Ted (2012)

Directed by: Seth MacFarlane (you might know him better as the creator of “Family Guy” and voice of many of the characters on the show I haven’t watched in probably a decade)

Written by: MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin (better known on Twitter as TheSulk and a “Family Guy” writer), and Wellesley Wild (also a “Family Guy” writer)

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, MacFarlane (as the voice of the titular bear), Joel McHale, Giovanni Ribisi, Jessica Barth, Matt Walsh, Ralph Garman, Alex Borstein, narrated by Patrick Stewart and featuring numerous cameos.

What it’s about: an adult male attempts to balance the relationships of his long term girlfriend and his childhood teddy bear that came to life

B-Movie Alternate Title: The Teddy Bear that Came Alive!

Movie Mash Up: any number of “bromance” R-rated comedies with “Teddy Ruxpin” I guess

What I liked: I dig R-rated comedies that refuse to pull verbal punches for the sake of a larger box office due to being able to play to more demographics.  I mean, that is what an R-rated movie should be about, and Ted is a prime example of what they should be.  I’m not a big Wahlberg fan, but he played his role quite well.  Same with MacFarlane, but I’m still not going to watch “Family Guy”.  I love Mila Kunis in everything, and I enjoyed many of the smaller roles as well as the fun cameos.  It’s a fun and interesting story, too, nothing really run of the mill here, and how the whole “the teddy bear is alive” thing is handled was decent.

What I disliked: Sometimes it felt like the entire movie was trying too hard, if that makes any sense.  It was entertaining and all, but it verged into Bad Santa territory without really having earned it, again, if that makes any sense.  I liked it, but I felt a bit dirty for liking it.

Would I recommend it to anyone?: Sure, if they like R-rated comedies, it’s entertaining and fun.

Rating: 3.5 / 5

The Departed (2006)

Here’s something I wrote in the Long Ago about The Departed, and after re-watching it, it is still how I feel.

With five Oscar nominations heading into tomorrow night’s Academy Awards ceremony, The Departed certainly has developed the reputation of an excellent movie. I was somewhat leery about watching it, worried that it would be another in a long line of Best Picture nominees that were clearly well-made, well-acted movies but were only borderline entertaining. Add in that it was a Martin Scorsese-directed film and I was even more worried that I wouldn’t like it since I’m not the biggest fan of Scorsese’s most popular movies. Thankfully all that worrying was for naught as Scorsese has finally made a movie that is an entertaining – albeit derivative – movie.

Actually, saying that’s derivative is pretty redundant as The Departed is a remake of Infernal Affairs, a Japanese movie released in 2002. Unlike the recent Americanization of Japanese movies (The Ring, The Grudge) it has nothing to do with creepy off-putting children scaring the bejezus out of you. Departed just has Jack Nicholson doing his best Tony Montana-descent into madness performance, with a stellar supporting cast grounding the movie in the wonderful cinematic environment of Boston.

It’s the tale of two cops, with Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) infilitrating the Boston police force on behalf of crime boss Frank Costello (Nicholson) and the other, Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) going the other way and immersing himself into Costello’s gang. The story takes place over a few years, but thankfully it doesn’t feel like your typical epic Scorsese movie, time is actually heavily compressed in this movie. Sullivan’s on the inside helping Costello keep a half-step ahead of the Boston cops, while Costigan sacrifices his identity for the Special Investigations department, headed up by the fatherly Olvier Queenan (Martin Sheen) and the foul-mouthed Dignam (Mark Wahlberg).

It’s an intriguing story made all the better by the excellent performances of the entire cast. I’ve never been a Mark Wahlberg fan, but I’d definitely be casting my vote for him to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar this year and those are words that it kills me to type. The most enjoyable performance for me personally was Alec Baldwin, probably his best small part performance since Glengarry Glen Ross. I still have no idea how Matt Damon wasn’t nominated for his role, other than maybe DiCaprio’s performance split the vote but DiCaprio was nominated for his part in Blood Diamond so it beats the hell out of me.

The only two problems I had with the movie are spoilerish in nature, but definitely made the movie feel cartoony with one of the major characters semi-goofy – but heart-wrenching – death as well as the last shot of the movie. Those two sections definitely lend credence to Scorsese personally referring to The Departed as his “B-movie”, but it’s still one of the worthier Best Picture-nominated movies in recent years. It’s entertaining, delivers an engaging story with electric performances and it’s one of those movies that you could see yourself re-watching over and over again.

4.5 / 5

Contraband (2012)

Americanized remakes of foreign films are sometimes just an excercise in pointlessness.  There are very few instances that I can recall off the top of my head where the American version actually accomplished something that the original foreign devils version didn’t.  I’m only speaking from experience here, those being the movies that I’ve seen both versions of, like Quarantine/[REC] or Let the Right One In/Let Me In and even the two The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movies.  I’m sure there are many more that aren’t coming to my mind right now, but the point is that most of the time, the foreign versions are the better ones.  For some subtle reasons, I enjoyed Let Me In better than the original, same with [REC].    Anyways, Contraband is a remake of Reykjavík-Rotterdam which I’ve never seen, so I’m just judging it on its own merit.

Now I’m not a Mark Wahlberg fan at the best of times, so I wasn’t expecting anything great out of this film.  He plays a former smuggler who has gone straight, opening up his own security business and having a hot wife (Kate Beckinsale) and kids and shit, you know where it’s going from here.  Hot wife’s little brother (Caleb Landry Jones) gets in trouble smuggling and dumps the product so he owes the dealer (Giovanni Ribisi) for the dumped product and etc. etc. ONE LAST JOB.  It’s not a terribly inventive premise at all, but whatever, most movies aren’t terribly inventive at all.

I will give this to Contraband: it wasn’t completely boring and bland, and it wasn’t hate-worthy.  You’ve got a solid supporting cast with Ribisi, J.K. Simmons and Ben Foster providing the acting chops, and everything else is predictable window dressing.  But it’s not terrible.  You know what will happen, you can probably write this stuff yourself.  For the most part, the film overachieves because I really expected full-on suckitude, but it was merely alright.

3 / 5

Boogie Nights (1997)

The opening shot of Boogie Nights is a three minute long tracking shot that introduces almost all of the main characters of the film.  It is easily better than the entirety of Bucky Larson, which has a similar theme of a heretofore unknown becoming a big thing in the pornography industry.  This movie was essentially Paul Thomas Anderson’s first real studio film, and it is an epic spanning two and a half hours of late 70s to early 80s porn history.  And really all I want to talk about is Rollergirl (Heather Graham).

Or more specifically, the Rollergirl that I met years and years ago.  Back in the late 90s to early 2000s, I used to be a big bar goer.  There was this one club in Calgary called Outlaws, and every Wednesday night was Boogie Night there.  My work schedule worked out in favour of that, so I frequented it pretty much every week.  One of the first times I was there, our waitress was dressed up as Heather Graham’s character in this movie, Rollergirl.  She was gorgeous, stunning, and funny.  We’d buy her a shot, next time she came ’round she’d get our shots.  I don’t remember how it all happened, but I actually got a waitress’ phone number, and I’m pretty sure by the end of the night we were about to kiss and something happened.  I cling to silly memories like this for some reason.

Anyways, it’s a great movie, but the running time of two and a half hours certainly works against it.  I started writing this thing about halfway through the movie, and I’m pretty sure there’s still a quarter of it left to go.  It features spectacular cinematography, excellent acting, great writing, and a massive cast that all went on to bigger things, or died (Robert Ridgely).  This movie was a huge break for numerous careers, and without it we probably never would have There Will Be Blood which may be one of the greatest movies of all time.  Not for the prude of mind, it’s a dark tale of how fleeting fame can be and how devastating the burning out is.

Ugh, originally I was going with a 4 for the movie, but it’s just far too long.  There are so many little trims Anderson could make to the movie that would actually improve it, in my opinion that is.

3.5 / 5

The Perfect Storm (2000)

Apparently I’m on some sort of George Clooney kick here, and why the hell not?  The man skirted the edges of obscurity for a decade, finally got his break and now he’s one of the closest things to the old Hollywood royalty set.  Most of his movies are critical darlings, and if it weren’t for him, dozens of projects would never get off the ground.  In hindsight though, I wish I’d have watched this one for the blog right after The NeverEnding Story as they’re both directed by Wolfgang Petersen.  I like it when the movies of the day are connected like that.

Anyways, look at all the tagged actors in this movie!  Admittedly, I have a fondness for character actors (“hey it’s That Guy!”) and well a lot of them won’t bring in me in any extra hits, to me they are name actors.  This movie was um, somewhat based on actual events of a real perfect storm that happened in 1991.  Something like eight hurricanes (Wikipedia is down right now, so I have no way to verify if this information is true even though I just watched the damn thing) all massed together like Voltron and wrecked havoc.  Nobody knows exactly what happened to the boat captained by Billy Tyne (Clooney) since well, they all died.  Oh, SPOILER ALERT, sorry.

It’s really hard to get excited for a movie that is going to be such a downer, and for the most part it’s fairly by-the-books.  Clooney and Mark Wahlberg are pretty much the only ship crew that really get a chance to shine, although now that I think about it, William Fichtner and John C. Reilly do get some emotional scenes as well.  Honestly, the allure of the movie isn’t the story, but the special effects and for the most part, they truly shine on Blu-Ray.

3 / 5