Review: Robin Hood

     Have you ever felt like you have done something before? Been somewhere before? Seen something before? That feeling of deja vu, is the feeling I had watching Robin Hood, a movie that does not contain a single original frame in its film reel (although I think it was shot digitally, but you get the drift). The cliches ticked off so fast, that I lost track of how many there are. It felt like a blitzkrieg of action/period piece stereo-types, and it left me totally dazed and confused, but nevertheless, I will give it my best effort to document as much of the blatant unoriginal parts of "Robin Hood" I can remember.

     First, let's start with the story. Instead of going the traditional route of telling the warmed over story of Robin Hood taking from the rich and giving to the poor (an actual misnomer since in reality, Robin Hood took money from the government and gave it back to the people), Ridley Scott and crew decided to tell a prequel of sorts. The film's story gives us a glimpse into the early years of Robin Hood, and how he changed from being a soldier in the crusades to a man of people fighting for justice and the anglo-saxon way. The decision to change the story is the only non-traditional thing about "Robin Hood", but unfortunately it was a poor decision. I understand the desire to tackle the story of Robin Hood from a new perspective, as the traditional story of Robin Hood has been done ad nausiem by Hollywood over the years, but to include a preposterous back story about Robin Hood's father drafting the Magna Carta and put to death because of it, only to have Robin Hood rediscover it and introduce to Prince John, is just stupid.

If I Picked the Winners: Best Adapted Screenplay 2008

    To get the idea behind this column, click here

  
     Before I get started on dissecting 2008's Best Adapted Screenplay race, I need to make an announcement about this column. I will be temporarily suspending this column either after this edition, or maybe next week's edition. Over the last week, I have been working hard on composing my own "100 Greatest Movies" list, and once it is done, I plan on releasing ten movies at a time each week, starting with 100-91. Since this will require a bit of time, I didn't want to attempt to do ten write-ups of some of my favorite movies and continue to rank different categories in Oscar history, which is why "If I Picked the Winners" will be going on a ten week hiatus while I count down my favorite movies.

     Now to the real point of this article: 2008. 2008 was an extremely disappointing year for me in terms of the Oscars (and the Super Bowl for that matter, but that discussion is better left for another blog).  The main reason for my dissatisfaction with the Academy Awards in 2008 was their sinful omission of "The Dark Knight", one the decade's greatest films, in the writing, directing, and picture categories. How on earth they managed to nominate typical "Oscar bait" films like "The Reader", "Frost/Nixon", "Milk", "Slumdog Millionaire", and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", but failed to nominate one of the most memorable movies in recent history is beyond me. In fact, I was so angered a movie that was so well received by the public and critics alike failed to live up to the Academy's "high-class" sensibilities, I considered boycotting the Oscars, but at the last minute I couldn't help but watch. The good part of this terrible snub was it lead the Academy to make some changes. Immediately, by the next year they expanded their Best Picture nominees to ten. The Academy felt this would make room for more movies from a variety of genres, such as action/drama films, which, with the very small sampling data of one year, has seemed to work so far.

     There were more problems though with the 2008 nominees than just "The Dark Knight". A number of other good films were mostly ignored by the Academy in favor of the stereo-typical films mentioned above. For instance,"Tropic Thunder" was one of the best comedies of the last decade in my book, but since the Academy has a perpetual bias against movies that make you laugh, it was not too surprising it did not get a Best Picture nomination. What was more surprising, was that three really good dramatic films, "Gran Torino", "Doubt", and "The Wrestler", failed to secure a Best Picture nomination, but garbage like "Frost/Nixon" did. What can I say, that's the Academy for you. Oh well, on to ranking the nominees.

Review: Grown-Ups

     Adam Sandler seems like a nice guy. He appears to care deeply about family and is probably one of the better fathers in Hollywood. Whenever I have seen him interviewed on a television show, he is extremely reserved, but I bet once you get to know him, he probably makes a great buddy too. The problem is in comedy, nice people rarely make good movies. Most comedians are angry, bitter people, but this is the reason they notice things about people that most us only contemplate somewhere in the far reaches of our minds. Comedians obsess over the imperfections of human beings, and when they point them out, even if we don't focus in on people's flaws as much as comedians do, we recognize these flaws when we hear them and are able to appreciate the humor. In Adam Sandler's newest comedy "Grown-Ups", you will see almost nothing remotely close to the humor I just described (or even anything close to real human beings for that matter).

If I Picked the Winners: Best Supporting Actor 1953

     Check out the idea behind this column here

     For the first two editions of my fantasy column, "If I Picked the Winners", I picked the relatively recent category of Best Actor 1997 and the extremely recent category of Best Picture 2009. For my third edition of this column, I thought I would go old-school and pick the oldest Best Supporting Actor category in which I had seen all the nominees, which ended up being 1953. I'm not sure if anyone old enough to remember 1953 reads this blog, but if you're out there, get ready for a trip down memory lane, and for everyone else, this is a good starting point for an education on the history of cinema.

     The year 1953 was all about "From Here to Eternity". The film was based on the popular book of the same name, written by James Jones, but was heavily edited and changed to get the cooperation of the U.S. Military. The changes did not seem to bother the movie-going public or the Academy though, as the film did gang-busters across the nation and the Academy nominated it for an impressive thirteen awards and rewarded it with eight Oscars, which tied "Gone With the Wind" for a record at the time. More pertinent to this column though, it resurrected the career of Frank Sinatra, who was desperate for the part, as his career was in the proverbial crapper at the time. Luckily for Sinatra, he did get the part and the film turned out to be the defibrillator he needed to jump-start his flat-lining career, as he won 1953's Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Did he deserve it though?

Review: The Town

  
     In the world of cinema, the 2000's were to the city of Boston what the 1970's were to New York City. In the 70's, you had a slew of famous films by great directors set in in the Big Apple. "The French Connection" by William Friedkin, "Taxi Driver" by Martin Scorsese, and "Manhattan" by Woody Allen are just a few examples of films where the city itself is practically a character of the movie. In this last decade though (a decade in which the New England Patriots dominated the NFL and the Boston Red Sox finally broke the "Curse of the Bambino"), Boston has taken the reigns from New York City as the auteur's favorite playground. From films such as Clint Eastwood's "Mystic River" and Scorsese's "The Departed" (as well as his last film "Shutter Island" that was set in a mental institution outside of Boston), to films like "Edge of Darkness" and "Gone Baby Gone" (another Ben Affleck film), this has been a golden age of cinema for Boston. It arguably all started though in the last decade, when two unknown actors wrote a screenplay called "Good Will Hunting". The film was a critical and box-office success and made its two writers and stars, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, household names and industry leaders. Thirteen years later, even with all his fame and fortune, it is clear that at least one of the Boston Duo has not forgotten his hometown as his second directorial effort "The Town" uses Boston as its backdrop and continues the Hollywood's recent obsession with all things Boston.

News: 127 Hours Proving Too Much For Some to Handle

     "127 Hours", the newest film from Danny Boyle ("Slumdog Millionaire"), is the movie version of the real incident in 2003 where Aron Rolston got his arm stuck in a rock while hiking in the mountains. The 127 hours that the film is titled after refer to the amount of time Mr. Rolston was stuck there, until he finally freed himself by amputating his arm with a pocket knife. Well, apparently for some, watching a man amputate his own right-arm was a little too gruesome, because on three different occasions where the film has been shown, someone in the audience has fainted. I haven't seen the film myself, so I can't give you my personal warning on how graphic it is, but for the very squeamish, this may be one Oscar hopeful they will have to skip (or at least close their eyes on certain parts).

Retro-Review: The Shining

 
     As I confessed in my in article on five great movies for Halloween, I've been somewhat of a coward in terms of watching horror films. This means there are a lot of very famous films that, simply because they are in the horror genre, I have yet to see. Recently though, I have managed to muster up enough courage to view some of these fright flicks, and it being the Halloween season, it seemed like a perfect time to watch the more famous films of the genre. I still didn't feel like I had the nerve to watch probably the most famous horror film, "The Exorcist", but instead opted for two films I felt wouldn't give me permanent nightmares: the original "Halloween" and "The Shining". Against what would seem like the logical order, I watched "Halloween" the night before the actual holiday (read my review here) and "The Shining" on Halloween night, but even though there would be nothing more appropriately on the nose then to watch "Halloween" on Halloween, it turns out the scarier film was the one without the holiday for its title.