The Dark Knight
When Heath Ledger died early this year, I was deeply disturbed by his death. I surprised myself by the strength of my sadness. What made it so difficult to accept his untimely death was my sense that this extraordinary talent could have mesmerized us for decades to come with his acting skills. The best thing about The Dark Knight is Ledger’s performance. How can a twenty-eight-year-old play the Joker, who has a much older persona? Having seen all few the recent spider man movies, I felt the Dark Knight breaks little new ground except for being much darker than any of the other films in this genre. Running 152 minutes, I left the theatre feeling overwhelmed by the seemingly never-ending battle scenes between good and evil. The plot could have been streamlined by an hour without losing anything.
Penelope
My expectations about this airplane film were modest. A family is cursed and the fist female bay will be born with a pig’s nose. Ok. A little children’s movie. Yet to my surprise Penelope is one of the most clever films I have seen in a while. It is Cinderella, Romeo and Julia, Miss Piggy and teenage beauty obsession all mixed together in a magical realistic fairy tale reminiscent of Charles Dickens. Few movies can please both the young and adult mind. This one can.
Live Free or Die Hard
Die Hard is not the kind of title that lures me into the theatre. But one day in a hotel room somewhere around the globe I came across a TV channel that showed one of the earlier Die Hard movies. I don’t remember which one it was. It played in New York City. The film was entertaining. I heard that Die Hard 4 had a new twist. Yesterday I needed some distraction from work and decide to watch Bruce Willis back in action as John McClane. Willis’s stunts defy the laws of physics, but the drama is pretty clever. A group of terrorists is shutting the entire country down by taking control of all U.S. major computer networks that underpin the digital economy. Apparently, in the past few weeks we came close to a complete meltdown of the global financial system. Against this backdrop, the film felt timely and scary. Bruce Willis saves the day. In real life, one small town cop will not save the country from a systematic failure of the federal government.
Bee Movie
Shrek 1 and 2 bored me sufficiently that I never watched the entire movie. Could the makers of the Shrek sequel come up with an animation film that could compete with Pixar creations? Yes, but only after teaming up with the comedian Jerry Seinfeld. Having watched a very funny trailer for the film a few months ago, I wanted to see the Bee Movie. Just like the Pixar movies, this film puts a smile on your face. Ohhh, life is good when someone as funny as skillful as Jerry Seinfeld gives a young bee the ability to talk to humans and file a class action in the New York State superior court. Enjoy!
The Invisible
High School Movie. Not long until graduation. Boy wants to become a writer in New York, escaping his controlling widow mother. Girl, after losing her mother, is angry and assumes the role of a violent troublemaker and gang leader. Girl kills boy, smacking him once too hard on the head. But there is a twist. Taking the Christian idea of an eternal soul, boy is somewhere between life and death, between a bodily and merely spiritual existence. The boy has a body that is invisible to everyone except other dead creates and us viewers. The virtually dead body of the boy is lying dying in a hole in the woods and now his invisible self tries to get in contact with the living before he cannot be brought back to life. It one point towards this film reminded me of Romeo and Juliet, only with a different ending…
Ratatouille
Brad Bird (writer, director) and Pixar have done it again. I continue to stand in awe of the dazzling imagination this team is bringing to the movies. Visually and conceptually Ratatouille is exquisitely pleasing. You don’t feel that this new film is a tiny bit repetitive of their previous effort The Incredibles. Guenter Grass selected the rat as the central character in his 1980s fable about human self-destruction and an apocalypse after which only rats will survive on our planet. Bird turns Grass on his head. Bird’s rat Remy does not want to live off human garbage but instead desires to eat the best human cuisine can offer. Remy’s inspiration is France most famous chef Gusteau, whose book “Everyone can cook” Remy has studied extensively. Remy also watches Gusteau secretly on TV. When Remy is washed from the French countryside to Paris, an incredible culinary adventure awaits him. Join Remy in Paris!
Next
The film invents a skill that no human has ever possessed: to see for two seconds reliably into the future. Such a capability comes in handy. You can win against the Casino, you can prevent a robber from killing two people, and more.Yet our hero (Nicolas Cage) is ambivalent about his skill. It helps him with his small-time magician act in Vegas and allows him to improve his income by beating the blackjack dealer. But during childhood, it also subjected him to a visit with an endless number of psychologists and counselors who wanted to help this strange little kid. When the government now identifies him as someone who might be able to stop terrorist from triggering a nuclear bomb in LA, our hero is not eager to sign up. But a dedicated FBI agent (miscast by Julianne Moore) and the terrorists who learn about his skills are not willing to let him mend his own business. Meanwhile our hero has discovered that in one instance he can see more than two seconds into the future: a beautiful girl promises to be his life partner. The beauty of girl (played by Jessica Biel) more than the nuclear bomb threat propels the film forward.
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Spiderman 3
It takes imaginative writers to stretch a story across multiple films. Spiderman 3 lacked such talent. Compared to the first two installments, the film feels uninspired, repetitive and contrived. Audiences can only stomach so much transformation in the lead character before they will turn way.
The Last Mimzy
On a previous flight this film was offered to me for lunch. I passed. Without any sound the beginning looked slow and quite lame. On this new flight I tuned in and discovered that the story has unexpected depth. Extraterrestrial creatures have come to earth to recapture what was lost in perfecting their ability to clone people: the human soul. The ET creatures have one last chance to copy that human quality before they will be too far away to reach earth. For those of us who had security blankets for many years, the film conjures up familiar feelings from childhood.
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Happy Feet
This musical on ice cannot compete with Pixar’s animated films as far as plot is concerned. But some if its Southpole animations can rival what Pixar pulled off in Finding Nemo. The film initially covers similar territory as The March of Penguins but then turns into a fantasy about singing Penguins. One Penguin cannot sing, but he makes up for with his dance abilities. The story is thin but the animations and music keep you engaged.
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