THE KARATE KID (1984) - john avildsen - 7.1/10 THE KARATE KID (2010) - harald zwart - 4.5/10

That The Karate Kid (1984) is even a halfway successful film owes almost nothing to the craft (or lack thereof) employed in creating it. In fact, the movie succeeds very much in spite of itself. The terrible (and terribly dated) music undercuts the action and emotion of the film at every turn, directly commenting on the onscreen action in the most ludicrous and annoying manner possible (with the worst example being, of course, the montage at the All Valley Karate Championship scored with ‘You’re the Best Around’). Then there’s the horrible sounding ADR that persists from the opening shot through to almost the very last one that makes the whole thing seem incredibly cheap. And the constant use of single takes for the duration of a scene (usually a hallmark of a good film and a strong director) somehow manages to make many scenes that should be resonant feel flat (the confrontation between Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita, the best thing in the movie) and the Cobra Kais’ sensei, for example, or the long scene of Miyagi and Daniel (Ralph Macchio) celebrating Daniel’s birthday).

DIE HARD – john mctiernan – 7.5 / 10

Why doesn’t anyone in this film believe anyone else?  All interactions start out antagonistic and every once in a while resolve themselves to being civil (but only sometimes).  When we first see Sgt. Al Powell he’s buying Twinkies for his pregnant wife but the store clerk doesn’t believe him.  When John McClane calls dispatch for help, they think he’s a crank caller.  When Powell suggests McClane might be trying to help, his boss says he’s probably just a bartender.  Even smarmy asshole reporter Thornberg is met with disbelief when he tells his boss there’s a terrorist attack underway.

SEX AND THE CITY 2 – michael patrick king – 1.1 / 10

At this point, after six seasons on HBO, countless reruns on TBS and a feature film, you know what you’re getting with Sex and the City 2. And it’s tempting to just say this sort of thing isn’t for me and ignore it (or, more accurately, pretend it doesn’t exist). But by making claims of feminism and female empowerment, Sex and the City demands a closer examination. If these films (and the TV series) are as important as the people involved in making them seem to believe they are, we’re in a lot of trouble. Because the truth is that Sex and the City’s view of women is as vapid and patronizing as anything you’ll see in a Michael Bay movie.

SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE – amy jones – 2.5 / 10

This film fits the slasher movie blueprint to a 't,' almost as if it were constructed with that as the goal.  To wit: there’s some tragic event in the past that comes back to haunt a bunch of young women left all alone with no one in authority.  And then they’re hunted by a madman and picked off one by one.  Whatever merit there is in being able to paint within the lines, this film achieves it.

 

ROBIN HOOD – ridley scott – 6.0 / 10

The latest in Ridley Scott’s long list of staggeringly mediocre, perfectly acceptable but nonetheless occasionally visually striking films, Robin Hood is, as all Scott’s films are, overlong, tedious and curiously devoid of passion and emotion. This is, of course, completely unsurprising since Ridley Scott hasn’t made a genuinely good film since 1982’s Blade Runner. But he also hasn’t made an outright bad film since then either. He just makes absolutely pedestrian movies, of which Robin Hood is merely the latest.

IRON MAN 2 – jon favreau – 5.5 / 10

Do you love Robert Downey, Jr.? If you do, if you’d be content watching him read the proverbial phone book for two hours, then you might enjoy Iron Man 2. If, on the other hand, you merely like Downey (I can’t imagine anyone outright disliking the guy, he’s just too charismatic), Iron Man 2 is going to be something of a bore. Because make no mistake, this is the Robert Downey, Jr. show; and if you don’t find his portrayal of Tony Stark endlessly fascinating, you’re going to find an awful lot of this film to be incredibly tedious.

THE TOP TEN FILMS OF 2009

my list of the ten best films of the year along with a few honorable and dishonorable mentions.

(and yes, i know it's almost may but it took me a little longer than usual this year to get caught up on everything that was released in 2009.)

KICK-ASS – matthew vaughn – 7.0 / 10

Though it’s being touted as some sort of critique or satirization of the comic book-based superhero blockbusters that have taken over the multiplex in recent years, Kick-Ass, perhaps unsurprisingly, wants to have its cake and eat it too, to be both a satire and a straight-up superhero movie. And for a while, when the critique is confined to the half of the film featuring Kick-Ass and the superhero stuff confined to the half of the film featuring Hit Girl and Big Daddy, this tactic sorta works. But, inevitably, Kick-Ass, the ‘superhero’ alter ego of uber-nerd Dave Lizewski, despite spending the first two-thirds of the film proving just how stupid the idea of donning spandex and fighting crime really is, ultimately saves the day and in the process completely undercuts anything interesting the film was trying to say.

RUNNING WITH SCISSORS – ryan murphy – 3.1 / 10

I guess the book this film is based on must be pretty good.  How else to explain how all of these demonstrably talented people got snookered into being in this film.  It’s no secret that I love Ryan Murphy’s series Nip / Tuck (the first couple seasons anyway).  And his direction and writing on that show are often exemplary.  The direction of this film (his feature debut) is workmanlike but serviceable, mostly getting out of the way of the ‘hilarious’ and ‘heartbreaking’ events of the film.  It’s the writing that fails him.  In the special features on the DVD, Augusten Burroughs, the author of the ‘personal memoir’ upon which the film is based talks at length about Murphy’s determination in pursuing this project.  That leads me to believe that Murphy feels some sort of personal connection to the weirdness on display here.  And maybe that’s why he misses the mark by so much.  Maybe he thought that other people would connect to the story as he did.  Maybe he just took for granted that the story was compelling on its own.

 

THE BEST ALBUMS OF THE OO'S

Before we get into the list proper, a word about how I determined the order of the twenty albums below. In order to be as scientific as possible, I compiled three separate lists. For the first list, I determined the average number of plays per song on each album (since iTunes keeps track of the play count and I only ever listen to music on iPods, this was as simple as adding up the total number of plays per album and dividing it by the number of tracks). For the second list, I determined the overall rating of each album (adding together the number of stars (out of five) I’d given each track and dividing that by the total number of possible stars (the number of tracks times five)). The third list was simply a ranking of where I thought the albums would place if I was being unscientific.

I then took these three lists and averaged out the albums’ placement on all three to arrive at a final score. I arranged the albums according to that final score (with certain allowances for the fact that I didn’t have iTunes (and hence the ability to keep track of play counts) until late 2003) to arrive at the final list of the twenty best albums of the 2000s.

Why go to all that trouble? Well, without taking into account factors like the total number of plays per album, it would be easy to convince myself that albums I admired more than liked should place higher, that, say, Fennesz’s Endless Summer should place higher than The Shins’ Chutes Too Narrow. But by being as scientific as possible, I was able to (hopefully) eliminate any bias I might have had.

All right, then, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, on to the list.

FOOD, INC. - robert kenner - 6.0 / 10

Lately there’s been an increase in what you might call social commentary documentaries. Traditionally relegated to the back of the book store, these sorts of polemics (often liberal and always one-sided) have, since An Inconvenient Truth made $50 million and won an Oscar, more and more begun to morph into documentaries. In and of itself this isn’t cause for alarm. But when they aren’t filmed or edited with any particular grace or style, offer no real narrative throughline and clearly leave one side out of the debate, they can become quite tedious.

PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTNING THIEF – chris columbus – 2.9 / 10

The director of such insipid middlebrow fare as Bicentennial Man, Mrs. Doubtfire and I Love You, Beth Cooper as well as the man responsible for almost killing the Harry Potter film franchise before it started (having directed the first two terrible entries before Alfonso Cuaron came in to save the series with the third film) returns with a mishmash of Greek mythology that possesses one of the oddest and most pernicious messages of any film I’ve ever seen aimed at kids.

CRAZY HEART – scott cooper – 2.5 / 10

Even before his celebrated turn in Crazy Heart, it was well established that Jeff Bridges was one of the best actors working today. He disappears so completely into every role that it seems as if he must, in real life, be exactly like the character he’s playing. When you watch The Big Lebowski, for instance, you believe that Bridges is exactly like The Dude, the aging hippie he plays in that film. Similarly, when you watch The Contender, you completely believe that he’s as thoughtful and confident in real life as the President he plays in that film is. Of course, since those characters are so different from each other, what that really means is that Bridges is just damn good. His work appears effortless. You can never catch him acting.

SHUTTER ISLAND – martin scorsese – 6.5 / 10

The reason that there are so many films about World War II has, I think, a lot to do with the Holocaust. A filmmaker can easily piggyback on the horror of the death camps as a sort of emotional shorthand. A few shots of emaciated corpses and grief-stricken loved ones and the film gains an instant amount of emotional credibility. Similarly, filmmakers so often give their main characters tragic pasts (dead wives, dead children, both in the case of Shutter Island) because it allows them to easily and without any real effort make the audience care about and feel for their protagonists. This tactic is clumsy and cheap but it’s undeniably effective.

THE BEST FILMS OF THE 00'S

my picks for the fifteen best films of the decade.

PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE – paul thomas anderson – 10 / 10

Even before the film begins, it’s abundantly clear that Punch-Drunk Love is something different. It’s a relatively short film from Paul Thomas Anderson, a director known for making very lengthy movies. And it’s a drama starring Adam Sandler, an actor known almost exclusively for his sophomoric comedies. Then the film begins and it becomes clear just how different it really is. But in this case, different is wonderful. Punch-Drunk Love bears almost no resemblance to any love story you’ve ever seen. Despite that or, perhaps more accurately, because of it, the film is able to evoke the joy, pain, unpredictability and volatility of love better than just about anything else out there.

IT’S COMPLICATED – nancy meyers – 0.7 / 10

Make no mistake, It’s Complicated is porn for middle-aged woman. Jane Adler (Meryl Streep, in shrill Mamma Mia mode) is the walking talking embodiment of everything a fiftysomething woman could possibly want. She’s the chef / owner of a successful restaurant. She has three grown children who are all beautiful, well adjusted and well on their way to being successful. She has a group of friends who fall all over each other to tell her how great she is. She’s got a fabulous home complete with a huge garden (both of which seem to magically require no upkeep). The architect designing the addition that she’s planning (which will double the size of her house) is head over heels in love with her. And now her ex-husband, Jake (Alec Baldwin, happily reveling in his physical shortcomings), even though he’s remarried to a hot thirty-year-old, finds her irresistible. The dialogue in the film is pretty much an unending stream of compliments to her and everyone seems to appreciate and respect her. Who wouldn’t want to be Jane?

THE HURT LOCKER – kathryn bigelow – 7.8 / 10

There are a few pieces of advice you often hear in relation to movies. One of them that’s undoubtedly true is that a good ending forgives a lot. A film that has a solid ending leaves the audience walking out of the theater feeling good about the movie and thus more likely to talk positively about it. You might call this The Sixth Sense effect. The reverse is also true. A great movie that ends poorly cancels out all the good will it’d built up to that point and leaves the audience feeling unsatisfied. You could call it the Unbreakable effect.

THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM – paul greengrass – 9.3 / 10

As anyone who’s talked with me (or, more accurately, listened to me talk) about movies for any length of time can tell you, I generally hate movies that employ a shaky handheld camera aesthetic. In fact, I even disliked it pretty severely in The Bourne Supremacy, this film’s immediate predecessor. The look is meant to convey immediacy and a you-are-there sense of documentary realism. But for reasons I’ve detailed elsewhere, that never works for me. It succeeds only in making the film in question seem cheap and slapdash. Mostly it just makes we me want to send the director a gift certificate for a tripod. But then along comes The Bourne Ultimatum, the exception that proves the rule.

AVATAR – james cameron – 4.4 / 10

An awful lot has been made about James Cameron’s first film in twelve years being some kind of game changer that takes cinema to a new level or some such nonsense. To be sure, Avatar is visually very impressive both in its utilization of 3D and in its photorealistic environments that only ever existed in a computer mainframe. Unfortunately, being visually stunning is only enough to occupy the audience’s mind for half an hour or so. At that point there needs to be some kind of story or character development in order to sustain the audience’s interest for the remaining two hours, and Avatar provides none.

UP IN THE AIR – jason reitman – 3.9 / 10

Unlike most movie stars who really only play minor variations of a single character (Will Smith’s everyman good guy, Brad Pitt’s coolest guy in the room, Tom Cruise’s all American hero) George Clooney has a couple default modes. He’s either the witless idiot (O, Brother Where Art Thou?, Burn After Reading, The Men Who Stare at Goats) or the suave sophisticate who’d rob you blind and get thanked for the privilege (Ocean’s Eleven, Three Kings, Michael Clayton). Up in the Air sees him earning critical raves for doing a combination of the two. And to be sure, Clooney’s performance is at least half of the (very limited) appeal of this boring, completely obvious ode to normal workaday life. Unfortunately, that’s not enough to save what is, at bottom, a very tedious and rock solidly conservative piece of awards-baiting nonsense.

THE BLIND SIDE – john lee hancock – 1.5 / 10

If anything about film can be said to be dangerous it’s that a movie can be simultaneously both horribly offensive and skillfully made. John Lee Hancock’s latest is a case in point. If you’re not paying all that much attention, The Blind Side seems like an enjoyable, if somewhat hackneyed and clichéd, crowd-pleaser. But if you look a little closer, it becomes clear just how horrifyingly racist the film is.

NEW MOON – chris weitz - 1.9 / 10

The experience of watching the second installment in what’s been dubbed, rather grandiosely, The Twilight Saga, is akin to getting kicked in the brain: disorienting and painful. It’s disorienting because there’s just no reason that something like this should have earned the shrieking adoration of millions of people, and painful because nothing in it has been crafted with any tact, subtlety or skill.

HE'S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU - ken kwapis - 0.1 / 10

Before even sitting down in the theater, I knew this was going to be bad. The signs were all there. Its release date had been pushed at least twice. The studio that made it sold it to another studio before distributing it (something you don't do if you think you have a decent product on your hands). And I'd seen the trailer so many times I could quote most of it (always a bad sign as it means they're trying to get everyone to see it opening day because they know word of mouth will be so awful that it'll soon kill the film). But even knowing it was going to be bad, I didn't expect it to be this bad, and outright offensive besides. He’s Just Not That Into You is one of the most offensive, most odious films I've ever seen, and certainly the most offensive film I've seen this past year (one that included cinematic gems such as Rachel Getting Married and Twilight).

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY – oren peli – 4.0 / 10

I’m not sure if the backlash against Oren Peli’s no budget horror film has already begun, but if it hasn’t, let me start it now. Far from the ‘scariest film ever made,’ Paranormal Activity is little more than long stretches of boring people talking about themselves punctuated by the occasional jump scare that could’ve been rigged up by any fifth grader with a decent imagination and a couple hours to kill.