War Horse

Summary:  This takes place in England at the beginning of the 20th century. Albert is the son of a drunken farmer and a hardworking mother.  They rent their farm from a greedy landlord who is interested in buying a certain horse at an auction.  Albert's father outbids the landlord out of spite and brings home a thoroughbred instead of a work horse like they needed on their farm.  Little did his father know, this was the horse Albert had his eye on.  Albert names the horse Joey, and they bond quickly.  In order to save the farm, they have to plow a rock-ridden and dried up field.  Albert and Joey try, but they can't do it.  Once it starts raining, the ground softens enough that they get the job done.

When WWI starts, Albert's father sells Joey to the army to pay off the farm.  (A heavy rain ruins their crops from the field Joey and Albert plowed.)  Albert is devastated.  He wants to enlist to go with Joey, but is too young.  The officer who takes Joey ensures Albert that he was take the best care of him and return Joey to Albert if at all possible.  This is the start of Joey's journey, through many countries, families, and owners - none of which would I like to spoil for you.

OaTs:  This would be one of those films that I truly enjoy watching for the first time, but cannot really see myself putting on a list of my favorite films.  It was beautiful, touching, and epic.  I truly believe in the connection between man and animal, and I love watching films about it.  I'm a sucker for animal films.  I love horses, or at least the idea of them since I have minimal personal experiences with horses.  I find them beautiful and majestic.  So to follow a horse on his journey was a really special viewing experience.

I was expecting the film to follow Albert more than Joey, but it was the other way around.  The people that Joey met along his journey through WWI, or The Great War at the time, were unexpected, but very welcome.  I got attached to some of them, who took temporary ownership/care of Joey.  Even so much that I wondered if I wanted him back with Albert instead of another person.  Ultimately, though, Joey was meant to be with Albert.  And the movie made me believe it.  I don't know how they got the horses to convey these feelings, but it worked really well.

If I have one complaint, it's in the lack of screen time for Tom Hiddleston.  He's a new favorite of mine, having previously seen him in Thor, Midnight in Paris, and The Deep Blue Sea.  He plays an Army Captain who takes Joey to war.  Their time together is too brief.  Captain Nichols was an upstanding man who promised Albert to return Joey to him if at all possible.  Then Joey moves on to another person.  Then another, and another.  The temporariness of Joey's caretakers, though, was in great service to the ultimate meaning of the story, so I understand why Hiddleston's time on screen is limited.  I can be a selfish viewer sometimes.
 

Score:  8/10

Young Adult

Summary:  Mavis Gary is the author of a young adult book series.  It was once popular, but is now on the discount table.  She grew up in a small town in Minnesota and is now living in Minneapolis.  When she hears that her high school sweetheart has had a child, she decides that she needs to save him from his boring life as a husband and father in their hometown.  While trying to do this, she meets a former classmate who was crippled in a "prank" pulled by the jocks they went to school with.

OaTs:  Charlize Theron was fantastic as Mavis.  She really made you hate her and sympathize with her at the same time.  I really felt like I was looking at a girl who lived off of her status in high school.  She was even using those memories to make a living as an adult.  She never really grew up, which is why she thinks her former boyfriend needs to be rescued.  And he couldn't be happier with his life.

So Theron was great.  And so was Patton Oswalt as Matt, the man still carrying around a grudge from what happened to him in high school.  But that's pretty much where my love for this movie ends.  I'm not into dark comedies.  I don't enjoy laughing at awkward and painful situations.  I felt embarrassed for her, and that's not a feeling that I enjoy while watching a film.  I feel that's what the writer and director were aiming for, so they succeeded, but I didn't like it.

I'm glad I saw it.  Sometimes an okay movie is worth it for a great performance like this.  She saved it from a much worse grade from me.  I understand that many critics are loving this movie, and that's just fine.  But it's not up my alley.  I'd cringe when she guzzled her Diet Coke right from the two-liter bottle.  I felt bad for her dog that was left in her hotel room for hours on end.  It was uncomfortable for me, so definitely not something that I enjoyed watching. 

Score:  6/10

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Summary:  Based on the first book of the Millennium Trilogy by Swedish author Steig Larsson, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is the story of a journalist and private investigator solving a forty year old crime.  Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), an old, rich gentlemen hires journalist Mikael Blomqvist (Daniel Craig), who recently lost a huge libel lawsuit, to figure out who killed his niece, Harriet, over forty years ago.  In exchange, Henrik will provide Mikael with all the information he needs to prove the story that got him in trouble.  Mikael soon enlists the help of a private investigator, the young girl who did the background check on him for Vanger:  Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara).  They dig deep in to the family history, full of Nazis and other sordid things, in order to figure out what happened to Harriet.

OaTs:  This has got to be one of the best adaptations I have seen in a long time.  I actually liked it better than the original Swedish film, which I did think was very good.  It was much more true to the book in tone - more gray, cold, and eerie.  I felt that Rooney Mara was much closer to my image of Lisbeth than Noomi Rapace in the Swedish adaptation.  And though I was hoping they would cast Viggo Mortensen as Mikael, Daniel Craig was an excellent choice.  He really played the part well.

They did change the ending a bit.  Not in a big way.  The answer was the same, but revealed in a different way.  I actually liked the new ending.  It was more concise.  The original story climaxes, then takes another twenty or thirty minutes to wrap things up.  This one only took about ten minutes.

It's a really gripping story.  I'm a huge fan of murder mysteries, or mysteries in general.  I have been ever since my love of Nancy Drew books in elementary school.  This one is really dark.  Really dark.  There are some difficult things to watch, including rape, torture, and murder.  I wouldn't watch this with anyone unless they knew what they were in for.  It's hard to recommend something like this unless I really know someone's taste.  I wouldn't want them looking at me like, "Why the hell did you show this to me?"  Yeah.  I'd like to avoid that conversation.

Funny story:  I went to the very first screening of the film with a friend of mine who shares my love of the books.  When we got our tickets, it said we were in Theater 3.  I found this odd because it's one of the smallest in the theater for a premiere of such an anticipated film.  I mean, not like Harry Potter, but the Millennium Trilogy is a phenomenon all over the world.  Anyway, we went to sit down and when the commercials came on, they were for Cartoon Network, PBS Kids, and other things of that nature.  Then the previews started.  They were all for movies rated PG or G.  You combine all of this, and my little red flag goes up.  I thought, "There's no way studios would pay to advertise children's movies at this movie.  The most UN-children's movie of them all." 

I knew they were going to play the wrong movie.  But I waited.  Maybe they just had the wrong reel of previews.  Then when the studio title cards started rolling, one said "Happy Madison Productions."  Yep.  They were showing us the Adam Sandler movie.  This was a Tuesday night.  The theater was packed.  We weren't there to see the Adam Sandler movie that had already been out for a month and received scathing reviews.  So I briefly explained this to my friend, Christal, and got up from my chair to tell someone they were playing the wrong movie.  A man in the audience tried to tell me it was the wrong movie and I told him that is where I was going.

I told the boy at the concession stand and he alerted the manager.  When I got back to the theater, the screen was showing the slide advertisements they show before all movies.  They had stopped it.  And the theater applauded for me when I got back.  I fully fill Christal in on how I knew and she agreed that the previews and commercials were odd once she thought about it.  The manager came in and apologized.  My theory is that they printed the wrong theater number on the stubs.  There's no way they'd have this film in such a small theater for it's first screening.

So that was my viewing experience for this film.  It started about a half hour late.  Then Christal and I stood outside the theater and discussed it for about ten or fifteen minutes.  It was a great evening that made for a great story. 

Score:  8/10

J. Edgar

Summary:  This film chronicles the life and career of J. Edgar Hoover, founding director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, played by Leonardo DiCaprio.  He started working for the government when crime scene investigation wasn't practiced.  Edgar grew frustrated with this, suggesting they were letting criminals get away with things.  His appointed second-hand man, Clyde Tolson, stuck by Edgar through think and thin, occasionally pointing out flaws in Edgar's approach.  Edgar's long-time secretary was the keeper of his secrets and one of the few people he could trust with everything.

It follows him from the time no one took him seriously, through the time he became the legend that he is today. 

OaTs:  When this film was announced, I was fairly excited to see it.  I have been a fan of Clint Eastwood, the director, and Leonardo DiCaprio for a long time now.  I thought it would be a great match.  And it wasn't a horrible match, but I have to say that I expected more.

I felt like it was trying too hard.  DiCaprio has always been a favorite of mine, but I am recently coming to a different conclusion.  I'm getting frustrated with the showiness of his performances.  I will always love him in The Departed, and maybe even Revolutionary Road, but I feel like he is going to have to do something really different in order for me to consider myself a fan once again.  I'd like to see him play an average guy using his given voice.  I can't remember a time I've seen him in a movie without a fake accent, except maybe Inception, of which I was not a fan.  His next role is Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby.  I'm looking forward to seeing what he does with that.

Eastwood has been letting me down as of late.  I was one of the few who enjoyed Hereafter last year, but it wasn't anywhere near his best stuff.  Invictus and Changeling were disappointments.  Gran Torino, on the other hand, was fantastic.  Anyway, I'm not sure if I am on the Eastwood band-wagon anymore either.

J. Edgar is a fascinating person, so I can understand why it was so appealing to make a film about his life.  I do feel, however, that there is too much left unknown.  I couldn't help but think to myself, "I wonder how much of this is true."  Since I'm a history nerd, I like to see historical movies tell the truth.  I understand that this doesn't always make for a good movie.  So why even make them?  There are some truly excellent films about history that are honest as well as entertaining.  If you're going to do it, do it right.

Then there was the makeup.  I keep going back to two films that used aging makeup to great effect:  Citizen Kane, of course, and La Vie En Rose, the latter of which won the academy award for Best Achievement in Makeup.  They realistically changed performers in their twenties and thirties into older versions of their characters and you didn't even think about the makeup until the movie was over.  The entire time that I looked at DiCaprio as the older Hoover, I got distracted by the stuff on his face.  Armie Hammer as Clyde Tolson was even worse.  As Hoover's secretary, Ms. Gandy, Naomi Watts' makeup was pretty good, though.

I think that, once again, an effort to get DiCaprio an Academy Award has failed.  He needs to stop trying so hard.  With The Departed, I could tell that it wasn't his goal.  It was a movie made for entertainment and it happened to be fantastic.  In my opinion, that's a much better way to win awards than to aim for it and win.  Make a good movie.  If it's recognized, that's great.  If not, at least you still have a good movie instead of a failed attempt at Oscar glory.  All in all, a very disappointing movie.  I was hoping for better.

Score:  5/10