Valkyrie

The timing of this release is head-scratching... Hooray holiday season! Let's go watch Tom Cruise try to kill Hitler in a historical thriller?

Omg totally. So there.

As engaging a premise as this is, thrillers are all about the suspense, and in Valkyrie there's absolutely no suspense. We know how this ends already. It's really not that exciting. He fails. Miserably. Probably doesn't even come remotely close to getting it done. I mean, it's cute that he tries. But we know that ultimately the Allies clean this mess up. I guess we could give the guy a gold foil wrapped chocolate medal for participation?

The only suspense related to this film is getting giddy over seeing Tom Cruise try and act all Nazi-like. Germans probably wanted this movie to be made in hopes that it would further rehab their image ("Look! Some of us didn't like Hitler as well! Honestly!"), but really all it does is associate Nazis with pirates, thanks to the film's historically accurate homage to Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg's eyepatch (soooo just copied and pasted the Colonel's name).

I didn't really want to harp on the eyepatch, but let's face facts: It's the star of the film. Besides getting the good Colonel laid, I reckon the eyepatch is probably the reason his assassination attempt failed. I mean, if I were a paranoid Hitler hiding in a bunker while WWII goes down the shitter, you know who I wouldn't wanna be around?

The dude with the lousy eyepatch who's probably ridiculously pissed off that he's lost an eye in service of his (losing) country.

Just sayin'.

The Tale of Despereaux

Forget Jesus being born today - everybody ought to gather and celebrate the lovechild of that rat from Ratatouille and the Virgin Dumbo!

But in all seriousness, my mom loves the book (yes, it was a book) and what she says goes, so I'm totally tagging along and checking this well-endowed rat out. You know what they say, big ears.... big Q-tips required? Beats me.

Milk

"This tastes like the cows got into an onion patch." - Napoleon Dynamite, Milk Taster


Harvey Milk was an important civil rights leader from California, which I guess means he was only important to 47.7% of Californians. Milk was gay and fought loudly and proudly (and fiercely, I guess, too) for gay rights back in the 70s before it was the cool thing to do. Needless to say, people didn't like that, and he was killed. Today, his story is "coincidentally" very relevant.

Sean Penn stars in the titular role (which, I presume, will be the only 'tit's in this movie.) James Franco is in this movie as well, and he gets naked.

That, however, is the shame of this movie. It looks kind of boring and standard bio-pic, even though it's directed by Gus Van Sant, has cool actors, and is about a guy whose story is important. This movie should have striven to do more than bring a relatively unknown hero to the attention of a country that by and large doesn't care about gay rights and doesn't want to. It should make us care about him. That's what was so good about "Brokeback Mountain": you looked beyond the butt-sex and actually thought about the complex relationship between the characters. With this, I just get the feeling we'll remember it less as a movie that brought a good man's life to the attention of the world than we will remember it as the one where Spicoli and the drug dealer from "Pineapple Express" totally made out in the pool.

Also, "This film promises to be the 'Milk'-iest movie of the year!!!" BOOM!

Four Christmases

Reese obviously doesn't approve of our blog or its contents.

Let's dive right into this holiday romance:

Boy (Vince Vaughn): Hey there hot stuff. I hate my family and don't want to get married and have children because I've seen firsthand how terrible it is to be raised by people you're actually related to. Now that I've grown into a big boy, I don't ever want to spend time with them because they're embarrassing and suffocating. How 'bout you?

Girl (Reese Witherspoon): Ohmigawd me too! We have so much in common...

Boy: That's a satisfactory response. I am a giant and you are a little minx, and I find the top of your head very, very appealing. Let's procreate.

Girl: That is so sweet. I love looking up into your nostrils and the underneath of your chin/neck area is so studly. Let's totally get it on.

(RELATIONSHIP ENSUES. LOVE GROWS OVER MUTUAL DISTASTE FOR CONVENTIONAL FAMILY LIFESTYLE. LONG AWAITED ROMANTIC VACATION DURING THE HOLIDAYS IS CANCELED DUE TO INCLEMENT WEATHER.)

Boy: I guess we could see the family, since we have nothing else to do and have been avoiding it forever. We have shacked up with each other for a while now.

Girl: I suppose you're right. Let's do it.

... Ain't that a cliffhanger? Aren't you dying to figure out what happens? Isn't this the most hilarious premise ever?

Thought so. I just saved you ten bucks. The End.

Bolt: An Epic for Our Time

There is a long and storied tradition of animated films which take great works of drama and literature and adapt them for children, generally by turning the main characters into adorable animals. The Lion King is Hamlet, only with lions and some characters live at the end. The Jungle Book is the Jungle book only with singing. The list goes on and on. Into this crowded but noble arena steps the latest contender, Bolt, a film which breaks new ground by being an adaptation of two different works of literature.

Bolt takes it structure from Homer's famous epic, The Odyssey. As we all learned in Mr. Bosch's ninth grade English class, The Odyssey is the story of Odysseus, a brave Greek hero who finds himself far from home and uses only his wits to overcome all manner of monsters and gods so he can return home to his loving wife. In the film, the Odysseus character is Bolt (John Travolta), a dog who plays a really kickass super dog on TV. However, when Bolt ends up somewhere other than the TV set, he discovers that he does not possess any of the powers he thought he did and instead must rely only on his wits (see the connection?) and a few friends (who end up getting eaten by Charybdis in the second act) in order to get home to his true love, Some Girl (Miley Cyrus).

While Bolt uses the narrative arc of the hero's journey, its emotional heart is taken straight out of Nabokov's famous novel Lolita. For those unfamiliar (we didn't read it in Bosch's class, so you're excused), Lolita is a tale of unrequited love between an older man and a far-too-young girl. Though John Travolta and Miley Cyrus fit neatly into these roles, the creators of Bolt wisely decided that, in this era of Ashton-Demi and Alanis-Uncle Joey, a February-October romance just doesn't have the same edge it did in Nabokov's time. You gotta hand it to Disney: beastility is the new statutory rape and they totally called it first.

I could go on and on about Bolt's myriad literary allusions--its reinterpretation of Hegel's Master-Slave dialectic in the the third act is particularly clever--but this is a movie review, not literature class. What really matter is how well this movie compares to Wall-E. And frankly, it's just not even the same league. Wall-E was a pleasant but ultimately cold movie, with some good laughs but little to say. Bolt, on the other hand, takes many of the seminal works of the English canon and reinterprets them in a way that is understandable and meaningful to kids, adults, and even dogs. So bring Fido along, because this isn't just Lolita with heart, it's also a whole lot of fun.

Australia

Hugh Jackman and his wild beast... Nicole Kidman.

I could start this review with "G'Day" but that'd be so ridiculously cliché.

Oh wait, this entire movie is a giant cliché, so let's go ahead and fire it up with a hearty G'DAY MATE. Get ready, for The Greatest Love Story of Our Time (That Coincidentally Occurs In a Completely Different Time) has arrived. Never before have we witnessed a hot, steamy, passionate vegemite-fueled romance of this caliber. This Outback Steakhouse (damn their pseudo-Aussieness) produced picture takes us to the Land Down Under where Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman search for the mythical Bloomin' Onion.

Hugh Jackman basically plays himself - a wild Australian bush man who's quick to shout "Crikey!" when critters and Aboriginals be actin' all foolish. (It should be noted that Steve Irwin was originally pegged for this Crikey-heavy role, having mastered Crikey like no other.) Nicole Kidman plays a frigid bitch of a Brit, which is a far stretch for her (please note that the preceding comment was in regards to her acting rather than her infamously inelastic forehead). As for the rest of the cast, the platypuses play platypuses very convincingly, as do the kangaroos (who play kangaroos) and the koalas (who play koalas). Let's not forget the wombats and kookaburras, who are not quite as successful but are (for the most part) very capable.

In short, Australia is basically the silver screen equivalent of Foster's beer in its "let's-internationally-capitalize-off-being-Australian-produced-even-though-our-own-countrymen-don't-really-like-us"-ness. I mean, the movie's basically a rip-off of Pearl Harbor, except Kate Beckinsale>Nicole Kidman. Having said that, the top-notch boomerang warfare kicks this puppy up. That and a bangin' didgeridoo score - hollaaaaaa.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to Hugh. He's just so ridiculously sexy - so much so that I'd go as far as say he is the sexiest male specimen alive on this planet at this time and I will stand by that assessment for one calendar year. Hey! Whaddya know? People magazine got with the program. Check out the studmuffin radar on me!

Twilight

For those of you not in the know, I spent a significant amount of time working for a book retailer this year. I am not a hormone-addled pubescent girl, I am not Goth, and I am not a Mormon. For all of the preceding reasons, I had been completely unaware of what Twilight was and how huge it is. Working at a book store changed that, and has set off many alarms. Sure, Twilight is the next Harry Potter they'll tell you. Beware, though: the enormousness of this craze belies the enormity of its subtext...

For those unaware, let me brief you on Twilight as I have come to understand it. This series of books is about vampires. Totally wussy emo vampires. The vampires, in their own world are still kind of cool, but are incredibly strong, and if one was to, for (very specific) example, have sex with a human girl, she'd be completely overpowered and killed. The thing is, one of these totally wussy emo vampires has fallen in love with a human. They decide to stay in love, but in a totally chaste, abstinent relationship.

So here we have a whole Christian-values allegory based on the premise of vampires not being vampires. Does any of that make sense? Are we seriously this deranged as a society that people can like this stuff, let alone totally obsess over it?

Did I mention that they were wussy emo vampires? And did you see the picture of the cast above? Whatever, man. They used to play videos of behind the scenes on the set of "Twilight" at the bookstore. Even the parts that you think might kind of be cool, the action scenes, looked bad.

I wanted to make fun of this movie, but just look at the freaking picture! Any joke would just be redundant. Well, any joke except a penis joke, I guess, but making penis jokes in front of teenage girls is not recommended.