This is 40

Bullseyes:  ③ (out of 5)

Yeah I know, what's Ben doing watching a safe, date night chick flick. But hey - it was Christmas – what else am I supposed to do?

There's good chemistry in this flick with Paul Rudd and that girlie from that other movie I can’t remember. And lots of good comic moments. It's a bit long though. And the whole two-car enormous house setting bothered me. Why do these movies always have to be set in enormous pristine white houses with two brand new cars? What’s wrong with a downtown row house and a Nissan? Or an apartment and a bus pass? And the main characters always work at these generic white collar jobs like a teacher and we somehow are supposed to believe they can afford to live like this. I didn’t have any sympathy for their financial predicament in the end because of their damned fiscal irresponsibility! Mark Carney would be appalled.

Flight

Bullseyes:  ③ (out of 5)

Flight is a good little movie. Excellent plane crash scene at the beginning and Denzel is his usual surefire self.

I like the whole down on his luck type character story, because, well, it makes me feel better about myself (whatever - I’ll talk to my counselor). I especially like it when the main character hooks up with another of life’s losers and they all sort of win in the end.

Hooray!

There is a very touching scene at the end of the movie which almost made me cry but didn’t because I turned my head away and my daughter doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

I did wonder how Denzel could land such hot looking women. The opening scene when the stewardesses arse is pressed up against the camera – I mean - come on! I’m with my 19 year old daughter here! But then I remembered – Denzel is a pilot (they don’t tell you these things in Career planning class do they?).

Looper

Bullseyes:  ③ (out of 5)

I thought I was going to get lost in this movie, lost as in - Inceptionized. When I saw the trailer I had flashbacks of, ‘a dream within a dream (within a dream...)’
Arrg! Inception!!

But in the end it all made sense. I think. The problem I had was that I spent the whole time watching the movie expecting it to not make sense:

'Now if he’s gone back in time and done this, how can he have done that in the future…?'
'And what if he gets killed in the past? Wouldn’t that mean the last ½ an hour never happened…?'

But it sort of ties together. Unlike Inception which is stupid.

Seven Psychopaths

Bullseyes:  ④ (out of 5)

I loved this movie!  Seven Psychopaths is quite the caper.   

One reason to love it is that the actors have so much fun.  It's as if main characters, Sam Rockwell (who knew he was so funny?), Colin Farrell and Christopher Walkin were just screwing around the whole time. It had a Lock Stock and Barrel feel to it – entertaining characters, join the dots plot (you never quite knew where it was going) and lots of crazy dialogue and, of course, blood.

The girl behind me kicked my seat and roared with laughter the whole way through. Curiously though, she warned me she was going to do this before the movie started so I couldn’t really complain which was strange. It’s as if someone tells you they’re going to hit you before they hit you and then after they hit you you just sulk and walk away. I probably should’ve complained.

The Hobbit

Bullseyes:  ③ (out of 5)

I didn’t read The Hobbit because it was too long and it looked boring and I have the concentration span of a goldfish. Tolkien fans are always harping on about the movie being true to the book and in that sense I think it’s fair to say the movie is true to the book. It’s long and it’s boring.

The first third is protracted. Blah blah blah lots of quirky hobbits don’t they eat a lot, what are they doing here, when is this f***g movie going to start? And then it gets going.

I wasn’t that invested in the plot to be honest. The dwarfs have lost their home to a dragon who’s wallowing in all their gold, OK…so find somewhere else to live! There certainly seemed to be enough land to go around – why didn't they just build some more huts?

The quest was well filmed and the casting was great, but many of the sequences were overly long. Why have the rock monster fight if no-one dies? I thought the whole point of a story was that if something happens it has to affect the plot, or else we have to learn something? If we go through a mountainous area and almost die but we don’t die and nothing really changes then why bother including that scene? Ka-ching, another 10 minutes of my life gone by... Directors need to start keeping movies to 90 minutes or else give me a good reason to keep squirming in my seat (some of us have weak bladders you know).

Inglorious Basterds

Bullseyes:  ② (out of 5)

Inglorious Basterds is one of those movies you’re supposed to like because it was made by Quentin Tarrantino.  And as we all know Quentin Tarrantino is cool, and Reservoir Dogs was a ‘game changer’ and Pulp Fiction was shear, ‘genius’ and, well - whatever.  I didn’t like it.  So there.

The problem I have with Inglorious Basterds is that I could never get behind the underlying premise - a re-imagining of the Second World War.  The second world war already happened.  We know what went down, that era has been movied and documented to death.  And most of the stories are amazing.  So why re-write them?  Can’t you just take a real story and film it, or else make something up from scratch?  How can you fictionalize certain fact?  Isn’t that what Creationists and religious nut-jobs do?  Hitler died alone in his bunker he didn’t die in a crowded movie theatre.  So why pretend otherwise?

Arrr!

I loved the acting - of course.  Again, I knew I had to, but that’s OK because I really did.  And I loved the craft of it.  Those long drawn out scenes, the subtle build-up of tension - The apple strudle!  The eyes under the floorboards…

Arr again!

In all those aspects I stepped back like everyone else and worshipped at the altar of the big goof.  And I was quite happy to cross myself, to genuflect - rapt as I was under the spell of Christoph Waltz’s Jew Hunter.  Entranced by Melanie Laurent – the girl under the floorboards, the heart of the movie. 

But, alas - the film just didn't tie together.  For one thing the Nazi Hunters noted in the title hardly feature at all. And the relationship between Shosanna and the German sniper, Fredrick Zoller, which we’re supposed to despise, I guess, was actually - quite sweet.  I thought we might see some redemption in Zoller’s character, an admission of his flaws, a willingness to step into the light.  That would have been nice.  But no, he just got slaughtered like everyone else. 

In the end Inglorious bastards is flawed because it doesn’t ring true.  And that’s probably because it isn’t. 

Unforgiven

Bullseyes:  ① (out of 5)

One of the few certainties in life is the thrill of a Clint Eastwood western.  Or so you would think.  You know how they go:  Bounty Hunter rides into town.  Townspeople scatter.  Tumble weed tumbles.  Bad guy swaggers out of the bar - spits, snarls, draws…and dies. 

Dew-ee-ow-ee-ow…Wa-wa-wa!

But for some reason something went awry with this western.  For one thing - Clint Eastwood grew a conscience.  Now why did this happen?  Watching a western with a conscience is like watching a Bond movie without bullets.

“Put that cat down Blofeld or I’ll, er, graze your arm?”

“Nien Meesta Bond!”

Most of the critical acclaim for Unforgiven seems to center around the decision to make the main Cowboy character a little more ‘real’.  But - who wants real?  Movies are all about not being real aren’t they?  Escapism!  And those legendary hoodlums that Clint Eastwood has crafted over the years are memorable precisely because they do things and act in ways that ‘real’ people like us will never be cool enough to do. 

In Unforgiven Eastwood’s cowboy is not only remorseful - he is also old. 

Oh dear…

The only thing worse than a real Cowboy is a real old one.

I don’t want to see Clint Eastwood getting old!  Old people mutter and drool and talk to empty chairs.  I want Eastwood’s cowboys to remain forever in their prime, like my parents and my pop idols.  I don’t want to wonder if Clint is squinting because of his cataracts.  I don’t want him to hop a pony out of town. 

“How many bullets was it punk?” he might ask, in an age updated remake of his other famous genre (‘Aging Harry’...?)

“I d-don’t know”

“Yeah neither do I...  Alzheimer’s is a bitch”

After watching Unforgiven I felt that I had to get the Clint Eastwood legend back.  So I watched The Man With No Name trilogy back to back until all memories of an ailing Eastwood dissolved - like cigar spit in the desert sand…

Dew-ee-ow-ee-ow!

That’s better.