Despicable Me (2010)

There's really no word to describe this movie except 'sweet'. Pleasant, lightly sentimental, surprisingly non-ambitious, with a great voice cast who are actually doing voices not just themselves. Good.

Red Ensign (1934)

Micheal Powell directed "quota quickie" from before he was famous. There's trouble afoot in the British shipping industry, and I kinda care. Weird mix of Frank Capra and Soviet montage. Film has rather unique moral that its okay to commit forgery if its for a good cause. Kind of dry for a thriller. Fair to good.

A Christmas Tale (2008)

A family dysfunction at Christmas-time movie, in French. Nothing new really, but I found the family interesting and surprisingly intricate in its development. It sustains its two and half hour running time, and you can't ask for much more then that. B-

Fantasia 2000 (1999)

Kind of an update or extension of the original Fantasia released roughly 60 years later. I'd been wanting to see it since before it came out, it was okay, nothing earth shattering. Stand out sequences being 'the flamingos' and Rhapsody in Blue. The flying humpbacks, very Star Trek IV. Fair.

Grey Gardens (2009)

Recent HBO film inspired by the cult favorite 1975 documentary of the same name. Story concerns Edith Ewing Bouiver Beale and her daughter Edith Bovier Beale, aunt and cousin respectively to Jacqueline Bouiver Kennedy Onasis. The Edies became celebrates when the state of there dilapidated East Hampton, New York mansion (Grey Gardens) became widely known and the documentarians the Maysles brothers made their famous film about them. I refer you to my earlier blog post on the doc for more information. This film has the virtue of filling us in on more of the back story, and attempting to explain why these two once vibrant individuals just kind of stoped and let things fall in around them. We learn more about Big Edies prolonged and rather open affair with musician George 'Gould' Strong, and that Little Edie had a short lived affair with a former Secretary of the Interior. I'd recommend seeing the original documentary first, I think you'll get more out this film if you do. I thought that while this film is solid and a more well rounded telling of the story, it just can't compete with the overpowering weirdness of the original film.

Dark City (1998)

I don't think I've ever seen a movie so influenced by German expressionism made outside of the Weimar Republic. There's Nosferatu here, M, Metropolis, and even some of Fritz Lang's later American Noir's. The films one of those, I suppose you'd call them allegories, where man is manipulated by outside forces and his world is an illusion, like in The Matrix or the 13th Floor. Those kind of films have never fully worked for me, and even with Roger Ebert explaining things to me in his (surprisingly present) audio commentary, like why so many of the characters acting seems wooden at first, I'm still left distant by this film. I'm glade I finally saw it just to get a sense of what its about, and I appreciate the visual sense, but I really didn't much care for it. Let's say 2 out of 5. Maybe it will grow on me as time goes by, a lot of the DVD's special features seem insistent on treating the film as a classic not yet fully understood or appreciated.

The King of Comedy (1982)

Scorsese/De Niro collaboration a kind of odd companion piece to the better known Taxi Driver. It covers somewhat similar territory to the earlier film, its about obsession, the mentally unbalanced, and a need to be loved/famous, however this is more of a traditional black comedy and exercise in the awkward then its even darker predecessor. De Niro is Rupert Pupkin, a thirty-four year old New Jersey born nobody who lives in his mothers basement and is obsessed with becoming a comic superstar star like his idol late-night television host Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis in his most understated performance, essentially playing a self loathing version of himself). Pupkin who seems to be largely trying to compensate for a feeling that others view him as worthless, at first tries to forcefully ingratiate himself with Langford, even inviting himself for a weekend at Langford's country home. It takes a long time for Pupkin to get Langfords less that subtle hints that he wants nothing to do with him, before the would be 'King of Comedy' kidnaps the talk show host with the help of another obsessed fan (the appropratly odd Sandra Bernhard). Pupkin gets into contact with Langford's people, and after the host gives his agent some code words to let him know that this is not a joke, issues his demand that he be given 10 minutes of time to do his routine on Langford's show and be allowed to see it air before releasing Jerry. The film has large portions of improvised dialogue that help it retain a spontaneity and tension, and in my (as well as others) estimation is the last movie to really retain that 1970's feeling of a dirty, odd ball, and gritty New York that was emblematic of that city in film from Midnight Cowboy (1969) to this cinematic offering. Best of all it allows Scorsese, De Niro, and even Lewis to show a greater range then we usually associate with them. 4 out of 5.