MY WEEK IN FILM

The Dark Knight smashes records and grosses $155 million in it's opening weekend, but is it the best movie I saw this week?

Let's see...

THE LIST
-The Beach 2000 - Danny Boyle
-Grace Is Gone 2007 - James C. Strouse
-Assault On Precinct 13 1976 - John Carpenter
-Father of the Bride 1991 - Charles Shyer
-The Dark Knight 2008 - Christopher Nolan
-The Tenant 1976 - Roman Polanski
-The Blair Witch Project 1999 - Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sanchez
-The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers 2002 - Peter Jackson*
-The Night of the Hunter 1955 - Charles Laughton

THE BEST
TIE - ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 and GRACE IS GONE
What an absolutely fabulous week for me in the movie scene. I really tried to pick just one, but when it came down to it, I had to call it a tie. Let's start out with Assault on Precinct 13, shall we.

I had about ninety minutes to kill the other night so I sat down and decided to knock off Assault On Precinct 13, and man, what a flick. You start out with one rookie policeman, add in two secretaries and three death row inmates and you got the group of men who are defending lonely old precinct 13, as it prepares to close it's doors for good. On the outside, you got a band of about thirty or forty hoods, ready and willing to do anything they can to kill everyone inside and bring 13 to the ground. Give all of this, that John Carpenter twist and you've got one hell of a movie. I mean just seeing the inmates and the lone officer team up to try and fight for their lives, is pretty cool in itself. It's really a whole lot of fun at the movies and I feel myself slowly turning into a John Carpenter fan.

Grace Is Gone was the first movie to bring the tears out of me in a very long time. Getting ready to go to work one day, Stanley Phillips, is surprised as his doorbell rings, and two military officers stand there and inform him, that his wife Grace...is gone. She died while in combat, and now Stanley must figure out how to tell his two young daughters, one 12 and the other 8. So one day, while driving, on a whim, he decides to take them to Enchanted Gardens, this movies equivalent to Disney World. And that's the movie, plain and simple, we follow this family as the travel, and Stan wrestles with trying to break the horrible news to his two young daughters. We see this family grow closer together as they are forced to go on living without Grace. The most heartbreaking parts of the movie are when we see Stan, on numerous occasions, call his own answering machine from the road, just so that he can hear the voice of his departed wife.

THE WORST
THE BEACH
Even in paradise nothing is perfect. I guess that's the message that Danny Boyle is trying to get across to us, as he truly disapoints and blatantly misuses the acting talents of DiCaprio. One night while lying in his bed, DiCaprio is visited by Daffy (Robert Carlysle, in another terrible misuse of great acting skills), who tells him of a real life paradise on Earth, a beach, on an island all by its lonesome. So DiCaprio, and two pals decide to go looking for the beach. They eventually find it, along with a merry band of inhabitants. They realize that a small community has been formed there and they want desperately to be a part of it. So all is well, until the leader of the group (Tilda Swinton) finds out that Mr. DiCaprio has made a copy of the map. That, along with a splash of infidelity and a shark attack, lead to the downfall of this beach community. This was really hard to get through and I found myself badly wanting to switch it off several times, and not doing so for the simple fact of wanting to see all of Boyle's films. Oh, Danny, what a shame that you made such a terrible movie.

THE REST
Shall we discuss the Dark Knight??? Okay. I can sum up the greatness of the Dark Knight in five words...HEATH LEDGER IS THE JOKER. Take Ledger or the Joker out of this film, and you don't have a whole lot left. When Ledger passed away, I said to myself, "What a shame, he was a good actor and I'll miss seeing him in new movies." Today I say "What a terrible shame, he was a brilliant actor and the fact that we'll never see him grace another picture is almost enough to bring a tear to your eyes." Ledger as the Joker, crafted every single word of dialogue with such careful consideration. Every cackle carried out to a tee. Every motion and every step carefully thought out. I seriously can't see anyone else being able to give such life and such brilliance to the Clown Prince. Everyone else did a fine job, but everytime that the Joker wasn't on the screen I found myself wanting more and nearly salivating to see what he was going to do next. Probably ONE OF the best performances I've ever seen in a movie.

I had only seen it once before, but allow me to say, that The Blair Witch Project is a truly creepy film and a very good one too. You all know the story, so no need for me to go over it. But, in the tradition of Cloverfield, we see everything as filmed to look like camcorder footage. What truly adds to the freakiness of this one is the fact, that some of the scariest moments in the film, we are totally left in the dark, and forced to use our imaginations to decide what is going on. I recommend this one on a Saturday night, with a couple other horror flicks and some popcorn. Good times.

Roman Polanski, directs and stars in The Tenant, a movie that I thought looked very intriguing. That turned out to be quite the bore. It's basically Rosemary's Baby without the devil and the rape scene. Polanski plays a Polish born man moving into a French apartment house, just several days after the previous tenant jumped out of the window to her death. Now, Polanski, begins to understand why she commited suicide and starts to contemplate it himself. Stay clear of this one, as it's really a drawn out affair, with very little payoff at the end.

The Father of the Bride, was your typical Steve Martin comedy, with a little more heart to it. I had never seen this one before and thought that it was your average comedy. I'm a fan of Diane Keaton and thought Martin Short was nothing short of hilarious. That's it.

I hope you are all familiar with the great Robert Mitchum, because he was one hell of an actor. And he shows off that acting muscle in The Night of the Hunter. He plays a deranged preacher, who has a fetish for widows with money, and strikes gold when he comes upon an outlaws wife. With the tattoos of LOVE across one set of knuckles and HATE across the other, he plays off as a gentleman for the townspeople, however, truly only wanting the money that the outlaw once stole. Who knows the whereabouts of the loot? The outlaws two young children, and Mitchum will stop at nothing to get it out of them. Mitchum is really the only great thing about this one, as most of the movie is very slow, with not a whole lot happening at times. Worth a look for a great Robert Mitchum performance, however.

'Till next week.

Andrew
7/20/2008