Brooklyn Top to Bottom
People at work and such keep asking me if I like living in Greenpoint. I do. Why? Because cool shit keeps happening here. Kat rallied us all to go to the Bring to Light festival. We watched cool projections (including a giant eyeball on the Greenpoint water tower), saw light bulbs go on and off in time to music, and walked around all of these empty waterfront warehouses that we're not normally allowed to go in. And it was all pretty close to the end of my street. Some proof!
(More photos if you click.)
Sometimes, though, it's good to get out of the neighborhood. We wanted to go for a walk today. Jesse said, having seen the best parts of Greenpoint at the festival, that he was sick of walking in our neighborhood. So we drove to the opposite end of Brooklyn to take a walk in a park. It made sense at the time. But Owl's Head Park in Bay Ridge is pretty cool. More proof:
This weekend was also Jesse's birthday. We celebrated by going to the movies, as usual. That rounded out the movies that I saw in September.
Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World: D
I think Robert Rodriguez should've gone back and watched the first two Spy Kids movies to figure out what people liked about them before he made this new one. Maybe he would've realized that people liked them because they had a good story about families, not because they were gimmicky, loud, antic, and had an incomprehensible plot. (We didn't get scratch-n-sniff cards, but it seemed like five of the eight smells were candy, and three happened at the same time-kind of a ripoff, right?) But I did like pregnant Jessica Alba, even moreso because he character's name is Marissa.
Contagion: A-
Some fans may argue (Jesse), but I find Steven Soderbergh to be a cold and detached director. Even his fun movies, like the Ocean's series, are glitzier than they are warm. That style completely works with Contagion, which is more of a Zodiac-style procedural than it is a horror film. The way he matter-of-factly follows the different threads of the story, showing how slowly bureaucracy works without really much hysteria, is totally effective-even if it paints bloggers and the worst human beings on Earth.
I Don't Know How She Does It: C-
As a working woman of the world, I was interested in a movie about how to handle work-life balance. I'm not sure if I'd ever seen a movie like that-or at least I've never seen a good one about that. Turns out, if you go by the movie, step one is to have a job that you really, really love that also pays out a ton of cash (like working at an investment bank). Step two is to work less at said job, which is okay because of the aforementioned salary. Quickly I realized I'd rather see a movie about someone who has a job she really, really loves that doesn't also make her filthy rich, or even a movie about a person who hates her job but she can't quit because she needs the money. Annoyances piled on from there, starting with talking-at-the-camera sequences that have characters saying things along the lines of "If a man leaves work to be with his family, he's a hero, but if a woman does it, she's irresponsible." (Wow, what a totally new idea! Or wait, the opposite.) Jesse pretty much nails everything that's wrong with the rest of the movie, even what he says about Olivia Munn, and I'm not as quick to like her as he is. Oh, but Jesse did get us into the premiere. Are you jealous that I got to pass Jessica Szohr in the hallway? If so, you're easily impressed!
The Debt: B+
The two-timeline thing was kind of unnecessary, although it did put an interesting stinger at the end of the movie. Really, the 1960s mission-the one with the young, attractive actors-was a totally well-done thriller. Nothing fancy, but nothing wasted, either. So far, Jessica Chastain is three for three of the million movies she has coming out this year. Bring on Take Shelter and Texas Killing Fields, I guess?
Restless: B
It's no secret that I heart Gus Van Sant. (Gerry!) Like some of his other movies, this one finds real sweetness in very dark material. Maybe some of it was cutesy or affected. But very simple things, like the way one sister helps another sort her Halloween candy, felt very real and very right. It didn't knock my socks off or amount to anything huge like Elephant did, but I left with a general sense of having my cold heart slightly warmed up.
Straw Dogs: D
Of the many ways in which a thriller could fail, I think being boring is one of the worst. Setting up the relationship between the two characters in the beginning is interesting, and the big dust-up at the end is crazy, but there's a lot of boring in the middle. I didn’t see the Peckinpah original, but nobody calls Peckinpah a boring dude, so I think there was something lost in the updating.
Drive: A-
It's hard to describe why I liked this movie so much. It just worked. The laconic main character, weird '80s pop music, ultra-violence, and all of the actor performances combined to made me react exactly the way the movie wanted me to. Which was basically to keep a small knot of suspense in my stomach the entire time, punctuated by eruptions of squeamishness. What's most impressive, though, was how reserved the movie was while still provoking that kind of reaction. Anyone could use high-adrenaline car chases with huge explosions and bullets flying everywhere to generate suspense. It's harder to do it at a normal red light, or with a character that barely says anything. More things I loved about this: Albert Brooks as the villain ("hard, soft, soft, soft"), Gosling's staring contests with the kid (funny, but creepy). Less can be said about Gosling's scorpion jacket, even if it becomes a thing.
Moneyball: B+
On some level, this movie succeeds, because I care not for baseball nor for statistics, yet I was totally into this movie about baseball statistics. I guess it just combines my soft spots for underdog stories and how-sausage-gets-made movies. (I guess I could've used the phrase "inside baseball" instead of "how the sausage gets made," but I'm so sports illiterate I'm not sure if I'd be using that right.) Brad Pitt was charming and at his most Robert Redfordy, and I liked nearly all of his scenes: trading players with Jonah Hill, talking with his daughter, eating in every scene. There's also some good Wally Pfister shots. I agree that Bennet Miller seems a little outmatched for the story and the star power, and that it probably would have been a better movie in the hands of someone more confident. But, to me, it wasn't like someone was reading the back of a baseball card, so I won't complain.
Abduction: D
Jesse pointed this out, but it is true (and spoilery): There is no abduction in Abduction. Taylor Lautner's parents are super-spies and give him away to another couple, also CIA, to protect him while they're on missions. I guess Adoption just didn't have the same ring to it. The rest of the movie feels similarly low-rent, to the point where I told Jesse that the co-star looked like a bootleg Lily Collins only to find out that it was, in fact, the real Lily Collins. (Others cashing a paycheck in this movie: Maria Bellow, Sigourney Weaver, Alfred Molina, and Mr. Malfoy.) The worst was the first five minutes of the movie, where T-Lau is supposed to act like a normal teenager with normal teenage friends. He looks like what happens to people when you go up to them and say "walk naturally." (Doing that makes people totally stop walking naturally.) I could basically hear Singleton off-screen saying, "Act like you do when you're out with your friends. Your human friends. You do have friends, don't you?" But, hey, in the "if you can't say anything nice" column, I'll say that it was cool that it seemed shot on location in Pittsburgh. That doesn't happen often.
Killer Elite: C
I was expecting this to be crazier, like Shoot 'Em Up meets Crank-after all, the trailer has the Stath jumping out of a window while he's strapped to a chair. The real movie isn't crazy like that. It's certainly pulpy, but it's less all-out crazy and more adult, sort of like Taken. After the initial disappointment wore off, my expectations adjusted and I started to like the movie again. But then it rambled and meandered and went on a bit, and I went back to being dissatisfied. The more minutes went by, the more I was hoping for something with a little bit more zing to it. The movie circled around back to being disappointing. But it did have one awesome part where a person explains what the acronym "MFWIC" means-let me know if you want me to tell you and I'll be delighted.
What's Your Number: B
Poor Anna Faris. She's so funny, but she's also conventionally pretty, so I think she's stuck, along with Elizabeth Banks, in this zone where she can't just be really funny in a movie that's not also about her trying to find a husband. I wish someone would let her just go for it 100% and be the female Jonah Hill/Seth Rogan, but I don't see that happening. But, for what it's worth, I laughed all the way through What's Your Number. Sure, they kept trying to rom-com it up, and those parts were pretty weak (especially the over-obvious music cues-ugh, Screaming Trees). But they lined up a great roster of ex-boyfriends and there were enough funny parts throughout. It sure beats my birthday rom-com of last year, When in Rome, so it could be much, much worse.
(More photos if you click.)
Sometimes, though, it's good to get out of the neighborhood. We wanted to go for a walk today. Jesse said, having seen the best parts of Greenpoint at the festival, that he was sick of walking in our neighborhood. So we drove to the opposite end of Brooklyn to take a walk in a park. It made sense at the time. But Owl's Head Park in Bay Ridge is pretty cool. More proof:
This weekend was also Jesse's birthday. We celebrated by going to the movies, as usual. That rounded out the movies that I saw in September.
Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World: D
I think Robert Rodriguez should've gone back and watched the first two Spy Kids movies to figure out what people liked about them before he made this new one. Maybe he would've realized that people liked them because they had a good story about families, not because they were gimmicky, loud, antic, and had an incomprehensible plot. (We didn't get scratch-n-sniff cards, but it seemed like five of the eight smells were candy, and three happened at the same time-kind of a ripoff, right?) But I did like pregnant Jessica Alba, even moreso because he character's name is Marissa.
Contagion: A-
Some fans may argue (Jesse), but I find Steven Soderbergh to be a cold and detached director. Even his fun movies, like the Ocean's series, are glitzier than they are warm. That style completely works with Contagion, which is more of a Zodiac-style procedural than it is a horror film. The way he matter-of-factly follows the different threads of the story, showing how slowly bureaucracy works without really much hysteria, is totally effective-even if it paints bloggers and the worst human beings on Earth.
I Don't Know How She Does It: C-
As a working woman of the world, I was interested in a movie about how to handle work-life balance. I'm not sure if I'd ever seen a movie like that-or at least I've never seen a good one about that. Turns out, if you go by the movie, step one is to have a job that you really, really love that also pays out a ton of cash (like working at an investment bank). Step two is to work less at said job, which is okay because of the aforementioned salary. Quickly I realized I'd rather see a movie about someone who has a job she really, really loves that doesn't also make her filthy rich, or even a movie about a person who hates her job but she can't quit because she needs the money. Annoyances piled on from there, starting with talking-at-the-camera sequences that have characters saying things along the lines of "If a man leaves work to be with his family, he's a hero, but if a woman does it, she's irresponsible." (Wow, what a totally new idea! Or wait, the opposite.) Jesse pretty much nails everything that's wrong with the rest of the movie, even what he says about Olivia Munn, and I'm not as quick to like her as he is. Oh, but Jesse did get us into the premiere. Are you jealous that I got to pass Jessica Szohr in the hallway? If so, you're easily impressed!
The Debt: B+
The two-timeline thing was kind of unnecessary, although it did put an interesting stinger at the end of the movie. Really, the 1960s mission-the one with the young, attractive actors-was a totally well-done thriller. Nothing fancy, but nothing wasted, either. So far, Jessica Chastain is three for three of the million movies she has coming out this year. Bring on Take Shelter and Texas Killing Fields, I guess?
Restless: B
It's no secret that I heart Gus Van Sant. (Gerry!) Like some of his other movies, this one finds real sweetness in very dark material. Maybe some of it was cutesy or affected. But very simple things, like the way one sister helps another sort her Halloween candy, felt very real and very right. It didn't knock my socks off or amount to anything huge like Elephant did, but I left with a general sense of having my cold heart slightly warmed up.
Straw Dogs: D
Of the many ways in which a thriller could fail, I think being boring is one of the worst. Setting up the relationship between the two characters in the beginning is interesting, and the big dust-up at the end is crazy, but there's a lot of boring in the middle. I didn’t see the Peckinpah original, but nobody calls Peckinpah a boring dude, so I think there was something lost in the updating.
Drive: A-
It's hard to describe why I liked this movie so much. It just worked. The laconic main character, weird '80s pop music, ultra-violence, and all of the actor performances combined to made me react exactly the way the movie wanted me to. Which was basically to keep a small knot of suspense in my stomach the entire time, punctuated by eruptions of squeamishness. What's most impressive, though, was how reserved the movie was while still provoking that kind of reaction. Anyone could use high-adrenaline car chases with huge explosions and bullets flying everywhere to generate suspense. It's harder to do it at a normal red light, or with a character that barely says anything. More things I loved about this: Albert Brooks as the villain ("hard, soft, soft, soft"), Gosling's staring contests with the kid (funny, but creepy). Less can be said about Gosling's scorpion jacket, even if it becomes a thing.
Moneyball: B+
On some level, this movie succeeds, because I care not for baseball nor for statistics, yet I was totally into this movie about baseball statistics. I guess it just combines my soft spots for underdog stories and how-sausage-gets-made movies. (I guess I could've used the phrase "inside baseball" instead of "how the sausage gets made," but I'm so sports illiterate I'm not sure if I'd be using that right.) Brad Pitt was charming and at his most Robert Redfordy, and I liked nearly all of his scenes: trading players with Jonah Hill, talking with his daughter, eating in every scene. There's also some good Wally Pfister shots. I agree that Bennet Miller seems a little outmatched for the story and the star power, and that it probably would have been a better movie in the hands of someone more confident. But, to me, it wasn't like someone was reading the back of a baseball card, so I won't complain.
Abduction: D
Jesse pointed this out, but it is true (and spoilery): There is no abduction in Abduction. Taylor Lautner's parents are super-spies and give him away to another couple, also CIA, to protect him while they're on missions. I guess Adoption just didn't have the same ring to it. The rest of the movie feels similarly low-rent, to the point where I told Jesse that the co-star looked like a bootleg Lily Collins only to find out that it was, in fact, the real Lily Collins. (Others cashing a paycheck in this movie: Maria Bellow, Sigourney Weaver, Alfred Molina, and Mr. Malfoy.) The worst was the first five minutes of the movie, where T-Lau is supposed to act like a normal teenager with normal teenage friends. He looks like what happens to people when you go up to them and say "walk naturally." (Doing that makes people totally stop walking naturally.) I could basically hear Singleton off-screen saying, "Act like you do when you're out with your friends. Your human friends. You do have friends, don't you?" But, hey, in the "if you can't say anything nice" column, I'll say that it was cool that it seemed shot on location in Pittsburgh. That doesn't happen often.
Killer Elite: C
I was expecting this to be crazier, like Shoot 'Em Up meets Crank-after all, the trailer has the Stath jumping out of a window while he's strapped to a chair. The real movie isn't crazy like that. It's certainly pulpy, but it's less all-out crazy and more adult, sort of like Taken. After the initial disappointment wore off, my expectations adjusted and I started to like the movie again. But then it rambled and meandered and went on a bit, and I went back to being dissatisfied. The more minutes went by, the more I was hoping for something with a little bit more zing to it. The movie circled around back to being disappointing. But it did have one awesome part where a person explains what the acronym "MFWIC" means-let me know if you want me to tell you and I'll be delighted.
What's Your Number: B
Poor Anna Faris. She's so funny, but she's also conventionally pretty, so I think she's stuck, along with Elizabeth Banks, in this zone where she can't just be really funny in a movie that's not also about her trying to find a husband. I wish someone would let her just go for it 100% and be the female Jonah Hill/Seth Rogan, but I don't see that happening. But, for what it's worth, I laughed all the way through What's Your Number. Sure, they kept trying to rom-com it up, and those parts were pretty weak (especially the over-obvious music cues-ugh, Screaming Trees). But they lined up a great roster of ex-boyfriends and there were enough funny parts throughout. It sure beats my birthday rom-com of last year, When in Rome, so it could be much, much worse.