127 Hours (Danny Boyle, 2010)

6/10
I was conflicted about this movie the whole way through but the incredible, orgasmic ending almost had me convinced I liked it more than I did. James Franco was tremendous (as expected) and Danny Boyle has talent in spades, but I was disappointed in the movie's style, I guess. I understand Boyle had to pull out all the stops to make a movie about a guy trapped for 95% of its running time interesting, but I felt this movie was stylized to the point of oversaturation. Between all the glossy visions of ex-girlfriends and potential loves to be, memories of a family neglected, fantasies of escaping, hallucinations, jaunty, ironic pop tunes etc, I felt the realism of Aron Ralston's predicament was sacrificed. Maybe it's a pretentious take but I couldn't help but wonder how a director like Cristi Puiu or Bela Tarr would handle an identical story. I even wondered how it would compare to a movie like Buried, which I've yet to see. I probably should have expected it going in, but Boyle's version felt too much like a music video, tarted up with the predictable Hollywood themes listed above to make it more appealing. The flash worked very well in Slumdog Millionaire, not so much here.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask (Woody Allen, 1972)

7/10
I've never seen a Woody Allen movie before...this may not have been the best place to start (as it's not so much a movie as a series of skits) but there were still some really funny moments. The skits are all based upon taking questions from the book of the same title, taken to ludicrous extremes. The last and best skit, "what happens during ejaculation?", featuring a bunch of workers inside the body's pleasure zones, stomach, brain, eyes, etc, is a scream. Others don't work so well, but I was rarely bored.

Never Let Me Go (Mark Romanek, 2010)

2/10
This movie, something like a cross between The Notebook and Blade Runner, was a near-total dud for me. The cinematography was quite nice and the acting was fine - nothing else was enjoyable. The direction and editing was especially mechanical, with scenes broken up into 20-second chunks existing solely for characters to explain a plot point, then cut, and repeat (especially in the beginning). The script (adapted from a popular novel) is wooden and predictable from start to finish. None of the characters really say or do anything that feels believable, and I felt absolutely nothing for any of the people I was supposed to feel something for. Carey Mulligan, so good in An Education, seems wasted here - she spends her screentime moping around and looking cute. Andrew Garfield is fine despite his character being a string of clichés. Overall a major disappointment.

Incendies (Denis Villeneuve, 2010)

10/10
Simply put one of the best movies of the year, and an absolute crime if it doesn't get greater attention outside Canada. The story: the mother of twin twentysomethings Jeanne and Simon dies, and leaves behind a will stipulating the two deliver a letter each to their other brother and their father. The caveat being that the twins had no idea they had a brother and have never met their father.
Two journeys are told at once - Jeanne (and later with Simon)'s attempts to track down her long lost family in her mother's native country (fictional but a stand-in for Lebanon, it seems), and in flashback, the tribulations their mother went through in this same country years before.
There are plenty of twists revealed to the audience before the characters, which is a clever and disarming tactic because the wallop of an ending hits like a freight train when it's revealed to all. My only minor gripe is that director Denis Villeneuve sometimes shows a lack of faith in his audience, over-exposing things with unnecessary after-the-fact voiceovers. And the plot, while magnificently constructed, requires a certain suspension of disbelief to imagine all these events occuring the way they do.
But that doesn't take away from the enjoyment of the movie itself which is gripping, harrowing, and tragic in every sense of the word. Go see it.

The Amityville Horror (Andrew Douglas, 2005)

4/10
Well I didn't really like this bad movie but I didn't hate it either, it was just kind of goofy...and not Road House goofy either. Nothing really seemed to make sense and the scares were ludicrous. I have to give credit to Ryan Reynolds who really seemed to be putting everything he had into the role of the possessed (or whatever he was) dad.

Road House (Rowdy Herrington, 1989)

7/10
I find it easy to like a lot of bad movies and Road House was no exception - it was something I was in the mood for when it came on MoviePix at 10pm the other night, and it was a lot of fun. If you can't have fun watching Patrick Swayze and his blonde mullet tear people's throats out...well what's the point? I'd watch it again if I were bored.

Inside Job (Charles Ferguson, 2010)

8.5/10
Documentary about the financial crash of 2008, narrated by Matt Damon. I thought it was pretty great, very interesting (if a little hard to follow at first, for a simpleton like myself) and probably scarier than any horror movie I've seen in a while. The blame is spread around pretty evenly (none of Reagan, Clinton, Bush Jr. or Obama escape unscathed). There are a couple of moments of Michael Moore-ish schlock that don't belong (I don't need a montage of Louis Vuitton and similar logos to remind me of the things rich people buy) and the ending is a little corny, but altogether a lot better than I thought it would turn out.