1/17/10- My Sister's Keeper

Tim
1/17/10: My Sister's Keeper (3 stars) - Not a terrible movie, though a bit sappy. The performance by the lead girl was good. Cameron Diaz's performance was a bit one note, but had some nice moments towards the end. The twist to the film was not all that much of a shocker, but it was a nice movie. There were some sad ruminations about a life cut too short and on the whole the movie was heartwarming. There were one or two swells of emotion that were nice.

Liz
My Sister’s Keeper (2009) 3.5 stars
This movie is based on a Jodi Picoult novel, and I have read many of her books, so I had a good sense of what this movie would be like. I also knew it would be very sad, so I had a box of tissues ready. Jodi Picoult is a master of taking some sort of social issue and creating a whole story around this. In this case, the issue is parents having a child so that child can be an organ donor for her sister who has cancer. Sophia Vassilieva plays the sister with cancer and Abigail Breslin plays her donor sister. I thought they were both good and I’ve liked them in other things, so it’s interesting to see them growing up and taking on more challenging acting roles. I guess I was less convinced of Cameron Diaz as their mother, but she had some good moments. The main conflict of the story was Breslin’s character trying to medically emancipate herself from her parents so she would no longer have to be a donor to her sister without her permission. It definitely had a Jodi Picoult feel, with flashbacks and different parts of the story seen from different character’s perspectives. I had heard that the ending of the movie was very different from the ending of the book. My Sister’s Keeper is one of the few Jodi Picoult books I haven’t read, so I looked up the differences, and wow- what a big change! I read something that said Picoult was not happy with the change and that it changed the message she was trying to convey. It seems crazy that someone can buy the rights to your story and then drastically change it. I might have to make a point of reading the book, just because I’d like to see the differences.

1/16/10- All That Jazz

Tim 1/16/10: All That Jazz (3.5 stars) - Interesting film about Bob Fosse's life and loves and struggle to balance his busy schedule with his family relationships and toll that his fast-paced life has on him. It was really hard to get into at the beginning because all these different things were happening at once and the Fosse character wasn't really that likeable. The plot jumped back a forth between what was happening in present day and this sort of dream world, which we later find out is a type of limbo world where he can reflect on the life he lived.

Liz- All That Jazz (1979) 3 stars
Going into this movie, I had absolutely no idea what it was about, just that it was a Bob Fosse movie. I didn’t even read the back of the DVD case. I guess I didn’t think I’d need any information going into it, because I LOVE Bob Fosse’s choreography and he’s basically my dance inspiration, so I should just love the movie. Right? Well, not so much. Some background information going into it would have been really great and had I known this was a bit of an autobiographical account of his life, it would have made much more sense. I spent the first half of the movie pretty much lost, and wondering what the point was. I guess I was expecting (from my expectations as well as from the opening scene), the movie to be another A Chorus Line, or something like that. The alternate universe dressing room/death scenes with Jessica Lange were so confusing to me that I almost felt I had missed the memo saying that this film is best viewed when under the influence of heavy drugs. The second half was definitely better and I have to say this movie probably had the best death musical number of all time. I was hoping for more dance, but towards the end, it picked up. Ann Reinking is amazing and I really enjoyed watching her dance. After the movie was over, I did a little research and the more I read about Fosse’s life and what had influenced this movie, the more I liked it. If I had written this review before I took some time to think about it, I probably would have said I hated it, but it’s definitely growing on me. Reading about how the different characters were inspired by real people was interesting and I think I’d like to learn more about Bob Fosse’s life. There was something really self-indulgent about the story and the way it was done though. It reminded me of a time that I was in a play that was written and directed by the same person and it was semi-autobiographical. It was so personal to him that he really couldn’t see where it needed editing or what wasn’t working. I think Bob Fosse might have had the same problem. I did think it was a really interesting message about show business and how people’s lives can become secondary to the success of a show or a movie.

1/15/10- Inglourious Basterds

Tim
1/15/10: Inglourious Basterds (2009) (3.5 stars) - I probably liked it a little more than Liz, but by no means did I think it was as good as the hype I remember it getting when it came out. It has the mastery tension buildup and release that Tarantino does so well and so dramatically. There is some really nice camera work and really nice visuals, but there are also some things that just don't seem to jive well together, such as the bold 70's era name title that springs up on the German "basterds" name and the strangely modern song choice that plays under the lead female characters preparation for the movie house slaughter night. All of these things could be called "classic" Tarantino but in this more historical setting it seemed a little out of place. The brutal violence can also be called "classic" Tarantino and definitely lives up to the standards he has set in other movies. In the "Kill Bill" series, the violence seemed more cartoony, here it was just brutal, but effective at telling the story. The characters were engaging and enjoyable to watch, despite a definite mis-casting of Mike Myers as a British military general with a horrible fake British accent. The movie seemed to have a bit of a slow pace for an action movie. Overall, I think the biggest problem I had with the movie was that it seemed like a sort of "fan fiction" taking actual historical people and putting them into completely made-up situations. Yes, it would be great if WWII could have ended as swiftly as it ended in Inglourious Basterds, but the truth is even more brutal then in Tarantino's fantastic mind.

Liz

Inglourious Basterds-3 stars

I wanted to see this movie when it first came out, but mainly because I think Quentin Tarantino is a good director and his movies are always interesting to watch. Nevertheless, I have seen enough of his films to know that he is notoriously violent and “Basterds”, which focused on a group of Nazi-killers, was going to be no exception. So, I went into watching the movie, fairly terrified, and pretty much stayed that way the entire time (2 and ½ hours). I don’t like watching extreme violence. I don’t like the sight of blood- real or even something I know isn’t real. I’m extremely squeamish. Now you might say, I was setting myself up to not like this movie from the beginning. I would probably think that was true as well, but I actually really liked Tarantino’s Kill Bill volume 1 & 2 (2 being my favorite), and those were probably the most violent movies I’ve even seen. The big difference between Kill Bill and Basterds for me was the storyline. I found the storyline in Kill Bill, even though it covered a lot of different people, to be much more interesting and a lot less all over the place feeling than Basterds. The different stories felt disjointed to me and left me not really interested in the outcome until about 30 minutes from the end of the film. Having said that, I was probably most interested in Shosanna’s story and really thought the actress who played that part (Melanie Laurant) and the actor who played Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) were standouts in terms of their acting. Most scenes in the movie were filled with intense suspense. You knew something was going to happen and that it was going to be really bad, but the scenes that featured those characters were especially tense. The scene they had together in the restaurant was one of the highlights of the film. Tarantino often adds touches of things that you aren’t expecting, and I’m usually fine with that, but in this film, those quirky touches just came too infrequently and seemed too out of place. Some examples of this were the titles that introduced the Basterds, the infrequent narration by Samuel L. Jackson, and the music that played over Shosanna getting ready for the premiere. So much attention was paid to the details of making the film feel like it took place in the 1940s, and things like this just really took away from it. SPOILER ALERT: My biggest problem with the film was its rewriting of history. It was weird to me to include a well-known historical figure like Hitler, and then almost live out this fantasy of killing him and all his men in a fiery inferno at the end. I’m not quite sure why I feel this way, but it was just weird. It was almost like that weird kind of fan fiction, where people come up with false scenarios for historical figures, but in this case, it is one of the most hated people in history. Just wasn’t what I was expecting… Oh, one more thing- the movie is called Inglourious Basterds, but I felt like I barely saw them in action!

365 Days/ 365 Movies- The Rules

1. We have one year to watch 365 movies. We do not necessarily have to watch one movie a day, as long as we've watched 365 by January 15, 2011.

2. At least 100 of the movies will come from the American Film Institute's Top 100 films. The other 265 will come from a combination of the 400 films nominated for the Top 100 list, new releases in the theater, movies we've always wanted to watch, suggestions from family and friends and anything that comes our way!

3. We can count a movie we have seen before as long as we watch it again during this year long period.

4. We cannot count a movie if we fall asleep during it or don't watch it all. We can pick up where we left off though.

5. We will blog about our thoughts and feelings about the movies as well as the experience.