I totally paused!

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio & Mark Ruffalo

There are a few things you can do to get me to watch a movie without questioning it ahead of time.  Casting Leo DiCaprio is one of those things.  Putting Mark Ruffalo along side him is a sure way to get my viewership.

You might be asking…why did it take me so long to watch this movie?  I’m lazy.  I like to think about going to the theater to watch movies, but it doesn’t often happen.  Usually it takes someone else to motivate me to go.  But this movie is now out on On Demand, so I watched it with my family members.

The first thing that occurred to me when I saw the trailers for this movie was surprise that Martin Scorsese was directing something that seemed to be a supernatural thriller.  And it does seem supernatural throughout much of the movie, but I’m not quite sure that it really was.

Much of this movie left me thinking “Did I fall asleep?”…not in a bad way, just in a “huh” kind of way.  I don’t feel that the answer to the question you’ll be asking yourself at the end is quite clear, and I may need to read the book to make a better judgment on that one.

My full disclosure for this movie is that I have thought Leonardo to be a fantastic actor since What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.  So I might be a little biased, but I quite like him in everything he does.  Obviously I’m not the only one, because Scorsese has cast him in something like four movies now, and who could blame him!

Despite some confusion, I thought it was a good movie, and it keeps you tense the entire time.  Not jumpy, which I hate, but anxious, as in wondering what would happen next.  It’s entertaining and makes you think about how reality can be different depending on what your perspective is.

My Rating: 3.5/5

See this movie if: You’ve seen Mystic River and/or Gone Baby Gone and liked them.  Dennis Lehane wrote all of these books and the movies have been decent each time.  It’s also a good thriller, so if you like that genre, it’s probably right for you!

Six Degrees of Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
Mark Ruffalo was in Zodiac with Jake Gyllenhaal (which is a totally awesome movie if you haven’t seen it already)
Jake GyllenHaal was in Rendition with Reese Witherspoon
Reese Witherspoon was in Cruel Intentions with Sarah Michelle Gellar
Sarah Michelle Gellar played Buffy Summers

Starring Adrien Brody & Keira Knightley

The basic premise of this movie is that Adrien Brody plays a vet from the first Gulf War, and due to a war injury he can’t always remember stuff correctly, or at all.  After returning to the states, he is witness to a murder, injured again, and subsequently blamed for the murder.  Due to his can’t remember issue, he’s sentenced to time in a mental correctional facility instead of a normal one, where he is experimented on during the night by being drugged, placed in a straight jacket, and inserted into a morgue drawer.  You know, the kind they put the dead bodies in.

I hadn’t ever heard of this movie before, which is funny because in one of the commentary thingies the director says the studio insisted they cast Keira Knightley in it for the name recognition.  I have news for anyone – if you’re producing a weird Indie film about experiments in a straight jacket, having Keira isn’t going to help your box office draw.  In fact, I feel kind of bad because the director had met with several good unknown American actors that he wanted to cast in the role that Keira took, and it’s sad to me when someone who already has the fame is placed in a role that a struggling actor could really use.  If I thought this were the type of movie that was made by having a big name actor in it, I would maybe feel differently.  But I would be surprised if this movie had any success in the theater, or if it even had a wide release.

None of this is to say that it’s necessarily a bad movie, I liked the concept, I’m just not sure how I felt about the execution of it.  I am borderline going to say that the whole thing was a giant Indie Film Syndrome.  I mean, I saw this movie something like two weeks ago and every time I think about it, I just think “huh?”  And not in any kind of good way, like sometimes you do after a David Lynch movie, more like a whole it didn’t make sense kind of thing.  It’s not even that the plot is hard to follow once you see what is going on, I guess I just wanted more explanation.  Like why the experiments are happening, what the end goal of them is, or is the doctor just evil?  And how come no one being experimented on has complained, if what they go through in the jacket is so bad?  You would think that if several people in one institution complained about this, someone important would listen.  But maybe I just have unrealistic expectations of the world.

I think part of the purpose of the movie was to freak you out, like pray on people’s fear of small spaces, but I never really felt tense when I saw them rolling Adrien Brody into the body drawer, or even the shots of him in there.  I guess it’s possible I just don’t have that fear, cuz to an extent, if you’re putting me somewhere when I’m supposed to be sleeping, I will probably just sleep.

Another thing that struck me as amusing is that there are several deleted scenes, with the writer commenting about them, and at one point she says “I think this is to show…” or something along those lines.  Honey, if you *wrote* the script, you should probably not be saying you *think* this is what’s going on.  You should know the motivation of the scene and the characters in it.  Or else you wrote from a place of Indie Film Syndrome and just thought it would be cool.

See this movie if: I wish I could say I recommended this movie.  For the record, I watched it at someone else’s house, so it was on their Netflix list and not my own.  It’s not a good thriller, doesn’t really portray something life changing, and I don’t think the acting is super phenomenal.  If you want to see Keira do an American accent, I guess you should see it.

My Rating: 2.5/5

Six Degrees of Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
Keira Knightley was in Bend it Like Beckham with Johnathan Rhys Meyers
Johnathan Rhys Meyers was in August Rush with Kerry Russell
Kerry Russell was in Waitress with Nathan Fillion
Nathan Fillion played Caleb in Season 7 of Buffy

Starring James Marsden, Lena Headey, & Kate Hudson

Good concept, not so great movie. It was actually not bad until we started getting to the point where everything becomes a big fat mess. At some point you start asking so many questions that you just can’t keep track of anything, and not in a good way. More like everything starts folding in and the movie gets too clever for itself.

Admittedly, I don’t like seeing James Marsden end up the bad guy. And for pre-google days, the character of Jones does a decent job of looking things up about what’s really going on. But everything just gets so convoluted you don’t know what to believe and what is fake. One could say that’s the point of the movie, but does this kind of movie *really* want to leave its intended audience confused?  You’re not going to pull the David Lynch crowd in with this one, so I can’t help but wonder what the writer and director hoped to accomplish.

It starts out as a not so bad look at what rumors and gossip can do to the lives of everyone involved, and I think does a good job of analyzing that up until the supposed even bigger truth happens.  I became curious as to how many rumors can you spread before it’s too late to go back?  It’s one thing when the rumor is that someone had sex at a party, then that they were passed out, and eventually that they were raped.

It’s another thing entirely when someone is supposed to be dead.  How do you come back from that?  You go to class the next day and you say “Sorry y’all, I was just kiddin’!”

I also wonder what exactly was the point of it all?  This many people get involved simply to teach one guy a lesson?  Sure, the rumor he allowed to be spread was vicious and the after effects were nasty, but did his life really deserve to be ruined?  Or is the argument that because the rumor caused two lives to be ruined, he should definitely have to have his too.

So basically, while the movie wrapped itself up nicely, I am confused as to why it had to go so bad.  I would much rather have been left wondering what really happened between Derrick and Naomi than to end the movie with him asking what people were going to think of him.  I know the solution to this problem – transfer to a different school!

See this movie if: I DVR’d this off some movie channel one day.  I guess if you happen to catch it on TV and you are otherwise totally bored, you can watch it and see if you’re as confused as I am.  Otherwise, it’s probably something worth skipping.  But we do get Kate Hudson before she turned into a total rom com queen!

My Rating: 2.5/5

Six Degrees of Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
Lena Headey was in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles with Summer Glau
Summer Glau was in Firefly with Nathan Fillion
Nathan Fillion was in season 7 of BTVS

Starring Don Cheadle & Guy Pearce

Don Cheadle continues to amaze me, I really do quite like this guy.  What’s even better is that his movies continue to be quality, I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve seen him in the past few years.

You spend a good portion of this movie wondering what side Samir is really on, and even more time wondering what side is really the right one.  We’re always so inclined to assume that our side is the right side, and although I don’t agree with the other side, I can’t always say we’re right either.  I have a difficult time condoning violence and deaths regardless of who is dealing them out, so for me, there are wrongs on both sides.

It’s really sad to see how young people are taken advantage of in the world of extremism.  They’re so young they don’t even know what to really believe, what behaviors are the wrong ones to engage in, and what is going to get them killed by who.  The world they’re engaged in is brutal from all angles, and I really wish someone was able to talk some sense into them.  It’s just so unfair for older, more mature people to take advantage of these kids in this manner.

The other performances in the movie were good as well, I’m a huge fan of Guy Pearce and like the roles Neal McDonough continues to play, although they are a little type casty.  In case you wondered, he was the Tin Man character in the recent Wizard of Oz spin called Tin Man.

For me, I was a little surprised by how much I liked this movie, and I love being pleasantly surprised like that.  I don’t really want to tell y’all much more about the movie, because I’d like for everyone to go rent it.  For an American audience, I think it’s a somewhat enlightening movie for a different perspective on the terrorism front.

See this movie if: You like thriller type movies, with international intrigue and great actors.  And it even has Steve Martin as a cowriter…yes, that Steve Martin!

My Rating: 3.5/5

Six Degrees of Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
Guy Pearce was in Ravenous with David Arquette
David Arquette was in Scream 2 with Sarah Michelle Gellar *or* he was also in the original Buffy movie
Sarah Michelle Gellar played Buffy Summers