Reviews by Matt

Hype is a dangerous thing. It can either work for you or against you. Think about every time you were so excited for something only to have it disappoint you. As a movie fan I try not to let hype get to me. I like to go in and be able to form my own opinions about a movie. I do not read reviews or listen to podcasts that review movies that I plan on seeing before I go. Once I go I like to see how their opinions differed from my own. But no matter how hard I try, every now and then, I let the hype get to me and sometimes it effects how I watch a movie.

That is what happened with “True Grit.”

When her father is murdered by a man he hired, Mattie (Hallie Steinfeld) sets out to get justice. She hires U.S. Marshall “Rooster” Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to capture Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) and bring him to justice. One of Mattie’s conditions is that she accompanies him to see that Chaney is captured. Along the way they meet up with Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) and the three go on the hunt for Clancy.

Yes I had this movie hyped up for me, but I still put it at No. 3 on my top 10 of 2010. The truth is that I did not love it as much as I felt I should have. Because of what I had heard on a podcast, I went into “True Grit” expecting to be blown away. I was not, even though I really liked the movie.

Bridges and Damon have proven that they have what it takes to carry movies and win Oscars. They do another solid job here and are a great pairing. The true surprise is Hallie Steinfeld. No 14-years-old should be able to do what she does in this movie. She easily gives two veteran, Oscar winning actors a run for their money. She shares the screen with these two stars and holds her own.

Mattie is such a strong character. She has strong convictions and is willing to fight for what she believes is right. One thing that I heard that I do agree with is that every girl should see this movie. Mattie is a character they should see and learn from.

I let the hype for “True Grit” get to me and it jaded my view of the movie. I felt I should have been blown away by this movie and I let that feeling carry too much weight. The movie is still really good and worth a trip to the theater…just be careful and, as Public Enemy sang, “don’t believe the hype.”

8 out of 10
Rated PG-13 for some intense sequences of western violence including disturbing images
110 min

This was not a good year for me to see movies. I have been busier than ever and have loved every second of it. Sadly though this has severely limited my chances to go see movies. I had very few movies truly worthy of this list. I barely saw 10 movies this year and that makes this list harder to defend. I was tempted to do a top five, but where is the fun in that? So to give myself a challenge, I kept the top 10 format and came up with one of the more interesting top 10 lists you are bound to see.

10) Kick-Ass

Honestly this is only on this list because I did not see that many movies this year. It was a fun movie that is really meant only for the comic book fans of the world. I loved it because it was something different. The main character was the very definition of an average kid and just wanted to do something. There was the shock value of seeing a little girl curse like a sailor. All and all a really fun movie for the under 30 set in the Levy clan.

9) Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Again this is a movie made for a very specific audience. Anyone who grew up in the 80’s with the 8 and 16-bit video games like Mario or Street Fighter will get this movie. It is funny and geeky and did not make diddley-squat at the box office. Sadly the world is not as geek friendly enough for this to be the box office smash it should have been.

This is also the first movie starring Michael Cera that has not made be physically ill. He actually did a good job of playing Scott Pilgrim and giving him a believable dweebey toughness.

8) Let Me In

This would have been No. 10 had I gotten to the theater more often this year. I really liked the original “Let the Right One In,” but this Americanized version added some things that made it better, but also took some things out that made it worse. Unlike the previous two, this movie is for anyone who likes movies. I also highly recommend the Swedish “Let The Right One In” too.

The real standout it Chloe Moretz. She is still very young but has some real talent on screen. She can play both creepy and sweet (sometimes at the same time).

7) The Town

Ben Affleck has come full circle. He has been redeemed from all the bad movies he made over the past 5 years or so. With “The Town” he is actor, director and co-writer. His performance is great if clichéd “bad guy with a heart of gold. ” The direction, especially in the heist scenes, is really quite good.

It was just the ending I did not like. I was unsure of how to take it. It is not that it ruined the movie for me, but it kept it from being a great movie. Granted it had a lot to contend with in other movies in the top 10.

6) Inception

This should be higher on my list. I really did love this movie, but I think that since I last saw it in July, my love as diminished. Don’t get me wrong, the movie was amazing. The way each dream was different from the one before it, made it easy to follow. But absence does not always make the heart grow fonder.

Nolan makes puzzles, not movies and this might be his masterpiece. He has one more Batman movie to make, “The Dark Knight Rises” which will come out in 2012, but he an make whatever movie he wants after all the success he has had and I will be in line to see whatever it is.

5) The Social Network

I need to start this by saying I hate that Facebook has become my go to site when I am bored on the Internet. It could get shut down tomorrow and I do not think my life would change that much. All that being said, I loved “The Facebook Movie.” The dialogue was amazingly written and beautifully performed.

The fact that a movie about the founding of Facebook could be so fascinating and done so well that I am actually looking forward to seeing it again even though it is very much a dialogue driven movie.

4) How To Train Your Dragon

I so very much wanted to put this higher. I love this movie. The problem is that my top three movies were better movies over all. Sadly someone in my position has to balance love of a movie with best movie I saw. If this were a list of movies I love from 2010, this would take the top spot easily.

What started out as a movie I had no interest in turned into my surprise of the year. The story, at its core is a boy and his pet and his attempt to fit in. The core relationship in the movie is not between Hiccup and his father or Hiccup and Astrid (his love interest). It is the relationship between Hiccup and the dragon Toothless. You cannot help but get teary-eyed in many places during the movie. I love this movie and cannot recommend it enough.

3) True Grit

Just saw this on New Year’s Eve, so my review is not up yet, but I was impressed with this movie. I heard a lot of talk about how amazing it was and I was not that impressed. I still really liked it, but it was not the best movie I saw this year. I fell victim to hype, something I rarely pay much attention to and it colored how I saw this movie. I wanted more when I left the theater.

The performances are great. Jeff Bridges can act, I think we all know that given his track record of the past few years. The true surprise was 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross. She holds her own with stars like Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin and some of the other stars. If she keeps this up, she should have an amazing career.

2) Toy Story 3

A great way to wrap up the story of Andy’s toys. This was the first trilogy that I was able to see all the parts in a theater (I don’t count Spider-Man 3 because it does not exist). I am not going to gush over the awesomeness of Pixar because I have done that every year and in every review of one of their movies, but they rock and can do no wrong.

If you did not cry in this movie, check your pulse. The final scene in the movie is something that everyone can relate to. Not going to spoil it if you have not seen it, but you really need to see it.

1) 127 Hours

No other movie this year affected me as much as “127 Hours” did. It is an amazingly simple movie. A man trapped beneath a rock in a canyon way out in the Utah wilderness. He is going to die unless he does something drastic. What is more amazing is that it is a true story. Aaron Ralston, played by James Franco, had to cut off his forearm in order to survive.

In an interview I heard with director Danny Boyle, he addresses the idea of could anyone cut off their arm if they were in Aaron’s position. He said “(the movie) says could you do this? And people go, ‘I couldn’t do that’ and they talk about it like that. What we wanted to convey in the film is that yes, you can. And not only yes you can, but yes you would. You would do that. And people say ‘No I wouldn’t, I would just die’ and you go ‘No you wouldn’t’…and that thing that combines us all, which is that we will keep living.”


Bring on 2011!

Almost forgot:


I make a lot of movie recommendations. It just comes with the territory of being know as the movie guy. I do not get many movies recommended to me, so when I do I take it seriously. A few weeks ago, a friend of mine, told me I had to see “The Town.” I had that Friday free so I took her recommendation.

“The Town” takes place in Charlestown Mass. It is known for its high occurrence of bank robberies. Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck) is a man who makes his living doing just that—robbing banks. During one such robbery, he and crew take Claire (Rebecca Hall) hostage. After they let her go, Doug keeps an eye on her to make sure that she doesn’t know anything that could get them caught. He “bumps into” her one day and they strike up a relationship. When Doug’s best friend James (Jeremy Renner) discovers the relationship he confronts Doug and the relationship between the two friends becomes strained.
Meanwhile FBI Special Agent Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm) is determined to catch them and hopes that Claire can give him anything to use to catch them.

For a long time Ben Affleck Hollywood’s whipping boy. I even used him in an April Fool’s article for the school paper. In the past few years he has been anything but that. He made is directorial debut with “Gone Baby Gone” a few years ago. It got nominated for a few Oscars and Ben was back in the good graces of Hollywood. Now he is back as writer, director and this time, star of “The Town.” Affleck gives a really good performance here. He shows that he is a great actor and those movies he made for a few years were just flukes.

There is a lot to like about this movie. Renner and Hamm deliver some pretty good performances too. Even Blake Lively (of “Gossip Girl” fame) is actually impressive. All around, the movie is strong. There are some pretty intense car chases and the final robbery takes place in an unlikely and iconic Boston setting.
It would appear my friends don’t have such bad taste in movies. I will take future recommendations with a grin of salt though because my friend also told me she was going to watch “Twilight” that night too.

8 out of 10
Rated R for strong violence, pervasive language, some sexuality and drug use
125 min

Some of the best stories to make movies out of are those that showcase the resiliency of the human spirit. When all the chips are down and there is no hope, it is amazing at what we will do to survive.

“127 Hours” is based on the real life events of Aaron Ralston who spent five days trapped with his arm beneath a bolder. Ralston (James Franco) is a man who craves adventure. One day he sets out on a hike in a canyon near Motab, Utah. He tells no one where is his going and no one really knows when to expect him back. When he slips and gets his arm pinned beneath a bolder and a rock wall, he must do whatever he can to get free and get out alive.

Wow. Plain and simple. Wow. This is a movie that stays with you. It was simply amazing. Sometimes when I say things like that I worry that I might be overselling the movie. Not this time. I absolutely love this movie on so many levels.

James Franco delivers an Oscar worthy performance. When Ralston is trapped he has nothing but time to think. He thinks about how to escape, he thinks about what he should have done differently, what items he should have brought with him and he thinks about his life—the things he has done, what he should have done and what he has yet to do. It is in these moments of reflection that Franco shines. He does carry the movie and there is such a wide range of emotions he has to go through that it is important to have an actor of Franco’s talents in this role.

SPOILERS FOR REAL LIFE.

If you followed the story, you know that Ralston had to cut off his own arm to get free. This scene is brutal, but not as graphic as it could have been. For me the only time I cringed was when he broke his arm. That sound still makes me cringe. The actual cutting, you never see. I think what is making people faint and feel sick is the implied action. If you know the story, you know what he is doing. This is the mark of a great movie. What you envision is worse that what you could ever be shown.

END SPOILERS

Director Danny Boyle does a stellar job of showing the isolation and desperation of Ralston’s situation. Boyle is a director who keeps changing. He got a lot of clout with “Slumdog Millionaire.” He could have made any movie he wanted and he chose this. As far as I am concerned, this man can do no wrong. He is a master storyteller and I am looking forward to what he has next on his to do list.

See this movie. It is worth it. I love this movie. Plain and simple, it is an amazing movie. Franco is fantastic and carries the movie like no one else could. Boyle adds another notch to his directing bedpost and should get a nomination for his direction in this movie. I recently (just two posts down) reviewed “Buried” which was about a man trapped in a box. Now I have the chance to do another review about a man trapped. This time though I left speechless and not because I wanted more, but because I was truly at a loss for words.

10 out of 10
Rated R for language and some disturbing violent content/bloody images
93 minutes

This one is going to be short and sweet for two reasons. The first being that since the full title of the newest Harry Potter movie is “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1,” It just seems unfair to grade an unfinished movie…and believe me, it is unfinished. The second reason is that I fell asleep a few times at the midnight showing—which had nothing to do with the movie.

I will address the second reason first. As many of you know I am in graduate school for elementary education. On Tuesdays and Thursdays this past semester, I have been in a classroom doing some teaching. Well the Thursday of the premiere was one of those. I was up at 6:30 and in the classroom until 2:30. Then I had class from 4:45 to 7. I should have gone back to my apartment and taken a nap before the movie, I did not. My friends and I went out for a few drinks after class. So by the time 12:01 Friday morning rolled around, I was on a long day with very little sleep plus a few beers. I tried my damnedest to stay awake. I took the toothpick out of my swiss army knife and poked it into my thumb to stay awake—it does not work by the way. Needless to say I missed large chunks of the movie. Not that I was lost, I had recently reread the book and knew enough to fill in the sleepy breaks.

Now to address the first reason. The movie literally just ends. It gets to a point and the credits roll. It is because of that that I cannot review it properly until July when part 2 comes out.

What I saw I liked and I am looking forward to the second part.

8 out of 10
Rated PG-13 for some sequences of intense action violence, frightening images and brief sensuality
146 minutes