Frozen

My 16-year old niece was in town and wanted to go to the sing-along version of Frozen at the local discount theater. So my wife & I took her, my first time seeing the movie.

I must say that I was disappointed. Not that the movie was bad or anything but that it felt...competent. Not particularly spectacular looking. Nothing all that memorable in the way of music (other than "Do you wanna build a snowman?"). Plot was pretty "meh". I mean, I was entertained, I just didn't think it was this awesome movie like I'd heard. Definitely not in my animated top 10, that's for sure*. Right at the Tabedoza line for this one: 7/10.

* - since you didn't ask:

1) Up
 
 
 
 
 
(Big Gap)
 
 
 
 
2) The Little Mermaid
3) How to Train Your Dragon
4) Toy Story 3
5) Finding Nemo
6) Shrek
7) Beauty and the Beast
8) Toy Story 1
9) Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
10) Meet the Robinsons

Caveat: I don't watch anime and, no, I haven't seen every Pixar or Disney movie. I'm also probably forgetting one or two that should be in the top 10.

The Beaver

Mel Gibson is Walter, a profoundly depressed CEO of his father's toy company who is barely able to speak. After his wife kicks him out, he comes across a beaver puppet in a dumpster and takes it with him for some reason. After a long night of drinking and failed suicide attempts, he awakens and begins using the beaver to communicate on his behalf. The beaver frees him to communicate like he previously could not and he is soon seemingly his old self - albeit with a puppet attached to his arm. Things don't just work out perfectly though but you'll need to see the rest of the movie for that. Anyway, other than it being a reaaaaaaallllly tough-to-accept premise (like a company would allow a dude with a puppet on his hand to have any kind of input as CEO) and having some other weirdness (Mel & Jodie Foster gettin' it on while he's wearing the puppet), there's a lot to like here. Some moving stuff and a nice subplot involving the teenage son. Anyway, this is isn't great but it was entertaining. I'll say 6/10, maybe 6.5. Definitely not up to the Tabedoza line of 7.

As for Jennifer Lawrence? She's really good in a small role as the love interest of the teen son.

Lone Survivor

I admit it, I'm a big-time fan of Mark Wahlberg. He's easily my favorite movie star at the moment. He plays Marcus Luttrell, one of a four-man Navy Seals team sent in for a mission against a camp in Afghanistan. While waiting to attack, they are discovered and make the mistake of letting the discoverers go. They warn the camp and the four Americans are soon under attack. What follows is an extremely tense, extended battle sequence. As the title implies, only one guy survives - that's not a spoiler - but how it happens is pretty darn remarkable. Based on a true story, this is a terrific movie. It kinda plays like an "Afghan version of Black Hawk Down" but with some twists. The cast is excellent, including a nice turn by Taylor Kitsch, one of my favorites from the Friday Night Lights TV show. Highly recommended - 9/10.

42

This was very good. It wasn't great but it was very good. It definitely has something of a TV-movie kind of feel to it and it's certainly not breaking any new ground, but it's good. My wife and nephew, who were not super familiar with Jackie's story, got a lot out of it. Me, already familiar with the story in a lot of detail, not so much. But it was definitely well-done. And Harrison Ford was very good as Branch Rickey. 7/10.

American Hustle

Can't say I loved it as much as others have but I liked it. Seems like all the pieces are there for greatness but never quite got there. Some great acting as others have mentioned. Bale is all kinds of awesome. And good God, Amy Adams. She is awesome and.. hoo boy... scorching hot would be an understatement. Wasn't as impressed with JLaw. OK but nothing special. On a sidenote - my wife complained about the constant barrage of f-bombs. While that stuff doesn't generally bother me - and didn't here - she has a point. A lot of movies - this one included - replace actual quality dialogue with f-bombs and it's annoying. Anyway, 7/10.

Dallas Buyers Club

In a word? Overrated. Matthew McConaughey plays a man infected with HIV/AIDS who puts together a group to import drugs from outside the country in order to treat themselves. Based on a true story. I'm impressed with McConaughey's dedication in losing all a ton of weight for his role but wasn't impressed with his actual acting. Not bad but not great. The movie itself was pretty "eh". Interesting story but not great. And long. Really, really, really, really long. My wife liked it more than I but even she said it felt really long. REALLY long. So, uh, yeah - 6/10.

Her

Joaquin Phoenix plays Theodore, a profoundly depressed man living in a near-future version of LA. He buys an operating system with true AI that takes on a female persona, voiced by Scarlett Johansson. They develop a relationship and he eventually falls in love with her. This is an incredible movie with Phoenix expertly portraying the sadness and loneliness of his character and the joys he experiences when the relationship blossoms. This is also a weird movie with some incredibly strange scenes. Theo's relationship is not seen as all that unusual and others have the same type with their own devices. Can't say enough about the performance from Phoenix - quite possibly the best acting I've ever seen. Just incredible. And the added bonus of Amy Adams, a top, top favorite of mine. This was far and away my favorite movie of 2013/14 and is easily in my top 10 all-time. 10/10.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

Made in 2006, this didn't get a US theater release until 2013 because of a distributor going bankrupt. Amber Heard stars as Mandy, a girl who got suddenly really hot over the summer. As a result, she's the center of attention among the in-crowd boys who all wish to be "with" her. At the end of the school year, she's invited for a weekend away at one guy's ranch. Everything's going as planned until the friends start dying. Anyway, this movie is awful. I slept through 20, maybe 30, minutes of it (it's only 90 minutes long) and it took me like 5 seconds to get caught up. The production values, the plot, the dialogue, the acting - all terrible. Oh wait, there's a twist ending! How original. Anyway, the only positive is you get to stare at the gorgeous Amber Heard for 90 minutes but that ain't enough to save this one. 2/10.

The Score

Saw this back on release in the theater and loved it. Still do. Remember when Edward Norton and Robert De Niro actually tried in their movies? Yeah, this was like the last time they did. De Niro is a high-end safecracking thief, Norton is a young up & comer who's got a line on a major score in the Montreal customs house. They partner up to steal a sceptre. Fun movie and one I like a lot. It's not deep, there's no underlying message, it's just entertaining with a super high-end cast (Marlon Brandon and Angela Bassett also appear). 8/10.

Last Stand

I had been wanting to see this since I first saw a trailer. Arnie is a sheriff of a small town through which a major drug lord is going to pass to try and escape to Mexico. Arnie and friends - including scorching hot Jaimie Alexander - put together an arsenal to stop him. Much carnage ensues. This is old school violent action with humor mixed in on top of a not-deep plot. And it's great. Lots of crazy action, lots of blood. 7/10.

Dan in Real Life

Holy cow do I love this movie. Steve Carell is Dan, a widowed advice columnist and father of three. He's at a family weekend when he meets an incredible woman, only to find out later - when she shows up at that family weekend - that she's his brother's girlfriend. This is a sweet, gentle movie that's very funny but in an understated way. Carell is fantastic and Dane Cook is good as the brother. Just a fantastic movie - 9/10.

Good People

Kate Hudson and James Franco are a struggling couple who discover a satchel full of cash in their basement when their tenant is murdered. Turns out he was into some not-so-savory stuff with the sort of friends that that brings along. They take the money and begin using it to help with their debts...and then the bad guys come looking for it. The movie then goes off the rails from merely boring and uninteresting to being actively bad. It ends up being really standard fare with so many thrill cliches - the bad guy who miraculously comes back to life and finds strength, the unexpected good guy saving the day and so on. Ugh. 3/10.

Out of the Clear Blue Sky

Cantor Fitzgerald is a bond trading company. In 2001, their US headquarters were at the top of the World Trade Center. On September 11, 658 of Cantor's 960 employees reported for work. All 658 died. This documentary is the story of the company, the aftermath, and the utter devastation suffered. It's a searing, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching movie. Tough to watch, yet utterly enthralling. You'll be right there with the CEO as he cries about the families and employees lost. You'll be right there with the families as they become angry over a payroll decision. You'll be livid at the callousness of Cantor's competitors. But mostly you'll be glued to the screen for this powerful story. This one was really, really good. 9/10.

Homefront

Jason Statham is a former DEA agent living in the middle of nowhere after an undercover bust gone bad. When his daughter beats up a bully at school, he ends up on the wrong side of some nasty characters. It's then up to him to defend his...homefront. Look, this ain't rocket science. You know what you're getting going in - Statham looking and acting tough, great fight sequences and a barely plausible story. It's the Jason Statham formula - and it works. Rounding out the cast are Winona Ryder and Kate Bosworth as meth addicts. Bosworth, who hasn't looked healthy since Blue Crush, looks positively awful here. I mean, I know she's supposed to but...wow. She looks genuinely anorexic, ill, and messed-up here. But she's really good in her role. Anyway, this is standard fare. Entertaining though! 6/10.

Informant

Brandon Darby is a/was a radical activist bent on the overthrow of the US government. Only he sees some things he doesn't like and ends up turning FBI informant. This documentary covers that flip flop, talking to Darby and lots of his former compatriots. It seeks to explain his motivations for turning while also exploring the feelings of betrayal many of his former friends are having. In the end, it does a little of both but never really makes anything clear. Darby isn't particularly likeable, his former friends aren't much better, and this just isn't very good. 4/10.

The King of Arcades

Richie Knucklez is a classic arcade game enthusiast. He collects machines and painstakingly restores them to glory. He decided to turn that into a business and opened an arcade. The arcade is really successful initially before falling on hard times. This documentary is the story of that rise and fall. Along the way, there's interviews with some key players in the industry - Eugene Jarvis, Nolan Bushnell, and others. If you enjoyed King of Kong, you'll like this. 7/10.

Rumor Has It

Jennifer Aniston is the granddaughter of the woman who supposedly inspired The Graduate. Kevin Costner is the guy who supposedly inspired the Dustin Hoffman character in it. Aniston seeks out the truth and ends up entangled with Costner, who is now a charming billionaire. What follows is pretty standard rom com stuff. There's some funny moments, the cast is pretty good (I'm a big Costner fan) and it's generally inoffensive entertainment. 5/10.

Unbroken

Louie Zamperini was just a guy. An Olympic runner, sure, but just a guy. A guy on a plane shot down during World War II. He and two others manage to survive the crash on a life raft. Louie and one other guy lasted over 6 weeks before finally being "rescued" by a Japanese war ship. From there, Louie is a POW subjected to an incredible amount of torture and abuse. And that's where the movie ends. What we have here is basically a WW2 version of The Passion of the Christ with the main character being tortured for 2+ hours. The movie as constructed is good but it doesn't tell the full story of Louie. We don't get his healing and redemption, or his positive later life, other than through a couple screens of text at the end. Maybe director Angelina Jolie didn't want to cover that part because Louie's faith plays such a huge part in his later life. I dunno. I just know that the full story isn't told. What is here is good, it's just incomplete. This one lands right at the Tabedoza Line™ - 7/10.

The Short Game

A Netflix-produced documentary, this covers about a dozen youth golfers as they seek out world championships. They're competing in the 7 & 8 year old categories. This is actually really well done and the kids come across a lot more likeable than you might expect, the parents a lot less so. You'll be right there with the kids, pulling for them, bummed out by their failures. This is a well-done documentary and quite engrossing. 8/10.

The Human Stain

Anthony Hopkins is a recently widowed, fired/retired professor. He's kind of lost and finds himself seeking out a writer to tell the story of his wife's "murder" at the hands of the school that fired him. Instead, he befriends the writer and begins to "live again". Then he meets Nicole Kidman, playing a divorcee with an abusive ex working 3 jobs to get by. They have an affair yet seem to never really be comfortable with each other. Mixed in are flashback scenes with a younger version of Hopkins' character acting out the scense that will lead him to hide his big secret. This is a movie that very clearly thinks highly of itself, with lots of "LOOK AT US DOING ALL THIS GREAT ACTING BY YELLING AT EACH OTHER"-type stuff going on. In the end, the story isn't interesting, the characters are boring, the secret is nothing, and it's all just a waste of time. 4/10.

A Christmas Story

My other contender for "best Christmas movie". Set in a nostalgic 1950s small town, Peter Billingsley is Ralphie, the put-upon star of the show. He's a dreamer and all he wants for Christmas is a Red Rider Rifle. Along the way, he'll run into an incredibly memorable cast of characters, including his father, a mall Santa, the local bully, and many others. The story is at once a farce and yet very authentic. It rings true for a lot of people my age (40s) and perfectly captures the joy, mystery and excitement of Christmas from a long-past time. I've seen this movie almost more than any other movie but rarely all the way through, thanks to seeing it on TV. This year, we didn't have cable, so went to a showing at a local theater. Did it hold up under those conditions? Heck yeah, it did. This is a terrific movie that tells a great, hilarious story with tons of great lines and memorable characters. The cast is terrific and it's well-acted. What more can you ask for? 8/10.

Elf

This movie is an annual tradition for my wife & I. I'm torn as to whether this or A Christmas Story are the best Christmas movie around. I think this one probably takes it. Will Ferrell is Buddy, a human baby raised at the North Pole among elves. As he grows up, he learns that he's not quite the same as everybody else and is told that he's a human not an elf. He's sent to New York City to find his father, played by James Caan. Buddy soon wins over his father's family with his infectious positive attitude, lands a girlfriend, and saves Christmas by helping people rediscover their Christmas Spirit. There's a million laughs throughout and this is really just a great movie. It's a sweet, happy movie that tells its story really well. Zooey Deschanel works well as Ferrell's girlfriend. Here she's just a pretty blonde girl with incredible eyes that can sing, not the quirky "it girl" for nerds she'd later become. The real revelation here is Ferrell though. He's just incredible in this movie. I am 100% serious when I say that I feel he deserved an Oscar Best Actor nomination for this movie. He is absolutely 100% invested in this role and plays it perfectly - total sincerity and commitment. This is a really, really great movie. 9/10. A side note: at the end of the movie, Buddy is shown reading a book of his adventures to young children. The makers of the movie somehow failed to capitalize on this by not releasing the book shown to the general public. Oh, they released a book - but it's very small and doesn't tell the story of the movie. Seriously, how do you screw that up?!?