Movie Diary

1) Nightmare on Elm Street (2010): Ugh. Boring and dumb and full of hateable people. Sometimes that works for a horror movie, but not in this case. What this series needed was not greater realism. The whole point is that it has the ability to be fantastical because half of it takes place in dreams. Also, the original characters are too strong to remake the first one. Lame.

2) Timer: Hey, Emma Caulfield was in a movie that didn't suck! Instead, it's smart, well directed, and totally good. It manages to be a little sad without going overboard, it doesn't take the premise (look it up) into the "Ack! Chocolate! I need a man!" realm, it has lots of sharp lines of dialogue, it's funny, it makes good use of its actors, and it's even nice visually. For every five or ten crap indie movies you get suckered into watching and end up disappointed, there has to be something good, and this is it.

3) Iron Man 2: These are still a little ADD or, if I were being more generous, I suppose I could say Robert Altman, only with lots of explosions. Downey's still good. Rourke manages to be so too, despite his ridiculous character. Are they saving Tony Stark's alcoholism as a real plot point for the third one? I was also just trying to remember what else we'd seen John "Roger Sterling" Slattery in recently (besides 30 Rock, on which he was awesome), and it's this, of course. There is something both proud and deserving of commendation in its shallowness (which is more like gleefully slick and refusing to take itself seriously, as opposed to the momentousness most superhero movies spread on with a palette knife), but also a little bit producing the impression of wasted effort. It's just a little too sloppy to achieve sprezzatura.

4) Greenberg: Quite a bit easier to watch than Margot at the Wedding and thank god for that (even though I liked it). I don't really understand how Ben Stiller can do both this and Night at the Museum, but he's not the first actor to swing wildly back and forth from quality to embarrassment. I guess he's just one of those guys who likes working even more than it is that he needs the paycheck. Anyway, every time he shows up in a trailer getting bitten in the groin by an animal or whatnot, I should just remember that he's capable of some quite fine dramatic work, too, like this. It's got some lovely trademark Baumbach jokes in it, like the shopping list for whiskey and ice cream sandwiches, which made me laugh for a good few minutes, without ever betraying its feel. I guess I can see how this would be frustrating in some ways, but its frustrations seem deliberate, and I'm able to find them comic because I don't feel trapped in the kind of situation the movie portrays. That is: I generally have my shit/life together.

5) Dolls: I'm sure I've mentioned my love of Stuart Gordon on here before. Yes, he's crazy, but he's also an auteur, and this early film of his is 100% Gordon. Horrible people get murdered in horrible ways (this time by some tiny dolls that come creepily to life) and generally act horribly to everyone, while a few angels are saved. If you don't want to see a small child imagine her teddy bear come to life and grown to tremendous size devour her parents, well... don't watch this. To me, that's an attraction.

6) The Signal: As I know people who know people involved with this movie, I was really hoping it would be good, but it's mostly a mediocre zombie flick with some small interesting ideas. The three directors were each responsible for a different section, and the middle one (which is comedic in tone) is pretty good, while the first one doesn't really establish things well and the last one is, I think, trying to be indie and mysterious and sad, but ends up just being confusing and annoying. It does, however, add fuel to the whole "Atlanta is the capital of zombie movies" idea.

7) How to Train Your Dragon: Dreamworks is getting rather good at this kind of thing. It starts out slow and mediocre, but once you get dragons involved and realize that they're basically kitty-cats, it takes off. There is drama and danger and humor, and while it's still not quite up to the level of the best stuff Pixar has done, it's at least on par with their weaker efforts. Good vocal work, too. I do wonder, however, who's making movies for the dumb jocks of the world, rather than for all these sensitive, scientifically minded kids.

8) Get Him to the Greek: Hey, even if you don't like Forgetting Sarah Marshall or Russell Brand, there is a really good chance you will like this, as I consider myself one of those people, and I certainly didn't expect to enjoy this movie. But I did. I do, however, love Jonah Hill and Elizabeth Moss, so it definitely had some positives from the outset. I also now kind of love Sean Combs. The number-one point of comparison here is, of course, The Hangover, which I did not particularly like because it felt low and mean. Get Him to the Greek has a lot of similarities (craziness, drugs, blackouts, wild sex), but it manages to feel light and playful. Maybe it's just the people involved in the two projects, from actors and writers/directors, but this is way less aggro, and its attitude toward wildness is not so much "Wooo!" as terrified nerd. Great job on the songs too. I'm looking at you, Jason Segal.

9) Talk to Her: Hillary, you are a dumbass for letting this sit in its Netflix envelope next to your TV for probably two months. Just realize already that Almodovar is one of your favorite directors and watch the rest of his movies. I would bet this film in particular attracted some outrage, due to what can be seen as a casual attitude toward rape (and the fact that, while it's called "Talk to Her," the "her"s, being in comas, don't get to do much talking), and I can recognize that, but, at the same time, what Almodovar does is pick up the people spat upon by society (from transgender to murderer to rapist) and hold them gently in his arms. He humanizes them for the spitters. And this film is not really about women. It's about men's relationship to women. So those complaints should be fairly easily deflected. Anyway, it's really good and, as usual, gorgeous.