Reviews

My favorite movie of the year, thus far. While it might not leave any long-lasting impact on society or even win an Academy Award, it is one of the most impressive character-driven films that I have ever seen. Granted, there are a number of films in the same "coming of age" genre and some have done an even better job than this one, but such are rare and have probably come once in a generation. This one is ours.

Set in Brooklyn, New York, the story is about one man, Dito (Robert Downey Jr.), reflecting on his adolescence (Shia LeBouf) through a personal memoir. It continuously shifts between past and present as one moment we see an adult Dito paying a visit to his old neighborhood and the next we are in that very same place during his younger years with his friends, a group of rough teens with nothing better to do than cause trouble for everyone around them. It strikes at you emotionally, as you grow to like each of the characters only to see the majority of their lives worsen with every scene. It is a depressing movie.

It has the darker 80's feel to it. Like "The Warriors" kind of a backdrop. Grimy. I like those stupid old movies a lot, so this was just perfect.

I don't want to give anything away, because I don't want to ruin such a good movie for anyone that might want to see it. It originally came out for the Sundance Film Festival and was finally released in Washington nearly six months later. As far as I know, it's only playing at Lincoln Square, but without a doubt it's worth the trip and the extra dollar or so.

The Departed is a cop movie, through and through, with almost as much mafia flavor thrown in. It could be considered part of the gangster genre, I suppose, but with the double agent detectives being the major players (DiCaprio and Damon), I stick by my original classification. So yeah, this movie has a little bit of everything. Not in that it seems mashed together, but in that it feels real. The characters are deep, constantly living even when they weren't on screen, and the plot line is rich. There's plenty of emotion, both raw and tamed—for those people that like to cry or clap at the end of a movie—, lots of guns and blood, and laugh out loud humor delivered via Alec Baldwin and Mark Walberg. Acting is excellent, as to be expected. It hooks you from the moment you sit down and—as clichéd as this may be—it never lets go.

My only qualm would have to be that the editing was as choppy as a baboon's arse is red. Martin Scorsese, the director, didn't finish the editing until a week before the release, but I would have been happy to have had it delayed a month and seen it at its best. At many points you see characters from an angle and then the angle will change and they will be standing somewhere else. I expected more in that department.

It's a must see, though. A classic for decades to come.

As far as horror movies go, the first film in this duo was rather pathetic. It wasn't scary in the least. Well, disappointingly, the sequel follows in the footsteps of its older sibling. In the beginning, we are introduced to three American girls living abroad in Japan. One is blonde and alters her uniform to be more revealing, so we know that she's the "bad" one. Minus points there for the cliché. Then we have the little minority friend who just does whatever the other says. Minus points there for another cliché. Finally we have the nerdy, introvert, new girl who—in an attempt to make friends, mind you—does whatever the other two do. Minus points there for a third cliché. I could go on and on about how many of the elements have been done before and how predictable the film actually was.

There were only two things I didn't see coming and they were both the scariest and funniest moments of the movie. Spoiler warning, because I will give them away. The first is when the blonde "mean girl" is introduced to the lady that makes that terribly annoying sound. Y'know, the ghost. She pees herself. It's funny and it's pretty scary. Then, the main character (forgot to mention her; she's the sister of the girl from the original film and is played by ,.jkhjjh), is going to some secluded town on a bus when an old man in front of her starts playing a game of peek-a-boo. It seems he's playing with her, but there is a lot of evidence to suggest he's playing with the cat-boy ghost sitting next to her. Sixth sense and all that business.

It isn't a good movie. Go watch the first one again and forget this one ever came out. The original Japanese version had no sequel, so other than financial gain there was no reason for the American one to have created its own path.

I'm going to go ahead and tell you right now that you wouldn't be missing all that much if you didn't see this movie. It tries to pass itself as historical fiction, pertaining to a time period in which magicians were willing to do anything to usurp their fellow illusionists, but at the end it dabbles much too far into the realm of impossibility-explained-with-science that it effectively ruins itself and drops down to the uninteresting "sci-fi" category.

For about the first two hours, it was what I expected. A dark, mysterious, captivating, and twisted piece of storytelling. I've come to associate each of those elements with director Christopher Nolan and his oddly familiar cast—Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Michael Cane, and Scarlett Johansson. But at some point during the course of the above-average directing and acting, the writer messed up. I don't want to give away too much, but it effectively ruins the greatest magic trick—the Transported Man—from the movie. It became convoluted. It tried so hard to be darker, more mysterious, more captivating, and more twisted, that it eventually turned itself into a pretzel. A crap covered one.

The final scenes made an attempt to fix up the original mess by delivering a punch that was actually thought-provoking. Still, you could pass this one up until it comes out on PPV or Blockbuster. Don't pay full price, unless you're a big "Batman Begins" fan and need something to satisfy your taste buds until "The Dark Knight" is released in 2008.