"Arthur Christmas" Brings Yuletide Cheer At The Start Of The Holiday Season

Finally, a quality Christmas movie since Elf that isn't a "Christmas Carol" adaptation!  This film follows the title character, Arthur, who discovers that, after what seems to be a perfect Christmas Eve for the Santa family, one gift has been left behind meaning one child will end up present-less.  It sounds like your typical Christmas movie, but it's actually quite unique and quite hilarious.

Arthur Christmas, an Aardman production for Sony Pictures Animation, starts off very similarly to Disney's holiday special Prep & Landing with secret agent-like elves using advanced technology and gadgetry to complete their deeds as Santa's little helpers on Christmas Eve.  Although it seemed to be an outright copycat at first, Arthur Christmas used this idea in a much cooler and eye-catching way.  After getting out of a jam and finishing a long night of delivering presents in the very high tech S1 sleigh, the elves and the Santa family celebrate back at the North Pole.  Then they find out about the wrapped-up bicycle that went unnoticed and undelivered.

The current Santa, boringly voiced by Jim Broadbent (a bit of a letdown since he is the iconic figure), goes right to sleep, ignoring the forgotten child.  The Santa-to-be, Santa's son Steve, voiced by Hugh Laurie, claims that the night was still a success due to the very small margin of error.  But Arthur, Santa's youngest son, voiced by James McAvoy, is as obsessed with the holiday as Will Ferrel's Elf and believes that the present must be delivered so the child can wake up to a gift the way all children should.  Grandsanta, hilariously voiced by Bill Nighy, agrees to help with his old sleigh to prove that newer is not always better.

Along with an elf that has a knack for wrapping, the former Santa and his grandson set off on an adventure.  As funny and emotional as the film may be, there are some issues.  It's very interesting to see an all British cast in an Americanized Christmas movie, but at times it seemed a little too British.  I've seen many acclaimed British comedies that I've enjoyed, but have also been like "What the hell is this guy saying?"  Grandsanta has some great lines, but also some that went right over my head because of his extreme accent.  British! British! British!

And as with most 3D movies, it's completely unnecessary.  This style is even less appreciated when you're in a theater as crappy as South Bay Cinemas in West Babylon where they don't even turn the lights off until you say something.  Some material in the film also seemed to be a bit much for children, which made me laugh, but may not have been understood by my eight-year-old sister.  And as likable as the main character should be, Arthur was a bit intolerable at times due to McAvoy's overacting and nonstop yelling that exceeded normal excitement.

Nevertheless, Arthur Christmas is a good new Christmas movie, although part of me thinks it won't be played every holiday season for years to come.  I could be wrong though because I've seen Fred Claus played on TBS multiple times and that movie is as enjoyable as a three-year-old fruitcake.  It could become a classic since it borrows from other holiday films like the aforementioned Fred Claus, showing the lives of the entire Santa family, Prep & Landing, with its use of high tech elves, and Elf, with its super excited human who kind of acts like an elf, but manages to make itself an original treat.

Arthur Christmas may share a few similarities with these films, but its emotional ending and Christmas message, along with its great use of humor, make it stand out.  After decades of the same holiday specials being played over and over, hopefully future Christmas movies can try to achieve their own unique styles, giving us a whole new batch of holiday treats.

I think I'll try implementing a star rating for those of you who don't like to read.

Here you go: 3/4 stars

"Melancholia" Is Visually Stunning

So I saw this in my friend's apartment where he downloaded the film and hooked it up to his TV.  Since I was not in a movie theater environment, I was not fully engrossed in the movie, but it deserves a review nonetheless (granted it will be brief).  Melancholia follows two sisters after the wedding of one of them, Kirsten Dunst as Justine, while Earth is about to collide with a rogue planet that the film is named after.  The first half focuses on Dunst's character who is experiencing melancholia, giving the title more than one meaning, which is a Greek word meaning sadness, further described as a "mood disorder of non-specific depression."  Being in this state allows Dunst to give a great performance, earning her the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival.

The second half follows Justine's sister, Claire, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg.  In my opinion, she handles the inevitable doom in a much more believable way.  She is constantly freaking out and is more noticeably depressed, while Justine is very calm and quiet while dealing with the end of the world.  Kiefer Sutherland is also in Melancholia, as Claire's husband, and proves that he can be more than just a hitman or a secret agent.  

Although the actors do a wonderful job in the film, I enjoyed it more for its visuals.  The characters use a simple homemade device to judge whether or not the planet is moving closer, and it creates a beautiful spectacle.  And overall, the whole thing is visually captivating.  The fact that they live on a golf course with the most amazing view certainly doesn't hurt.

So if you're sick of blockbuster end of the world films, and want to see a disaster movie done in a more artsy and emotional way then consider downloading Melancholia.  The director, Lars von Trier, has experience with this type of movie and certainly knows what he is doing, although he seems like a total weirdo.  In a Kirsten Dunst interview, the actress said he would run around with his pants off just to get a laugh.  You don't have to worry about that sight in the actual film, but you do get to see Kirsten Dunst's boobs.  How's that for "visually stunning"?

"Tower Heist" Is An Investment That Sometimes Pays Off

I'd like to start off by saying that I've made multiple attempts to see this movie.  It was sold out twice in one night, and plans fell through the other few times I tried to check out Tower Heist, so I apologize for the lack of reviews throughout the month of November.  Anyway, last night I went back and forth between Tower Heist and The Descendants, not quite sure which I'd rather see more, favoring one over the other for brief moments, until I finally decided I'd try one last time to see Tower Heist.  The actual heist takes place during the Thanksgiving Day Parade and I figured this would put me in the holiday spirit.  However, since I failed in my attempts at seeing it so many times, maybe those were signs saying I shouldn't waste an evening with this mainstream jibber jabber.  But I digress.  The fact of the matter is, it was a Monday night and it's been out for a while and I got tickets no problem.  Let's talk about the actual movie.

So I don't think I need to get too into the plot points because the title itself tells you what this movie is all about.  Plus, it's a Brett Ratner film so the plot doesn't really matter because let's face it, this director just puts out decent crap.  And that's really all it is.  But in case you don't know, the movie takes place at The Tower, just like the Trump one, located in Columbus Circle.  I'm not sure how I managed to live there during the filming of it and not notice the production, but they probably only needed a few shots and I just missed out.  So Alan Alda plays Arthur Shaw, who is essentially Bernie Madoff, and he does a great job with this role.  Like Madoff, Shaw steals the Tower's employee's pensions in a Ponzi scheme.  Although Josh Kovacs, our protagonist played by Ben Stiller, had a very close relationship with Shaw at first, he discovers that his doorman friend got screwed over and he decides to get a motley crew together to steal back everyone's money.

The cast of characters includes: Matthew Broderick as a somewhat unintentionally hilarious Mr. Fitzhugh, who has recently been evicted, Casey Affleck as a less enjoyable, but not so bad version of himself in the Ocean's movies, Gabourey Sidibe as a pretty funny maid, and finally Eddie Murphy back to his hysterical, not Meet Dave self.  It took a while for him to finally get screen time in the film, making the first half hour or so quite stale, but it picks up once Eddie joins the crew.

So the plan for the heist gets pretty crazy and a bit unbelievable, but it's all in good fun.  The movie is nothing special, but it will hopefully pave the way for Eddie Murphy to get back on track with his career.  It's a shame that Ratner screwed up his chances at the Oscars, but I don't think he was ever truly committed to hosting anyway.  So if you have time to kill and wish to see decent performances from a decent cast, then check out Tower Heist.  I know it's been out for several weeks, but I'm glad I got it out of the way before Thanksgiving break.  The Muppets looks like it'll be a great movie-going experience.

"The Ides of March" Gets My Vote

With the extensive coverage of the Republican presidential debates currently going on, as well as my, for lack of a better word, hatred for politics,  I found myself wondering why I was in the theater for The Ides of March.  Truth is, I had a free ticket and knew of the potential Oscar buzz for George Clooney's latest project.  I went in thinking it would be one of those movies that's only considered good because of who is responsible for it, and overall it'd be rather dull and boring.  However, I was wrong.  The Ides of March is truly captivating, due to the renowned cast, the great twists, and of course, Clooney's directing.

The film follows Stephen Meyers, wonderfully played by Ryan Gosling, the Junior Campaign Manager for Mike Morris (George Clooney), Governor of Pennsylvania and a Democratic presidential candidate.  It takes place in Ohio, where Meyers and the Senior Campaign Manager, Paul Zara, (Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is perfect as always) are trying to enlist support for Morris, which would basically guarantee his nomination.  It is clear that Meyers is a very important asset to the campaign, which leads to the rival candidate's campaign manager, Tom Duffy, played by Paul Giamatti (also perfect), asking for a meeting with Meyers to try and convince him to join the other side.  Overall, the movie focuses on loyalty, which is something that Hoffman gives a powerful speech about.

It's difficult to say much about the plot without giving away the twists, but if you thought it would be just a boring movie about politics like I did, you need to realize it's nothing of the sort.  Although the story is genuinely entertaining, The Ides of March really is about the acting.  Ryan Gosling will most likely be nominated for Best Actor.  There's one scene that had me on the edge of my seat, waiting for him to stomp someone's head to a pool of blood a la Drive.  It didn't happen, but Gosling continues to prove that he could be the next Clooney.  The poster for Ides couldn't be more appropriate and accurate.  George Clooney may not get a nod, but in my opinion, his character should be the next president.  Philip Seymour Hoffman could get a nomination for Best Supporting Actor, but he probably could've gotten that for Along Came Polly too.  He's always superb.  The most captivating performance had to be from Evan Rachel Wood as Molly Stearns, an intern for Morris' campaign.  She ends up having a much bigger impact than your average coffee-fetching 20-something.

If you're looking to escape the real news regarding politics and want a more appealing story than whatever is going on with Mitt Romney or Michele Bachmann, then check out The Ides of March.  You'd probably also save some time for when Oscar season rolls around and you're racing to the theater to see everything that's nominated.

"Moneyball" For The Win

Whether you're a baseball fan or not, I'm almost positive you'll really enjoy Moneyball.  And if you don't for some reason, I'm sure you'll at least be able to appreciate it as a great work of cinema.  The film starts off showing the 2001 postseason game between the Oakland Athletics and the New York Yankees.  It's portrayed as if you are watching it through an old, fuzzy television to make it seem more historic.  Although this is just the first few minutes of the film, you immediately start to root for the underdog as you learn just how much more money the Yankees have than a low-budget baseball team like the A's.  I felt a little bad being a Yankee fan, but it didn't alter my love of the pinstripes.  However, it is a very moving film and for 2 hours and 6 minutes I was rooting for Billy Beane's baseball club.

After a very tough loss for the A's (not just the postseason game but also star players like Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon), the general manager, Billy Beane, played by a very funny and emotional Brad Pitt, realizes that he needs to completely restructure his team.  He does so with the help of Peter Brand, wonderfully played by Jonah Hill, who does all the calculations to assemble a brand new ball club.  Together, they focus heavily on players' on base percentage, which upsets the older scouts who Beane has worked with for years.  At first this seems to be a complete failure, but if you know anything about the A's, they end up making baseball history.  

I'm not going to bother summarizing the whole movie.  If you want to know what happened with Billy Beane and the 2002 Oakland Athletics, you could Google it in a heartbeat.  However, if you want to see a fantastic performance by Brad Pitt and the rest of the cast, and see baseball from a powerful emotional perspective, then see Moneyball.  Jonah Hill, although quite funny in this role, further proves he is more than just someone to laugh at on the big screen.  Philip Seymour Hoffman is perfectly cast as Art Howe, the stubborn manager who refuses to test Beane's strategy.  It is also great to see Chris Pratt, from Parks and Recreation, on the big screen.  As for the star, Brad Pitt manages to keep the audience cheering by his side whether he is hilariously making player trades with the help of Jonah Hill, or unleashing his hotheaded fury on players and occasionally objects in his clubhouse as a result of consistent losses.  He is at his best, however, while sharing the screen with Kerris Dorsey, who plays Beane's smart and talented daughter.

Overall, Moneyball is a terrific film.  Many people are calling it The Social Network of baseball movies.  I guess I would agree, not just because this is also written by Aaron Sorkin, but because it is an intelligent and possibly Oscar-worthy motion picture.  But do you have to be a baseball fan to like Moneyball?  I don't think so.  You'll certainly enjoy it a lot more if you are, but either way, Moneyball is a home run.

"Drive" Starts Off Too Slow...Then Crashes Violently

As you all know, my latest review was for Contagion, which I had very mixed feelings about.  What you may not know, however, is that while waiting for that movie to begin, all I wanted to do was see Drive.  It was one of the previews before Contagion and I had been dying to see it.  So a few days ago I went to check it out feeling pretty pumped about it, but man was I disappointed.

The film starts out very quiet with no more than a few words spoken.  We follow the "hero," Ryan Gosling, who is simply called "Driver," carry out one of his missions.  And I'm not going to lie, he's a badass.  However, towards the latter half of the film, I wasn't expecting him to turn out to be a genuine psycho rather than a James Bond-like protagonist.  But I'll get to that later.  

So Gosling is helping some guys rob a place and uses his unique driving skills to avoid the cops as they flee the scene of the crime.  With this downright cool sequence, I really thought I was in for something incredible.  Then the '80s style credits roll, followed by about an hour of Gosling falling for Carey Mulligan and hanging out with her kid while the father is in prison.  These 60 minutes feature about twenty full sentences, with so few words from Gosling I could count them on one hand, one short scene giving evidence to the fact that Gosling is a stunt driver for the movies, a couple of parts featuring Gosling working as a mechanic for Bryan Cranston, and two *t0t@l1y hiP* songs.  

The director, Nicolas Winding Refn, throws in a little thing about Albert Brooks, head honcho of the mob, asking Gosling to be a stock car driver, but the main focus so far is the love story.  This begins to fall apart when the husband, played by Oscar Isaac, comes home from prison.  He is in a lot of trouble and the bad guys say they will hurt his family.  Gosling will have none of this.  He goes on a mission to steal a million bucks from a pawn shop with the husband to pay for his protection.  Things go terribly wrong and here comes the violence.  I remember reading that this movie may be too violent for some and for the first hour I was thinking, "What the hell are these people talking about?"  I shut up the second someone got their head blown to smithereens.  Now the film changes from super indy/artsy to unnecessarily violent.  I mean, the kills are pretty cool, but it was just too drastic of a change.  The gangsters, including Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman (who looks like Johnny Drama's cartoon character, Johnny Bananas on Entourage) want to kill everyone who stole the money and keep the million for themselves.  Ryan Gosling goes f***ing nuts.  As I watched him beat people to a pulp (he never uses a gun), I thought, "How could this quiet, calm man be so crazy?"  Then I realized, most of the quiet ones are.  I was completely caught off guard and didn't know how to react.  Anyway he tries to hunt them all down, a ton of people die, there are about five way over the top kills, and it ends all symbolically.

Now I'll admit that the film is very stylishly directed, explaining why Refn won Best Director at Cannes.  However, I think the abundance of fancy mise-en-scene (yeah, just learned that in my communications class, look it up) makes it seem as if the actors are performing amazingly.  Is it really so hard to not say anything and just look cool?  Maybe, but I don't think so.  I can see why some would consider this a masterpiece, but it didn't really dazzle me.  The more I think about it, the more I imagine how completely wrong I could be.  I've never seen A Clockwork Orange, but I believe I feel the same way about Drive as people who have seen Clockwork feel about that.  A masterpiece, but kind of slow and gross?  I'm not too sure.  I just feel that a lot more could have been done.  He barely even drives in the movie.  I'm not exactly saying I wanted it to be a studio film, but if there were more missions showing him being the getaway guy, more peeks into the life of a Hollywood stunt driver, more dialogue and appropriate action, it could have been awesome.  The film is still well done in a sense, but I think the concept was wasted.

I thought I'd leave wanting to get into a car chase, but I just left bewildered.  I thought Ryan Gosling was the s*** after Crazy, Stupid, Love but after his performance in Drive I'm just hoping I can appreciate his future projects, such as The Ides of March without playing this one scene over and over in my head.  Let's just say, if you see Drive you'll understand when I claim that I can never ride in an elevator the same way again.

"Contagion" Spreads like the Flu with Minimal Effects

Let me start off by saying that I've had issues with Contagion before it even hit theaters.  A few months ago, way before any preview had been released for the movie, I had a dream about a disease wiping out the population.  It played out like a film in my head, and the second I woke up, I wrote down what happened because I figured it could be a good idea for a screenplay (hopefully one day I'll have time to write my own movie and not just a few paragraphs every now and then reviewing one written by someone famous...we'll see).  So yeah, I was pretty upset when I finally did see the trailer.  I had to check it out though to see just how similar it was compared to my tentative script.

The movie starts off with sequences of people simply touching things.  And since it's clear that this is a movie about germs and a fatal disease that spreads across the globe, I was immediately grossed out.  However, the cringing just about ends there apart from one scene involving Gwyneth Paltrow's autopsy.  If you've seen the trailer, you know that's not a spoiler.  She's the first one dead.  The studio certainly could've saved some money casting a nobody for her role, but Contagion is all about the ensemble cast.

So thanks to whatever Gwyneth did (you'll find out), the world is suffering from bird flu times 1,000.  This leaves her husband, Matt Damon, who is immune to the disease, alone with his daughter from a previous marriage.  He deals with the loss of his wife, and the anxiety of whether or not his daughter is immune, thus turning him into an overprotective father, but reasonably so.

Laurence Fishburne and Kate Winslet do the best they can to figure out how exactly this disease originated, and what elements make it up so they can come up with a cure.  Bryan Cranston is thrown into the mix and aids in the CDC's efforts.  Marion Cotillard works with the World Health Organization and is kidnapped in Hong Kong and held there until her captors receive the vaccine.  Jude Law is a blogger who gets rich and famous for his conspiracy stating that the government started this disease with the pharmaceutical companies for a profit.  I think that covers most of the ensemble cast.  It was kind of hard to keep up.

Now Contagion is actually a pretty good film, but there's too much, yet too little going on for it to be great.  With regards to the story, most of the movie is like an actual newscast or even a documentary making the whole thing very believable.  However, this involves simply showing people doing research while playing dark and ominous music.  There's not enough action or enough scenes depicting what is happening to everyone.  But I guess a bunch of seizures on screen would get old.  That's where there is too little.  The number of story lines and characters bring too much in a sense, which then results in minimal character development.  Don't get me wrong, the acting is great.  It truly felt like watching real people react to an epidemic, but there was so much I wanted to see happen for each character, particularly Cotillard who connects with the children she is surrounded by while held captive.  We learn that and see that develop in about 10 seconds.  At the end, however, we see Matt Damon crying over his wife's death, but seeing hope in his daughter who is going to prom that night.  They tried to make us feel really sorry for him, but it's not like he was the only person we followed throughout.

The final scene shows how the disease started.  It's actually a very cool sequence, but we were already told what happened, so this was literally just seeing it.  I'm really going back and forth with how I feel about Contagion.  The movie is very well directed by Steven Soderbergh and the performances are great, but it just wasn't as thrilling as I had hoped.  I did like it as an example of how crazy our society can get when given tragic news that will affect everyone's lives.  This is where the tagline "Nothing spreads like fear" comes in.  It was also cool as a metaphor for how quickly information can spread on the internet and how something like what Jude Law's character says, which is false, can result in an insane amount of people following one random person with a blog (should be me).  It's really disgusting to see people view him as a "prophet" only his posters say "profit" because of what he thinks the government is doing.  Think Glenn Beck, but not as bad.
Anyway, I washed my hands immediately after the movie, but then when I got on the subway to go home, I held the rail without hesitation.  I think that about sums up my uncertain reactions to Contagion.  Maybe if I ever get to writing a screenplay based on my dream, the audience will walk away satisfied and not on the fence.