I’ve reviewed 77 movies on this blog since I started it on the recommendation of a friend back in mid January, 2012. Some I couldn’t wait to be over so I could free myself from its annoying, over-dramatic clutches (The Master, Wrath of the Titans) and others have become some of my all-time favorites (Hugo, The Hunger Games, Les Miserables). But ever since I watched The Help on January 24, 2012 with the intention of writing a critic-style review, my tendency to watch movies for entertainment has become something else: fluffy feel-good time-fillers have been torn apart, flash-and-bang summer blockbusters have been critiqued as if they were serious movie labors of love and not just spectacles, and I’ve found myself buying tickets to movies I never thought I’d watch, all for the purpose of having posts to write. But despite my sometimes manic obsession with having content for posts for this blog, some movies have slipped through the cracks. A few I watched, became otherwise occupied and then procrastinated on until I’d lost enthusiasm and forgotten what I really thought, some I watched just to kill time-with no intention of ever putting the time and effort into a review, and at least one I had reviewed…right up until I accidentally deleted the two hours’ worth of effort. Anyway, eight titles were significant enough that I wanted to make mention of, for one reason or another: 61*, Pitch Perfect, Unstoppable, Malcolm X, Oz the Great and Powerful, The Lucky One, Magic Mike and The Bourne Legacy.
I’m pretty sure you have to be a hardcore baseball fan to really enjoy 61*, but I am a really hardcore baseball fan, so I enjoyed it (My Grade: B+). Billy Crystal’s made-for-TV love affair with an unforgettable season of professional baseball chronicles New York Yankee teammates Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle’s chase of the single-season home run record, which was 60 at the time, a number put up by the great Babe Ruth. Thus the living legend, Mantle (Thomas Jane) and the unassuming regular Joe, Maris (Barry Pepper), each powerful sluggers, looked to hit at least 61 homers in 1961. Surrounded by a colorful and effective supporting cast, Jane and Pepper have a ball playing the two hyper opposites who were actual friends until the looming idea of making history began to create tension between and around them. Watching the movie not only brought to life a Golden Age of baseball I’ve read about but obviously never seen, but also took me back to my childhood, when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa had their own historic chase of Maris’ record of 61 homers during the 1998 season and set the imagination of the world on fire, keeping baseball fans of all ages running to their TVs every night. The love of baseball is all over this movie, as is the spirit and humanity of the men who play it. It’s also a fitting tribute to Roger Maris, one of the most overlooked and underappreciated men in the long history of pro baseball.
A true sleeper hit, Pitch Perfect has become of those movies that did modest box office business but, on video, has become That Movie That Everyone Saw (My Grade: B). After eternal embarrassment in the national finals her junior year, Audrey (Anna Camp), leader of the a capella group The Bellas, tries to rally girls for one more go at a trophy, but she’s forced to turn to a young, aspiring DJ (the always-good Anna Kendrick) to find the right mixes of catchy and incredible sound that could grab attention. Pitch Perfect is a lot of fun, what with its great music (Madonna, Bruno Mars, Simple Minds and more), Rebel Wilson’s instant-classic portrayal of goofball Fat Amy, a pair of amusingly snarky commentators (Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins) and one jump-out-of-your-seat moment (I won’t spoil the surprise). It’s definitely one I’d like to see again.
Runaway train flick Unstoppable is the original Movie I Forgot (My Grade: B), one that I just never got around to reviewing, even though I watched it back in this blog’s golden age (February 2012). The late Tony Scott’s partly-based-on-a-true-story adrenaline rush is a movie I had long wanted to see. Denzel Washington and Chris Pine (the new-age Captain Kirk) make a great team as a conductor vet and trainee who get caught up in serious business when they inadvertently become the last hope for a New England community when a huge unmanned train stocked with chemicals races toward it, forecasting catastrophic damage. True, character development isn’t a priority, but the two leads develop solid chemistry and you definitely root for them to save the day during pulse-pounding, edge-of-your-seat sequences. It’s not exactly groundbreaking filmmaking, but it makes for a very entertaining hour and a half.
For whatever reason, as soon as I joined the local library here in Lynchburg, Denzel Washington’s Malcolm X biopic really caught my eye in the DVD rental area (My Grade: B-). Spike Lee’s 202-minute monolith made for a long sit, but it’s a great vehicle for Denzel and a very interesting look at the life of one of the 20th century’s most electrifying figures, the black supremacist Muslim preacher Malcolm X. Sure, the first hour’s long and slow and you wonder where it’s going, but in the second hour, when Malcolm comes into his own and begins his fiery pulpit-pounding, the movie really picks up. A detailed study of the man’s entire adult life, it’s an interesting look at faith, prejudice, selfishness, duty, human frailty, and envy. I probably wouldn’t ever watch it again because it’s so long (I didn’t mean to watch the whole 3.5 hours in one sitting, but I got hooked), but I’m glad I learned the history.
I had written my full review for last month’s blockbuster release, Oz the Great and Powerful (My Grade: C+), but as I went to finalize the draft on my blog, I accidentally deleted it, and it was gone forever. Luckily, I still remember all the main points. Oz is a sort-of prequel, sort-of spinoff to the classic The Wizard Of Oz, with James Franco starring as Oz, a small-time magician magically whisked away, via tornado, to the colorful and wonderful land of Oz. There he’s greeted as a long-prophesied coming king and an all-powerful wizard, but he learns he must defeat an equally-powerful wicked witch to claim his throne and his fortune. And the question is, which witch is it? Is it Mila Kunis’ doe-eyed Theodora, Rachel Weisz’s sultry Evanora, or Michelle Williams’ sweetie-pie Glinda? I’m not a big Franco fan (he just doesn’t seem like a very good actor), but my big problem with the movie was that the special effects used to create Oz, while eye-catching, are so pristine that real people don’t look believable walking amongst them. It’s also easy, later on, to believe Franco is in front of a green screen talking to thin air at a time when he’s conversing with a fully-CGI sidekick. And I kept waiting for a falling house and a certain pair of slippers. The delightful Joey King did steal my heart, though, as a spirited little girl made of china.
I knew what to expect with The Lucky One, because I know what to expect from Nicholas Sparks adaptations (My Grade: C+). You have one person who’s given up on love/doesn’t have time to love and another person who seemingly can’t love, and BOOM, they fall in love. But there will always be complications and someone always bites the dust. I hope that wasn’t a spoiler. In this case, the person who can’t love is a PTSD-afflicted former marine (a buffed-up Zac Efron), who found a picture of a woman (Taylor Schilling) lying in the sand in Iraq
Yes, I watched Magic Mike (My Grade: C). No, I didn’t care much for Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer and Matthew McConaughey flashing their buns and gyrating before crowds of squealing women, but I wanted to see if director Stephen Soderbergh could actually create an intriguing sort of romance between Tatum’s strutting showman Mike and Cody Horn’s squeaky-clean Girl Next Door. Did he succeed on that objective? Um... You may think I’m foolish for expecting otherwise, but Magic Mike too often gets lost in the raunchy male revue where the main actors strut their stuff, throwing plot details to the wind in order to show us women gushing over men in firefighter helmets, military commando fatigues, ripped-up Tarzan outfits and G-strings. What goes on outside the club really doesn’t matter. Would it be cool if furniture-making enthusiast Mike actually broke from the stripper mold and followed his passions in life? Sure. Would it be nice if he and cool-chick Cody Horn got together for real, not just at a club? I guess. Does it really matter, though? Nope.
Boy, was making The Bourne Legacy a misguided venture (My Grade: C-)! Opting to create a fourth entry in a lucrative series without the previous three entries’ star actor (one Matt Damon), writer/director Tony Gilroy gives us a really long, really talky, not-very-interesting look at “another agent”, pharmaceutically-enhanced Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner). In the movie, Cross hooks up (no, not like that) with a smart but naïve doctor (Rachel Weisz) to turn the tables on the Government suits (Edward Norton, Stacy Keach, and others) trying to wipe them both off the map. But there’s only one really cool action scene, a lot of government lingo that goes right over one’s head, and a serious lack of Matt Damon. Renner’s not a bad actor, but his character has no depth, and at least Damon seems like a complex sort of guy. And why would you set up a chance for Aaron Cross to duke it out with an even more enhanced Asian baddie only to have them simply have a motorcycle chase and never fight it out mano-a-mano? Basically, watching this movie was an effort, and that shouldn’t be said of a blockbuster action flick.
So, yeah, from the good to the bad, there have been several movies I never took the time to craft a full-length review for, but that I either enjoyed or thought notable (even if for how underwhelming they were). Thank you, as always, for reading.
61* (2001) – Directed by Billy Crystal – Written by Hank Steinberg – Rated TV-MA for language and some alcohol abuse – Length: 129 minutes
Pitch Perfect (2012) – Directed by Jason Moore – Written by Kay Cannon; Based on the book by Mickey Rapkin – Rated PG-13 for language and sexual content – Length: 112 minutes
Unstoppable (2010) – Directed by Tony Scott – Written by Mark Bomback – Rated PG-13 for language and intense sequences of action and peril – Length: 98 minutes
Malcolm X (1992) – Directed by Spike Lee – Written by Spike Lee and Arnold Perl – Rated R for language (including racial slurs), some violent content, sensuality and images related to drug and alcohol abuse – Length: 202 minutes
Oz the Great and Powerful (2013) – Directed by Sam Raimi – Written by Mitchell Kapner and David Lindsay-Abaire; Based on the book “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum – Rated PG (contains action, sensuality, and some scary images) – Length: 130 minutes
The Lucky One (2012) – Directed by Scott Hicks – Written by Will Fetters; Based on the book “The Lucky One” by Nicholas Sparks – Rated PG-13 for sexuality, violent content and some language – Length: 101 minutes
Magic Mike (2012) – Directed by Stephen Soderbergh – Written by Reid Carolin – Rated R for strong graphic sexual content, language, and scenes of drug and alcohol abuse – Length: 110 minutes
The Bourne Legacy (2012) – Directed by Tony Gilroy – Written by Tony Gilroy and Dan Gilroy; Based on the “Bourne” novel series by Robert Ludlum – Rated PG-13 for intense violence, language, and some gory and disturbing images – Length: 135 minutes
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