My 2010 Movie Odyssey - Part X

Repo Man (1984)

This movie can’t decide if it’s a coming of age story featuring lots of colorful characters or if it’s a movie about dangerous alien technology. Either one of those could be interesting but thrown together they end up being at odds with one another ultimately resulting in an interesting failure of a movie.

The Lovely Bones (2009)

What was so great about this story that it HAD to be a movie? Whatever it was did not come across on screen. Narrative threads disappear without warning, the afterlife in which the murdered main character finds herself makes very little sense, and it all leads up to an unsatisfying non-ending. Sure the visuals are pretty cool in the afterlife scenes and Stanley Tucci is pretty creepy as the murderer, but it still just adds up to a rather empty and bleak two hours.

The Blind Side (2009)

This is a wonderful movie about unconditional love and how it can change the lives of not only the recipient but also the giver as well.

Fantasyland (2010)

Every year a bunch of experts in fantasy baseball play against each other in a high profile league called Tout Wars. One year the question was asked, “How well would a regular guy do against all these so-called experts?” Enter Jed Latkin, a wide-eyed, enthusiastic fan of fantasy baseball. He starts out as David versus Goliath, but as the movie progresses he is so obsessed with winning that we soon start rooting for him to fail because he is so obnoxious. At one point he is more interested in swinging a trade than being with his wife while she is in labor. For people who are unfamiliar with fantasy baseball, it isn’t a very good primer on how the game works. On the other hand, for people like me who are avid fans of the game, there was a frustrating lack of information about how he managed his team (and we were never once treated to a look at his entire roster). It is worth checking out for people who are already fans of fantasy baseball, but for those who are more interested in learning about fantasy baseball, the 45 minute documentary “Silly Little Game” produced by ESPN is much more informative.

Gun Crazy (1950)

The noir-ish look to this film is why phrases such as "glorious black and white" exist. It is glorious to look at. Unfortunately, it is accompanied by a thinly-veiled cautionary tale of how a young man's life can be ruined by fast women and an obsession with guns.

Coming up next: a couple older comedies.