Entertainment round up: Movies

This took way longer than anticipated to write up. The TV/books edition will have to wait for another day. Enjoy...and tell me what movies you've watched recently!

Movies:

Away We Go (theater)
✰✰✰✰
Loved the performances, especially Maya Rudolph. (Jon Krasinski was solid with surprisingly nuanced moments and I always enjoy Maggie Gyllenhall. Allison Janney was shockingly funny.) Loved the soundtrack (check out Alexi Murdoch a Scottish singer-songwriter). The muted colors, the meditation on geography and place, family and home, I enjoyed the ride. The tone of the movie shifts quite a bit from outrageous humor to melodrama, but it still worked for me, in the end.

Burn After Reading (on demand)
✰✰✰✰
Loved the performances, especially Frances McDormand. (Always delighted to see Tilda Swinton, and Clooney and Pitt did not disappoint here.) I liked how literally loopy this movie was. Characters and stories circle around, came together, and then went their separate ways, only to come together again in a different configuration. It's noirish, but in broad daylight, which would make it not everybody's piece of cake. But, it worked for me. (I saw both this and Away We Go with Cap and liked them both better than he did. He gave them both "it was alright" :-)

Role Models (dvd)
✰✰✰✰
I thought this movie was hilarious. I watched it with high hopes and was not disappointed. I love Paul Rudd and have a growing appreciation for Seann William Scott. The language is really raunchy, but there is a sweet story that manages to be served up, despite the "salty" exterior.

Hancock (on demand)
✰✰✰
This movie could have been better than it was. More clearly than most "ok" movies. I like Will Smith and watched this because he was in it and it was free (much like I Am Legend a few months ago). It's a super hero story (a genre of story I like) and had some good twists. Jason Bateman and Charlize Theron are solid actors who provided good support (which came first this movie or Arrested Development? :-) You do have to suspend more belief than you have already watching a super hero movie and it all kind of ends in a mess. Like I said, it could have been better...

The House Bunny (on demand)
✰✰✰ 1/2
Anna Faris is great. A joy to watch. I liked her on Entourage and she delivers the goods in this movie. The movie is genre-y. It's feminist and funny despite the inevitable "makeovers".

Slumdog Millionaire (dvd)
✰✰✰✰ 1/2
Loved it. I will lap up the romance of destiny every single time. Even though I don't believe in it in real life. Or maybe I do... The cinematography, the music, the actors, loved it.

Twilight (dvd)
✰✰✰
I loved the books and went into this movie with little in the way of expectations. Kristen Stewart is perfect as Bella. (Pattinson, unfortunately, is all wrong...so far. Actually, I thought most of the other major characters looked miscast. The only other ones who I thought came close were Jacob and Victoria.) Not surprisingly, the scenes I enjoyed the most were the ones with special effects (the baseball scene and the one where Edward races through the forest with Bella on his back and they end up hanging out atop a huge ass tree.)

Up (theater)
✰✰✰✰
I went to see this with Sag. We did not see the 3D version. Another entertaining Pixar production. Fantastic animation. There were some good messages in the movie that I appreciated. The dogs were really funny.

Into The Wild (on demand)
✰✰✰✰
A great performance by Emile Hirsch. Beautiful cinematography. Good soundtrack (Eddie Vedder did the music.) Depressing as hell, but really well done. (Directed by Sean Penn.)

The Dark Knight (on demand)
✰✰✰ 1/2
Love Christian Bale. Squealed when I saw Cillian Murphy for a few seconds, but his character, The Scarecrow, is destined for a future movie. This movie, this portion of the Batman story, is...dour. Batman is feeling kind of down for the whole movie and this kind of relentlessness doesn't make for pleasant entertainment. Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhall and Aaron Eckhart were particularly enjoyable in supporting roles. And Heath Ledger's performance was remarkable. Subtlety and nuance when playing The Joker? He does just that, masterfully.

Iron Man (dvd)
✰✰✰✰
This movie was really fun. The colors, the effects, the story, the actors, everything was presented as in a comic book. Simply (direct and uncomplicated), yet with a certain vibrance. With heart, with camaraderie. I admire Robert Downey Jr.'s art and he is really good in this movie.