Need Some Movie Recommendations?
Now, of course I recommend one to you every Friday and I’m sure you all plan your weekends around my selections, but if you’d like a few great films from the past decade to catch up on in the coming weeks, you ought to go check out my friend Kenny Montano’s picks for the top 10 films of the decade. Kenny is as insightful and thoughtful a moviegoer as I’ve ever met while avoiding the pretentiousness that often accompanies people who enjoy great movies. Rooming with him in college is what’s largely responsible for turning me from a guy who liked watching movies into a guy who truly appreciates the medium of film and the power it carries as a means of storytelling and communicating truth. His list (and honorable mentions) are full of great films. While there are a few I haven’t seen, there are none on the list that I have seen that I disagree with him on. Go check out his list, then check out the movies.
Solid list, though it is missing “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”… that was one of the best movies from the past decade, along with “Gone Baby Gone”. Casey Affleck is brilliant in both, particularly in “Jesse James,” which one reviewer said was THE best acting performance of the last decade. I still think Russell Crowe in “Beautiful Mind” was better, but Affleck did do a great job.
Also, saw that new Christmas Carol movie last night. It is the best adaptation of Dickens’ book I’ve seen (and I’ve seen quite a few, even Scrooged with Bill Murray
). It took the story much more seriously than other ones did. Usually the visitation time with the ghosts is treated with a wink and a nod. “Sure, Ebenezer is seeing some serious problems in his past, but you know this story and it’s going to end up okay and just wait til he wakes up Christmas morning.”
It is also more faithful to Dickens than any other Carol film I’ve seen. There were several Dickensian lines in the movie which I’d never heard before, but seemed to point at some spiritual or moral truth that other versions had neglected.
The CGI motion capture style was quite good (some spots it was hard to tell that we weren’t looking at real people), but it was a little distracting to the story in a couple spots. A good movie to see on the big screen.
I thought about “Gone Baby Gone” when putting together my list. I agree that it is a really good movie, one I gave 4 stars for when I was more consistently reviewing movies. Casey Affleck is great in this and in “Assassination…” and I wish we saw him in more films. I also thought that brother Ben’s direction was calm and well controlled and he didn’t push too hard at the ending leaving each viewer to come up with their own conclusions. As is the game of making a list, some really good films get left out. I think “Gone Baby Gone” may have just missed the list because of the unendingly brooding feeling one gets while viewing…not a bad thing…I did like it.
I also think “Assassination…” is a good film, but not a great one. I think the performances are commendable and Roger Deakin’s cinematography is always stellar. But, like the the title, the film is way too long at 160 mins. I like long movies, but the plot must support the length. There are stretches of the the movie that are just boring, and you shouldn’t be bored in a good epic. 20 or 30 minutes of editing and tightening could have made that a great movie.