Such a Bad Blogger….

So I haven’t been contributing to the blog very much for the past month or two, and I apologize for that. I had some good excuses ready to write down for this entry, but I’ve since forgotten them. Even if you, gentle reader, are not disappointed in me and my failure to contribute even weekly to this endeavor—I assure you that I have disappointed myself.

For one thing, I went to many movies over the past number of weeks with expressed interest to rant about them in this forum and get other people to rush out and see them in the theater. At this point most of those films have since disappeared from all but the most-behind second run movie house. Still, I hope you seek some of the movies I feature in these mini-reviews on DVD when they eventually become available. This entry will feature solely recent theatrical releases---I hope to address my TV and DVD viewing habits in future upcoming entries.

Rendition
While I wasn’t as ecstatic over this film as H-Dogg was in his recent review, I did enjoy this film quite a bit. While it appeared to be a quite straight-forward message movie for the first hour, it managed to surprise in the second half and left me quite impressed.

This film was in the theatre at the same time as the dreadful-looking sports movie parody The Comebacks which, among it’s assumingly numerous crimes against the cinema, featured a parody of the sports movie parody Dodgeball.
This is far from relevant other than that I had the million dollar idea while watching Rendition that the next dumb parody movie needs to actually parody things that aren’t funny in the first place. How great would it be to create a farce involving several self-righteous mouthpieces for issues such as racism, drug trafficking, the lack of human communication, etc. whose stories entwine and intersect in contrived and interesting ways. The jokes would be the most obvious, ham-fisted form of comedy since the Naked Gun series: pies in the face, characters with big butts, and lame celebrity impersonations of topical figures/easy targets like Michael Vick and Kevin Ferderline.
From 0 of the 12 writers of Epic Movie I bring you Important Movie.
8/10

Gone Baby Gone
A great noir thriller that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the Affleck Bros actually have talent, Gone Baby Gone follows two detectives (Casey Affleck and -Iowa-Represent!- Michelle Monaghan) who are hired to track down the missing daughter of a dead-beat druggie mother. The key to the film is that our two lead characters are far from cool gumshoes—they’re young and, while street smart, relatively inexperienced. This leads to some butting heads with the local authorities, portrayed in the film by the Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman.

The film offers some pretty good twists (some of which sat better with me immediately after seeing the film than they do now, a month later) and great performances from Affleck and Amy Ryan as the self-destructive mother. Expect a best-supporting actress nomination for Ryan’s memorable turn.

After what could only be considered media overexposure, I could honestly care less if I ever see Ben in front of the camera again. However, after this strong debut outing, I'm excited to see what his next project is behind it.
8.5/10

30 Days of Night
One of the ten films I was most excited to see for this last quarter of the year, this graphic novel adaptation more or less lived up to my expectations for being a fine-enough time waster. To stand out in this current horror-movie market, a film needs to have a pretty good high-concept. In this case, vampires take over a town in northern Alaska where the sun doesn’t shine for the entirety of thirty days. Josh Hartnett and Alias’ Melissa George play the chief run-away-ers.

By applying a lot of the recent zombie movie characteristics to vampires (who, as much as I love zombies-make better monsters because they can, well, think) 30 Days helps make this the best vampire movie of recent memory. The movie remains faithful to the source material while not being hampered to the comic’s two main faults—interesting, but hard to follow art and a rushed story.
7/10

Michael Clayton
Tony Gilroy, the writer of the three Bourne films makes his directorial debut with Michael Clayton, an intelligent legal thriller that-much like the Bourne series-refuses to play by (most) of the rules inherent in its chosen genre.

George Clooney is the title character, an attorney who plays a ‘fixer’ role with his law-firm: someone who works to resolve problems while working out of ‘the system.’ When a personal friend of Clayton’s has a mental breakdown in the middle of a deposition, he finds himself in both physical danger and moral uncertainty.

For those in the market for an intelligent, adult film that doesn’t spoon-feed its audience, Michael Clayton will be a rewarding movie-going experience. The fact that it did so poorly at the box office says more about the American movie-going public than it does about the film’s quality.
The film is deliberately paced (the critic’s code for ‘a bit slow in places’), but the performances are great and the dramatic pay-off much worth the wait.
9/10

That took longer than I thought, more films to be reviewed soon.