I’m trying to catch up with movies that I haven’t seen because I was too young (or not even born yet) when they came out. Since Woody Allen has been making movies since the 60’s, a lot of his films fall under that category. Here are two of his films that I have seen over the past couple of weeks.

Crimes and Misdemeanors (1992)

True to it’s title, this film is actually about crimes and misdemeanors. It is also about what is morally right or wrong.  What can be called a crime. If no one finds out that you have committed a crime, can it still be called one? Or is there a God watching you at all times and therefore you will always be guilty? There are quite a few story-lines going on at the same time that all end up being connected at the end. It is a brilliantly told story with very funny and intelligent dialogue (is it actually necessary to point this out in a Woody Allen movie?).  It reminded me a lot of Woody’s recent Match Point, which I now feel like re-watching for the 200th time.

Love and Death (1975)

I hadn’t heard anything about Love and Death before watching it and was quite surprised that the setting of this movie is in the early 19th Century Russia. The language as well as the acting are a mix of old, probably reminiscent of Dostoyevski and the likes, and Woody’s typical modern “babbling”. Also very funny dialogue although I didn’t think the slapstick comedy was necessary in this film.

I can’t wait until his new movie You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger comes out in a few weeks.

A few days ago a friend and I were talking about the Harry Potter movies and I said that I wasn’t excited about the new one coming out because the series has been going on for so long and the breaks in between are really long so I am not “in it” anymore. Plus the book came out years ago and I’ve pretty much forgotten the story already. But then the new trailer came out and now I’m actually quite excited about it. It looks great! What do you think?

Wow, so Lost is really over. How long until they are going to make a movie?

It does feel a bit like the end of an era. I started following Lost pretty much when it first came out and got hooked on it quickly. I lost interest after about two seasons and then recently re-watched and then watched all of the episodes.

The ending was quite disappointing though. It seemed like the easy way out. I’m not gonna stay up to watch the alternative endings (mainly cause the online stream stopped right after the episode finished) but I’m sure they are gonna be available on youtube in the next few days. I thought the writers would come up with some amazing ending that would totally blow all of us away but I guess they couldn’t think of anything.

What did you think of the final episode?

I have to thank The Mad Hatter for writing a review that inspired me to watch this movie. The trailer didn’t get my attention at all. It made it look like a somewhat cute kids movie but nothing special. But it is quite the opposite: How to Train Your Dragon is in fact the first new movie to make it onto my “!Must See!” list since A Single Man (which I saw in January).

I’ve been trying to put my finger on what makes this movie so special and I think it is the writing: it’s a very funny script. I found myself laughing quite a lot, usually at the little side lines. The story itself is not that new: boy is trying to fit into society but just can’t until he finds his own way and becomes the hero. We’ve all seen that one before. But How to Train Your Dragon is told in such a sweet way that it feels like it’s the first time to see this story told. It’s just so damn cute that you have to love it. The animation is really well done and it’s a great use of 3D. It feels a bit like you are flying on a dragon yourself. The dragons are surprisingly cute, especially the main dragon Toothless is adorable. They are very cat-like and I really wish I could get one.

It is a real adventure story and I didn’t feel bored for one second. The characters are very likable. I loved the cranky Viking father (Gerad Butler, I’m sure RTM will agree with me on this). The main character, Hiccup, was nerdy enough to be likable and at the same time he wasn’t a cliché. His love interest, Astrid, was also very cute and wearing an awesome outfit with little sculls on her skirt. I highly recommend watching this film, especially in 3D. It’s the first film in a long time that really entertained me.

Since I can’t find anything wrong with this movie, I simply have to give it a perfect rating:

I just got home from watching The Graduate at the Lincoln Film Center. They are having a few Anne Bancroft days and Mike Nichols (the director) was there afterwards for a Q&A. I love New York.

The film is obviously pure genius and it was nice to see it on the big screen for once. The Q&A was absolutely hilarious. Mike Nichols is a very funny and quite humble guy. He was full of stories about the casting and shooting of The Graduate. He basically said that they had absolutely no idea about anything at the time. It was only his second movie and he had just gotten to L.A. and was awestruck by everything and everyone. So cute! He said that Ava Gardner (who he loved) was really interested in the role and called him so that she could play the part but insisted that he would say that he called her. But she just wasn’t right for the role.

Of course there were questions about the music. As far as I know, this was the first movie to use popular music instead of a classical score (at least that’s what I remember learning at film school, I could be wrong). Nichols said that his brother had given him a Simon & Garfunkel CD as a present and that he was listening to it everyday while shooting the film. At one point he just thought “this is perfect!” Apparently they needed one last song for the scene where Ben (Dustin Hoffmann) breaks into the Robinson’s house and Nichols didn’t like the stuff that S&G came up with. He asked if they had anything else and after a little bit they came back with the famous song “Mrs. Robinson” which they had originally written as “Mrs. Roosevelt.”

There was one question from the audience about if it was intentional that Dustin Hoffmann is jewish and Anne Bancroft isn’t but Nichols said it wasn’t. The only thing that was intentional about it was that he had to be different from the normal Beverly Hills boys.

Well that was my evening and I thought, I’d share it with you guys.

It happens very rarely that I absolutely fall in love with a movie but tonight was one of these scarce occasions. I have literally just come home from the cinema so I am still completely “in” the film and haven’t really processed it. But I thought just this once I want to write a review that is completely subjective.

Normally I only feel that connected to films if they somehow remind me of my life or myself which really isn’t the case with A Single Man. In fact it couldn’t be further away from me. I am obviously not a gay middle-aged man who has lost the love of his life and is about to commit suicide and has some sort of sexual interest in my student. But there was something deeper then the visible story that I connected with. It had a lot to do with Colin Firth’s excellent performance as George. I thought it was an extraordinary moment when he picked up the phone and gets the news of his lovers death. The camera stayed so close (too close, really) on Firth that there was no way to fake the emotion. I am very aware of the fact that for some people it is very easy to cry on command but that is not what Firth was doing. He wasn’t just crying, he was truly but quietly suffering. One of my teachers (George Loros (The Sopranos)) always says that we shouldn’t show all of the emotion that we are feeling and that holding back tears can be more powerful then completely braking down (which he calls emotional masturbation). And for this movie that is absolutely true. This moment (others as well but this in particular) made the character so real to me and I think that is what I could connect with.

A big part of A Single Man is its beauty. It is just unbelievably gorgeous. Like one photograph next to another. Or maybe it is a bit like looking at Vogue Magazine (which I thoroughly enjoy doing, they have stunning photos). But it wasn’t just beautifully framed, the really interesting aspect of it was the saturation of the color. The more pain George feels, the less saturation the picture has and the happier he is, the fuller the color gets. It is done in a very subtle way, not “in your face,” some people might not even notice it and that makes it perfect. Obviously the fashion in this movie is perfect. Firth is wearing gorgeous suits all through the film, Moore gets to wear a truly fabulous dress and even though Hoult is wearing a slightly outrageous outfit, it still looks great. It was always obvious in his Fashion that Tom Ford (who directed this movie) has a real eye for beauty but it is still very surprising that his first film is that stunning. I hope he will continue making films.

The title really does explain the movie. It can not only be read as a single man (instead of being in a couple) but the film is actually about one single man. Everyone else is a side character. I am not even sure what Julianne Moore is doing on the film poster. She doesn’t have a bigger role then anybody else. She is just more famous than Matthew Goode and Nicholas Hoult. (Hoult is really making it by the way. I just remember him as the boy in About a Boy but we just finished watching the British TV-series Skins and he has a major role in it. I am sure we will see more of him soon!)

I could easily go back to the cinema now and watch the movie again. Or maybe just dress up to the nines with lots of make-up, light up a cigarette and have some gin or whiskey (even though I don’t smoke and don’t really drink gin or whiskey and come to think of it, I don’t even normally wear make-up or fancy clothes) and just listen to a record and enjoy the rest of the evening. Because even though the film is ultimately very sad I went away with a happy feeling. The feeling of having fallen in love with a movie. It happens…once in a while.

Sherlock Holmes

The much anticipated Sherlock Holmes has been criticized a lot on other blogs. I wanted to see it for myself though because the trailer looked very promising. But I have to agree, it is not a brilliant film.

Robert Downey Jr. (Sherlock Holmes) is very well casted. He always seems quick witted and he is a bit of a bad boy. Perfect. Jude Law (Dr. Watson) would not have been who I would have casted but he is really good in the role. The slightly homosexual chemistry between the two works very well. The way it is filmed is quite nice. It has a dark and mysterious feel to it. What I didn’t like was that the fighting scenes with Holmes were always shown twice. Once in slow motion where Holmes is planning what he will do and knows exactly what impact it will have on the other person and then its shown again when he executes his plan. This would have been fine if he had failed once or something unexpected would have happened once. This way it was just a waste of time.

What really killed the film was the plot. It was boring, long and everything was foreseeable. Holmes also never had a moment where he actually figures something out in front of the camera. He always already knows everything. In my view, this film had everything going for it, it just wasn’t well told. This seems to be the problem with a lot of the recent films. Or maybe we, as a society, have seen too many films already and nothing can really surprise us anymore. I surely hope not though!

It’s Complicated

You might think that this is a strange mixture for a double feature but I can explain it: We planned to watch The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnussus as a second film but it was screened on another floor and we couldn’t sneak into it. It’s Complicated was the only other film starting at that time. Obviously I am not the target audience for this film at all and from the first time I saw the preview for it I thought it would be a horrible film. So why did we go into the screening anyway? I am a movie geek, what can I say.

To my complete surprise it turned out to be a really sweet and funny film. Jane (Meryl Streep) and Jake (Aec Baldwin) have been divorced for ten years and Jake is remarried to a much younger woman. Jane has come to terms with her life as a single woman and has no real interest in meeting men anymore. At their son’s graduation Jane and Jake somehow end up sleeping together which then turns into a full blown affair. At the same time Jane’s architect Adam (Steve Martin) start courting her.

Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin are really fun in this movie. Baldwin surprised me a lot. He does comedy really well and is perfectly casted. Even though he is playing an unsympathetic guy, he is still likable. Steve Martin is a very strange choice for this role. He is very serious and straight. Not his normal goofy self. I had no idea he could be serious. Although he looks like he has been lifted which is a bit strange. The trio works well together. John Krasinski as Meryl Streeps son in law is also hilarious. Although he has been in a lot of movies that I have seen, I didn’t really notice him until I saw Away We Go. He is great though and  I am hoping to see him in more films as a leading character soon.

The plot itself is rather uninteresting. I have seen this exact story in plenty of other films. But It’s Complicated gets some points for being entirely about people in their 50’s and 60’s. I am sure that there are films about that age group but I really can’t remember one right now.  Even though its not a perfectly made film, it is fun to watch and I know plenty of people (who are more the target audience then I am) who would enjoy watching it.

There are a lot movies that I have watched in the past few weeks that I haven’t reviewed yet. Mainly out of time reasons. I do try to write about all the films that I watch at the cinema but I can’t always keep up with my Netflix movies. So here are a few very short reviews.

What a great reason to test out my new rating system:

Love Actually This is a movie I have to watch at least every Christmas. I love pretty much everything about it. British cinema at its best! I don’t think I have to say anything else about it because you have all seen it. If you haven’t then what are you waiting for?

Paper Heart Recommended by David from Hoping for Something to Hope for, I really enjoyed watching this indie mocumentary. The main characters Charlyne Yi and Michael Cera (both playing themselves) make a very cute couple and their fictional love story goes well with the real interviews. It is a very cute film but won’t become one of my favorites.

The History Boys This is a fun film about a British all boys school. A few boys are preparing for their interviews at Oxford University with much help from their teachers. It is a sweet film but there are better films about all boys (or all girls) schools.

The Girl on the Bridge A beautiful and odd French film about a young women trying to commit suicide and being rescued by a man who turns out to be a Knife Thrower. Together they go on a journey to discover themselves and each other. It is a very unusual and wonderfully made movie.

The Way We Were A classic that I have only just watched for the first time. I think it is different to grow up with it but I really liked the story and the characters. I would have wished for a different ending though.

La Moustache This is a truly strange movie about a man who shaves off his mustache and to his surprise no one notices. People around him even deny the fact that he ever had a mustache. Honestly, that is the plot! I really liked it until the man goes off to Hong Kong and completely loses his mind (Or did I lose my mind watching it?).

Hideous Kinky Since Kate Winslet is in this movie, I have seen it a couple of times before. But a long time ago. I love the feel of the movie. I have never been to Morocco but I can almost taste the air when watching this film.

Postcards from the Edge Even though Meryl Streep plays the main character in this, the movie is completely forgettable. It’s not a bad film, it’s just not special in any way and the editing is awful and in my eyes ruins a movie that could otherwise be kinda fun.

My Cousin Vinny This is a surprisingly humorous film about two boys who through some misunderstanding face the death sentence for murder. One of the boys cousins, Vinny, just passed the bar and tries his best to defend them. It is simple but laugh out loud funny.

The Nightmare Before Christmas Tim Burton Rocks!

This is him at his finest.

Eyes of Laura Mars A dark murder mystery about a woman who takes fashion photos of murder scenes that haven’t happened yet. She starts getting visions while the murders happen. It’s well made, well acted and mysterious enough to have kept my attention. It reminded me a lot of Peeping Tom though.

mce_markerA new year, a new MovieNess feature. I have decided to introduce a rating system. It is based on the Netflix rating system: 1-5 Stars, including half stars. Obviously, I wanted to make it a bit more fun than that, so here it goes:

A film strip with movie stars! This would be 5 stars (loved it!):

Two and a half stars (it was ok):

Zero stars (hated it!):

Should be easy enough to understand Let me know what you think about it!