The Ides of March

Politics is a dirty, stinking, putrid game of backstabbing, shady deals, lying and cheating. And that is from the people on the same team!

The Ides of March follows the campaign of democratic governor Mike Morris' (George Clooney) race for the presidency. The head of his campaign is Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who values loyalty over absolutely anything else, hence when his lieutenant in the campaign, Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling) takes a meeting with, Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti), the campaign manager of a rival democratic hopeful...well, lets just say that the stinky results of a bowel movement really hit the rotary blades of a device designed to cool a room.

There are many ins and outs in this movie, tonnes of back room dealing, selling out friends, and just selling your soul...But it pretty much shows that politics is just as dirty as you would believe it to be.

I give Ides of March four stars out of five.

Moneyball

I went into this movie with a skeptical attitude. Generally, I don't care for movies about sports, but we had some discounted tickets to use up before expiry, and this was one of the only movies that was appealing. I've got to say that I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked this movie. Don't get me wrong, it is still a movie about sports, and while I didn't LOVE it, I did like it.

The movie is about the Oakland A's which are a small market baseball team, which I didn't know. I knew of the Oakland A's, but I didn't know they were a small market team. The movie follows the A's through a rebuilding year after the loss of three of their best players to free agent status. Instead of going the tried and true route of using scouts to find players on the cheap, the general manager, Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) hires Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) as an assistant GM; Peter believes that the old method of finding ball players is the wrong way to go. He thinks that by using science rather than scouts, you can analyse player statistics scientifically, and put together a winning team.

Moneyball is based on a true story, and while Peter's strategies didn't work out for the Oakland A's, the same strategy did work for the Boston Red Sox who implemented the same strategy, two years later.

I thought the movie was pretty well acted, I really liked Phillip Seymore Hoffman as the manager, even though he had a smaller role.

I'd give Moneyball 4 out of 5 stars.

The Artist

!!!!

See what I did there? It's a silent movie, so I simply put some exclamation marks!

Huh? Huh?

5/5

Hugo

We saw this movie a little while ago, and I'm just getting to the review now.

First of all, this is NOT something you generally think of when you think of Scorsese directing. Shutter Island, Cape Fear...sure, Good Fellas, or The Aviator...ok. But this is something completely different, and utterly fantastic. It was both visually stunning and wonderfully acted...and I guess to his credit, well directed.

The story is about a Clock Maker's son, Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), who is orphaned and is adopted by his drunkard of an uncle, who also works with clocks. Hugo is forced to ensure the clockworks at the railway station are always functioning, while is uncle is off getting drunk.

Before his death, Hugo and his father are working on a project to reconstruct a clockwork automaton that his father found in a museum. Unfortunately, his father died before they completed it and Hugo views it as a mission to complete the work in honour of his father.

In an effort to complete this quest, hugo must steal parts from a railway station shop keeper, Georges Méliès (Ben Kingsley). The same Georges Méliès who made the film: A Trip to the Moon, among many others. Through his interactions with Mr Méliès, he meets his young neice, Isabelle Méliès (Chloë Grace Moretz) and have various adventures as they try to evade capture by Station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) and also try to solve the mystery of the Automaton and its connection with Mr. Méliès.

This was a wonderful, feel good movie that was not treacly at all.

5/5

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

This was a really good movie! So here's the deal: During the Cold War, it is discovered that MI6 (you know the British version of the CIA) has a mole.

Hmmm...kind of a strange tangent here, but other than the head of MI6 just knowing about the mole, they really don't get into how he found out. Huh? Oh wait, I think they found out about the mole as a result of a spy being killed earlier, and as a result the head of MI6 and his second in command were sacked. At least I think his second in command, George Smiley (Gary Oldman) was sacked. Well, they actually didn't really say George Smiley was sacked, the head of MI6 simply said that "Smiley is coming with me." Which to me means that he was either sacked, or there was some strange homoerotic thing going on that they didn't delve too much further into during the movie...Not that there's anything wrong with that.  Ok, never mind, I remembered how they knew about the mole now.

So anyway, before dying, the head of MI6 tells his fears of the mole to the only one he trusts, George Smiley, that there is a mole in MI6. Oh wait...actually, he died before actually telling him that there was a mole, and it was George that found out about his suspicions afterwards while ransacking the apartment of the dead guy.

Ok, you know what? In this review, I'm only about 20 minutes into the movie and I'm already confused about the plot. Look, it is a really good movie, and although there aren't gratuitous explosions or car chases, there are a couple guns that were fired, and a really cool head shot at the end. Spoiler alert!

Oh and Colin Firth is in it!

4/5

Paul

I originally didn't want to see this movie as I thought the previews looked juvenile and crass. But what I found while watching the movie was...that it was juvenile and crass. But I still liked it!

Paul is an alien that is trying to get home...think ET, but voiced by the expletive loving Seth Rogan (There isn't that much swearing). On his journey to get back to his home, he bumps into Graeme Willy (Simon Peg) and Clive Gollings (Nick Frost). The three form a fast, if uneasy friendship, while being pursued by the G-man Agent Zoil, his boss The Big Guy (Sigourney Weaver), Two inept policemen, homophobic red necks, and a shot gun toting father of an unsuspecting hostage victim of the trio, Ruth Buggs (Kristen Wiig).

The movie, despite being a mashup of ET and Every Which Way But Loose actually works really well.

4/5

The Descendants

As many will already know, The Descendants is one of the top Oscar picks for this year. Which kind of tells you what a lousy crop of good movies there was this year. Either that, or Academy is over represented by middle aged women who have the hots for George Clooney.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie and I thought Clooney's performance was wonderful. I also thought that Shailene Woodley's performance was really well acted too. The bottom line however is that this wasn't that great of a movie.  It was ok, but I don't think that it was Oscar worthy

The story is about Matt King (George Clooney),one of the descendants of King Kamehameha, who's wife is in a coma from a boating accident. While in the coma, Matt finds out from his daughter Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) that his wife has been having an affair behind his back. The movie plot revolves around how Matt and his family deal with the fallout of the affair and how it affects the rest of the family's relationships.

There is also a subplot about how the King family is to deal with a large portion of Hawaiian land that they own, which kind of felt tacked on. While I enjoyed the movie, I really don't think that it was deserving of an Oscar nod. But I will say that the performance of Nick Krause as Sid was hilarious! He deserved an Oscar, but for the movie itself....meh.

3/5

The Iron Lady

Let's forget for a second that I really don't like Margaret Thatcher's politics, and let's forget for a second that a movie that condenses the life of a historic figure into about two hours is going to leave a lot on the cutting room floor. What we can't forget about this movie is the performance that will pretty much guarantee Meryl Streep a Best Female Lead award at the Oscars. She was absolutely flawless in this movie.

As you might have guessed by the blog title and the poster accompanying it, this movie is about Margaret Thatcher; where she came from, and who she is now. It is a very interesting portrait into the life of The Iron Lady. The movie goes back and forward through time to try to give to context to each story, but it works really well in this movie.

Aside from the fact that in her political life, she became tough as nails, one of the things that I enjoyed about this movie is her relationship with her husband Denis Thatcher, played with characteristic excellence by Jim Broadbent. I came away from this movie believing two things:

1. Maggie was a hard ass that wanted nothing for the best for her nation.
2. Maggie love her husband more than she loved Britain.

As mentioned earlier, Meryl Streep was outstanding in this movie, and Jim Broadbent was excellent as well. While the movie may only gloss over her life, it was still very interesting to watch.

5/5

Beginners

The more I think about this movie, the more I dislike it.

Don't get me wrong, the movie was very well acted, great directing, and what should have been an interesting story. But there is where the rubber hits the road. The story, which could have been quite enjoyable, went down in flames.

This was a sad movie. Not a depressing movie, a sad movie. The main characters were sad people who seemed to want to find some other sad people to share their life with, and make each other sad.

A quick plot synopsis is that Oliver (Ewan McGregor) is a very successful, good looking and well off artist who is very unhappy. Anna (Melanie Laurent) is a very successful, good looking and well off actress who is very unhappy. Oliver's dad, Hal (Christopher Plummer), is a senior who has recently come out of the closet after losing his wife, has some issues with his boyfriend's fidelity, and is diagnosed with inoperable esophageal cancer...Hal is absolutely over the moon with happiness! This whole movie was a big mix up!

I think what probably happened is that en route to production, the script fell out of its binder and all the pages got mixed up. Hence the people with reasons to be happy are now unhappy, and the people who should be unhappy are all smiles and giggles.

Seriously! The movie itself even mentions in its dialogue that Oliver and Anna obviously are too narcissistic in their unhappiness...or something to that effect.

Look, if you like a good story gone wrong, if you like the feeling of wanting to slap a character across the face to smarten them up, then please go and see this film. Otherwise, I'd recommend something a little happier...maybe the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Arthur Christmas

Ever since I was a kid, I have always loved cartoons! Whether it be The Simpsons, Toy Story, or even old Bugs Bunny cartoons. Kristie would say that my tastes aren't discerning enough, but I would disagree. I think that while I would enjoy a bad cartoon, I can still appreciated that it should be scaled.  Which brings us to the newest cartoon we saw this weekend: Arthur Christmas.

Arthur Christmas is the new CG cartoon from Sony pictures. Nope, not Pixar, not DreamWorks, not even Disney, but Sony.

The movie is about the Clause family; the current Clause family.

• Malcolm: The current Santa
• Grand-Santa: The father of Malcolm who is often spouting off about the glory days
• Steve: Son of Malcolm and the Santa apparent
• and Arthur: The fish out of water, who loves Christmas with all hiis heart, but is a bit of a...well, a fish out of water, I guess.

The story is about the current Santa coming to the end of his days, as he has been Santa-ing for 70 years, and how Steve is getting ready to take over the family business.  Well, on what is suppose to be Santa's final ride, Steve, who basically is in charge behind the scene, managed to miss a single child's gift; which he thinks is an acceptable error rate.  Arthur disagrees, and it is up to Arthur, Grand-Santa, a plucky little wrapping elf, and a moth-eaten old reindeer to save Christmas for the little girl.

The story is suitable for both young and old, and there are some great jokes that will delight everyone peppered throughout the story. The only thing that I would criticize about the movie is that for a British film, it seemed pretty Americanized in its humour...a little less Wallace and Gromit, and a little too Shrek.

On the whole, even though it is a cartoon, and I'd rather watch a bad cartoon than a good movie, I'd give Arthur Christmas 4 out of 5 stars.

Project NIM

As it turns out, I already saw this movie earlier this year. Of course they had a different title for it then: Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

The similarities of the fictional account of a chimp that was taken into a human's home to learn sign, and the true to life version of Project NIM are uncanny. Granted, there weren't as many explosions in Project NIM (spoiler alert), but some of the fallout regarding the chimpanzee are quite heart wrenching in both movies.

Basically, Project NIM is the story of a bunch of frigging idiots that decide take an ape into a human household and see what happens. If you asked the researchers of the study, they may say that it was a scientific experiment to see if an ape could learn human language and grammar. But I think my idiot comment stands.

Why? Because not one of the multitude of people who were involved in this study (save one: the drug smoking hippie...no, not that drug smoking hippie, the other one) had any knowledge about chimpanzee behaviour, and what might (would most definitely) happen when you bring a wild animal into a house or academic setting. No one involved in the study thought it might be a good idea to do a bit of reading into chimpanzee behaviour before hand; virtually every one of them admitted in interviews that they knew almost nothing about "monkeys".

Without spoiling the entire movie, lets just say that people were bitten, poop was flung, and a chimpanzee was mistreated.

I thought this movie was outstanding and I encourage anyone reading this (except for that one guy...you know who you are) to go and see this movie.

5/5

Midnight In Paris

I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but I actually enjoyed a Woody Allen movie! I know! I can't believe it either!

A couple months ago, Kristie and her book club read the book The Paris Wife by Paula McCain.  Some of the others in the book club started talking about the movie Midnight in Paris that was coming out in the near future.  As it turned out, when the time arrived, only one person from the book club wanted to go, so they decided to drag the husbands along.  I've got to say, that I went in there pretty much kicking and screaming, but as it turned out, I found it pretty good on the whole.

Without too many spoilers, the story is about Gil (Owen Wilson) and his fiancee, Inez (Rachel McAdams) who are on a vacation in Paris when they bump into a couple friends of Inez: Carol (Nina Arianda) and Paul (Michael Sheen).  Paul is an old professor of Inez that she use to have a crush on, and is, not to put too fine a point on it, a total prat! And Sheen plays the part really well.

Anyway, as the film goes on, in order to avoid mingling with Paul and Carol, Gil decides to take a walk around the city of Paris, a city that he adores and pines for whenever he is away.  On that night, at the stroke of midnight, Gil is inexplicably transported back in time to Paris of the 20s where he meets many of his idols: Hemingway, Picaso, Cole Porter, Gertrude Stein, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and a host of others.  While on many of his blasts to the past, he begins to fall in love with  Adriana, (Marion Cotillard) a muse of Picaso, Hemingway, et al.  Without giving away the ending, lets just say, I like how it ended.

Like most Woody Allen movies, I had two issues with this one.  The first was the pairing of two people who's characters couldn't have lasted for five minutes together, much less long enough to be engaged.  The second was how Woody Allen does dialogue. Virtually all Allen movies have people stepping over each other's lines as they have pseudo-intellectual conversations about nothing in general, and the actor's seem to be encouraged to speak as if they every thought in their head has to exit through their mouth at the exact same moment.  There never seems to be any coherent thoughts that spew out of their mouths.

Despite these two flaws, like I've said a couple times, the movie is actually pretty good, and I'd recommend going to see it.

I give it 3/5 stars.

Jane Eyre

First Point of Order: This isn't a book review!

In addition to book reviews, we've decided to start reviewing the movies that we watch too!  And lets be honest, I don't think that I could ever get through the flowery language of Bronte.  Kristie could, but I couldn't.

Point Number Two: I liked it!  Actually we both liked it!  I do have a question about it however:

Was England really that bad back then?

Dickens, Bronte, Austin, et al, they all seem to basically say that unless you had money, you were pretty much treated like crap!  Its like living in Reagan's America in the 80's!  ZING!

Anyway, the movie starred and was brilliantly acted by Mia Wasikowska, who also played the daughter of two lesbian parents in The Kids are All Right.  The role of Rochester was played by Michael Fassbender.  I thought that he came across quite well as a grumpy aristocrat.  Rounding off the top roles was Judi Dench as Mrs Fairfax.

Without giving too much away to those who have never read the novel, or seen the BBC series, or watched this movie, or any other version...well, you get the point, there were a lot of adaptations of this novel.  It is a rags to riches story (actually, riches to rags to riches) of a girl named (spoiler alert!) Jane Eyre.  It follows her from her younger years where she is taken in by her aunt following the death of her parents (no, it isn't Batman).  The Aunt, being the child hater you'd expect in any Dickensian/Bronte novel, cast Jane out into an orphanage where she is beaten, deprived of food, scorned and ridiculed; again, very much like the Reagan years.  After leaving the orphanage, she takes a position as a governess for Rochester Fairfax, the romantic lead.

Not knowing anything about the story of Jane Eyre, I thought the story was, while depressing, very interesting.  And as I said earlier, I thought it was very well acted.

We give Jane Eyre 4/5 stars.