2011: WHAT I'VE SEEN

In order of preference:

The Tree of Life

Super 8
Cowboys & Aliens
Hanna
Bridesmaids
The Adjustment Bureau
Captain America
Source Code
The Trip
Rango
The Hangover: Part II
Fast Five
Crazy, Stupid Love
Battle: Los Angeles
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Horrible Bosses
Your Highness
Sucker Punch
Water for Elephants
Paul
Friends with Benefits
X-Men: First Class
Thor
The Lincoln Lawyer
No Strings Attached
Rubber
Hall Pass
The Green Hornet

In the next few days I'll be posting a MAY-JUNE-JULY round-up...

CAN'T GET HERE SOON ENOUGH

What an epic cast.

MOVIES FOR THE WEEKEND

Double feature for my birthday weekend -- Crazy Stupid Love on Saturday and Cowboys & Aliens on Sunday.  They both look fun.

From Netflix is the comedy Hall Pass.

I noticed that Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams has hit On Demand -- gotta watch that for sure...

COOLNESS

Peter Berg is clearly swinging for the fences with this one.  The recently dropped teaser is fucking sick...

FINALLY!

October 4, 2011.

TODAY'S BLU

Duncan Jones (Moon) is a director to pay close attention too.  Can't wait to see what he does next...

CUTE

ALL OF INTEREST

MOVIES FOR THE WEEKEND

Captain America on Satuday -- looks f'ing awesome...

From Netflix is the Malickian-sounding Spanish drama Silent Light.

Limitless is avail On Demand so I'd like to check that out as well...

DEFINITELY

AWESOME ART

Steven Soderbergh is one of the top 10 filmmakers currently working on planet Earth.

CLASSY ALL AROUND

TODAY'S BLU

A wonderful, delightful comedy from Jean-Pierre Jeunet.  It's gonna look GORGEOUS on Blu-Ray...

LOOKS LIKE A BLAST

Just hope it delivers the goods...

PERFECTION

Five perfect seasons of television.  A shame it's over.  What a finale.  What an amazing piece of storytelling.

MOVIES FOR THE WEEKEND

I haven't seen the last 12 Harry Potter movies so I'll be skipping the final installment.  These films have never done much for me (I haven't read any of the books so there's no vested interest) and while I've enjoyed certain movies in the series (Cuaron's was wonderful) I'm just not into the LOTR/Potter fantasy stuff.  So...count me in the minority...no Potter here.

From Netflix is The Lincoln Lawyer.  I've heard some good things...

Last night I went to a sneak preview of Friends with Benefits which was very funny and a bit better than No Strings Attached. Not a great film by any stretch but an entertaining rom-com with more than a few moments of laugh out loud humor. Mila Kunis is awesome and Timberlake did a nice job. Aside from some sloppy editing it was a solid genre entry that most people will really enjoy.

PERFECT

Easily one of Soderbergh's best.

GOTTA WAIT A BIT...

LITTLE LIZARD

Gore Verbinski's surreal, witty, Chinatown & Western-tinged Rango is easily the best animated film of the year.

OLD FRIENDS

MOVIES FOR THE WEEKEND

Horrible Bosses looks funny and I love the cast -- plan to check it out on Sunday at the moment...

From Netflix is the Turkish drama Three Monkeys, which I've heard great things about over the last couple of years...

Need to see The Tree of Life again...

Really enjoyed Barney's Version, despite the inherent sadness.  Mini-review will be posted soon...

WILD & TWISTED

Wayne Kramer doesn't make enough movies...

ANYONE HOME?

SO MUCH FUN

I had forgotten how much fun (and how fucking silly) Armageddon really is as an action flick.  It's so Looney Tunes-preposterous that it's tough to lodge any rational, narrative-based complaints -- it's a movie made by man-children for little boys who like to play with toys.  At the time, Michael Bay was shooting his most expensive film to date with Armageddon ($140 million in 1997 dollars), and it still shows -- the film is enormous in scale, with some truly outstanding setpieces, including a particularly riveting escape-from-an-exploding-space-station that is still dazzling (and recalls aspects of Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot) despite years of advancements in special effects.  Yes, the film is incredibly cheesy and hokey and most of the dialogue is tremendously on-the-nose, but you know what -- it all works like gangbusters.  It's as American as apple pie, hot dogs and hamburgers, family cookouts, and trips to the ballpark.  It's an emotional, overly sentimental blockbuster that Bay and Bruckheimer collaborated on right after the success of The Rock (still Bay's best film; I doubt he'll ever come close to it again) and it demonstrated Bay's ability to make a seemingly R-rated product on a studio-friendly PG-13 rating.  It also features some eerie scenes of NYC destruction that show a flaming WTC -- three years before 9/11 -- so odd and scary.  The funniest aspect certainly has to be the absurdly high-end roll-call of Hollywood writers who worked on the script:  JJ Abrams, Robert Towne, Jonathan Hensleigh, Steven Zaillian, Tony Gilroy, Robert Pool, and Shane Salerno (just to name a few) were all either credited or uncredited writers on the film, and it shows in spades.  Some scenes are overwritten, some are underwritten, some are funny, others aren't when they're trying to be --  all Bay trademarks.  But what Armageddon really showed, that Pearl Harbor would later cement, was that Bay was putting a serious stamp being put on Hollywood action films, a style that has now become instantly recognizable to anyone who's been going to the movies ever summer for the last 15 years.  Love or hate him, he's an auteur in the truest sense of the word. 

STILL HAUNTS ME

MOVIES FOR THE LONG WEEKEND

Not sure what I'll see this weekend in the theaters.  There are a few titles out there (Midnight in Paris, Bad Teacher) that I haven't seen yet and others (Tree of Life) that I need to see again.  I'll give Transformers 3 a second viewing, but not until next weekend. 

From Netflix is the indie dramedy Barney's Version with Paul Giamatti.