Movie Review: The Invention of Lying (2009)

Ricky Gervais is one of my favorite comedians.  The British version of The Office was extremely funny, Extras is perhaps the funniest British show I’ve ever watched, and Ghost Town was kept afloat by Gervais’ comic timing and dry wit.  Needless to say, I had high expectations for the new comedy starring and written by Gervais, The Invention of Lying.

The Invention of Lying tells a somewhat simple but ingenious story:  In a world where no one lies, Mark Bellison (Gervais) discovers the ability to lie.  Bellison, considered a loser by almost everyone, including himself, finds that the ability to speak “that which is not” can come in handy, both professionally and personally.

Unfortunately, The Invention of Lying takes a premise with nearly endless possibilities and manages to partially squander its potential.  That isn’t to say it isn’t good.  It is good, but it’s just not great.  Hilarious situations are introduced and then either go nowhere or disappear from the screen.  Hilarious cameos from Philip Seymour Hoffman and Edward Norton make one wish that their scenes had been twice as long as they were.

On the flip side, Tina Fey and Jonah Hill make brief appearances that do almost nothing to the plot, and their scenes either needed to be extended or cut from the film completely.  As is, they barely work.  Rob Lowe and Jennifer Garner both perform adequately in supporting roles, although neither of them takes full advantage of the material provided.

Ricky Gervais, however, is at his comic best.  He has always had great timing and a natural inclination of how to sell jokes, and in The Invention of Lying he has to do his fair share of selling jokes.  Unlike in Ghost Town, which was written by someone else, Gervais appears more comfortable when performing in something that he had a hand in writing.

The crux of whether you like or dislike this movie, however, is probably going to come down to one particular plotline.  Ricky Gervais has not been shy about approaching contentious subjects in the past.  In The Invention of Lying, this subject happens to be religion, which in America is a subject possibly more contentious than any other.  Although I don’t want to give away any of the jokes, I will say that The Invention of Lying falls of the side of the coin that says that religion is a man-made phenomenon.

I personally found the entire sequence to be the funniest part of the movie, but I can see how some people could be offended by the way The Invention of Lying tackles the ideas of both religion itself and religious faith.  The ad campaign for the movie completely ignored this aspect of the movie and its plot, and I have seen a few very negative reactions to The Invention of Lying solely resting on the religion sub-plot.

I personally wonder why the movie ends when it does.  It sets up Gervais’ sacrilegious argument, runs with it for a few minutes, and then the movie veers off and never goes any further than a couple of comments near the end of the movie that are pretty tame compared to what happens in the middle.  The extent to which it’s in The Invention of Lying is enough to offend those who will be offended by material of this ilk, and thus it seems somewhat odd that Gervais didn’t go any further with the material than he did.

The Invention of Lying is funny and, at times, flirts with greatness, but never is able to put the whole package together.  Maybe Ricky Gervais wasn’t quite sure how to make a movie for American audiences.  Maybe Gervais has softened his comedy to achieve a larger audience (although this seems unlikely given the religion aspect of the movie).  It is a small step up from Ghost Town, but not much of one.

Rating:  7/10

Movie Review: The Informant! (2009)

(As a note, I will not be using the "!" at the end of the film's title within the review. Too much grammatical hullabaloo for me, thank you very much).

Look at the poster for The Informant. Look at Matt Damon's mustache, the childlike bewilderment in his eyes, the painfully bright orange background, the giant letters spelling out the film's title. Although it tells you nothing directly about the movie, it's a great distillation of everything you'll find in The Informant minus any possible story/plot elements.

Although a movie about corporate corruption, The Informant takes a very unorthodox approach to telling the story. Although set in the early 1990's, director Steven Soderbergh has decided to wash everything in a 1970's orange glow and to tell us the time and place with giant 1970's lettering. Matt Damon, taking on the role of whistleblower/eccentric Mark Whitacre, sprinkles narration throughout, which may or may not have anything to do with what's actually going on in the movie at the time.

Sound confusing? For the first fifteen or twenty minutes, it's nearly impossible to really tell what's going on. Things happen, Whitacre gives random narration about corn, Japan and ideas for television shows. After deciding to tell an FBI agent (played, no less, by Scott Bakula) about his employer's corrupt price-fixing schemes, however, the movie picks up and doesn't let go until near the end.

In essence, the casting is what makes The Informant a success. Damon does an exquisite job as Whitacre, perfectly hitting that chord of seems-weird-but-can't-be-that-crazy-can-he that is necessary for the role. Bakula does a great job as the idealistic FBI agent who trusts Whitacre, even when it seems highly possible that Whitacre is going further and further off the deep end. Joel McHale, snarky commentator from "The Soup," plays Bakula's partner, and does a great job of making normal scenes absolutely hilarious (and shows off how he can stare at something for ten or fifteen seconds and not blink. Trust me, in the context of the movie, it might just be the funniest scene in the entire film).

Unfortunately, the story, which is based on true events, often seems rushed, as if a lot of expository information was left on the cutting room floor so that the movie could clock in at 108 minutes and not have to be cut into two films (Soderbergh's previous effort, Che). It doesn't derail the movie, but keeps it firmly in the realm of "very good" instead of "great."

Rating: 8/10

Music Review: Kid Cudi - The Man on the Moon (2009)

(I'm going to try going with shorter reviews for music than for movies. Let me know what you think).

Kid Cudi's debut album is a tough album to judge. On first listen, it paled in comparison to Cudi's mixtape work. The beats seemed sparse and unengaging, and Cudi's rapping seemed stale and, at times, bored. However, after listening through the album a couple of times, I realize it's actually a work of genius. An uneven, inexperienced work, but nonetheless has moments of greatness that point towards Cudi becoming something of a hero in both the worlds of hip-hop and of electronica and indie rock. Cudi's at his best when he's tackling issues close to his heart, like feeling out of touch with the world and being somewhat of a lost soul ("Soundtrack to My Life," "Day 'N' Night") and not when he's trying to weave sexual innuendo that's all too common in mainstream hip-hop ("Make Her Say"). His collaborations with indie rockers Ratatat and MGMT also come across as inventive and fresh, making me hope that, in the future, Kid Cudi decides to do more collaborations with indie rockers and lesser-known artists than with rap superstars (Kanye sounds surprisingly flat on "Maker Her Say").

Rating: 8/10
Standout Tracks: Day 'N' Night, Soundtrack to My Life, Alive (Nightmare)
Weak Links: Make Her Say, My World

Movie Review: Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Quentin Tarantino movies are often an enigma, a collection of hyper-violent images and self-indulgent homages to movies that most of the viewing public have never even heard of, much less seen. They are also, in the opinion of this reviewer, some of the greatest movies of the past twenty years.

Inglourious Basterds is neither as good as Pulp Fiction nor as overbloated as the Kill Bill duology (which was still a damn good set of movies). The most surprising thing about it is, outside of three or four scenes, it is much less about gratuitous violence and more about how people act and feel, playing out more like a European art film than an American action movie.

The best performance of the movie is easily Christoph Waltz's, and without his tour de force, Inglourious Basterds would most likely be the weakest film in the Tarantino canon. Waltz moves easily among English, French, German, and even a little Italian, and does so in a way that it seems effortless (and indeed it may be), and he infuses all of his scenes with a sense of black humor that slides in easily with Tarantino's writing.

In fact, Waltz's performance is so nuanced and well done that it's difficult to judge the other acting performances, as they all pale in comparison. Melanie Laurent does a good job as Shosanna, and she shows why she's one of the up-and-comers in the French movie scene. Brad Pitt does a serviceable as Southern redneck Aldo Raine, but it's not going to win him any awards.

The main complaints that can be leveled against Inglourious Basterds is that it A) is a little too long, with some scenes dragging on for a good 15 or 20 minutes, making the total length of the movie stand at over two-and-a-half hours and B) has a very poor marketing scheme, with many of the trailers focusing on the Brad Pitt storyline, which is NOT the main story arc, and doesn't prepare viewers for the long periods of quiet talking and tension building that makes up the bulk of the movie's time on the screen. This doesn't really effect how good the movie is, but has probably led to some of the more negative reviews of the film, as most people were expecting Pulp Fiction in a War Zone, which this movie most definitely is not.

We haven't reached Oscar-bait season yet, but as it stands, Inglourious Basterds is the best movie of 2009 so far (narrowly edging out Up), and stands a good chance of being one of the ten best movies at year's end.

Rating: 9/10

Sorry for the delay

Well, it's been a while since I've submitted any new reviews, mainly due to personal laziness/not having the time after moving to Syracuse. I'm going to try and submit reviews of a few films I've seen recently in the next few days, with the new philosophy of just focusing on a movie's pros and cons, and not including any plot rehashing that most reviews have (and that I've tried to include sometimes), mainly because these details are readily available on a lot of websites/TV trailers, and thus you probably don't need my rendition (unless, of course, it's something I either like/dislike about said movie.

Again, sorry for the wait, hope you all enjoy the new reviews!

Movie Review: Two Lovers (2008)

Since being nominated for an Oscar for Walk the Line, Joaquin Phoenix has done a great job of baffling the public with increasingly odd behavior. His movie choices since his nomination have all been mediocre fare at best, and his attempt to become a bearded rapper have brought on speculation that he's gone certifiably insane. It's a shame that his (possibly) last movie role is Two Lovers, a bland indie drama that doesn't even come close to living up to the hype that it has garnered.

Phoenix plays Leonard Kraditor, a man who has just moved back in with his parents after becoming suicidal when his fiancee leaves him. He could be anywhere from his late twenties to his mid-thirties, but acts like he's fifteen. He's impulse, he mumbles almost all of his dialogue, and he has no real concern for the overarching effects of the decisions he makes.

Shortly after moving in, he meets both Sandra (Vanessa Shaw), the daughter of a family friend who likes Leonard from the first time she sees him, and Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow), the new neighbor who's erratic behavior makes her character almost completely unlikeable...except, of course, to Leonard.

The story unfolds uncommonly slowly, and the characters are surprisingly one-dimensional for a drama of this magnitude. The characters' motivations are almost all completely selfish, and it's easy to wonder why Leonard continues to fall in love with Michelle when all she does is use him and play with his emotions. This is made even worse by almost insufferable performances from two of the leads (Phoenix and Paltrow).

Phoenix's performance is grating because of his constant mumbling. Every time he spoke, I wished there were subtitles on the screen to let me know what he said. Luckily, the dialogue is fairly sparse, and the long moments where very little happens allowed me to piece together what he said, and in the end I had a fairly good idea what was going on through most of the movie.

Paltrow's performance, however, was inexcusably bad. She seems bored, and her character comes off more annoying and manipulative than confused. Her voice rarely wavers from a dreary monotone, and she brings absolutely no life to the character. Leonard Kraditor might as well have fallen in love with a cardboard cutout. At least then it wouldn't have had any dialogue, and would've been just as believable as the situation we are actually presented with.

Two Lovers isn't all bad. Vanessa Shaw manages to deliver a good performance in her (very) limited screen time, and the story itself has some merits and good ideas, they're just drowned out by the utter stupidity of the two main characters, shattering the ability to actually connect with the characters directly, and unfortunately that is what lingers more than the few good moments that are found sprinkled throughout.

Rating: 5/10

Movie Review: Death Sentence (2007)

When a movie boasts Kevin Bacon in a leading role as a middle-aged office worker-turned-killer and John Goodman going off the rails in a supporting role as a psychotic gun dealer, there are two possible outcomes. The first is that it will be an off-the-wall, crazy adrenaline rush that surprises no-one by having plot roles but surprises everyone by actually holding the viewers' interest. The second outcome is that it will turn into a godawful mess that is barely watchable. Unfortunately, Death Sentence very firmly falls into the latter category.

The blame mainly falls in the lap of director James Wan (Saw), who muddles every action sequence by washing things in dull colors and poor lighting and using enough random cuts to almost rival music videos in their franticness. There was not one major action scene that did not at least once confuse the hell out of me, and thus the rest of the sequence was spent wondering who was where and trying to keep up with what the hell was actually going on.

This is made even more difficult by the utter stupidity of the plot. We're supposed to believe there are cartoonish street gangs who just go around and kill people for sport (and never with any real motivation). We're supposed to believe a somewhat wimpy office worker can not only be transformed by the brutal murder of his son, but actually be a very effective killer even though he looks like someone who has never even held a gun before in his life. We're supposed to believe that the police are so inept that this newly transformed killing machine can, without much effort, evade the police's grasp until his mission for revenge is complete.

Both Kevin Bacon, as the aforementioned office lackey-turned-Dirty Harry, and John Goodman, as a wildly eccentric gun runner who seems more likely to shoot someone rather than sell them guns, put more into their roles than was necessary. Both are, in the midst of continually building plot holes, somewhat believeable, which is a testament to the acting chops of both actors. The supporting cast, however, falls in line with the material, offering portrayals that are either excrutiatingly over the top or so bland that they might as well have not even been in the movie.

If you want an action movie with frantic editing and a disposable plot with John Goodman, Speed Racer was a hundred times more entertaining than Death Sentence. If you want a thriller with Kevin Bacon, he's done quite a few over the years, most of which are probably more thrilling and engaging than Death Sentence. If you want a creepy movie directed by James Wan (not exactly sure why you would), just check out Saw. Whatever you do, don't watch Death Sentence unless you're either a masochist or are easily entertained by horrible movies.

Rating: 2/10