Jonah Hex (2010)

Oops, I didn't know what I was getting into on this one. I'm sure I would have avoided it if I would have known that Megan Fox was in it. Sadly Josh Brolin and John Malkovich were not enough to make this film good. With an estimated $47 million budget and only grossing $11 million in three months at the box office, I would call it a pretty big flop. I'm not sure how
Jimmy Hayward makes a jump from directing Horton Hears a Who! to directing this film, and I'm not sure we will see him do it again soon.
Based on a comic book about a cowboy brought back to life by Indians is far from making sense. Not that this is the most extreme stretch that this film makes, but it gives you a taste of just how bad it was.

This outlandish action film really doesn't deserve to be discussed much. Malkovich was a pretty good villain and saved this film from being a 1.

Vote: 2/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1075747/

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Brothers (2009)

This is the emotional war movie I expected The Messenger to be. A film that breaks your heart then drags you through a families misery. It is a difficult film to watch but some great acting from a young cast. Natalie Portman and Tobey Maguire are husband and wife. Just before heading back to Afghanistan, Maguire picks up his screw up brother [Jake Gyllenhaal] from prision where he has just been released on parole.

While Maguire is gone, Portman and Gyllenhaal become emotionally attached. Not necessarily in a sexual way, but he is there to fill a father role for the kids, and console her. I have to be vague and it is hard to go into detail about why I liked this film so much without spoiling it. It was nominated for two Golden Globes, but one was for a U2 song that played during the closing credits. So it basically had a single credible nomination for Tobey Maguire's performance.

Although difficult to watch, I really enjoyed it. Not a lighthearted film though.

Vote: 8/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0765010/

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Baarìa (2009)

An Italian epic film about a village in Sicily. An autobiographical film following three generations of the Tornatore family. Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore and focusing mainly on his fathers generation, this film was very long and hard to stay interested in.

Nominated for a golden globe, in a foreign language category that the more I watch the more I feel is much much weaker than the Oscar category. The film seems to lack direction as it wanders through the decades, it becomes difficult to tell exactly where we have progressed to. To top that off I was not impressed with Francesco Scianna's acting. The director is famous for his film Cinema Paradiso, and this almost seemed like a nomination to make up for that film.

That probably isn't fair, but the fact is that there were some really good foreign films last year and this was not one of them.

Vote: 5/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1081935/

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The Right Stuff (1983)

This winner of 4 Oscars in 1984 was the final film for me to finish several imdb lists (2004 and 2005 top 250 to be exact).Best picture nominee in the 1984 Oscars that lost out to an emotional film featuring a retired astronaut, Terms of Endearment. This film was nominated for 8 and won all of the non-acting awards, like Effects, Editing, Music, and Sound.

It is almost a film in two parts. The first half focuses on a group of pilots in the desert trying to break the sound barrier. It then transitions on to America int he Space Race. The tie-in is that the first astronauts consisted of pilots, and several of the first were also part of the effort to break the sound barrier.

The film is somewhere between biography, drama, adventure, and epic. This is obviously loosely based on factual events, we really don't get emotionally vested in any of the men in particular, and it is loaded with action and adventure as these men do what not other man has ever done.

I had reservations about making this a 9 or 10. There are too many 80's cheesy moments to make it a 10. The lack of getting emotionally involved kept this out of my 9 range. It really was good though, and has a fantastic cast, namely with Ed Harris, Dennis Quaid, Sam Shepard, and Fred Ward. I liked it a lot more than "Terms..." and am sure that I would have been pulling for it to win almost 30 years ago.

Vote: 8/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086197/

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Il Divo (2009)

I'm not quite sure were to begin with this one. It was nothing like what I expected from seeing it on people's "Best" lists. The film was nominated for an Oscar last year for some sort of film editing. It starts out with some fantastic action sequences introducing countless characters with cool visuals flashing either names up from behind building, etc.

The problem with this film is that it is not made for an international audience. It just makes no sense at all. They follow this guy who is like a political godfather in Italy. He has knocked people off to get as powerful as he now is, and we get to see him running for President. We don't really get to see the side that is trying to bring him down, and we actually spend most of the film talking about how so-and-so took out so-and-so, therefore so-and-so is linked to so-and-so. It is so utterly confusing that you only get the point that we know he is linked to the killings but cannot prove it in court.

Trying to follow this film was painful and pointless, unless you know Italian politics then forget it.

Vote: 1/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1023490/

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The Maid: La Nana (2009)

Nominated for a Golden Globe in the foreign language category. This Spanish speaking film based in Mexico and partially in Chile was actually pretty interesting to me.

Raquel (Catalina Saavedra) is a live-in maid that has been with the family half of her life. She acts as if she is part of the family, and when her stress level is dangerously high it takes several "other" maids to finally get her to calm down. She runs off a couple, then finally makes friends with another. She starts as the villain, then by the end of the film you pity and understand her a little better.

It is a pretty interesting character study. Some unnecessary nudity though. I'm not sure why we needed to see the different maids showering in the mornings or getting dressed. It seemed more like the drector, Sebastián Silva, just wanted an excuse to have them take their tops off.

Vote: 7/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1187044/

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Which Way Home (2009)

The hard to find fifth and final documentary from last years Oscar nominations. I've talked a lot about the other films that "should" have been nominated without seeing the last one that actually was. Probably the most controversial subject manner of the nominees as well, regarding immigration.

The film is about kids that ride trains from Central America through Mexico trying to get to America. Some are murdered, some are captured by smugglers who try and collect ransoms, most are caught and sent back home. The survival rate is low, and the question here is who is letting these kids attempt these outrageous stunts.

It seems that the story with most is that either one or both parents have already made it into the US and they are attempting to find these relatives. Either dad left mom and kids to make money, or both parents left and the kids are stuck with their grandparents. It all boils down to a lack of responsibility on the parents for abandoning their kids. In some cases the kids just run away from home, which is a little different, and hard to place blame on either side.

The subject matter is powerful, but the inability to follow these kids all the way, and the attempts to draw emotion from the viewing audience was a little over the top for me. It was good but not that good.

Vote: 7/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0489342/

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