Man of the Year 7. Aaah... Robin Williams getting to do what Robin Williams does best: run, barely restrained, through a movie production. While it's a hoot to watch, acting opposite him must be a pants-messing nightmare for 90% of today's actors. Case in point, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler look lost to the point of anger while doing a Saturday Night Live bit with Williams in the movie. Perhaps they were acting, but I suspect they're not that good. This sadistic satisfaction aside, MotY is a little uneven, bringing veritable landslides of humor in some places; not so much in others. I loved the entire presidential campaign, but after the election, the plot droops substancially, showing the writer's weakness in handling the less-easy scenes. And, strangely, after the election the setting feels less presidentially, not more. Random strangers being able to walk right up to the president elect? Harder to swallow that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. And inexcusable to me was the fact that nowhere in the film do we learn who Williams' Vice Presidential running mate is. Nowhere! Lastly, I think the writers missed a golden opportunity to bring back the vitality of the first half of the movie. At the end of the film is a brief montage depicting how Williams becomes the "man of the year." While it's quickly glossed over in Hoolywood's standard we're-out-of-time-and-money montage form, I think a large part of the movie's second half could have been condensed in favor of fleshing out this "aftermath," which I think would have felt much more like the first half of the movie, allowing Williams to once again take the hysterical high road.

Man of the Year is what I describe as "cinematic popcorn"... it doesn't have a lot of substance, but you can't help enjoying it.  ¶ 11:46 AM 0 comments

  The Departed 4. Whoo-wee. That's some intense shit right there. The Departed is one of those hard to rate films because it doesn't fit and of the standard movie molds. It's a very raw and harshly realistic movie that doesn't explain itself as it goes along. Either keep up or get the fuck out of the theater. Profanity and violence abound. (How many head shots does it take before you get jaded from seeing them? Answer: more than even this film has.) Nicholson is humorously terrifying as a NYC crime lord. He scared the pants right off me. (Seriously.... the usher had to come around again and tell me to get dressed.) His character is fascinating in that way that being too close to a live grizzly bear is fascinating. I'm told that during casting, Matt Damon and Leonardo [gag] DiCaprio were interchangable as far as which character they would be cast in. I think they made the best choice. Hollywood has finally found the best way to shoot their regrattably-proclaimed golden boy.... in lots of quick, angry glimpses while the rest of the movie is allowed to flow around him. Mark Wahlberg is a 5000-rounds-per-second gattling gun of profanity. And Vera Farmiga's eyes have a mind and pants-altering effect on me.

The Departed is not for the squeemish, nor for those made uncomfortable by non-formulaic plotlines. If you'd like a raw, gritty shot to the head of the other-worldly drama that is the NYC crime scene, this is the movie for you.  ¶ 11:46 AM 0 comments