Capsules for 2009

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Capsule reviews for movies released in the U.S. in 2009. Includes all the movies of 2009 I've seen that I did not write a full review for.

(500) Days of Summer
Director: Marc Webb
Rating: 9/10
At last, here's a movie that takes the wimpy, tortured, hopelessly-in-love boys from the other movies and tells them to grow up. Very simply, (500) Days of Summer is about a young man, Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who falls in love with and has a relationship with a young woman, Summer (Zooey Deschanel), who doesn't fully reciprocate his affections. At some point they break up (not a spoiler -- the movie skips around the 500 days of the relationship using a handy visual counter) and there is fallout, and Tom must learn to come to terms with his romantic delusion that there is one person he's fated to be with -- or, more precisely, that a relationship with someone you fall head over heels for often comes with an uneven playing field. I believe that the greatest fallacy of our civilized society's perception of love is that we believe one can make anyone else fall in love with him/herself if we just try hard enough to get the other to see one's good qualities. Of course, this is what Hollywood has been selling us since movies began -- the romantic pursuit of a love interest -- but have there really been so few movies that have dared to present a more realistic take, featuring a man who may fail and may actually learn enough to move on, that when one comes along, it feels this refreshing? (500) Days of Summer is a triumphant feature film debut for Marc Webb, who not only had two great main actors to work with in Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel, but was also able to present his tale with just the right amount of creative flair, including the use of a number of visual gimmicks and even a random choreographed music number. But none of it feels out of place as the movie's honesty anchors it. It's a story that may suggest that the woman was a "bitch" for treating the man badly, but it outright shows him to be the true fool. This movie should practically be required viewing for any guy who unhealthily obsesses over a girl -- one-way love is a trap from which too many emerge far too unnecessarily scarred. (added 11/24/2009)

Anvil: The Story of Anvil
Director: Sacha Gervasi
Rating: 7/10
When I first heard of Anvil: The Story of Anvil, I thought it was a mockumentary -- someone's attempt to update and pay homage to This Is Spinal Tap. Nope, it's actually about real-life heavy metallers Steve "Lips" Kudlow and Robb Reiner, together known as the band "Anvil." Formed and primed during the music genre's rise in the '80s and apparently considered a pioneer by their now-more-famous peers (Metallica, Poison, Scorpion, etc.), the Anvil duo somehow missed the fame boat -- but they've also never stopped making albums (albeit without much push from their minor record labels). Though their sound doesn't seem to have evolved, neither have they quit pursuing the idea of making a living from their artistic endeavors. Therefore, the story of Anvil is one of pursuing your dream, no matter how much you starve, how much family you may alienate, and how little audience you have to perform before. This is an underdog movie from start to finish, where the heroes are weirdly cheerworthy due to Kudlow's innate lovability (the guy just never stops believing, no matter how frustrating things get) and Reiner's rather intriguing mix of perspective and persistence. You'll learn nothing new here about chasing the dream, but this non-fiction story may convince you to make room in your heart to appreciate the combination of earnestness and doggedness that some people maintain, despite the possibility there will be no reward except fulfillment of one's own passion. (added 11/24/2009; edited version featured at ReelTalk Movie Reviews)

Away We Go
Director: Sam Mendes
Rating: 6/10
Away We Go, Sam Mendes's foray into indie-flavored movies, is tripped up by its own concept before it begins. A quirky expecting couple (John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph) travel around the country visiting relatives and old friends in search of a place to settle and raise their family, and, wouldn't you know it, these people they see are all decidedly wacky. Because the script was written by the husband-wife team of Dave Eggars and Vendela Vida, one wouldn't think such seasoned writers would resort to the easy-target school of humor -- there's nothing like making your protagonists, even if they are goofy, feel like sane centers the audience can get behind by surrounding them with extreme personalities (plus most of them have kids and rear them radically differently, providing obvious perspective). And yet the film is made watchable by its best elements -- it's refreshing to see two usually supporting actors play the leads, and they do their jobs well, with the reserved, grounded Rudolph balancing Krasinski's more kinetic and quite funny performance. A bit of memorable support comes from Maggie Gyllenhaal, playing the wackiest of the wacky friends, who is able to pull it off because she sells the believable absurdity of her character well. The good acting provides an example of what might make this kind of formula work, but it's quite an uphill battle when one can see the scripted situations acting as comic (and, when the story needs it, heartwarming/breaking) fallbacks. (added 10/4/2009; edited version featured at ReelTalk Movie Reviews)

The Blind Side
Director: John Lee Hancock
Rating: 7/10
The Blind Side is the story of Michael Oher, currently an NFL player. You may wonder why his life in particular deserves a movie treatment, and the answer is simple -- his story is pretty incredible. Oher (played by Quinton Aaron), a large, laconic teenager, was effectively homeless when a wealthy couple, Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy (Tim McGraw and Sandra Bullock), allowed him to stay in their home, eventually applying for his legal guardianship. Because of this, Oher was able to complete his education and work his way to becoming a high school football star. The story is incessantly positive because it's about good deeds and its ripple effects, and even if you view it with one raised brow and are looking for signs of embellishments, it's hard to argue the main point, which is that this family did a major altruistic act, which achieved much more as an act of humanity than sitting around and talking about it ever would. As for the movie itself, it doesn't strive to go against predictability; instead, it offers itself up as a sturdy feel-good tale, anchored mainly by the spectacle of watching Bullock in blonde hair wielding a Southern accent. To her credit, she acquits herself fine as a lead dramatic actress, working up enough charisma so that the audience will naturally want to get behind her. The Blind Side does stumble in a few false moments (mostly towards the end), but otherwise passes respectably as a crowdpleasing mainstream drama. (added 11/28/2009)

Brüno
Director: Larry Charles
Rating: 7/10
Sacha Baron Cohen and his director Larry Charles follow up Borat with another guerilla comedy film, Brüno, this time based on Baron Cohen's outrageously flamboyant gay Austrian fashionista. The comedy is created through similar methods, wherein the actor, under the guise of his character, interacts with real people who don't know he's acting, allowing themselves to be awkwardly ambushed into exposing their prejudices. But while Borat cut to the bone in its mocking exposure of the depth of racism, sexism, and classism within our society, Brüno has trickier territory to navigate as it specifically targets homophobia. Possibly the most primal, most vicious, and most resistant strain of bigotry found within humanity, it deserves confrontation, but when done in the manner of the movie here, it is less enlightening than it is just plain squirmingly funny. With attacking homophobia should come the notion that there is a massive double standard in the acceptable depictions of sexuality of women vs. men, and Brüno addresses this limitedly (and perhaps most effectively in the film's last big scene). However, most of the time, the movie just presents the obvious -- most people are homophobic and can be easily made to feel uncomfortable with suggestions of homosexuality; most people misunderstand homosexuality or have no intention of understanding it; and frank sexual exposure unnerves most people (much is made of the infamous scene focusing on a male's privates being shown to a focus group, but frankly that group's reaction would have been the same if those privates belonged to a female). So the shock and mock lose their potency simply and sadly because it's not surprising that homophobia is so prevalent -- you may be surprised and disguted if the nice gentleman next door is a racist, but perhaps not at all to learn that he is homophobic. So what's left? Well, the way Baron Cohen is so fearless in approaching his satire is to be appreciated. Also, Brüno's comic instincts are intact and well-honed enough to make it generally entertaining, especially if you're an open-minded individual, and even if you may not be necessarily registering something dark about your fellow American and yourself. (added 11/24/2009)

Capitalism: A Love Story
Director: Michael Moore
Rating: 8/10
Michael Moore, already a polarizing figure especially after his last decade of editorial films, might be criticized for singing the same old song with Capitalism: A Love Story. Essentially, no matter what his subject is, he has the same things in mind -- sticking up for the little guy, and looking to take down more than a few notches the big guys who take advantage of those little guys. In this latest film, he mainly targets institutions who turn blind eyes to ethics in order to squeeze out just a little more cash for themselves, eventually focusing on the banks, their involvements in the recent housing crisis in the U.S., and the ensuing bailouts. But there's something a little different this time around -- Moore, whose usually delights in showing off the sarcastic edge of a stage comedian in his movies, seems more weary now, more intent in getting his message across without as much dedicated comic relief. Yes, there are jokey moments in the movie, but they feel more like perfunctory quick breaks as Moore makes the stories of injustice he's gathered the real meat of his film; and as he tells them, he shows a continued disillusionment at the depths the powerful are willing to go to against one's fellow man just for the sake of more wealth. Thus, Capitalism acts as a culmination, an assessment point, of this long filmmaking road traveled by Moore, where he may have been preaching to the choir most of the time, but where his whole purpose has always been to stoke our outrage so that we may be moved to participate and do something about the world we live in. No matter how he argues them, he keeps the important issues topical, and that itself is a public service (and frankly, he can't be too worn-down these days -- after all, Obama did win the last election). (added 12/15/2009)

Chocolate (2008; released in U.S. in 2009)
Director: Prachya Pinkaew
Rating: 6/10
With Prachya Pinkaew directing and a lady fighter (Yanin Vismistananda, aka JeeJa Yanin) in the lead, one is led to believe that Chocolate may be the female version of Ong-Bak. Well, it's not quite -- frankly, it just helps to remind us that nothing was ever like Ong-Bak, starring the Muay Thai machine that is Tony Jaa (even Pinkaew and Jaa's follow-up, The Protector, paled to it). That movie just had a raw ferocity to it, which perhaps renders Chocolate impressive if somewhat slight in comparison. It is admittedly unfair to compare Vismistananda to Jaa -- her moves come off more on the balletic than brutal side -- but she does hold her own, and her movie, after getting the half-hour or so of obligatory set-up plot out of the way, becomes a series of gang fight set pieces -- just choose a location (ice-packing plant, meat-packing plant, warehouse, etc.), let the stooges attack, and watch Vismistananda use her body and her environment to creatively smack the crap out of them. The movie builds up to a feverish series of sequences, and concludes with end credit outtakes that show just how much real pain came with the stunts. It's otherwise weighed down with a preposterous premise that actually makes a plea for sympathy for special needs children (Vismistananda's character is autistic, you see -- she actually assimilates martial arts techniques by observing them), setting up a new standard for noble futility as anyone knows we all come here just to see the girl kick serious behind. At least she does just that, and after a while Chocolate mainly and plainly feels like the exhibition that it is. (added 4/8/2009)

District 9
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Rating: 7/10
Science fiction is well-suited for social metaphors, and perhaps District 9 feels the strain a bit from being a bit too obvious about being one. An alien mothership hovers over Johannesburg, South Africa, apparently stranded, and the million-or-so bug-like passengers inside are given refuge within a district in the city; however, human-alien relations have been stressed to the point where the humans have become rather irritated with their presence. Before you can say "apartheid," the aliens' district has devolved into a slum, and they are now about to face a forced relocation to another potential slum further away from the city. Using dislocated aliens on earth to illustrate segregation and xenophobia looks both easy and creative; to the credit of director Neill Blomkamp, though, the film concentrates more on the fantastic nature of the story, displaying a major dose of verve. Since the metaphor itself is pretty clear, Blomkamp goes for the visceral quality of the images and situations -- the shock you might actually feel when humans rough up an alien creature, or, indeed, the disgust one feels at the potential of human cruelty once people believe they have the upper hand as the aggressor. And then there's also the excitement of the film's last third, which dives headfirst into military action. Just the same, the strain is still there -- it's too clear that, outside of having fun with their depictions, the filmmakers use the aliens just to be social illustrations; they otherwise have little internal community logic. We don't have a sense of the effects of their oppression; they don't gather or show evidence of a larger sense of injustice; they have ridiculously powerful weapons that humans can't use, yet they don't use them themselves to fight back, or see them as assets other than for trading; and only one of them seems to have a plan to return to the mothership and escape, and he's helped only by one friend and his young son. Perhaps there are background reasons for all this -- maybe they speak softly and carry big sticks -- but we're forced to speculate. Blomkamp instead focuses on his main character, a human (Sharlto Copley) who may find redemption from his own prejudicial stance against the aliens, all the while ironically steadily metamorphosising into an alien himself, after an accident. Aliens helping a human find his humanity while turning into an alien? This is how poetry operates in science fiction, after all. (added 12/7/2009)

Duplicity
Director: Tony Gilroy
Rating: 5/10
Duplicity writer-director Tony Gilroy has been building his reputation on espionage thrillers, having helped pen the Bourne series and making his directorial debut with Michael Clayton, so why not change up a little? His new movie is also about espionage -- corporate espionage -- but it's more a caper than a thriller, and at heart it's a romantic pas de deux between an ex-CIA agent (Julia Roberts) and an ex-MI6 agent (Clive Owen). Alas, this is also where the movie must pass the test: is the pairing engaging, sparkling, scintillating? Well, maybe only halfway so. Roberts and Owen's characters are so ingrained in spy culture that they have a lot of trouble trusting each other, even as they work out an elaborate scheme to con a couple of corporations. Yes, this is funny, but it also makes the "love" part of their relationship hard to believe. Frankly, their constant sparring and apparent backstabbing also hurts both characters' likabilities. Being able to get behind the central pair in a movie like this is crucial, but Gilroy appears to be more happy to pile on elements that demonstrate the movie's cleverness and the, yes, duplicitous nature of his leads' relationship as opposed to their romantic chemistry. At best, Duplicity shows that Gilroy continues to have no problem putting together slick, well-paced, intelligent movies, and I laud the effort to construct something complex and original. He's also able to get good supporting cast work, in this case from Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson as the CEO's of competing corporations. It's a reunion of sorts, as both were in the mini-series John Adams, with Giamatti as John Adams and Wilkinson as Ben Franklin -- contentious there, it's fun to see them even more so here, and in the movie's best scene (which happens during the opening credits, alas), the two take it to the mat in slow motion at an airport tarmac. But it might be saying something that I preferred to see those two in action than the two actual leads of the film. (added 9/6/2009)

Fantastic Mr. Fox
Director: Wes Anderson
Rating: 9/10
As it turns out, if given the chance, animation may be the best way to prove the auteur theory. There is no question that Fantastic Mr. Fox is undistilled Wes Anderson -- I suppose the only way it could've been more pure is if he did all the voices himself. The film is every trait from his live movies magnified, or to put it more distinctly, expressed to their most accurate degrees. Consider the way the characters are shot; the art production of the sets; the way the characters move, the way their eyes move, the way they walk into a room, the way they are mostly still and are punctuated with rapid movement, even the way they dance. Do you think Anderson could ever get his actors to dance that way? The thing about animation -- and stop-motion animation in particular -- is that "preformances" have to be precise right down to every frame; and so with Fantastic Mr. Fox, we may have the ultimate Wes Anderson movie in terms of look and feel. It's fascinating, and the movie itself is also thankfully delightful, as Anderson's sensibilities, sometimes too self-consciously twee with live actors, work extremely well in this animated format. This story of a society of wild animals living in disharmony with some nasty neighboring farmers is about the call of one's individuality, and it's quite comedically voice-acted by George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, and others. Now I'm starting to wish every auteur would go and make his or her own stop-motion animated flick; what a fantastic experiment that could be. (added 12/14/2009)

Fast & Furious
Director: Justin Lin
Rating: 5/10
Fast & Furious is the fourth movie in "The Fast and The Furious" series, and it's pretty clear by now the whole thing's on auto-pilot. Absolutely nothing new happens here -- you get what you'd expect, which are cool cars, some creative racing/driving stunt scenes, and some plot dealing with illegal this or that, while the protagonist men bond. The novelty, if you can call it that, of this particular entry is the reunion of the primary cast of the first movie (and primarily Vin Diesel's return to the franchise), but it's rather anti-climactic since the characters don't really do all that much when they're not driving or mumbling. It is amusing, though, to see just how much Diesel dominates his co-star Paul Walker in their onscreen relationship -- no mistake who the alpha male is around these parts. Director Justin Lin, who also helmed the third movie, brings things back to multi-cultural Los Angeles, and it's always nice to see that he has roles ready for Asian-Americans, although now the primary concern of pigeonholing may come from the depictions of tough men and thugs -- if you've seen seen one tattooed gangster in a movie, you've seen 'em all. Yes, I'm kidding, but the general unoriginality contributes to "The Fast and the Furious" series' own issue as a "seen one, seen 'em all" series. If you don't mind seeing one again, though, Fast & Furious is a passable time-waster -- it only offers what's asked of it, and nothing more. (added 8/3/2009; edited version featured at ReelTalk Movie Reviews)

Food, Inc.
Director: Robert Kenner
Rating: 9/10
Food, Inc. is this year's An Inconvenient Truth, only this one hits you more in the gut -- literally. After all, one can choose to debate the theories of global warming, but what argument can be leveled against the truths about the products that go directly into your stomach? The spotlight is shone upon the mass production of agricultural products in the U.S., as they are controlled by only a handful of large, powerful corporations, who all take production shortcuts or ethically questionable enhancements that end up harming health and the environment. In the end, the viewer is asked to enact change through their purchasing power, but the reality that you are left with is that, when you look around, you are just surrounded by the products of these companies. It's a harsh feeling, but Food, Inc. does its job in just getting out the information that most of us probably want to ignore and shouldn't; and as a documentary, it's a testament to our general capital-driven shortsightedness. Its goal is to raise awareness, and it deserves to succeed, so if you haven't seen it, you ought to. (added 11/28/2009)

Funny People
Director: Judd Apatow
Rating: 5/10
Director Judd Apatow is moving in a progressive direction with Funny People, ironically mostly a drama with moments of comedy, but the movie shows that there are still a lot of kinks to work out. The story combines a dramatically reliable premise with the potential for odd couple dynamics: a successful comedian/movie star, George Simmons (Adam Sandler), who doesn't have any close relationships, finds out he has a rare form of leukemia; he then hires struggling stand-up comedian Ira Wright (Seth Rogen) to write jokes for him and to be his personal assistant in general, as well as someone simply to confide in. George is determinedly unsentimental, bitterly bottled-up, selfish, and something of a jerk; Ira is his total opposite, a mostly considerate guy who's outwardly emotional and open. At first their interaction is interesting as character drama, but when the last half kicks in, it becomes clear that there is a plot to work out, wherein George works up the nerve to reconnect with his now-married ex-flame (Leslie Mann). While playing out that part of the story, contrivance rears its ugly head, but even then that might have survived were it not for a layer of unpleasantness that's woven throughout the film. Sandler's character is mean; Rogen's character has mean comedian/actor friends; if this movie were to be believed, I would conclude that the last people I'd ever want to hang out with are comedians. People here are either mean or stupid, or are being mean to people who are being stupid. A lot of that is meant as comedy, but it feels uncomfortable to laugh. And the whole package has a welcome-overstaying runtime of two-and-a-half hours (it doesn't help that a lot of its padding feels self-indulgent, what with real-life comedian cameos and Apatow once more trotting out his and wife Mann's daughters for displays of cuteness). Funny People is a bit tough to sit through and, by the end, despite having intriguing moments, doesn't feel like it's gone anywhere. With some more tightness and efficiency, Apatow could get a good thing going; hopefully, this movie will just be a step to something more solid later. (added 11/30/2009)

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Director: Stephen Sommers
Rating: 5/10
Comparisons between G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and Michael Bay's Transformers movies are inevitable -- as many kids of the '80's are aware of, G.I. Joe and The Transformers formed the weekday afternoon Marvel-produced syndicated one-two punch of half-hour animated shows based on Hasbro toys. From my perspective, The Transformers gained more lasting popularity and, as a result, had the bigger and more hyped live-action movies, but not only were those movies fairly ugly, Bay didn't give a lick about his subject's cultural footprint and its place in the hearts of its fans, nor did he understand the most basic idea of what made it appealing in the first place. In that regard, Stephen Sommers's G.I. Joe movie, while quite dopey on its own, is superior to Bay's films in that it at least retains the basics -- an elite government military team vs. an elite terrorist organization, both with access to powerful and fanciful military technology and weaponry -- and makes winking nods to its past incarnations as a comic book and cartoon (they actually slip in the line, "knowing is half the battle," and I had to laugh). Unfortunately, it sinks itself with a multitude of weaknesses -- the acting is distractingly inconsistent (Channing Tatum is a brick; Dennis Quaid moves about as if he's constipated; Marlon Wayans actually locks into the tone correctly, while Sienna Miller tries her best to get by; and Joseph Gordon-Levitt hams it up way too much); the story is convoluted where it concerns its characters, creating unnecessary relationships between its principles in order to generate twists; and at no point does any of it contain enough weight so that it might better involve the viewer. It's light entertainment with little to call memorable, save for perhaps a fun sequence in Paris; but at least therein exists some detectable evidence that the filmmakers had a soft spot for G.I. Joe and simply wanted to deliver its essence -- its hodgepodge of techno-weapons, military fetishism, team comraderie, and ninjas -- to the screen. (added 11/7/2009)

The Girlfriend Experience
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Rating: 7/10
Steven Soderbergh, who continues to bounce around his eclectic directorial spectrum, lands on his artistic indie side with The Girlfriend Experience. This film seems to be based on the notion that it would be interesting to follow around a female escort in New York during the deep recession days of 2008, right before the U.S. presidential election. "Chelsea" (real-life porn actress Sasha Grey) is paid by very rich clients to accompany them in whatever way they please, although many of them appear just to need company in the face of the bad economy. Meanwhile, Chelsea also has a boyfriend, Chris (Chris Santos), a personal trainer aggressively seeking more business with various avenues of income. There's a level of coldness depicted here, where all of the characters are exposed as searching for their basic needs -- money, companionship (sexual or otherwise) --when times get tough, and they are determined not to give up lifestyles they may have grown accustomed to. Chelsea herself is no angel -- her line of work affords her the luxury of being mostly independent-minded and even selfish in pursuing her own personal desires; it also forces her to create distances between herself and the people she interacts with. Soderbergh likes to put the magnifying glass on human behavior as a sort of uncontrollable, instinctive set of compulsions, all of which are heavily shaped by environment (see also: Bubble). Chelsea may believe she has control over her life, but her actions feel inevitable; it reminds me a bit of Nana in Godard's My Life to Live. Grey isn't Anna Karina, though; she does just enough to get by, and Soderbergh's visual compositions do the rest. The Girlfriend Experience ends up as a curious snapshot of urban America during a particular pressured time; it doesn't have a generally nice view of people, but a frankness about the film's subject drives it -- when the chips are down, it's all about business. (added 10/13/2009; edited version featured at ReelTalk Movie Reviews)

The Hurt Locker (2008; released in U.S. in 2009)
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Rating: 9/10
Is it possible that though we've had numerous movies about the Iraq War, so few of them have been directly about the soldiers' experiences in the field? Most of them have had storylines involving people outside and around the war, or soldiers who come home and suffer post-traumatic stress; and almost all of them carried a political agenda. The Hurt Locker, straightforward in its approach about the adventures of a bomb defusing team in Iraq, is therefore weirdly refreshing. Thankfully, director Kathryn Bigelow and her team don't drop the ball here, and the result is thrilling, suspenseful, involving, and probing. It also makes no excuses about being that philosophical oxymoron, an "exciting war movie" -- this contradiction is actually a part of its central theme, showing how the danger of the battleground experience is so unique and fearsome, it is actually perversely appealing in some way. The main character, Sgt. James (Jeremy Renner), has somehow become numb to his job to the point of recklessness, much to the chagrin of his main comrades, the pragmatic Sgt. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and the more nervous Spc. Eldridge (Brian Geraghty). We aren't asked to pity James or even necessarily to sympathize with him -- we simply watch him and drop our jaws at the kind of creature he's become, at the combination of his cold expertise and his almost psychotic intuitions. Bigelow has rigged together a tough war movie that puts into perspective the awesome incongruence of the experience of this modern war with any other known modern experience. In doing so, she may have finally given the Iraq War its definitive identifying film. (added 12/15/2009)

The Informant!
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Rating: 7/10
The Informant! starts out as a true-life whistleblower movie, wherein Mark Whitacre, played by Matt Damon, cooperates with the FBI to expose his agribusiness company's involvement in price-fixing, but then turns into something unexpected when more of Whitacre's character is revealed. However, the story itself doesn't particularly characterize this movie -- it's director Steven Soderbergh's comedic approach that gives the film its personality. While going about his business, both mundane and extraordinary, Whitacre is prone to giving us his random thoughts in voiceover, thoughts that would seem to be recollections of trivial stories, never appearing to matter to whatever is happening at hand, and almost always with some kind of wry or goofy punchline. I have to admit I was laughing readily at the very oddity of this presentation and the comedy in general, and it also helps quite a bit that Damon does a fantastic job playing this strange character, a combination of contradictory moods, impulses, and motivations that nonetheless feels believable. Now, normally, I don't really like Soderbergh's sarcastic side, and this movie is full of that, all punched up with cute music and titles updating the settings; but it works well enough here because it contributes to the oddness of the whole tale, one constantly finding a new way to catch the viewer off guard, accentuating the absurdity of Whitacre's situations. The movie does a good job of matching its mood and tone to Whitacre's state of mind -- the further it goes, the more nervous everything gets, including Whitacre. As a film, The Informant! should be considered part of a certain genre, yet to even state what that genre is would be akin to offering up a spoiler -- but it becomes evident by the time the movie moves closer to its climax. The films of that genre are generally dramas, so this humorous approach is very tricky, but Soderbergh and Damon pull it off with aplomb. (added 11/28/2009; edited version featured at ReelTalk Movie Reviews)

The International
Director: Tom Tykwer
Rating: 5/10
The International is certainly a loaded title, since it refers not only to the evil worldwide bank that our heroes, played by Clive Owen and Naomi Watts, are trying to bring down, but also to the very nature of the current popular idea of modern-day villainy -- that there are no secret organizations or corrupt governments trying to take over the world, but rather it's capital/corporate institutions taking advantage of worldwide conflict and trying to profit at all costs. As Owen's Interpol agent Salinger learns, the bad guys are a conglomeration of cooperative, endlessly replaceable personnel, all working for the benefit of a malicious faceless entity, whose business entangles several countries. The problem with the film is that it tries to build up to this realization, playing itself as a mystery/thriller with something profound to say at the end, when we've pretty much heard a lot of this already; in other words, it's the continuation of a trend, epitomized when The Manchurian Candidate remake replaced the Communists with a corporation and most recently spotlighted by the 007 movie Quantum of Solace, where SPECTRE, a megalomaniac's terrorist org, has been replaced by QUANTUM, a mysterious far-reaching group one middleman agent confesses to having "people everywhere." Even shows like 24 have gotten into the act, wherein the hero can't bring down the whole system so much as just hack at it a piece at a time. For most of The International, the unfolding of its mystery is slow, meticulous, and not very urgent; it only kicks into another gear with its much-lauded shootout in The Guggenheim, a grand and exciting set piece that, at the same time, feels a bit out of place and, frankly, counter-logical to what had been happening in the rest of the movie. The film is hampered by a self-seriousness that halfheartedly caves in to movie contrivances (the bad guys are a bit too assassination-happy) and generates nominal suspense while not trying hard enough to create real movie excitement. (added 6/16/2009)

Julie & Julia
Director: Nora Ephron
Rating: 6/10
Director Nora Ephron has been overthinking things with her last two movies. Previous to Julie & Julia, she made Bewitched, which convoluted a premise that would've worked great in straighforward fashion with meaningless meta-weirdness. Now with Julie & Julia, she could've made a rather charming straight biopic of Julia Child, with a dream star in Meryl Streep to play her, no less; but no, instead it's a parallel-track movie, bouncing back and forth between the lives of Child in the 1950's and blogger Julie Powell (played by Amy Adams) in 2002. They both face similar dilemmas: having been relocated to a new home, Child and Powell turn to cooking to preoccupy themselves, and find the great joy within the activity, not only in doing it but also in writing about it -- for Powell, a blog, and for Child, the cookbook that would eventually be Mastering the Art of French Cooking. They're further intertwined by the fact that Powell's challenge is to cook every recipe from that very book within a year. As a premise, this is cute and interesting, but perhaps more overloaded than it needs to be, for it doesn't seem to lend much insight other than what it must be like to discover how cooking and writing about it can be a timeless elixir for those looking for a fulfilling activity in their lives. That's pretty light stuff, and the movie's only goal seems to be to convey that fluffiness, as both lives are milked for generally positive comic and romantic moments (both women have supportive husbands). A harmless and easygoing film overall, it can boast of Streep's grand performance (does she have any other kind?) and show what it's like when Adams receives what I can only imagine as this specific direction from Ephron: "Be more like Meg Ryan!" (added 12/14/2009)

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©Jeffrey Chen, 2009

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