January 1, 2008
Smart People (2008) *
A misantropic comedy about a self-absorbed university professor (Dennis Quaid), his emotionally-handicapped daughter (Ellen Page), his pathetic brother (Thomas Haden Church), and his new girlfriend (Sarah Jessica Parker), who looks positively insane for wanting to join such a thoroughly fucked-up family. Set in a small college town in Pennsylvania, the film tries hard to be a smart, sardonic comedy, but falls flat on its face. The only ironic thing in the film is the title - those aren't smart people at all, merely erudite fools.
Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (2008) *
The weakest of all four Indiana Jones flicks (yes, even worse than "The Temple of Doom"), a lousy adventure film about alien creatures from a mysterious city lost in the Amazonian jungle. Cate Blanchett steals the movie as a hilarious Soviet spy (possibly inspired by Natasha from "Rocky and Bullwinkle").
Your Name Here (2008) *
Unbelievably lame and boring movie starring Bill Pullman as a famous writer. A disaster from start to finish.
Marley & Me (2008) *
Boring comedy starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Aniston as a young couple who get a pooch.
The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (2008) *
Atrocious movie, unexplicably hailed as a masterpiece by numerous critics. Too long, very boring and completely pointless. It has a few good set pieces (like the naval battle between a Yankee tugboat and a Nazi U-boat), but otherwise it just baffles the mind. Why would anybody, and especially David Fincher (who made such great films as "Seven", "Fight Club" and "Zodiak"), think that a story of a man who ages in reverse (he is born an old man and dies as an infant) would be interesting in itself ? Well, it isn't, and the film offers little else (aside from that naval battle) to compensate for the utter triviality of its main premise. John Podhoretz rightly demolishes the film in this Weekly Standard review. Choice bits: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a failure for two reasons: It's preachy, and it's stupid (...) There are no conversations in this movie, just one character depositing dubious pearls of wisdom into the ear canal of another; and since they're neither wise nor especially pearl-like, they grow extraordinarily tiresome."
W. (2008) *
Lousy film from Oliver Stone. He can't decide whether he's making a serious film about the War on Terror, or a satiric comedy about a well-meaning bumpkin who finds himself in the White House and does a mess of things. The actors aren't sure how to play their roles neither. The only exception is Richard Dreyfuss, whose incredible tour-de-force performance as Dick Cheney definitely deserved a best supporting actor nod. His "Drain the swamp", "Nobody will fuck with us again" and "There is no exit strategy, we stay" speeches are the highlights of the movie and can be applauded as rare instances of coherence and straight talk in an otherwise politically-confused farce. Thandie Newton creates a memorable (though crude and vicious) caricature of Condi Rice, but other SNL-ish imitations are completely off the mark (particularly Scott Glenn's inept attempt to re-create Donald Rumsfeld and Jeffrey Wright's pathetic stab at Colin Powell). Toby Jones does only a so-so job as Karl Rove, Ellen Burstyn is a very imperfect Barbara Bush and Josh Brolin's W is very disappointing (as is Elizabeth Banks' Laura Bush). Compared to them, James Cromwell's Herbert Walker Bush is actually quite good, but like Dreyfuss, he apparently didn't get the same stage directions as others, and looks like a serious thespian playing Hamlet or King Lear with a troupe of commedia dell'arte clowns. The film also suffers from omitting many important events of Bush's life (like the Florida recount, 9/11, the invasion of Afghanistan and Bush's victory over Kerry).
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