Reviews by Matt

Having seen my final movie of 2007 and the need to put something up on my blog, I thought it would be a good idea to list my top 10 movies of 2007. It was a lot harder than I thought. I have seen some real stinkers and a lot were just O.K. There was only a handful that left an impression on me. Movies that made me glad that I paid the movie theaters an obscene amount of money this past year. What I have done is forgone the usual plot synopsis and just jotted down a few things that I liked about the movie.

With out further ado, I present my list.

1) “Juno.” The review of this is pending, but in short; it was the easiest to place. It is funny, smart, dramatic, sweet, touching and simply the most original movie I saw all year (and it only took me 364.5 days). It is so rare to find a movie where every single actor delivers such great performances.

2) “The Bourne Ultimatum.” This is one of the rare examples of a sequel that is as good, if not better then the original. The trilogy is my absolute favorite, even if it went away from the books.

3) “Grindhouse.” The most fun I have ever had in a movie theater. If more directors had as much passion as Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez had then this list would have been much easier to make.

4) “3:10 to Yuma.” Christian Bale and Russell Crowe are two of the best actors and this movie shows why. Their star power alone is enough reason to see this.

5) “Michael Clayton.” This is another of those performance driven movies. George Clooney shows that he knows how to act beyond being Danny Ocean. He plays the reluctant hero. He wanted nothing more then to sit back and do his job. He is thrust into a position where he must act and Clooney makes it all believable.

6) “Hot Fuzz.” The funniest straight up comedy of the year, with out a doubt. Simon Pegg who starred as the title character in the zombie-comedy, “Shaun of the Dead” is as funny as ever. Sergeant Angel is a by the book cop who takes his job very seriously. He gets transferred to a town where there is no crime and has to make that adjustment. Pegg is brilliant in this role. He delivers a performance that is so straight-laced that it becomes funny.

7) “Waitress.” This year marked the year that I fell in love with Keri Russell as an actress. She blew me away in this movie. She plays a character who loves her husband despite the fact that he is a complete jerk and treats her like crap. The other notable performance in this is Nathan Fillion, who plays Russell’s doctor. The two have great chemistry and it shines on screen.

8) “American Gangster.” Russell Crowe pops up again on my list. In this one he plays a cop going after the bad guy. Crowe is an actor who seems to play every role he can and is good at it. There are very few times he completely fails to impress.

9) “Eastern Promises.” Besides begin the most brutally violent movie I saw this year, it was also a interesting story and I thought the acting was especially good.

10) “Live Free or Die Hard.” This one was the toughest pick. The first nine were going on, it was just a matter of where. This one I put on because it was one that I liked a lot more than I thought I was going to.

I scare like a 5-year-old. I have said it before and I will stand by it until the day that I do not jump at the smallest of things. I was faced with a problem the other day, I really wanted to see “I Am Legend,” but it was going to be one of those movies that made the night a little tougher to get through. I had hoped to go to an afternoon showing so as to give myself a chance to push it to the back of my mind by the time I went to bed. Then through a series of incidents, namely the heat mysteriously stopping in my apartment, I went to the 10:30 p.m. showing. It was PG-13, so I figured I would be fine as far scary images went, I was wrong on that note, but right on another, unexpected one.

Robert Neville (Will Smith) is the last man on earth. A deadly virus has wiped out the majority of the world’s population and turned others into creatures that live on blood. Yea, kinda like vampires, but they never say it in the movie. He is determined to find a cure and save those who have been infected. He and his dog roam the streets of New York City during the day farming and hunting for food, but at night must be locked inside to stay safe from the creatures.

Will Smith was awesome in “I Am Legend.” In fact he was much better than Tom Hanks in “Castaway.” He had to act to green screen, mannequins and a dog. Not much to work with, it is safe to say that he delivers the best performance of any in the movie. His performance is very powerful. He is both funny and dramatic. He has conversations with the “owner” of the video store as he rents a different movie each day. He is determined to find the cure and even captures one of the creatures in order to experiment on it.

Here is why I slept relatively soundly that night. The creatures were all done digitally. It was obvious that they were digital characters, hence, not scary. There were multiple times when what would have been a tense moment was marked by the realization that it was all fake.

This movie had so much potential. I was expecting great things and could not help but feel slightly disappointed at the end. The way things unfolded was interesting and more than enough to hold my interest, but when it was all said and done, I wanted more. There needed to be a little more background on the virus, the discovery of what it was doing and the reaction to it. All we get for background is mention of using nature to cure sickness and then NYC being closed off and an attack by the infected. The story focused on Neville and his day-to-day struggle to cure the virus while surviving alone.

With the exception of waking up to my neighbor shoveling his walkway at 5 a.m, I slept soundly that night. There were a few moments of jump out and scare you, but the creatures were far from frightening. The movie was worth seeing, but was not what I was expecting. I enjoyed it a lot, but was disappointed by how things turned out.

7 out of 10
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence.
101 min

I like to think of myself as an easy-going guy. I am easy to please. Heck, I am a breeze to shop for when Christmas rolls around, buy me a DVD and I will be happy. There are a few things out there that really annoy me. The biggest is stupid people. When certain movies are released, there are groups who boycott it for one reason or another. They worry that the movie is offensive to whatever their viewpoint is.

“The Golden Compass” is one of those movies.

Lyra Belacqua (Dakota Blue Richards) lives in a parallel universe where humans have animal counterparts called daemons. Lyra has grown up on a campus where she has been taught from a very young age. There has been talk of Dust, small particles that could be used to unite all the worlds together. The Magisterium, who rule this alternate world, want to stop this at any cost. Her uncle, Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig) heads north to study the Dust, and Layra learns that the Magisterium is after him. She is given an alethiometer, a golden compass that can tell the truth to use on her trip.

In a time where these grand epic adventures at the movie theater are commonplace, this is nothing special. If you want amazing and spectacular movies watch “The Lord of the Rings Trilogy” or “The Chronicles of Narnia.” It is still a good movie, the visuals are stunning and it is a nice escape from the run-of-the-mill action dramas.

As far as performances go, the lead, Dakota Blue Richards, is not as strong as it could be, but she delivers a good performance for being only 13. With actors like Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman, she holds her own.

The visuals are really good. The landscapes are beautifully done and the computer-animated animals look great. The daemons look real, but at the same time they are very obviously not real.

Here is the real reason I am writing this. I need to vent. I did this in my DaVinci Code review I feel that the outrage is completely ridiculous. It is only a movie, or a book (my feelings are the same in regards for the book too).

I understand that the author is an atheist and that there are apparent anti-religion overtones in the later books. I do not care what the guy believes anymore than I care what he ate for breakfast on the morning he decided to write the book. Whatever he believes is his business and he can do whatever he wants.

Here is where I take issue. There are people who are boycotting the movie because of the supposed overtones. People are worried that the movie/book is teaching or encouraging atheism. Pardon my frankness here, but if you are stupid enough to have your beliefs changed because of a movie or even a novel, then you deserve it. If you want your religious views changed then you are the one to change them, if you do not, then there is no movie, book or person who can. It is all about the strength of your own beliefs. If a movie changes what you believe then maybe you did not believe it that strongly in the first place.

What I am trying to say is, do not let anything or anyone tell you what to believe. If you want to believe that little gremlins are responsible for making a light turn on, good for you. As long as you do not hurt anyone else you can believe and do whatever you want.

7 out of 10
Rated PG-13 for sequences of fantasy violence.
113 min

This past semester, as many of you know, I was the entertainment editor for the school paper. I went to at least one movie a week in order to insure that I could fill the two pages required by my new position. I had a “movie buddy” who would, without fail see any movie with me. Last weekend there was no need for me to go see a movie. I saw two. The first movie will be reviewed later; this is about the second one I saw on my first weekend off.

I had not planned on seeing two movies that weekend, but when I was asked to help my friend, Matt, out by going to a movie with him, I was happy to return the favor. Even if it was a movie I did not really want to see.

“Awake” is about the phenomena of “anesthetic awareness” where someone under anesthesia is fully aware of everything going on. Clay Beresford (Hayden Christiansen) is one of those people. He is completely paralyzed and he cannot alert the doctors to it.

But before we get to that we have to find out that he is a young successful businessman who is in love with a beautiful woman Sam (Jessica Alba). His life is great except for one thing, he has some kind of heart condition that requires him to have a heart transplant. Finally one day he gets the heart he has been waiting for and soon goes into surgery.

Now back to the awake during surgery thing. He hears that his doctors have a plan to kill him and that is new wife is in on it.

I know that no one reading this is going to see it, but I still cannot reveal the ending, I have a feeling that there is something about journalistic ethics involved.

Overall, it was an intriguing movie, but not enough to hold my attention for very long. The acting was bland, the story was mildly interesting and it was not as suspenseful as it tried to be.

Christiansen, known for playing Ankin Skywalker/Darth Vader in the last two “Star Wars” prequels, showed me that it was the bad writing by George Lucas that made him seem so bland. The acting is a little better in “Awake,” but not by much. He still shows the emotional rage of a potato, but at least the writing was better this time.

For being a former Oscar nominee and an actor who picks really good roles, Terrence Howard was disappointing in the role of Dr. Jack Harper. Harper has been sued for malpractice at least five times and he decided to set this entire thing up to help him get out of financial trouble. He is desperate and will even kill a supposed friend to make his life easier.

I had absolutely no intention of seeing this movie. Ever. I owed Matt big time. He was the one guy I could get to go to a movie every weekend. The upside is I did not hate this movie. I enjoyed myself, but it is not a movie I ever need to see again.

5 out of 10
Rated R for language, an intense disturbing situation, and brief drug use.
84 min

The history of videogame movie adaptations is long and full of complete and utter disasters. Every now and then a “Tomb Raider” will emerge and the studios will think that it is a good idea to make more videogame-based movies. Most end up as a waste of time and fail. “Hitman” is one of them.

Agent 47 (Timothy Olyphant) is a Hitman for “The Agency” who one day finds himself the target. He is determined to find out why and to want ends he is involved it a larger conspiracy.

That is really all it is and to see the plot as anything more, is to give this movie more credit than it deserves.

Having never played the game on which the movie is based, I do not know how true to the game it stayed.

What I do know is that Olyphant either delivers the worst performance ever, or the most brilliant in movie history. He is so unemotional, so cold and so dull. He was good in “The Girl Next Door” and “Live Free or Die Hard” and showed some emotion, but here the choice may be to keep Agent 47 the cold killer he is supposed to be, but it is not good for a movie.

The movie is all about the hits and the uncovering of the conspiracy. Hit by hit 47 starts to put together what is really going on. He begins to kill his way to the answer. He kills who he has to in order to get to the one person pulling the strings. During all of this he has to avoid being caught by Interpol, who have been alerted to his part in multiple murders.

The movie is not overly violent despite the source material. The kills made by Agent 47 are no more violent or brutal than any other movie where people are killed. The movie is truly a series of kills with a story between. Even then the story is weak at best and relies on the hits way to much. It is good for pure escapism purposes. You are not required to think at all and it is easy just to sit back and enjoy the ride.

5 out of 10
Rated R for strong bloody violence, language and some sexuality/nudity.
100 min

In any discussion of great movies there is always that one person who just has to disagree. That one guy who says “No way that belongs on the list.” or “That is no where near as good as everyone says it is.”

Today I shall play the part of “that guy.”

There are a ton of movies out there that I think are overrated. The criteria I used for this list are the movies I have heard good things about. These movies range from Oscar winners to movies that everyone seems to like to movies that became ingrained in popular culture. All these movies have a huge amount of hype behind them and with the exception of the number five on the list this hype is without merit.

Bring on the outrage.

Bring on the debate.

Bring on my list of the top five most overrated movies.



#5) “American Beauty”

Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) is unhappy with his life. After developing a crush on his daughter’s best friend (Mena Suvari), he decides to turn his life around. He quits his dead-end job and decides to do what he wants and be happier. There is some other story with the creepy kid, who moves in next-door, and Lester’s daughter, but it has been about 3 years since I have seen it, I do not remember it that well.

Why people like it: It is loved and adored by millions. It must have been good if it won five Oscars. The performances are good, especially on Spacey’s part.

Why it is overrated: I however have never seen what the hype was about. I agree Spacey is at his best in this, but other then that, it is a dull movie.

Do not get my wrong, I am not one of those people who needs explosions and special effects to keep me interested in a movie, in fact some of my favorite movies are exactly like this; story, character development and great dialogue.
Nothing could keep me interested in the movie. It took two separate sittings about a week apart to finish it. I found myself not caring and checking to see when the movie was over.




#4 “Bad Santa”

Every holiday season Willie (Billy Bob Thornton) and Marcus (Tony Cox) pose as Santa and an elf at a mall then, on Christmas Eve, proceed to rob the mall blind. Each season they move on to a different mall and cash in. Then Willie meets some kid and his heart softens, or something.

Why people like it: Apparently it is funny.

Why it is overrated: It is not funny. It is stupid, and only a fifth grader who snuck it out of their older siblings DVD collection would laugh at it.



#3 Any M. Night Shyamalan movie made after “The Sixth Sense.”

Not a movie, I know, but I just have this deep seeded hatred of this “director” that I had to make room for him.

Why people like it: For some odd reason he is seen as a master of suspense. He has these amazing twists and is original.

Why it is overrated: Shyam-lama-ding dong is the most overrated director ever. He had one mediocre hit with “The Sixth Sense” and suddenly he gets crowned the new Alfred Hitchcock. I refuse to believe that. Hitchcock was original and movie after movie, he delivered some of the most suspenseful and mysterious movies ever made. Night is a hack. Every movie he has made since has been predictable and poorly made.

The plot of “Signs” has plot hole so big you could build a new dorm in them. Case and point: the aliens have these super powerful legs and can jump over a house yet they cannot kick down a door or better yet, the aliens are harmed by water yet they are taking over a planet that is 71 percent water.

You want another example. I never saw “The Village,” but my sister did. To see if is was as predictable as I thought I gave her what I thought was the ending, the elders are the monsters and the village is in the present day. She said that was it. Talk about a “surprise” ending.



#2 “Titanic”

Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) is some kind of rapscallion who gets a ticket on the doomed Titanic voyage across the Atlantic. He meets Rose (Kate Winslet) a fancy lady who is also on the ship.

The two fall in love.

He draws her naked.

Her boyfriend does not like her crush.

The ship hits an iceberg.

Biggest surprise in movie history-the boat sinks.

Jack dies (sorry for the spoiler, but if you have not seen it by now then you have no right to complain).

Rose carries a torch for her dead love until she is old.

Movie ends.

Roll credits.

Rack up 11 Oscar wins.

Why people like it: My best guess; the love story. Something about Jack the lower class man getting Rose, the rich upper class woman to fall in love with him, people seem to love. It is the unlikely love story that people gravitate to.
Some like the special effects. For 1997, this was a big deal. The ship sinking is impressive to watch even today when you think about how special effects have changed since the movie was released. It was a huge undertaking in the late 90s. Today with movies like “The Matrix” and “The Lord of the Rings,” “Titanic” look like claymation.

Why it is overrated: It really feels like two different movies. One is a love story and one is a disaster movie. The first half focuses on getting the audience to care about the characters, which I just could not do. They are supposed to be seen as these people we want to see survive and live a long and happy life. When Jack died I breathed a sigh of relief because the death was way too drawn out and it meant the movie was almost over.



#1 “Napoleon Dynamite”

Some loser who has a strange infatuation with Tater Tots (the pigeonholed Jon Heder, not that I am complaining) acts like a loser for 99 percent of the movie. The last one percent he dances and finally talks to the girl he has a crush on.

Why people like it: Because they are stoned or in middle school.

Why it is overrated: It is not funny. Plain and simple it is not funny. Anyone can be Napoleon and because this movie became so popular everyone did. The sign I got that showed me this movie was way out of hand was one day in depression central-Wal Mart. I was looking to feed my DVD addiction and was browsing the cheap DVD bin. I over heard some middle school aged kid saying “gosh” in that annoying Napoleon Dynamite voice. I just about punched the little twerp in the face.

Bring on the hate mail all you “Napoleon Dynamite” lovers. I will defend this choice above all others until the day I die. The others, minus the M. Night rant, I am willing to reconsider.

We all have seen “The Wizard of Oz.”

If you have not, I feel sorry for you because you missed out on one of the fundamental childhood experiences. It is a movie that has transcended time. “Over the Rainbow” was named the best song from a movie by the American Film Institute a few years ago. It is one of the few movies I can remember watching as a kid.

This past week, the SciFi channel, aired what can only be described as a science fiction version of “The Wizard of Oz” called “Tin Man.”

DG (Zooey Deschanel) no longer feels at home on the farm in, what I can only guess to be is, Kansas. She longs to get out.

In the O.Z. an evil sorceress, Azkadellia (Kathleen Robertson) rules through fear. She learns that someone is coming from the outside that will pose a threat to her. She sends her henchmen to retrieve whoever it is.

It happens to be DG. When the man come out of a tornado to get her, her parents know what is happening and save her by sending her into the tornado and into the O.Z. There she is captured by the Munchkins because she is seen as a spy for the evil sorceress. In her captivity she meets Glitch (Alan Cumming) and man who has had his brain removed. When DG and Glitch escape they try to find DG’s parents. Along the way they rescue Cain (Neal McDonough) from an iron box where he was forced to watch the murder of his wife and son over and over. He used to be a cop, or tin Man, in Central City, but when he was discovered to be part of the resistance against Azkadellia, he was imprisoned and his family was killed. The trio saves Raw (Raoul Trujillo) a lion like creature that possesses physic powers.

This group seems to be destined to over throw the evil Azkadellia and bring peace back to the O.Z.

The Internet Movie Database is my homepage so every time I start up my web browser I see the main page. For a few weeks a prominent advertisement was for “Tin Man” on SciFi. I investigated it further and saw that it was a version of “The Wizard of Oz.” I am not a huge science fiction fan. There are a couple things I like, but most I ignore. This looked like it had potential to be interesting.

I really cannot consider this a remake of “The Wizard of Oz.” There are elements that relate to the original. Glith is literally brainless, Cain is a “tin man” and heartless because he had to watch the death of his family over and over. There are little things that relate to the original, but for the most part, this has nothing to do with the 1939 movie.

Of everyone in the cast, Neal McDonough does the best job. He is one of the best actors you have never heard of. He has been in numerous movies, television series and miniseries. He is an amazing actor who has had steady work for many years.

In “Tin Man,” he plays a tin man in many ways. Not only is it another name for a cop, but it is also his manner. He has become emotionless and cold since he was imprisoned. Early on he is content to leave DG and find the men who killed his family, but something inside him does not allow him.
As of writing this I have only watched the first episode, but the other two are, or will be on the DVR and I will be finishing the miniseries as soon as I can.

It may be a little out there. Maybe it was so unlike the original that I hesitate to call it a remake or even a re-imagining. It is not even an alternate look. It is a miniseries that uses imagery from “The Wizard of Oz” to tell a new story. It is interesting nonetheless and I intend to see where this story ends up.