Baum Reviews

10 out of 10

Absolutely amazing retelling of an evil Prime Minister’s attack on Chinese rebels in Southern China. Epic two part movie with battles as big in scale as Lord of the Rings’ but with a heavier focus on the strategies involved. The strategy elements of the film are easily the most entertaining bits and I haven’t even mentioned the wonderful scenery, martial arts, and fleshed out characters.
I insist that this film must be seen in the 2 part, 5 hour version as every scene matters! Subtitles are plentiful but tone down in the second half. Not a problem for me but just a warning :)

AVATAR running time = 161 minutes

TRANSFORMERS 2 running time = 140 minutes

UP running time = 96 minutes

I do this to make a point.  Pixar’s recent release UP is one of the best paced films I have seen in recent memory.  Here is a touching animated flick that has not one wasted scene in it and cruises by at the perfect viewing time for what it is about.  Not to say that long running times are bad (see classics like SCHINDLER’s LIST, BRAVEHEART and from what I hear from my old man EL CID), but nowadays I get the feeling like the director’s of most films are pushing for longer run times to give audiences the most “bang for their buck” and we all pay for this in one way or another and not in a good way.

UP is a simple tale about an old man whose whole life was exciting thanks solely to his childhood friend/sweetheart/wife and when she passes on, he is left in a dead end. After some quick plot points he is left with no choice but to leave his house (which in a way would mean leaving the memory of his wife) and as a last ditch effort to save the home and kick-start his life again he ties hundreds of baloons to it and fly’s to South America to a remote fantasy-like location.

Without telling the whole story, let’s just say that he has a kid who accidentally takes off with him by being in the wrong place at the wrong time and hi-jinks ensue.

UP peppers in some fun villains and action scenes but I couldn’t help but think that this was the first time in a while that I have seen a movie explain things so vaguely.  For instance how did old man get all the balloons?  Why is a good guy bad all of a sudden? Why are the henchmen-like dogs there and where did they come from?  Then I realized the point of this movie is to come across like a quick tale like the kind you would read your kid to go to sleep.  This again is why the pacing works so well.  Why explain things and make them complicated when the point is really about enjoying what’s in front of you just BECAUSE.

Our main hero learns to just enjoy the ride that is life and thanks to Pixar’s UP I have learned this too!

OK so this is the saying we should all be getting used to by now:

“Everything old is new again…”

We’ve had BOND 2.0, BATMAN 2.0, SUPERMAN 2.0 etc etc etc…. The first BOND with Craig was great and Nolan’s BATMAN movies are amazing.  SUPERMAN was a blown effort and now we have another blown effort in HOLMES 2.0.

Here is a list of the reasons why this movie did not tickle my pickle in no particular order…

* Robert Downey is too recognizable and is very distracting as Holmes.  Should have cast someone who is not in the Depp, Cruise, Downey category.  May I suggest Seth Rogen next time since it is mandatory for him to be in every other movie these days?

* The action scenes felt forced and were pretty lame.  They clearly used computer graphics for a lot of the slam-bang moments and they were boring. For a movie that tried to disregard the traditional Holmes for a bigger action hero Holmes, this means the movie was tedious.

* Guy Ritchie is yesterdays fad.  SNATCH was his last good movie and his style of the super-fast-zoom-back-to-super-slow-mo is getting super tired.  Been there, done that. Hope he is getting his support checks from Madonna…

* The villain was blander than grandmas mashed taters.  Nothing beats a fun villain! Look at the Joker or a lot of Bond villains.  I can’t even remember the villain’s name and I just left the theater!!!!

* The mystery was ok but didn’t grab me….

That is about it for the reasons.  So what worked then???  Uhm… The movie had a funny dog in it… I swear there was a dog in there for a couple of minutes…

Funny People is an amusing movie that will give you a chuckle or two but the movie as a whole is more melancholy than upbeat.  It’s a shame because what we have here is a movie that was marketed to be another “Knocked Up” when in fact to have pushed the drama aspect would have lead the audience to angle their viewing experience to a more appropriate level.

Adam Sandler plays a character that I can only assume was half-based on his real-life career.  The character is George.  He is rich, lonely, at the peak of his career, and informed that he is dying.  Trying to make up for what he views as lost time, he tries to go back to his roots as a stand-up comedian as well as tie-up any loose ends in his life to include a woman he wronged in the past.

This movie is going to be a slow viewing experience for most and at 2 hrs and 25 minutes, you hope to God your time is well spent.  That is where I have a hard time reccomending this film.  On one end, the fact that I stayed up very late to finish it should say something about the story.  On the other end, I felt like finishing the movie was more a chore than entertainment.  Again, this should be viewed as an “amusing” drama and don’t even bother if you’re expecting a big laugh…

Ooooooh boy…. How do I say this?  In the words of Public Enemy, ‘don’t believe the hype!’  The critics have all been gushing over this one but I failed to see anything more than a ‘good movie.’

Up in the Air plays it by the numbers and stars George Clooney as a man who fires people for companies that don’t have the scones to do it themselves.  He is a road warrior and is perfectly fine with it.  I admired this aspect of the movie… he is not miserable about his life, nice change of pace.

Where the movie lost me though, is that it plays it extremely safe and where profound developments could have taken place in the film, they never do.  To be sure, there are mild plot developments in the film but in the end they are just that, MILD.  I know how this film should have been watched and I watched it with the patience it deserved.  I just can’t, for the life of me, understand what the critics are raving about?!  People get fired A LOT in the movie so that makes it relevant to our time???  Not enough for me… perhaps following one of the recently laid off would have made the film more entertaining…

AVATAR has finally been unleashed on the public after years of hype and for the most part it doesn’t disappoint.  The story is fun, the acting and motion captured acting is great, and when the 3D works it REALLY works.  The formula of the movie is basically…

Take the characters from ALIENS, add the “we are one with nature” message of FERN GULLY, make the movie as long as LORD of the RINGS, and lastly pepper in the beasts from JURASSIC PARK.  Oh, and DANCES WITH WOLVES wrapped around the whole thing.

Coming out of the theater, I was so exhausted from the viewing experience that I swore I would have no need to see this film ever again.  Now that I have been able to sleep it off, I feel like maybe a second viewing is due when a Blu-Ray release happens.

My problem with the film is that the CGI (computer generated images) are wildly inconsistent.  When a texture looks real things are great, but too many times during the film I felt I was watching a bad-ass PIXAR film with human actors dropped in for good measure.  Sorry to say it Mr. Cameron but you are right there with George Lucas in terms of making the mistake of digitizing everything when a real prop could have added some weight and texture.

Still, AVATAR is a great film and definitely one of the only “worth the high ticket price” films out right now.  See at least once in 3D or don’t even bother.