Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Movie Grades - 4Q 2007

I watched fewer movies than normal last quarter, but still saw some pretty good ones:

A
American Gangster - 2 hours 40 minutes, and not one second of it was boring.

A-
Michael Clayton - Awesome movie, but Clooney should get a lot of credit. Swap out him for some b-list actor, and this might have been entirely mediocre.

Into the Wild - This didn't grip me emotionally as much as I was hoping it might, but still a fantastic film. Emilie Hirsch deserves an Oscar.

Gone Baby Gone - This could have had more depth. I found myself more interested in the next cheap plot twist than I did the characters' dilemmas.

Flags of Our Fathers - Maybe the most honest war movie I've ever seen.

B+
Zodiac - A little dense and lengthy, but worth the viewing.

Hollywoodland - Didn't insist on resolving itself, which made it intriguing. Could have been shorter, though.

Breach - Kinda boring, but that can be partially forgiven by the fact that this is based on a true story.

B
Lars and the Real Girl - Ryan Gosling is clearly a great actor, but this was a little dull. It reminded me of Napoleon Dynamite, just without all the funny.

No Country for Old Men - I'm bothered by movies that leave you with tons of "what do you think happened?" type of questions. In a work of fiction, if the story doesn't tell you what happened, than nothing happened!

Bobby - The all-star cast was distracting but I think this movie accomplished what it (probably) set out to: paying tribute to one of our country's most hopeful politicians who was taken away much too soon and much too needlessly.

B-
Owning Mahowny - Not only was this set in the 80s, but it was filmed to appear as if it was made in the 80s as well (it was made in 2003). I thought that was a neat piece of moviemaking, but the film itself was pretty mediocre.

Bugsy - Long and often boring, but at least it was a gangster movie.

C-
Deja Vu - I'm okay with having to take a small leap of faith with regard to a movie's premise, but this was asking for an Olympic-caliber triple jump.

F
Saw IV - Movies, especially mainstream blockbusters, shouldn't require thirty minutes of reading IMDB message boards to figure out wtf happened.

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Top 10 Movies I Saw in 2007:

1. 3:10 To Yuma
2. In The Shadow of the Moon
3. Sunshine
4. American Gangster
5. Into the Wild
6. Once
7. Michael Clayton
8. The Prestige
9. Alpha Dog
10. Babel

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