Movie Review:Street Fight

Finally worked through my netflix's que to Street Fight an extremely compelling documentary about the 2002 mayoral campaign in Newark, New Jersey. I know it seems like you couldn't care about this if lived outside of Newark, New Jersey, but trust me, you will care about who wins this race between the golden boy challenger Cory Booker and the willy old incumbent, Sharpe James. What unfolds in this race hits every issues at play in American politics: race, age, reform, class, scandal, urban renewal and more.

The film also shines a light on a much rougher and darker brand of local politics than I've come across in my time. I've worked a number of campaigns in jurisdictions across Northern California and worked in local government in a few more and I've never seen the kind of dirty that gets played in Newark. The incumbent administration had police and firefighters tearing down the challenger's signs in broad daylight and uses City Code Enforcement officials to shut down business's that support the opposition. Not to get too self-righteous, but that kind of crap just would not just not fly where I'm from. It would hit the press in a second and anybody trying it would be roasted alive. But New Jersey is just a different kind of place, those kind of moves just get shrugged off as "politics."

But enough about a much cleaner NorCal politics is that Jersey, your main take-away from this post is that Street Fight is well worth your time to check out.

Avatar Reviewed

First off, lets make this clear Avatar is the best looking thing you will in theaters this decade. Absolutely amazing. From broad scenery porn to the tiniest detail, every single bit of this movie is staggeringly good-looking.

As for plot, what you've heard is true. Dances with Wolves IN SPACE. The aliens are the clearest Native American stand-in you've ever seen in Sci-Fi.

I do have some nit-picks. The alien mineral at the root of the movies conflict is called Unobtanium. For real. Dozens of amazing creatures and war machines created down to last detail and they couldn't spend another 10 minuets to come up with a better name that Unobtanium. Its not unobtainable! Obtaining this material is triggering an interstellar war! Get a better name name.

One last point. If, in the future we ever find a race of noble alien savages living atop an incalculably valuable resource, we are going to let them be. You know why? Because we will all have grown up seeing the movie classic Avatar, and we will know better.

District 9

Kick Ass.

What you want more?

Kick Ass tale of displaced alien refugees, living in a Johannesburg slum, trying to be relocated by a nasty bunch of private military contractors. The whole thing is very South African, which gives the allegory of destitute aliens living among us extra punch.

Sharlto Copley gives a wondrous performance as the bumbling functionary in charge of the effort, like an Afrikaans version of Michael Scott from The Office, as he gets in horrifically over his head.

First time in a long time special effects really got to me. The alien weapons in play here are shocking in their power. When was the last time you were awed by a movie ray gun?

All and all well worth your money

Or like I said:

Kick Ass.

UnWanted

Should gone to the one with the cute robots. Wanted is utterly depraved, brilliant crap. Timur Bekmambetov, The young Russia director behind Nightwatch, previously noted on this blog, is a genius for blowing your fraking mind. There are at least 10 images in this movie that are nothing I've seen before and will dream about tonight. Too bad these images lie in the mist of crazy depraved weirdness. I could write a whole thesis on this movie and the masculine impotence of the modern American male. Our hero is a such a beat down emasculated chump, I'm surprised his fat, cruel female boss doesn't reach down his pants and steal his penis away right there on screen. But then he learns how to kill, "grows a pair," and proceeds to put that knowledge into practice. Money, self-confidence, and snogging Angelina Jolie all follow. That's killing = manhood for those of you keeping track at home. As Christopher Orr says "I've watched a movie that, while fiercely entertaining, made me fear for the emotional health of my gender."

Iron Man

I have seen the future, and it contains lots and lots of power armor suits. And lots of movies about guys in power armor suits. Robert Downey Jr. does great work as billionaire supra-genius playboy hero Tony Stark. The plot I won't bother to summarize here, seeing as you seen the trailer and know the gist. Interestingly enough the movie carries a pretty strong critic of the international arms industry. The morality tail goes astray however, as the answer to high tech weapons seems to be even awesome weapons. But still awesome, none the less. The other message of the movie seems to be don't trust anyone without hair. Gwyneth Paltrow seems to have wandered in on those great legs of hers from some 1950's workplace romantic comedy.

But all told I must recommend this movie. Well done.

A Proper Caper

I do love me a good heist movie. There are lots of things a good heist movie must have. High stakes, a double-cross or two, a beautiful woman who isn't to be trusted and so on. Well The Bank Job has all that, plus the added bonus of being English. Which means all of the above plus characters that say things like "cheeky bastard" and "spot of trouble with some local villains" I love it when they call criminals "villains" it makes the whole affair seem so much more...classy.

For an added bonus, this story is supposedly based on true events and involves 1970's swinging London, black militants, royal sex, straight and crooked cops and either MI-5 or -6 ("Who can tell the difference - they all have the same bloody tailor and went to the same bloody school") The blokes doing the bank job are the most honest characters in the movie.

The real affair was placed under a news blackout (They can do that?) in Britain, so I'm unsure how true this story is.

But its a heck of story and well worth your time and money.

Entertainment Report

I found Jumper to be sadly disappointing. Up until this point I've loved everything Doug Liman has done as a director. But the man is losing his indy edge. Hayden Christensen is just dead weight in the center of this movie. He's not a hero, he's not a likable rogue, and he’s not a desperate everyman. He's just an amoral blank. And amoral blanks don't fill up very compelling movies.

Also in the bad category was the new version of Knight Rider. The trend these days is to bring back old shows and make them darker and edgier and better (Case in point.) The new Knight Rider is not darker, not edgier, and no good at all.

I know I’m coming late to this party but if you must have a positive review of something, I have fallen in love with The Wire. Very damn good.

What do you all find out there that’s good? Bad?

Cloverfield

(Lightly Spoilerish)

By the far the coolest trailer of last year was this mysterious untitled pic from JJ Abrams. Party - Explosion - Head of the Statue of Liberty comes crashing down. Well the movie that goes with that trailer is out and the movie is called "Cloverfield." Cloverfield as it turns out, is the rather harmless-sounding government code-name for the big nasty which makes life so difficult for our party-going New Yorkers. I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but Monster! Run!

Most of the time, the monster wrecks a city, you get the monster view. Or the above the monster view. People run and scream and die like ants. Well this movie is from those ant's perspective and it sucks to be those people. Hand-held cameras bring the action home.

The days of picture perfect special effects is over. The real trick now is dirty, out of focus, out of frame, and seamless blended into the real world.

A movie like this is about balance. You want people who are compelling enough to be involved in their plight, but not too sympathetic that the inevitable deaths bring you down. This is a popcorn movie, after all. I just want to have some fun during the long weekend. Our central characters are unknown, good-looking, and good enough actors that they keep our sympathies. They maintain balance by committing acts of head-banging stupidity. I'm guessing the filmmakers were going for "heroic" but instead they landed on "too dumb to live"

In the end I pronounce this film to be "good" but I now pronounce the era of the hand held camera over. My inner ear can't take much more. I want my Steadicam.

Golden?

Well, my faith is shaken to its very core. Oh please. If this movie shakes anything, you are on pretty weak foundation. The Golden Compass has a lot of nice parts, but add those parts up and you don't get much of a story. The setting is a cool, Victorian England but with magic technology. The concepts are cool - dæmons as a kind of external soul in animal form have got to be the neatest fantasy "pet" untill they make a Dragonriders of Pern movie. The Armored Polar bears are just as cool as advertised. The cast is great - Daniel Craig, Sam Elliott. Eva Green as sexy/deadly witch. The only way to make an armored polar bear warrior cooler is to give him the voice of Ian McKellen. Of course, none of these folks get enough screen time. That all goes to the Kid. Lord The Authority spare me from precocious child actresses named Dakota.

The story is where all these fine parts fall apart. The central mystery of the story, something to do with magical "dust", infinite parallel worlds, the central church, and the dæmons of kids made no sense to me at all. And I have bought into a lot of scifi and fantasy concepts in my day. Its like they weren't even trying. If I can believe that when the robots take over they will rely on humans body heat for power, I can believe a lot, but throw me a bone here people.

So with nothing to hold it together, the story plods from place to place. A bit of jeopardy here, a bit of battle there. Nothing too compelling. The whole thing is a just a set-up for the next movie. Not so golden, I say.

Bourne!

A couple of things in here are sort of spoilers so read carefully.

More! More! Unlike just about every other summer movie franchise (Pirates! Now even Longer and Making Even Less Sense!) I'm really glad they keep making Jason Bourne movies. The latest is Ultimatum again with Paul Greengrass at the helm. Greengrass has a style all his own. Way too close to the action not-steady-cam. Which puts every fight, every car crash this close to you. Which is riveting. The downside is that, after the movie, you pretty much feel like you were in a car crash and a fight.

They really do know what they are doing making these movies. All the pieces are in place. Put some great A-list talent back at CIA headquarters. Lots of great globe trotting locations. Whip-smart action. All the moving parts fit together. (Kung Fu calls it out -Nested sequels! Sonovabitch!) O hell even Julia Stiles and the movie's use of Julia Stiles gets better with each picture. There's this part where she cuts and dyes her hair and looks just like Marie after she had just cut and dyed her hair...oh man! I could write a whole thing on the perfection of that moment, of how the movie is smart enough just to show it without calling it out, trusting enough in the audience to get it without having someone explain it.

That's the secret of Bourne - it's a smart movie for smart people who watch action movies. A few weeks back, I'm watching Miami Vice with my Dad and during the scene with Tubb's girlfriend rigged with a bomb-collar, my Dad says "Looks like C4." And I say, "First, I think your right and two pretty damn scary how much we can learn just from the movies we take in." Bourne movies are for people who watch and learn, even from summer action flicks. Bourne is smart, but not magic smart. You get to see him think, to see how he gets one step ahead. You learn something.

Movie Review: Transformers

So for two hours I was able to reconnect to my lost childhood. Transformers were second only to Legos in my personnel Pantheon of toys. As John Swansburg says in Slate "the only thing better than a toy truck was a toy truck that was also a toy robot."

And Michael Bay does all he can for the boy in all of us. I swear to God the man is least subtle director in film history. He wants you to jump, he throws a car a the screen. Bam! Off comes the head! Boom! Down comes the building Crash! The bus gets cracked in two. Fun times. Just don't expect everything to make much sense. How did..? When did..? Didn't they already say..? Just leave those questions behind. This is a movie for boys. Boys do not ask questions about the plot.

How do I know that this is movie for boys? Well, there are two female characters, stunningly hot and their skill sets are mechanic and computer hacker. Only in Boy-Movie never-never land do mechanics and computer hackers look like this.

High points- effects, the transformations effects are great. A million little parts shift and move and recombine in a way that is fascinating to watch, apart for the mere fact that a fracking helicopter just turned into a fracking giant robot.

Low points- jokes, this movie tries way too hard to be funny, and the gags miss more than they hit.

But in the end the battles are cool, the chicks are hot and Optimus Prime says "Autobots, roll out" Really what more do you need on the 4th of July.

Ocean's 13

Ok so this post has been sitting in draft since I got back from Sin City, about time I hit publish.

Ocean's 13 marks the first movie trilogy I've managed to see this summer, having missed both Shrek and Pirates 3. I managed to see this movie four days into a Vegas vacation, which I highly recommend. There is something deeply emotionally satisfying about watching people so much cooler than you rob a Las Vegas casino blind. And after the movie, you can go wander the strip and see all the location and make like you're George Clooney. Or in our case, try and figure out where the fictional CGI casino would be located in relation to our own hotel.

Anyway, to the movie: Many, many people pulling many, many cons with great style, both personal and cinematic. Lots of moving parts in this one. The full cast, lots of supporting characters, everyone gets their 30 seconds. Nothing quiet as smart as the first movie, but no massive clunkers like the second (Julia Roberts plays someone who looks like Julia Roberts!) Al Pachino's dayglow tanned Willie Bank just doesn't seem as smart or as menacing as Andy Garcia's Terry Benedict. And where is the fun in beating the B-Team. Putting the moves to Ellen Barkin , however, will always be fun.

So to sum up, Las Vegas, Cool, Hey the French Guy! Slick, Casino robbing - somehow ok, style, Elle Barkin - still hot, fun, gadgets, just how many people are in this movie and did I mention I just got back from Vegas.

300

Finally took in the show, and in I-MAX no less. Because when a slow-motion decapitated head flies across the screen, I want to see every detail.

Rather than give an overall assessment, it's best to break this movie down into parts. As war porn, this movie is unbeatable. The visuals are stunning, down to the last pixel. Spartans yell, Persians howl and blood flies. Everywhere. A girl in my row got splattered with some and that stuff does not come out. This is pure stylized mayhem of the first order. The wardrobe department forgot to give the Spartans their armor, so as to better show off everyone's rippling pecs and abs. Every Spartan soldier is a walking, chopping, stabbing reminder that I need to get to gym more.

As politics - don't even try. Yes, yes what is now Iran is what used to be the Persian empire. But anyone trying to make a metaphor out of this piece of bloody fantasy is a lackwit.

As history this movie sucks eggs. Go read. As someone who goes out and reads the history books when a movie like this comes out, I find it more than a little annoying how wrong they get almost every detail.

I know, I know based on a comic, but still, this is how most of the country gets most of its history and they are getting sold a bill of goods. So when all the Spartan characters give speeches about freedom, it's sort of painful to know that Sparta was oligarchy that held most of its population in slavery.

We should know what we owe to the Greeks and to which Greeks.

Yes the Spartans are cool as badass warriors, but everything worth saving in Greek culture came from Athens, not Sparta. Philosophy, democracy, drama all came from Athens. The Spartans were too busy abusing their children and their Helots to do any of that. Plus, the Athenians did their part to stop the Persian invasion.

But I digress.

To sum up: War, heads chopped off, blood, a rhino, more blood, elephants, bad history, still yet more blood, need to go to the gym more, the 10,000 Immorals just looking so cool, a bit more blood, the Queen of Sparta was hot, some more blood, the Athenians not getting their share of credit and even more blood.

Any questions?

Smoking Aces

Ah the frenetic, mad-cap, shoot-em-up criminal dark comedy. Thanks to Guy Richie and Tarantino, this has become a genre all its own, right next to serial killer thriller, romantic comedy and Dying of something Oscar bait.

Now this isn't the best entry in the genre, but it is a fun genre. A collection of wacky hit-men, hit-women and hit-things set out to kill Jermey Pivin's Buddy "Aces" Israel - a stage magician turned mobster turned informant. I'm not sure why a guy named Buddy Israel needs a nickname, but OK I'm just going to go with it.

Violence ensues, including the proper use of a .50 caliber sniper rifle and the misuse of chain saw. In one fight a security guard is lit on fire for what I'm guessing is no other reason than it looks cool.

Highlights include Alicia Keys as a smoky hit-chick, Ben Affleck doing fine work as both a mook of a bail bondsman and a corpse, and Jermey Pivin hitting rock bottom in fine fashion. When he looks out upon a luxury hotel room filled with passed-out hookers and weeps, I was genuinely moved.

Not Dying of Something Oscar Bait moved, but moved.

Bond, James

Still cool after all these years. Casino Royal is the new picture and the tastefully named Daniel Craig is the new Bond. Not what you expect, but takes the franchise to interesting places. This movie owes a lot to Batman Begins and the Bourne Movies.

Batman Begins because this is a reboot, that goes back to Bond's first mission, his first kills, his first Martini. (Shaken or Stirred? Does it look like I give a damn!)

This movie also moves in a much more Bourne direction with its action. The fights are much more brutal and real and the high-tech gizmos are almost completely gone. No invisible cars and no laser watches. No "Q" at all.

But the locations remain exotic and the babes remain top-rate. A fun time for all.

Movie Review: The Departed

My oh my, what an excellent movie. Just think of it as the slickest, most adult game of "cops and robbers" you ever played. Leonardo DiCaprio (Who I maintain an irrational dislike for) and Matt Damon (who I maintain an irrational affection for) do fine work as an undercover cop and a mobster's police mole. The plot has a beautiful symmetry, as both men try to uncover the identity of the other. I'm trying to remember what thrillers did before cell phones. One of the best scenes in the movie revolves around caller ID.

The supporting cast is a lot of fun. Between Jack Nickelson, Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg(!) there isn't a piece of scenery left unchewed. Marky Mark makes off with many a scene as a foul-mouthed police sergeant.

I need to come up with a movie scoring system unique to Craigorian Chant. Any ideas? This one will score high.

Arrrgh

Welcome to At the Movies with Craig. Today's show is on the latest Pirates Movie. The title is Pirates of the Caribbean: We've Come to Steal Your Money and Two and a Half Hours of Your Life that You Will Never Get Back.

I'm sorry its called Dead Man's Chest, but you get the idea. I was a late comer to the first Pirates movie. I was operating on the principal that if movies based on video games always suck, a movie based on an amusement park ride would suck ten-fold. But right in the middle of the action blah, blah, blah of the first movie was this wonderfully manic Johnny Depp performance. His captain Jack Sparrow is a classic. It will be making top ten list for all time.

Well Jack's back in the new movie and still great. The best part is how you can see the gears spinning in his head as he does his dirty deeds. The best parts are when those wheels start grinding and then come completely apart. But he's not the delightful surprise he once was. The romantic leads are physical wonders. My God, Keira Knightley is pretty. My God, how is it that Orlando Bloom is even prettier? But I can't recall a thing they said or did, and it's only been hours since I left the theater.

The action in this movie really is cartoonish. It's practically at the point where Captain Jack won't fall until he looks down. After he runs off a cliff. In a strait line.

Also the movie comes with about three endings, none of them real. The whole movie sets up Pirates of the Caribbean: Arrrgh, Fooled Again.

Ye Be Warned.

Time for a Rave Review

The deserving flick is Brick. The movie that has restored my faith in the movies, after a long, cold season. The concept is classic hard-boiled film noir, set in that more dangerous of places, high school. It sounds a little off at first, but once you get in it, who makes a better femme fatal than the head cheerleader?

The hero of Brick, Brendan Frye, is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who you will not recognize as the kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun. He may not look like much, but the ice-cool blood of Sam Spade runs through his veins. This is a guy who will face down a pack of stoners with the line

"You wanna take a swing at me, hash-head? Huh? I got all five senses and I slept last night. That puts me six up on the lot of you."

You wish you were this cool in high school. You will not be able to look away as he tears through the clicks of his school, in a quest to out the people behind the murder of his ex-girlfriend and the people behind them. Like any good noir hero, he will beat-on and be beaten-on, and talk to lovely women who aren’t to be trusted. And the talking is great. This movie has it own slang, some of which I've heard before like "Duck Soup" for easy and "gat" for gun but also some stuff I think the film invented like "scape" for patsy (i.e. scapegoat) and "heel" for walking away. They hand out a little glossary on your way into the theater, just to help you keep up. There are also exchanges like this between the Brendan and Ass. VP Gary Trueman, who plays the flat-foot to Brendan's gumshoe:

Assistant VP Gary Trueman: You've helped this office out before.
Brendan Frye: No, I gave you Jerr to see him eaten, not to see you fed.
Trueman: Fine. And very well put.
Brendan: Accelerated English, Mrs. Kasprzyk.
Trueman: Tough teacher?
Brendan: Tough but fair.

Great stuff. Go see it if you can.

Remember, Remember

You should go see this movie. Then tell me what you think. It's very much an action movie but it has a whole lot to say.

First and foremost, this is the movie that will show you what fascist government would look like in the UK. We can find German and Italian fascism in old history books, Serbian fascism in new history books and Belarussian fascism in today's headlines. But it's important to know what the UK or US version would look like. I'm not one of those who run around calling Bush a fascist, and I certainly don't go tossing that around when talking about Tony Blair, but you can see hints of totalitarianism in warrentless wiretapping and the eliminationist rhetoric of Ann Coulter.

The second theme of V for Vendetta is political violence. Blowing up buildings and killing lots of cops and police up close and personal with lots of knives. The anti-hero of the movie, known only as V is your classic terrorist/freedom fighter ink blot. Just depends on who's looking at him. V has no political program except destruction and chaos. He is firm is his conviction that the current government is profoundly wrong and must be destroyed. What he believes is correct, so what we must look at is his tactics. They are extreme and cruel and at one point, indistinguishable from the regime he is fighting.

The true test of non-violence is always fascism. At the end of every work about the Holocaust there is some message of "never again." The question is, do you really mean that? Because a protest march does not stop this kind of evil. True fascism destroys all democratic, peaceful means of change. At what point does violence become necessary?

Buried

So took in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada a little Indie film directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones. The action revolves around the killing of the aforementioned Melquiades by a border patrol agent and Jones' quest to return the body to his home in Mexico and get a little justice. Let's just say we spend a lot of quality time with a dead body. Now the movie does have its highlights, Tommy Lee Jones with a gun and some one-liners is always good cinema and the overall story is compelling, as well as an epic downer. Lowlights include the worse sex scene I have ever seen on film. Seriously bad sex. Terrible. Also, it may be that I'm just the product of an ADD, MTV culture, but this movie was edited way too slowly. Every scene seemed to drag on too long or just just had 35 seconds of action/dialog but 55 seconds of film time. It runs an even two hours long but felt much longer. Overall, I would say its a worthy movie, if not a good one.

P.S.

Best Tommy Lee Jones-with-a-gun-one-liners

Number 1:

"I didn't kill my wife"

"I don't care"

The Fugitive

Number 2:

"You're breaking my heart cockroach, show me your face I'll cure all your ills."

Men in Black