Friday Night Lights (TV)

Where to start with this one? How about this: This show, criminally unappreciated by nearly everyone (me included!) when it aired, is in the running for greatest TV show ever. EVER. Yes, you read that right. I dismissed it as a high testosterone, over-the-top, take on the book of the same name. Apparently, lots of others did, too. Hooooo boy, was I wrong.

Friday Night Lights instead is a nuanced, deep look at life in small town Dillon, TX where, like just about everywhere in Texas, high school football is king. Kyle Chandler is the charismatic head coach, Eric Taylor. Connie Britton is his strong wife, Tami. Their relationship as presented here is one of the best in the history of TV. They are an incredibly REAL couple. Do they always get along? Of course not. But their love for each other, their devotion to each other and their family, never wavers. There's none of the usual TV cliches - the idiot dad who can do no right, the sassy mom always insulting dad, the fighting over nothing, no cheating on each other, no threats of divorce, no drunkenness or dysfunctional behavior, none of that stuff. No, their relationship is what you would expect from stable, mature, well-grounded people who get along, who love each other, and who are real.

Then you've got a whole cast of football players, led by Taylor Kitsch as Tim Riggins and Zach Gilford as Matt Saracen. Riggins is the prototypical star football player who gets all the girls and gets hammered on weekends (and weekdays). He's got a rough life, living with only his brother, and there's a deeper level to him than what is first seen. Saracen is the backup QB given a shot at stardom when the star gets injured. He isn't ready, he's terrified, he's in over his head and he's dealing with all kinds of stuff at home, too. Gilford here is incredible as Saracen, hitting all the right notes emotionally and really pulling you into his character and his struggles. Amazing stuff. It is absolutely a crime that Gilford didn't win any awards for his work here.

Lots of other great complementary characters, too. Brad Leland as Buddy Garrity is fantastic. Garrity is a tremendous character, one with tremendous growth throughout the course of the show. Not to good is Minka Kelly as Lyla Garrity, Buddy's daughter. Kelly is not a good actress and her character on the show does her no favors. She's strictly eye candy with all the (lack of) depth that that implies. Much better is Adrianne Palicki as Tyra, the tough-talking girlfriend of Riggins. Rounding out the mainstays is Jesse Plemons as Landry, in the role that got him onto Breaking Bad.

The cast overall is fantastic. The characters are INCREDIBLE. The writing is fabulous. The dialogue, the storylines*, the emotions, the environment, the whole thing just feels so authentic and true-to-life. All of these people are ones you can imagine actually meeting. And the first season of this show might just be the best season of television ever shown in the US. It really is THAT good.

Having said all that, this show is not perfect. Several of the actors look a little too old for their characters. There are timeline continuity and age-changing issues with the characters. But these are minor quibbles. Seriously. Folks, GO WATCH THIS SHOW IMMEDIATELY. YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT. 10/10, my highest possible recommendation!

* - OK, you probably will hear some stuff about season 2 being terrible. It's not. It definitely feels like something of an alternate universe compared to seasons 1,3,4 & 5. The producers demanded more drama and "action" and that's what you get in season 2. Realism and authenticity are sacrificed and the show definitely loses its way a bit. But STICK WITH IT. For one thing, season 2 isn't bad at all outside of one horribly stupid storyline. For another, the last 3 seasons are GREAT.

Saving Mr. Banks

Very good movie. Nothing great but a good story told well. Tom Hanks does a good job as Walt Disney. Emma Thompson is fine as PL Travers. For those not familiar, the movie is the story of the making of Mary Poppins. It was a difficult process thanks to Travers' huge attachment to the characters she created. Thankfully, her difficult personality led to all the scripting sessions being tape recorded so a full record of them remains. Anyway, good movie. 8/10.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

From all the ads and hype, I had no desire to see this movie. Got roped into seeing it with the family and, holy cow, this was so much better than expected. It had some nice funny moments and was generally just a nice entertaining movie. 7/10.

Killing Season

Robert De Niro is an army colonel who has retired to a cabin in the woods. John Travolta is a Serbian army veteran who apparently was shot by De Niro during the Serbian wars of the 90s. Travolta seeks him out, they go hunting together and then De Niro becomes the target. This movie is all kinds of ridiculous with stupid movie stuff all over the place. Both guys turn down multiple chances to kill the other instead insisting on talking to them. Travolta's accent and dialogue have to be heard to be believed. Ditto for his hair and beard. And the ending is just ridiculous. I honestly can't fathom how they got two stars this big to be in this crap. The only saving grace is the smoking hot bartender and her cleavage for 10 seconds at the end. 2/10.

Assault on Wall Street

Dominic Something-or-other (I believe that's his actual legal name) is an armored car guard whose wife has cancer at the start of the economic meltdown a couple years ago. His insurance reaches its limit, his investments go south and the fat cats all get rich off of him. His wife commits suicide and he decides it's time to get some PAYBACK. Sure helps that he's a former Army sniper with a very expensive sniper rifle in the closet. Anyway, he starts taking out the people that did him wrong. He ends up making one final assault on the guys who did him wrong. He's at least a semi-sympathetic character right up to the end when he just mows down a whole bunch of people that had no connection to him whatsoever. This is an Uwe Boll film and it's actually pretty good. It's well-made and the story is decent enough. That said, Boll did this "dude gets pissed off and mows down a whole bunch of innocents" better with Rampage, though that movie didn't have nearly the budget or production this one did. Still, this was decent enough. 6/10.

Diminished Capacity

Matthew Broderick plays a guy recovering from a serious concussion still having memory and other issues. Alan Alda is his elderly uncle and has dementia. Both have "diminished capacity", get it? Anyway, Broderick goes to visit the uncle and learns he has a valuable baseball card and they head to Chicago to sell it. Virginia Madsen is a childhood friend who also needs to go to Chicago so she's along for the ride with her kid. This movie never really reaches the level of even "average" but the first 75 minutes aren't terrible. It's gentle, a little funny and there's a certain sad sweetness to it. Then the last 15 minutes goes all to hell as Alan Alda gets ripped off and we end up having a ridiculous brawl and a whole bunch of f-bombs out of nowhere. Completely out-of-place and waaaay innappropriate for this movie. Turns a not good movie into a bad one. 3/10.

Ender's Game

I have not read any of the books, so had no frame of reference going in. Co-worker had suggested it, had heard it was good, I had a free ticket, so....

Anyway, this was fun. The special effects were great. The acting was generally solid, if a bit much on the "this is serious" gravitas thing. It's not mindless but definitely not a movie you're wanting to spend too much time analyzing for deeper meanings or whatever. I was entertained and that's all I ask. 7/10.

Here Comes the Boom

Kevin James plays a biology teacher who becomes an MMA fighter to raise money to save his school's music department. He trains with Bas Rutten. Obvious reality issues and money stupidity aside, this was really funny. The MMA stuff is handled pretty well, too. 90 minutes of light entertainment. 7/10.

Shut Up Little Man

In 1987, two friends moved from Wisconsin to San Francisco. They ended up in a cheap apartment next to a couple of alcoholics who had screaming, profane fights with each other. The fights had some humorous dialogue and the friends ended up recording them. They shared the tapes with friends and something of a cottage industry sprung up as a result. Comic books, magazine articles, a play, and some movie stuff all came out of it. This documentary tracks the whole history of that, seeks out the fighting neighbors and talks to everyone involved (that's still alive). Problem is, every single person involved is a scumbag. You've got the alcoholic jackasses. You've got the friends who, instead of calling the cops, record the fights - by taping a microphone to a ski pole and putting it outside the neighbors' window. Knowing that the fights sometimes turn violent they naturally....make calls designed to provoke more fights and conflict. Then, when it's all said and done, they set up a web site years later and sell the tapes and CDs to profit off of the misery of the neighbors. You've got the various artists, playwrights, and movie people who use the tapes as the basis for their own works, all without talking to the neighbors. Or the movie guys who simply get the neighbors drunk and have them sign releases in return for $10. The title of the documentary comes from words that one of the neighbors would yell at the other frequently. Admittedly, a lot of the fights ARE pretty funny but, in the end, it's hard to get past the exploitative nature of the whole thing and not be disgusted by absolutely everyone. 5/10.

21 Grams

Three lives intertwine as a result of a horrific car accident. You've got recovering drug addict Naomi Watts, doing the "pretty woman made to look average" thing, whose family is killed. You've got Benicio Del Toro, the driver who killed her family. And Sean Penn, who gets a new heart from it. The story is told as a mix of flashback and present. It's pretty obvious that this movie was aiming high, with a great cast and an attempt at a deep storyline. Doesn't really work though. Tries really hard to be GRITTY and DEEP and ARTSY with all the flashbacks and hey THERE'S SERIOUS ACTING GOING ON HERE and all that. It just doesn't work. Movie is (in)famous for a scene where Watts' nipples are very (VERY) prominently on display. That's a real highlight but ends being about the only one. 5/10.

Pink Ribbons, Inc.

Documentary on the "pink industry" that surrounds breast cancer. Starts with a premise that I can get behind - that "breast cancer awareness" has essentially become a business, co-opted for profit by various groups, but wanders a bit off-track along the way. Instead of focusing entirely on things like "Where is all the money going?" and "Why haven't we seen more results?" and other things like companies spending more money on advertising their breast cancer donations than the actual donations or companies that both have cancer-causing products and cancer medications, the doc gets a bit lost in discussions of other stuff. There's some good bits in there, like the history of the pink ribbon, but other stuff like people complaining about the use of the word "survivor" or "fighting the battle", while interesting, seem to be a bit off-focus. In the end, what could have been a really hard-hitting documentary instead ends just being interesting. Worth a watch but not great. 6/10.

The Numbers Station

John Cusack is a CIA assassin who gets reassigned after a particularly nasty mission. His new job is to guard Malin Akerman, who is a civilian cryptographer working at a numbers station broadcasting codes to agents. They get attacked, Cusack kills a bunch of people and Akerman saves the day. Good movie, good action, and the smoking hot Akerman. I'd watch her read the phone book, which is almost what she's doing here. 7/10.

One Fall

James is a felon returning home after 3 years. Seems he fell off a 200-foot cliff before and somehow survived and also developed supernatural healing powers. He starts healing people at the local hospital but only in return for cash. Quirky movie with unusual characters and a story that's told in a sweet, quiet way. Not at all the movie I was expecting and so much better than it could have been. 7/10.

An Officer and a Gentleman

The movie that made Richard Here and Debra Winger major stars. Gere is an officer candidate trying to become a naval pilot. Winger is the townie he falls in love with. Louis Gossett Jr is his drill sergeant in an iconic role. Good movie but not great. Gere's delivery of a few lines is laughably bad to the point that he sounds borderline retarded. 7/10.

Twelve

White Mike is about 20 and he buys drugs from 50 Cent and then sells them to rich white kids. Jessica is a hot girl who gets hooked on the designer drug "Twelve" and screws 50 Cent to get more. Sarah is the hottie everybody wants and who manipulates to get what she wants. This is all narrated by Kiefer Sutherland in a "this is all really cool and serious" tone. Movie tries really hard to be really deep and really cool. It fails on both but still manages to tell its story of bored rich kids and their empty lives. I liked it. 6/10.

Safe

Jason Statham action vehicle. Plot is convoluted but basically there's a mathematical genius Chinese girl that three rival groups (Chinese mob, Russian mob, dirty cops) are all trying to get ahold of. Statham rescues her. The end. Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of bodies falling in this one. Pretty good movie for what it tried to be. I enjoyed it. 6/10.

TWA Flight 800

For those who don't remember or don't know, Flight 800 was a plane that exploded off the coast of New York in 1996 while bound for Paris. The official line was that one of the gas tanks exploded. However, LOTS of witnesses claimed to have seen missiles fired at the plane. This movie delves into that aspect and concludes, pretty much beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it was missiles that brought the plane down. They've got some of the original investigators, they've got a lot of witnesses, they've got radar maps, and so on. This one is GREAT, one of the best documentaries you'll ever see. 10/10.

We Steal Secrets

Documentary on Wikileaks and Julian Assange. This one's pretty great, interviewing Wikileaks employees and lots of other people. Starts out as really positive but does a lot of trashing of Assange once the story gets to the rape allegations against him. Oddly enough, the movie seems to be supportive of his accusers but both women pretty much state that they claimed he raped them because he didn't use a condom or the condom broke. Anyway, this was really good. 8/10.

Captain Phillips

This was great. Great job by Tom Hanks (especially if you ignore his accent coming and going) and the four Somali pirate guys. Tom Hanks plays the title role, the captain of a merchant ship off the coast of Africa taken over by pirates. Based on a true story. Really, the only thing hurting the movie is that you know the outcome going in. Still, this was great. The very last scene is off-the-charts great. This movie was good enough that I had to downgrade other movies I'd given the same rating because this was a lot better. 9/10.

Side Effects

Rooney Mara is a depressed woman who murders her husband while under treatment of an experimental new drug. Pretty good movie but a little too twisty for its own good. Big name cast but not quite the home run you hope for. 6/10

Lucky

Dark comedy about an aspiring serial killer who kills a woman just after she's bought a lottery ticket - the winning lottery ticket. He claims the prize and the girl at work that previously ignored him now is interested. They marry, she discovers his crimes and, well, things go downhill from there. Some nice black humor, pretty funny. 7/10.

Knuckleball

Incredibly disappointing documentary on Tim Wakefield and RA Dickey, the two most-recent pitchers to use the knuckleball in the majors. What should be an interesting discussion with good footage ends up being just a disjointed mess. Jumps all over the place and is just not good. 3/10.

Up For Grabs

Documentary on Barry Bonds' 73rd home run ball and the legal fight that ensued regarding possession of the ball between two guys. Pretty good documentary complete with a host of pretty unlikable people. Neither guy claiming the ball ends up being very sympathetic. On the one hand you've got a guy who caught the ball but may have lied about being beaten up and certainly exaggerated himself and the story. Then you've got the guy who ended up with the ball but may have stolen it to do so but definitely BIT A KID in the process. Lots of good footage and interviews. Not sure I agree with the decision in their lawsuit but it's a fun ride getting there. 7/10.

Dear Zachary

This is an absolutely gut-wrenching documentary. It is basically a video "letter" from the filmmaker/narrator to the newborn son of his recently-murdered friend. The kid was born 5 months after his father's murder so he never got to meet him. Complicating things? The killer was the kid's mom. The director learns that there was a major part of his slain friend's life (photography) that he was unaware-of so he decides to drive from California to Newfoundland (where the guy's parents live), interviewing people along the way to learn as much as possible about this friend he'd known for 20+ years. What emerges is that this guy was a great guy. No, a GREAT guy. As in he had something like 7 friends that wanted him to be best man at their weddings. Intermixed with that journey are updates on the case against the mom. The murder took place in the US but she'd fled to Newfoundland with their son. We get updates on the maddeningly-slow extradition process. The guy's parents moved to Newfoundland to be near their grandson and to push for custody. They are saints of the highest order, acting normal around this psycho who killed their son, jumping through all of her hoops, whatever it takes to meet with their grandson. As a movie, all of this works really well. The story is engaging, heartbreaking, and well-told. This is a movie that packs an INCREDIBLE emotional punch and will leave you torn apart, exhausted, and angry. Really, really, really angry. I can't really go into too much more detail here - to do so would be to give away a big chunk of the movie and that wouldn't be fair. Anyway, this is a great movie and highly, highly recommended. Just be ready for it. 9/10.

The Hammer

The true story of Matt Hamill, first deaf NCAA wrestling champion and UFC fighter. I don't know Matt's story at all so no clue how accurate this is. It's a pretty sanitized version of ANYBODY'S life though. Production quality is on the low end for a Lifetime movie. Not bad or anything, it's well-done, just obviously not a high-budget production. The actors all do a good enough job though the lead actor is definitely too old to be playing Hamill. Anyway, this is a feel-good, "You can do anything!" movie and it succeeds in that goal. The only real negative is that you can't just have this on in the background which was my intention when picking the movie. A good 75% of the dialogue is sign language with captions so you have to actually watch and not just listen. That seems obvious when you think about it, which I didn't before picking the movie :) To call that a negative is misleading - it's more of a "Tabe was a dumbass for picking this movie at that particular time". Anyway, entertaining enough - 6/10.

The Italian Job

Love this movie. It's like 90% style and 10% substance, but I don't care. It's got Marky Mark, my favorite actor going. It's got Edward Norton, who I also like a lot. And it has scorching hot Charlize Theron at the absolute peak of her hotness through the entire movie. Throw in some fun car stuff, a couple cool heists, and you've got movie gold. 9/10.

Evocateur

Documentary on the life of Morton Downey Jr. This is GREAT. If you watched the show back in the 80s, this is a total must-see. Lots of great footage and stories. I had not realized his show was on the air less than two years. Go watch this on Netflix now! 9/10.

It's a Disaster

I've had a thing for Julia Stiles since Save the Last Dance. Can't really explain it. She ain't the hottest girl on the planet. She ain't the best actress on the planet. That movie is more of a guilty pleasure than any kind of great cinema and, still, I somehow have a thing for her. Anyway, someone recommended It's a Disaster to me so I decided to give it a shot. Basic idea is that several couples gather for a Sunday brunch and all is normal until the TV, phone, and internet all go out. And then the neighbor comes over and tells them there's been some kind of nerve gas attack downtown and basically the world is going to end. The couples hole up in the house and basically wait out their fate. This is a dark comedy with several very funny moments. Liked this one a lot. 7/10.

Irreversible

Holy cow, this was awful. That's 3-1/2 hours of my life I'll never get back. What do you mean, it's only 97 minutes long? It sure felt like 3-1/2 hours! This is a movie that's in love with itself, trying to be all artistic and stuff. This is a movie with the thinnest of plots - a rape and revenge - and uses the gimmick, a la Memento , of playing out in reverse chronological order. The gimmick is useless and serves no purpose. Many of the scenes are painfully overlong. The infamous rape scene is incredibly well done, brutal, violent, really realistic and nasty. The revenge scene is really violent but lost in a mess of "artistic" nonsense. You do get about ten minutes of incredibly gorgeous Monica Bellucci naked to end the movie but even that isn't enough to save this dog. 1/10 - one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

Fightville

Yet another in a long line of "behind the scenes" MMA documentaries. This one tracks guys in Louisiana, most specifically Dustin Poirier and promoter Gil Guillory. Documentary actually is very good and pretty much all of the guys coming out looking like pretty decent guys. I knew nothing about any of the people involved beforehand and know only what I learned watching the doc but ended up liking them all. Some good moments, like one of the gyms using guys to pound on fighters who don't show up for their training regularly, including one time where Poirier beats up on a friend. The friend takes his licks like a pro and understands he was simply being taught a lesson. Good stuff. Anyway, I recommend this one pretty highly - 8/10.

Witness

Remember when Kelly McGillis was scorching hot? When she was scorching hot even when wearing Amish clothing? Yeah, this is that movie. Kelly plays an Amish mother whose son, Samuel, witnesses a murder in a bus station bathroom. Harrison Ford plays the detective investigating. He quickly learns that the murder was perpetrated by dirty cops who then seek to murder him so he hides out on Kelly's family farm. Ford must adopt Amish clothes and ways to fit in and so he does. Romance sort of blooms and then we get the big finale. The movie is excellent with the relationship between Ford and McGillis portrayed in a quiet, understated way in which glances and words take on extra meaning. I do have some complaints, seeing McGillis topless not being one of them, mostly centered around the little boy. Early in the movie he's portrayed as borderline retarded or just stupid instead of just unfamiliar with "English" ways. When asked to describe the killer, he isn't traumatized yet is unable to find such hard words as "short" or "black" or "tall". The kid is bilingual, clearly supposed to be bright, and yet in that conversation he's treated as stupid because he's Amish. Anyway, really good movie and great way to spend 2 hours. 8/10.

Heckler

Disorganized mess that starts out as a treatise on people who heckle at comedy shows and morphs into bashing critics. In between that, Jamie Kennedy confronts critics or hecklers and asks them why they hate him. Kennedy is the maker of the movie. In the end, the whole thing just kind of meanders without really making a point. 2/10.

The Imposter

Documentary about a French guy who impersonated an American boy who had disappeared three years earlier - and even convinced the family. Not particularly great but all the principals participate but you are still left to marvel at how the family could possibly believe the guy. 5/10.