She's the Man

After such a nice surprise with the previous movie, I got exactly what I expected with this one. It may be nostalgia talking, but I think they did a better job with Just One of the Guys back in the 80s.

I hate to be a hater, but Amanda Bynes was the wrong girl for the part. She may be a cute little girl, but she makes a pretty unattractive male, was completely unbelievable as a boy, and the persona she adopted as Sebastian was so silly that it was un-funny. BUT the presence of Channing Tatum (especially without his shirt) more than made up for her. It was also kind of fun to see Bullet Tooth Tony as a high school soccer coach.

Speak

I used to be a contender, but recently I've been choosing sleep over movies. And really, a lapse in my rate of movie-watching is OK. I can't believe I watched 15 movies in the month of March. One or two movies a week should be more my speed.

I'm almost embarrassed for liking this movie, like I wasn't supposed to or something, but I must admit I was really impressed by it. It was not at all what I expected, but in a good way. The one surprising thing that was a little disapointing (and only because I think the netflix synopsis made a little too much of it) was the fact that Melinda isn't all that mute. I mean, she is quiet sometimes, but she talks an awful lot for a mute person. OK, so netflix did specify that she was "selectively mute," but I think the emphasis of the movie is more on speaking (hence the title, right?) than on not speaking. But I love how Melinda discovered art as a way to express herself.

The people in this movie are real. They're human. They're not slick Hollywood portrayals, they're not silly caricatures, they're not too much or too little. Some of the characters may be stereotypical, but none of them are false or overblown. Every person in the movie, from the normal ones to the most eccentric, changes in some way throughout the story. Melinda's parents, who are slightly clueless, aren't ridiculous the way most parents of teenagers are shown in the movies. And it's not just the characters; the story itself is completely real. The only thing that rings a little false is Melinda's seemingly sudden transformation at the end of the movie, after telling her ex-best-friend her big secret. I guess I shouldn't look at it as so sudden, since theoretically the change occurred over the entire school year, but it seemed like it happened all at once on the last day of school. That's my only complaint, though. Excellent movie.

How to Train Your Dragon

When I first heard of this movie, all I knew about it was what I could glean from the poster displayed at the theater. (In other words, not much.) I had zero interest in seeing it, based on the ad. But once the movie came out, I started hearing good things about it from everyone who went to see it. In fact, one person I know thought it was even better than Avatar. Still not knowing anything about the plot, my interest was piqued. And of course my kids wanted to go see it. They'll take just about any excuse for a trip to the movie theater, as long as it doesn't involve sparkly vampires. (S'okay, they're too young for such stuff anyway).

I definitely give this movie two thumbs up. Fun, funny, and a great story. Most of the time the computer animation is excellent, though at the beginning of the movie the beards of the vikings got on my nerves. They seemed to exist in a nether-world between realistic-looking hair and an acceptably stylized cartoon portrayal, but happily the absorbing story eclipsed my facial hair worries and I forgot all about them. Well, until the end, anyway. At least the hair wasn't bad enough to ruin the movie for me. And they more than made up for bad hair with awesome eyeballs! Dreamworks did a great job getting those eyes to look liquid and alive, and the way the light sometimes gleamed on them was amazing.

Lots of times during animated movies I am distracted by trying to identify voices I recognize, so it was kind of nice that most of the voices sounded unfamiliar to me (although when I looked the actors up online afterwards, I was surprised that Gerard Butler, American Ferrera and Kristen Wiig hadn't sounded familiar to me). At first I thought I recognized the main character's voice, but it didn't take long to figure out it just sounded a lot (but not quite) like Christian Slater.

Oddly enough, the characters' faces actually seemed more familiar than their voices. I thought Snotlout totally looked like Jack Black. Ruffnut and Tuffnut each reminded me of someone but I haven't yet figured out who. And I spent nearly the entire movie thinking Toothless must look like some kind of Pokémon or something because he looked so familiar (although why I thought a Pokémon might look familiar to me, I have no idea), but it hit me at the end: Stitch. I thought Toothless looked a lot like Stitch. I mean, not so much that you'd mistake one for the other, obviously. But their faces are similar, and they have the same legs.

If you have kids (or you are one), go see it! We saw the 2D version (it's cheaper, especially when you're carting 3 kids around) and it was great, so I'm thinking seeing it in 3D isn't necessary.

Up in the Air

Not many surprises here. Crusty old bachelor who has managed to live life commitment-free suddenly finds out that commitment might not be so bad. For some reason I'd been expecting something a little less formulaic, but this one was just as predictable as the rest. The only thing that really surprised me was that, although the crusty old bachelor's outlook changed somewhat throughout the movie, his life situation was exactly the same at the end as it was in the beginning. That's slightly depressing.

It was strange to see Anna Kendrick acting so formal and business-like and un-funny. She did have a hysterical crying fit and drunken party scene to redeem her part. Otherwise her character would have been just plain boring.

I can't help but wonder if George Clooney is just like his character, Ryan Whoever, in real life, and this is how he has managed to stay so famously unattached.

Where the Wild Things Are

This was our movie night movie tonight, but I picked it just as much for myself as for my kids. I really loved the picture book when I was little (as well as many others by Maurice Sendak) and I was curious about what was added to make a feature-length film from it.

I must admit that I did not watch every minute of this movie, which is par for the course of movie night movies, but I'm sure I saw enough to get the gist of it. I must also admit that I had a slight preconceived bias against this movie ever since I heard that Dave Eggers was involved. (I read his book, You Shall Know Our Velocity!, several years ago and was not impressed. Whoever called Eggers the "J.D. Salinger of our generation" needs to be smacked upside the head. To me, one obvious difference between the two authors is that Holden Caulfield surely was not modeled after Salinger, while I was just sure that Eggers was the exact same sort of MTV-style loser as his two main characters. But I digress.)

I didn't like the change they made for the movie that has Max escaping from the house and running away. He was supposed to actually go to his room, not just be told to go there. They really missed an opportunity when they skipped showing the part about how in his room "a forest grew . . . and grew and grew until his ceiling hung with vines and his walls became the world all around . . . " (that may not be an exact quote--I pulled that from memory--but it's close enough). Can you just imagine how cool it would have looked to see the trees and vines growing in his bedroom, and the walls melting away? Plus, I always loved the implication that the whole adventure had been a dream, and I didn't know how they could pull that off if he didn't fall asleep in his bedroom. (They didn't even try, by the way).

I love that the monsters looked just like the monsters in the book, but their voices were too advanced and their emotions were too human. They just don't sound monster-y enough. I couldn't help thinking that the voices were actually coming from the audience of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Not only that, but their movements were not graceful and natural enough. Their slow lumbering waddle made it too difficult to forget that I was watching people wearing monster suits. Even so, I can't express enough how impressed I was with the monster costumes in their faithfulness to the look of the original drawings.

Before he sailed away, Max evidently had some serious anger issues, combined with a distinct lack of self-control. I was sure hoping that his adventure with the Wild Things would solve that flaw in his personality, because I was afraid in a few months Max would start torturing neighborhood cats, and would eventually grow up to be a serial killer. Too bad the part of the movie where he returns home wasn't long enough to show us whether he retained any of the lessons he'd learned with the Wild Things.

If you are wondering whether the monsters would be frightening for children to watch, I'd say I think the scariest part was the doomsday lecture by Max's science teacher. On the other hand, there were a few times my three-year-old squealed and snuggled closer to me (and it wasn't during the lecture).

I feel like all I've done is complain about the movie, but it really wasn't bad. Not necessarily something I'd want to watch over and over again (once was probably enough), and my kids were not interested in watching it again before I return the disk to netflix, but I'd say it's worth seeing once.

I will leave you with my favorite quote from the movie: "Forget it. I'm not going to step on your head just to make you feel better."

The Beat That My Heart Skipped

By now I just assume that a movie like this shows up on my netflix queue because the system suggested it to me after I watched other French movies. I have no recollection of picking it out, and no knowledge of what made it sound interesting to me.

At least, as it turns out, this one wasn't half bad. The first part reminded me of a Guy Ritchie movie, without the humor or the English. (What remains is that it's a movie about small-time European gangsters). Once Tom started playing the piano, though, Guy Ritchie went out the window. This made for an interesting (though, at first, perhaps not especially believable) juxtaposition of a French strong-arm mobster with a desire to be a concert pianist.

As with other French movies, I noticed the English subtitles were a little off from what was actually spoken in French (so "Don't touch me" becomes "Hands off," and "What did you say?" becomes "What did you talk about?") but the main reason I bring this up again is because of the French title of the movie, which is De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté. Now, as I've mentioned before, my French skills are minimal, but I do know that the verb arrêter means to stop, not to skip. I'm probably splitting hairs here, and I must admit that "The Beat that my Heart Skipped" does sound a little more interesting than "My Heart Has Stopped Beating."

I wondered why Tom was smiling triumphantly at the end of the movie. The only thing I can figure is that he feels he has finally put his past behind him and is ready to live completely in the present. He must assume that, because he spared the Russian's life, Minskov considers themselves even. But I don't think a man like Minskov would let a severe beating and ball-twisting go unpunished. If I were Tom, I wouldn't be smiling. I would be very afraid.