Mao's Last Dancer, 2009

Michael Jackson's This Is It, 2009

Moon, 2009

Year One, 2009

It was stupid, but I laughed my ass off.

Much of my enjoyment, of course, owing to Jack Black, who makes me laugh regardless of how dumb he's acting. And Michael Cera is always entertaining, too, and is almost a caveman version here of George Michael Bluth with his big doe eyes and stuttered afterthoughts.

I did think that with the actors they wrangled here, and director Harold Ramis, that the story and its execution could have been slightly less ridiculous. But, then again, this is a caveman movie with Jack Blakc, so perhaps not...

The movie is very Apatow-ian in that stupid things pass for comedy, moments of crudeness ruin the overall sweet dumbness of the main characters and their plight, and scenes of no importance are used for comical effect in ways that are only really comical to dopes. Still, at least it's concise, and the story flows somewhat. These characters have purpose, and they reach their goals with little Anchorman-like random and pointless distraction.

Again, it's stupid, but it's enjoyable. The concept of a lazy caveman and his smart, workaholic sidekick exploring the holy lands for proof of God's existence and their purpose in life (one a believer, one not so much) is stupidly clever. The use of modern-day language in the film is often rather amusing, and it's kinda fun to watch seasoned actors just acting silly as religious characters like Abraham (Hank Azaria), a high priest (Oliver Platt), and Xander Berkeley (the King).

I laughed, and that, I suppose, was the whole point.

The Ugly Truth, 2009

Crazily enough, I liked it.

I'll do romantic comedies any day of the week provided I like the actors. I'm not convinced yet about Gerard Butler, but I'll watch Katherine Heigl do anything (so long as she promises never to work for Apatow again). She's just the snuggliest, most adorable woman. It's difficult to believe she struggles with romance given her face, her body, and overall warmth, but she manages to pull it off (just). Butler, on the other hand, I know little about, so seeing him as a pompous, chick-hating skunk was not so hard to believe. He did that really well.

So, basically, she's a news producer who wants to retain the seriousness of her program despite her bosses desiring a change to shift with the times -- i.e. to go for scandal over substance to gain ratings. The network brings on board Butler, host of a cable show called The Ugly Truth, which tells women and men like it is -- basically, Can't get a date? You're ugly. He describes the male psyche as lustful and not so smart, and informs Katherine that the perfect man does not exist. Men are all boobs and sex, not classical music and poetry. Katherine is furious, but realises he gets those ratings, and that means she keeps her job, so she runs with it -- not that she has to like it.

Then Katherine meets a potential good guy. To prove he knows how men and women operate, Butler makes a deal with her that if he tells her what to do as the relationship progresses, her date will fall for her head over heels. She agrees, and it works. But, drum roll, what happens when Butler-the-cynic starts to fall for Katherine-the-naive himself?

Standard rom-com hijinks ensue, but the writing here is crisp enough that, while standard, it's relatively enjoyable. For a rom-com, there's actually a lot of good stuff in here about men and women and their goals and values in relationships. Lots of home truths come out about how relationships start, why they fail, and what we think along the way. I, at least, found myself nodding in agreement with much of Butler's supposed cynical rantings. We really are very basic animals. But then, Katherine Heigl would probably make me see the bright side of life, too.

Sunshine Cleaning, 2008

Had no interest in this film whatsoever until I started hearing the trailer over and over at work. It sounded whimsical, as I thought, but perhaps a little smarter and edgier than I'd thought when first hearing about it. Generally, when I hear Amy Adams is in a movie, I'm skeptical. I haven't enjoyed her really in anything, and can only see her as the annoying dacing princess from Enchanted. Here, finally, she changed my mind. She can do edgy, apparently.

I really enjoyed this one. It's a good story -- I'd almost go so far as to say it's original in it's concept, and that's fairly rare these days. Two down on their luck chicks -- one with a kid, the other living with dad -- go into their own crime-scene cleaning business, and find that cleaning up the waste of the dead is about more than stains on the floor and the walls. They find it's an entry into people's lives at their most private. The fallout of such an emotional job seeps into their home and private lives, and ultimately changes the both of them, for better and for worse.

It's funny, well-written, clever, human, and interesting. Really good movie.

17 Again, 2008

Rewatched with my sister. I knew she'd love it. We're fans from way back of body-swapping flicks, and this fits the subgenre perfectly. Funny, charming, and, above everything, smart. It's a keeper.

Crush, 2009

WHY WHY WHY????

There's this ad on the loop tape at work that says something like "10,000 Australians work to make the movie you love watching, but buying and downloading pirated films is putting these jobs at risk". Usually, I feel bad for the film workers losing their jobs, because as the ad also says, "Australians make great films".

Then you watch Crush and want them all fired. You watch Crush and want to download a thousand movies to boot them out of a job quicker.

Australia makes great films. Um, no it doesn't. Australia makes some good movies. It also makes some hellish, stupid, and fucking pointless movies like Crush.

Ready? Just when the stakes are at their highest, just when the twist is ready for revelation, just when you think this sadistic woman couldn't be any more sadistic... you find out SHE'S A GHOST!!!!!! A ghost who deletes emails. A ghost of flickers off TVs. A ghost who floods toilets, and causes all manner of havoc in a boy's life, who, well, kinda deserves it after repeatedly cheating on his girlfriend and inviting the ghostly woman back more and more for sex games we're supposed to feel sorry for him for carrying out. This ghost is just too sexy to say no to.

Well, um, you dug you're own hole stupid boy. But wait -- this is not a comment on the male psyche, or an unravelling of human behaviour, or a deep look into the ways of seductive women, because SHE'S A FUCKING GHOST. And everything that happens means FUCK ALL.

Avoid. (PS. Downloading movies is bad.)

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, 2009

I know, I know. Everyone said it was crap, and it looked crap and sounded crap, but I was in the mood for crap, so I watched it. And it was crap.

Only because it falls into that lame-o romantic comedy trap of altering a man's entire thought processes for the love a single woman. I'm the viewer who goes, yeah, and what about tomorrow? What about the next model who walks into photographer Matthew McConaughey's darkroom with her panties at her knees begging for a career boost? Is the love of Jennifer Garner, his childhood sweetheart, really enough to quell these desires?

In movie-world, yes. And if you consider this film a complete fantasy, then it might work for you. Maybe I'm thinking too hard about it. Basically, womaniser finds love. Great. Next.

Knowing, 2009

And then the guy turns around, opens his mouth, and this big blue light comes out! And then I wanted to beat myself senseless that a movie could lead me so close to something really awesome and then yank it away with one turn of a blue-light mouth-spewing head. FUCK YOU MOVIE!

Oh man! It started out so well. And it speaks directly to my point that movies just can't seem to end these days. They start out good, and then turn to crap in the interests of a quick wrap up.

The end of this film is DUMB. Supremely DUMB. And, as someone pointed out to me, not without its religious posturing. Holes everywhere.

Okay -- one good thing: Ben Mendelsohn was awesome. Otherwise, sucky crapola.

Synecdoche, New York, 2007

Every Little Step, 2008

I really wanted Rachelle Rak to play Sheila!

Generally, I agreed with Bob Avian’s choices in casting his 2006 revival of A Chorus Line, but I think he (unintentionally) confused Rachelle when he told her in the finals call backs to perform as she did eight months before in the open calls. She struggled to remember what it was about her initial audition that would have stood out, and it threw her. Not that I know a thing about theatre casting, but I wish Bob had let her find her vulnerability from a present place, not from eight months before.

Still, that was one of the things I really liked about this movie – learning the ins and outs of the casting process, how these iconic roles are cast after all this time. I enjoyed learning the story behind the show, how Michael Bennett came up with the idea, and how he and his producers shaped in into what it eventually became.

I had no idea that these stories are actually all true. I figured they were generalizations; stuff overheard in the audition rooms. I didn’t know they were actual, almost word for word the same, stories of Bennett and his friends. I got chills when I first saw the trailer for this, and heard the old tapes of voices and stories and then Michael Bennett says “I think this could be a show … called A Chorus Line.” It’s all real life, and the genius of Bennett and Marvin Hamlisch who wrote the music and Edward Kleban who wrote the lyrics is so evident is how they transformed the story into this heartbreaking and funny show.

The stories of the auditioning performers were interesting, too, as they always are (hence the show itself). It’s all big breaks and dreaming, and it’s nice to see some genuine people get their moment in the spotlight. I’m glad the filmmakers resisted the melodrama of, say the opera doco In the Shadow of the Stars, opting to retain much positivity throughout. A Chorus Line shows us the downside of the performing life and so we didn’t need to see it again here. I liked that choice – to keep it bright. That said, there’s a few sad or ego-soaked moments, when Nikki Snelson realizes Jessica Goldyn is a better “Val” than she is; when Rachelle gets her knock back; when Tyce Diorio talks about “his party”. But, overall, the vibe is a good one.

If I can have one more complaint, I would have loved to have seen how the “Morales” role was cast, and to perhaps meet the original Morales, as we meet original “Connie” and original “Cassie”. Morales was always my favourite.

I’ve always loved the film version, and while I’m not a dancer or a singer, and have no such designs, songs from the film have repeated in my head over and over at key points in my life, particularly “I Can Do That” and “I Hope I Get It”. It’s often said that A Chorus Line is the performer’s story, but it’s everyone’s story – everyone who has a dream and strives to fulfill that dream but knows that on stage, as in life, places are limited.

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, 2008

I knew very little about this case prior to watching this film, and having seen it, I'm just appalled (again) at the US justice system. What a farce. From the outset, the whole thing was an almighty sham headed up but a judge who did nothing but make a complete mockery of the entire case, and cause unnecessary disruption to the life of Samantha Geimer, the girl Polanski raped.

The judge was known to be a womaniser and a wannabe celebrity. He made every decision in this case based on how the press would view it and him, with absolutely no reagrd for actual justice, the victim, the perpetrator, or the legal system itself.

That's my take, anyway. I think the lawyers should have spoken up about the judge's handling of the case and attempted to have him removed earlier. I don't think the arguments surrounding the case should be about whether or not Polanski was justified in his self-imposed exile. They should be about how ridiculous the thing was from the very start. Polanski would be forgiven for being elated that it went the way it did, that he got the judge he got. It's because of that judge that he ended up getting off scot-free from a serious, horrible, disgusting crime that he admitted to committing.

I'm floored that the family sought no incarceration. He drugged and raped Samantha Geimer -- she says this, Polanski admits this. I am astounded that the parents of this girl haven't been asked to account for just why they let their daughter to go to photo shoot with a man known to have had an affair with a 15-year-old model. I'm driven to distraction by the outpouring of support for Polanski by the Hollywood community. He drugged and sodomized a child. How is this a man we can stand by because of his "treatment" by the courts, or the quality of his art? The crime was committed, and everyone seems to be forgetting about, or ignoring the severity of that crime.

Or is this the sort of thing we just overlooked in Hollywood in the 1970s? Is this something we overlook because of varied cultural practices? Polanski stated in the intial police report that Samantha acted erotically towards him, and that her level of experience was obvious. He says this for no other reason that to attempt to justify his actions, blame his victim. She was 13. There is no such thing as consenual sex by an adult with a 13-year-old child. The man's arrogance overwhelms me. I was nearly sick to my stomach when, at the beginning of this film, Polanski tells Clive James that he likes young women, that he believes all men do. Still, after all that happened, he justifies his urges and his actions. There is no doubt Polanski has been through absolute hell in his life, from his childhood during the Holocaust, to the murder of his pregnant wife by the Manson Family. But this kind of trauma does not justify his causing such gross trauma to someone else.

I think it's horrendous the way the hearing went down, but I think Polanski needs to face this. I hope someone out there, whoever handles the case, treats it with the seriousness it deserves and properly executes justice. Samantha Geimer doesn't want the publicity -- that's fine, but Polanski is the reason this has happened. He is the reason this story has flared up again. The judge was removed from the case not too long after Polanski fled -- wasn't that an opportunity to see justice done? But Polanski doesn't seem to want justice, not the right kind anyway. He just wants to be left alone.

The film is very well done, eye-opening, with interviews from most of the major players in the case. It attempts to leave the viewer questioning the rights and wrongs of the case, even making us shake our heads in the final moments that yet another judge, years down the track, promised Polanski time served if his handling of the case were televised. It's all about the cameras isn't it? Poor Roman. Poor Roman who used those same cameras to his every advantage when it suited him. Publicity is a bitch when the shoe's on the other foot.

The Alphabet Killer, 2008

I want to say it wasn't lame, but it really was. It's just that Eliza Dushku and Timothy Hutton are cool to watch, so it didn't feel entirely, completely like shit, even though it was.

So, it's based on the Alphabet murders that took place in Rochester, NY, in the early 1970s. Someone was going around killing kids with first and last names that shared the same initial. (Carmen Colon, was one.) He would then dump the girls in towns with that initial. While suspects mounted, no one was ever charged with the murders, and two prime suspects suicided, while, one, Kenneth Bianchi the Hillside Strangler, continues to protest his innocence. The crimes, the initials twist anyway, stopped in 1973.

The basics of the crimes are in this movie, and that's about it. The movie focuses on Megan, a detective on the case who becomes obsessed with finding the killer. So much so that she is haunted by the girls' ghosts, hallucinates, and winds up with adult onset schizophrenia. She loses her job, ends up in therapy (where she meets sage-like paraplegic Timothy Hutton), and is considered insane by everyone at the police station. Still, nothing can stop her from solving this case, so on she progresses, uncovering clue after clue.

Sadly, though, none of her clues get her anywhere and she stumbles upon the killer in this version of events completely by accident. Kind of renders invalid her so-called detective expertise and apparent non-insanity, but still...

It's not the best story. There are plotholes galore, and if you're slightly familiar with police procedure, you'll be shaking your head at what this movie tries to pass off as an actual investigation. The biggest offence is the fake closing of the case by police who shoot an innocent man and then plant cat hair from the crime scenes in his apartment. Did these clever policeman not fear another murder? If they killed the wrong guy and planted evidence in his house, and then another girl was found dead, would that not leave many unanswered questions? Dear, oh dear.

Well, I wasn't totally bored. Bill Mosely showed up, which was fun. As did Michael Ironside, who lifts to watchable even the Z-gradest of trash (like Watchers). And Eliza is just so pretty.

I give it 2 stars out of 5 for tricking me into not thinking the killer was who I knew it should have been all along.