The Curious Case of Movies in December

Checking in before the New Year.

Israel is still attacking. They’ve sent in air and are amassing ground troops at the border. 394 total are dead, including 63 civilians.

Ugh. Moving on.

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Apparently, a bunch of Zunes are simultaneously dying around the country. Whether this is due to some sort of internal clock malfunction or the awakening of Microsoft’s Global Domination AI is yet to be seen.

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Last night I saw the Curious Case of Benjamin Button with my friends, codenamed Bullseye, Benefactor, and Snot Season. (I’m not really attempting to protect anyone’s identity. I just think codenames are cool.)

The movie came highly recommended and it was the only movie in theaters seemingly worth watching. Valkyrie had Tom Cruise in it, Bedtime Stories had Adam Sandler, and The Day the Earth Stood Still had Keanu Reeves AND Will Smith’s kid, who, combined, quelled my desire to see Jennifer Connelly.

*sigh* Jennifer….

Anyway, it and Doubt are the only well reviewed movies on Rotten Tomatoes, so it seemed like a safe bet.

I thoroughly enjoyed the trailers and I basically want to see every movie. Click on each poster to see a trailer.

Don't let them fool you. It's actually Iron Man 2.

It's...it's Katherine Heigl and Gerard. This is hotness....THIS. IS. THE TRUTH!!!

Shout out to my Neil Gaiman reading group.

Not that I'm a huge Titanic fan, but I liked the message of breaking free from suburbia.

This did not play, but I needed another image for formatting purposes and this looks awesome.

But anyway, Benjamin Button was quite good. They had a lot of attention to detail and Brad Pitt did a really good job acting his ages. It’s from the same guy who penned the Forrest Gump screenplay and it shows, since you’re following a life throughout several decades with the same sort of montage/vignette approach, the difference being that Button is actually changing in age whereas Forrest was 30 in high school. It’s also the director of Fight Club, but any hint of Tyler Durden would probably occur during those stretches of time that the movie glosses over in an attempt to get to the interesting part: How the hell does someone act as he’s regressing into infancy?

The pacing could have been better and a lot could have been cut, but it’s probably one of the best movies of the season and it’s stunning, technically speaking. You get a WWII shoot out on a boat, motorcycles, Cate Blanchett in her prime…all very well done. In an attempt to vary up the story and provide a narrative push to the story, there’s flash forwards to New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, but they’re mostly unnecessary.

The theme that struck a chord with me was Button’s idea that it’s never too late (or in his case too early) to do be who you want to be or, if you’re dissatisfied with who you are, to start over completely. The scenes that struck a chord with me and Bullseye were the ones where a guy gets struck by lightning seven times, for no particular good reason.

So final verdict…Good. But long. And not quite Forrest Gump level of impact.

And that’s a condensed movie review for the final day of 2008.