Catching Up On Movies

Thought I'd do a little catch up on my blog with movies, with Oscar season approaching and all...

The Pursuit of Happyness

I said not too long ago that Thank you For Smoking was the best movie of the year... I want to see it again since it was very early in the year when I saw it... But I think The Pursuit of Happyness might very well be a better movie. It was clearly a movie that wanted to manipulate my emotions, and really, it was a pretty conventional Hollywood movie, but for whatever reason, I went along with the ride and loved every moment of it.

Also, as you may recall, I recently put all actors who aren't Forest Whitaker on notice. I am now officially taking Will Smith off notice. I still think Forest gave the performance of the year, maybe the decade, but Will was damn good in this movie. Will might be the front runner for the Oscar because he's the bigger star, and it won't bother me too much if he wins instead of Forest (and really, Forest was a supporting actor anyway).

I'm a little surprised that the movie hasn't been getting Best Picture buzz along with the buzz for Will Smith.

Dreamgirls

I don't care if anyone calls me a sissyboy because of this... Dreamgirls was a good movie. Not a great story by any means... a couple very good songs but most of the songs didn't even do that much for me... It was the performances that made this movie. Particularly Jennifer Hudson, but Eddie Murphy, Beyonce, Jamie Foxx, Danny Glover... all good. Stylistically, it was very similar to Chicago, and it wasn't original or outstanding to the point that it deserves to be Best Picture. But if it wins, it won't be the worst offense the Academy has ever commited.

All the Kings Men

Caught up with this on DVD recently. This was on my list of ten movies I wanted to see last fall, but it had been so universally panned that I wasn't that excited about it by the time I saw it. The verdict? I think the criticism was overly harsh. Not a great movie, but I'd give it a mild thumbs up.

Speaking of that list of ten movies, I still need to catch up with a few...

The Good German (What happened to that one? Seemed to kind of disappear.)
The Prestige (Still really excited about this one, just haven't seen it yet.)
For Your Consideration (Not as excited after lots of bad reviews, but I can't stomach the idea of missing a Christopher Guest mockumentary, so I'll see it.)
Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny (Talk about a movie that went nowhere... at this point I'll just catch it whenever it ends up on Comedy Central in a few years or something.)
Also need to see the two honorable mentions... Marie Antoinette and Rocky Balboa.

Back to movies I've seen recently...

Keeping Up With the Steins

Saw it on DVD. Not a masterpiece by any means, but kind of funny. Not sure if I'd recommend it to gentiles... I don't know if it would be as funny if I weren't Jewish. Jeremy Piven was very funny, and pretty much plays the same character he does on Entourage, so maybe Dara's new found obsession will cross over.

Inside Man

Also finally saw this one on DVD. This one got lots of good reviews, and Spike Lee is one of my favorite directors, so I was really excited about this one.

Unfortunately, I don't understand the buzz around this one at all. While it had it's moments, it was pretty boring overall. Although, given the way the movie ended, I'm still interested in the sequel that's in development.