Media Review

The Namesake
I liked the book and the film stayed pretty faithful to the novel. Ultimately, I was a little disappointed. Still 3 stars but a low 3. I think the movie was a little dry, I was expecting the cinematography to be more stunning, especially when you're shooting India which is such a visually intense place. The actors were all excellent. I liked Kal Penn and his mother played by Tabu was also very good, but the standout performance was the father played by Irfan Khan. He was exceptional. I would recommend seeing the movie just based on his understated performance.


Crash
I finally rented this somewhat controversial movie that won Best Picture in 2006. Controversial in that people thought Brokeback Mountain should have won Best Picture. I saw Brokeback first and I thought it was wonderful. People I know either liked or disliked the Crash, so I came in with low expectations. I came away thinking that Crash definitely deserved the Best Picture nod. I liked this movie a lot. Both Brokeback and Crash were Oscar worthy but I don't know which would have deserved it more. I can see why there are Crash-haters out there, but this film really spoke to me. There's a lot of anger in it, and I related to that anger.

Meet the Robinsons
Not horrrible. Not great. Kinda sorta okay, I guess. The visuals were awesome, the animation was also very good. The pace was strange. You could tell that the story was re-worked and patched together. There were some shots that didn't make sense at all. The main villain was very very fun to watch. I'm glad I saw it but I'm not sure I'd recommend it. How's that for a half-assed review.

Spiderman 3
Let me start by saying that I barely liked Spiderman 1, mainly because they totally got the Goblin wrong, missing a grand opportunity with Willem Defoe, and I thought it was a little too violent. I liked Spiderman 2 but thought it could do without a lot of the cheese-factor with Mary Jane, the action sequences were great. Here's what was good about Spiderman 3 - the Sandman visual effects scenes and Venom's visual effects scenes. The rest of this film sucked hard. All the criticism you may have read, I agree with. It was a pretty bad movie all in all.

The Proposition
Great movie. Highly recommend. Australian western. The landscape scenery was stunning. The acting superb. Visually crafted. If you like them brutal westerns I think you'll really like this movie.

The Departed
I saw Infernal Affairs which is the Hong Kong film that Departed is based upon. But they are two very different movies. Which I was glad to see. I thought Departed was great, but I think I would've voted for Babel for best picture instead. Still glad to see Scorsese finally get his oscar nod though.

Capote
Very good but I wasn't completely blown away by film as a whole. The performances were great, I really liked Catherine Keener. Obviously Philip Seymour Hoffman is the man, I always like him in whatever he's in, but the breakout performance for me was Clifton Collins Jr. who played one of the killers, Perry Smith. I thought I had seen him before and indeed, he played the gay Mexican hitman in one of my favorite movies, Traffic.