As some of you know, I have a had a pretty exciting few months. I finished up my graduate schooling and am in the process of obtaining a teaching license. The last two months of my student teaching took place in Moshi, Tanzania. And I spent a week in Barcelona on my way home.
That said, I am currently piecing together income as I wait for my license to arrive. I am tutoring twice a week at a middle school, subbing at my old job, Minneapolis Kids, and have begun writing a food column for the Minneapolis edition of examiner.com, entitled This Way to Delicious. For a shameless plug, the first article is here:
The spotty employment that was recently more like unemployment has been beneficial for my creativity, and almost as importantly, has allowed me to catch up on all the movies I have missed while I was out of the country.
By Oscar time, I will have seen 55 movies this year. The breakdown is as follows:
In theaters: 32
At home: 20
On an airplane: 3
2011 was another solid year for film. Franchise films and comic-book movies of course continued to smoke everything else in the box office, with Harry Potter 8, Transformers 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean 4 each hauling in over a billion dollars worldwide. Two very impressive newcomers in Jessica Chastain (The Help, The Debt, The Tree of Life, Take Shelter) and Michael Fassbender (Shame, A Dangerous Method, X Men First Class) made big waves with their performances. Directors we haven't heard from in many years (The Descendant's Alexander Payne, The Tree of Life's Terrence Malick) brought us great new films, and first-time directors (Bellflower's Evan Glodell, Stuck Between Stations' Brady Kiernan) showed a ton of promise in their ballsy debuts. And for the first time maybe ever, a silent film in The Artist is the front-runner for the academy's best picture of the year.
2011 was also the year that Ryan Gosling got his due. He is the best young actor in Hollywood, and it's not even close. Fresh off of last year's Oscar snub for Blue Valentine (the best performance of the year), he turned in critically revered performances in The Ides of March, Crazy, Stupid, Love and Drive. The Golden Globes, who have characteristically been more apt to take note of Gosling than the Academy, nominated him twice-for Ides and for Crazy, Stupid, Love. He was nominated for the fantastic and barely-seen Half Nelson in 2006, eventually losing to Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland, which was also a snub in my opinion. People are finally taking notice of just how good this kid is, and it is about damn time.
I plan to crank out 5 write-ups a day over the course of the week so that I can get moving. Movies 55-31 will be short reviews, 30-21 will be a couple paragraphs, 20-11 a couple more, and so on.
Ready? Go.
#55 I Don't Know How She Does It
The "working mom tries to balance her life and family" plot is so contrived and predictable that it borderline offensive. The ensemble backing Mrs. Broderick is decently talented. Greg Kinnear is the beleaguered husband, Christina Hendricks is the Sex and the City-like pal, Pierce Brosnan is the powerful business tycoon that she forms a new partnership with, and Olivia Munn is her no-nonsense assistant. SJP gets a new job, flirts with Pierce Brosnan, goes out of town a bunch on business, neglects her needy artist husband and by association her children, and freaks out about everything. There are also misplaced The Office-style interviews with many of the characters assessing the situation, which add next to nothing to the movie's direction. At one point, her character runs out of time and needs to bring a dessert for some parent-teacher thing, so she buys an apple pie and smushes it up so it looks homemade. Gah. The Carrie Bradshaw era is over for Sarah Jessica Parker, and instead of finding ways to get out of the working-girl typecast, people like me find themselves predicting and saying her exact dialogue while eating on international flights trying not to get bread crumbs everywhere because the butter is not soft enough. Did other passengers look at me? Absolutely. But it didn't change the fact the script was hokey enough to literally say out loud beforehand.
The "working mom tries to balance her life and family" plot is so contrived and predictable that it borderline offensive. The ensemble backing Mrs. Broderick is decently talented. Greg Kinnear is the beleaguered husband, Christina Hendricks is the Sex and the City-like pal, Pierce Brosnan is the powerful business tycoon that she forms a new partnership with, and Olivia Munn is her no-nonsense assistant. SJP gets a new job, flirts with Pierce Brosnan, goes out of town a bunch on business, neglects her needy artist husband and by association her children, and freaks out about everything. There are also misplaced The Office-style interviews with many of the characters assessing the situation, which add next to nothing to the movie's direction. At one point, her character runs out of time and needs to bring a dessert for some parent-teacher thing, so she buys an apple pie and smushes it up so it looks homemade. Gah. The Carrie Bradshaw era is over for Sarah Jessica Parker, and instead of finding ways to get out of the working-girl typecast, people like me find themselves predicting and saying her exact dialogue while eating on international flights trying not to get bread crumbs everywhere because the butter is not soft enough. Did other passengers look at me? Absolutely. But it didn't change the fact the script was hokey enough to literally say out loud beforehand.
#54 Hall Pass
The Farrelly Brothers steady downhill tumble since the Dumb and Dumber era continues in possibly their most ridiculous premise to date. Rick (Owen Wilson) and Fred (Jason Sudekis) get permission from their wives to have a week off of marriage to help spice up their lives. The wives-Christina Applegate and Jenna Fischer, are good actresses who are underutilized despite subplots in which they form relationships with other men in the absence of the party boys. As you can imagine, they do drugs, get drunk, try to hit on women with varying success, and learn valuable life lessons along the way. Been done before, and much better, by their frat pack brethren in Old School.
Jesse Eisenberg? Aziz Ansari? Danny McBride? What could possibly go wrong? A lot, actually. It's possible that this movie ended up being a victim of my higher expectations, or maybe I was in a pissed-off mood at the time. Who knows. Either way, I laughed a couple of times, chuckled a couple of times, and was disappointed a lot of times. Eisenberg and Ansari play Nick and Chet, high school friends, pizza delivery driver and substitute teacher respectively. Danny McBride's character Dwayne is almost exactly like Kenny Powers in every way, just not any of the funny kind. Then there's Nick Swardson, obnoxious as ever as Dwayne's younger brother. In order to kill their father and inherit his millions, they first have to raise 100,000 to hire an assassin. So they order a pizza out to a secret lair (junkyard), knock Nick out, strap a bomb to his chest and order him to rob a bank. Yeah, I thought it was kind of stupid too.
The Farrelly Brothers steady downhill tumble since the Dumb and Dumber era continues in possibly their most ridiculous premise to date. Rick (Owen Wilson) and Fred (Jason Sudekis) get permission from their wives to have a week off of marriage to help spice up their lives. The wives-Christina Applegate and Jenna Fischer, are good actresses who are underutilized despite subplots in which they form relationships with other men in the absence of the party boys. As you can imagine, they do drugs, get drunk, try to hit on women with varying success, and learn valuable life lessons along the way. Been done before, and much better, by their frat pack brethren in Old School.
#53 30 Minutes or Less
Jesse Eisenberg? Aziz Ansari? Danny McBride? What could possibly go wrong? A lot, actually. It's possible that this movie ended up being a victim of my higher expectations, or maybe I was in a pissed-off mood at the time. Who knows. Either way, I laughed a couple of times, chuckled a couple of times, and was disappointed a lot of times. Eisenberg and Ansari play Nick and Chet, high school friends, pizza delivery driver and substitute teacher respectively. Danny McBride's character Dwayne is almost exactly like Kenny Powers in every way, just not any of the funny kind. Then there's Nick Swardson, obnoxious as ever as Dwayne's younger brother. In order to kill their father and inherit his millions, they first have to raise 100,000 to hire an assassin. So they order a pizza out to a secret lair (junkyard), knock Nick out, strap a bomb to his chest and order him to rob a bank. Yeah, I thought it was kind of stupid too.
#52 No Strings Attached
"We're going to make two movies with the exact same plot, and get this--we'll release them at the exact same time. Don't worry, it's going to be awesome." -Hollywood
Portman/Kutcher's version of the "let's be friends who have sex with each other and try and pull off the whole no emotional ties thing" is weaker than the Timberlake/Kunis version. Natalie Portman is in her medical residency who wants something not serious because she has no time. Kutcher is a production assistant on a TV show who is young and wants to be unattached. Uh-oh. Is it possible-and I'm just throwing this out there-they will come to realize they need each other?
More movies tomorrow. See you then!
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