Last movie you watched......

I've never heard it referred to as right-wing, so this is interesting to me as well. The portion of it that I've heard most frequently criticized from a politicized point of view was the abortion/crime rate chapter, and that's certainly not conservative fodder. I think there's stuff in both the book and the doc that True Believers on both ends of the spectrum won't care for.

Finally got around to seeing "127 Hours." It's an amazing true story and works far better than it should've, given that it's pretty much just James Franco stuck in a canyon for 2 hours. It's still something I feel like I would've enjoyed more on DVD than in the theater, though. Netflix has made me far pickier about what I bother to go out for.

 

Oh, what a depressing five hours I spent cleaning my apartment this afternoon, with AMC on.

First up was "Taxi Driver", an all-time favorite that I've seen numerous times. What was depressing was watching DeNiro's performance and wishing he had his own real-life Travis Bickle nowadays to drag him away from the scripts and shabby phone-it-ins he's known for.

Then -- and I shudder to type this -- M. Night Shitburger's "Unbreakable." I'll give it credit, though, for delivering some of the (unintentionally) funniest lines ever, like the mom's "No shooting friends, Joseph." The closing line by Samuel L. was also hilarious. "Unbreakable" was actually a little better than some of the other ones, but that's scant praise. I hated it, and hated myself for leaving it on.

What the hell. My apartment's clean.

 

Just saw Love and Other Drugs. Hathaway and Gyllenhaal were outstanding, but it was a little off, and when I read Ebert's review, I understood why. The pharma and hedonism b.s. in the script got in the way of a superior story line about love and growth.

 

The Tatooist -- The movie was a lot less interesting than the Samoan culture it profiled, although the concept was actually fairly original as far as horror-type films go. Points for making an effort, but the acting wasn't very good for the most part.

Unstoppable -- I'm pretty into trains, so this movie both excited me on premise and dismayed me in execution because I kept thinking, "That doesn't work like that" and "Physics would make this impossible," etc. Also, what's up with making up fake towns in Pennsylvania. Stanton, PA, pop. 752,000? Why the hell not use the name of a real city? "The small town of" Arkway, PA, pop. 12,500? That's not a small town to me.

Also, as a member of the media, I hated-hated-hated how so much of the narrative was provided by live news coverage, which new seconds after something went up in a puff of smoke that "the independent brakes have failed," as well as having the full name and a mugshot of every railroad employee that their helicopters flying 20 feet off the deck were filming in real time.

So, while the action certainly held my interest, it ultimately pissed me off because it was so farcical.

 

I saw "How Do You Know?" and I was stunned by it's mediocrity.

 

Saw "The Fighter" and amazed yet again by the performance of Christian Bale. Glad to see he won the Oscar. Funny how with how good he is how ordinary Wahlberg appears. And Melissa Leo, she was fun to watch as well.

How about that brood of 7 sisters? Damn, talk about Deliverance like.

Really fun movie.

 

I loved the movie and have been surprised to see a little bit of a backlash against Christian Bale's performance out there in critic-land.

I think it was GQ this month that noted that history will redeem Wahlberg's performance. Thought it was better than Bale's.

My thought watching it was that Wahlberg's projects certainly have a type: I couldn't help comparing Micky Ward to Vincent Chase, i.e. the main character is the least interesting person in the ensemble.

 

Working my way back through the Harry Potter movies. Watching the first one, I'm again amazed at how fortunate the producers have been to keep all the crucial characters together all this time, with the regrettable exception of Richard Harris.

 

The third one remains my favorite. Some tremendous filmmaking.

 

"The Switch."

I thought the scenes between Jason Bateman and the kid were really well-done, but I think that they kind of wrote themselves into a corner at the end and resolved everything in about five minutes. The happy ending was really tacked on, particularly since Aniston and Bateman seemed to have little romantic chemistry throughout the movie. Actually, none whatsoever.

All in all an entertaining 100 minutes, however.

 

I've said it before but I think Wahlberg has been seriously underrated for his performance. The showy roles are much easier to play. Playing the quiet centre that all the other characters revolve around is much more difficult.

 

Saw "The Fighter" yesterday and Wahlberg's character had to be subdued. The whole point of the family dynamic was that he was constantly overshadowed by a psycho mom and older brother and a gaggle of sisters. The early scene in the bar where he ends up asking out Amy Adams' character illustrates that perfectly. He's literally on the outskirts of all the action because of so many mostly older powerful characters in a large family. As the last of six children, I know exactly what that's like.