Reviews

In episode 3 of FlashForward: The Center for Disease Control requests money from the Department of Homeland Security. In 1991. Which is somewhat prior to the date the DHS was founded. The only person in the world who notices all the crows in the world dying during the flashforward blackout is a Nazi prisoner. After all the crows in the world die, the crow population magically recovers. Approximately every single cast member explains that the world has changed, and we are all prophets, and we know our future, and the world has changed as a result. In case you hadn’t heard. Jack Davenport does not appear. Dominic Monaghan does not appear. Sorry, semi-promising new SF show! Your time is up. Anyone still watching can let me know if it gets any better.

The season two premier of Dollhouse got lousy ratings, which it deserved. The problem’s highlighted in the climatic scene, where Eliza Dushku is flipping through identities. You can’t really tell the difference between them. Which kick-ass identity is the meaningful one? Kind of sad, insofar as Fran Kranz and Amy Acker knocked their scenes out of the park. Whedon just isn’t all that great at casting female leads, I guess.

Rose Madder? Nah, probably not. But spoilers, definitely. Mad Men is back. As the Anglophile in me decrees, everything’s better with Brits. The office politics are going to be sharper and, probably, meaner. And funnier, since we’ve now got a world of misapprehensions and bad cultural assumptions to play with. Since this is Mad Men, we even get that point thrust home with a Don Draper metatextual commentary. Not his only one this episode, either. Consider the implications of his London Fog tag line given that he’s just seen Sal with a half-dressed bellboy. “Limit your exposure.” He’s quick, that Don. Whereas Mad Men is pleasantly slow. It took three seasons for Sal to get even a taste of the sexual release most of the cast has already seen; but it worked. A slow build is good. Good for AMC, as well, for not shying away. ...

That was a very loyal adaptation of the comic book, which did not improve on or shed new light on the source material. So hm.

Ack, I never wrote about The Wrestler. Well, there’s not that much new to say, really. It’s fundamentally a simple tearjerker, which is where Darren Aronofsky does a lot of his best work. Like Pi and Requiem for a Dream, he’s telling a story about outsiders. I think that’s his niche as well: people who can’t relate or participate in what we might cynically call the world of the squares. Or marks. Mickey Rourke is really good. It doesn’t hurt that he’s reiterating his own story of burn out and stupidity, of course; still, he’s really good. I’ve seen a fair number of the movies he’s made in the last five or six years. He’s not just acting the same part repeatedly. He gets the pain and suffering and – eh, call it what it is; Randy “the Ram” Robinson is not smart. I tend to think that’s a commentary on twenty years of concussions, but regardless, Rourke’s playing a dense caring guy with a lot of skill. ...

Check off American Gangster on the Oscars list. I don’t think I’ll bother to do a whole review. It was okay, very competent, not great. Ruby Dee got an Oscar nomination for like five minutes of acting, which was probably not deserved.

I saw The Savages for the Oscar task; not bad, not great. I have no objections at all to Laura Linney’s performance, and I sort of assume Phillip Seymour Hoffman would have gotten the nomination for this if he hadn’t been nominated for Charlie Wilson’s War. My review is here.

One hour and twenty-three minutes into The Savages, someone does something kind for no reason other than to be kind. No guilt is involved. It’s a simple act of kindness. It’s the first time that happens in the movie, and it’s close to the last time. Phillip Seymour Hoffman was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance here. The category was Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. His fellow nominees included John C. Reilly in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. ...

Backlash time! Slumdog Millionaire was pretty fun and I can always lounge back and watch Danny Boyle get all flamboyant with his camera, but it wouldn’t find a place among my ten best films of the year. Also I’m going to say snide things about its relationship to City of God. Problem one: I’m too sensitive to the conditions depicted with such skill. The Mumbai slums are atrociously awful, and the poverty level we’re seeing is horrifying. Boyle’s really good at showing this. The early scene with Jamal covered in shit, running around oblivious – you laugh and you’re repulsed at your laughter, because it’s funny but guys. That kid is covered in shit and he’s going to get an infection and die or be scarred for life. This is bad. ...

I saw the Che roadshow down at the Kendall Square Theater in Cambridge this last weekend. Quite the experience. It started with a nice glossy program book, which I’ll have to take a picture of, since I can’t find any out there on the Web. As the very serious posters on the wall explained, it’s an old school roadshow, which means no opening or closing credits: those were in the program book. We collectively shuffled in, found seats, watched the lights dim, and saw a map of Cuba come up on the screen. For the next minute or so, various regions of Cuba were highlighted and named: sort of 50s geography filmstrip. And then the movie proper began. ...