Monthly Archives: February 2010

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At The Theater #7: The Last Station

Walking into the theater at The Angelika, I didn’t know anything about The Last Station other than James McAvoy stars in it. When I sat down, and was told it was about Tolstoy, I reaction was “Really?” Inside I was thinking “How did I let this happen? Great, time to prep for something boring and pretentious.” But as it turns out I need not have worried. The Last Station is a surprisingly humorous movie, especially considering that it’s a movie about Tolstoy. The movie features what will probably be the funniest sex scene of James McAvoy’s career. I did think it was weird that my companions and I were the only ones laughing during some scenes. Maybe the other theatergoers were also prepped for something boring and pretentious, and no amount of humor was going to rob them of that.

The scene right before this picture is worth the price of admission.

Christopher Plummer plays Tolstoy. This is the second movie this year that I thought Christopher Plummer was Ian McKellen. This is also the second movie where upon finding out he wasn’t Ian McKellen, I thought he was Christopher Lee. For some reason, I forgot Chrisopher Lee’s last name and thought Christopher Lee and Christopher Plummer were the same person. “He looks so different than when he played Saruman,” I’d think. “It must be because his beard is so much scragglier here than when it was so nicely combed in Lord of The Rings.” Because I thought Christopher Lee and Christopher Plummer were the same person, I found it very funny when one of the characters with a General Zod-like beard was on screen at the same time as Tolstoy. Luckily someone that looks like General Zod is funny no matter who is starring alongside him. It turns out not only is Christopher Plummer not Ian McKellen or Christopher Lee, he hasn’t played a wizard in any of the Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings movies. How is this possible?

Not Gandalf.

Helen Mirren plays Tolstoy’s wife Sofya. Helen Mirren is turning 65 this year. Is there any actress who is sexier at 65 than this woman? Good looking for her age seems like an insult. The woman is good looking.
♫Sexy and 65/My little Tolstoy queen♫

Beards play a very big role in The Last Station. If you’re wondering how important a male character is in the movie, just check the size of his beard. Tolstoy sports something that is Santa Claus meets ZZ Top, so it’s no wonder that everyone hangs on his every word. Paul Giamatti plays Vladamir Chertkov, Tolstoy’s Head Sycophant in Charge (HSIC). It’s only natural that he has the next most complicated beard, even having a line “There was a problem with the wax,” when questioned about the state of his moustache. James McAvoy’s Valentin Bulgakov is the new guy at the compound, so it makes sense that his beard is understated, about the same size as the General Zod clone who is of a similar rank as him in the Tolstoy compound.

“Son of Jor-El. Kneel before Tolstoy.”
This is not Christopher Plummer, but this beard does make an appearance in The Last Station.
I saw The Last Station at The Angelika Film Center. Like The Brooklyn Heights Cinema, The Angelika gets an A for their popcorn. Movies are $12.50 there, the same price as the Regal in Union Square. Is $12.50 the current standard price of movies in Manhattan? Have I been spoiled by Brooklyn, where $10 seemed steep just a couple of weeks ago?

The Last Station is at the bottom of my list of movies I’ve seen at the theater so far in 2010. But it’s a good movie and I recommend seeing it. I’ve just been lucky to see plenty of good movies so far this year. Hopefully this keeps up.

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On The Couch #5: Julie & Julia

I need to apologize to anyone who ever watches a movie with me that has location shoots in any places that mean anything to me. There we’ll be, quietly watching a movie together, like say Julie & Julia, and a character gets off the subway at 45 Road/Courthouse Square in Queens and I yell out “Hey! That’s Long Island City!” This is followed by confused silence from my movie-watching companions. “That’s grandma’s old building in the background; the red brick one! And there’s the diner!” Which is usually given the sarcastic response of “Great…” or the non-sarcastic response of “Uh huh, so?” Amy Adams’ Julie Powell gets on and off that subway stop a few times in Julie & Julia, so…sorry.

-“Look! It’s Long Island City!”
-“Um, great.”

I thought Julie & Julia was quite good. Amy Adams plays Julie Powell, who starts a blog about going through every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. There are 524 recipes in the book and she gives herself a deadline of 1 year, so she has her work cut out for her. She’s motivated by her dissatisfaction with her job and and of her apartment in Queens. I get the job bit; that job looked torturous. But Queens? Come on. She acts like it’s Staten Island.

Meryl Streep was excellent as Julia Child. This performance has me circling her name in any Oscar pool I’m in this year. The two storylines dovetail well together, often playing off the same themes, and, as this is a movie about one person writing the same cookbook the other is reading, the same recipes.

The book that started it all.
But even more so than Streep, how awesome in Stanley Tucci? In this movie, he plays Julia Child’s husband Paul. He’s great here, but what I really mean is how awesome is her in every movie? He wins the Tuesday Night Movies J.K. Simmons Award for Making Whatever Movie He’s in Better. So congratulations, Stanley. You deserve it.

A toast…to Tucci.

Worst part of the movie? Amy Adams’s haircut. I get it. The filmmakers don’t want her to be glamorous Amy Adams, they want her to be everyday woman Julie Powell. But man, that was one unflattering haircut. Then I think about it some more and remember how bad my hair looked in 2002 and 2003 and I really get it. They weren’t trying to make Amy Adams look dumpy. They were commenting on how ugly hairstyles were in the early part of the last decade. Well played Nora Ephron.

The blu-ray for Julie & Julia is packed with content, maybe too much content. The cooking videos with Julia Child were very cool, spotlighting Julia’s take on recipes that were used in the movie, but the behind-the-scenes featurette on the movie was way too long. I say this mainly because I couldn’t sit through the whole thing. I don’t know how much more I had left to go with it, but I think I was about 20 minutes in and the end looked far off.

Someone once asked if this blog was inspired by watching Julie & Julia and my answer was “Huh?” At the time, the only things I knew about the movie was that Meryl Streep was receiving rave reviews for her portrayal of Julia Child, and that Amy Adams played a woman who was going through all the recipes in Julia Childs’ cookbook. “And she blogs about it,” I was told. Oh. Right. No, this blog wasn’t inspired by Julie & Julia. But it did inspire an idea I had for a continuation of this blog in 2011. It would be much more challenging than my 52 movies in the theater and 52 movies at home challenge, but the more I think about it, the more I think it’s a good idea. Before I reveal on how I want to make this harder for myself, maybe I get through this current challenge first. So, more to come on that on a later date…maybe.

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At The Movies #6: An Education

My main reason for wanting to see An Education was that the screenplay was written by Nick Hornby, author of two of my favorite books: High Fidelity and About a Boy. I read all of his novels, so the completist in me felt the need to see this movie. I didn’t know it was based on a memoir by Lynn Barber until the movie started. This let me down a little because going into it I was excited to see Nick Hornby’s first original screenplay, one that wasn’t a movie based on one of his books. But it looks like I’ll still have to wait for that because while this wasn’t based on one of his books, it was based on someone else’s.

An Education was playing at my local movie theater, The Brooklyn Heights Cinema, for a while at the end of last year, but I didn’t manage to catch it. Thankfully, the Oscar nomination for best picture brought it back there. A word to the wise about The Brooklyn Heights Cinema: the two theaters aren’t labeled, but one is the left of the ticket window and one is to the right. You can tell which theater to walk into by looking at the arrows next to the movie’s name on the ticket window. If more people noticed that, half the people in our theater wouldn’t have missed the first 7 minutes of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus when they realized they were in the wrong theater.

The premise of An Education is very straightforward. An honors student, bored with here life of studying is swept off her feet by Peter, a sharply dressed, smooth talking playboy. The initial problem is that he’s nearly twice her age. But Jenny is mature and Peter is very sweet, so sweet that not only does their romance flourish, but Jenny finds herself having to choose between her new love or the track she’s been on her whole life, being accepted to Oxford.

‘Cause every girl’s crazy ’bout a sharp dressed man.

Peter is your classic silver tongued devil. He’s able to convince Jenny’s parents not only that they should let him date her, but words it in such a way that they end up thinking it’s their idea. The problem is that Jenny doesn’t realize until she’s gone too far down Peter’s road that if he’s so good at lying to her parents that it’s indiscernible to tell truth from fiction when he’s talking to them, that maybe he’s not being completely honest with her as well.

My favorite parts of An Education were any scene where Jenny was having a conversation with Peter’s friend Helen. Helen is very pretty, but not exactly what anyone would call smart, and anytime Jenny would innocently say something intelligent, Helen would say something dumb and I would laugh.
 
Every conversation between these two is good for a laugh. 
I liked An Education. I’m happy that six movies into this project, I haven’t seen a bad one yet at the theater. Do I think An Education should win the Oscar this year? No. It’s good, but it’s not movie of the year good. While I was watching it, I felt like I was watching Mona Lisa Smile, but told from the point of view of Julia Stiles’s character. I haven’t seen all of the Oscar nominees for best picture yet, but out of the ones I have seen: Avatar, Inglourious Basterds, Up and Up in the Air, I would put An Education at the bottom of that list.

What An Education might want you to do is book a trip to Paris. The city of lights is painted so beautifully in it that I wouldn’t be surprised if the Parisian Tourism Bureau was a sponsor of the film. While Peter and Jenny were watching the sunset on the Seine, my date turned to me and said “When are you taking me to Paris?”
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On The Couch #4: Funny People

Wow, I had Funny People sitting next to my DVD player for a long time. I received it from Netflix in late November and finally watched it on Friday. The weird thing is I really wanted to see this movie. I pushed it to the top of queue is late November, knowing that I would watch it the day it came; I was that excited about this movie.

But the disc went neglected in the lead-up to Christmas and New Year’s, always sitting atop an empty spot on the television stand, never completely out of sight, never completely out of mind. Even having off from work the week between Christmas and New Year’s didn’t help. There was always some reason not to watch it.

One night around New Year’s we invited over Andrew and Jen, two good friends who were visiting from California. They were just sitting down to watch a DVD though, and would be over after that. I said “Think they’ll want to watch Funny People after that?” They did not. Because the DVD they were watching was Funny People. Son of a – !

When they came over to hang out, Andrew warned that the movie was really long. They turned it off with a half hour left in order to come to our place. “Eric Bana doesn’t show up until about two hours in, and he’s in the commercials,” Andrew warned, “It’s like two movies in one.” Sure enough, I checked the DVD sleeve. 2 hours and 38 minutes! Damn!

Andrew’s warning and seeing the length of time on the DVD sleeve aided in my delay. Once I returned to work, it was hard to work in a 2 hour and 38 minute movie. If we started it at 8 PM, then it wouldn’t finish until around 10:40 PM. Finally Julie gave me an ultimatum: “You have to watch this before you watch disc 2 of Weeds.” That worked, because I really wanted to see how season 5 of Weeds ended. “Okay,” I said, “we’re going to watch this Friday night.” And we did, followed by a couple of episodes of Weeds.

I’m sorry I waited so long to watch Funny People. I think it’s a great movie. It excels both as a drama and a comedy, showing the inner turmoil of people who get paid (or try to get paid) to make others laugh. Seth Rogen and Adam Sandler are both great in it. Rogen takes a major turn from his usually overly sarcastic characters and comes across as very real. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been a fan of Seth Rogen since the first time I saw him in Freaks and Geeks. But it was refreshing to see him play someone who is 180 degree turn from his usual characters. I thought both he and Sandler were overlooked not getting an Academy Award nomination for their roles in Funny People.
Freaks.                            Geeks.
Aubrey Plaza and Aziz Ansari from Parks and Rec both play aspiring comedians in the movie. I like both of them and it’s always cool to see them in different things, this movie being no exception. Aubrey plays Seth Rogen’s love interest and Aziz plays basically a much more annoying version of himself. I thought Human Giant, Aziz’s sketch comedy show with Rob Huebel and Paul Scherer, was MTV’s best program in years. Hopefully they come back with a second season of that. And I have thought Aubrey was funny ever since I saw her Kaplowee! video a couple of years ago.

Funny People also has plenty of guest stars, both major and minor, making cameos. I don’t want to spoil the “Oh, cool” surprise factor for anyone though (Ha-ha! Look at me act like my readership is more than a few friends who I know already saw this movie). But there is a very funny argument between a rapper and a former CBS sitcom star that stood out as one of the best parts of the movie.
This is another disc that utilizes the Pocket BLU iPhone app. I have to say, I really like using my iPhone as my Blu-ray player’s remote, even if the actual remote is sitting right by me. I haven’t gotten over the novelty of this just yet.

What I also liked about the disc is that the theatrical version is included with the unrated version. When it comes to comedies, I’ve found that most of the time the theatrical version wins. Unrated versions of most comedies seem to just include jokes that weren’t that great to begin with. I came to this understanding when I saw Wedding Crashers. I first saw it on DVD and thought it was 20 minutes too long and had stretches that were a bit boring. Then I saw it again and cable and loved it. And realized it was a bit shorter. I don’t think with the unrated version of the majority of movies that you’re getting more for your money. Sometimes more is less.

Longer? Yes. Funnier? Eh…

It’s been pointed out to me that I am not living up to my post-within-24-hours-viewing promise. I think I overreached with that one. Revised promise: the post will be up the same week that I see the movie, though I’ll always try to get these up as quickly as I can.

Up next from Netflix: Julie and Juila and District 9. I’m excited to see both. Hopefully that doesn’t mean they sit on my shelf for two months.

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At The Theater #5: Youth in Revolt

I have a new favorite movie of the year, and it is Youth in Revolt. I’m really surprised that Youth in Revolt didn’t do better both financially and with critics. I thought this movie was hilarious and would label it a must-see. It is the story of Nick Twisp, a nice guy who can’t get the girl. Nick, played by Michael Cera, invents a new personality for himself named Francois Dillinger. Francois is everything that Nick isn’t, namely cool and more aggressive. He’s like a teenage Tyler Durden, compsenating for Nick’s shortcomings, sometimes to extremes.
Francois makes me almost want to reverse my stance on moustaches.
Francois does such a good job of transforming Nick that I wouldn’t be surprised if skinny white pants and pencil thin moustaches become the standard look for nerds trying to make a stand. At least it’s a better look than modeling yourself after Napoleon Dynamite. If you’ve got $800 to spare and a yearning to really wear Michael Cera’s clothes, you can buy the whole Francois outfit package here. But you could probably also by the same outfit for 1/10 that price at H&M too.
The new look for bad boy nerds?

I think that Youth in Revolt will be remembered as the movie where Michael Cera stopped being so Michael Cera-like. There’s plenty of Michael Cera being Michael Cera for anyone who can’t enough of Michael Cera’s trademark awkwardness. Nick Twisp is basically George Michael Bluth or Paulie Bleeker. But Francois Dillinger definitely isn’t. He’s something new, and if you’ve grown a little tired of Michael Cera being Michael Cera, this is definitely worth seeing.
I was really happy to see Adhir Kalyan show up, playing Nick’s school friend Vijay Joshi. I was fan of his short lived TV series Aliens in America, so it was cool to see him here. In their first scene together, Nick and Vijay don’t look too dissimilar from Justin and Raj from Aliens in America, except Justin never had a Francois Dillinger and Vijay isn’t quite as pure as Raj.
I miss this show.
Jean Smart is really carving a place for herself as the go to actress for white trash moms. Her role as Nick’s mother Michelle is almost identical to her role as Mark’s mom in Garden State. I half expected Jim Parsons to show up in a full suit of armor because her two roles were so similar.
The worst part of Youth in Revolt was the previews beforehand. Wow, there are some seriously bad looking movies making their way to a theater near you in the near future. The previews were so bad that I started being worried about the movie I was about to see. Most of them were unmemorable, with the exception of Repo, whose preview was too bad to forget. I seriously doubt I’ll be writing about that movie this year.
I saw Youth in Revolt at the Regal Cinemas Union Square 14.  A note to the frugal, on Mondays all candy is only $1 and if you buy a large soda anytime, you can get free refills. Another note to the frugal, movies here are $12.50, which might kill your candy and soda budget.

Have you seen a good movie lately? Hit me up with the title, because the pickings look pretty slim right now. My plan is to see the An Education this coming week and maybe The Hurt Locker the following week. But after that? Hopefully not Repo.