Tuesday, November 23, 2010

My 2010 Movie Odyssey - Part V

The Jacket (2005)
I was hoping for an interesting, mess-with-your-mind movie that kept me guessing through the very end. Instead I got a mediocre movie with some uninspired time travel.

A Christmas Carol (2009)
This may be the most cinematic version of A Christmas Carol ever made and the most visually stunning. On the other hand, Jim Carrey as an old man was weird (he should have waited 20 years to play Scrooge), Bob Cratchit just looked off, and the whole thing came off as rather emotionally shallow.

Catwoman (2004)
This movie is a series of dumb ideas. First of all, they completely threw out all of the Batman mythology surrounding the character of Catwoman and made up a completely new world around the character. So what was the point of calling it Catwoman? Then they cast the severely overrated Halle Berry as Catwoman. Then they dressed her in some bizarre, partially completed dominatrix outfit. The story is dumb and there are no interesting characters. There are, however, too many shots of cats for me to truly hate this movie, and Halle Berry acting all cat-like was actually a well-executed idea.

Cloverfield (2008)
I am glad I waited until DVD to see this movie. The concept is interesting and the camera-work is believable as found footage shot by an amateur. On the other hand, the single point of view got a little monotonous, and I would have liked to have a little more explanation for everything that happened.

Eight Men Out (1988)
This dramatization of the 1919 Black Sox scandal examines what it would take for prominent members of the best team in baseball to intentionally lose the world series. It is an interesting character study, and of course features lots of baseball. (Though I did find the movie a little frustrating in that I recognized almost all the actors but couldn’t figure out where I recognized them from, even after a trip to imdb.)

Coming up next: some classic and not-so-classic horror.

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