Choke

Many reviewers claimed Choke is nihilistic and perverse. I thought it was the EXACT OPPOSITE. I thought it was romantic and optimistic. I LIKED THIS. This movie has a big heart at its core, and the skilled, earnest portrayal of a struggling man by Sam Rockwell. As funny as it is, it’s never hysterically, laugh-out-loud funny because there’s a deep, poignant thread running through the whole story. I was genuinely rooting for the flawed hero as he tries to reconcile with his dying mother while he believes there might be a chance to save her. Yes, the “solution” to saving his mother is perverse; a terribly (ah-hem) “ill-conceived” plan, but that just helps us understand and really care about Rockwell’s hilariously misguided character. It’s a really honest depiction of a screwed up guy with a true need to change his life. Choke is honest about sex and about love, and dares to dip a big toe into an ocean of uncharted taboos.

Miracle at St. Anna

I stopped counting how many times during the 2 hour and 40 minute running time I smacked myself on the head and thought, “Spike! What are you THINKING!?” This is a mess. It’s hard to know who the main character is or what they want. Normally in these movies the g.i.s need to blow up a bridge or take a hill. But there’s a lot of weird, meaningless scenes here. Probably taken from the book. And it’s never clear what the hell’s going on! There are some decent performances, but as a whole this is a mess. Very frustrating.

Ghost Town

A very familiar retread of Ghost and The Sixth Sense, but the likable cast makes it work. It’s funny in all the right places and sentimental enough without being syrupy. A wholly pleasant movie.

Lakeview Terrace

I expected trashy, but this mish-mash of Cape Fear & Crash lacks any through-line. Sometimes it’s suspenseful, and sometimes it seems like the characters can’t remember what happened in the preceding scene. Sam Jackson’s coming at them with a chainsaw one minute, the next minute they’re all chummy having drinks. The script feels like a product of development meetings. Some adolescent USC grads trying to get their newbie fingerprints on a script to prove they’re valuable to their boss. (i.e. parents’ tennis buddy.) In the late 80’s and early 90’s these kinds of thrillers were a dime a dozen. Here, they fail to spice up the recipe by trying to make the villain sympathetic. It’s too bad it couldn’t be what it wanted to be about: racism.

Burn After Reading

Second viewing.

It was nice to hear the final scene again, and behold J.K. Simmons as he wonders, "What did we learn?" Some CIA suit trying to find the meaning of it all. Brilliant.

Righteous Kill

Old cops pontificating about the "job." All of the action is offscreen so the movie won't reveal who the killer is, which is shoddy execution that is dangerously boring. I still believe in Carla Gugino and I think she has yet to play her definitive part. As for Pacino and DeNiro: Grumpy Old Men 3?

Burn After Reading

A perfect serving of Coens lunacy. At one point John Malkovich as the bitter CIA analyst accuses another character of being in a “league of morons.” That would almost make a better title. Everyone in this movie is either selfish, crazy, stupid, paranoid or some combination of all four. Everyone’s motives are misguided and idiotic, but never totally evil. However, the consequences of their idiocy and paranoia are deadly, which is why this movie MUST take place in Washington D.C. What’s amazing about this is the tone gradually and expertly transforms from a straight-faced farce to an outright lunatic binge. The transformation is so elegantly invisible, by the final scene I was in hysterics, laughing retroactively at the impossibly tangled web. Everyone in the cast is great, but J.K. Simmons and David Rasche are standouts as the bureaucrats trying to make sense of it all.

Bottle Shock

Sideways wasn’t about wine. It was about Paul Giamatti. Wine was just the setting. Wine was the metaphor. Bottle Shock tries to be about the actual fields of grapes themselves, so the characters take a back seat. Some of the performances are weird, and the plot meanders from character to character. The movie’s drowning in b-roll. Endless helicopter shots of Napa Valley slow the pace to a crawl. The movie’s never sure what it wants to be. Artificial suspense is inserted unskillfully to keep the audience awake until the very predictable conclusion. It’s not a bad movie, really. It’s like a glass of “two-buck Chuck.” You can drink it, but you can’t really recommend it.