12:40 PM
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By Robert Jay Moore
Directed by Sam Mendes, Screenplay by William Broyles Jr. Universal Pictures, 2005. Color, 2 hours and 3 minutes.
I am not usually one for military movies, but I really enjoyed this. Jarhead is less about the action and the killing, and much more about the camaraderie, the journey, and the descent into insanity. It also deals briefly with the assimilation of marines back into American society, and in one shot, the never-ending aspect of war.
All around, the performances were amazing (Peter Sarsgaard was poorly cast, in my opinion, but he did a good job). Jamie Foxx was great to watch and very easy to love and hate simultaneously. Jake Gyllenhaal may not have been covering any new ground here, necessarily, but he did it very well. His cabin fever had shadows of Donnie Darko, but definitely became a character specific to the film.
Even though a desert can be pretty boring, Mendes does a great job of keeping every shot exciting to look at, and does well to rely more on the emotional bonds between the men and the character development than the visual aesthetic (there's only so much you can do in a desert, after all). He also uses music in very interesting ways to communicate the sarcastic, dark humor in the beginning of the film.
Not a lot of action like you would expect from a war film, but a lot of fun and a lot of thinking.
Four out of Five Stars.
8:48 AM
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By Robert Jay Moore
Written and Directed by Troy Duffy. Franchise Pictures, 1999. Color, 1 hour 48 minutes.
Wow. My least favorite part about Boondock Saints is the fact that it took me so long to watch it.
Sure, it had a ton of language, and yes it was pretty violent. But in a mob film set in Boston, what can you expect? The "saints" do a fantastic job of bringing about their characters (kind of makes me wish I was just a little more Irish so I could be such a BA), and Willem Dafoe is incredible as the cross-dressing FBI agent. Duffy does an amazing job of making you sympathize and side with the vigilante justice. These guys may as well be the foul-mouthed, sloppy version of Robin Hood and his merry men. The character of Rocco "The Joker" is just like that goofy friend that everyone has, in my case, the roommate, and the sarchastic Detective Greenly is just like that other friend everyone has that no one really invites, he just shows up with his stupid comments.
My favorite part about the film, though, is the device of playing with time. We rarely see any action as it actually happens, and it is all rehashed by Dafoe, Rocco, or someone else piecing together the puzzle. In some scenes there is even crossover between present time and past. This was probably a lot more acceptable to me since I had just finished watching the last two episodes of LOST, but I still think that it was genius.
I don't have anything else to say, except if you haven't seen this movie, you are as stupid as I was. Go see it right now.
Five out of Five Stars.
8:42 PM
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By Robert Jay Moore
Written and Directed by Chris J. Ford. Independent, 2008. Color, 1 hour 39 minutes.
When I was in college - way back, oh so long ago - I had a professor who would always complain about myspace. He said myspace was destroying the music industry because so many bands were becoming popular without record labels noticing them, which meant that to find music you actually liked, you had to sift through all the crap first. I never really agreed with him because I have always been a fan of independent music, films, art, etc.
After seeing this film, however, I can see where he is coming from.
I will keep this entry short because I am tired and have to work tomorrow. But I'll sum it up by saying if you want to see a movie about a crotchety old man who is afraid of change who meets a youngster who turns everything around for the better, bypass and just rent Up. This movie employs terrible lighting, terrible shot framing, and terrible acting. It feels like a bad credit report website commercial on local cable. The best acting award definitely goes to John Ratzenberger of Pixar fame (the voice of the piggy bank in Toy Story, among others). That being said, Ratzenberger should definitely continue doing voice-overs and stay out of the gaze of the camera from now on. And he was the best. Don't even get me started on Shelly Cole's utterly failed attempt at being the cute, adorable, spunky, Juno-esque pregnant girl. This movie was a waste of my 99 minutes, and just goes to prove that if you have the money to make a full-length movie, that doesn't mean you necessarily should.
One out of Five Stars.
Directed by Sam Mendes, Screenplay by William Broyles Jr. Universal Pictures, 2005. Color, 2 hours and 3 minutes.
