I realize it is a couple weeks late, but here’s my top five through October.  Well, I guess through the second week of November.

1. Zombieland

2. Up

3. District 9

4. (500) Days of Summer

5. Star Trek

Not much movement, I know, but I expect that to change in the near future (it isn’t from lack of trying, I’ve seen at least a dozen films since the last list).  I don’t believe I’ve said anything about Zombieland before.  It is darn near a perfect movie.  Taut, consistently funny, surprising, and well-cast.  One of those films where I understand if someone doesn’t like it much, I just probably can’t be very good friends with that person.  Jesse Eisenberg is who people want Michael Cera to be.  Woody Harrelson was just about born to play his role (and I’m hoping he gets a nomination for The Messenger because I’ll consider it half a vote for this).  Abigail Breslin, well, maybe I better let Brian chime in.  And I’m madly in love with Emma Stone.  If I’m not writing a ridiculous post advocating that this script should get a nomination, it will have been an insanely good year.

While I have the floor, just wanted to point out something.  The latest Gurus O’ Gold list went up a few days ago.  Their predictions are always interesting and one of the bets resources out there.  But I was struck by how few films the experts think have a shot to get a Best Picture nomination.  For ten spots, they seem to agree that only eleven have any real shot.  I realize that no one really knows how the change to ten affects anything, and that it is still relatively early in the game.  But this is stunning to me.  I thought part of the point of the change was accepting that a wider swathe of movies can be good than the Academy generally deems.  But this wouldn’t be progress at all.

Guess it has been some time since the last post, huh?  Well, John was awesome and got a top five up before his super secret trip.  I’m waiting on one movie (or the end of this week, whichever comes first) to do the same.  And I’ve been under the weather lately, plus I’ve been in a rut of average-ish movies that didn’t inspire me to do a whole post.  So I’ll bunch up five I’ve recently seen into two categories:

Great, but underutilized cast

Easy Virtue:  Really, any movie with Colin Firth and Kristen Scott Thomas should almost by definition be amazing, and that’s before I mention it was written and directed by the guy who did Priscilla.  Alas, Easy Virtue falls short of the mark.  Set in the 1920s and based on a Noel Coward play, the film stars Jessica Biel as an American whirlwind who marries a young Englishman (Ben Barnes) in a fit of passion and then goes to his estate to meet the family.  Call it a precursor to Meet The Parents, if you like, though this is a little darker.  The film has a lot of trouble setting a consistent tone and events seem to occur out of order.

Lymelife: Set around 1980 in Long Island, the cast includes the Culkins Rory and Kieran, Alec Baldwin, Jill Hennessy, Cynthia Nixon, Emma Roberts, and Timothy Hutton.  It is part crumbling family drama, part coming-of-age story, and part an exploration of Lyme disease.  I think in a different year, with maybe some relatively small script changes, this film could have been a You Can Count on Me or The Sweet Hereafter.  The film’s biggest problem, in my opinion, is its fear of exploring any relationship too in-depth.  Perhaps because of the story’s personal nature to the writers (Derick and Steven Martini),  the drama seems to be missing its edge.  Also, not to go all Brian on you, but based on the trailers for Nancy Drew and Hotel for Dogs, I didn’t really buy Emma Roberts as an ingenue, but I changed my mind.

Shrink: Stars Kevin Spacey as a psychiatrist to the stars who has been going on a pot-smoking binge since his wife’s recently-committed suicide.  There were times when I felt the film was on the verge of breaking through to something really great, but it caught itself and settled for complacency.  The character is set up for Spacey to be an Oscar dark horse, but he isn’t given quite enough screen time to show off.  I may or may not have put this on my queue for Jesse Plemons as a drug dealer, but he doesn’t disappoint, even if he seems to be trying to channel Matt Damon a little.  Also, I’ve watched one episode of True Jackson, VP (because Julie Bowen was in it!), but Keke Palmer shone here.

Offbeat really specific genre

Good Dick – The genre being a guy, a girl, and severe social problems.  Other things in the genre include Adam (at least, that’s my very educated guess, still waiting for it to come out on DVD), Big Bang Theory, and every relationship I witnessed at the University of Chicago.  Written and directed by (and co-starring) Marianna Palka, the film portrays a woman virtually unable to function in the outside world, save for going to the video rental store for porn and the somewhat-troubled video store clerk (Jason Ritter) who desperately tries to woo her.  It is (intentionally) all kinds of awkward and raw, at times to the point of distraction.  Tom Arnold shows up for a pretty devastating scene, and Martin Starr is in a few scenes.

The Killing Room – The genre being a bunch of people, a room, and people gonna die.  Think Cube or Saw.  I happen to think Cube was brilliant, if not quite polished.  And I’m not really big on Saw, but I do think the idea is inspired.  It is kinda hard to describe without giving away too much, but basically the premise is that the government is performing some sort of creepy experiment (supervised by Peter Stormare) involving a few people and a room.  The story unfolds in an interesting manner: Stomare is interviewing Chloe Sevigny to see if she can cut it on the project, and does so by showing her tape from a recent experiment involving Nick Cannon, Clea DuVall, Timothy Hutton, and Shea Wigham.  I wouldn’t classify this as horror, really, more psychological thriller.  I actually really love this genre (or at least I do in theory) and I think this film is a worthy addition, though I would have liked to have seen more time in the room and the ending refined a little.

It’s not quite the end of the month but I’m headed out on safari for a few weeks and I know no one will sleep until they hear my latest top 5.

1. Up. Still no change.

2. Zombieland. What a delightful surprise. This is a clever, funny, deliciously gory film. It sticks to its premise and takes it in a fun direction. Absolutely terrific characters with some excellent surprises. This is the multiplex movie to see at the moment.

3. The Informant!. Zany, hilarious, twisty.

4. I Love You, Man. Funny! If it’s on the plane I think I’ll watch it again.

5. Moon. Will the fledgling movement to get Sam Rockwell a nomination pay off? Probably not. But that would be sweet.

As time goes on we see more films it’s tougher to move the top five, so occasionally I’d like to highlight a film that probably would have made the top five had I seen it earlier.

9. By no means a perfect movie but I enjoyed its unique visual style and surprisingly dark themes. The second half is significantly better than the first – probably because by then you accept the relatively thin plot and characters – and the climax is quite effective.

Why don't you whine about it some more?

Period romances have an inherent edge in the quest to be compelling, I think.  Just seems it is a lot easier to find obstacles to love in the class and gender boundaries of the 19th century than today.  Girl has money, guy doesn’t, girl’s family won’t let them marry.  See, just takes five seconds to set up the story.

Of course, that simplicity is a double-edged sword.  While it can take just a scene to set up a plausible and engaging romantic entanglement, that leaves the whole rest of the movie to figure out ways to make that romance interesting.  Bright Star, unfortunately, isn’t up to the task.

Even if you don’t know anything about John Keats’s life, the film isn’t really particularly surprising.  Abbie Cornish plays Fanny Brawne, a somewhat educated young woman of some means who is a bit proud of her sewing career.  As soon as Keats (Ben Whishaw), a young poet of little renown and even less money enters her life, it is clear (by all the usual ways) they’ll be an item.  The problem is that the film never really advances much beyond that stage.

The movie in a nutshell: Fanny is whiny and Keats is wimpy.  Other people claim the film has subtle, delicate layers.  But frankly, I’m didn’t see that at all.  There isn’t really much to their story, or much reason to get invested in the characters.  Their courtship was vague and detached.  I never saw a moment where Fanny falls in love or even a reason why she does.  And Keats seems to mostly ignore her.  There is very little romantic bickering.  And the scene where they do get together feels accidental.  It is kinda sorta a forbidden romance, but only in the sense that Fanny and Keats exert the least possible effort to try to get together.  I half expected any of the secondary character to slap either Keats or Fanny and excoriate them for their inaction.  Basically, in my mind, the story held very little interest as a romance, and there wasn’t really anything else there besides the romance.

Other than the comic relief, which was far and away the best part of the film.  There were several legitimately funny moments in the film, and increasingly they became focal points.  Certainly a large part of that is due to Paul Schneider, but I’d also spread the love around to the rest of the cast and writer/director Jane Campion.  Schneider plays the portly Charles Armitage Brown who has what kids these days call a bromance going with Keats.  A fellow poet, Brown is wholly devoted to his and Keats’ work, well, except for partaking in some sensual pleasures, and is (rightly, in my mind) skeptical of Fanny.  Obnoxious and overbearing, Brown is clearly the highlight of the film.

Bright Star has been bandied about in talks of all the major Oscar categories, save supporting actress.  Frankly, I think it’d be a mistake for the film to receive any nominations.  I’ve covered why I think the film is boring and how I was put off by Abbie Cornish and Ben Whishaw.  I don’t like to speak about direction, but I will say that I found the cuts between scenes to be highly distracting, so I guess I have to blame Campion for that.  I wouldn’t really be upset if Schneider picked up a supporting actor not.  He did a lot with a relatively slight role; had he been given a more substantial character, I’d be much more confident in handing him a nomination.

I can’t figure out Tilda Swinton.  Part of it is that she creeps me out, and I don’t know why.  Maybe it is her more than passing resemblance to Conan O’Brien and Beaker.  But I can’t decide what sort of roles she should be playing.  In thinking about this piece, I was also thinking about who is comparable to her.  I just came up with John Malkovich, and I’m not sure there’s going to be anything better.

She’s the star of Julia, which is relevant here because of the buzz that Swinton has a shot (albeit a long one) to get a Best Actress nom for the title role.  And I’m of the opinion that with a better fleshed-out character in a better fleshed-out film, she might have had a pretty good case.  Which is perhaps a bit odd, given that the movie clocks in a little over two hours and Swinton is the focus of nearly every minute of every scene. Swinton’s character is an alcoholic, and as with many who suffer from the disease, it defines pretty much everything about her.   I was struck by how director and co-writer Erick Zonca  decided to depict Julia’s alcoholism.  I think he (with the obvious help of Swinton) manages to successfully walk a fine line in showing how sad Julia’s life is without ever going over the top or resorting to cliches.  It is all too easy to glorify alcoholism or turn a drunk into some melodramatic wretch.

At an AA meeting and later after a night of drinking/blacking out, Julia meets Elena (Kate del Castillo) who happens to also be her neighbor.  Elena claims that her son’s rich paternal grandfather has custody of the boy and asks for Julia’s help, offering a substantial sum of money.  Elena is soon written out of the film, somewhat clumsily, but not before a scene that would have put her into the Supporting Actress race, had she been a higher profile name in a higher profile film.  The rest of the film has Julia stumbling through kidnapping the child, with the idea of getting a ransom, which leads her to Mexico, where the kid gets kidnapped from her.

One of the film’s major problems is that Julia isn’t a compelling character (though she is, to be sure, quite interesting).  She’s mean, greedy, basically just not a nice person.  Which probably is directly related to her alcoholism, perhaps she doesn’t quite know how to relate to people while sober.  It hard to feel anything other than vague disgust toward the character, even her redemption is murky.  And that’s a significant stumbling block to a character-driven film where Julia as a person is supposed to maintain interest in what is otherwise a fairly uninteresting kidnapping story.

I liked the supporting cast, I mentioned del Castillo, but Saul Rubinek was definitely underused.  The revelation to me, though, was Bruno Bichir (who, according to imdb, has had some success in Mexican entertainment and is good friends with Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal).  He plays a suave stranger Julia meets in Mexico, and just might have been the most interesting character in the film.  If I were to have recut the film, I would have left manic del Castillo in a little longer, given Rubinek a stronger roler, probably cut out a good chunk of the middle section, which drags, and transferred that time to the Mexican scenes, exploring Bichir’s character more in depth.  So, OK, maybe I’m just looking for a sequel spinning off his character.

Obviously it is pretty early in the year to be assessing Best Actress nominations.  Swinton is certainly memorable here, but I’m a little skeptical it is going to rank among my favorite performances, and given the film’s low profile, it seems relatively unlikely Swinton will grab her second Oscar nom.

…cannot be found on this site. But our unexpected and inexplicable hit gravy train of being the #1 Google Image Search result for Leelee Sobieski suddenly and devastatingly left the station. We need new ways to trick traffic into visiting our site, looking for a split second, then hitting “back” when they realize this isn’t what they want.

But seriously I’m pretty much done with Megan Fox for a while. Talk about overexposure. First the hype around Transformers 2, then the absurd feud with Michael Bay, and then the panned and flopped Jennifer’s Body. After the awful, awful Saturday Night Live she helmed on Saturday, can she please just disappear for a while? She’s not a good actress and no one who meets her has anything nice to say about her.

Also, she’s not that hot. That’s right, I said it. With Hollywood full of attractive people this is the peak of womanhood?

So go away for a while, please. I’d take a new Christian Bale movie every week instead.

Ooh, but it’s just one year, eight months, and thirty days til Transformers 3 is here…!

Several of the Grouches got a sneak peak at the new Ellen Page roller derby comedy Whip It the other night. Drew Barrymore makes her directorial debut in this story about a small town Texas teen discovering herself and coming of age in Austin’s roller derby circuit. Kristen Wiig, Marcia Gay Harden, Jimmy Fallon, Alia Shawkat, Juliette Lewis, and Andrew Wilson (brother of Luke and Owen) also appear. While it’s not likely to garner any awards attention, Ellen Page is a Grouches (and awards circuit) darling and Whip It did premiere at the Oscar springboard Toronto International Film Festival.

John

I really, really hated this movie. When it comes time to talk directing awards we often note that it’s tough to tell what makes a well-directed movie and how to separate the directing from a film’s other components. I’ve generally looked at shot and editing choices, tone, and pacing but really it often comes down to whether the director has created a good movie.

This is a poorly-directed film. I don’t have any feelings either way for Barrymore in general, but she should stick to acting. Every cliched shot possible can be found in this movie. Beyond that it’s unfocused and messy. It felt like they had an idea of some cool scenes and made it up as they went along. No sports movie cliche goes unused and never in a clever or ironic fashion. The themes are handled clumsily. The acting is hammy. It does have some funny moments and interesting, albeit underdeveloped, characters. Page’s parents I found particularly fascinating.

But if roller derby is such a grrrrl power sport, why are all the announcers, refs, and coaches male?

Jared

Whip It fits comfortably into the sports movie genre, perhaps too much so.  Think A League of Their Own, only with more physical violence and less-developed characters.  The film hits most of the familiar tropes (including having an awesome soundtrack), but rarely deviates from them.  So it feels a little paint-by-numbers, which is fine if you like standard sports flicks, but it just means you have to tolerate a few weak and/or cliche subplots.  The supporting cast is filled with interesting people, and it sure appears that they had a lot of fun filming, unfortunately they have to work with extremely stock characters, so their enthusiasm can only add so much.  Ellen Page shines in the lead, not just because she’s ridiculously cute.  If you go in expecting something TBS will show as part of a sports movie marathon one Sunday afternoon, you probably won’t be disappointed.

Thus far, only Jared and John have put up their misguided lists, so I will confine my derogatory comments to their choices and assume that Brian’s picks will be typically horrific.  That being said, both John and Jared should correct their post names to “How Many Mediocre Movies Can We Pick?”.  The answer in both cases is at least two.  Unfortunately, at this time, I can’t comment on District 9, nor Moon.  But I will give each of them the benefit of the doubt, as those are two movies I am looking forward to seeing.

However, before I repudiate their claims of greatness (for some of their movie picks…not themselves…that would be ridiculous even for them), I’ll give mine:

1.  Inglourious Basterds

I love me some Quentin Tarantino.  That being said, while I really enjoyed this movie (even more after thinking about it for a while), I wish there would have been more of the actual Basterds.  I can’t wait to see the uncut version.

2.  The Hangover

Best bachelor-party-in-Vegas movie of the year.  And easily the funniest movie of the year thus far.  Zach Galifianakis was hilarious and I’m thrilled that this movie has caused him to be recognized and signed on a variety of new films.  I still think the film trailed off at the end, and I still wish Heather Grahms’ character was better developed, but it was a good movie.  I think the combination of Zach, Ed, and Tyson (along with a naked chinese man) pushed it up into the #2 spot.

3.  (500) Days of Summer

I really enjoyed this movie.  It was slightly less funny than I expected, but the story more than made up for it.  The only real problem I had with it was that some of the cool pieces of the movie went just a little…longer than they should have.  They were stretched too much.  For example, the dancing scene.  Excellent scene, great device, but it went just far enough with the blue bird to over stay it’s welcome.

4.  Sunshine Cleaning

Fun, quirky, and Amy Adams…what more do you need?

5.  Star Trek

John is still wrong.  But, I hate that I like this movie.  I’m looking forward to it getting bumped off the list.  Please Hollywood, put out some good movies in the next month or two.

Honorable Mentions:  Taken & Coraline

Now, on to the Why I Am The Only Grouch To Have Any Taste segment of our show.  As all of you readers out there (so, pretty much my fellow Grouches) have noticed by now, my colleagues (and I use that term loosely) have been proclaiming the merits of Up and I Love You, Man.  Don’t drink the Kool-Aid.  Both of these were OK movies that completely underwhelmed.

After all their hype, I couldn’t believe the lack of humor in I Love You, Man.   It actually reminded me of Death at a Funeral – short bursts of hilarity sparsely spread throughout a plodding, unfunny plot populated with actually decent characters.  Some thoughts:

The Good

Paul Rudd:  I agree with my fellow Grouches that Paul Rudd has really impressed me in his leading man roles.  I hope to see more of him – just in better movies.  I actually liked him better in Role Models than in this.

Jaime Presley:  I thought she nailed this part.  Every scene with her in it was improved because of her.  One of the few comedic elements in the movie that was actually under-utilized.

Jason Seagal: He has really impressed me in his last couple of outings.  Forgetting Sarah Marshall was one of my favorite movies last year and held up under repeat viewings – no small feat in itself.

Rush montage

The wedding party

The Hulk

Paul Rudd’s constant, horrible nicknames.

The Bad

Paul Rudd’s constant weird accents:  What was up with that?  It was sort of funny once.  The rest of the times it was worse than boring.

The constant abbreviations and “slang” terms:  Never-ending.  Never funny.

Extremely slow to develop.  It’s actually surprising how long they took on developing unnecessary elements and how little they took in developing more interesting aspects.

The Ugly

The lack of chemistry between characters, the lack of plot development, and the inharmonious/cobbled together feel of the entire movie.

Conclusions

Just looking over the past thoughts, one might question why I have such animosity towards the film.  And my response is: I don’t.  I did like the film.  It was fine.  Fine.  There were some good/great characters and a couple of laughs, but it never really came together for me.  How do you not hit it out of the park when you have Rush figured so prominently and you cast The Hulk?

Jared, John, and Brian need to re-examine their definitions of “comedy.”

As for Up, it unfortunately falls into the same category as the other recent Pixar movie – decent movie, but fails to live up to the bar of The Incredibles and Finding Nemo.  Not only that, because it’s Pixar, it developed an enormous amount of undeserved hype.  By far the best part of the movie was the talking dog and squirrel jokes.  Unfortunately, that lasts all of 5 minutes.

All in all, two decent movies that should only be in someone’s Top 5 if they’ve only seen 5 movies this year.

The Creative Arts Emmys (aka the Emmys no one cares about) were awarded last week. The Oscar telecast was nominated for ten Emmys and since no one else gives a hoot about those categories nine those awards were handed out on Saturday. Outstanding Music and Lyrics will be handed out at the Primetime telecast on Sunday, presumably so Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg can take the prize for “Motherlover.”

The Academy Awards won three!

• Choreography for that lame “Musicals Are Back” number starring Beyonce
• Short Form Picture Editing
• Sound Mixing for a Variety or Music Series or Special (take that, Dancing with the Stars!)

They lost the big category, Outstanding Special Class Program, to the Beijing Opening Ceremonies. In fact, the Olympics pretty much kicked the Oscars’ ass all over the place. They also lost out on:

• Art Direction For Variety, Music Or Nonfiction Programming to the MTV Video Music Awards and American Idol
• Directing For A Variety, Music Or Comedy Special to the Beijing Opening Ceremonies
• Lighting Direction (Electronic, Multi-Camera) For Variety, Music Or Comedy Programming to American Idol (that one’s gotta hurt, amirite?)
• Technical Direction, Camerawork, Video Control For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Special to the Beijing Opening Ceremonies
• Writing For A Variety, Music Or Comedy Special to Chris Rock: Kill the Messenger

So congratulations are in order for what was a pretty decent Oscars telecast.

Previous Grouches coverage here.

Update: The Academy Awards took home Outstanding Music and Lyrics last night at the Primetime Emmys for the cute Hugh Jackman opening number. The winners noted that the award was presumably moved to primetime due to the unusual appeal of this year’s nominees (aka two noms for Justin Timberlake) just to have the least telegenic group win. This ups the Oscars’ Emmy haul to four!

For once our opinions are relevant and timely instead of only thoughtful and brilliant! Three of the Grouches got to take in a preview screening of Steven Soderbergh’s newest film, The Informant!. Matt Damon stars as Mark Whitacre, a manager at agri-conglomerate ADM in the early 90s. He tips the FBI off to his firm’s schemes to fix prices for corn derivatives. But rather than a corporate or crime thriller – this is no Michael Clayton or The Firm – The Informant! is a zany journey through Whitacre’s twisted motivations and off-kilter personality.

The film opens this Friday. Here are our quick thoughts:

Brian

Speaking as someone who knew next to nothing about the ins and outs of the Mark Whitacre story, I loved watching the plot unfold and seeing the case for/against ADM unfold. Damon was hilarious and transformative, and Marvin Hamlisch’s score reminded me of one of my favorite movies, The Sting. Even before the big reveals towards the end, I enjoyed playing the “crazy like a fox?” or “just plain crazy?” game with Damon. Highly recommended.

Jared

Frustratingly obvious and consistently flat, The Informant! knows where the jokes should be, but fails to deliver on any of the punchlines. Perhaps because I knew the story ahead of time, the barely-there plot isn’t as twisty as it thinks it is. But maybe most disappointing is the criminally underused supporting cast. What’s the point in having people like Scott Bakula, Tony Hale, Tom Wilson, and the Smothers Brothers in a comedy if they are all going to play straight?

John

The highest praise I can give The Informant! is that it is spot-on tonally. Rather than playing the plot straight, Soderbergh turns the story into a madcap adventure into one businessman’s twisted mind. The plot is interesting enough but the true strength comes in all the clever little touches and humorous absurdities. I wouldn’t call it laugh-out-loud funny for the most part but it’s always amusing and intensely fun. Damon should get some Best Actor consideration. In short: see this because not only is it terrific but I fear it will need every dollar it can scrounge up. The Oscar season is truly off and running.