Money Ball

Drama, True Story
4 stars
Really good movie starring Brad Pitt as the Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane who changed baseball’s player evaluation techniques by hiring an assistant (Jonah Hill) who used statistical methods which were frowned upon by scouts, owners and managers with disdain. I only have limited knowledge of baseball, but the techniques were explained well and I even recognized most of the players featured in the film. The most fun was watching Beane’s uphill battle in convincing both the team’s owner and its manager (Philip Seymour Hoffman) to play along with the new philosophy. Jim loved it too. Good movie.

Abduction

Action
3.5 stars
Exciting action film but the teen romance was kinda sappy. Taylor Lautner stars as a teen who discovers his own photo on a missing children’s website. As soon as he makes an inquiry on the listing, the CIA and some bad-ass Russians descend on his quiet suburb and the people around him start getting killed off. He goes on the run with his love interest (Lily Collins of The Blindside and musician Phil’s daughter) and doesn’t know who to trust. It’s a pretty cool action movie with lots of fight scenes and I loved the action scenes at the Pittsburg Pirate’s stadium. The teen romance could have been skipped and the ending felt a little cheesy, but on the whole I thought it was a fun action film.

Dolphin Tale

Family
3 stars
Inspired by a true story, a cute film about a boy (Nathan Gamble) who convinces a doctor specializing in prosthetics (Morgan Freeman) to create a tail for an amputee dolphin. Ashley Judd stars as the boy’s mom, Harry Connick Jr. stars as the marine biologist and Winter the dolphin stars as herself - the real amputee on whom this story was inspired by. I thought the story of the young soldier was moving, but the actor was too cheesy to be taken seriously (Austin Stowell of Secret Life of the American Teenager). Some scenes are pretty goofy, but I really loved the scenes of the boy swimming with Winter and it was very moving when amputee vets and young children began to support Winter’s cause. A nice movie kids of all ages will be sure to love.

DVDs for Halloween

Here's a list of films to get in the mood for Halloween:


The first section is lighter films, lots of comedies dealing with the usual monsters, nothing too scary.

The second section is more serious movies but no hardcore horror.


Trilogy of Terror
Karen Black
The last story is the best!

Young Frankenstien
Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman
“It's Alive!”

Poltergiest
“Don't go into the light!”

Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Johnny Depp
Classic creepy tale

Death Becomes Her
Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn, Isabella Rosselini
Women who want to live forever but with nasty side-effects

Cirque du Freak
John C. Reilly
Two teens get mixed up with a vampire-run circus

Dracula
Frank Longella
Classic, quintessential story of Dracula. Bad special fx, but still fun

Practical Magic
Nicole Kidman, Sandra Bullock
Two sisters use witchcraft to hamper a bad guy

Shaun of the Dead
Simon Pegg, Nick Frost
So funny, but gory, parody of Dawn of the Dead

Zombieland
Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg
Let's kill some zombies! Wryly funny and gory.

Cursed
Christina Ricci, Jesse Eisenberg
Werewolves in LA

**********************************
Serious movies concerning demons and the Devil, unless otherwise stated

Constantine - Keanu Reeves

The Crucible - Daniel Day Lewis, Winona Ryder – Salem witches

The Devil's Advocate - Al Pacino, Keanu Reeves, Charlize Theron

The Exorcist - Linda Blair

Fallen - Denzel Washington

Interview With The Vampire - Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise

The Ninth Gate - Johnny Depp

The Omen - Gregory Peck, Lee Remick

The Rite - Anthony Hopkins

The Serpent and the Rainbow – Bill Pullman - creepy voodoo

The Seventh Sign - Demi Moore – the apocalypse

Drive

Indie, Violent Drama
3.5 stars
Good, but really slow with lots of long silences – and has a terrible soundtrack. Ryan Gosling stars as a nameless character whose past remains a mystery. He works as both a stunt driver and as a getaway driver for bad guys. His loner routine is interrupted when he falls for and begins helping out his neighbor, Carey Mulligan (An Education, Wall Street) whose husband (Oscar Isaac, Robin Hood 2010) is mixed up with some seriously bad dudes. As I said, this film really takes it’s time and depends more on facial expressions rather than the spoken word to convey emotions. By contrast, the violent scenes are very gory. Costars include Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman (Hellboy) as mean thugs as well as Bryan Cranston (Malcolm in the Middle) as Gosling’s crooked employer. Let me put it this way, if you didn’t like 2010’s superb (but also slow and silent) George Clooney film The American, you probably won’t like this one either. Good, but gory and really slow.

I Don’t Know How She Does It

Chick Flick, Comedy
3 stars
Passable chick flick staring Sarah Jessica Parker as a harried Mom, wife and business woman. Parker’s life is extra chaotic because her job requires frequent travel as well as competition from her co-workers which strains her marriage to (the always dependable) Greg Kinnear as well as her relationship with her kids. Comic relief came with brief (but not enough) input from Busy Phillips (Cougar Town) as an organized but judgmental stay-at-home Mom. Pierce Brosnan co-stars as Parker’s VIP client. I give it credit for taking place in Boston, but that's my own bias. :) It’s a cute movie, but I think just watching such a hectic lifestyle made my blood pressure rise.

Contagion

Drama, Pandemic
3.5 stars
Good, but I wouldn’t recommend running out to the theaters to see it either. Gwyneth Paltrow returns from a trip to Hong Kong with a deadly flu that quickly spreads around the world. We’ve all seen these epidemic and pandemic movies before with the quarantines, panic and paranoia, etc., etc. Good acting by a fine cast separates this film from the pack, but the ambiguous outcome of several storylines just pissed me off. What happened with Laurence Fishburne’s character? What about Marion Cotillard? Why did Jude Law suddenly stop wearing his Hazmat spacesuit? Matt Damon and Kate Winslet also co-star. Wait for cable.

Colombiana

Action, Drama
3.5 stars
Exciting, but only if you can temporarily suspend your disbelief. Zoe Saldana (Avatar, Star Trek) stars as an assassin who began her training after seeing her parents murdered with the goal of avenging their deaths. It was fun to watch, even though you know in the back of your mind that things just couldn’t haven’t worked out so smoothly in real life. I liked watching Saldana slink around like Cat Woman and think she would make a great addition to the Mission Impossible franchise. Michael Vartan co-stars as her boyfriend and Jordi Molla (Blow, Knight & Day) is perfect as one of the main bad guys. A fun temporary escape from reality.

The Debt

Drama, Intrigue
4 stars
Very good movie starring Helen Mirren as one of three Israeli spies sent into East Berlin in 1966 to capture a former Nazi surgeon who performed gruesome experiments on the death camp prisoners, a la Dr. Josef Mengele. It is a very good movie, though the previews had led me to believe there would be a lot of undercover espionage and sneaking around in East Berlin. Instead, the film spends more time with the trio and their prisoner in a safe house, waiting for safe transport back to Israel. Still a very good film; just different from what the previews led me to believe. Also, there is a dark secret that haunts the trio long after the mission ends. Jessica Chastain (The Help) costars as Mirren’s younger self. Very good movie.