PLACES AND NUMBERS

Yesterday I caught a couple movies I’ve been meaning to see for awhile.  First up was Superbad alum Emma Stone in her first starring vehicle Easy A.  The film could have been a cloying, unwatchable high school girl coming-of-age piece of fluff in the hands of a lesser actress.  But Emma Stone has charisma to spare and carries the film with gusto.  I think Stone is going to ascend to greater heights than the date-night rom-com plateaus of Katherine Heigl and Kate Hudson.  This girl who is going to be a big star.  After Easy A I snuck into Red, the CIA-retiree action flick starring Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, and John Malkovich.  Red was a fun mix of action, thrills, and dry humor.  The actors seem like they’re having a good time with the over-the-top material and I enjoyed it despite some pretty implausible action sequences.  Karl Urban (Eomer from LOTR and Bones McCoy from the Star Trek reboot) has a standout performance as a CIA agent with orders to take Bruce Willis out.  I like this guy, I hope he gets some better starring roles than Pathfinder.  Ugh.

Another bomb I recommend is Let Me In, Matt Reeves of Cloverfield fame’s remake of the beloved vampire flick Let The Right One In.  Best vampire movie ever?  I don’t know.  But it is a fantastic film.  Let Me In is a haunting story that deals more in the grey areas of love and devotion than it does in blood sucking.  Though there is a fair share of blood sucking.  Chloe Moretz is incredible as Abby, a mysterious girl who moves into the neighborhood and befriends lonely, bullied Owen (a wonderful Kodi Smit-McPhee, following up his excellent turn in last year’s The Road).  Moretz deserves an Oscar nomination, this girl is going to be a big star if she does some mainstream films at some point.  She has been excellent in Kick Ass and Let Me In but both movies have disappointed at the box office and I hope she gets the opportunity to show off what she can do to some bigger audiences.

I went to a pre-screening of It’s Kind of a Funny Story.  I really liked it.  It’s about this kid who checks himself into a mental ward for a week because he’s having suicidal thoughts.  It’s not as grim as it sounds and it’s kind of refreshing because it could have been annoying oscar bait and it’s not.  It’s kind of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest minus anything that might bum you out.  Zach Galifianakis is hilarious but he shows some different chops than you may have seen in the past, turning in an excellent performance as another patient in the mental ward.  Totally bombed at the box office but I highly recommend it.

I went to a pre-screening of The Social Network, which I really enjoyed.  I don’t even do the Facebook but the movie isn’t really about Facebook, it’s about our inability to make real human connections.  And it was spot on.  The acting was great, the writing was great, the score was great, this is probably best movie of the year at the Oscars if you ask me.  Maybe some movie that nobody goes to see might pull an upset but this was a very good movie.  I hope Jesse Eisenberg gets an Oscar nod but I think most of the attention will go to Andrew Garfield, who soon will soon star in the Spiderman reboot opposite Emma Stone, and he is fantastic.  I think this guy is gonna make some great movies.  I really want to catch Never Let Me Go while it’s still in theaters.

I’ve seen so many awesome movies recently.  Let’s talk  about it.  The American.  Loved it.  George Clooney is stoic but understated as a hitman hiding out in Italy hoping to escape his past before it catches up to him.  It’s like an existentialist Bourne movie.  Might have been one of my top movies of the year if it wasn’t for some truly horrific and unnecessary CGI in a key scene.  It irks me to no end that they did what they did and yanked me out of such a moving cinematic experience.  Even so I loved the movie, but most of the time I just wish they had never invented CGI so directors would rely on practical effects.