Movie Reviews

I’ve learned that one great way of dealing with stress is to occupy my mind with other things. Sometimes books are a great escape, but movies often work just as well. I’ve dived into movies the past few weeks.

SPOILER ALERT: These reviews contain spoilers and plot points. Read at your own discretion.

Dead Girl / Jennifer’s Body

Horror movies often symbolically deal with the trauma of growing up, specifically the teenaged years. These two movies easily fall into that category.

Dead Girl asks the disturbing question: How far would a teenaged boy, hopped up on hormones and inexperience, go to have sex with a woman out of his league? The most disturbing aspect being, these teenaged boys stumble upon a woman that is clearly undead but mostly healthy in appearance that has been restrained in an abandoned building. Tensions run high when one young man gives into temptation and the other resists. I don't think I need to go into detail here. Just let your imagination run wild and rest assured that most of what you can imagine was implied/off screen.

Jennifer’s Body approaches very similar territory from the female perspective. In this story, it’s the femme fatale breaking hearts and… necks. Beyond the subtext, this is a straight up, enjoyable horror movie. I’m not a fan of Megan Fox by any stretch, but she does a great job as the lead monster. I don’t quite undestand why so many horror fans shunned this one. It had a decent cast, a decent story, enough scare factor, and it wasn’t even a retread like most of the garbage out there recently.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

I really wanted to like this one. The costumes and production value are fantastic. It’s very artsy in points, very imaginitive, but it falls apart. It falls apart because Heath Ledger died half way through the movie. It was noble of the producers and director to try to save the movie. The movie deserved saving. It just couldn't be done.

The good doctor's Imaginarium offers up salvation or damnation. Those who enter see just how good they could be. They're given a glimpse of Heaven-like scenarios, and at the last second, they're tempted with very honest depictions of their old dirty habits. There's also a love triangle in there somewhere, and we find out that the Parnassus has been playing a dangerous game with the devil for ages.

Ledger’s performance was great. They recast his character using other well known actors and offer up a supernatural explanation. It actually makes sense to an extent, but it just doesn’t work. The story itself seems to drop off at that point. Maybe it’s just that it ends on such a negative, without the redemption you expect.

The Day the Earth Stood Still
2008 (remake)

I love the original 1951 movie, and the remake isn’t all that different. Keanu Reeves was a great choice as the unemotional Klaatu. This character in the original film was a little better defined, a little more likeable. He has a lot more interaction with the single mother/son in the original. He almost becomes a love interest to the female lead in that movie. We miss that here. In exchange for character development, we get special effects.

If I hadn’t seen the original, I might have found Reeves' character less enjoyable or understandable. So, I might be biased.

The motivation for the alien visit is also slightly different. The original was concerned with mankind’s invention of nuclear weapons and the history of warlike behavior among earthlings. Intelligent life forms on other planets feared that earthlings would someday declare war on the universe. They were willing to destroy Earth to protect themselves.

The modern version focused on our destruction of the environment and Earth’s impending demise at our hands. In this scenario, the other life forms weren’t concerned with their own welfare, but the welfare of Earth as a planet. In this scenario, the humans would have to be destroyed to save the planet.

I liked the remake. I liked the message it was sending. Over and over again, the humans kept saying, “Well, we know we need to change our ways, but we tend to only do that just before it’s too late.” Klaatu’s response, “You’ve got about five seconds until it’s too late.”

Up in the Air

What defines success for you? What makes you feel alive? Are those things the same? Should they be?

This movie asks a lot of questions about whether or not success in vocation is more important than having meaningful relationships with people.

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is a professional down sizer. He fires people for a living. There’s a lot of baggage attached to that, and he’s on the road 95% of the year. He defines success based on Frequent Flyer Miles. He has no friends, and he ignores his family. He doesn’t know much about love in any form.

Clooney is a great actor. It doesn’t matter what he does, how ridiculous his characters are supposed to be, he plays them straight (or perfectly crazy). His characters are always believable. I admire that.

My favorite part of the movie: Bingham asks a soon-to-be-groom with cold feet to think about his fondest memories. He then asks whether or not he was alone during those times or if there are other people involved. The answer of course being, life is better with other people in it.