I’ve been a Jason Bateman fan since he first popped up on Silver Spoons, playing the smart-ass sidekick of Ricky Schroeder.  They spun his character off to a one-season wonder called It’s Your Move.  This should have been the clue as to how his career would unfold.  Bateman has always thrived more in situations where he was the supporting actor and not the lead.  His timing and reactions make him the perfect straight guy for wackiness around.

Since Arrested Development folded, Bateman has been given two opportunities to headline a movie.  The first one, Extract, did not do well.  Granted, it was a Mike-Judge effort and those can be hit or miss; Office Space hit, this was a miss.  The second one is the subject of this review.  To help him carry the load, The Powers That Be cast Jennifer Aniston as his love interest — not a bad gig for Jason Bateman.

I had some time to kill between getting off work and going to a function, so I decided to catch a late-afternoon showing at the Premier Cinema in Fashion Square Mall.  I grabbed my snacks and headed in.

The story centers around Bateman’s character, despite the title of the movie and the ads.  He is a guy in love with his best friend but unable to tell her.  What unfolds is perhaps, for me, the most depressing comedy I have ever seen.  Depressing because the story does not contain many laughs, and depressing because it hits too close to home.  Aniston and Bateman do a great job of acting and I feel both were well cast.  Unfortunately, for me, the movie fails at the point of trying to figure out why it was made.  All it does is depress guys like me and make women similar to Aniston’s character question the intentions of all their male friends (of course I tend to side with Billy Crystal from When Harry Met Sally on this subject).

My advice:  Skip it; outside of good acting jobs, this movie has nothing to offer you as a movie-goer…

The mark of greatness in an actor labeled as a superstar celebrity is their ability to perform in a role and have the audience forget that they are watching a superstar celebrity.  Jimmy Stewart was good at this, as was Harrison Ford in earlier roles.  Kevin Spacey is probably one of the best at it today.  George Clooney, on the other hand, has had issues with this.  In the late 90s and early 2000s, it was hard to see past the celebrity while watching Batman & Robin or Ocean’s 11.  He has been doing a better job of this given the amount of acting acclaim that he has received over the past 5 years (and Academy Award nominations).

Enter The American…

The American is a character study.  It is not a movie that you would expect to see in a megaplex to close out the summer; rather, it is one that you find at your local arthouse.  With a foreign director and being set in Europe, it is no surprise that it has a foreign film feel to it.  Clooney plays a man good at killing people.  The movie opens with him being hunted.  No explanation is given and none is needed.  The story is not about why he is being hunted; it is about the effects of the choices of his life and his attempts to pull himself out of the depths of hell he has put himself.

This movie is all about the relationships.  Clooney’s shot at redemption with the priest and the hooker; the hunter and the prey; and the environment and Clooney.  All of the cast does well with each role.  There is very little dialog, with half of it being in Italian.  The trailers do not do the movie justice, as they only focus on the action.  The action is completely shown in the trailers — the rest is quiet and slow.

My advice: wait for video — I am glad to have seen the movie, but I am not in any rush to see it again…

Some movies are easy to get excited about by just the mere mention of a title:

• Star Wars – before 1999
• Indiana Jones – before 2008
• Transformers – before 2009
• James Bond

For some movies, this would bother me.  For months I would hear the title “Avatar,” but no one could tell me what it was other than some geeks were going crazy over Internet rumors.  Snakes on a Plane was another that had no details shared other than Samuel L. Jackson, snakes, and a plane.  So, you can just imagine how I was reacting to hearing “Inception” and not much more.

Then I saw some poster images, where the guys over at Ain’t It Cool News where pointing out similarities to poster art for The Dark Knight.  That’s when I found out that Christopher Nolan was directing.  Nolan has definitely earned a lot of credit in my book, given what he has done with the Batman franchise and other films.  He likes to film things on a grand scale and use as little computer-work as possible.  This harkens back to when Lucas and Spielberg were first starting out and actually knew how to do stuff.

Rich and I decided to go see this film at the last minute on a Sunday evening – that meant no good theater; we were stuck with Regal at Waterford Lakes.  After getting in, we were slightly surprised at the packed theater.  Then the film rolled…

Inception is about a man (Leonardo DeCaprio) who extracts information from people’s brains through the use of dreams.  For this mission, however, he is being hired to plant an idea.  What follows is the assembling of a team, designing of a dream, and then the execution.  As with all great stories, to say more would be too much.

I found the acting to be great.  A number of recognizable actors signed on to play supporting roles, including Nolan’s good luck charm of Michael Caine.  Ellen Page does well as the “grounded” person of the team, with none of the ghosts of previous roles popping out at inappropriate times.  Nolan does a masterful job of bringing everything to life, yet leaving you with wanting more.

My advice: see it, on a real IMAX – worth every penny and then some…