaming.

Everyone and their grandmothers needs to see this movie. There are no excuses not too [especially at the IMAX]. Skip out on work, skip out on your best-friend’s wedding, skip out on your OWN wedding, skip out on your first born [or any other] child’s birth. I don’t even know why you are still reading this post. You should have tabbed into a new page several minutes ago to see if there is a showing at your local theater within the amount of time it takes you to drive there.

My vocabulary does not include the words necessary to describe this movie in enough detail that it deserves, and I don’t know if anyone’s vocabulary does. There is only one way to see the incredible idea and production of this movie that nearly every single person in the world has been raving about.

You know what to do.

My rating [See it, Rent it, Skip it]

See it. In an IMAX theater. If not that, see it in a regular theater. Three times. Minimum.