BilmBlog500

Midnight:  Spotlight. 11:57  I like Leonardo DiCaprio a lot, liked him from when I first saw him in Gilbert Grape a very very long time ago.  In Wolf of Wall St., in Titanic, in lots of movies.  I just wish he wasn't getting an Oscar for The Revenant. 11:53 PM I would happily see Michael Fassbender or Malcom's dad or Matt winning for Best Actor.  But this is not likely to end happily.  Steve Jobs was a great movie, and Fassbender's performance is a huge part of that. Matt Damon was too good, made it seem too easy!  Trumbo better for me than for most critics. 11:45 PM Best Actress is a depressing category for me.  Saw 45 Years, and not a fan.  And not a fan of Brooklyn, or of Carol.  Didn't see Joy.  So I guess I'll hope for Brie Larson to win, as she is touted to do. 11:38 PM Not a surprise, but I so wish something or someone else would have won for Best Director.  What can he do next year in his quest for Best Award Bait? ...

So having completed the live blogging for the Oscars, this is my Baker's Dozen best of 2013, in no particular order: World War Z: This is grading on a curve.  But basically, there are so many really shitty special effects spectaculars around these days that I feel an urge to give some recognition to a movie that's just a little bit different.  Also, since I keep asking authors to revise their manuscripts, it's nice to see something in the popular culture where revision works.  In particular, the ending of this major CGI-ridden summer spectacular release is quiet.  One setting, one main character, a place where small little things count, where the tension is real.  A place where the violence is earned, justified by the movie being what the movie is, and now entirely thrown in just because someone thinks it's fun to plow a starship into a building, or to destroy Manhattan for the 18th time and pretend like it isn't, like Superman didn't save Manhattan in Superman ...

In case you haven't noticed, I'm trying to catch up on a year of movie reviews in the week of/after the Golden Globes and before the announcement of Oscar nominations. Lots of people have seen the excellent Captain Phillips.  As well they should! Tom Hanks is fantastic in this movie.  Unlike in Saving Mr. Banks, you never forget that he is Tom Hanks.  But the much talked about last scene of the movie which is harrowing and amazing (and all the more so for being partially improvised, with Hanks playing against a non-actor) is all the more so for us knowing that if it's Tom Hanks in this situation, it really could be any of us.  It's directed by Paul Greengrass who is a quite perfect choice.  He started out as a documentarian, moved to doing documentaries like the quite excellent Bloody Sunday and United 93, jas done action-oriented feature films like Green Zone and two Bourne movies.  So here, he gets to take a real story which is full of ways to show off h...

Saving Mister Banks started out kind of slowly at the box office in its initial limited release.  I went to see it opening weekend on the primary screen at the Village East, a landmarked beautifully ornamented former Yiddush play house surrounded by much smaller screens in the basement and stacked in the one-time stage area. The movie was playing on four screens,and there were maybe a few dozen people watching in this very large one. Happily, to me, the film picked up some steam with families over the holidays.  It is quite entertaining, boasts some fine acting, and for my clients and people in my trade it poses some interesting questions about the boundaries between art and commerce. It is the story of an artist, the author of the Mary Poppins novels, and her money-driven flirtation with Disney over the making of the film based on her books, which the author wouldn't have enjoyed with a five-pound bag if sugar, let alone a spoonful. The acting first.  Tom Hanks plays Wal...

I haven't done a lot of blogging recently.  To make up for it, I'm going to try and do quick capsule reviews of some movies that are in theatres now and/or not in so many theatres but in the buzz for awards season. Thor: The Dark World I didn't care for this at all.  The first movie with a very odd superhero movie choice in Kenneth Branagh directing was a little off the superhero movie tracks, as interested in showing Chris Hemsworth in a tight tee-shirt as in endless superhero battles.  Not this movie,  As is so often the case, I tuned out and went to sleep when we got to the last half hour, because I knew it was just going to be another long, dull, over-CGIs, boring, been-there done-that fight scene.  That said, I saw it with a client who enjoyed it quite a bit, as have most of the other people I know who saw it.  Really? Last Vegas If you think you might like this, you probably will like it.  It's not good by many objective critical standards, but i...

11:37 having the presenter do all the encomia for the acting nominees instead of the array of past winners, well OK, not lime the thing they did the past few years is unalterable. But the Best Picture nominees are all lumped into one montage. The producers don't have their names read aloud and have to settle for just type on the screen. And even the Best Picture winers have to deal with music telling them time is too shirt. C'mon, broadcast somewhere around 3:15 you can let the winners for Best Picture have their say. 11:32 why Jurassic Park music of all the films Spielberg has directed 11:31 not in love with his acceptance speech. trying too hard. 11:25 Colin Firth was also great in A Single Man last year. 11:20 unless Jeff Bridges wins in a category that is almost certainly and deservedly going to Colin Firth, safe to say that True Grit is the evening's big loser. Lots of nominations, lots of bos office, no love from Oscar. I didn't like the movie all that muspch sav...

Toy Story 3 may be the best movie I've seen so far in 2010. It demonstrates that if Hollywood were to try, if it were to care, that it could make movies that were actually good. The people at Pixar care. They don't always succeed, and I haven't been as big a fan of Up or Wall-E as others. Not that either of them was bad, but I just didn't think they were as good as some of the fuss and bother had them to be. And when I see Toy Story 3, I'm seeing the difference between true greatness and some nice tries. Why do I love this movie so much? Well, the most important thing might be the characters. They're toys, but we really and truly and deeply care about them. There's something about the performances of the voice actors that goes a little bit deeper than the usual. Way back when the first Toy Story came out not every actor was lined up for these animation voicing jobs like it is now. That's a long time ago, it is, and we were just getting to Robin W...

Up.  Seen Tuesday evening May 19, 2009 at the AMC Empire, screen 17.  2.5 Slithy Toads Angels & Demons.  Seen Tuesday evening May 19, 2009 at the AMC Empire, screen 6.  3.5 Slithy Toads So I'm sitting at home on a Sunday night with The Firm on as background noise ; it's a TNT Free Movie On Demand, and hearing that Dave Grusin score... It inspires me to write about movies. Up is Wall-E redux.  It starts out with some wonderful stuff that nobody but Pixar does in an animated film, a music-and-pictures sequence that tells the life story of the lead character from youth to old age, for richer and poorer and sickness and health with the woman he meets at a young age, marries, and eventually survives.  There's another very nice scene not long thereafter when he snaps at the pressure of a development going up around the house he's holding on to, providing an opportunity for evil developer to get his way.   [where is Gene Hackman.  I just hear his vo...

Seen Monday evening   September 29, 2008 at the Landmark Sunshine, Auditorium #1, 3 Slithy Toads I was so quick to post negatively about the first film I saw in this year's Variety Screening Series that I should have been much quicker to enthuse about Jonathan Demme's "Rachel Getting Married."  But better late than never. Jonathan Demme's had a very uneven career as a director, from the excellent and energetic Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense and film adaptation of Spalding Gray's Swimming to Cambodia, on to Married to the Mob and Something Wild (not bad, though others love more than I), continuing to The Silence of the Lambs and the excellent Philadelphia to The Truth About Charlie remake (which I love more than others) to a remake of The Manchurian Candidate (which needed better tighter editing; even scene seemed to last a beat too long making it rather a chore) and now to Rachel Getting Married, which I think might be up there with Philadelphia ...