Plus, I don’t really like sports so, you know, there’s that, too.

But I loved Friday Night Lights. I’m not doing a formal review because, well, I saw it on the FX Network on cable and I have a rule not to review a movie I saw on TV, but this movie forced me to write something.

The movie revolves around the Permian High football team in Odessa, TX in 1988. The movie feels very real. It was shot quasi-doc-style and even uses the minimalist drone music found in many indie films. The casting is top-notch, featuring Billy Bob Thorton as the coach and is one of his most believable roles. (“Bad Santa? Come on, now.) Even the kids on the team rarely fall in the over-the-top teenager mold. So, yeah, good acting there.

It’s really hard for me to organize my thoughts right now for some reason, so I’ll try to just give a quick summary of why this movie is awesome: As much as I hated it, high school football is the most charged, emotional, and real sport that exists. The kids truly play as if it is the most important thing that they will ever do. The drama of the game has nothing to do with the turf, it’s what happens off the field. Pressure from community and friends and the feeling that this truly might be your only shot at glory in your life. At the end of the movie, the three main players look at the stadium with a mixed sense of longing and relief. I’ve felt that (on a basketball court) and this is the only movie that I’ve seen that captures that feeling. And that is why it is the best sports movie, ever.

Let me first address these two concerns.  To the nerd whose expectations of a faithful retelling on the 80’s cartoon, um… they did the best possible job considering the source material.  I mean, transformers are alien robots who transform into cars.  This is the best it gets.  To those who complain about the product placement (which was never distracting), I find it ironic to use this movie to take a consumer high-road when the original cartoon existed solely to sell toys.  Like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Pokemon, and other kids shows, Transformers was simply a vehicle (no pun intended) for selling stuff.

So is Transformers worth your $10?  Yes.

Like Armageddon before it, Michael Bay’s latest spectacle is a perfect summer movie.  (Don’t get all snobby about Armageddon on me.  You know you watched it in a theater and you liked it.  Heck, you probably got all choked up when Bruce Willis died.)  The story revolves around Shia LeBouf (I don’t know if that is how you spell it, but I don’t care enough to look it up) who is the great grandson of someone important and thereby becomes someone important to big robot aliens who are looking for a big square battery…or something.  Okay, let’s face it.  The plot sucks.  But you don’t care.  LeBouf is great as the teenaged everyman (because we all think of ourselves as teenagers still).  Josh Guy-From-Las-Vegas is passable as The Army Guy.  Heck there is even John Voight with an accent that I think is supposed to be southern.

Bottom line is, this movie has everything a summer movie needs:

1. I likable lead character.
2. A beautiful not-quite-girlfriend-yet-but-will-be-by-the-end-of-the-movie
3. Earth in peril
4. Destruction of a major metropolitan area
5. Smart, funny dialog
6. A couple of fart jokes
7. Funny black secondary character
8. Unbelievable plot
9. John Voight
10. Building-sized robots with built-in rocket launchers.

This film is fun.  You should watch it.  Don’t think you are nerdy enough?  Don’t worry.  You don’t have to be.  There is enough explosions, pretty people, and jokes to keep you interested.  And for those nerds, this will definitely tide you over until Harry Potter is released.

[rating:4/5]

I just didn’t like it.

Pizza stars unknown Kyle Sparks as Cara Ethyl an overweight teenager who had conversations with herself in order to convince her blind mother that she has at least one friend at her eighteenth birthday party. When the pizza guy, Matt (Ethan Embry), delivers pizza for the “party”, he takes pity on Cara and invites her to tag along on his deliveries.

They spend the night bouncing between delivery stops and attempts by Matt to help Cara Ethyl experience life. One of such attempt involves sneaking Cara Ethyl into a dance club and introducing her to alcohol and cigarettes. The two develop a quick love/hate relationship. Cara Ethyl accuses Matt (who is 30) of being too scared to do anything with his life and he retaliates by accusing her of intentionally scaring people away. The only problem is, she scares the audience away.

The problem isn’t Kyle Sparks’ portrayal of Cara Ethyl (although her acting is a bit stiff in parts), the problem is Cara Ethyl, herself. The director makes every attempt to get you to like her. He gives her quirks that he insists are endearing. Instead of getting contact lenses on her birthday, she simply gets a snazzier pair of black-rimmed specs. The proclaims that she is going to “light up Broadway” after she gets her medical license, of course. She is energetic and spunky, but retreats quickly when mocked by others. It’s in these situations when it seems as though the director wants the audience to stick up for Cara Ethyl and tell her to celebrate her individuality, but more often you just feel awkward and embarrassed. Cara Ethyl is so awkward at times you almost want to leave the room. When she is not being victimized by those around her she is being weird to the point of annoyance. She has a couple of great lines, but they are so few and far between that it doesn’t seem worth it. The only person seems to gain any connection with the audience at all is Matt. This is mainly because of Ethan Embry’s portrayal of the pseudo-liberal-intellectual loser and not because the character has anything interesting to say. The movie, like Matt, drifts along without any real direction and by the end, you just want the night to be over and everyone involved to continue on with their lives.

I had high hopes for this film. It was produced in part by Indigent which specializes in movies shot on DV and HD video such as November with Courtney Cox and Pieces of April with Katie Holmes, both of which were good. Pizza, unfortunately doesn’t compare. The editing is spastic at times and at other times almost glitchy. It makes me wonder if some of the cutting decisions were because of a lack of usable footage (hey, it happens), because it doesn’t seem to really serve the story.

So, Mr. Christopher congratulations. You made your movie. You poured your heart and soul into it and for that we commend you. I really wanted to like it, too. I think Ethan Embry is a great actor and enjoyed the casting of Joey Kern who also played “Shirts” in Sasquatch Dumpling Gang (check it out, by the way). I even lay in bed after the movie, unable to go to sleep because of my frustration, but it wasn’t any use. The movie simply isn’t very good.

Rated: PG-13, but you’ll probably only find it on DVD unrated.

[rating:2]

Will Ferrell plays Harold Crick, a IRS agent whose life is ruled by numbers. He counts the number brush strokes with an OCD- like obsession. At work, people shoot out large multiplication problems to him (hey, they sounded large to me, so lay off) and he almost instantly shoots the product back (See, I used “product”, a math term. I didn’t even have to look it up). He has no friends outside of work and generally leads an nondescript life.

Until he hears the narrator.

One day while brushing his teeth, Harold hears someone narrating…his life. This only borders on annoying until the voice announces that the act of resetting his wristwatch would, “result in his imminent death.” Other people can’t hear the voice and rejects craziness as the answer posed by psychiatrists because, “the voice isn’t speaking to [him], but about [him] and with a better vocabulary.” Deciding that his problem isn’t mental, but literary, Harold goes to visit a English professor, Professor Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman) to find out what kind of story he is in and the identity of the narrator.

The narrator is, in fact, Kay Eiffel, a blocked writer in who is trying to find a way to kill her latest character, Harold Crick. Kay is played wonderfully by Emma Thompson (whose name I had to look up, because ever since I watched a certain episode of Geekdrome, I could only think of her as “the female Kenneth Branaugh”). Professor Hilbert tries to help Harold decide whether he is in a comedy or a tragedy and the movie does the same thing throughout. I knew it wasn’t going to be a typical Will Ferrell slapstick feature, yet about a third of the way in, I was kind of hoping it was, then I found myself so enveloped in the characters and the plot (of the plot) that I thought using this movie for cheap laughs was beneath it. Not to say it doesn’t have its funny moments, but they are subtle and often dialog based.

What really draws you in is the same thing that consumes Harold-what the ending is going to be. In this movie Ferrell shows himself to be a very versatile actor, a comedic actor, but a versatile comedic actor. He can do the over-the-top laughs of Zoolander, but he can also do the simple, subtle comedy of this movie. Dustin Hoffman is Dustin Hoffman. Emma Thompson proves that she can fill whatever roll she wants by playing the eccentric, chainsmoking Eifell (and displays a lot of courage by looking absolutely horrible on screen). The movie even includes the great Maggie Gyllenhall as Crick’s potential love interest/audit subject.

In short (actually this has been one of my longer reviews) this is a great movie. It is more than competently directed by Marc Forster of Finding Neverland and Monster’s Ball. If you are looking for hilarity, change your expectations, make it through the first third (more like quarter really) and stay through the whole thing. You’ll be glad you did.

Rated: PG-13 for some disturbing images, sexuality, brief language and nudity.

[rating:4]

Borat is the movie based on the same-named character created by Sacha Baron Cohen for his HBO news parody, Da Ali G Show. Borat is a reporter for the state-run television network in Kazakhstan and is send by his government to the United States to make a documentary on…american life (see, that’s the name of my blog), which explains the movie’s lengthy alternate title, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

A mixture of scripted and holy-crap-there-is-no-way-unscripted adventures, the film follows Borat and his producer, Azamat Bagatov as they begin to make their film in New York starting with an interview with feminists in New York. The feminist’s interview was one of the shortest in the movie as they lose patience with Borat’s clueless sexism after about 30 seconds. The night before shows Borat discovering American television and by American television, I mean Baywatch, especially Pamela Anderson Lee Anderson. He convinces Azamat that to really discover America, they need to drive across it to California (avoiding flying in case the “Jews repeat their attack of 9/11”), but he doesn’t inform him that the real reason is so he can meet Pamela Anderson. While the characters drive across the country (in a ice-cream truck that has seen better days), hilarity ensues. Because he presents himself as an ignorant foreigner, it’s amazing to what lengths people accept his antics. They put up with a lot…but not everything. He manages to get thrown out of a dining club in Birmingham, Alabama, a hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, and is boo-ed while singing an improvised Kazakh national anthem to the tune of “The Star Spangled Banner” at a rodeo in who-knows-where. (My favorite lines from the Kazakh national anthem, “Kazakhstan is number one / Exporter of potassium / All other Central Asian Nations / Have inferior potassium“.) His trip ends in California as he finally meets Ms. Anderson and asks her to marry him in a very unconventional (and absolutely hilarious) way.

Put it simply, Borat is really, really funny, but don’t even come close to this film if you are the least bit (seriously, the least bit) offended by jokes about: Jews, Muslims, Christians, Central Asian Nations, sex (all kinds), women, men, gays, mothers-in-law, bears, Pamela Anderson, Jews, a five-minute-long naked fight scene between a very hairy Borat and the over-overweight Azamat, Jews, public displays of…everything, prostitution, Pentecostals, Southerners, thongs, fraternities, blacks, whites, gypsies, Uzbekistan, chickens, Jews and mortgage lenders.*

That being said, if you are completely depraved and lack all sense of morals and decency or if you don’t take anything too seriously, then you’ll find Borat to be hilarious and yourself poorly trying to imitate Borat’s central Asian accent for days to come.

Rated R: for language, and…just read two paragraphs up

*list is not comprehensive

[rating:4]

Was it worth it? Totally. In the first five minutes of the movie, the main character, Dennis gives the set-up: He is a struggling filmmaker who was recently diagnosed with terminal bone cancer. Instead of taking chemo, Dennis decides to let the cancer take its course. He is given 3 months and rents a house with his girlfriend, Lily. Being a filmmaker and all Dennis fills the house with motion-activated cameras to document his final days. The hook? The first night the cameras start recording in rooms that are unoccupied. It’s all downhill from there.

Put simply, In Memorium is everything The Blair Witch Project wanted to be, but wasn’t. The premise is gimmicky, yes, but it works. The movie starts off with a good scare and keeps you on the edge of your seat until its disturbing end. Several times the entire theater screamed like little girls and the rest of the time they were ignoring the actors and looking around the screen for ghostly shadows and figures. Ah yes, the actors. Well, they weren’t all that great, but like I said earlier, the audience was too busy being scared to even notice (except for the brother, the scenes he was in were a bit slow). There were several times the audience didn’t even know quite what was going on…they just knew it scared the crap out of them. Some of the scares are the cheap “loud, jumping out at you” type, but there is definitely enough innovative scares and suspense to keep you interested.

It’s making its way on the festival circuit right now looking for distribution. Hopefully, it will find it and In Memorium won’t require its own epitaph (wow, that was bad, wasn’t it?).

Rated: Unrated, but would probably be in the R range for language, bloodletting, and just being pretty darn scary.

[rating:4]

The show follows the 2005 football season of the Hoover High School in Hoover, Alabama. A nationally-ranked school, the Buccaneers face the beginning of the season with 4 state championships and 25 straight wins behind them. No pressure or nothin’.

If I remember my Alabama high school football correctly – didn’t play, didn’t really care – the show paints a fairly accurate picture of what it is like to be a star high school in the south. Businesses close on game days as the whole neighborhood becomes engrossed in the game and its players – on and off the field. My favorite scene is when rumors that Alex (the show’s main focus) cheated on his girlfriend. These rumors spread as quickly through the parents as quickly as it does through the students even causing Alex and his girlfriend’s parents to discuss it while the game is going on. Yes, my friends, this is high school.

The pressures facing these kids are amazing. Aside from being constantly watched by their communities, they have the whole nation to face. The first game of the season is broadcast live via ESPN. Yeah ESPN, not even ESPN2. Having parents and coaches constantly reminding you that your entire future depends on your performance on the field on Saturday doesn’t really help, either.

The documentary has a distinct MTV feel to it. It is peppered with the latest in pop/rock music and includes enough Laguna Beach-style relationship drama to keep the 14 year-old girls interested, but it doesn’t dwell on these plot lines so much as to annoy the target audience of 14 year-old boys. This is a show about football, make no mistake about it.

If MTV is never going to air music videos again, I’ll settle for well-produced shows like this where you actually care about the subjects instead of hope they are run over by an H2 (seriously, those girls on My Super Sweet Sixteen are just terrible people). Here’s hoping MTV’s Juvies which premieres Sept. 5 is also worth watching. You can check out the whole first episode of Two-A-Days on MTV’s Overdrive (which now works with Firefox and Macs).

Rated TV-PG: Kids vomiting at football practice. That is about it.

[rating:4]

I think I still am in a state of shock.

“Snakes on a Plane” was like a massive traffic pile up on the interstate. You slow down to gawk and then you keep driving.

No, seriously, a state of shock.

The movie lives up to its hype depending on which hype you heard. I heard the hype that billed the movie as the campiest/worst movie ever and that it was. I realize this as soon as the snakes started biting people on every part of the human body that would make people go, “eeewwww!!!”

The title is all the summary you need and any further explanation is unnecessary. In fact, my friend David and I turned up late, but we didn’t feel like we missed anything. I mean, there are these snakes…on this…plane. The CG effects, which are used constantly, are terrible and the difference between the real and fake snakes are pretty obvious. The scare factor relies completely on snake-striking-a-the-screen devices that get so annoying after a while. Several of the deaths were so ridiculous that they left the theatre laughing rather than creeped-out.

The acting was terrible, but it’s not like they had anything to work with, so I guess you have to cut them some slack. The movie occaisionally came up with some one-liners that were genuinely funny, but most of the humor came from the absurdity of the plot.

All in all, the movie doesn’t pretend to be anything its not. There are snakes. On a plane. Everyone enjoys a good traffic accident.

Rated R: For everything for which they give R ratings.

[rating:2]

I rented this movie because it won the Independent Spirit award for best foreign film and since I can be such a sucker for foreign movies, I threw it into my Netflix queue.

Said and Khaled are lifelong friends living in the Palestinian west bank. They are chosen by their resistance group to be the suicide bombers that will enter Tel Aviv and respond to an attack by Israel on Palestine. When the Israeli army finds out, the escape back into Palestine and are separated. The resistance suspects betrayal and Suha, a foreign-raised daughter of a martyr helps Khaled find Said before the resistance finds him first.

I have to admit that this is the first time I’ve really heard about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from the Palestinian side of things. Said explains in the film that his father was a collaborator and was therefore executed by the resistance. This he blames on Israel whom he says is the oppressor yet is claiming the role of victim. This, he says, turns good people into murderers. Through Suha, the film rejects the suicide bombers actions yet sympathizes with their plight. Palestine is in ruins from countless bombs. There is a subtheme of water filters that everyone uses to protect against the pollution from the Israeli settlements. This is contrasted to Tel Aviv where buildings scrape the sky and models advertise cell phones on billboards.

The acting in the movie is amazing. Camera movement is minimal and several times the shot is locked down for the duration of the scene allowing it to be completely controlled by the acting. The final shot is haunting and will stay with you long after the credits are through.

Rated: PG-13 for brief strong language

[rating:5]

Damian is a little boy who moves into a new house with his brother and father after the death of his mother. Damian is obsessed with Catholic saints and even sees them on occasion. While playing in a cardboard house he built on the side of the train tracks, Damian stumbles across a satchel full of British pounds. He decides the money is sent by God for him to give to the poor. His brother, Anthony, has different ideas – real estate for one. Britain is on the cusp of the pound-Euro turnover and the brothers have to decide what to do with the cash before it becomes worthless in a week. To make matters a bit more interesting, the thief who stole the money is determined to get it back he wants it back.

The movie could have easily gone the way of your standard Disney Channel Original Movie junk, but Doyle’s incredible visuals and the great acting saves it from that mediocre fate. We are often taken into Damian’s imagination – to see what he sees. The movie avoids patronizing kids and parodying adults that many kid/family oriented movies do. The movie is also not afraid to include religion – another rarity for modern movies of this type. The film raises some interesting moral questions: what would you do if you found a lot of money? What if it was stolen? What if it was originally intended to be destroyed? There are some great conversations that could come from it.

That being said, there are a couple of issues that kind of break the film from being a true family movie. There is a scene with Damian’s dad and his new girlfriend in bed together. Nothing explicit – there just might need to be some explaining. Also, in a kind of unnecessary scene, Anthony is checking out a leingire website – slightly explicit in close-ups. The robber can be a bit scary for littler kids. Bottom line: watch it first, learn the fast-forward marks and then watch it with your kids. It might un-fry their brains after watching the most current incarnation of Pokemon.

Rated: PG for a scary thief, leingire website, and for a dad on the rebound

[rating:5]

I have to admit that I had to do a Wikipedia search for Guy Fawkes after watching Warner Bros. V for Vendetta. Fawkes was a British man who was arrested in the attempt to blow up British parliament. The title character V in V for Vendetta shares Fawkes goal – and assumes his face.

There was one couple that didn’t make it all the way through the movie and there were several times that I wanted to leave in frustration. The film is set in future London. The United States has dissolved into turmoil and civil war along with much of the world. A right-wing extremist Adam Sutler (played by John Hurt) has used this environment to gain absolute power and transform Britain into a 1984-esque dictatorship.

The story revolves around a young woman, Evey (played by Natalie Portman) who breaks curfew and is saved from Gestapo-like “fingermen” by V-a masked vigilante set on revolution. V (voiced by Hugo Weaving) invites Evey to witness his opening shot at the regime and she watches in horror as he proceeds to blow-up the Old Baily.

The movie takes some not-so-sutble shots at the current environment. Government detainees are “black hooded” and tortured referencing Abu Ghraib. Two top sins against the hardline Christian government are Islam and homosexuality, both of which are punishable by death.

The main controversy of the film is sure to arise from V’s explosive terrorism which he uses to inspire the populous to rise up against the government. In explaining his actions to a shocked Evie he insists that the people need hope more than a building. He explains that buildings are symbols of power and oppression and “terrorists” are in the eye of the beholder. This is sure to rile-up people in the wake of 9/11.

The film is pretentious to be sure. Written by the Wachowski brothers who helmed the Matrix films, the film seems to be an attempt to infuse political ideology to the 15 year-old boys (or 24-year olds, whatever) that are sure to be the intended audience for this graphic novel-inspired story. At times the heavy-handed-ness of the plot left me thinking, “oh come on.”

Then again.

The film makes definite attempts to align the story with the rise of the Nazis in Germany and in that context, such governmental atrocities are not completely without precedent. The treatment of the homosexuality and Islam angles, however, seemed to be more of an attempt to make the film fit in the present rather than an integral part of the story.

If V‘s main goal is to make people think, then I would consider it a success. In spite of my own friction to a lot of the film’s negativity, it did make me stop and think about issues that have made the news recently.

Just don’t expect me to start blowing stuff up anytime soon.

Rated: R for violence and language and disturbing Holocaust-like images

[rating:3]