One Day (2011)

2/5

One Day feel like a concept film, an experimental trial of style regardless of its impact on content. The movie starts with Emma (Hathaway) on July 15, mid-2000, then reverses back to July 15, 1998 and goes forward year by year until we catch up to the start of the film. The relevance of this day is obfuscated for no particular reason. It initially seems as if it commemorates the day she first meets Dex (Sturgess), as it follows their interactions on that day each year, but the true "secret" is revealed near the end. After that secret is revealed, it goes even further back to uncover even more unseen scenes.

And that is the real problem with the movie. It is mysterious for the sake of being mysterious. It does it to hide the story in the hopes of surprising you at the end, instead of doing it for any thematic benefit. You watch the first half of the film wondering why you're sitting there watching the film at all. This frustration is made worse by the fact that there is no chemistry between the two leads. There is no electricity or excitement. The acting is competent, but there is nothing tying the two together through time and space. They are two independently adequate actors. Ultimately, it doesn't matter how good the technical aspects are (they are decent) because the movie fails to engage us with its storytelling.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1563738/

Friends With Benefits (2011)

4/5

Friends With Benefits has a fairly uninspired plot. Two twenty-somethings, Dylan (Timberlake) and Jamie (Kunis), decide to start a purely physical relationship after being dumped for being either emotionally absent or emotionally guarded. This being a romantic comedy made in Hollywood, you know how the entire story unfolds from the premise alone: one develops feelings for the other, they break up because of a mistake one of them makes, and eventually get back together and live happily ever after. Like it or not, that's the formula you're buying with your movie tickets.

Fortunately, this movie is probably the smartest it could have been given that preordained scenario thanks to pristine execution and delivery. The dialogue is sharp and witty, the acting believable and emotionally fulfilling (unlike the characters themselves), and the mood is appropriately adult (plenty of nude butts and four-letter words). I was surprised at how much I bought the film, which I think is a testament to the directing and the acting. I actually felt the emotions that the characters were going through, and to me that means the movie has succeeded. So despite the predictable plot, despite occasionally feeling like the simple message was beat into my head, I don't think there's much higher you can aim for in a film.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1632708/

Easy A (2010)

3/5

Easy A is a forgettable teen comedy about a girl (Stone) who is way too smart for high school. Once a rumor is spread by her friend Rhiannon (Michalka) that she lost her virginity to a college guy on a first date, she earns a reputation as an easy lay. She helps a gay friend (Byrd) pretend he's straight by having fake sex with him at a party. The rumors continue to swirl among the popular crowd (Badgley) and offended Christians (Bynes), while the truth makes its way around the losers of the high school. Eventually she realizes that her actions may have bigger consequences than she thinks.

The movie is unimpressive in almost every way except for its dependence on clichés and 80's movies references. The cinematography is bland and the pacing was somewhat uneven. The writing as a whole was superficial. I never really understood anybody's motivations for doing what they were doing and the pointless narration in the form of a webcast didn't help. But this movie is hilarious. The dialogue is sharp and witty and Emma Stone delivers her lines with precise comic timing. The jokes are even better when it comes to the adults (Haden Church, Kudrow, Clarkson, Tucci), each of which are shining, unique gems in an otherwise dull film. But that's not enough to make this film memorable. Watch it if you want a quick laugh, but don't expect anything more than that.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1282140/

Shutter Island (2010)

5/5

Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island is everything I didn't know I wanted. It is beautiful, uplifting, disturbing, sad, and compelling. It may not be what you expect the movie to be, but it is everything that a movie should be. The plot follows US Marshalls Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Ruffalo) on Shutter Island, home to a prison for the criminally insane. A patient has gone missing, having apparently evaporated through the walls of her cell, and they are tasked with finding her. They are welcomed by unhelpful security guards and menacing psychiatrists (Kingsley, von Sydow). They dig deeper and deeper into the mysteries of the island--the fortified Ward C for the most dangerous patients, the solitary lighthouse surrounded by an electric fence--but the truth just barely eludes them at every turn.

The movie is not typical in any sense of the word. It bears some resemblance to noir in thematics and cinematics, but it uses blinding whites instead of pitch blacks. It shows us his traumatic past in fragmented visuals instead of linear storytelling. Its labyrinthine mysteries take on new dimensions in the physical, mental, and spiritual realms. The visuals are reminiscent of Kubrick's The Shining, but the traditional Hollywood horror aspect is muted to allow the unnerving psychological dysfunction to haunt us. It tugs us between pity and awe, hatred and sympathy, for the ill patients and their past acts. It asks us how we would treat them. And then it flips everything on its head and asks us all those same questions again.

This is a movie where the acting complicates the written characters in the best possible way. This is not a simple movie, and none of the personas within it are simple either. They are alive and breathing. And they hide secrets from the camera that we are never meant to know. The editing is equally complex: it takes flashbacks to a new level and it does so with simplicity and expert craft instead of gimmicks and CGI. This film shows a director, an actor, and an editor all at the top of their form. And I hope they just keep getting better and better.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1130884/

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

4/5

Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona tells its entire story in the title, which I'm sure Allen intended. It is about Vicky (Hall) and Cristina (Johansson) during a summer vacation in Barcelona, where they meet Juan Antonio (Bardem) who invites them to drink wine and make love to him. As a young narrator informs us, the two girls have differing views on love. Vicky is engaged to Doug (Messina) but is afraid she wants more than her boring but otherwise perfect marriage. Cristina is always looking for more and different ways to be pleased until she finds what she's looking for. Juan Antonio is frank and honest with his emotions and sexuality. While these all sound like unique characters, they're not; they're caricatures exaggerated to make fun of each social class (educated homemaker wishing for something more, ever-unsatisfied free spirit, and romantic bohemian artist). Even the side characters are laughable.

This is not to denigrate the acting, which was excellently understated, but rather to emphasize the humor. I was laughing throughout the entire piece, not because of the things that happened, but because of the characters' impressions of themselves--how they talked and what they said--that revealed Allen poking fun at each of these social circles. Technically, the movie was solid, with little risk and littler reward. (There was an odd cross dissolve during a shot/countershot conversation, but nothing else particularly awful comes to mind.) I actually didn't mind the narration that much (and thankfully they didn't try to explain it at the end like in Million Dollar Baby). The movie is a fairly light romp through what is clearly a male fantasy with nothing profoundly insightful, but it's well worth the ride.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0497465/

Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

3/5

Lars and the Real Girl is a pretty typical indie drama romance comedy smorgasbord of heartache, love, and laughs. It follows an underdeveloped man-child weirdo lead (Ryan Gosling) and his sex doll Bianca, which is his outlet and the movie's "unique" quality that indie fanboys (and fangirls) will surely love. The real love interest is an equally weird uggo who is too perky and aggressive in the dating arena for how little success she must have had given her uggo-ness. But like a lot of indie films, this one has a heartwarming story, laugh-out-loud moments, and melodramatic tearjerker scenes. If you can stand the contemporary awkward American "independent" cinema, then you'll probably like this movie.

Now, to rant: I don't know who the character is supposed to be. It's a fantastic situation that has zero conceivable relevance to most viewers' everyday lives. He shifted from absurdly bizarre in the beginning to perfectly normal in the end. Everything was tied up way too neatly for me. And it seemed like the entire forward momentum of the story was based around the protagonist, a character whose motivations and mindset I didn't understand at all. Any change in the story was a direct result of a change in Gosling's character--the supporting cast was powerless to influence the plot progression. The only reason it kept going was because it was a 2 hour movie, not because it necessarily would have. Still, all my nitpicky complaints didn't hurt my enjoyment of the movie. So if this seems interesting to you, check it out. You indie fanboy. (Or fangirl).

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0805564/

The Station Agent (2003)

4/5

The Station Agent is a movie that's easy to dislike. It's a slice of life movie about a lonely dwarf who enjoys his solitude. But somehow the movie managed to engage me at all the right moments. I was just about to lose interest when something different and unconventional happened. The writing and acting in this movie is phenomenal; the characters are fully fleshed-out and three-dimensional. I especially liked how side characters came back repeatedly, but in a different light from how they were introduced. Also, the music made the movie. If it weren't for the original score, I quite possibly might have hated this movie.

I thought some of the scenes tried much too hard to accomplish their goal. For example, when the woman almost runs over the dwarf the second time; when the dwarf yells in the bar for everyone to look at him; and when he falls on the train tracks and feels like killing himself. Some scenes just weren't that believable and feel scripted (really obvious because of the otherwise stellar script). Another thing: there is an incredibly powerful and emotional moment when he must walk away in shame and embarrassment from protecting a girl because his size prevents him from helping. But the movie doesn't fully explore this moment and the feeling just sort of dips off and dies. All things considered, though, I really enjoyed this movie. It's not exactly slow and it's not exactly boring, but you probably won't like it if you can't stand slow, boring movies. It's hard to tell, and it varies from person to person. But if you like slice of life stories, you might want to give this a try.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0340377/