The Art of The Steal

April 12.

This is tough. I agree with the Friends of the Barnes Foundation, the city of Philadelphia stole the Barnes Collection by creating loopholes in Barnes’ will, however, I want to be able to see the greatest collection of art in the United States, so maybe I’m OK with that.

The Art of the Steal chronicles Albert C. Barnes’ life from a poor Philly boy to rich, successful pharmaceutical businessman who starts buying art by Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso, and other great artists before museums were vying for their work. He created the Barnes Foundation as a school for artists and the students are the only people welcome to view the $25 billion art collection. He didn’t want this to be a museum, but a study of art, and he didn’t want the art displayed on empty white walls, like it would have been in a gallery. He was so adamant about the experience viewers had with the art that he put a will together stating the art could never be moved or sold.

After he died in 1951 the story gets interesting. Everyone wants this collection, some, like the Friends of the Barnes Foundation, want the building and art preserved as Barnes wanted it, and others want the works to be accessible to more people.

The movie is completely one sided. Although they do say that most of the people who worked to get the art moved to Philadelphia turned down invitations to be interviewed for the movie. But I can’t help feel like I’ve met the Friends of the Barnes Foundation during my years of covering city council for a small town. Community activists can be … tiring.

So here’s the dilemma – I agree, Barnes bought this art, it was his to do with what he wanted. And what the city did is wrong. What if tomorrow they decide my car needs to be in a museum, can they take it? So, of course, they shouldn’t be able to just do what they want with it, especially since he was very specific about what he wanted. And you have to watch the movie to really understand why he wanted the art to stay in the suburbs. He has compelling reasons. But this isn’t one painting, or five. This is $25 billion of art. So, even though I think it’s wrong, I will go see the collection once it moves to Philadelphia in 2012.

Sorry Mr. Barnes. 

Rating: Like

Arthur

April 12.

I can’t imagine a world where if I was a poor woman scraping money together to pay for a one bedroom apartment in Queens where I lived with my sick father and a billionaire offered me a million dollars as a sorry I lied to you I wouldn’t take it. I know we’re all supposed to pretend we are above money and that integrity is more important, but come on.

This wasn’t the only false part of the Russell Brand reboot of Arthur, but I have to admit, I didn’t hate it like I thought I was going to. It is too sad to really be a comedy and too silly to really be a drama but I found Brand and his nanny, played by Helen Mirren, to be a great team and enjoyed his antics and seeing some beautiful New York scenery.

I saw the original Dudley Moore version but I was a kid and don’t really remember it, actually maybe I only saw part two. Either way, I did think a few times that Brand was trying to imitate Moore, but then I found out that they are from the same area of England. So maybe they just sound the same when they are pretending to be drunk.

Rating: Like

Trois Couleurs: Bleu (Three Colors Blue)

April 9.

Trois Couleurs is one of those trilogies that has been recommended to me over and over and has been in my Netflix queue for years. I wanted to see it, three great French movies that everyone loves, but I never found the motivation. So when my friend mentioned he had ordered the trilogy last year and finally got it, I guess Amazon didn’t have the motivation to send it, I said OK, let me borrow it. I’m sure he wasn’t going to charge me late fees, but I didn’t feel it was right to hold onto it for months, so finally this weekend I watched part one: Bleu.

So after all this time it’s nice to be able to say Bleu, starring Juliette Binoche as the widow of a famous composer, really lived up to the hype. It was amazing and beautiful and disturbing and sad.

Bleu starts with the car accident that kills Binoche’s husband and daughter and follows her as she tries to live after the tragedy. Bleu is a bit mysterious with unanswered questions and a linear storyline but it seems to be more about the emotion.

I’ve already returned Bleu and have parts two and three. I am excited to see where this trilogy, which is general in theme, (trilogy of films dealing with contemporary French society concerns), goes.

Rating: Love

Source Code

April 9.

Source Code is Groundhog Day meets Inception meets Avatar ... kind of.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays a disoriented soldier who gets to take over the body of a man who is on a train outside of Chicago that is about to blow up. He has eight minutes until the bomb explodes and everyone on board dies. Eight minutes. Over and over again until he can figure out where the bomb is and who planted it. He’s not supposed to be trying to save the people, only learn about the bomber to stop a future attack. This isn’t, as they say, time travel.

There’s a lot of to figure out in the movie – like where is Jake once he’s off the train and in his own body, who are the people who are instructing him in his mission, who’s the bomber, etc., etc.

Source Code is well made and acted and pulled me in from the start. There’s a question I have about Jake and then end, but I don’t want to ruin it for you. So let me know when you’ve seen it and we discuss the ending.

Rating: Like

Hop

April 5.

Hop is cute. It does a great job of creating Easter folklore for the Easter Bunny like so many Christmas movies have done for Santa. But some of the charm of the great Christmas movies was just missing. I’m not exactly sure why.

Easter Island is as detailed as the North Pole. The chicks working in the candy shop are maybe even cuter than elves, and everything is fun and colorful. Maybe an Easter movie can never be like a Christmas movie because Christmas has a special feeling or because I heard stories about Santa my whole life and those movies just brought it to life rather than trying to create something new. Or maybe Hop just wasn’t a great movie.

The movie starts out good as it introduces the Easter Bunny and his son, E.B., who is supposed to become the Easter Bunny on his next birthday. E.B. isn’t interested in dedicating his life to hiding eggs and wants to become a famous drummer. So he sets off for Hollywood and the home of the Bunny’s – the Playboy Mansion. After getting turned away by Hef he hooks up with freeloader, Fred. There’s the whole part about Fred thinking he’s crazy and E.B. discovering how much fun it is and then how dangerous it is to be among the humans, etc.

The end is where Hop really falls apart though. It crams what should have taken half the movie into about 10 minutes and doesn’t really put an end to everything. And without ruining the ending, some humans seem to accept things a little too easily.

Rating: Ehh

Certified Copy

March 26.

I had really high expectations for Certified Copy. The French movie set in Tuscany starring Juliette Binoche got rave reviews everywhere I looked. So as the main characters - Binoche, an apparent single mother running an antique shop in small town Italy and William Shimell an art historian and author - have an uncomfortable meeting, full of strange bickering, I wasn't sure what I thought of it.

And then, when the pair started acted as a married couple, but not in a cute, fun way - in a strange sad way, I was actually less uncomfortable but still confused. This couple seemed to truly be married ... I think.

So in the end I wasn't sure what I thought. The conversation was interesting, the scenery and camera angles were gorgeous and interesting. But the story. What had happened? Were they married? Were they strangers? I don't know.

A few days later, I was talking to a coworker about the film and we had similar reactions. But as we talked about it, we both began to appreciate what we saw more and more. There are so many questions. About what happened, sure, but also about the way people speak to each other and why. And there's no denying that the storytelling was like nothing I've ever seen before. So, now I feel like I need to watch this movie again, and that it could be a movie I love, but for now ...

Rating: Like

Limitless

March 19.

Limitless is stylish and sexy with sweeping, gorgeous views of New York City and Bradley Cooper. Sure the story of a disheveled man with a serious case of writer's block who takes a miracle pill that lets him unlock his full potential has a few holes, but it's fun to watch anyway.

The actors, Cooper, Abbie Cornish, and Robert DeNiro were all really good, even if DeNiro wasn't used enough. There's never a slow or dull moment in Limitless, but this is not the Inception of 2011. The story tries to throw in some twists, but I wasn't shocked and could kind of guess what was coming up.

Still, sometimes fun is all a movie needs to be.

Although, Limitless did make me think a little. If given the power of no limitations would I, or would any of us, do more than Cooper's character Eddie did, which was pretty much impress people with his intelligence like a parlor trick, get girls, and make money? Is Limitless trying to point out the sad state of our society? Or maybe this is just a movie trying to tell an amusing story and not a lesson in morals.

While watching the movie it seemed that the writer, Alan Glynn, of the book, The Dark Fields, which the film was based, was trying to make a statement about illegal drugs. You take them to get you through, feel invincible, can't live with out them, then can't live with them. But I can't find anything to back that up. So I should probably stop trying to read so much into this and focus on what really matters: Bradley Cooper's hot.

Rating: Like

The Illusionist (L'illusionniste)

March 12.

L'illusionniste is sad. That’s the way I felt the whole movie. Sure there’s a flash of the fun times the magician had when he had a successful act in Paris, but really it’s about his decline. I spent the whole movie waiting for the change, for something good to happen. It didn’t. On his way down, the illusionist spends some time in Scotland where he befriends a young girl, Alice. I thought this was where some happiness would come in. But Alice just seems selfish and unappreciative of his generosity.

Sometimes I enjoy movies like this, a story that is linear seems more honest and life doesn’t always have a happy ending. So maybe it was my mood or maybe I was waiting for some of the silliness that was in The Triplets of Belleville, but it just felt a little empty.

Rating: Ehh

Cedar Rapids

March 5.

Ed Helms should never stop singing. I love all his nerdy songs. And in Cedar Rapids he belted out the perfect Christmas tune about insurance.

There were other really funny moments in this movie about a sheltered insurance salesman who goes to a conference in the big city - Cedar Rapids. He makes new friends including the bad boy of insurance, John C. Reilly, and a hooker played by Maybe from Arrested Development, which was weird.

Even though I did really like this movie, I laughed a lot, cared about the characters, and was interested the whole way through, I kind of expected more. It got such good reviews and won film fest awards. So I thought I was in for more than a solid comedy.

Rating: Like

If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium

February 19.

If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium isn't a great movie, but it made me laugh a few times. And I liked seeing familiar faces of the 60s and 70s traveling around Europe together on a bus.

The bus brought me back to the time I spent traveling around Europe  on the Plummet Coach. You haven't seen Europe until you've driven it on a bus. Although I never went as far as this group of Americans on a tour of nine countries in 18 days.

The group, led by a cute British tour guide (Ian McShane) starts in London and ends in Rome. All the annoying American stereotypes are there. Suzanne Pleshette (of Oh, God!) plays a single woman on one last jaunt before marrying a man she doesn't love, Norman Fell plays a married man whose wife accidentally gets on the wrong bus and is with a Japanese tour group for most of the trip, there's a bickering married couple, a single man who comes with empty suitcases an steals everything that isn't nailed down, and on and on.

The movie was filmed on location in 1968, and it's awesome to see Amsterdam, Brussels, London, Germany, Venice, and Rome, especially with all the late-60s garb. I visited almost every city the movie does 30 years later, and besides the mini skirts and bell bottoms everything looks exactly the same.

Rating: Like

Arsenic and Old Lace

February 15.

Arsenic and Old Lace. What a great quirky, silly, old movie. Cary Grant and his two old aunts run around this charming Frank Capra classic Three’s Company Style, and I love it.
On his wedding day, the theater critic (Cary) learns that his spinster aunts murder single, lonely men to put them out of their misery. Even though they’re murderers the aunts are still sweet and thoughtful. People who visit just have to make sure they don’t drink from the wrong bottle of wine. Cary discovers a body and starts putting together a story to get his aunts into a nut house to avoid jail. All this is happening while his uncle, who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt, is in the basement digging the Panama Canal.

I know this sounds crazy but it gets even messier from there and it’s still good. Somehow, maybe because Capra is a genius or because Cary is Cary, the movie kept me connected and interested and made the over-the-top story funny rather than stupid.

You should see it. It will make your crazy family seem a little less crazy.

Rating: Love

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

February 14.

The whole world is raving about the book and movie trilogy that starts with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I guess I just missed something.

The story wasn't even about the girl. When the movie flashed to her life it was just one disturbing image after another, but I never really got why I was supposed to care. And her tattoo, was there even a tattoo?

The secondary story, which was the real story, was interesting, but not much more than a good episode of CSI Stockholm.

So although the Swedish movie held my interest I refuse to see part two and don't really think I'll run out to see the American version.

Rating: Ehh

The Triplets of Belleville

February 14.

I love The Triplets of Belleville. The animation and story are so whimsy, weird and interesting.

The story is about a boy, his dog and a woman I am guessing is his grandmother. They all live in Paris, so from scene one I was in.  The boy becomes interested in the Tour de France and starts cycling, with the old woman as his trainer. As he's racing in the Tour De France he gets kidnapped and his grandmother (dog in tow) follow his kidnappers to New York. The grandmother gets help from the expat French triplets, who were a famous singing act about 50 years before.

There are parts of Triplets that seem like a dream, or maybe the whole thing is a dream. I don't know. But I loved it anyway.

Rating: Love

Gnomeo & Juliet

February 13.

Awwwe. Gnomeo & Juliet is so cute. These angry little garden gnomes live in neighboring English gardens and come to life whenever their owners disappear.

Just like in the original Romeo & Juliet, the two families are feuding but we don't really know why. Gnomeo is a blue and Juliet is a red but when they first see each other they miss the color of the others hat and fall in love.

Things get complicated when they find out who the other is, but anyone who knows Shakespeare's story knows what's coming. Of course this is a cartoon about Gnomes so there isn't as much sex or death, but the general components of the classic tragedy are there.

The story isn't the only thing that's cute. The animation is also unique and creative. The gnomes are all a little scratched and dented, which make them look lifelike.

I should admit, I boycotted the 3D version for the old-fashioned 2D, so I can't comment there. But I don't know that any movie needs 3D, let alone Gnomeo & Juliet.

Rating: Like

The Chateau

January 29.

Wow, bad movies really are painful.

The Chateau is a comedy about two American brothers (Yes, Paul Rudd and Romany Malco play brothers, and no not like brothas, they are brothers. (Malco is adopted.) A joke which they use about 1,000 times.) who inherit a chateau, along with its staff, in France.

They think they are going to get there, sell it, and pocket the cash but zaniness ensues. It's really not worth getting into what happens or why, honestly, it's not. There's thousands of great movies and there's no reason to watch this ridiculousness.

Rating: Hate

The Affair of the Necklace

January 29.

No, no, no, no, no. No.

Hilary Swank may have won an Oscar, but she's awful, awful, as a down-on-her-luck aristocrat in pre-revolutionary France. Awful.

I found this movie because I watched a documentary about Marie Antoinette and thought this true story of a necklace scheme, which is credited for starting the French Revolution, was fascinating. But The Affair of the Necklace did not translate. The bad script and bad acting did not bring the story to life or shed a new light on the doomed queen of France.

The whole movie was flat. Swank is not sexy and not even a little French. I still think the story of the extravagant necklace, which the queen might have been trying to buy secretly, as not to incite the people of France who were starving to death, is interesting. Especially since the queen claimed she never agreed to buy the necklace but because the citizens believed the story, or wanted to believe it, it put them over the top and started the French Revolution, which left the queen and her husband headless, and the monarchy dead forever.

But why with such great material, why are so many movies so bad?

Rating: Hate

Marie Antoinette

January 28.

As a lot of you know, I am obsessed with the British Royals and France. So when I came across this PBS documentary about the last queen of France, Marie Antoinette, I couldn’t resist.

The queen, who famously did or did not tell the starving people of France to eat cake, is such an interesting historical character I can’t believe there aren’t more movies about her. Of course there’s the Sofia Coppola film, and although that movie is pretty and deals with the lavish lifestyle the queen had it doesn’t get to the parts that I was excited to learn about in this documentary.

It explains the affair with the necklace, which was turned into a bad movie a few years ago and was the turning point for the French revolution. It appeared that the queen was sneaking around buying a ridiculously expensive necklace while her people were starving. Whether that’s true or not, no one really knows.

Another aspect of her life the movie looks at is the years after she was taken from Versailles until she was beheaded. I guess I always thought she was killed the same night, but that’s not the case.

This documentary makes me wish there were some great movies about the queen and the French Royals. I guess I’ll just have to find a good book.

Rating: Like

The Heart Specialist

January 16.

The Heart Specialist is almost a good movie. It’s kinda funny and sort of touching. But I had a hard time getting passed the bad production and the choppiness.

The story follows a Harvard Medical School graduate to an internship in Miami where his ex-girlfriend now lives. Ray becomes friends with Sidney, the chief resident and a woman, who is kind of Sidney’s girlfriend, I think, played by Zoe Saldana. The movie quickly becomes about Sidney, who is a writer and a comedian in addition to being a doctor.

I don’t think every movie should be a mystery but when the story is building up to a reveal that I figured out 40 minutes ago I tend to get annoyed. So I won’t say what the big surprise is here, but if you watch the movie you will know long before you’re told.

Rating: Ehh

Blue Valentine

January 15.

Well, now I'm depressed.

There are a lot of movies that tell the story of the beginning of a relationship or the end of a relationship. Some even show both, War of the Roses was brutal. But the way Blue Valentine shows snapshots of this married couples start and finish, moving from happy moment to sad, it's wrenching.

Michelle Williams, who was nominated for an Oscar for this role, and Ryan Gosling do an excellent job of playing the young smitten couple as well as the broken married pair.

Usually I agree with one person more than the other, most stories are written that way, but in Blue Valentine it's hard to say who is right and who is wrong. It's just a real, raw marriage that's over.

Rating: Like

Made in Dagenham

January 15.

I love movies set in places – and times – I want to visit, so a film about England in the 1960’s is perfect for me. Made in Dagenham centers on Rita, a wife, mother, and seamstress at the Ford factory in Daggenham, just outside London. She, along with about 200 other women working for Ford, goes on strike to fight for equal pay for women.

Everyone who works at the factory also seems to live with their families in a sort of dorm right on the property. All the women’s husbands also work at the factory, making a lot more money. So with the help of a union rep, played by Bob Hoskins, Rita becomes the face and voice of the Ford women.

 As the strike drags on, and with no seat covers, the factory comes to a halt. No covers, no cars. Rita travels around England to other Ford factories and gets more seamstresses to strike making waves with Ford in the U.S., until she finally gets the attention of national politicians and sets world-wide changes in motion.

Made in Dagenham has great performances, an engaging story, and the music and costumes are fun.

Rating: Like

Season of the Witch

January 9.

So, Season of the Witch stars Nicolas Cage and Clay from Sons of Anarchy as knights in the 1300s-ish and they’re going to transport a witch for some reason.

This seems to be almost horror – witches get hung and drowned before coming back to life to kill the priest who ordered the execution. I’d probably be scared if I wasn’t laughing at the acting and lack of accents. Nic and Ron Perlman, who are way too old to be running around fighting in the crusades, are using some old English words and speech patterns but with their normal accents and modern slang. Wow, it’s bad. I wonder if there was a script or if the actors were just given an outline of the general story like they do on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Note to writers: these guys need a script. The dialogue is absolutely awful. As I watch Perlman, I can see him laughing at the producers for paying him for this.

Most of the action takes place in front of a green screen and there are a lot of creepy moments just for the sake of being creepy. It seems lazy and thrown together. The storytelling isn’t good either. Towards the end Nic starts explaining what just happened while flashbacks from the movie I’m in the middle of watching appear on the screen. I didn’t forget, I’m not that stupid, and this is not that complicated. On a positive note, there are zombie monks. They are good for a laugh if nothing else.

Rating: Hate

Ang tanging ina mo: Last na 'to!

January 8.

I thought I was going to be alone watching Ang tanging ina mo: Last na 'to!, but, nope, it seems the entire Las Vegas Filipino expat population is here with me. It’s mostly old people looking at me wondering what I’m doing here. No one is speaking English and it’s weird to be in a place I’ve been hundreds of times and have it feel totally foreign.

Ang tanging ina mo: Last na 'to! is the third and final installment of a popular Filipino comedy series. I haven’t seen the first two but I read about them in preparation. In the first, the main character, Ina, becomes a single mother of 30 or 12 or some ungodly number of children and she has to figure out a way to raise them and earn a living. Sounds funny, right? Hmm. So in part two, Ina, having her life in order, becomes president of the Philippines. Yes, president of the Philippines. So that’s where part three begins, her kids are growing up and she’s president … of a country.

The movie starts with loud, annoying music followed by loud, annoying talking and it takes me a few seconds to realize there are no subtitles. What?! Umm. I don’t speak Tagalog, or whatever this language is. I have seen tons of foreign movies and it never occurred to me that there wouldn’t be subtitles. I have wondered in the past if I would be able to follow a foreign movie without subtitles and I now know the answer: sort of.

 The problem with this movie isn’t that I don’t understand what they are saying. I really think I would have thought this was stupid even if I understood. The real problem is that it’s so over-the-top, so loud, and so annoying. I can’t believe people are watching this or that it was entered into film festivals. I keep checking the time and it’s not going fast enough. A baby has been crying for nearly half of the movie and normally I’d be mad that the parents didn't take him outside but I am sort of glad for the distraction and I feel his pain.

Without knowing what is being said it’s hard to gauge when the end is coming, but the end does come, finally. 

Rating: Hate

Country Strong

January 8.

So, here I am, bored to tears, watching my first mess of a movie of the year, Country Strong. It isn't long exactly, but it does feel like it won't end.

There are too many main characters - Gwyneth, a country super star fresh out of rehab; McGraw, her asshole of a husband and manager; and the two young wannabes along for the ride. The writer really should have picked whose story this was before trying to jam all their lives down our throats. As the story builds it feels forced and phony. This is not at all like last year's successful movie about a washed up, drunk country star - Crazy Heart, which was authentic and raw.

Country Strong moves along quickly, it has to in order to fit it all in. Alcoholism, dead babies, affairs, parents in prison, lies, music - this movie has it all. The story isn't unfolding as much as is being thrown at us. The scenes don't build and reveal secrets slowly, they just spat out some issue and then the next scene spats out something new and unbelievable. And even without any build up everything is completely predictable.

I don't really like any of the characters but the secondary leads are better than Tim and Gwyneth. It is weird watching Blair Waldorf sing country music, but she's not bad. The young, sweet country crooner, who prefers singing in honky-tonks to good people who just want to hear some good music while they drink their beer, is cute, but his facial hair is distracting. It's long and straight and grows in patches. He needs to shave.

The end came just in time with a big, sad, to some, dramatic finale that, again, is predictable even though there isn't any preparation for it.

Rating: Hate