With a mother coming to town, a sheetrocking and mudding project, and progress reports due by 10 am on Monday, I'm realizing this might be impossible to knock out before the Oscars, but I'll be damned if I'm not going to at least try.
Lightning Round, part 1.
41) Brave
Pixar's weakest effort, thus far. It had good moments. The lead character's brogue princess only went so far for me, though her three redheaded triplet brothers were hilarious. The most memorable thing about it? The short film that precedes it, La Luna, a terrific cartoon with two big mustachioed Italians and a kid taking a ladder to the moon and sweeping the stars off it.
40) Voyage to the Moon (restored)
Moliere's classic 1903 short film, restored, set to a soundtrack by French electro pop duo Air, and accompanied by a 70-minute documentary on the restoring process. The documentary didn't fascinate quite as much as I had hoped, but it was cool to see Moliere's greatness and influence live on beyond last year's homage, Hugo.
39) Pitch Perfect
This is a shitty, yet suprisingly entertaining movie about an all-women and an all-men choir competing for acapella dominance on a college campus that would be downright formulaic if it weren't for the ridiculously cute Anna Kendrick and her heartfelt performance as a mash-up DJ turned acapella arranger, and the always hilarious Rebel Wilson as Fat Amy, the comic relief. And even though I'm not generally an acapella guy, the performances were solid.
38) Prometheus
I saw this on the giant 3D IMAX screen at the Minnesota Zoo, so there is no way I can deny its greatness visually. There is plenty of fire and ass-kicking and creatures (I won't elaborate if you haven't seen it) along the way, but both the plot and script were absolutely clunky, and even the talent involved (Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Michael Fassbender) didn't live up to their usual potential.
37) Ruby Sparks
A pretty good film about when fantasy goes a little too far. Real-life couple Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan, working on a script by Kazan, are a couple literally written into existence by lonely writer Calvin (Dano). Ruby Sparks is his dream girl who comes to life off the page, but then ends up sticking around and becoming less and less perfect for him. A cute, albeit hokey, concept.
36) Last Day at Lambeau
A documentary that I saw at the M/SP Intl Film Festival following the dramatic, drawn-out saga of Brett Favre leaving Lambeau Field as a Packer and returning as a Viking. It was interesting to see all of the various sportscasters perspectives and get a little bit of a better insight into the behind-the-scenes action. The only problem was that as a Packer fan, none of the information really felt new to me. I almost would have rather seen it as like, a Bengals fan.
35) Only the Young
At only 70 minutes, Only the Young is a documentary that follows 3 decidedly Christian adolescents as they experience the ennui of living in a post-foreclosure California town. They go on dry waterslides into empty pools, set up camp in abandoned houses, skateboard under bridges. Amidst this bleak landscape, they try to plan out their futures, fall in and out of love, and most importantly, rely on each other. It's a quietly cool statement about growing up post-millennium, though there's an emphasis on quiet--not a whole hell of a lot happens.
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