When you think back, it all started with Meatballs…

Prior to the 70s, film and movie makers did not worry about catering to teenagers, much less their problems.  The general consensus was that as long as it involved a beach party or Elvis or both, that things were taken care of.  As with other areas of pop culture, things started changing in the 70s.  With the onslaught of several director icons-in-the-making (Lucas, Speilberg, Scorcese), studios were forced to start listening to what inspired those directors.  Grease was made as a way to reach the kids, but 70s teenagers could not fully identify with those of the 50s; not saying that the movie did not do well, just that it did not satisfy what they were looking for.  Then Saturday Night Live comes along with a need to use its stars in movies.  Yet even those movies were more adult and unrelatable.

Then lightning in a bottle.

Meatballs focused on the issues of a kid and helped a generation begin to work through awkward coming of age issues.  Of course none were taken seriously and considered raunchy like Porky’s and Revenge of the Nerds.  Then John Hughes came along.  With his movies, he captured the essence of what we were all going through.  From then on, people tried to copy that elusive formula.

In the 90s, studios tried again and again, but none were well-received except for 10 Things I Hate About You.  This launched a series of movies trying to use Shakespeare as inspiration, most of which were forgettable.  American Pie helped reintroduce the raunch of the 80s.

So we now find ourselves in 2010, and studios are still looking for that movie that will ring true with kids today.

I would argue that Easy A is that movie.

Easy A centers around a girl (Emma Stone) who manufactures a bad reputation to help some awkward boys and give herself a little money.  Contrary to the stories out there about our lead character, there is very little in the way of sexual encounters on-screen.  The A refers to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and is woven into the back ground as a solid through-thread for the story.  We get blatant nods to John Hughes and the character even comes across at times as a female Ferris Bueller.

At no point does the movie dumb things down for the audience.  In a refreshing change of pace, not everyone is given a happy ending, and the main character learns that not all of the damage she created with this stunt can be undone with a simple apology.

My advice: See it at full price and encourage your teen-agers to see it, then discuss it with them afterwards; for an apparent piece of fluff, there is a lot of substance to this movie…

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…

You know how there are some movies that you just have no interest in seeing, despite the fact that you like the genre and similar-looking movies?  Well, that is how it has been for me with Avatar.  Maybe it was the non-stop promotion insisting that I would like it or the incessant fanboy bellowing declaring me an idiot for even thinking about not seeing it or, heaven forbid, not liking it.  As the release date grew closer, I kept wondering how any movie could live up to the hype.

And if this were a normal review, I would tell you that Avatar did.

But this is not a normal review…

Rich talked me into going to see it in IMAX 3-D at Pointe Orlando (the only true IMAX in Orlando) on opening night.  A buddy of his from work had gotten a bunch of tickets and had a whole group going.  I agreed since this would be the best chance of me actually seeing it on the big screen.

For those that have been out of contact with society, Avatar is the story of a soldier who “inhabits” the body of an alien as a way to find weaknesses, but ends up helping the alien race he is supposed to hate.  Now if this plot sounds familiar, then you are alive.  It was the real-life story of Pocohontas and the big-screen feature, Dances With Wolves.  So that Avatar should really be named Pocohontas: Dances With Smurfs.  I can see why James Cameron hid so much detail of the story from the public – we would figure out that we had already seen it.

Now I will not deny that Avatar is leap in technology for movies.  Cameron did a good job with that.  But much like Lucas with the last three Star Wars movies, Cameron has spent so much time on the effects that the story suffers.  Sadly, based on the box office take, no one seems to care.  It might win Best Picture at the Oscars, which would be a blow to movies with an actual story and did not need effects to tell it.

My advice:  see it in a true IMAX theater with 3-D; if you wait until DVD/Blu-Ray, then you will hate the movie…