“The American” is not going to be appreciated by most Americans. It isn’t anti-America, or political in any sense. But it’s paced more slow than we’re used to, there isn’t a lot of dialogue from Clooney’s Mr. Butterfly, and the story is very subtle. The audience I was a part of were quite vocal and they kept remarking very loudly that they didn’t know what the point of this movie was. I understand their complaints but I also was saddened by them. “The American” is a great, quiet film that deals with some of the issues we all deal with but rarely speak of. Read on to see my review.

The audience doesn’t know the real name of Clooney’s character, though it is probably Jack. We are introduced to a “content” Jack in Sweden, where he and a woman are staying in a frozen, isolated, small log cabin. The couple leaves the cabin to take a walk on a frozen lake, when suddenly Jack realizes something is wrong, he pulls a Walther pistol out of his coat and grabs the girl and runs for cover. Rifle shots ring out, Jack sees the shooter and sneaks up on him, firing two rounds. What happens next, I won’t say, but it’s shocking and revealing.

Jack leaves Sweden and heads to Rome where he meets up with a trusted friend, and asks for some help in hiding for a while. Jack is given a small town’s name, a cell phone and some instructions. Jack ditches the phone, scopes out the town, but decides to stay somewhere else. Jack doesn’t trust anyone apparently. Even in a place where no one knows who he is, he looks over his shoulder every chance he gets, he is suspcious of everyone. He has no peace, and therefore can have no room for love, and no ability for happiness.

His first relationship with any human is with a priest who is a bit nosy. The priest talks with him of his peace and how a man can be rich only if he has God. Jack doesn’t disagree, in fact, Jack knows he is poor because he has nothing. The character of the priest is wonderfully important to contrast Jack, it helps to display who Jack is, and that is vital because Clooney’s character is alone and quiet for a lot of the movie.

Jack drives back to the town his friend told him about occassionally and calls from a pay phone, to remain hidden. His first call, he is offered a final job, to build a weapon for an assassin. Jack meets the client, and is naturally suspicious, but agrees to build a unique and unusual fully automatic rifle. The scenes where Jack is building it were so interesting to me as a guy on two levels, mechanical and firearms related.

As he nears completion of his job, he meets a woman while visiting a brothel, and falls for her. He also distrusts her but they begin a relationship, still always watching her to make sure she isn’t reaching for a gun. He decides to leave with her after finally deciding that she is trustworthy, and for the first time in the movie, Jack smiles. A totally vulnerable, unprotected man.

The conclusion of the mission, the relationship, and the film were intense. I found it to be a wonderful ending, but understand that it is not for everyone. The movie has some action scenes and were just as exciting as a Jason Bourne movie with less action, because the drama of the movie was more dramatic. It’s a movie about our inner lives, and the lack of peace a man can have. Can anyone relate? I think we all can. Maybe we don’t have men with guns after us, but everyone has fears. A love interest may bring some joy and peace but it isn’t secure. Like Jack and the priest talked about, there is no peace or richness without God.

Be warned! It’s got a somewhat graphic one minute sex scene, more implied than revealing, but still excessively long —>Rated R for violence, sexual content and nudity.

“I guess they had it coming.”-The Schofield Kid
“We all have it coming, Kid.”-William Munny

Clint Eastwood’s 1992 Best Picture/Director/etc Winner definitely earned its awards and critical acclaim. Any conversation I hear about Westerns always concludes by someone saying either, “It’s the best Western since ‘Unforgiven’” or “There hasn’t been a good Western since ‘Unforgiven’”. Read on to see what I thought.

Before I begin, let me say that this movie is not really a Western. It’s not meant to leave you cheering for the hero or the good guy. It’s not about one man versus a gang. It is not the same as Eastwood’s early work in Westerns, or modern takes. That said, let’s begin.

She was a comely young woman and not without prospects. Therefore, it was heartbreaking to her mother that she would enter into marriage with William Munny, a known thief and murderer, a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition. When she died, it was not at his hands as her mother might have suspected, but of smallpox. That was 1878.

“Unforgiven” opens with those words, and immediately we see the reformed man, William Munny, maintaining his humble farm. He’s poor, old, but noticeably different than we might suspect based on the above lines. His two small children know nothing of his previous life. One day, a young man rides to Will’s farm and offers him half of a reward to ride with him to Wyoming and kill two cowboys who cut up a prostitute. Will turns it down, saying that he’s not that kind of man anymore. But as his farm is falling apart and his pigs are dying of a fever, Will changes his mind, recruits his old partner, Ned and together they catch up to the Schofield Kid. Will and Ned both have moved on from their killing days, but (I believe this is intentional on Eastwood’s part), Will keeps repeating to Ned and anyone listening that he is a different person now, that he is doing this one job for the money and that will be that. He stopped drinking, he stopped shooting and killing more than 10 years ago.

As the “heroes” move toward Wyoming, we see the townspeople, prostitutes, and lawmen of the small town where Will and his crew are headed. A sheriff named Little Bill is running a tight camp. No firearms in town, no assassins tolerated, anyone coming for the “whores’ reward” will be beaten to a pulp or killed. For a chunk of the movie we follow a man named “English Bob” as he heads toward the town looking for the reward. Bob is a famous gunslinger, who strikes fear into the townspeople. But when Bob enters the town, he’s no match for Little Bill. Of course this is meant to show us what Will, Ned, and the Kid are in for.

And boy, are they in for it! Not only do Will, Ned, and the Kid face the “justice” of Little Bill, who isn’t afraid to be violent, they are also confronted with the horror of their acts, to which they each react a different way, The Kid, as you’d suspect, is all talk during the ride to Wyoming, but once he sees what death looks like, he wants no part of it every again. After participating in the death of one of the cowboys, Ned gives up on the mission and decides to ride home. I won’t give away the ending of the movie, but I’ll say one thing, it’s brilliant. It’s meaningful and powerful. I’d say it’s a movie with a good illustration of how violence/vengeance/eye-for-an-eye plays out in real life, while also dealing with human nature. Can a man change his nature?

Rated R for language, and violence, and for a scene of sexuality.

(500) Days of Summer’s preview is correct… It’s not a love story. It’s a story about love. Read on to check it out!

Tom Hansen, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is a young professional looking for his true love. He always knew with certainty that when he found the right girl, he’d be happy. Tom went to college for his passion, architecture, but after school was not able to land a job in the field. He took what he could get, writing greeting cards. One day at his office, a new secretary named Summer Finn catches his eye. During their first conversation(picture above), Tom tries to show no interest, but she breaks through his armor and wins his heart immediately with her singing and charm and taste in similar music.

After a few weeks, they grow closer together. Tom wants to call her his girlfriend, and Summer wants no such thing. She is just interested in having a good time and enjoying their relationship without actually saying they have one. She prefers superficial flings and superficial friends, and never lets anyone get close enough to her to hurt her. One night though:

Narrator: For Tom Hansen, this was the night where everything changed. That wall Summer so often hid behind – the wall of distance, of space, of casual – that wall was slowly coming down. For here was Tom, in her world… a place few had been invited to see with their own eyes. And here was Summer, wanting him there. Him, no one else. As he listened, Tom began to realize that these stories weren’t routinely told. These were stories one had to earn. He could feel the wall coming down. He wondered if anyone else had made it this far. Which is why the next six words changed everything.
Summer: I’ve never told anybody that before.
Tom: I guess I’m not just anybody.

Tom fell hard for Summer, and it begins to hurt him that she is so careless with his heart. Over time, we see Tom as happy as he could only dream, while we see Summer getting sadder each day. Summer decides to end their “relationship”.

Tom is heartbroken and lonely. He remains that way for quite a while, until he sees Summer on their way to a mutual friend’s wedding. They catch up and laugh and dance and enjoy themselves. Summer invites Tom to her place for a party later in the week. We see Tom show up and two screens, with some help from the narrator, showing Tom’s expectations for the party and the actual events. He’s so happy that it’s devastating to see when he learns that Summer is engaged. The girl who had said for months that she would never commit and didn’t want to even have a boyfriend, is now set to be married, so shortly after dumping Tom.

A few weeks later, after seeing Tom fall into a pit of despair, he picks up what he can in his life and sets his will to pursuing his passion. He interviews for jobs in architecture, starts reading about buildings and designs again. One day he runs into Summer. He asks why she would ever get married.

Summer: Well, you know, I guess it’s ’cause I was sitting in a deli and reading Dorian Gray and a guy comes up to me and asks me about it and… now he’s my husband.
Tom: Yeah. And… so?
Summer: So, what if I’d gone to the movies? What if I had gone somewhere else for lunch? What if I’d gotten there 10 minutes later? It was – it was meant to be. And… I just kept thinking… Tom was right…I woke up one morning and I just knew.
Tom: Knew what?
Summer: What I was never sure of with you. You weren’t wrong(about destiny and love existing), Tom. You were just wrong about me.

Harsh right? She doesn’t mean to crush the poor guy, only to tell him the hard truth that she finally found who she loved and it changed everything. As Summer turns to leave, Tom wishes her well and says that he is glad that she is finally happy. He means it.

Tom has a rough time for a while, but the story doesn’t end with his misery and doubt of true love’s existence. I loved every minute of this movie. I found it easy to connect and identify with Tom. His story is one of hope and searching for love, then becoming jaded and hopeless, to having his hope restored. 500 Days is fairly clean, with a few small exceptions, unpredictable and fresh, so easy to watch, and so original. It’s by far my favorite movie about relationships and love in the past decade.

These three posters are from the original three films of the series. They follow a theme that really breaks the Star Wars plot down into three simple but awesome acts. Read on to see them enlarged and to find the artist’s website.

I really dig these posters, their titles, and especially enjoy how they’re similar and different.

Check out his page here .

“You’re Our Only Hope”

“Never Tell Me the Odds”

“Fully Armed and Operational”

Check out his page here .

While Box Office is no indicator of the quality of a movie, it is an indicator of something. Either an event-movie that people had to see to feel part of a conversation, or a story that really spoke to an audience. During this series, I am going to pick the #1 movie of a particular year and give some history and insight into the story and the success of the film. Today’s movie comes from 1980 and is the 2nd film in the original Star Wars series.

“The Empire Strikes Back” recorded a whopping $209,398,025 in 1980, which today would be decent, but nothing spectacular. If you adjust it for inflation, based on # of tickets sold, it’d beat “The Dark Knight” by $190,000,000. I don’t mean to downplay “The Dark Knight”, things were different in the 80′s. People paid to see movies rather than steal or stream them online(TDK actually holds the most records for any single movie). Irregardless, “Empire”, like TDK really steered the franchise into darkness. “Empire”, of the original 3 movies, is certainly the least happy and the least triumphant for its characters. Like any good second act, “Empire” shows the good guys suffering, the stakes are much higher, and hope seems pointless. I can’t think of a second act that tops this movie in this way. This necessary progression sets the viewer up for a really exciting third act.

Check out this trailer and reflect on some great moments in cinematic history.

Recently on NPR, I heard an excerpt from a conversation between film critic Roger Ebert and film director Martin Scorsese (among the many-”Raging Bull”, “Goodfellas”, “Gangs of New York”, “The Departed” and recently “Shutter Island”). I found it quite exciting, because of my view of what good movies can do versus what a popular view of movies is. Read on to see the short highlight of the conversation.

Mr. EBERT: What I feel so strongly in talking to people about movies, frequently people will – they know I’m a movie critic – they will discuss the subject matter as if that is what the film is about. Oh, it’s a film about boxing.

Mr. SCORSESE: Yeah, I know. Right.

Mr. EBERT: Or, oh, its a film about gangsters. Or whatever. You know, like when they hear what “Breaking Away” is about. Oh, I don’t know if I want to see it. A film is not about its subject. It’s about how its about its subject. A subject is neutral. People don’t understand that. When people say, whenever anybody makes a statement, I don’t like to go to movies about and then fill in the blank…my response is, anyone who makes that statement is an idiot.

Mr. SCORSESE: It’s true. It’s true.

Mr. EBERT: I don’t want to go to bad films about cowboys.

Mr. SCORSESE: Yeah.

Mr. EBERT: I don’t want to go to bad films about boxers.

Mr. SCORSESE: I know.

Mr. EBERT: I would like to see a good film about a boxer. It might be more intelligent to say that.

Mr. SCORSESE: Yeah. I mean when Bob gave me the book originally, back in 1974, I never saw a fight I never saw a fight. My father was a big fight fan. But I never, I didn’t know anything about boxing and I wasnt interested in films about boxing, you know. But it took those years to – for me to go my own way, to come back to understanding really what it was about.

Mr. EBERT: It was about a boxer but it wasn’t about boxing.

Mr. SCORSESE: Right.

Mr. EBERT: It was about the boxer.

Mr. SCORSESE: It was about a man.

The 2nd edition of best of the “decade”! What is in store this time? I am thinking of a sci-fi, a tv show, a sequence and maybe a drama or two. Read on!

Best Use of “Foil” (a secondary character that contrasts the main character) – “The Departed”

Like all good movies, this movie isn’t really about cops and gangsters. Although all of the characters are one or the other, this movie is about people and specifically two people. A Boston State Police Detective(Sullivan, played by Matt Damon) who is working for the Mob, and a State Police recruit (Costigan, played by Leonardo DiCaprio) who is approached by a special investigation unit. Costigan, because of his past and family history is used to being two different people around his two different family units, is asked to work undercover for them. They suspect a rat in their unit, who feeds the mob information about the investigation team trying to take the mob leader down. So they strip Costigan of all dignity and stature and send him to jail for months, while Sullivan prospers and advances within the ranks of the State Police.

Sullivan’s promotions come as a result of solving numerous crimes, because he also receives information from the mob about their enemies. However, Costigan is released and begins building his cover and doing horrible things in order to infiltrate the mob. These things tear him apart, especially when he remembers his father and the great example that he was as he stepped away from the “family” to raise his son in a better way. As the two work their different angles, an honest, good man doing the things he hates in order to put a horrible criminal away, and a weasle of a cop who lies, murders, steals; the two men are contrasted against each other constantly by the brilliant Martin Scorsese. His film isn’t about right and wrong, or cops and criminals. It’s about these two men and the differences between them and how they interact with morality, with cops, with criminals.

I highly recommend watching this, though with a warning. Unless you watch it on TV, this movie is filled with expletives. It’d be unrealistic if it wasn’t, so if you can’t handle that, then wait for an edited viewing. Check out the trailer below.

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Best Story with a Moral – “An Education”

You know, Grimm’s fairy tales, TV’s Home Improvement, etc… They always have a meaning behind their stories. “An Education” is an excellent movie with a strong and subtle message that is meaningful and true. Jenny is a smart, young woman being groomed for Oxford University by her controlling parents. When she meets an older man, David, who offers her a new kind of life, Jenny is swept away. It’s hard not to be, especially for the viewer. I won’t give the movie away, but it truly is an education.

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Most Nostalgic Movie -”Napoleon Dynamite”

It’s entirely possible that you disagree. We don’t all share a common childhood. But I think that this movie captures what my childhood was like to a certain degree. My family was and is together still, I don’t have an Uncle Rico, or a Llama. But I did have a fascination for martial arts, nunchucks, magical animals, 12-gauge shotguns, drawing, etc. I think that in my mind, maybe not to the world, I was Napoleon Dynamite as a child. I had the same awkwardness to social interaction, and the same confusion about relationships.

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Best TV Hero and Best TV Gunfight -”Justified” ‘s Raylan Givens

Yeah it’s been only one season so far, but I can’t think of a protagonist with such diversity/depth, flaws, yet has been so enjoyable to watch. Yeah, I’ve seen “House”, “24″, and many others, but Timothy Olyphant’s Givens is spot-on the kind of hero with a Western-attitude that makes me want to apply to the US Marshals. And the last episode of the season, “Bulletville” was the most exciting thing I’ve ever seen on TV. Check out the Promo for the the season finale below, sorry for the commercial.

This summer, Alamo Drafthouse is presenting “The Rolling Roadshow”. They take a projector, sound equipment and a huge screen to different cities all over the US and show a movie or a few, that involve that particular city. Read on to check out the information!

My closest city is Philadelphia, and Rocky I – III are being shown at the Art Museum steps. It’s free, all of the dates are! I doubt I’ll check out Philly’s date since Rocky is an obvious choice for a city that is extremely proud of the series. Some of them are better than others, but I’d much rather check out “Dirty Harry” in San Francisco, or “There Will Be Blood” outside by an oil derrick in Bakersfield, CA, or “Robocop” in Detroit. They’re all a bit more subtle picks for their cities.

Anyway, check out the dates and movies at Rolling Roadshow’s event site. And if you’re ever in San Antonio, don’t do what I did and regret now. Go to one of the Alamo Drafthouses and enjoy a dinner and a movie at the same time. It looked really cool, but I passed on it.

Yeah, end-of-the-world movies were as plentiful in recent years as sequels and reboots. But “The Road” was not a rushed project determined to rake in money. It’s not about a gimmick, or zombies, or aliens, or a disease. In fact, we’re not even told what destroyed the world. “The Road” is based off of a book by Cormac McCarthy(“No Country for Old Men”) and is a grim, uncompromising movie about the end of humanity and the love of a father for his son. Read on!

“The Road” begins with a voiceover from the main character, who, along with the rest of the characters, does not have a name:

The clocks stopped at one seventeen one morning. There was a long shear of bright light, then a series of low concussions. Within a year there were fires on the ridges and deranged chanting. By day the dead impaled on spikes along the road. I think it’s October but I can’t be sure. I haven’t kept a calender for five years. Each day is more gray than the one before. Each night is darker – beyond darkness. The world gets colder week by week as the world slowly dies. No animals have survived. All the crops are long gone. Someday all the trees in the world will have fallen. The roads are peopled by refugees towing carts and road gangs looking for fuel and food. There has been cannibalism. Cannibalism is the great fear. Mostly I worry about food. Always food. Food and our shoes. Sometimes I tell the boy old stories of courage and justice – difficult as they are to remember.

As we see father(Viggo Mortensen, Hitch in “Appaloosa”, Aragorn in “Lord of the Rings”) and son make their way to “the coast”, we learn a little of their back story. Hoping that the further south they go, the warmer it will be. The coast/South is the only hope that they have. Everything around them is dark, dreary, dead, or deadly. Father and son encounter many dangerous people and situations that were truly depressing. But what got me through their ordeal was their relationship. Seeing the dad find a Coke can in an old soda machine, giving it to his son who has never had it, who in turn finds it so delicious that he can’t help but force his dad to have some too. Their world is so harsh and pitch black that any “light” that they find, they share with each other. It may appear bleak, and it may seem depressing(it isn’t easy to watch), it does have purpose and a heart and ends meaningfully.

For instance, as the father tells the son about the bad guys(those who have given in to cannibalism and murder to survive), he reminds him of their purpose:

The Man: You have to keep carrying the fire.
The Boy: What fire?
The Man: The fire inside you.

I won’t say much else about the film, other than it’s not a depressing movie and it’s not as depressing as it is for no purpose at all. Like all well-told stories, the writer wanted to get at something. Something inside of him was burning and he needed to share it. In this case, the love of a father in a world with no restraint of evil, of hopelessness and utter depravity.

Check out the trailer below.

During a recent illness, I RedBox’ed a bunch of movies to pass the time. “The Wolfman”, “My Life In Ruins”, “When In Rome”, and “The Book of Eli”. They all kept my interest(well… Wolfman came the closest to losing it), but only “Eli” kept it by means other than humor and fuzzy wuzzy moments. Keep reading about “Eli”!

“The Book of Eli” is all about one thing. Two different points of view by two men who value just one book. The world is reduced to ash and sunlight. Eli, played by Denzel Washington, is a man who tries to remain faithful to the teachings of the book in his possession. He protects it like it was the most precious thing in the world, he reads from it daily, and on his God-given mission, embarks each day toward a place he doesn’t yet see, to deliver the book to people who will care for it and copy it. Carnegie(played by Gary Oldman, “The Professional”, Gordon in “The Dark Knight”) is a man who runs a town of survivors and sees the book as the means by which he can rule the people of his town and then nearby areas. Very quickly, we learn that the book is the only remaining copy of the Bible. As Carnegie confronts Eli again and again, it is clear that Eli is protected by God, though he does suffer. Eli remains fixed on his path, and on his faith in God’s plan.

Despite sounding preachy, this movie isn’t really. It actually kind of lacks focus. I’m still not sure what the message is. But I do know that what I liked about it was the point of view that it offers toward God and The Bible. Typically, Hollywood, if anything, speaks poorly of The Bible and God, “Eli” portrays a different message. There are two kinds of people who “care” about the Bible… those who want to wield power over others with it, and those who seek to live their lives by its message and in service of the God it speaks about. In the real world, the ones with “power” tend to dominate any news concerning Christianity (Senators, mega-church preachers caught in scandal, churches whose goal is to oppress homosexuals and those who get abortions, etc.), but there is another sphere that does not get media attention. The quiet, the humble, the servants, the sacrificial, those who love others selflessly.

What I don’t like about the movie is that Eli is a bit violent and merciless. But I think he changes during the movie, and realizes that he was not living according to what the Book said. What “Eli” does best is show both sides of those who profess to believe the Bible, not just one. It also shows that the message of the Bible is that God does care and is not silent. He continues to speak and leaves His Word as a testimony about His very nature. So if you’re looking for a movie with a message, and aren’t too concerned about a perfect story, this is worth a viewing.

Check out the trailer below!