Cowboys & Aliens

      The title really says it all doesn’t it?  Almost as plain as when Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction, Unbreakable, Jumper, Lakeview Terrace) introduced Snakes on a Plane (2006) “It’s about snakes …… on a plane.” Enough said.  Well, Cowboys & Aliens (2011) is just that easy as well. It’s about cowboys …… and aliens.  What a fun idea.  I always figured the aliens didn’t come to earth until they crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. I mean sure maybe they did a few fly-bys to check things out but that was really all. I never once thought about them coming during the old west. 
     Jon Favreau (Iron Man, Zathura, Elf, Made) is quickly becoming a favorite of mine as a director, writer, producer and actor.  I am really liking the things he is doing, both in front of and behind the camera. He directed Cowboys & Aliens.  It probably helped that he had an awesome cast to work with.  They all did a great job.
      Daniel Craig (Quantum of Solace, Munich, Dream House) is excellent, he plays Jake Lonergan.  This is my favorite role I have seen him in.  Harrison Ford (Hanover Street, Blade Runner, Witness, Firewall) is well, Harrison Ford. When is he not fun to watch? It isn’t very often we get to see him as a bad guy. He is a bit of a bad guy in this one.  Not nearly as bad as he was in What Lies Beneath (2000) but still a little bit of a mean tough guy.  Olivia Wilde (The Change-Up, Tron: Legacy, Year One) is gorgeous, and her performance was wonderful as well. I really liked all of the other characters as well. Too many to go on about. Adam Beach (Smoke Signals, Windtalkers, Flags of Our Fathers) as Nat, Sam Rockwell (Moon, The Green Mile, Iron Man 2) as Doc, etc. etc. etc.
      Anyway, moving on, the aliens reminded me of the vampires on Priest (2011) very creepy and weird. Almost as good as the aliens in Alien (1979) yea, they reminded me of those ones as well.  The Alien aliens are, after all, the best aliens. Aren’t they? Still Cowboys & Aliens is a fun, entertaining movie and worth watching.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

      Quite possibly one of the best New Year’s Eves ever! The girls where all busy so my husband and I had the evening to ourselves.  We decided to go to a movie.  This is always okay by me. We saw the new Sherlock Holmes (2011) movie.  I really enjoyed it.
      Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man, Tropic Thunder, Lucky You, The Soloist) plays the role so well.  I enjoyed this one even more than the first one.  The chemistry between Holmes and Watson was great! Dr. Watson is played by Jude Law (Cold Mountain, Enemy at the Gates, Repo Man) he is just amazing and makes Watson a wonderful character.  The entire cast was great and the story line was so good.  I get tired of seeing the same story over and over.  Even though I love movies and I will watch the same “boy meets girl” or “good guy catches bad guy” story again and again I love it when I come across something new.  Sherlock Holmes was not predictable.
      A Shadow of Games is a really fun title and a concept that is, of course, carried out throughout the movie.  There is an amazing chess game that was so fun to watch! If you saw the first Sherlock Holmes (2009) then you are familiar with Guy Ritchie’s (Snatch, RocknRolla, Swept Away) directing style for these movies.  It is one of the things that really make these movies very entertaining to watch.  His slow motion camera of what Holmes is thinking is so cool. 
      There are some fun new characters introduced in this Sherlock Holmes adventure. Stephen Fry (V for Vendetta, A Bear Named Winnie, House of Boys) plays one of those new characters.  He is an actor I have really come to like.  I love his character Gordon Gordon on Bones and now, thanks to my mom, I am loving him on Kingdom. Kingdom is a British TV series that ran from 2007-2009, Stephen Fry plays the main character Peter Kingdom. It was fun to see him in Sherlock Holmes and I really didn’t expect to see THAT much of him. No one, should see that much of Kingdom.
       Jared Harris (Extraordinary Measures, The Ward, Mad Men, Fringe) plays Professor James Moriarty, another new addition.  He is pretty creepy and plays an excellent villain. The match up between Moriarty and Holmes is really good. After all, aren’t all superheroes only as good as the villains they face.
      A Game of Shadows picks up right where the first Sherlock Holmes movie leaves off.  Spoiler alert if you haven’t seen the first.  Watson is getting married. Kelly Reilly (Eden Lake, Pride & Prejudice, Me and Orson Welles) plays the wonderful Mary Watson. She is great. All in all I really liked this movie, so much so that I would buy it for my collection.  Guess I need to buy the first one too then.  I can’t have a sequel in my collection and not have the first.

Apollo 18

      I still haven’t processed how I feel about this one.  It was a very interesting idea.  I would like to say a very original idea except for the fact that I kept having thoughts of The Blair Witch Project (1999). Anyone remember that one?  Film students out in the woods, horror strikes, supposedly found the camera the next morning with some terrifying footage.  Well Apollo 18 is kind of the same idea.  “Decades-old found footage from NASA's abandoned Apollo 18 mission, where two American astronauts were sent on a secret expedition, reveals the reason the U.S. has never returned to the moon.”
      The film is set up as if you are viewing actual footage that has been uncovered.  There is old home movie footage to introduce the characters and then the rest of the movie is made to look like actual footage from the astronauts cameras. It is very well done in that respect.  The footage looks very authentic and old.
      Apollo 18 is really a first for both the director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego and the writer Brian Miller.  (Interesting fact, the Blair Witch project was also a first for its writer and director)  I like to see new talent and then watch to see what they do next.  This is a very interesting movie with an interesting concept.  It isn’t very mainstream at all. It also may not really be for everyone. However, it is a very interesting movie all the same. 

Devil

      Devil (2010) is the first movie in The Night Chronicles trilogy.  It is written, but not directed, by M. Night Shyamalan (Signs, Lady in the Water, Unbreakable, The Village) Shyamalan wanted to try his hand at producing some of his ideas, the supernatural in a modern urban society.  You could actually find yourself in the particular situation.  I really enjoy M. Night Shyamalan films; I love his writing style, his directing style, all of it!
     The opening shot is awesome! It is your typical helicopter shot of a city, however the whole thing is upside down as it takes you through the city.  I don’t want to say to much about the movie because, in the style of Shyamalan, it would give the twists away.  The story of Devil comes from a folktale called “The Devils Meeting” in which the Devil roams the earth in human form torturing the living before he kills them. The folktale is told in the movie in a creative way.  I know it may not sound very good from that story, but it really is.  It is a fascinating story with an intriguing ending. 

Super 8

      As much as I don’t like to say it, Super 8 (2011) was a disappointment to me.  Maybe I just had really high expectations. I followed it for a long time and bought into all of the hype and secrecy about it. I am a huge fan of Steven Spielberg (Hook, Jurassic Park, E.T., Saving Private Ryan). I have also grown to like J.J. Abrams (Lost, Fringe, Alias). He is doing some interesting stuff and I kind of like his style.  All of that being said I had very high expectations.  That may be why I was so let down.
      Super 8 takes place during the summer of 1979, Abrams, and Spielberg wanted to recapture the thriller movies of the 70’s and 80’s.  They succeed in that.  It has a very old feel and even though it has new CGI and such it is still very much a 70’s or 80’s thriller.
       Joel Courtney plays Joe Lamb, the main character.  This was his first role.  He did a good job. He has a few other projects coming out in the next two years.  Elle Fanning (Déjà Vu, Phoebe in Wonderland, The Door in the floor) on the other hand has been acting since 1988. She did a wonderful job and I enjoy watching her almost as much as I enjoy watching her sister. Yes, that is right, she is Dakota Fanning’s (The Runaways, Push, The Secret Life of Bees, Coraline) little sister.
       I am sure there are people who will enjoy this movie and I wouldn’t be surprised if it ended up having a cult like following.  It just didn’t grab me.

The Secret Life of Bees

      How did I miss this movie? I really don’t know how this one slipped passed me.  With a cast full of some of my favorite actors The Secret Life of Bees (2008) was so fun to watch.  Maybe fun isn’t the right word?  The Secret Life of Bees takes place in South Carolina in 1964, and isn’t really an uplifting movie.
      Dakota Fanning (Dreamer, I am Sam, Push, The Runaways) plays 14 year old Lily.  She is an only child trying to come to terms with her mother’s death and an emotionally detached father.  Paul Bettany (Priest, A Beautiful Mind, The Tourist) plays T. Ray, Lily’s father.  As much as I like him I have to say he was pretty frightening and hard to watch. This means he did an excellent job!  Lily and her caretaker Rosaleen end up running away from home.  They go to South Carolina where they stay with three sisters who own a bee farm and make honey.
      Queen Latifah (Chicago, Just Wright, Mad Money) plays August, the main beekeeper who lets Lily and Rosaleen stay with them.  This movie is full of wonderful life lessons that Lily learns while staying with August and her sisters.  Even though The Secret Life of Bees deals with difficult subject matter and a difficult time in the United States of America it is a very well written story and worth watching. 

The Bad Mother's Handbook

      In my post about the Green Lantern I talked about how many super hero movies deal with father son issues.  Well, here is a movie all about mother daughter issues.  The whole movie is about the relationship between a mother and her child, most specifically her daughter.  Wow! I am just now realizing this has been on my mind quite a bit lately.  I have been very focused on the musical Little Women for the last few weeks, which is also about a mother and her daughters.  As I have mentioned I have three daughters of my own and come from a family of four daughters, no brothers.  Just last week I was talking to my mom about watching my daughters grow into young women and she asked "Have you thought about what it is like to watch your daughters go through child birth. And then raise their own daughters." That really hit me because to be perfectly honest, no I haven't thought that far ahead.  My oldest is 18; it isn't as far away as it used to be.
       After that conversation I just happened to watch The Bad Mother's Handbook (2007). This movie deals with all of that, really. It is three generations of women all living under one roof. Catherine Tate (Starter for 10, Doctor Who (2005), Love and other Disasters) stars as Karen Cooper, a single mom trying to raise her teenage daughter and take care of her elderly mother who isn't really all there these days.  Nancy, the elderly mother, is played beautifully by Anne Reid (Coronation Street, Hot Fuzz). She was wonderful to watch. Holliday Grainger (Bel Ami, Daddy Fox, The Illustrated Mum) plays Charlie. Charlie is a straight "A" student who does everything she should, for the most part.  She is also a 17 year old girl trying to find her place in the world and figure out who she is. 
      The Bad Mother's Handbook is a made for TV British movie. It isn't a "Hollywood Blockbuster".  There are no car chases, no explosions, no computer graphics. It is just a beautifully written film about being a mom. There are some interesting twists to the storyline, Karen finds out about a huge family secret her mother has been keeping and Charlotte, who goes by Charlie, finds out she is pregnant. Charlie's mother, Karen, doesn't deal with either of these things very well.  Charlie's pregnancy is a reminder of her "mistake", she wanted more for her daughter then to be a single teenage mother.  Enter Daniel, played by Robert Pattinson (Remember Me, Bel Ami, Water for Elephants) Daniel is a new transfer student, Charlie is asked to help him adjust to the new school, you know, show him around and such.  When Charlie finds out that Daniel's dad is a doctor she begins to ask him a lot of questions about pregnancy and Daniel ends up being a huge support for her over the next nine months. 
      This is a very different kind of movie but I really enjoyed it.  It is a very touching story with well written characters.