The Dark Knight Rises

I am sorry for the cliche, but The Dark Knight Rises is why movie theaters still exist. In a world of 60" TVs and surround sound, this is the kind of movie that is worth getting off the couch for.

Rises is the last in the trilogy of Batman films written and directed by Christopher Nolan. It stars Christian Bale as Batman, Michael Caine as Alfred, Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon, Morgan Freeman as Lucias Fox and in the only misstep in this film, Anne Hathaway as a cat burglar.

The star of this film is the aptly named Bane, the scariest of Batman badmen so far. This is a guy you really believe could wipe out the world, never mind Batman.

The story is pretty simple, but it is well told and there is plenty of amazing action to keep you glued to your seat. Thank you summer blockbuster.

Ted

A movie about a talking teddy bear that lives with Mark Walhberg and does nothing but party and talk sass, who wouldn't love this?  Add to the mix that it's written by Seth Macfarlane of Family Guy fame and that he is the voice-over for the bear, and now we are getting into possible Borat funny range.

Unfortunately I over-hyped it in my mind and watched too many of the trailers and extras, so I had seen most of the good stuff before the movie even began. That said, it's still a funny movie, that is well played by Whalberg and Mila Kunis.

The fun twist is that the bear is real, not treated like an imaginary character, so outsiders interact with him and he becomes a celebrity, with an appearance on Johnny Carson. When we get to the meat of the film he is more like a former child star than an animated child's toy. This is what makes the film work, because everything else about the film is cliche: best friend vs. girlfriend, dumb guy with hot girl, loveable slacker wins in the end, etc.

Bottom line: this would be a excellent rental or DVD purchase as it is funny and the kind of thing you could watch a few times, but not necessarily a must for in-theater viewing.

Moonrise Kingdom

I am a huge Wes Anderson fan, so I have been excitedly awaiting his latest release, Moonrise Kingdom. It did not disappoint. If you have seen Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore, and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, you know what to expect here. A short simple story with strange characters and amazing art direction.

Moonrise Kingdom is set on a small vacation Island in New England, the year is 1965. A boy and girl meet at a local play, instantly fall in love (or something like it) and run away together. The boy is an orphan, with a lot of issues and the girl has parents, although I am sure she wishes she did not. We spend the next hour or so trying to find the kids with a strange mix of people: a very small town police officer, played by Bruce Willis; a strange scout master played by Ed Norton; two insufferable parents played by Bill Murray and Francis McDormand; and a short but excellently strange appearance by Anderson regular Jason Schwartzman.

The kids, Suzy and Sam, are played by Kara Hayward and Jared Gilman. They are great, but it is hard to call them the stars as you couldn't take out any one of the people I mentioned earlier and still have the same film. And as with all Anderson films, it's the art direction that is the star. Everything is perfectly curated, the house, the Island, the scout camp and the intermediary tours we receive from Bob Balaban as the narrator. If you are an Anderson, you'll love this film.

The Big Uneasy

Was the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina a natural disaster or a result of years of incredible human negligence? This is the question film maker Harry Shearer explores in his new documentary The Big Uneasy. You know Shearer better for his mockumentaries, Spinal Tap, A Mighty Wind, etc. but this time he is deadly serious.

Shearer does a great job of pulling together interviews and stories from the teams that went to New Orleans immediately after the flooding began to try to figure out what went wrong. What they found was so disturbing that the government, the people who funded them, and the Universities they worked for either squashed the results, or in the worst case fired them. If you are like me and you have a vested interest in the city of New Orleans, you will not be surprised by much of what you will see in the movie. We know the wetlands have been disappearing for year and that this makes hurricanes much more intense and much more likely to reach New Orleans at full force. We know that the Corps of Engineers made inferior levees, because we saw all the pictures of sand piles and we know you can't build levees on sand. We know the pumps that were supposed to move water down the canals failed. What I didn't know was that lots the people at the Corps of Engineers knew this and they knew it for a long time before Hurricane Katrina hit. After the hurricane, they decided that any study of what went wrong should, "focus on the future and not seek to place blame." As I am sure you can guess, if blame were to be placed it would all land at the feet of the Corps.

The sad part, is that it is not getting better. The people that caused all the problems in the first place are now charged with fixing them, but the problem is they are not fixing them. They are making things worse. You will hear crazy stuff like the fact that 90% of the levees in New Orleans have not been upgraded and are essentially the same as when they failed after Katrina.

So, next time New Orleans floods, you'll know it was not a natural disaster, but a man made disaster brought to you by the Army Corps of Engineers.

It's Oscar Time

I can't say that I am a huge fan of the televised presentation of the Oscar Awards, it is usually boring and often cringe inducing. What I do love about the Oscars are the nominations and seeing which of my favorites made the list.

In my humble opinion, this was a pretty good year for films. I enjoyed almost all of the films nominated for best picture:

Inception - I am not100% sure this movie deserved a nod for best picture, but in the expanded 10 movie structure, visually compelling movies that do well at the box office, are going to sneak in. In fact that is the whole point of the expansion, to get some crowd pleasers in there. I thought Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page were great in this film and it did keep me on the edge of my seat. It also had just enough twists and turns that you could argue what was real and what was a dream, throwing the entire movie into question. A fun film, that was visually stunning and had a good plot, but not the best pic or 2010.




The Kids Are All Right - congratulations to Focus Features for propelling another good movie into the best film category. These guys are amazing at getting their films nominated for awards, whether they deserve them or not. This one did not. I thought it was a good film; Mark Ruffalo and Annette Bening's performances were good, but they did not stand out to me as best supporting actor and best actress nominees. It was a strong ensemble cast that kept this story together. The fact that it doesn't have a Hollywood ending is what saved it from the trash heap for me.




The King's Speech - Now we are getting to the real contenders. I love period pieces and this is the ultimate period film. Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush are most deserving of their nominations for best actor and supporting actor respectively. I see Firth running away with it and Rush in a dogfight with Christian Bale. I was disappointed that Helena Bonham Carter did not get a nomination, but you can't have everything. At the end of the day this is the film that will walk away with all the awards. Hollywood loves this kind of film and God bless them for it. It is a great story, well told. We can ask no more.



127 Hours - And now we take a giant step backwards. 127 Hours, really? I don't even want to watch this movie on cable. Interesting news story, should have stopped there.










The Social Network - This movie got a lot of Oscar buzz early in the year, but was soon overtaken by The Kings Speech and The Fighter. It is a great film and it deserves to be in the running but it's like being in a race with Michael Johnson, in any other year you would have won. I know there has been a lot of controversy around the amount of liberties the writers took with this story, but who cares, the drama is great and you know everyone is lying to some degree. I have heard people taking Zuckerberg's side as well as the Winklevoss orNarendra's so obviously the writers gave everyone something to argue about. Another thing that has become brutally evident is that we won't be waiting 50 years to tell our stories, the future is unfolding so fast, that the movie has to be made while it is still happening.


Toy Story 3 - By the time to you get to the third of anything you are usually past done, but this is not the case with the Toy Story franchise. The genises at Pixar are able to keep the story fresh and interesting. As with all Pixar stories you know what is going to happen, but it is still a great ride getting there. Although there are some other great choices in the category, I have no doubt this will win the Oscar for best animated feature.






Black Swan- Review forthcoming.














The Fighter - This is my other favorite movie of the year, and honestly I can't remember a year that had two equally great movies that were so different. The Fighter is the opposite of The King's Speech in almost every way except they are both based on a true story and they both took a lot of effort to get to the screen. Mark Wahlberg went through several directors and a maze of financing to get this film made. I am not sure what was harder, getting the film made or the training he went through to be a convincing boxer. I have heard him tell the story and I think that would be a great documentary in itself. Like the protagonist, Micky Ward, Wahlberg is also the youngest of nine kids. They came up in the same neighborhood and both their mom's dotted on older brothers. And like Ward, Wahlberg had to keep fighting to get his shot. It was well worth it. This is a raw and ruthless film.


True Grit - I love the Coen brothers and I will watch any film they make, but I feel like it has been a while since they made a big movie. A Serious Man and Burn After Reading were both interesting but they did not have the gravitas of True Grit. Jeff Bridges and Hailee Steinfeld both deserve nominations for best actor and actress, they are fantastic. This is one of the few movies that is worth seeing on the big screen. Again, I have to say, if this weren't the year of The King's Speech, this would be a legitimate contender.





Winter's Bone - This was not the feel good movie of the year and that is why I loved it. It is a very raw look at a family that is dealing with rural poverty and the devastation caused by meth. I know it got a lot of critical acclaim, but I don't think this movie had a very long run in the theater, so my guess is that this nomination will get a lot of people to check it out on Netflicks or DVD. That's fine as this movie is all about the story, you don't need to see it on the wide screen. Jennifer Lawrence and John Hawkes are both excellent and it was great to see the are nominated in the best actress and best supporting actor categories. This is my sleeper of the year nominee.

Wartorn 1861-2010

Wartorn 1861-2010 documents America's battle with the mental injuries our soldiers have suffered from the Civil War, when it was called hysteria, to the current Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The official diagnosis is now Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), but it was called shell shock in WWI and battle fatigue in WWII. The only consistency is how poorly the military and the US government have treated soldiers with mental injuries.

The film opens with the reading of a letter from a gung ho, young Union soldier to a friend back home, who calls the 100 or soldiers who are going home due to hysteria or melancholia, cowards. Over the course of the next couple of years, the letters from this same soldier, become more and more dark and it becomes obvious he is suffering deeply from what he has seen and done. After he is sent home, his friends are so concerned about him they won't allow him to go hunting with them. Unfortunately, they leave him alone with his gun and he takes his own life.

From here we see the pattern repeated over and over again. Parents, wives and other family members plead for help from the VA to save their returning soldiers from themselves. The stories are heartbreaking and infuriating. Executive Producer Jame Gadolfini does a great job interviewing current soldiers and the medical staff who are trying to change the protocall in the armed forces, making it easier to get help.

This is an extremely powerful film, and while it is not the feel good movie of the year, it is well worth your time.

The Millennium Series Movies

The first two books of Stieg Larsson's Millennium series, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire are now out on DVD and On Demand. I am sure these films are already being remade with America actors, but I'll stick with the Swedish versions. I am not going to apologize for liking these books. I understand they are not great literature, but they were a lot of fun to read, and somehow I get a little bit of pleasure not seeing them Hollywoodized.

The Swedish films are dark and the casting is excellent. Lisbeth Salander is not a star, she is flat chested and a little scary looking. Mikael Blomkvist is rumpled and looks his age. In fact, almost everyone in these two movies looks like a real person not an actor. The two directors have also stayed very close to the story. Some elements have been simplified, but the storyline is all there.

Before I saw the film, I heard a review that made me laugh, but as I was watching the movie I couldn't believe how much it captured the difference between Hollywood and foreign films. At the end of the second book, Lisabeth Salander is in a fight for her life. Meanwhile Blomkvist has figured out where she is and has to make his way out into the countryside to save her. For the next several minutes, we see Salander getting shot, hitting her father over the head with an axe, and trying to kill her brother as Blomkvist puts on his seat belt, gets caught in traffic and all but stops at a drive-through Starbucks on his way to save her.

If you enjoyed the books, make sure you see the Swedish version of the films before Hollywood gets to them.

The Social Network

I just got back from seeing The Social Network, the new David Fincher movie about Facebook and the first thing I want to do is get off Facebook. It is an understatement to say that this movie does not paint any of the participants in a good light, and founder Mark Zuckerberg comes across as the biggest a-hole of them all.

The story is pretty simple. A young hacker named Mark Zuckerberg comes up with the idea of connecting people through a social network, basically linking college facebook pages to more and more people so you can share information and become friends. The problem is, it may not have been his idea and he may have screwed a few people along the way. The story is told in retrospect as Zuckerberg gives testimony in two lawsuits that have been filed against him. He is portrayed as a know-it-all jerk, who ironically can not maintain a friendship in real life, but there is no doubt he is a genius. Justin Timberlake takes a great turn as a-hole number two, or Sean Parker the inventor of Napster, who shows up as the slightly older guy who has been through it all before and wants to help Zuckerman succeed, or make sure Parker makes some money this time around.

If you are at all dialed into the 21st century this is a must see film. It is very well written by Aaron Sorkin and beautifully directed by David Fincher. It is much more than the facebook story, it is a great film.

My Trip to Al-Qaeda

My Trip to Al-Qaeda is a documentary based on Lawrence Wright's one man play of the same name. It chronicles fundamentalist Islam's rise to power and explores Wright's struggle to maintain his objectivity as a journalist writing about Islamic terror in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Looming Tower.

Lawrence lived for a time in the middle east and has extensive knowledge of the players in the world of radical Islam. He also wrote the screenplay for a movie called The Siege that came out in 1998. This is pertinent because it was a precursor to 9/11. In the story, the US government has abducted an Islamic religious leader, which leads to New York City becoming the target of escalating terrorist attacks. As the bombings continue, the US government responds by declaring martial law, and torturing captives. Sound familiar? Needless to say, it was not very popular among the Muslim community and a group of radicals blew up a Hard Rock cafe in South Africa in response to the movie trailer, because one of the stars, Bruce Willis, was a partner in the restaurant. A 12 year-old girl died as a result.

This is only one of the stories Lawrence tells in the movie. Another explores his relationship with the brother of Osama bin Laden, who became a source for Lawrence and was questionably linked to the 9/11 bombings through phone records. Before he could clear his name (or not) he was murdered.

This movie has been attacked from all sides. Muslims feel like they are unfairly portrayed as radicals. Conservatives will say Lawrence is an apologist and liberals will cringe at his admission of wanting to take out some of these people he was reporting on. Still it is an interesting insight into what the US is up against if we ever hope to end the fighting in the middle east.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Edgar Wright is the director that brought us the amazing films Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, so the question is, what happens when he gets Hollywood money to make a film? The answer is a really good movie that is over the top in an entirely different way.

The thing that hits you right away about Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is the graphics. The movie is based on a graphic novel by Bryan Lee O'Malley and many of those graphic elements are animated into the movie, so, the fight scenes have "thwacks!" and "Oooffs" and when people kiss animated hearts come out of their mouths. This would be disconcerting if I hadn't heard an interview with the director about how he wanted to take everything to the extreme. And he does take everything to the extreme.

The basic premise is that Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is a 20-something looser living in a very small apartment with a roommate that owns everything in it. He falls in love with Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and to keep her, he has to defeat her seven evil exes. These encounters become more and more perilous and Scott Pilgrim's life gets pretty complicated. The fight scenes are pure fantasy and can be jarring. Wright suggests we think of them as songs in a musical, but instead of breaking into song the characters break into video game like fight sequences.

Normally I wouldn't enjoy this kind of movie, but with a little warning of what I was getting into I was able to enjoy it a lot more. It is a funny and entertaining farce.

Lucky

Ever dream of winning the lottery? You may change your opinion after you see the new HBO documentary, Lucky.

Director Jeffery Blitz of Spellbound fame, takes us around America meeting several "lucky" winners and discovering how the money changed their life. This film follows the lives of several big money winners and one hopeful. We meet Quang, a Vietnamese immigrant who won $22 million as part of a eight way contingent at work. James, a down and out man who spent his last $3 on a Powerball ticket and won $5 million. Kristine and Steve, a nice middle-class American couple who won $110 million. Robert, a math professor who despite knowing the odds, still plays and wins $22 million. Buddy, a local hero who won $16 million. And finally Verna, who spends up to $100 a day playing the lotto and after 30 years has still not had a big payday.

What is the one thing that holds these people together? At some point in the movie, despite many great things that the money has brought them, they all say, "I wish I had never won." Some people do better than others in the long run, but no one gets away without their life charging significantly. the saddest story is Buddy, who's family literally tries to kill him to get his money.

Greenberg

In Greenberg, one of my, I'll watch any film he makes guys, Ben Stiller, takes on the role of Roger Greenberg, a 40-year-old man who has recently suffered a nervous breakdown and is now trying to "do nothing." He has returned to L.A., where he grew up to housesit for his rich brother, who is on a long vacation with his family in Vietnam. Greenberg meets his brother's assistant, Florence (Greta Gerwig), and begins a bizarrely awkward romance with her. He also reconnects with his old band mates, who are still bitter about a record deal that Roger ruined 15 years ago. Rhys Ifans, is a scene stealer, playing Ivan, Roger's best fiend who despite Roger being a complete a-hole, still goes out of his way to help him. While trying not to start a relationship with Florence, Roger also attempts to date Beth (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a divorced old girlfriend, but she laughingly rejects him.

While Roger is housesitting, his brother's dog becomes sick, forcing Roger to take responsibility for his care, but it is pretty obvious Roger is barely able to take care of himself. He is very neurotic and does not recognize any flaws in himself. This reaches a comic climax when his niece returns to the house and throws a wild party.

Life During Wartime

Life During Wartime, a film by Todd Solondz, is a sequel to his 1998 film Happiness, although the characters are all played by different actors. This may have been off-putting if I had seen Happiness, but I had not, which if Life During Wartime is an indication, I am glad I didn't.

This is one of those films where we drop in on some people's lives for a moment with no reason why and no explanation of why we suddenly leave. The plot revolves around three sisters Trish (Allison Janney), Joy (Shirley Henderson), and Helen (Ally Sheedy), all of whom are totally screwed up. Trish has three kids, who she over-shares with, except for telling them their father is not really dead but in jail for molesting a child. Joy is married to an ex-con, who is struggling to change his ways, but also visited by a dead former boyfriend who has committed suicide. Although we only meet Helen for a short time, she seems to be the worst of all. She is a raging bitch and possibly the most self-absorbed person ever, it only takes a few seconds to start disliking her. Full minutes pass before we start disliking other characters in this movie, but eventually they all prove to be unlikable or worse uninteresting.

I would very much like to have the hour and a half I spent watching this movie back.

The Other Guys

The Other Guys is the latest comedy starring Will Ferrell and as a huge fan, it pains me to say that this is not a great movie. I think part of the problem is that we expect a lot more these days when we make the effort to go to the theater, and this was a film I would have been happy to see on my own couch, but not happy to pay $20 plus the same again for popcorn and a soda. It starts with one of the most amazing over the top car chases featuring Samuel L. Jackson and the Rock, which made me wonder if I had walked into the wrong theater. Turns out they are only around for a short time and the rest of the movie has a cast of idiots trying to replace their "super cop" exploits. I may be giving this film too much credit, but I think it's supposed to be a farce, in the vein of the Pink Panther movies. Everyone is way over the top and too stupid or too out of it to make sense. Will Ferrell's character is a total looser, but he is married to the "plain" Eva Mendes, could be funny, but it's not. Even worse is Mark Wahlberg, as the one dimensional partner to Farrell. He is playing a dumber, more over-the-top version of many of his other cop characters and it's sad.

Writer/director Adam McKay has written a lot of funny stuff for SNL and Funny or Die, but this full length feature does not live up to Anchorman or Talladega Nights. Just because you have Will Ferrell in a movie doesn't mean you can call it in.

A Single Man

After hearing an interesting interview with Tom Ford and Colin Firth on NPR, I decided A Single Man might be worth watching. That was a mistake.

Before I started on this review, my wife sent me the review I should have written, by Dan Smith a photographer and editor in Virgina, where he basically has captured my thoughts exactly. The only good thing about this movie was the very cool, old Mercedes that Firth's character, George, drives.

Otherwise this is an overly art directed film about a bunch of boring people that I would never want to meet or spend time with. I do have to admit there is a very touching moment in the film were George receives a phone call from the family of his long time lover to let him know there has been an accident and his partner, Jim, is dead. As were the times in 1962, George is told the service is "family only," despite having been with Jim for 16 years. It made me feel we might have made some small amount of progress in gay rights in the last 50 years. This movie offered little else of interest. Julianne Moore's character Charlie was especially annoying and vapid. As far as I could see she was just a prop for Ford to dress in early 60's couture. I won't give away the ending, I'll just say it's predictable and trite.

Get him to the Greek

Jonah Hill and Russell Brand, how can Get him to the Greek not be funny, right? Well it was funny in parts and it was slow in parts. This movie made me realize the genius of The Hangover. Sometimes it's funnier not to show the craziness, because you are always going to build it up as even more crazy in your mind. In The Hangover, we don't see what happened that night until the credits roll, and by that time we are so hyped we really don't care any more. We have already built it into the greatest night in the history of Vegas.

This is where Get him to the Greek lets us down. We follow Jonah Hill's record industry flunky character as he tries to get rock star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) from his drug den in London to a come back concert at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. There is a lot of partying and wildness along the way, as well as some sentimental moments as Hill's character is experiencing girl problems. The thing is that the wildness and partying is never as crazy on screen as it is in our imagination. While it is funny, it's like a sugar rush, it soon fades and leaves us feeling a little down.

The best thing about this movie is the crazy record company president, Sergio Roma, played to the hilt by Sean "P. Diddy" Combs. His character is so believably insane, that you sometimes wonder if they let the camera's roll and he's just playing out his life. He also has one of the best lines of the movie, and as with any Apatow Joint, there are a lot of great lines. He is talking to his staff about needing to make more money, when he says, "I have six kids. Do you know how many Air Jordans six black kids go through?" Who knew P. Diddy was so funny.

Lost Dogs

Several months ago I was asked to talk on a panel about film marketing. It was a little strange in that everyone else there was making low budget, independent films and all I have worked on is one big budget, Hollywood production. That said, it was still an interesting afternoon. After the panel was over, a producer came up to me and asked for some advice on fund raising for a film she was working on. I had to admit that I didn't know anything about fund raising, but that I'd be happy to help with any marketing as it was about my favorite topic, dogs.

Last night we were invited to a fund raiser to help get the movie finished. It was held at my office and although the turn out was light, the people there seemed very engaged. The film is about homeless and free roaming dogs in Chile and how the government deals with them. In short, they poison them. It is a pretty horrible situation. The director's hope is that the film will raise awareness for homeless dogs and cats around the world. As people become educated to the problem, humane societies spring up, spay and neuter programs get started, and animals start to have happier lives. Who wouldn't want to support that?

If you would like to watch the trailer or find out more info, check out the Lost Dogs website. Be warned it is pretty graphic and a little sad.

Dinner and a Movie - Pal's Shanty and Raw Faith

Pal's Shanty is a classic Portland restaurant. It has been around for a long time but looks like a dump from the outside, and the inside for that matter too. We rolled up at 6 PM on a Friday night and it was already full. We managed to get the last table over on the side "extra" area. We were in a little bit of a hurry, so we didn't read the menu as closely as normal. We jumped on the chowder and a couple of specialties, the steamed clams and the Louie Salad, half shrimp and half crab. We also got a couple of beers. I have to say, the food was great and the service was good too. Unfortunately we ordered way too much food. The steamed clams came in a huge bucket and Barbara was only able to eat half. My salad was also huge and I ate as much as I could, but there was about one third left. We then had a big debate about whether or not to take the clams home or not, can you reheat clams? We decide yes. Next time I am there I am going to try the open faced crab sandwich, it is highly recommended.

The main event of the evening was a movie called Raw Faith. It was directed and edited by my co-worker Peter Wiedensmith. It premiered at the Nashville Film Festival and began a three night run at the Hollywood Theater in Portland tonight. Luckily we had booked tickets in advance as both the Friday and Saturday night shows were sold out. In brief, the film is about a woman who decides to retire as a minister from the Unitarian Church in Portland after 17 years. While she is excited to move on with her life, she is also very lonely. Originally the movie was going to chronicle this major life transition, then life took a wonderful twist and she fell in love for the first time in her life. The name of this movie could not be more descriptive. It is very raw, I can't believe anyone would let a film crew have this much exposure to their lives. And as far as faith goes, I really wish I had found out about this minister before she retired, he sermons sounded amazing.

I am not sure if this movie will get another run, but they are working on a distribution deal, so hopefully more people will have a chance to see it.

Pal's Shanty
4630 Northeast Sandy Boulevard
Portland, OR 97213-2074
(503) 288-9732

Open Weekdays 11am-11pm; Sat 12pm-11pm

The Blind Side

My catch up with the 2010 Oscar winners continues with The Blind Side. My first question is how did Sandra Bullock win an Oscar for this role? My second question is can I get the hour and a half I wasted on this movie back?

Sandra Bullock plays Leigh Anne Tuohy, a rich Southern bell who is married with two kids. On the spur of the moment they decide to take in a very large African American kid who has just enrolled at their son's expensive private school. He has terrible grades, but the coach has talked the principal into making some concessions to help the football team. Problem is, the kid is not a very good football player. Not to worry, one speech from Bullock converts him into an NFL caliber player.

Based on the true story of Michael Oher, a homeless and traumatized boy who became an All-American football player and first round NFL draft pick, the movie takes a few liberties, but is basically true to what really happened. The story is not the problem, the problem is the super cornball Hollywood execution. The acting is terrible and the schmaltz is so thick you can cut it with a knife. The only good part of the movie was the closing credits, one, because the movie was over and two, because they showed some interesting pictures of the real Michael Oher and his family.

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire

My catch up with the 2010 Oscar winners begins this week with Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire. My first question is why such a long name? My second question is how did Gabourey Sidibe not win for best actress? People who did win Oscars include Mo'Nique for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role and Geoffrey Fletcher for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published.

Now back to Gabourey Sidibe, she plays Precious, a very overweight fourteen year-old girl who is about to have her second baby. Her mother lives on public assistance and is the worst stereotype of a welfare mother you could ever imagine. Her father is gone, but not before impregnating Precious twice. This causes her mother a lot of jealousy (not the appropriate emotion you say?) which she manifests as physical abuse towards Precious. Precious' only chance at a life is an alternative school, taught by the Ms. Rain, played to perfection by Paula Patton, and the friends she makes there.

This is a very dark and gritty movie, filled with early comic relief in the form of dream sequences of Precious imagining herself as a movie or pop star. This element is a welcome break that helps you ease into the ugliness that is Precious' life. Director Lee Daniels is no stranger to challenging movies, this is the same guy who brought us Monsters Ball. He is a very interesting person and you should search out his interview on the Daily Show with John Stewart, well worth a look. Finally as if you need another reason to see this movie, you have to check out Mariah Carey as Precious' social worker, almost makes you forget Glitter ever happened.