Movie Scum

It seems that since the terrorist attacks in 2001 and the following wars in Iraq and Afganistan, more and more movies and television shows were produced with elements of Middle East tension, a terrorist mastermind, questionable intelligence, or some combination of the above. With the eventual onslaught of bad news from the frontlines of the war and the sheer amount of pop culture fashioned around these modern storytelling tropes, it is easy to grow tired of that trend no matter your innate desire to watch Jack Bauer use "enhanced interrogation" methods. But Zero Dark Thirty 's theoretical trump card of a "realistic" portrayal of the hunt for Osama bin Laden is too little, too late, and especially too rough around the edges for the already crowded geopolitical subgenre.

With a dynamic cast and an engaging story, it would be hard for Argo to fall flat but considering Grant Heslov and George Clooney's output as a producing team, it could have as easily ended up as an overwrought, insufferable look at international relations (cough,Syriana). Fortunately though, Ben Affleck returns to the director's chair bringing his experience and past strengths and little of the overdramatic and deadly serious tones that normally populate this sub-sub-genre.

When the 2010 Oscars were held, I had seen only two of the ten movies nominated. I did significantly better this year seeing nine before the ceremony. The one I didn’t get to: this year’s Titanic Effect victim, The King’s Speech. Early on it became abundantly clear that this film would sweep the award shows, potentially even in categories it wasn’t nominated for or ones that don’t exist yet. I figured I would let the dust settle and wait for DVD to see if I was watching The World’s Bestest Picture Ever! The King’s Speech is the type of movie that I would normally never watch. I don’t understand the fascination with monarchy and period settings always tend to add another layer of dullness to an already suffering movie. I figured though, I should probably shoot for all ten movies this year since Precious and An Education are still unchecked from last year’s nominees. Not surprisingly, I found the movie good and certainly “uplifting” as many others have said countless times before. Bu...

Written by: Digger The problem with basing a movie on something that actually happened is that most people are going to know how it ends. While most movies based on historical wars or other large scale events can get around this by focusing on unknown facets or personal stories of people who played minor roles in the grand scheme of things, how do you put any surprises in the story about one guy who had to amputate his own arm? Interestingly enough, director Danny Boyle found a way. Literally all I knew going in to 127 Hours is that a climber gets trapped by a rock and has to cut off an appendage to escape his eventual death. Strangely, this foreknowledge actually made the anticipation and the emotion of the film’s imminent climax all the more intense, but I’m getting ahead of myself. The film follows the novel ‘Between a Rock and a Hard Place’ written by Aron Ralston, the mountaineer who survived the film’s central event in 2003. So that would make this the third time Ralston ha...

One of my all-time favorite movies (and one I am terrified to do a proper review on) is American Beauty. Something in that film just grabs me every time I even think about it whether it be the music, the great acting, or the exposé on real life. Perhaps not strangely then, I thought about American Beauty quite a bit while watching The Kids Are All Right. And not just because Annette Bening was in both. Perhaps you can view this as the American Beauty for the new millennium. Nic and Jules have a dedicated, yet stressful marriage. Nic is a successful doctor who sometimes can be a bit overbearing; Jules is more of a free-spirit: a homemaker with an occassional odd job on the side. They have a two kids, Jodi and Laser, a nice house, and even a Volvo. If it hasn’t been spoiled for you already, allow me: Nic and Jules are gay. When the almost-college-bound Jodi (Mia Wasikowska) reaches out to the man whose sperm conceived her and her brother, the family is introduced to Paul (Mark Ruff...

Where has this Natalie Portman been hiding? In the horrendous Star Wars prequels and the other generic rom-coms that I haven’t seen, Portman has never received much applause for her performances; they weren’t bad but nothing special either. But if you would have told me ten years ago that Padmé from Episode I would go from a wooden performance of terrible dialog to a serious contender for Best Actress, I would have laughed at your absurdity. In Black Swan , Portman plays Nina, a dancer in a prestigous New York dance company who works hard but mostly without notice. After the announcement that the lead ballerina is set to retire, the troup’s director Thomas ( Vincent Cassel ) sets out to find a lead for his version of Swan Lake. Nina is considered due to her precise dancing ability but Thomas worries about her ability to play the parts of both the pristine White Swan and the devious Black Swan convincingly. Nina ends up getting the lead role but that leads her to obsess over h...

It doesn’t take long to think of a sports movie, usually based on a true story, with a scrappy underdog mounting a triumphant comeback to reclaim the respect of his love, his family, or himself. It is a tried and true formula with a feel good ending after some points of hardship for the main character. Since its release in December, The Fighter has received much acclaim from critics and associations declaring it to be one of the best pictures of the year. But the question I had going into this movie: does the world really need another one of these movies? Director David O. Russell weaves the tale of Micky Ward ( Mark Wahlberg ) as his ascension in the world of professional boxing is fraught with obstacles. The greatest is Micky’s hero and older half-brother Dicky Eklund ( Christian Bale ), previously an accomplished fighter who now is Micky’s trainer when he is not too high off crack to remember. Micky’s family is supportive to an extent but only as his mother Alice ( Melissa Le...

Written by: PBF Yes, I actually checked my Facebook while waiting for this movie to start. I also have a tab open in my browser right now where I am signed in to it. The Social Network tells the story of Facebook, from it’s drunken conception in a dorm room, to a billion dollar operation. Mark Zuckerberg ( Jesse Eisenberg ) gets dumped by his girlfriend and goes back to his Harvard dorm to drink and blog angrily. He suddenly comes up with the idea create a webpage where pictures of 2 female students are posted side by side, and users can click which one is hotter. As he is creating the page with the help of two friends, he blogs his progress. This project involves Zuckerberg hacking in to various residence hall databases in order to download pictures of students. He creates the page in one night and calls it Face Mash, then sends the link to as many people as he can. It becomes insanely popular, however, it lands Zuckerberg in to trouble and he is placed on six months of academ...

A few episodes ago, PBF and I talked about movies inspired by true events and I was rather dismissive of this film. Yes, The Blind Side is at its core a film more oriented towards female viewers that goes over the top with sentimental gestures of faith and love. But it does feature football and statistics have shown that approximately 94% of men either love or are interested in football. So, how does a sure-fire date movie turn into a Best Picture nominee? Michael Oher is a wayward young who has bounced from home to home after being separated from his mother several years earlier. He comes to study at the Wyngate Academy, a private Christian school attended mostly by the families of upper crust in society. His presence is an annoyance to his teachers due to his academic challenges and he stays mostly isolated from his affluent, caucasian classmates. After Michael is befriended by her young son, Leigh Anne Tuohy realizes that Michael has nowhere else to go and brings him home. Ove...

War movies are an interesting beast. Having never been in these situations, I am sure the real life events of these movies can range the broadest spectrum of emotions from anger to fear to relative happiness. Rather than stick with these basic, primal emotions, recent films (especially those on the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) have attempted to interject politics and the hand-wringing of whether it is right or wrong, mostly to the detriment of the film (at least for what I have read on movies like Redacted). Just like zombie movies, some films are made with a social commentary and underlying thought interwoven in the story while some are just straightforward tales about the subject matter. I am truly happy that Hurt Locker took the latter approach to telling a story about three men in an army of thousands who are just trying to make it through each day. The vast majority of the movie takes place with the company of three men, each a member of the Army’s Explosive Ordinanc...

As we had discussed in a previous episode, I had a general distaste for movies that were Best Picture nominees as they seem to be pretentious and boring, much like another George Clooney movie that I did not care for. This movie, much like the director’s previous effort Juno , make me rethink Up In the Air but with reservations. As we are introduced to Clooney’s Ryan Bingham, we are thrust into his world of constant motion. He works for a contracted firm to break the bad news to workers that they are now unemployed. This job requires frequent traveling to the point that a vast majority of his time is spent in airplanes and hotels. He is for all intents and purposes a voluntary vagrant and he enjoys it. This is all threatened when fresh graduate Natalie Keener tries to revolutionize his industry by telecommuting and saving all of the travel expenses. As Ryan takes Natalie on the road to show her what she is getting into, he meets Alex, another wayward traveler with the same pench...