Some Other Movies From 2008 (2)

For further background on the year in film, please refer to the Some Other Movies From 2008 entry.

The following things happened in 2008:

• The Great Recession began.  For details I refer you to The Big Short.
• Iran launched a rocket into space.
• Demonstrations by Tibetans led to unrest in China.
• 138,000 people died after a cyclone passed through Myanmar.
• The Canadian Prime Minister formally apologized to First Nations people for the Canadian Indian residential school system.
• The Summer Olympics took place in Beijing.
• The Android operating system was released.
• Satoshi Nakamoto published "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System."
• Heath Ledger, Roy Scheider and Arthur C. Clarke passed away.

Underlined titles were viewed on Netflix.

Linked entries can be viewed in their entirety on YouTube.

Excellent

1. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Jojo Rabbit?  I think The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas tells a similar story much better.  This, and that ending will Fuck.  You.  Up.  Jesus, I really didn't think it would go that way.  I'm not buying the part where he digs under the fence, but yeah, that ending...

You Make the Call: Many critics dismissed this movie as being derivative, but in my opinion the ending is worth it.  Many other critics complain of "false equivalencies" between the suffering of a single German family and Jews persecuted during the Holocaust. 

2. The Wrestler

One of my all-time favorite movies, my favorite Mickey Rourke movie, and my favorite of Darren Aronofsky's films.  If you haven't see it you should, and if you've already seen it you should go see it again.  This movie walks a fine line between Rocky and The Last Temptation of Christ, and it does so with an assurance that very, very few movies possess.  Out of Aronofsky's films I'd pick Black Swan or Requiem for a Dream for second place, but both are still far removed from The Wrestler, which remains a masterful film.

Fun Fact: Nicolas Cage almost starred in this movie.  That would have been interesting!

Find a Quiet Room Without Distractions

1. Synecdoche, New York

Uh... what's it about?  Well, Charlie Kaufman's fingerprints are all over it, so if you like "meta" this film doesn't disappoint.  Philip Seymour Hoffman is also great in the lead, playing - as you might expect - a stand-in for the writer and director of this movie.  Many critics called it pretentious, others called it the greatest movie of all time, and others probably scratched their heads, wondering what they'd just seen.

 

Some Good Ones

1. Definitely, Maybe

Ryan Reynolds stars as a man recounting tales of relationships gone bad.  Aside from the framing device, which seems very forced and artificial, it tells a good story of love lost and love found again.  Reynolds appeared in Smokin' Aces two years before, and he'd appear in X-Men Origins: Wolverine the following year.

2. Transporter 3

Jason Statham rescues a hot Russian girl from a kidnapper.  I liked 2 a lot more, but this one's OK.  Luc Besson wrote the script, and had a lot of say over the production.

Fun Fact: Natalya Rudakova, who plays the hot Russian girl, was a complete unknown before filming started.  Luc Besson spotted her on the street in New York, paid for her acting lessons, and flew her to Paris for the movie.  Critics at the time weren't loving her performance, and she hasn't been in a major movie since.

3. Speed Racer

"More like non-jas...."

I don't care what anybody says, I've loved this movie since it first came out and I still have to re watch it on occasion.  Sure, WAY too much backstory for its own good, but it looks amazing and parts of it are very funny.  Anyone who can say some of the cornier lines in this movie with a straight face deserves an Oscar, and John Goodman says more than his fair share.

This movie was a financial disappointment, and failed to impress critics at the time.  Just the same I highly recommend it.

4. Max Payne

Look, it's Beau Bridges!  And Chris O'Donnell!  What are those guys up to now?  I have no idea.

I'm not sure if it's more apt to describe this movie as Sin City Lite or Constantine Lite.  Whichever it is, it's weird to see Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis together in this movie.  I kept thinking of Ted, and how much more engaging they were in that film.  Not that this movie's bad, mind you - the scenes near the end are actually quite cool - but yeah, it's not as good as Ted.  Or Constantine.  Or Sin City.

Olga Kurylenko is, by the way, incredibly sexy in this movie.  She played the same role in 2007's Hitman, but she's even hotter in this movie.

5. Death Race

Better than Transporter 3, another Jason Statham vehicle (ha ha) from the same year, but still not that great.  As B movies go this one's a solid B.  It takes itself a bit too seriously, lacks the cheesy charm of the original, and violence + EXTREME LOUDNESS don't quite compensate for a film that could have been 30 minutes shorter.

Fun Fact: David Carradine, who starred in the original Death Race 2000, voices "Frankenstein" in the beginning of the movie.

6. City of Ember

Two young adults discover that there's a world beyond their underground city.  Reminded me a lot of Hugh Howey's Silo series, though City of Ember - at least in its film incarnation - is a lot better thought out.  It bombed at the box office, but the critics weren't especially harsh on it.

7. 27 Dresses

Say what you like about Katherine Heigl, she could carry a movie.  And say what you like about James Marsden, he could also carry a movie.  Sure it's a rom-com, sure it's contrived, but it somehow works, damn it.  They MAKE it work.

8. Bronson

Tom Hardy stars as "the most violent inmate in the history of the British prison system."  Hardy is great in the role, but what keeps me from putting this movie in the "Excellent" category is that it's pointlessly violent.  I love some of director Nicolas Winding Refn's other movies, but this effort seems more muddled than others.  I'm just not sure what this movie was trying to say.

9. Never Back Down

It's nice when Djimon Hounsou has a role he can do something with.  He's a good actor.

The rest of this movie?  Basically nu metal + teenage angst + mixed martial arts.  The star looks a lot like Tom Cruise.  After Never Back Down he'd go on to star in The King of the Fighters and other movies you probably didn't know existed.

Fun Fact: Check out Evan Peters in this movie.  He was quite husky back in the day!

Some Bad Ones

1. Step Up 2: The Streets

Whereas in Save the Last Dance Julia Stiles plays a white girl schooled in ballet who learns how to both dance and fall in love in the darker side of town, in Step Up 2 a while girl, schooled on the streets, learns how to dance ballet and fall in love in the lighter side of town.  WHOA.  I know, right?  But turnabout is fair play, is it not?  Overall it's pretty bad.  Channing Tatum briefly reprises his role from the first movie, but aside from him I couldn't recognize anyone in the film.

2. Wild Child

A spoiled rich girl from southern California makes new frenemies in a British preparatory school.  I'm of course NOT the intended audience for this one, but I still feel pretty confident in calling it terrible.

3. RocknRolla

Guy Ritchie directed this boring movie about British and Russian gangsters.  There's a lot of famous people in it - most of them speaking in their natural accents - but plotwise it's all over the place.

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Some Other Movies From 2008

2008 was not a good year for me.  I was living in Seattle and teaching in various elementary schools there.  It was one of those "personal crisis years," if you know what I mean. 

But hey, they can't all be winners, right?  At least I saw a lot of good movies that year.  And if you like comic book movies, you'll probably know that 2008 was a VERY good year, seeing as it did the release of both Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, the first two films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  2008 also saw the release of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, for which Heath Ledger was posthumously awarded an Academy Award.  Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk got by me, but I saw The Dark Knight on its first day in theaters.

And I wasn't the only one.  Christopher Nolan's film was the biggest movie of 2008, with Iron Man coming in eighth at the box office.  Between them lay Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Kung Fu Panda, Hancock (what?), Mamma Mia!, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, and Quantum of Solace, one of the most forgettable Bond films.  Rounding out the Top Ten were WALL-E (a great movie) and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.

Let us not forget that The Wrestler appeared the same year.  I've seen that movie so many times that I almost have the dialogue memorized.

Some Good Ones

1. Yes Man

At times this movie will remind you of Office Space, but it's still funny (if not hysterically so).  Jim Carrey has been in his share of bad movies, but he does a good job of toning himself down for this one.

2. Baby Mama

Tina Fey stars as a woman who can't have children, with fellow SNL alumnus Amy Poehler as her surrogate.  This movie's much funnier than the above-mentioned Yes Man.

3. Be Kind Rewind

DIY Hollywood blockbusters could be a lot of fun.  This movie doesn't really get funny until they remake Ghostbusters, but after that point it's pretty good.  My only real issue with it is the Danny Glover subplot.  It's like dead weight bringing the whole thing down.

One huge missed opportunity in this film.  With Glover in the cast, they really should've remade Lethal Weapon.  Hearing him say "I'm too old for this shit!" would have been classic.

4. The Eye

The breathtakingly beautiful Jessica Alba stars as a woman who can see ghosts after a cornea transplant.  I'm pretty sure I've seen the Chinese original, but for the life of me I can't remember anything about it.  The American remake is decent, though far from great.

5. Doubt

Philip Seymour Hoffman gives a commanding performance as a Catholic priest accused of molesting one of the boys in his parish, with Meryl Streep as the nun leveling the accusation against him.  It's a wonderful, thought-provoking film which anticipates current social trends by several years.

6. Rachel Getting Married

Family.  You can't kill them without meticulous planning, and when you try to run away they can always find you with Google.  Anne Hathaway stars as a woman just released from rehab on the eve of her sister's wedding.  It's low budget but very well acted.

Two I Can't Make Up My Mind About

1. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

Ben Stein goes on a crusade for Intelligent Design.  I'm not a believer in this particular theological and/or philosophical viewpoint, but I have to admit that whoever did the editing was quite skillful to make it look like arguments were followed through to their logical conclusions, and to make it look like conversations were conducted in an open and honest fashion.  It's somewhat ironic that the Nazis, those masters of propaganda, are brought up so often in the movie.

I'd love to see an unedited version of that conversation between Ben Stein and Richard Dawkins.  I'm assuming that the reality of that conversation was quite different from what was presented in the film.

2. In Bruges

I know this sounds silly and superficial, but I can't deal with Colin Farrell's eyebrows.  I find them incredibly distracting.  So distracting, in fact, that I had trouble paying attention to whatever he was saying in the film.  I really wanted to give this movie a chance, and I've heard great things about it, but those eyebrows...

Some Bad Ones

1. Appaloosa

One of the most boring Westerns I've ever seen.  Writer and director Ed Harris stars as a marshal with anger management issues, with Viggo Mortenson as his deputy.  Harris was at the top of his game with Pollock, but after seeing this one I began to question his judgement.

2. The Strangers

We Americans sure do love our home invasion movies.  What got me about this one is how SLOW it progresses, and how predictably events unfold.  If you'd like to see a very similar but much better movie, I recommend Funny Games.

3. The Ruins

Four Americans and a German get into trouble visiting a Mayan pyramid.  The premise is somewhat interesting, but the people in this movie are DUMB.  Aside from a delightfully gruesome scene involving a set of broken legs, The Ruins isn't worth bothering with.

Fun Fact #1: If some of those Americans look familiar, there are some very good reasons why.  The med school character was in both The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake and Pulse, the guy with the curly hair played Iceman in the the X-men movies, and the girl with the brown hair played Lois Lane's coworker in Batman v. Superman.

Fun Fact #2: This movie was shot in Queensland, Australia, of all places.

4. Swing Vote

The U.S. presidential election comes down to a single vote, and a man in small town New Mexico finds himself thrust into the national spotlight.  It starts out well enough, but it goes on too long and I can't imagine his daughter getting that emotionally distraught in just ten days.

5. Flash of Genius

Greg Kinnear stars as an inventor suing The Ford Motor Company after they infringe on his patent.  It's not so much bad as just BORING.  By the time Kinnear's character finally achieves his Pyrrhic victory one can only wonder what the point of it all was.

6. Over Her Dead Body

I bet Paul Rudd wishes he could forget this movie.  His fiancee gets crushed by an ice sculpture on their wedding day, with predictably unhilarious results.  The dialogue is really bad, and the acting isn't much better.  I had to tap out after Rudd's character visited the local psychic.

One So Bad It's Kind of Good

1. Doomsday

Calling it Escape from Scotland would have been more to the point, though it does resemble Mad Max near the end.  The heroine (who has an eye patch and a ridiculous mechanical eye) does a passable Linda Hamilton impersonation, the music is very John Carpenterish, and one of the (badly trained) soldiers is even named "Carpenter."  The last twenty minutes of this movie make absolutely no sense.

Self-Destructive Drinking Game: Every time someone in this movie says "fuck" or "balls" take a shot.  See you in the emergency room!

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