The International. I remember the giggle inducing ads for that one; “Look honey, the ‘Evil Bank’ movie is coming out!”. Having no idea that Tom Tykwer was the director. Now, I’m not the dude’s biggest fan, but he’s done a couple of interesting films; What was the draw here? There’s some nice framing and production design, but ultimately his hand really isn’t felt. This may as well have been done by Roger Donaldson. It’s a slicked-up, modern version of a Pakula thriller, with only one really exciting sequence to speak of. Generally slow paced, artistic director + conspiracy spy thriller = this boring mess? Something to keep in mind, what with Sam Mendes on the new Bond film.
Race To Witch Mountain. Ass.
Sherlock Holmes. Now, this one I enjoyed quite a bit. I liked Downey Jr as Dark Knight Detective, with his own personal Catwoman. Photography by Philippe Rousselot was excellent (I thought it was Darius Khondji the whole time), and I loved the Hans Zimmer score. Kind of surprised that this is only getting so-so reviews; It’s not revolutionizing anything, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun. P.S. Wasn’t Bradolf Pittler supposed to be in this? Did that not end up happening? That wasn’t him in the shadows, was it?
Bruno had some laughs, although I didn’t like it as much as Borat. While it’s probably more important to be mocking people’s homophobia in this day and age, I kind of missed the focus that the character used to have on mocking the fashion world. But, most likely the secret was out by the time Borat got big, so he didn’t really have the access to do that. And I prefer Da Ali G Show to both of those films. I feel like the movies were a delightful celebration of excess, but the comedy on the show was more pointed and much sharper.
The Limits Of Control. God damn, this was boring. And I’m a fairly big Jarmusch fan! This was Jim’s Inland Empire; A plotless, two hour long, self-indulgent wankfest. Here’s how best to describe it: Take the Matrix trilogy. Put it all in one film. Now take all of the action out. What do you have left? A bunch of scenes with Anthony Zerbe and Keanu Reeves talking Philosophy 101. Hey, Jim’s still my boy, and I’m glad someone out there is still at least attempting to set the bar high. So if he needs to do this to get an “itch” out of his system, I’m all for it.