Inglorious Basterds

Ok, so Tarantino is at it again. Let me get this straight out of the gate: it's stellar. It's interesting, absurd, gross, and I had an unbelievable time. The premise is simple. A rogue group of about 8 Jewish-American soldiers drop in to Germany occupied France with one objective in mind: killing NA-zis. You'll get the awkward spelling once you see the movie.

Brad Pitt does an unbelievable job, playing a great role that suits him well. He's hillbilly Lt. Aldo Raine. A hard nosed, often hilarious, luietenant in charge of the group. Several of the rogue soldiers have memorable names, and memorable moments/scenes. Tarantino always does a great job of developing unforgettable characters, and this show has several.

The only thing that holds this movie back from a 100 is the fact that Tarantino loves himself. That's not really a bad thing necessarily. He's terribly unique and is allowed to think so, but his dialogue scenes can wind just a tiny bit too long. The point could be made slightly quicker, but he likes his dialogue and likes to just "let go."

That's really all I can pick out of the movie as any type of criticism. As usual, you have no idea how it's going to end. And I didn't have super high expectations for this movie. It looked like it coolhave been a terrible mess. But once the movie came to a close 2 1/2 hours in, I wish it actually wouldn't stop.

Ken's Score: 95
Metacritic: 69

District 9

Sorry for becoming side tracked from writing reviews through this blog. I've actually become relatively addicted to posting quick reviews on Netflix. It's neat because it shows how many people have rated your movies and you have on overall reviewer rank. Currently I'm rated 1,100,042. So all I can go is up (I hope anyway).

But I saw District 9 a little over a week ago, and I had the highest of expectations for it, considering the initial and even final reviews were stellar. It seemed like it could be an extremely thought provoking sci-fi classic.

When you go in with such high expectations, a lot of the times they are tough to be met. And I went in knowing this, so I tried to slow my heart rate, take a couple deep breaths, and lower the adrenaline a bit, and just "experience" the movie.

The first 1:15 minutes sucked me in, and exceeded my expectations, even my unrealistic ones. The documentary style, the quarantined alien slum, watching the aliens treated subhuman (I guess that shouldn't be a stretch), and the tension amongst the unit sent in to relocate the alien race. It was gripping, and I expected this movie to rank amongst the greats with me.

Not that the movie really fell apart, but it went in a direction that I hoped it wouldn't. It fell back on action. Not a bad thing. But from the previews and the way it was set-up. I didn't expect the standard blowing up of human after human, cars rolling, bad guy, good guy ending. The alien race wasn't really explored, which I thought it could have been, had a little more thought gone into it.

It was a really good movie. "Fun" is what I'd like to call it. I just thought I'd have my mind challenged a bit more while having a little action mixed in. It turned out that I didn't have to think much about it at all, and I ended up with an action movie with an interesting premise.

Extremely well done, but not what I was looking for.

Ken's Score: 75
Metacritic: 81

Valkyrie

Ok, so the ending is predictable, if you have any concept on history whatsoever. So renting Valkyrie was an afterthought. I Netflixed it mainly because it was in Blu-Ray. I saw average reviews and watching a failed assassination of Hitler didn't seem intriguing.

I was extremely surprised by how well the movie was done. There was nothing amazing about it, but it had great amounts of tension and an unrelenting pace to it which I found quite enjoyable. You know the attempt will not succeed, but the way the attempts are shot, and not really knowing what will happen to Colonel Stauffenburg (Tom Cruise) still kept me guessing.

Cruise played his role well, but the character was a bit too limited to really pull me in. Cruise is appalled by Hitler and his antics and wants to do something about it.

He is the main handler of the briefcase bomb which was supposed to end Hitler's regime. Cruise was good, but it was like he was constantly moving forward, always had the objective in mind, never wavering. It just came across like he was a robot. But that might have been how the actual character was, but at points I was thinking, "are you really that dense." And I saw a picture of him and his wife on the poster I downloaded which didn't make tons of sense because their relationship was developed so minimally.

I like to be surprised, but the ending is already known. So it loses it's steam from the get go. But the ride was enjoyable enough, that it's definitely worth a watch.

My Score: 70
Metacritic: 56

Funny People

So they say Judd Apatow is growing up, taking a step away from his goofy comedies, mainly "The 40 Year Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up." I never finished the 40 Year Old Virgin but I did see Knocked up. I actually thought Knocked Up was wittier and smarter than Funny People. It had more heart. Funny People is simply darker, and it has too many wiener jokes to say that he's taking a step in a completely different direction.

It is funny though. Enough to recommend seeing it in the theaters. It's engaging and Adam Sandler, as George Simmons, plays an interesting character: an uber famous comedian, that's let stardom get to his head in every way, and he just happens to be dying from a rare blood disease. So he's obviously got a lot going on at once. He's trying an experimental treatment as a last resort. The treatment has "positive results" in 8% of patients. Will he be one of the lucky ones?

Sandler can be a pretty good actor when he tries. He pulls the part off well. Seth Rogan comes in as a nobody comedian, who just happens to catch Simmons at the right place at the right time, doing just the right bit. Simmons takes Rogan in as a joke writer for him. Rogan gains confidence as a comedian, and really comes along well as a character.

The movie runs almost 2 1/2 hours. Extremely long for a comedy, but Apatow tries to do a lot with more character development and extra story lines than he's done in the past. It feels like it should be longer than the standard 1 1/2 hour romp, but somewhere in the middle would have been perfect. There just seems to be a half hour of fat that could have been trimmed. I didn't particularly find the relationship with Simmon's first love to be all that engaging, and that's mainly where I think it runs long.

But it's worth a watch. A lot of people gave it stellar reviews, some thought it was a poor effort. It made me laugh, it worked in general. Not a homerun, not a strike out, but more like a ground rule double. (That analogy is for my friend Mike, who would appreciate a baseball reference.)

My Score: 70
Metacritic: 60