Payback follows Porter (played by Mel Gibson) a guy seeking revenge against his former partner in crime Val Resnick (Gregg Henry) for shooting him in the back and stealing $70k. Gibson plays the role of Porter as a dark, gritty, tough loner. After being betrayed by Val, Porter has only one purpose in life, get his money back. He dedicates every waking minute to getting to Val and getting back the money he’s owed. Standing in the way of getting back his money is an assortment of mean, hard-edged and crazy criminals played by the likes of William Devane, Lucy Liu, and Kris Kristofferson.

Payback is set in a bleak, violent, drug-addled, blue-toned Chicago. Despite its 1999 release, the movie feels older. It looks twenty years old. The film is noirish, like great noirs the main character is largely in it for himself, as are all the other characters. There’s not a lot of love or sentimentality shared between the cast. The only hint that Porter might have been blessed with a softer side are scenes in which Porter tries to help his drug addict wife and scenes with his old girlfriend Rosie (Maria Bello).

The movie’s funnier scenes usually involve Porter torturing someone trying to stand in his way of seeking revenge. Porter is no holds bar about enacting painful means of gathering the information he needs to track down his old partner Val and the money he’s owed. Mel Gibson is a great actor for Porter. There are few actors that could play the role so convincingly. Too many actors lack the edge necessary to convince the audience they’re as tough as Mel. I can only name a handful of other actors I would suggest for the role, but I don’t think any of them would have performed as well.

One of the highlights of the film is actor Kris Kristofferson as Bronson. Kristofferson is one of the few actors who can convince us he’s as tough, if not tougher, than Gibson. The two play off one another perfectly.

The tagline for this film was “Get ready to root for the bad guy.” Porter is certainly not a guy I’d like on my bad side. It’s not so bad loving the bad guy, when the bad guy is going after the other bad guys.

At the beginning of Up, we’re introduced to Carl Fredricksen as a young boy. He loves flying. He loves big hot air balloons. His hero is Charles Muntz, a blimp riding explorer who has caught some of the world’s strangest, most exotic animals. Carl meets Ellie, a plucky, tom-boy of a girl who shares his love for flying and adventure. We’re given a beautiful montage of pictures that perfectly show us Carl’s life without a single line of dialog: he and Ellie fall in love, marry, Carl grows up and sells balloons to kids, they share the dream of visiting Paradise Falls but are never able to go, Carl and Ellie want to have kids but they’re unable, they grow old together, and Ellie gets sick. And inevitably, only a few minutes into the film, we already care enough for Carl and Ellie that we’re deeply moved when Ellie passes.

This is a rare film that can tell so much story with so few pictures. We’re so used to films these days that are all dialog, words spitting at you at rapid fire across the screen, and we’re still not sure what’s going on. Up is a sort of magical film where the characters come to life purely through their actions.

After Ellie’s death, Carl (now old and voiced by Ed Asner) is sad and bitter. He never had a chance to have his adventures with Ellie, and he misses her severely. A small Wilderness Explorer Scout named Russell (voiced by Jordan Nagai) comes to his house, knocking eagerly on his door, hoping to earn his final badge so he can become a senior scout member. Carl ignores him. He’s the typical angry old man telling people to get off his lawn. A corporation has erected hundreds of skyscrapers around the home he and Ellie built, and they are trying to kick Carl off his own property. He is mad at the world, mad at everyone and troubled.

Eventually after being court ordered to leave his property, Carl decides he will finally fulfill Ellie’s dream of visiting Paradise Falls. He fills his house with millions of brightly colored balloons. He releases them all at once, and he and his house all take off together.

He soon discovers that Russell is a stow away on his flying house. At first, Carl is reserved about including the boy on his adventure, but it isn’t long before the two become inseparable friends. From there, he and the boy enjoy many adventures together on their quest to get Carl and Ellie’s home to Paradise Falls. Of all things, there are talking dogs, a rare exotic bird and an unexpected villain. All in all, the story is fun, fast-paced and never bores. It works perfectly with the humanity that Ed Asner brings to the role of Carl Fredrickson, a bitter, angry man who finds love and hope again after the passing of his wife. In this way, it’s of course predictable; we never believe we won’t arrive at the ending at which we inevitably arrive, but the fun isn’t in a surprise ending, the fun is in loving the characters and enjoying the adventure they have together.

Up is a great film. It affirms that Pixar knows how to make great movies. Wall-E still stands as my favorite Pixar film, but Up might be a close second.

There are too many great 80s action movies to count. How about Predator? A bunch of commandos go in the woods and fight an alien, who picks them off one at a time. Who doesn’t remember the line, “I ain’t got time to bleed”? Right there, that one line, that sums it up. That’s what 80s action films were all about. Fighting to the bloody end with testosterone pumping while a bunch of men having major roid rage battle it out. Did anyone see the recent Terminator Salvation? Watch that, then compare it to the first Terminator. What different movies. The original had all the grit. It was in your face, down in the dirt action. We knew who the good guys were, and we knew who the bad guys were. End of story.

How about Rambo? Or Rocky III? Oh yes, Rocky III. Who doesn’t want to see Sylvester Stallone fight Mr. T? Shit, I would pay good money right now to watch them go at it, even if they are two over-the-hill geriatric farts these days. And what happened to action scenes, where I had a clue what was going on. The Bourne movies were fun when they first came out. The Matrix was fun. But I’m sick of every movie copycatting them. I want to tell who is hitting whom. I want to see the fists actually connect. I’m tired of paying good money to watch 90 minutes of blurs.

Then, there’s Die Hard. What a perfect action film. We’re introduced to a regular, average joe, working cop. He’s presented with the unimaginably difficult task of fighting hardcore German terrorists, and we buy every second of it. It’s a tough movie. Willis is beat up by the end of that film. He’s cut up from head to toe. Every muscle in your body aches after seeing what Willis went through. Compare that with the more recent Die Hard flick, and it’s a joke. Willis went from being average joe, working cop to superman. I don’t want to see Superman in my gritty action flicks. I want to see a regular guy who has the crap beaten out of him, but he keeps on going.

Speaking of which, they ruined Indiana Jones in the same way. Watch Raiders of the Lost Ark. Did you notice something? Indiana Jones looks like he’s been through the ringer. He even gripes about the pain he’s in. He’s all sore muscles, and he can barely move. Now you’ve got the recent movie, where he’s one hundred years old, but he’s flying around like Spider-man. What the Hell? What happened to these guys? These were my heroes. Not because they were invincible, but clearly in spite of it. Because they were ordinary people doing the extraordinary.

Maybe I’m getting off track here. All I know is, I want two things back in my action movies. I want real grit. I want to see what’s going on. I want to see blood and brains and brawn. And I want to see my heroes act like heroes, not like invincible supermen.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a truly great movie.  Jim Carrey plays Joel Barish in what can only be described as his best performance to date. He is sweet, shy, kind, terrified, angry, bitter, resentful, hurt, scared. He runs the gambit in this picture, as we follow Joel through the process of erasing every memory he has of his darling Clementine.

There Will Be Blood

Daniel Day Lewis earned his oscar for There Will Be Blood. He owned every word he spoke in the movie. It’s truly one of the most remarkable performances in film history. The movie is dark and chilling. Greed hangs heavy in the air like the oil spouting from the wells. It’s a gritty, wonderful picture filled with intensity from the first frame to the last.

Pan’s Labyrinth

This is how fairy tales should be: dark, menacing, filled with scary characters. It’s great to see a fairy tale like Pan’s Labyrinth on the screen. It’s everything fairy tales were meant to be, not the glossed over, kiddie stuff we’re usually shown.

The Royal Tenenbaums

I’ve seen The Royal Tenenbaums at least a dozen times, and I never get tired of it. I’m still moved every time Chas tells Royal, “I’ve had a rough year, dad.” This is what every Wes Anderson films tries to be. This is his masterpiece. Gene Hackman is perfect in the role Wes wrote especially for him. The supporting cast plays every role exactly as they should. I can count several actors’ best performances in this film: Ben Stiller, Luke and Owen Wilson. I’ve never laughed so much while holding back the tears.

Adaptation

Cleverly written. Odd. Bizarre. A movie within a movie? There’s a lot you can say about Adaptation, but one thing you can’t call it is boring. Whenever one Nicholas Cage won’t do it for me, I turn on Adaptation and enjoy two Nicholas Cage’s, fighting with one another, bickering like twin brothers. This might arguably be Cage’s best role, in the least, it’s his best role this last decade.

Brokeback Mountain

Fewer movies have ever been more talked about. Ang Lee brought us the first really successful romantic film about two gay men. Ledger proved once and for all he could act. For too long, he’d been the darling of sophomoric action flicks and cheesy romantics flicks. Here, he proved he could play anybody.

Children of Men

The world as we know it is gone. Humanity is dying off. Children can no longer be conceived. That is, until one girl becomes pregnant. Children of Men is a daring look at a dystopia where a world has gone mad, where violence and hatred reign supreme. And it isn’t until the world has lost what matters most: its children, does it realize the poor path it chose.

Memento

“Remember Sammy Jenkis”? There are few movies that have ever been executed as well as Memento. It’s the movie that introduced the world to Chris Nolan. He had already made a small movie called Following, but it wasn’t until Memento hit theaters that the world took notice. A man attempting to avenge the death of his wife who cannot make new memories? It’s a great concept made into a great movie.

Wall-E

Pixar proved with Wall-E that it’s possible to make a great animated film with which anyone can identify. The first 30 minutes are devoid of dialog. We see little more than a robot going about his duties, but we get the whole picture. Pixar tells the story beautifully without a shred of dialog, without explaining details, simply by doing what animation does best: showing us. Wall-E may be one of the few completely animated characters that conveys more emotion and tugs at your heart strings harder than most human performances.

Letters from Iwo Jima

Letters from Iwo Jima is a gorgeous film. We get a real glimpse into the lives of the Japanese during WWII. There’s no propaganda. There’s no evil men in uniform out to murder Americans. We see soldiers, dying on the battlefield, serving their country. Directed by Clint Eastwood, this is infinitely better than the film he directed depicting the American side of events: Flags of Our Fathers.

Honorable Mentions

• Grizzly Man
• Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2
• No Country for Old Men
• City of God
• The Dark Knight

I think back on all the films Ford has done, and I’ve seen nearly all of them a dozen times. He’s had so many of the great roles. Han Solo. Indiana Jones. Jack Ryan. Rick Deckard. Dr. Richard Kimble.

What boy didn’t go through an Indiana Jones phase? Dressed up in a Fedora, some makeshift whip in your hand, running around the neighborhood fighting invisible Nazis? I’ll be straight with you, I still do that occasionally. Who hasn’t donned a black vest and pretended they were Han Solo, pilot of the Millennium Falcon? If I could have a job where I got to dress up as Harrison Ford doing one of my favorite roles, I’d take it in a heartbeat.

I’ve read that Tom Selleck was supposed to play Indiana Jones. I’m glad he couldn’t. I doubt we’d be looking back now and thinking what great films they were. Nothing against Selleck. He’s a decent actor, but it’s no coincidence that Harrison Ford has played so many memorable roles. He’s what makes them memorable. His style of acting is laid back, almost non-chalant at times. But he gets it. He gets how to play these characters. He knows what the audience is looking for. He has excess charm and wit.

I can’t forget all of Ford’s other roles. Jack Trainer in Working Girl. Detective John Book in Witness. Henry Turner in Regarding Henry. Whenever I see Ford is in a new movie, I can’t help but still get excited. It’s unlikely he’ll be in as many great movies as he once was. It just isn’t realistic to hope for that. But I can’t help it. I get boyish, giddy even when I’m reading about his newest movie. He’s one of those actors that I’ll always treasure. My favorite movies growing up almost always starred Harrison Ford, and that’s something I’ll never forget.

Directed by Ang Lee, the film, Taking Woodstock, follows the true story of Elliot Tiber (played by Demetri Martin), an aspiring Greenwich Village interior designer, whose parents own a dilapidated motel in the town of Bethel, NY. Having acquired a permit for $1, Elliot plants to hold a music concert in Bethel. When he discovers that the organizers of the Woodstock Festival are running into problems with having the concert at the originally planned location, Elliot steps and offers his permit, while Max Yasgur (played by Eugene Levy) offers his farm land for the festival’s location.

The movie isn’t perfect. Some scenes drag on too long. Some scenes just aren’t necessary, such as when a group of hippies put on a play, strip completely naked and dance around people in the town. We get it. There were lots of drugs. There were lots of hippies. We don’t need these kinds of scenes. They don’t add to the comedy; they just take away from it. The movie works when it focus on Elliot and his parents. These scenes are almost always pitch perfect. Elliot is a sympathetic character; his parents are funny and compelling.

Liev Schreiber shows up about halfway through the film to steal every scene he’s in. He plays a cross dressing security guard that offers his services to Elliot. How does he play the role? Completely straight. It’s perfect. When he walks on screen, you almost wince, because you’re expecting a parody, but Schreiber plays the role so perfectly that you grow to love the character and his humor.

For a movie about the Woodstock concert, the one thing that it surprisingly lacked was music. For most of the movie, Elliot is too busy to see any of the concert, leaving all the memorable performances out of the picture. There probably wouldn’t have been room to include many of them, but it seems like such an important part of Woodstock that it’s sad leaving it out.

Overall, Taking Woodstock is a fun comedy. For a truly great film about Woodstock, watch the documentary, Woodstock. Ang Lee was clearly influenced by the famous documentary. He often mimics the shooting style used in the documentary, splitting the screen two or more times to show difference scenes simultaneously. It’s a good flick, worth a watch.

Jimmy Stewart plays Detective John “Scottie” Ferguson. He develops severe acrophobia after seeing a fellow police officer fall to his death during a chase. Ever since, Scottie can’t even stand on a step stool without suffering vertigo. His head spins. Everything starts shaking. And if he isn’t helped, he’ll fall. The incident forces Scottie into early retirement, until a college acquaintance named Gavin Elster (played by Tom Helmore) comes seeking his help. It seems Gavin’s wife, Madeleine Elster (played by Kim Novak), has this kooky behavior; she visits a gravestone every day; she visits the same art museum and stares at the same painting every day; Gavin is convinced his wife is the reincarnation of Carlotta Valdes (the woman from the painting who suffered a tragic death by suicide).

Gavin has Scottie follow his wife, observe her every behavior. It isn’t long before his wife plunges into the San Francisco Bay, leaving Scottie to save her from drowning. Inevitably, Scottie falls in love with Madeleine. He can’t help himself. She’s played by Kim Novak after all. She’s gorgeous, and because of her strange behavior, Scottie can’t help but want to save her, keep her for himself. One night, after Madeleine recounts the details of a bad dream to Scottie, Scottie is able to identify the setting of the dream. He takes her to Mission San Juan Bautista, where there is a church. While at the mission, Madeleine suddenly runs up the stairs of the church. Scottie chases after her, but due to his agoraphobia, he is unable to keep up with her, and before he can catch her, he looks out a window in the church just in time to see Madeleine plunge to her death.

But that is only the beginning…the movie only gets better from there. Scottie finds a woman, named Judy Barton, who oddly resembles Madeleine. She looks absolutely identical (she should, for she is also played by Kim Novak). Except for dark hair and different dress, she’s the spitting image of his deceased love. Scottie courts the woman, falls for her. But his love takes a sickly turn. He forces Judy to dye her hair the same color as Madeleine’s, dress the same way. Look and act the same way. When you stop and think about it, you realize what’s happening. It’s necrophilia. Scottie is in love with a dead woman, and he will do anything to have her.

The movie doesn’t stop twisting and turning after that. It’s perfect from start to finish. Jimmy Stewart was, in my opinion, Hitchcock’s best leading man. Stewart perfectly played the vulnerable man, while he also could play dark, angry, bitter. These are the quintessential characteristics of a Hitchcockian hero. Stewart’s role as “Scottie” Ferguson might be his best.

The film follows Joel Barish (played by Jim Carrey) and hipster, free-wheelin’ Clementine Kruczynski (played by Kate Winslet). This is Jim Carrey’s best role to date. When I saw this in the theater, people stood up and walked out. I heard one person exclaim, “this isn’t even funny!” Well, no, it’s not laugh-out-loud funny. It has a few funny moments, but that’s not the point. This movie, more than any other, displays Carrey’s talent as an actor. He isn’t just a funny man. He has real depth. This puts him on par with some of the great actors of the last 20 years. Kate Winslet, as always, performs great. It’s not a big surprise, though it’s fun to see her in a very different role for herself. She’s punk; she dyes her hair orange, blue, whatever. She has a lot of attitude. She’s spoiled, bratty, angry, bitter, and she takes all of her angst out on poor Joel. For both actors, it would seem they’re out of their element, and yet both actors pull of their roles perfectly.

At the start of the movie, we meet the two characters on a train to Montauk. Joel never meant to take the train initially, but something inside him compels him to skip work and take the train. He meets Clementine aboard the train. Joel is awkward, quiet, shy. He doesn’t know how to talk to women. He doesn’t know how to act around them. Clementine is his shining opposite. She has no problem approaching Joel, talking to him, striking up a conversation with him despite his tentativeness. At face value, they would seem like a terrible couple. The story picks up with Joel in tears, frustrated, out of control. He’s packing up his bags, taking everything with him to pay a visit to Lacuna Inc., a uniquely interesting company whose practice it is to wipe your memory clean of the bad things you’d like to forget.

In Joel’s case, he’d like to forget everything about Clementine. And why? Because he has just discovered that, on a whim, Clementine went and had her memory erased of Joel.

It’s during the process of erasing Joel’s memory that the movie’s brilliance truly shines. Flashing back into Joel’s memory, seeing how he fell in love with Clementine. Seeing all their moments together. Watching them go from coming apart as a couple to coming together as lovers is an amazing experience. It’s full of sweetness. It’s pure. It’s simple. It’s joy. And I watched every minute of it, soaking it up, on the edge of my seat.

The movie has a lot of turns. And the plot isn’t linear. You can get lost, not quite sure where you are in the story, but it seems fitting, symbolic of how one gets lost in a relationship that started out so well and ends up so poorly.

Joel Barish and Clementine Kruczynski are a great movie couple. You fall in love with them, as they fall in love and then out of love and then in love again with one another.

What’s most surprising about the film isn’t that it was so successful and such a perfectly made film but that the people making it never expected much to come of it. Though the movie featured many A-list stars of the time, it was just one of dozens of movies being churned out by the studio at the time. No one was thinking “classic” when they were working on the set. No one was thinking that more than 60 years after it was filmed, people would still be calling it a great film.

The film could have been a disaster. Many writers contributed to the script. They were editing and revising the script minutes before the director called “action”. Despite the many writers and the many different approaches, Roger Ebert labeled Casablanca with a script that is “wonderfully unified and consistent”. And it is, from start to finish, the movie never steers us wrong. There’s never a slow scene. There’s never any time you’re bored.

And the acting…what can one say about the acting in Casablanca? The chemistry between Bergman and Bogie is pitch perfect. You don’t doubt for a minute the love they have for one another. And the moment Bergman walks onto the screen is breathtaking. She’s gorgeous. Perfectly lit. Perfectly beautiful. If you’re watching her, you’re falling in love with her, and you know exactly why Rick loves her too.

Of course, no review of Casablanca would be completely with discussing the music. “As Time Goes By” is one of the best songs ever written for a movie, even if the musical director had hoped to replace the song with his own composition. Luckily, the scenes with Bergman listening to Sam play the piano had already been shot and since the filming, her hair had been cut short, leaving the director no choice but to leave the songs in as is. Could any other song have been as perfect for the story? As timeless? It’s difficult to imagine.

There’s no good way to finish this review, so I’ll leave it with this: “Play it again, Sam.”

The Basterds as they dub themselves is a group of special soldiers led by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), whose sole mission in the war is to kill nazis. And in the most brutal fashion, they scalp them. At no time are the Nazis depicted as cruelly as The Basterds. We’re used to films and books that paint a horrifying, ugly picture of the Nazis. But in Inglourious Basterds, the nazis are anything but. They’re timid, weak, afraid of The Basterds, terrified of being scalped. I wonder if viewers will get the delicious irony that they are rooting for the guys who are excessively cruel while they hate and have no mercy for the timid soldiers doing their duty. The movie is most revealing, when one of The Basterds asks a soldier if he received the medal pinned to his chest for killing Jews, and the soldier replies that he received it for bravery.

I suppose Tarantino couldn’t make a movie where the Nazis were the good guys, so instead, he made a movie where the good guys were worse than the Nazis.

There are high points in the movie. There are scenes of terrific action. But there are too many low points to ignore. Some scenes are so languid and dull, especially those featuring Shosanna (a young Jewish woman, played by Mélanie Laurent, seeking revenge against the Nazis for killing her family), that I couldn’t fathom why more film wasn’t left on the cutting room floor. Many scenes meant to leave you on the edge of the seat, instead leave you yawning and begging for it to end.

Take one scene in particular. British spies are posing as Nazis in a German bar. They are attempting to retrieve important information from a German actress working for the allies. On paper, the scene is ripe with tension, but on the screen, it goes flat. Typically, a Tarantino film is filled with degenerates, but they’re degenerates we care about. Vincent Vega wasn’t such a good guy, but I cared when he was blown away. But in Inglourious Basterds, I found I never really cared who was killed. It never mattered. There was too much going on in the movie with two many storylines to ever concern yourself completely with one character.

Overall, I think a trimmed down version, one without the unnecessary Shosanna in it, would be a huge relief. Many people have been bothered by Tarantino’s misuse of historical fact in the film. Have people forgotten that hardly anyone was aware of the holocaust during the war? That it wasn’t until after the war that many of the atrocities were revealed? So, a group called The Basterds seeking revenge against Nazis for killing Jews seems a bit odd…But that’s besides the point, the movie isn’t meant to be historical. If anything, it’s meant to be a parody of other war movies.