Oscar thoughts

Disclaimer: I think the Academy Awards are, largely, a joke. Any body which honestly thought that Chicago and Crash (yes, Nikolai Crash was a piece of shit) were the best movies of their respective years, must largely be composed of utter idiots. Even when they get things relatively right (I’d argue that last year wasn’t bad), they still make some pretty moronic selections (does anyone honestly think that Juno was one of the top five movies of last year?  I mean really?  And I liked Juno)

That said, the awards are still important and the nominees were released the other day so here’s my commentary.  I’m going to try to comment on every nominee if I can, so this might get pretty long ( I deleted some of the boring categories):

Performance by an actor in a leading role

• Richard Jenkins in “The Visitor” — Didn’t see so I can’t really comment, but I’ve heard good things
• Frank Langella in “Frost/Nixon” — Same as above
• Sean Penn in “Milk”  — All right, and here’s where I start having problems.  I did not think Milk was very good.  Honestly, it was mediocre at best and I thought Penn’s performance was ridiculous.  He’s probably going to win this year if the buzz is any indication, apparently, talking funny and making out with guys is worth of an Oscar.  I disagree
• Brad Pitt in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” — Seriously?  Did anyone see this coming?  An average performance in a boring movie
• Mickey Rourke in “The Wrestler”  — I honestly cannot believe anyone would argue that Rourke doesn’t deserve the Oscar, it’s like Daniel Day Louis last year.  He was perfect for the role and his performance was magnificent.

Performance by an actor in a supporting role

• Josh Brolin in “Milk” — Even though I disagree with the Penn nomination, I thought Brolin did a great job.
• Robert Downey Jr. in “Tropic Thunder” — Another wtf pick, Downey wasn’t bad by any stretch, but I wouldn’t call his performance Oscar-worthy.
• Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Doubt”  — Excellent choice.
• Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight” — Then again, Heath Ledger was great as the Joker.  I imagine he picks this up to make up for The Dark Knight getting shafted in other categories + the whole being dead thing + it was a great performance.
• Michael Shannon in “Revolutionary Road” — yet another wtf pick.  Shannon did a fine job but I wasn’t really affected by his performance at all, then again I fucking hated Revolutionary Road

Performance by an actress in a leading role

• Anne Hathaway in “Rachel Getting Married” — I’m going to see this movie next week, but I’ve heard that Hathaway was great, plus she’s really hot.
• Angelina Jolie in “Changeling” — I don’t have a problem with this nomination, although if Jolie won I’d be a little perturbed given the quality of the other actresses nominated.
• Melissa Leo in “Frozen River” — I haven’t even heard of this movie.
• Meryl Streep in “Doubt” – yes yes yes yes yes.  Streep was fantastic in Doubt.
• Kate Winslet in “The Reader” — Great performance in a boring movie, hopefully she doesn’t win.

Performance by an actress in a supporting role

• Amy Adams in “Doubt” — Basically, everyone from Doubt deserves and Oscar for acting
• Penélope Cruz in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” — Didn’t see, Penelope Cruz has never impressed me as an actress and I find her unattractive.
• Viola Davis in “Doubt”– See above, although I think Davis’ role was a little too small for the nod over Adams.  Then again, her scene was probably the most powerful in the whole film
• Taraji P. Henson in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” — How did she get nominated and Cate Blanchett, who did a much better job get snubbed.
• Marisa Tomei in “The Wrestler” — She deserved a nom  (nom nom nom) but I wouldn’t expect a win.

Best animated feature film of the year

• “Bolt”
• “Kung Fu Panda”
• “WALL-E”

Three good choices, Wall-E was obviously the best and the clear choice here (yes, I saw Bolt I’ll try to review it soon)

Achievement in cinematography

• “Changeling”
• “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
• “The Dark Knight”
• “The Reader”
• “Slumdog Millionaire”

I’d say all good choices, except The Reader.  Honestly, I have no clue what will win.  I’d probably give the award to Benjamin Button, which was utterly beautiful.

Achievement in directing

• “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”  David Fincher — Fincher, one of my favorite directors, did a great job visually with Benjamin Button, but the story and the pacing were both off so I hope he doesn’t win.
• “Frost/Nixon” Ron Howard — Didn’t see, since Ron Howard basically makes nothing but Oscar bait this nomination is unsurprising.
• “Milk”  Gus Van Sant — No
• “The Reader”Stephen Daldry — I really didn’t like The Reader
• “Slumdog Millionaire” Danny Boyle — Boyle should win, hands down.  That said, he should have had tougher competition in this category.

Other thoughts: No Arronofsky for The Wrestler?  No Nolan for The Dark Knight?  See my comments about the Oscars being a fucking joke.

Best foreign language film of the year

• “The Baader Meinhof Complex” A Constantin Film Production, Germany
• “The Class” (Sony Pictures Classics), A Haut et Court Production, France
• “Departures” (Regent Releasing), A Departures Film Partners Production, Japan
• “Revanche” (Janus Films), A Prisma Film/Fernseh Production, Austria
• “Waltz with Bashir” (Sony Pictures Classics), A Bridgit Folman Film Gang Production, Israel

Apparently, Let the Right One In wasn’t even submitted for consideration.  Ridiculous.

Achievement in makeup

• “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (Paramount and Warner Bros.), Greg Cannom
• “The Dark Knight” (Warner Bros.), John Caglione, Jr. and Conor O’Sullivan
• “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” (Universal), Mike Elizalde and Thom Floutz

I’d give this to Hellboy, the practical effects in that movie were stunning.  Button did a great job too.  Dark Knight basically only had two guys in make-up and while both were good, the other two movie deserve it more.

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song)

• “Down to Earth” from “WALL-E” (Walt Disney), Music by Peter Gabriel and Thomas Newman, Lyric by Peter Gabriel
• “Jai Ho” from “Slumdog Millionaire” (Fox Searchlight), Music by A.R. Rahman, Lyric by Gulzar
• “O Saya” from “Slumdog Millionaire” (Fox Searchlight), Music and Lyric by A.R. Rahman and Maya Arulpragasam

No Springsteen for The Wrestler?  Are you fucking kidding me?

Achievement in visual effects

• “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” — Yes, the special effects in this movie were fantastic.
• “The Dark Knight”
• “Iron Man”

Hellboy 2 really should have gotten a nomination here.  Oh wait, it’s a fantasy film so it doens’t deserve to win any awards

Adapted screenplay

• “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” — No way, this movie dragged like crazy.  Maybe if the screenplay was 15 pages shorter it would deserve an award.
• “Doubt” — It’s hard to tell how much of this movie’s awesomness was the screenplay and how much was the acting but I think it deserves the award.
• “Frost/Nixon”  — I guess I really need to see this movie
• “The Reader” — Why is this shitty movie getting so much love and The Wrestler getting shat on?
• “Slumdog Millionaire” — This could also win without upsetting me in the least, excellent script.

Original screenplay

• “Frozen River” — Seriously, what is this movie?
• “Happy-Go-Lucky” — I’m going to see this on Sunday afternoon, so I’ll let you know
• “In Bruges” — Nice to see this movie get at least some love.  I didn’t like it as much as some others, but it was still damn good and the screenplay was excellent.
• “Milk” — Like I’ve said, mediocre movie which seems more important given the political climate.
• “WALL-E” — Awesome movie, I don’t know if you can reward a screenplay that has no dialogue in the first half, although maybe that’s exactly why it should be rewarded.

Best motion picture of the year

• “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” — A boring but beautiful movie by an excellent director, does not deserve to win.
• “Frost/Nixon” — Fine, I’ll fucking go watch Frost/Nixon
• “Milk” — Ok I’ve been crapping on Milk a lot and I want to make it clear that I don’t think Milk is a bad movie.  In fact, I think it’s a good movie.  However, I don’t think it deserves a lot of the acclaim that it’s been receiving.
• “The Reader” — I’m mystified, I really didn’t like this movie at all.  Furthermore, did anyone even see this movie?  Furthermore, I’m sick of holocaust movies automatically being rated better than they are because they deal with weighty subjects.  Just because a movie deals with something important doesn’t make it good (see also, Milk (although Milk was way better))
• “Slumdog Millionaire” — Considering that the other movies in this category aren’t really all that great (minus Frost/Nixon, which obviously I haven’t seen) and considering that this was hands down one of the best movies of the year (with only The Wrestler as real competition), this movie should win without a doubt.  That said, they’ll probably give the award to something shitty.

Final comments on the Best Picture nominees.  It’s a goddamn travesty that The Wrestler and The Dark Knight were not nominated.  On one hand, you have what is probably the best movie of the year, which received one fucking nomination in any meaningful category.  On the other hand, you have the second highest grossing movie of all time, which, on top of that, was excellent.  This, to me, proves more than anything that the Academy is a goddamn joke.  Year after goddamn year, movies that are mediocre (at best!) get nominated and sometimes even win simply because they deal with: “important” shit (Milk) or sad shit (Babel).   As I said before, there is a difference between important and good.  In addition, good movies can make you feel emotions other than sadness.  It’s easy to make people sad in a movie, just kill a dog, that doesn’t make a movie good.  Furthermore, the Academy routinely shits all over whole genres, specifically Sci-Fi, Action, and Comedy (seriously what was the last comedy to win best picture, Annie Hall?) .  I guess those genres just aren’t good enough, despite the fact that they are, by far, the most routinely enjoyably movies made.  Ergh.  Rant off.

See I told you this would be a super long post.

 

Movie #38 The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

I’m a little amazed that I never saw this movie during my cult movies phase in high school. As always, I strive to correct my rare mistakes.  Return of the Living Dead is one of those cult movies that explicitly sets out to be a cult movie.  That is, it’s in the vein of Evil Dead 2 or Army of Darkness (really, the gold standard in awesome), rather than something like The Brain from the Planet Arous.  Oftentimes, these movies fail miserably.  They’re either too shitty or not shitty enough or the humor sucks.  Return of the Living Dead does not suck.  It knows exactly what it’s audience wants, namely boobs, blood, and ridiculousness, and it delivers.   I mean, it’s a fairly classic nutso cult movie.

Nikolai has a theory that all zombie movies take place in an alternate universe where zombie movies don’t exist.  That’s not true in this movie (and Shaun of the Dead, which I maintain is the most realistic zombie movie ever made), so that’s fresh and interesting.  In addition, Return wastes very little time getting to zombie mayhem, which is always a good thing.  I mean they don’t start seriously killing people till like 25 minutes in, but it moves pretty briskly (plus full frontal nudity, that’s always a plus).  Doesn’t it suck when you’re trying to watch a cheesy cult movie and they have like 45 minutes of exposition?  Seriously, folks we don’t given a shit, give us zombies, damnit! (Godzilla: Final Wars also did this nicely, mainly by not having any plot…still it kicked massive ass).  So, another plus: The main characters are your typical generic 1980s punks, however, these punks are far, far more interesting than the irritating-ass generic 1980s punks in Repo Man (hell, they’re actually funny(mostly), mainly because they don’t think the height of comedy is giggling at the word “fuck”).  In fact, this movie is similar in a lot of ways to Repo Man, only better.  Mainly, because this movie doesn’t contain all the irritating as shit moments that Repo Man did (and I liked Repo Man)  On top of this goodness, there’s a ton of gore + actors who aren’t atrocious + zombies and the special effects are actually surprisingly decent.  It’s a pretty damn good little movie.  Definitely, in the pantheon of great cult movies, alongside the Evil Dead movies, Dead Alive, Cemetery Man, Slither, Godzilla Final Wars, Versus etc…(btw you should watch all of the movies I just listed).  If you’re into the genre you really need to check it out.

 

Nikolai picks up some slack

Young Daniel claims he hasn’t seen Man on Wire, Cloverfield, or The Band’s Visit, so here’s my take on the three:

Man on Wire is like Murderball – the way documentaries should be made for my generation.  It’s fast, it’s funny, it’s full of audiovisual gimmicks (reenacting all sorts of strange scenes in amusing ways to give us a visual component to elements of the story that obviously couldn’t have been filmed).  But the movie is really made by Phillipe Petit – the tightrope walker is so charismatic and such an absorbing storyteller that you can see within fifteen minutes of the movie starting how his crew of misfits was drawn mothlike to his intensity.  With the overabundance of serious “large-scale” documentaries lately (the environment, US debt, oil, Iraq, etc) it’s nice to know that my favorite type of documentaries are still being produced – ones with a subject so obscure that you likely had never heard of it but by the movie’s end are completely caught up.

Cloverfield - Everyone adored the Blair Witch Project style of accidental camera coverage, so why such a harsh critical backlash to filming a massive monster movie from that perspective?  People attacked it for being “too cinematic” – that their supposedly random footage happened to cut out all the boring walks and frame the attacks in the most frightening/exciting way.  What the fuck do you want?  Some indie exercise like Elephant where we have to watch thirty minutes of walking down a hallway?  It’s a goddamn movie – I want it to be interesting.  Make the framing gimmick amusing enough to give a new perspective on an action movie, and then give me some scary, violent shit.  Which the movie does.  Others claimed it was too much like a real person would be with a camera, making them nauseous from the jarring cuts and jumpy footage.  To this I say man the fuck up.  This is like people saying Mission: Impossible and Syriana were too hard to follow all over again.  Where are these fragile moviegoers coming from?  Grow a pair and pay attention.

The Band’s Visit is American indie, only foreign style.  Lots of people living lives of quiet desperation – check.  Long silences with much supposedly being communicated in equally long looks – check.  People passing through each others’ lives, not necessarily changing anything, but leaving us with the understanding that things may get better – check.  Just add falafel.  At the end of the day I did like the movie – the scene in the skating ring is pretty hilarious for a foreign film, the music that unites the band members is used sparingly with a real ethereal quality to it, and the band leader is terse to an extreme that’s fun to watch.  Plus it not only never becomes heavy-handed with the Jew/Muslim/Arab/Israeli thing, it hardly even mentions it.

Two posts from Nikolai in one day?  Looks like a coup.

 

Valkyrie – Nikolai’s Take

Valkyrie:  It’s a movie with Tom Cruise, and it’s about nice Nazis, so (much like the outer edge of my toilet seat) it’s bound to be shit on.  Take, for example, this ridiculous article in The Washington Post that seems to insinuate that any movie made about Nazis is only produced to stroke the egos of the director/actors, that any movie about World War II/Hitler/the Holocaust is automatically inappropriate, and that having British actors playing Germans is borderline offensive (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/12/19/ST2008121902399.html).  Me – I didn’t mind it. As far as movies go where you know exactly what is going to happen, it keeps things pretty tense – lots of people jumping in their seat when the phone rings and terrified exchanged glances when there’s a knock at the door.  The cinematography is beautiful, and the general mechanics of a coup (the wire services, the military bureaucracy, the almost awkward chain of final events) are very interesting.  Plus any movie with Tom Wilkinson gives me an automatic hard-on (go back and rewatch his speech to Bale in Batman Begins – he’s even awesome in that).  And ps, I seriously don’t get the big deal of the actors speaking normally (does anyone really find it more pleasurable when they speak in heavy, silly-sounding German accents that helpfully remind us they’re not playing the scruffy Americans and loveable Brits?).

 

Something I forgot

Something I forgot in  my year-end wrap-up thing:  By far, my favorite thing committed to film (as in movies/TV/whatever) of the year was Generation Kill.  Quite simply, it’s excellent in every respect.  If you haven’t yet checked it out, you really owe it to yourself to watch.  I can’t even really describe exactly how much I liked it, every episode was top-notch.  I liked this even better than the 5th season of The Wire (the greatest TV show of all time (non-comedy division)), also created by David Simon (then again season 5 was the weakest season).  The lesson?  David Simon kicks ass.

Watch Generation Kill

 

Movie #37 Smart People

Christ, this movie is irritating.  It seems like the screenwriter wrote a movie about some truly unlikable people and then  sat down with the director and said “gee, how can we possibly make these characters MORE unlikable”.  So, you’ve got Dennis Quaid playing the stereotype of a dickhead professor (hereafter referred to as Cmdr. Asshole), the girl from Juno taking her character from that movie and dialing up to the nth degree, Thomas Haden Church in a role that’s obviously supposed to be the likable loser but ends up just being a loser, and the whiny-ass son from History of Violence playing a whiny-ass son.  Finally, you’ve got Sarah Jessica Parker floating around, looking like a horse, and being half-tolerable, although you have to question why she’s hanging out with Cmdr. Asshole.  Seriously, I loathed the people in this movie.  Plus, there’s this whole weird critique of intellectuals floating around, but it’s too schizophrenic and muddled to even be worthy of criticism.  I don’t even understand what this movie is trying to say or do, it’s basically an extremely shitty version of The Squid and the Whale. This is a problem, because that movie wasn’t even all that good (I mean it was ok, but do you have any desire to re-watch it?  because I sure don’t).  Honestly, I don’t even feel like talking about this movie because it’s just bringing shitty vibes into my life.  Also, it’s somewhere south of 20 degrees in my apartment and my fingers are frozen.  Also, my dog is looking sad and, therefore, compelling me to pet him.  Don’t watch this movie under any circumstances, unless you need 90 minutes of hate.

 

Movie #36 Revolutionary Road (2008)

Remember how I sorta mini-ranted about how I’m entirely over the whole “suburbs suck” genre during my review of Little Children? No?  Well, you suck.  Anyway, I’m entirely over the genre.  Seriously, we fucking get it, beneath the bright facade of American suburban life lies a dark and depressing underbelly.  It’s just dreary bullshit at this point.

Revolutionary Road is directed by the guy who popularized the whole genre way back when with American Beauty, Sam Mendes.  I’m generally a fan of Mendes. He’s fantastic at crafting beautiful shots although sometimes his stories seem to lack, something, it’s hard to quantify (see: Jarhead).  Revolutionary Road, while well-made/shot/acted, has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the penis.  For realsies, it takes all the suburban angst bullshit from American Beauty (which, by the way, I didn’t really like all that much) and ratchets it up to 11.  I’m baffled by the fact that this movie is getting Oscar buzz (I believe Winslett won a Golden Glove for her performance, as if the Golden Globes meant shit), there isn’t a glimmer of fun in this movie.  I feel that a lot of the time critics confuse “sad as all hell” with “good” (see: 21 Grams, Babel).  So yeah, I didn’t really like this movie at all.  It’s beautifully shot, well acted, thoroughly well made, and devoid of anything that would incite me to recommend it to anyone.  If you want to watch a depressing movie, go watch Requiem for a Dream.  If you want to watch something about how the suburbs suck watch American Beauty, or, better yet, Mad Men (it even takes place in roughly the same time period as Revolutionary Road).  Avoid.

 

Year end wrap up

All right, I know that there are like a billion year-end movie lists out there, mostly by people who are profoundly better versed in cinema then me but I figured I’d give my opinion nonetheless.

I’m not a fan of top ten lists, so instead I’m just going to list movies that came out this year that I feel like you should see (in no particular order really):

The Dark Knight – duh

Wall-E - Pixar has made one bad movie (Cars), a mediocre movie or two (see: Finding Nemo), and like fifty classics.  This is one of the classics.

Let the Right One In – Great Swedish vampire movie.  Just quirky and awesome, I wrote a full review as part of my whole 50 movies thing.

Doubt – Incredibly great acting.  Just an all around awesome movie.  Plus, Amy Adams automatically adds eleven bonus points to any movie.

Burn After Reading - Underrated and Hilarious.

Pineapple Express & Forgetting Sarah Marshall -Like three posts ago, I mentioned in passing that FSM was my favorite comedy of the year, but on Nikolai’s suggestion I went back and watched Pineapple Express again, and, yeah, it’s better.  In fact, I’d argue that Express is one of the best stoner comedies of all time.  I completely forgot how funny that movie is.  So yeah, Pineapple Express was the best comedy of the year.  Sarah Marshall is pretty good too, well worth checking out.  (where’s Tropic Thunder? you ask…I reply that while there were great moments the movie as a whole was just too uneven)

Midnight Meat Train - Yeah, this may seem out of place but I felt like it was the best horror film that I saw this year so I felt obligated to include it.

Slumdog Millionaire – Wow, this movie is great.  I always find it difficult to talk about movies that I find really good, it’s easy to talk about movies that are bad-ass or funny or whatever, but just quality cinema? difficult.  However, I do feel comfortable saying that this is Danny Boyle’s best film.  When I walked out of this movie I firmly believed that this was the best movie of 2008, without question.  This feeling lasted twenty minutes, until I walked into:

The Wrestler – Amazing.  Without a doubt my favorite movie of the year.  Everything is perfect, from Rourke’s performance to the wrestling jargon (yes, I used to be really into pro-wrestling) to Marissa Tomei being naked and hot a lot.  Seriously, great great great movie.  Go find it, go watch it.  I loved it.

Biggest Surprises, seriously these movies aren’t bad:

Kung Fu Panda, The Incredible Hulk, Ping Pong Playa

Biggest Disappointments:

Quantum of Solace - ugh.  I wasn’t wholly negative about this when I first saw it, but after watching it a second time, this movie sucks.  Seriously, it’s actually hard to figure out what’s going on in this movie, despite the fact that it apparently has no real plot and most of the action scenes suck.  What a crappy follow-up to Casino Royale

The third act of Ironman – The first 2/3 of Ironman kicked ass, then wtf?  Jeff Bridges was a terrible villain and the final boss battle sucked.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - dull, Fincher can and has done much better.

Changeling - Eastwood is one of my favorite directors, plus this movie got fairly decent buzz coming out of the festivals.  Not a bad movie, well made, just not very great.

Body of Lies - Come on Ridley, you’re better than this

Eagle Eye – Awesome trailer, shitty movie

Obviously, I haven’t seen every good movie this year.  In fact, due to the difficulty of me getting to the theater this has been one of the worst years for me getting to the movies here is a list of movies I apparently need to see, other recommendations are always welcome: Cloverfield, Man on Wire, Revolutionary Road, The Band’s Visit, Synechdoche New York, Bolt

 

quick note

God, 3 posts in one day…I so crazy

I didn’t really feel up to reviewing Changeling or Gran Torino.  But I will say this, even when Clint Eastwood makes a movie that’s not great, he makes a damn good movie.  Hopefully, that made sense.

 

Movie Mayhem!

A blitz of reviews to make up for the severe  decline in posts recently.  Blame the University of Chicago Divinity School, a lack of internet at the cabin, the Shield (final verdict on the show: The Wire has ruined all cop shows.  Aside from that it’s pretty good, but watching 7 seasons in like a week was a bit of overkill), my enormous stack of books-to-read, and me in that order.  Basically, this is me trying to catch up with a bunch of movies from this year:

Movie #30 Appaloosa (2008)

Renee Zellweger is kinda weird looking.  Seriously, I guess I’m supposed to think she’s hot but, no, just no, ew.  Plus, she kinda sucks at the whole “acting” thing.  That’s probably too harsh, she’s not terrible, but she’s certainly not good.  ANYway, this movie is a western and as anyone familiar with my tastes in movies can tell you that I am genetically predisposed toward westerns.  This movie isn’t bad but it’s nothing special (this is a theme you’ll be seeing a lot in these reviews).  There’s this weird romantic subplot (or mayhaps it’s the main plot, really) with Ed Harris using Viggo Mortenson to talk to women for him, I didn’t find it particularly compelling but your mileage may vary.  All in all the movie is kinda dull but inoffensive.   Viggo kicks ass, the end.

Movie #31 The Wackness (2008)

This a rant which is not entirely connected to the movie.  Here we go: Isn’t one of the points of independent filmmaking that you can transcend conventional genres and do new and exciting things?  If that’s so, then why are so many indie movies the exact fucking same?  “Incredibly slow moving movie about two people falling awkwardly in love and it ends unsatisfying where you’re not sure if they stay together or not”  Color me unimpressed.

The Wackness isn’t bad.  It’s not great, or particularly funny (or particularly anything), though.  There’s a real effort to replicate the whole early 90s thing and sometimes it feels a bit forced.  We get it 90210 etc…On the other hand, the music kicks some real ass.  The ending isn’t exactly satisfying, but if you couldn’t see that at the beginning then you seriously need to watch more movies.  Worth a rental.

Movie #32 Ping Pong Playa (2007)

This movie is kinda great.  Seriously, it’s really well made.  The type of movie where 10 years later when the director makes some big budget bag of awesomeness you’re shocked (see Peter Jackson’s early movies for a good example).  It’s certainly the best movie about ping pong that I’ve seen in the last year, emphatically beating out Balls of Fury (not that Balls of Fury was all that bad (I mean, it wasn’t great)).  I can’t even really describe the tone of this movie, it’s kinda like a combo of 80s sports movies (complete with ridiculous montages! (everyone loves montages!)) with Napoleon Dynamite. In addition, I’ve noticed that I’ve been making some somewhat ridiculous spelling/grammar errors in these posts, sorry.  Moving on, the main character here is pretty unlikeable but that’s kinda the point and he’s kinda awesome at it (as in unlikeable but still likable/endearing (does that make sense? good)).  Plus, a key character moment is instigated by a puppet kung-fu movie.  What more do you need?  It’s a fun little movie and I strongly recommend it.

Movie #34 Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008)

Brief review because my dog seems to have no other desire in life but to rest his head on my keyboard: eh, it was ok.  Elizabeth Banks is always good (why does everyone think Anna Farris is funny (seriously what has she done that’s good?) and no one talks about Banks? she’s good).  There were some good parts, some funny Kevin Smith dialogue, but on the whole it was underwhelming.    Also it seemed to go really quick, I guess that could be a good or a bad thing.  It’s worth a rental but on the scale of 2008 comedies it ranks solidly behind Pineapple Express and Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Christ, does every movie star Seth Rogen?).  Not worth your 10 dollars but certainly worth the space on your Netflix queue…It might make a good date movie, but what the fuck do I know?

Movie #35 Hamlet 2 (2008)

Steve Coogan is pretty damn funny.  The rest of this movie is utterly forgettable and there are some very crappy jokes here.  If it’s on TV, why not? otherwise leave it be.

I actually watched a couple other movies but didn’t feel up to reviewing them.  I have shamed my family and apologize.