The Book of Eli

Woah. I like seeing movie's in the theater. I just feel like everything's better on the big screen. See this in theater's. The Book of Eli wasn't exactly what I thought it would be. It had the action I expected. Denzel being Man on Fire Denzel. But there were so many other qualities that I didn't expect. This movie is about the power of the Bible. The real Bible. Not some universal, Hollywood Bible. The real thing. There were only a couple things I didn't like. Really just one. There was some weak sauce product placement. A dilapidated Busch Beer truck, a run down J Crew store, a couple Oakley products, and my personal favorite, some very fresh looking Beats by Dr. Dre earbuds. They weren't too distracting though.

Let's talk about characters before we get into the plot. Gary Oldman, Commissioner Gordon, Lee Harvey Oswald, Rosencrantz, plays the best bad guy I've seen in awhile. Truly evil. Corrupt, selfish, dirty. Every moment he's on screen he eats it up. You're always focused on him. Mila Kunis plays the first really serious dramatic role that I've ever seen her in like she's been doing it her whole life. She's a pretty powerful screen presence too, which I didn't expect. And she's gorgeous. Denzel, as previously mentioned and always expected, is perfect.

I'm a fan of post-apocalyptic stuff. I haven't gotten around to seeing The Road yet, but the book was fantastic and I expect that movie to be much like this. Shot with that colorless filter one would expect of a world after what was most likely a nuclear war. They never really say exactly what happened, I guess it's not important. The cinematography was pretty good. Not great. But there weren't too many lame tricks. No Matrix garbage that's so over played. That slo-mo stuff was cool 10 years ago. Not any more. I was glad this movie didn't employ any of that.

This movie is all about the Bible. Denzel was led to a Bible amongst the rubble by a voice, presumably God's. The voice told him to take the Bible west. So he does. The whole movie is centered around him traveling west, to the coast. (Stolen from The Road? Maybe, but I don't really care.) Denzel understands that this Bible means something. That its words are powerful. That it can change the world. How true is that? Isn't that what Christianity teaches? The to Bible, and its Gospel, has the power to change the world. But evil knows this too. And evil wants to take the Bible and twist it, stretch it, and make it serve its own purposes. That's what Oldman wants to do. He plays this small time crime lord who employs brutal men to carry out his brutal tasks in order to find a Bible. While Satan is tempting Jesus in the wilderness in Matthew 4, he quotes the scriptures, but out of context, for his own purposes. And thats what Oldman wants to do. But good prevails, even though it looks like evil will. Oldman finally acquires Denzel's Bible, only to find that he can't read it the way he expected. And when Denzel and Mila Kunis finally make it to the coast and find a safe haven of knowledge and books that are intended to reteach and rebuild the devastated planet, Denzel is able to dictate the entire Bible to Malcolm McDowell from Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. The entire message of the movie is simple. The Bible is powerful, and it's words can bring Light into the world. But, "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves." Matthew 7:15.

Cinderella Man

Cinderella Man is so great to watch. I really like everything about it. The words, "Based on a True Story" can either be the best or the worst words ever to appear in a movie trailer. The words "Starring Harrison Ford" and "Directed by Michael Bay" come in a close second and third.

I've always liked boxing movies. The affair for every guy starts with Rocky. You're about 8, you walk into the living room and your dad's watching Rocky. You sit down. And you love it. I feel like that story's pretty standard. Cinderella Man is very little like Rocky. In Rocky, the conflict is man v. self. But in Cinderella Man, the conflict is both man v. world and man v. man. Let's take the second on, man v. man. Max Baer, played by some guy named Craig Bierko who, since this movie came out in 2005, has had the prestigious honor of being in Scary Movie 4, a couple episodes of Boston Legal, one episode of Nip/Tuck, and Superhero Movie, is a true villains villain. He's mean, narcissistic, and you really hate him. Apparently, Baer's descendants were really upset by his portrayal in this movie and insisted that he was torn up by two men he killed in the ring and considered never fighting again as a result. Nevertheless, you're really really happy when Russell Crowe beats him.

The man v. world aspect of this movie is what really makes it I think. Everyone who made it through 7th grade social studies knows about the Depression, but it takes a good movie to make it real sometimes. Russell Crowe and Renee Zellweger do some of their best work as the struggling, but obviously madly in love, Braddock couple. Both of them do great Jersey accents and look the part. There was a great Chris Rock bit from some awards show he hosted a few years ago. He was talking about Crowe and how good he is in period movies and he said something to the effect of, "If you hire Russell Crowe to play a guy from last Tuesday you'll watch the movie and say, 'Damn man! That looks like last Tuesday!'" And he's really right. Although not really a method actor, Crowe always looks and sounds the part. Except in Gladiator where the gave him a British accent. But for that I blame Hollywood for assuming that Americans want everyone who's not from America to have a British accent if they're a good guy and a Russian accent if they're a bad guy.

Paul Giamatti is one of my favorite actors. He's not a Denzel type of actor who plays only a few types of roles and has never made a bad movie though. He's more of a De Niro type of actor who's not afraid to be in some comedies, some kids movies, some horror movies, some dramas, and out of all of that he's not worried about a couple stinkers. I was so glad that he won Best Supporting Actor for this movie. He really was fantastic.

I love the way this movie's shot too. It has that Gangs of New York, Band of Brothers, feel that seems very old. One of my favorite scenes is where Renee Zellweger is washing a pan in their apartment and Russell Crowe is teaching his son how to box. You start hearing the scraping of the spatula against the pan along with exaggerated sounds of a small boy's fist hitting his father's hand with flashbacks of the funeral of their friend who was killed in Hooverville. You can see the stress boiling up in Zellweger's eyes and the incessant sounds aren't helping. When she snaps you get one of those emotionally stirring moments that director Ron Howard does so flawlessly.

After I saw this movie in the theater for the first time, my buddies and I immediately went and boxed in one of our friend's front yards. And just today when I sat down to watch it, everyone new who walked in and asked what we were watching said, "Good movie" and sat down upon hearing that Cinderella Man was in the DVD player. It's just that kind of movie. It's inspiring, visually stimulating, and a perfect good guy story. For the first time on this blog I'm going to snob out and drop the f-bomb. I really loved this film.

Observe and Report

It's simple, Paul Blart minus family fun and Kevin James plus Seth Rogen, 100 F-bombs, and a lot of unexpected weiner. It's a pretty straight forward story line. Seth Rogen works security, is in love with a great Anna Faris bimbo, gets coffee from the cute girl from Fist Foot Way, and catches a streaking pervert with the help of Landry from Friday Night Lights and two Asian guys who should absolutely have been in The Ringer.

It's funny. It's a good bro movie where you just pop it in and don't take it too seriously. Ray Liotta seems out of his element as the detective, but he's still alright. The Indian guy from Parks and Rec is really memorable as Saddamn and provides the most quoatable line of the movie.

I wouldn't call any abrupt and unexpected change in a Seth Rogen movie a plot twist. But I don't know what else to call everything that happens randomly at the end of this movie. All of a sudden Seth Rogen is doing lines of coke, shooting heroin, and beating the crap out of high school skateboard kids in the parking lot with some guy who's channeling Fez from That 70's Show. Whatever, it's funny. The movie is rolling along and then all of a sudden everything goes crazy and then it ends. Watch it once and every time someone suggests eating at Chick-fil-A remind them why you wouldn't ever blow up a Chick-fil-A.

Office Space

Ok, Office Space is good. And very funny. A lot of comedy's rely solely on sexual, 8th grade humor. Office Space seems a little more high brow. The cast makes this movie though. Ron Livingston is great as Peter. He speaks with the same relaxed cadence as Ferris Bueller. No one who's seen either Office Space or Band of Brothers without seeing the other could possibly imagine Livingston in the other role. The guy who plays Milton might as well never play another role. This one is just too perfect. Lumbergh is great, Michael Bolton is great, Samir is great.

This movie is really quotable too. Which is always a bonus. But it's not quotable in the traditional way. This movie is tonally quotable, if that makes any sense. Mumbling like Milton and saying, "Yeah..." like Lumbergh will always be popular. The soundtrack is also so so good. Gangsta rap from the 90s is the opposite of the type of music you'd expect from a movie like this, but it works so well. I really think it even raised the bar to a certain degree for the soundtracks of movies like Pineapple Express, which also employed gangsta rap untraditionally. It all starts in the first scene with Michael Bolton breakin' it down in his car and locking his door and turning down his music when a black homeless guy walks by. But the fax machine destroying scene takes it to a whole new level. "Damn it feels good to be a gangsta."

Man on Fire

Most underrated movie of this decade. I'm almost sure of it. And every time I rewatch it, I gain a new sense of respect for it. So many aspects of this movie appeal to me. I enjoy the cinematography, the action, even the shrewd use of subtitles. Denzel Washington is great and Dakota Fanning is even better. The performances of Marc Anthony in his pre-JLo days and Mickey Rourke in his not-quite-yet-post-addiction days are both fantastic. Anthony is unbearably broken when Denzel confronts him about his involvement in Dakota Fanning's kidnapping. Rourke is in his element playing a snakey attorney who thought it better to be rich than assure the safety of a little girl.

I'm not sure if I've ever seen a Denzel Washington movie that I didn't like. Philadelphia, John Q, Remember the Titans, The Pelican Brief, American Gangster, The Manchurian Candidate, Glory. Everything he's in is great. And Man on Fire is no exception. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it leads all of the aforementioned movies. I'll give it a push up against Remember the Titans and The Manchurian Candidate because the league leader in movie views with substitute teachers and anything with Meryl Streep actually acting and not just playing a goofball are pretty hard to beat.

I mentioned this earlier, but the subtitling in this movie is really great. The whole movie takes place in Mexico and a good deal of the dialogue, even by Denzel, is in Spanish. Subtitles are therefore necessary. Subtitles have a tendency to slow the movie down which can then lead to the movie dragging and becoming unwatchable because of the average bum's inability to read along properly. But the Man on Fire subtitles flow seamlessly with the movie. Words often appear one at a time and on different parts of the screen, thereby becoming part of the cinematographic look of the movie instead of simply a necessity. Also, subtitles are sometimes used highlight important words or phrases that occur later in the movie, even if they're spoken in English and don't need to be translated. It's a pretty cool technique and I can't really think of anywhere else I've seen it used.

Overall, a really, really great movie. It's rewatchable. It's accessible. And Denzel gets to go commando all over corrupt Mexican cops.