1. Wall-E

By far the best movie of the year, Pixar has done it again. This movie works on so many levels which is all the more amazing considering the first half of the movie has no dialogue. Simply amazing.

2. Let The Right One In

This moody and atmospheric Swedish import is the best vampire movie the Moose has ever seen. It’s not about the terrors of blood and gore as much as it is about the horrors of loneliness.

3. Gran Torino

Both satisfying and thought provoking, Clint Eastwood shows everyone how to play to an audience’s expectations and then subvert them.

4. Taken

Although released in America in 2009, Taken was produced and released in Europe in 2008, hence it’s place on this list. Producer Luc Besson and his co-writer Robert Mark Kamen have crafted a tense and satisfying kidnapping thriller which Liam Neeson improves on with his resonating performance.

5. Bolt

Disney returns to its roots with this classic animated tale that harks back to the magic of Walt Disney’s laugh and a tear philosophy.

6. The Ruins

A good adaptation of the book, this movie will make you think twice about going off the beaten path in foreign countries. Terrifying.

7. Changeling

Clint’s second movie on this list lacks drama but makes up for it with masterfully crafted tale of one mother’s nightmare in a dark time in Los Angeles history.

8. Iron Man

Ok, this movie isn’t great but it is great fun. Robert Downey Jr. has finally found a vehicle to tap into his energetic and spontaneous talents. Forget Mickey Rourke, this was the big comeback of 2008.

9. You Don’t Mess With the Zohan

An unexpected comedy that combines silly and adult humor to great effect. Adam Sandler’s best and funniest movie since?Happy Gilmore.

Twilight

Movie adaptations of books tend to fall into two categories: those that are better than the book and those that are worse than the book.Most film adaptations fall into the latter category. Books rely on the power of the reader’s imagination. Movies use the combination of visual images and sound to tell the story and constantly run the risk of showing the zipper on the back of the monster suit. Filmmakers are also hampered by the issue of length. You can tell a much grander and richer story over five hundred pages than you can over two hours. Because of issues like this, filmmakers have a difficult time capturing all of the qualities and details of the book that its readers love.

Based off the book of the same name by Stephenie Meyer, Twilight fails into a third category. It is the rare movie that brings to light just how awful the book really is. For those who don’t know, the story of Twilight revolves around a teenage girl named Bella Swan who moves to a new town and falls in love with a boy named Edward Cullen. The twist? Edward is a vampire.

The movie is pretty faithful to the book, which means that nothing happens for most of the movie. Mainly, Bella meets Edward and they stare at each other. A lot. Then they declare their love for each other and then stare at each other. A lot.

Only a minor subplot about an evil vampire who thirsts for Bella’s blood interrupts the gooey eyed staring sessions. This subplot is meant to be exciting and showcase the vampires in action. The problem is that there are seven good vampires and only one bad vampire (there are two other “bad” vampires but they conveniently leave the story) so Bella’s safety is really never in question.

But I digress, and so does the movie as this action subplot is nothing more than an excuse to put Bella in danger so Edward can save her and then stare into her eyes yet again.

In the movie, there are several MTV-music video sequences that show Bella and Edward bonding and talking. The audience can’t hear what they’re saying as there’s no sound in these scenes other than the generic rock songs. What exactly is the audience missing in these scenes? Nothing. You can’t hear what the characters are saying because Stephanie Meyer didn’t write anything for them to say in her book and the filmmakers didn’t know what to have them say to each other.

Having read the novel, I can tell you that there is nothing more to Edward and Bella’s love than mere physical attraction. They never have any conversations about anything other Edward being a vampire or their lurv. The book does delve into the character’s thoughts, but that doesn’t help the reader understand their fatal attraction. Almost every thought from Bella is a variation of “Edward’s so beautiful” or how she can’t get over his white, marbled skin. Edward adds little to the conversation other than reminding Bella that he’s a “dangerous” vampire and that he’s perfect.

Director Catherine Hardwicke and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg keep the movie faithful to the book. That includes such awful dialogue as “and so the lion fell in love with the lamb”. What comes across as mildly cheesy in print becomes laughably bad and corny when spoken out loud by actors. Even the best actors couldn’t save Stephenie Meyer’s dreadful dialogue let alone the two stiff actors that star in Twilight. Just how bad is the acting by these two? There’s a scene where Bella and Edward are sitting in a tree (just like the nursery rhyme) and it becomes hard to tell what is more wooden, the actors or the tree.

But that’s nothing compared to the short soliloquy Kristen Stewart gives in the hospital when she thinks that Edward might leave her. It’s a masterpiece of hammy overacting by someone who can’t emote. If Keanu Reeves ever wants to win an Oscar, he should hire Kristen Stewart as his co-star. She makes him look like Laurence Oliver.

Of course, the acting fits in perfectly with the cheesy low-rent production values of the movie. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell whether the cheap look is because of the filmmaker’s incompetence or their devotion to Stephenie Meyer’s book. For instance, take Edward’s fast running where his feet don’t touch the ground. He looks like some type of vampire fairy.  Or the “glitter” effect when the vampires are exposed to sunlight. Or even the vampires themselves. Edward and the rest of his family, the Cullens, try their best to fit in with the rest of human society but, come on! They are so pasty white and obvious, how could you not think they were vampires? Seriously.

Of course, this will matter little to the devoted teenage girls who’ve based ideals of romance off of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight book series.

Quantum Of Solace

Let’s just call a spade a spade and say that the new James Bond movie Quantum Of Solace sucks. It’s confusing, dizzying, generic and, worst of all, boring. The movie is as dull as the title is confusing. The title is taken from an Ian Fleming short story but the movie has nothing to do with that short story. Or Fleming’s character of Bond for that matter.

In his second outing as Bond, Daniel Craig does little to change the Moose’s low opinion of his Bond. Once again, he plays Bond as a construction worker thug with an English accent. You would be forgiven if you thought this Bond was the guy you hired to pave your driveway. While there was some depth to Craig’s performance in Casino Royale, his performance here is more one note. Bond is out for revenge and nothing more. He barely finds any time for bedding women.

Some people have noted that James Bond has become a British Jason Bourne. There is some truth to that. Like Bourne, Bond has and is no fun. He’s a stuntman posing as an action hero. Take a moment to think about James Bond. What pops into your head? Tireless playboy who beds anyone without a Y chromosome, vodka martini shaken not stirred, classic introduction (Bond…James Bond). Without the mannerisms and stylish flourishes that Bond is known for, the character becomes little more than your generic action hero that could be played by any muscle bound meathead with an English accent.

But what about the story? Well, it’s both simple and incomprehensible. At its core, it’s basically Bond looking for revenge against the people that killed Vesper. But in the hands of Monster’s Ball director Marc Forster, it’s a confusing, convoluted mess that wants to be both realistic and fantastical. And did I mention stupid?

The villains are a super-evil organization named Quantum that has people everywhere. Why do I say that they’re super-evil? Because instead of world domination, they want to become a utility company. That’s right, the whole motivation of the bad guys in this movie is to become the sole water supplier of Bolivia. Very exciting stuff. The bad guys are headed by a goggle-eyed, effeminate, tofu eating Frenchmen Dominic Greene in a tuxedo who Bond somehow has trouble defeating in a fight despite the fact that he can take out rogue MI6 superagents and an army of evil militants with no problem.

As for the Bond girl, only an incompetent idiot would take a beautiful Ukrainian model (Olga Kurylenko) and cast her as an unsexy Bolivian out for revenge armed with a pout and a bad haircut. Oh, hello Marc Forster. Are you the one that decided to place the boring finale in a luxurious hotel that looks like a Motel 8 in the middle of the desert? That makes about as much sense as the rest of the movie.

Let The Right One In

It’s difficult to make a good vampire film. Why? Because vampires have lost their mystique. From The Count on Sesame Street to the campy vampires on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, vampires are not only accepted but embraced by the public consciousness. It’s hard to be scared or moved by vampires anymore in a traditional horror or creature feature film.

Leave it to the Swedish to turn vampires on their head and make them fascinating again. Adapted from him own novel Let the Right One In, writer John Ajvide Lindqvist and director Thomas Alfredson have crafted a unique vampire movie unlike any other I have ever seen. Instead of cheap thrills and loud action and Eurotrash seduction, this movie is smart and literate and resonant. It’s part horror film, part coming of age film and part love story, yet the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

The story of Let The Right One In deals with the relationship that forms between 12 year old milquetoast Oskar and his new friend Eli, who just happens to be an age old vampire stuck forever at the awkward age of 12. Both Oskar and Eli are lonely and damaged and their friendship and budding romance help bring out the life in each other, even after Oskar realizes that Eli is a bloodsucking vampire.

Let The Right One In is not your traditional horror film. The movie is not about the plot or the events that unfold. It’s a story of awakening and love and acceptance. It’s about the awkwardness of adolescence. The director Thomas Alfredson doesn’t shy away from the darkness of the violence, yet he does not linger on it as one would expect in a traditional horror film. Instead, the movie’s horror is brought out by the atmosphere and the no-nonsense, realistic approach the director takes the supernatural elements. He plays to the emotional impact of the horror as opposed to the shock factor.

Compared to most movies in theaters today, Let The Right One In is a breath of welcome fresh air. The movie is paced perfectly and avoids the fast cutting and over-the-top stylistic flourishes that plague most American movies. There is also a return to classical compositional framing that burns the stark images from the movie into your mind. You could freeze frame the movie at any point and be left with an image as haunting as a painting by Johannes Vermeer. And there is a stillness in the movie that only accentuates the depth of the moving relationship between Oskar and Eli. Let The Right One In is a movie that will stay with you after you have seen it. The Moose thinks that this is not only the best vampire movie of the year, sorry Twilight fans, but also one of the year’s best movies.

Trailer

The ninth film from Pixar Studios, now a part of Disney, and the second by Andrew Stanton, the writer/director of Finding Nemo, one wonders if Wall•E will continue Pixar‘s string of critically acclaimed box office hits especially considering that a large portion of the movie contains no dialogue,

After watching Wall•E, the Moose can only say that Pixar has done it again. Wall•E is not only good, it’s sublime and makes you wish that they could make live-action movies as touching and enthralling as this. That the movie works with the bare minimum of spoken dialogue makes the feat all the more amazing.

The movie revolves around the central character of WALL•E, a robot that’s a cross between a trash compactor and the robot from the Short Circuit movies. For the last 700 years, Wall•E has been hard at work crushing all the garbage left on an uninhabitable Earth into little compact cubes and stacking them on top of each other to make giant, makeshift skyscrapers. At night, Wall•E returns to his home, a giant storage area filled with various “treasures” that Wall•E has collected over the years. He passes the time watching the movie musical Hello, Dolly! where he learns about romance.

Wall•E, and his unusual “pet”, are the last inhabitants on Earth. That is, until a sleek spaceship drops a beautiful, feminine probe named EVE that Wall•E falls head over wheels for. Wall•E’s courtship of EVE eventually lands him on a giant spaceship version of the ultimate cruise ship where humanity now resides. It’s on this ship, about halfway through the movie, that spoken dialogue is first heard. What happens next? You’ll have to watch the movie to find out.

While some people will watch Wall•E and think of its environmental message, this is not a message movie. Sure, the humans have used up all of Earth’s resources and then tossed it aside like an empty soda can, but that’s not the point of the movie. So, then, what is the point?

The point of Wall•E is something that it achieves that most live action films do not, without the use of spoken dialogue or great actors; getting the audience to care about the characters. Yes, this robot can feel, and so will you when you see this movie. People use to call movies moving pictures. What they were talking about, of course, was the motion that film captured. With Wall•E, it’s the emotion that has been captured – yours.

Wall•E opens with the hilarious short film Presto about the power struggle between a magician and his rabbit.

Trailer

What do you get when you creative minds behind Happy Gilmore, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and The 40-Year-Old Virgin?

A hilarious satire. Full disclosure: although I like Adam Sandler, I haven’t really liked one of his movies since The Waterboy. And I don’t really think Judd Apatow’s movies are as funny or good as people think. The 40-Year-Old Virgin was mildly amusing only because I have an acquaintance who is the 31 year old virgin and is eerily similar to Steve Carrell’s character. That being said, I do like Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, especially when he makes fun of Star Wars nerds.

I found myself laughing at You Don’t Mess With The Zohan more than any other major studio comedy of the past few years. It’s an absurdist satire with a bit of an edge that balances out its bite with pure silliness. The movie is so over-the-top that it plays like a cartoon similar to Stephen Chow’s movies Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle.

Abandoning the stunted, man-child character he usually plays, Adam Sandler’s Zohan is a likable caricature of action movie stereotypes. He’s super-strong, super-fast and super-sexy in a way that James Bond could never be; and all he wants to be is a hair stylist. And in a bit of genius casting, John Turturro plays Zohan’s equal and nemesis, The Phantom. Who would have ever thought these two would be playing Middle Eastern commandos?

Like the best Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker movies (The Naked Gun, Airplane!), Sandler and co. throw a million jokes at the audience and most of them stick, especially the ones involving race, sex and politics. Where the movie stumbles is when it focuses on the required love interest and the wannabe terrorist subplot featuring Rob Schneider. Thankfully, the movie spends a minimum of time on these forced subplots and the pointless cameos by SNL alums Chris Rock and Kevin Nealon.

Where You Don’t Mess With The Zohan excels is when it parodies the ultra masculine action heroes and movies that the Zohan is based on. The chase scenes and fights are inspired silliness and based on a kind of cartoon logic. If you can’t appreciate silliness, you’re going to hate this movie.

Ironman is the first movie from Marvel Studios, the filmmaking arm of comic book giant Marvel Enterprises and is the perfect example of how a comic book adaptation should be. Smart and fun, the movie will appeal to everyone, not just comic book geeks. Who would have thought that the writer/star of Swingers would turn out to be the perfect director for such a big budget comic book adaptation?

Ironman has a loose, almost improv feel to it and never feels forced except near the end when it must deal with the villain and setting up the final confrontation. The actors, led by a sterling Robert Downey Jr., never take the movie too seriously and are clearly having a blast with the story (even Gwyneth Paltrow). The real charm of the movie is that the special effects never take over the movie; they remain just a color in the palette of director Jon Favreau, who uses them only in service of the movie.

One thing that’s amazing about Ironman is that it manages to not take itself too seriously without falling into easy tongue-in-cheek comedy territory. The humor is more whimsical and spur of the moment and comes largely from the Robert Downey Jr.’s performance and his enjoyment of the male fantasy lifestyle of his character Tony Stark.

That lifestyle is one that I think most men who kill for. After all, who wouldn’t want to have their own private plane with a retractable stripper pole for the airline stewardesses. All things considering, Ironman is the best comic book movie to date and the most fun big budget movie to come out of Hollywood in a long time.

Iron Man Trailer

Trailer

John Cusack is an unusual Hollywood star as his popularity stems more from starring in a series of films with cult status than from being in any major Hollywood blockbusters. One of these films with a devoted cult following is the fun little hitman comedy Grosse Pointe Blank.

Co-written and co-produced by Cusack himself, this movie was overlooked upon its initial release but has gained a rabid cult following on DVD. The right mix of comedy, satire and action, Grosse Pointe Blank tells the story of a hitman who goes back to his ten year high school reunion

Why do I bring this up? Because, in some ways, John Cusack’s new movie War, Inc. can be seen as a sort of unofficial sequel to Grosse Pointe Blank. Once again, Cusack plays the role of a hitman unhappy with his work. This time, he’s sent to the country of Turaqistan to assassinate an uncooperative Middle Eastern oil minister. He’s given the cover of being a trade show producer where he falls in love with a political journalist played by Marisa Tomei while overseeing the wedding of an outrageous pop star played by Hilary Duff.

War, Inc. shares a lot in common with its predecessor Grosse Pointe Blank starting with its cast. John Cusack’s sister Joan is cast as the hitman’s assistant/liason in a role very similar to the role she played in Grosse Pointe Blank while Dan Akryod plays a caricature of Vice President Dick Cheney.

But more than just it’s cast, War, Inc. shares many of the same setups and situations as Grosse Pointe Blank. For example, in Grosse Pointe Blank Cusack’s character often talks to a psychiatrist on the phone for advice to work out his problems. In War, Inc., Cusack’s character talks to a Movie-Fone like advice service in his plane or car to work out his problems. There are many scenes that are lifted directly from Grosse Pointe Blank and reused here in this movie

At it’s core, War, Inc. is a dark political satire that targets not only America’s unpopular war in Iraq, but also the privatization of the war and the opportunistic commercialization and marketing of America’s brands and culture to the world.

But you never quite connect with the characters. Instead, the movie is more like an exercise in intellectual political satire where the banter is witty but the plot is predictable. And while there are many fun moments in the movie including a sex tease involving Hilary Duff and a scorpion, the movie lacks the playful spirit and tone of Grosse Pointe Blank and doesn’t have the heart of that earlier film. That’s not to say that War, Inc. isn’t enjoyable in parts, but it misses the mark as a whole.

Trailer

At the moment, mixed martial arts is the fastest growing sport in North America. So far, Hollywood has not been able to cash in yet on this increasingly popular sport. There have been a few attempts but nothing that has caught on yet with MMA’s core audience of young males. Now comes a movie from a most unlikely source: Pulitzer-Prize winner David Mamet.

According to press materials for Redbelt, David Mamet is a blue belt in Brazilian jiu-jutsu and has been studying the martial art for the last five years and change. He was introduced to Brazilian jiu-jutsu through current black belt Ed O’Neill (of Married with Children fame). Yes. Al Bundy can kick your ass.

Redbelt is Mamet’s attempt to delve into the classic genre film and turn it on its head with typical Mamet verve and what you get is something quite unexpected. With this movie, Mamet tries to combine the mechanics and language of the con typical to most of his movies with the format and conventions of a boxing film filtered through the Eastern philosophies of samurai film. Sounds a bit strange, doesn’t it? So is the movie.

The usual twists and elaborate cons that one would expect from a Mamet film are here as well as a handful of above average fights, but the movie lacks drama. It lacks tension. And while the movie has many good moments, it also has many dull moments. The main reason for this is because the central drive of the main character is to not fight. To not do something is not nearly as dramatic as doing something.

Another problem the movie has comes from the elaborate con that Mamet creates for the story. A good con works by exploiting a natural weakness in its mark, usually greed. The con artist gives you his confidence and sucks you into the narrative they weave so that they can exploit your weakness. In this movie, the mark’s only flaw is that he holds onto principles that are outdated and anachronistic in modern American society. The main character Mike Terry (Chiwetel Ejiofor) eventually succumbs to the con and reluctantly agrees to fight only after he has exhausted all other options. This is not a satisfying con.

In the press kit, Mamet points out that this is “not a martial arts movie” and he’s right. It’s more a movie about idealism and pragmatism and whether or not the philosophies of the martial arts are relevant and applicable in today’s modern society. The end result is that the audience ends up watching a noble movie as opposed to a entertaining and dramatic one.

Full disclosure here. The Moose is both Asian and an accomplished martial artist. The reason I bring this up is that this background gives me a unique perspective on Redbelt and why it turned out the way it did. I believe that Mr. Mamet has fallen in love with the idealized purity of martial arts and its esoteric philosophy. While Mr. Mamet is not quite to the extreme of the wide eyed rice king who embraces and loves all things Asian without question, his enthusiasm and love for his art (Brazilian jujutsu) has clearly dulled his artistic edge and vision.

How else can you explain how he has forgotten his own principles about drama? His adherence to the purity of martial arts philosophy has tainted the purity of his drama. Still, despite its flaws, Redbelt is a fascinating movie in its attempts to blend so many diverse elements into a genre film. The Moose is a huge Mamet fan so I’m a little disappointed because Redbelt is not Mamet at his best. Still, it’s worth seeing because even when it fails, it’s still better than the exploitative drivel of movies of similar movies trying to cash in on the MMA craze like Never Back Down. And for those wondering about the fight scenes, the fights are better than the standard Hollywood fare. They’re staged with technical precision with an eye towards reality although the actual choreography is neither cinematic nor realistic (there are too many reversals during the grappling). If you’re really looking for a good MMA fight on film, watch Sha Po Lang (Kill Zone in America) with Sammo Hung.

Redbelt press kit.

Redbelt screenplay

Juno

Everyone loves good stories. It’s what the book industry and the film industry are based on. Even the adult industry makes porn with an attempt at a story line no matter how cheesy because they know that people have an appetite for good stories. By now, you must have either seen the movie Juno or have heard some of the endless hype about this small indie comedy from Fox Searchlight that went on to win an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and gross over $120 million at the box office.

Does Juno live up to the hype? No. The story with Juno is not the story that the movie is about, but rather the story behind how the movie got made. Case in point, the movie is basically an average John Hughes type teen movie updated for the year 2007. It’s marginally about a teenage girl who gets pregnant after a one night stand with a boy friend of hers and how she deals with her pregnancy. No reinventing the wheel here.

Compare this to the story of how Juno got made. A stripper turns to the web and writes a blog with the salacious name The Pussy Ranch. A Hollywood talent manager surfs the web for porn and comes across said blog. He contacts the stripper and finds a publisher for her memoir Candy Girl: A Year In The Life Of An Unlikely Stripper.

The book does all right. Meanwhile, the manager tells the stripper to write a screenplay. The result is Juno. Now you tell me, which is the more interesting story. They certainly didn’t sell the movie to all the talk shows. Only in Hollywood does there exist the stripper/hooker with the heart of gold.

For those of you who haven’t watched the movie, it comes out on DVD today. Let me be the first to tell you, you aren’t missing much if you haven’t seen this movie. Little Miss Sunshine it ain’t. Don’t get me wrong, the movie isn’t awful. It just isn’t good.

A lot of the problem lies in the script. The story is about something that happens in every day life which means that the potential is there for it to be very good or very boring. The writer, Diablo Cody, desperately doesn’t want the story to be boring so what she does is infuse every single character with non stop witticisms and one liners. The result is that movie doesn’t unfold like a story but rather like a sitcom as filmed by a an indie director. There are no fully formed scenes really. Everything is just a set up for Juno’s witty and sarcastic one liners. There’s also the very amateur problem of trying to make all the characters extra-quirky so that they stand out. For those of you who want to read the script, you can buy the shooting script to Juno here.

But then how did the script for Juno win an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, you may ask. Because story is king and Diablo Cody has a killer “Hollywood” story. As for the rest of the movie, I beg to differ with everyone about the performances. The actors are a little too self-aware and the performances are kind of strange hybrid acting halfway between film acting and sitcom acting.

I didn’t really find any of the characters believable except the step-mom at times. Especially the character of Juno. For what she’s going through, she seems awfully nonchalant about it. No morning sickness, no loss of self-esteem over her pregnancy. None of the problems that affect most women during pregnancy.

Of course, those on the Diablo Cody bandwagon will say that Juno is not meant to be a reflection of reality but rather Diablo Cody’s own wicked take on teenage pregnancy. I can see that argument but that would mean that Diablo Cody sees the world as a big sitcom where everyone can get cool points and indie cred with a little sarcasm and name dropping. Sorry, but to me that’s not a very interesting or entertaining world.

Don’t believe the hype. Avoid this movie unless you have nothing better to do. You’re better off renting a teen movie with James Spader in it then watching this dreck.