The Tourist—“Yes, we did spend the equivalent of the GNP of Austria on Angelina Jolie’s eye makeup. You gotta problem widdat?”
The Tourist’s big plot twist totally fooled me (but not my girlfriend, to her vast amusement), proving that a film clever enough to fool me can still be lousy.
The Black Swan—Cigarettes and Tattoos and Lesbians, Oh My!
Is it possible to make a film as over the top as “Swan Lake”? The answer, obviously, is not “no”. Even though I am totally not a Tchaikovsky guy, I’m guessing the ballet will outlive the flick. Director Darron Aronofsky stacks the deck so outrageously against poor Nina (Natalie Portman)—she’s old! she’s a virgin! she lives with her mother!—that you can’t help wanting the poor bitch to nail the part, but Aronofsky swamps us with such a shitload of cliches—possessive mother, bitchy younger dancers, a “dangerous” newcomer with killer tats and attitude to spare—that it’s impossible to care. It’s not too surprising that the most sympathetic character in the film—the only one to function as a real character instead of a cliche—is the ballet director, played by Vincent Cassel. Young, handsome, tall—a head taller than anyone else in the film—imperious, manipulative, but somehow not a total shit—probably how Aronofsky likes to think of himself.
Somewhere—This is not the right title for this film. It should be “The Princess Diaries,” or perhaps “The Tragically Hip Princess Diaries.” In fact, all of Sophia Coppola’s films should be titled “The Tragically Hip Princess Diaries.”
The Little Fockers—Ben Stiller gets richer, the rest of us get poorer.
Country Strong—If it’s strong, it ain’t country. And if it’s country, it ain’t strong. Git to the big city, youngun. You’ll see a lot of things on a big city sidewalk, but you won’t see no bullshit.
True Grit—People talk funny and shoot each other a lot. Didn’t the Coen Brothers already make this film? A lot?
Love & Other Drugs—I think Anne Hathaway recently did or said something bitchy or otherwise offensive, but a little nudity can heal a lot of wounds. Probably worth a matinee.
Another Year—“British filmmaker Mike Leigh delivers another emotionally honest portrait of ordinary people trying to make sense of their lives in this comedy drama. Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen) are a couple who are drifting past middle age into their sixties; he’s a geologist and she’s a psychotherapist.”
OK, this one sounds really, really scary. Time to rent The A Team! In Blu-Ray!