Reviews by Matt

A while ago, maybe three years or so, I decided to see how long it would take me to watch every DVD I owned. Movies and television, nothing would be missed. I did not give myself a deadline; I just saw it as something to do. Well, like I said it has been three years and my guess is I am less than halfway though. It not that I have a lot of DVDs, though it has not helped that I keep adding to the collection, it is that time has not allowed. Mostly though it is a mood thing. Some of the movies I have you have to be in the right mood to watch.

Now imagine that I gave myself a deadline of a year and I did a review of each movie? One of the reasons I decided to not be a journalist was the constant deadlines. Also I would be repeating myself a lot since I own many of the movies I have reviewed.

That is not the case in “Julie and Julia.”

Julie (Amy Adams) decides to get herself out of her rut by cooking every recipe in Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” and must do it in one year. She puts her life in cooking up on a blog and begins to gain notoriety for her project as her marriage suffers.

Cut between Julie’s story is the story of how Julia Child (Meryl Streep) became a household name. She is in Paris with her husband when she decides to take cooking classes. She is very good at it and when she finally completes the classes, she is asked to help revise a French cookbook for Americans.

Allow me to gush here for a second. I love Amy Adams. In every movie I have ever seen her in she is full of charm and charisma. She was the best part of “Junebug,” and “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.” She knocks every role out of the park. Even with all that in mind, her storyline was the weakest part of the movie. There were some funny/interesting parts, like when she has to boil the lobster, but it not add anything to the movie that was not covered by the Julia part.

Streep was amazing as Julia Child. When I saw the preview, I was worried her voice was going to get annoying, but Streep plays her in such a way that it is endearing. Most of the humor comes from the Julia half. She has such a quick wit and a humor about herself and it makes for some great scenes.

I understand why the movie was cut as it was. Julia has some success and then we see Julie have some success. Julia fails and Julie fails. It just seemed to be a bit too much and way to coincidental at times. There were times when it was blatant that it was trying to show how similar these two women were. You could really do that with anyone, the only connection that these women had was that cookbook.

Yes, this review looked a bit more at the bad than the good, but the movie is really quite good. I actually found myself enjoying it. The performances are good and it is really funny, I just wish there was one story and not two.

7 out of 10
Rated PG-13 for brief strong language and some sensuality.
123 min

As someone who follows the movie industry, I keep up with just about every bit of news that comes out. A big part of the year is the Sundance Film Festival. The big movie to come out of the last Sundance was “(500) Days of Summer.”

The opening voiceover warns you that while this is the story of boy meets girl, it is not a love story. Tom Hanson (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) met Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel) when she came to work at his office. He immediately fell in love with her. She was not as quick to return the feelings. The movie is about the 500 days of their relationship.

I’m going to keep this short and sweet because it is sweltering in my room and the A/C in the house is broken. The acting is amazing and both leads do a superb job and continue to show why they are indie movie superstars. What I loved the most was not the acting, directing or even the great soundtrack. What I loved the most was the editing.

The story is not told in chorological order. It cuts between different days in their relationship: some good and some bad. Title cards tell you what day of Summer it is. The movie opens with them broken up, somewhere around day 300. He is brokenhearted and vows to get her back. Then it is day 1 when he first sees her. It cuts back and forth like this for most of the movie. Tom recalls all the things he loves about her and the things they did together. The audience can slowly see the relationship fall apart while Tom cannot.

This is one of those movies I cannot wait to see again. It is truly a great film and its going to take a lot for it not to be on my top 10 list when the year is over. This is a movie you could wait for the DVD to see, but why would you? It is not everywhere yet, but do whatever you have to do to see this.


9 out of 10
Rated PG-13 for sexual material and language
95 min

Here is a little insider information. When I see a movie during the movie I make note of things I should mention in the review. I’ll see a scene and say, “When I talk about so-and-so’s performance, I will mention this scene.” Some movies I don’t know what I will say until I sit down and write them. “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” is one of those movies. I am a fan of the books. I have liked the movies so far and when I sit down to watch them I do so as a fan and not a critic. Which makes this just a little bit harder.

Let’s face it, fans of the books know what is going to happen and what events lead to this picture:

But for those not in the know, it breaks down to this. Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) is back at Hogwarts for his sixth year. With the revelation that Lord Voldemort is back, things are a little different. Granted from the movie all that seems to be going on is the hormones of the Hogwarts students are up and everyone seems to be snogging (kissing).

The real stories in the movie is the ones between Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) and Harry Potter and Snape (Alan Rickman) and Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton). On one hand Harry and Dumbledore are on a quest to learn more about Tom Riddle, the boy who grew to become the Dark Lord known as Voldomort. As for Snape and Malfoy, Snape pledges to help Malfoy carry out a deed that the Dark Lord handpicked the young wizard to do.

I both love and hate this movie.

I love it as a fan, but as a critic, I hate it.

From the critical standpoint, nothing happens. The movie could have been 30 minuets long and all the important stuff would have happened. All we really needed to know was about the horcruxes. It is too complicated for me to explain here, so just see the movie or read the book.

As a fan, this movie is awesome. Qudditch is back, Hermonie (Emma Watson) admits her love for Ron (Rupert Grint), Harry and Ginny (Bonnie Wight) become an item, (which still bothers me, I mean that is your best friend’s sister. IT IS JUST PLAIN WRONG) and then there is everything with Dumbledore.

If you have seen or read anything on these movies before you know that the cast is great and are all perfectly cast. Blah. Blah. Blah. One guy who needs to get the proper recognition is Alan Rickman. For very spolierlific reasons his is a tough character to play (READ THE BOOKS) and he is awesome at it. He is able to walk the line between evil and good guy and cross it at ease. If there is one reason to see any of these movies, he is it.

Even with the fan and the critic at odds within me, I liked this movie a lot. I look at it as warm up to the climax that will be the next two movies based on “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows” which come out in 2010 and 2011.

8 out of 10
Rated PG for scary images, some violence, language and mild sensuality
153 minuets

“American Beauty” is widely considered a great movie. I was not that impressed with it. In fact, I was so unimpressed with it, I have not seen anything else by the director, Sam Mendes. Well, “Away We Go” has me reconsidering my opionon.

When Burt (John Krasinski) and Verona (Maya Rudolph) find them expecting their first child, they travel across the country visiting friends and family to find the best place to start their family. Through their travels they begin to discover what makes a family and what makes a place a home.

As much as I love the explosions and special effects of the big budget movies, I love movies like this just as much. Great characters exploring just who they really are can make the most riveting movies.

John Krasinski is best known for his role as Jim on “The Office.” He can handle comedy with great ease, but as he proved in this role, he can also do drama just as easily. Burt and Verona are not married, but Burt keeps asking her. She does not see it as necessary, they love each other and that is enough. There is a scene late in the movie where they talk about it. He wants to get married incase something happens to one of them. They go back and forth on marriage and their relationship.

The one person I have to talk about is Maya Rudolph. She is best known for her time on “Saturday Night Live,” and was very funny. I had no idea how much of an actress she could be. There is a scene near the very end of the movie that just proves how good she is. She tells Burt a story from her childhood and what home was to her. It was a great scene and I will never doubt her talent as an actress again.

I consider movies like this a detox from the larger movies. It is a great little film that is well worth the time and money. I am in love with this movie. It takes a lot for me to fall for a movie like I have for this one. Soemtimes it comes back to bite me in the ass (“Juno” lost a lot of its luster once I saw it on DVD), but I have a good feeling about this one. The performances are great, the writing is stellar and it made me reconsider my thoughts on Sam Mendes.

8 out of 10
Rated R for language and some sexual content.
98 min

The summer is the season of blockbusters. These are those big budget, special effects driven, explosion-palozza movies where heroes grapple with villains and the fate of the world is always in the balance. This summer is no exception. The newest film to throw its hubcap in to ring is “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.”

The plot, near as I can tell, is the Autobots (the good robots) and the Decepticons (the bad robots) are again fighting to save and destroy the world respectively.

That is really it. The plot is really secondary to the explosions and the cars that transform into robots. In fact, the plot is almost nonexistent. There are hits here-and-there that there is more to the story that the robots, but it gets lost among the explosions and the robots fights.

In all honesty, you could take the human characters out and it would be just about the same movie. They serve so little purpose to the overall story that the fact that there are so many humans makes most of them redundant.

Take for instance the character of Sam’s roommate, Leo (Ramon Rodriguez). He serves no point. He never makes any big revelation, does anything to help or really anything at all besides give an weak excuse to have John Turturro come back (which is a good thing).

Even Megen Fox’s Mikaela is just window dressing, which as a guy I cannot really complain that much about. She basically spends the entire movie trying to get Sam (Shia LaBeouf) to tell her that he loves her.

Which brings me to Shia. I hate Shia LaBeouf, as an actor. Even with the aliens in “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” he was still the worst part of it. The fact that they even joked/hinted that he would take up Indy’s fedora in future installments makes the movie geek in me want to swear off movies for good. As a person he may be alright, but is wide-eyed “I cannot believe I get to do this for a living” attitude seems fake to me and it is getting old.

Enough ranting.

Good stuff: special effects and…well that is about it. As with the first the special effects were top notch, but that is what you get with a movie directed by Michael Bay. And giant explosions like this one:


Did I hate the movie? No. Did I like it? Not really. It was worth the money, but the first one was superior in every single way. If you really feel like watching giant robots fight, watch the first.

6 out of 10
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi action violence, language, some crude and sexual material, and brief drug material.
150 min