Blue Jasmine - DVD Review

Starring Cate Blanchett, Sally Hawkins, Alec Baldwin, Bobby Cannavale, Andrew Dice Clay, Louis C.K., Peter Sarsgaard and Michael Stuhlbarg. Directed by Woody Allen.

★★★

Woody Allen may be a pedophile-scumbag, but he's a good writer. It'd be nice to see if he's capable of writing a movie that doesn't have infidelity.

Cate Blanchett is the star of the show here as Jasmine, an upper-crust wife whose life is shattered after her philandering multi-millionaire husband (Alec Baldwin) goes to jail for his Bernie Madoff-level of fraud. The movie goes back and forth between two times, before the fraud was discovered, and how Jasmine's trying to piece her life together now. She goes to move in with her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins), whose own life (and marriage) were ruined when they put all their money into one of her husband's schemes.

Blanchett earned her Golden Globe and SAG wins for this role. It's a great part, but she also makes the most of it. Sometimes good parts float other boats, and all the other actors play well off of her.

Seriously, is there a Woody Allen movie that didn't have infidelity in it?

To Rome with Love - DVD Review

Starring Woody Allen, Alec Baldwin, Roberto Benigni, Penelope Cruz, Judy Davis, Jesse Eisenberg, Greta Gerwig, Ellen Page, Alessandra Mastronardi, Alessandro Tiberi, Allison Pill, Ornella Muti and Flavio Parenti. Directed by Woody Allen.

 ★★½

This is middle-of-the-road hit-and-miss Woody Allen.  I mean, I'm still a big fan.  Seeing that white Windsor font against the black screen while a really old song plays is the best kind of introductory cinematic comfort food.

This is an ensemble piece where we have four stories going on that don't bother to link to each other, save for that they all take place in Rome.  We meet a newlywed Italian couple where the uptight husband (Alessandro Tiberi) is the young-Woody stand-in, nervous and insecure.  We meet an architect (Jesse Eisenberg) who runs into an old pro (Alec Baldwin) who may just be an older version of himself.  We meet two nervous parents (Woody Allen, Judy Davis) flying to Italy to meet their daughter's Italian fiance. We also meet Leopoldo (Roberto Benigni), an office drone who is suddenly famous and stalked by paparazzi for no discernible reason.

The success of the movie depends on how successful each storyline works in its own right and how they come together as a whole.  Well, they don't come together as a whole, so how are the parts?

The Benigni thread worked best for me.  It had the whimsical what-if fairy dust of Purple Rose of Cairo or Deconstructing Harry.  I enjoyed Penelope Cruz popping into the newlywed thread as a high-priced call-girl, even if it never lived up to its premise.  The Woody Allen thread had one good gag.  The Eisenberg/Baldwin thread was a waste. I blame some of it on the miscasting of Ellen Page, but the older Baldwin, seeing the trainwreck coming, doesn't really try to stop it.

So it's not a nailgun to the skull like Whatever Works or Curse of the Jade Scorpion, but there are a good twelve Woody movies I'd recommend over this one.

2012 Screen Actors Guild Award Winners

Movies
BEST CAST - Argo (Affleck, Cranston, Goodman, Arkin, etc.)
BEST ACTOR - Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln
BEST ACTRESS - Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR - Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS - Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables

Television
BEST CAST COMEDY - Modern Family (O'Neill, Bowen, Stonestreet, etc.)
BEST CAST DRAMA - Downton Abbey
BEST ACTOR COMEDY - Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock
BEST ACTRESS COMEDY - Tina Fey, 30 Rock
BEST ACTOR DRAMA - Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad
BEST ACTRESS DRAMA - Claire Danes, Homeland
BEST ACTOR MOVIE/MINISERIES - Kevin Costner, Hatfields & McCoys
BEST ACTRESS MOVIE/MINISERIES - Julianne Moore, Game Change

Rise of the Guardians - Movie Review

Starring the voices of Chris Pine, Alec Baldwin, Hugh Jackman, Jude Law and Isla Fisher.
Directed by Peter Ramsey.

★★★

With childhood heroes like these, who needs the Avengers?

Okay, Avengers was a better movie, but this is a decent entry into the animated Christmas movie sub-genre.  I liked it about as much as Polar Express.

Santa Claus (Baldwin), the Easter Bunny (Jackman), the Tooth Fairy (Fisher) and the silent Sandman have been defending the children of the Earth for hundreds of years.  They answer to the Man in the Moon, who somehow telepathically communicates to them.  When the Boogeyman (Law) regains some of his long-dormant strength, a new Guardian is selected to join them: Jack Frost (Pine).

Frost is more about mischief than protection, and he has to learn to play nice with others and find his inner strength, believe in himself, etc. (Ever notice how many kids' movies have the message "Believe in yourself?")

It's missing a lot of the pop-culture references and cynicism that's marked so many DreamWorks Animation's efforts.  There's some amusing stuff there for adults, but it's mainly aimed at kids.  I found it a bit strange to have Santa be this tattooed Russian sword-fighter, and the Easter Bunny's a bit of an Aussie thug. I'm guessing one of his inspirations was Rabbit from Winnie-the-Pooh.  The Tooth Fairy's more bird than Tinkerbell, and Jack Frost is just your regular teenage boy.

Random Movie Stuff - 1/31/12

- Adam Sandler will star in the live-action big-screen treatment of Candy Land, based on the board game. Kevin Lima (Enchanted) will direct.

- Dennis Quaid has joined the cast of The Words, starring Bradley Cooper as a successful author who has to pay the price for stealing someone else's work. Jeremy Irons, Zoe Saldana, Olivia Wilde, Ben Barnes and JK Simmons co-star.

- Clint Eastwood will act again in Trouble with the Curve. He will play an aging baseball scout who's losing his sight, who goes on one last trip to check out a hot prospect. Amy Adams will play his daughter, who joins him on the trip. It will open September 28, opposite Won't Back Down, a drama about two mothers (Viola Davis, Maggie Gyllenhaal) trying to make a difference at their local school, and Loopers, a sci-fi time-travel actioner where an assassin (Bruce Willis) runs into the younger version of himself.

- Taylor Lautner is now out of the Stretch Armstrong movie, dropped by Universal, and now Relativity has picked it up and has set aside April 2014 for a release date.

- Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, who'll appear in The Silver Linings Playbook later this year, will reunite for Serena, based on the Ron Rash best-seller about a husband-wife team lording over their new timber empire in 1929 North Carolina. When she finds out she cannot hanve children but he has fathered a son from an affair, she seeks to murder the boy.

- Patrick Wilson is reuniting with his Insidious director James Wan for another ghost story, this one about a haunted farmhouse. Vera Farmiga (Source Code), Ron Livingston (Office Space), and Lili Taylor (The Haunting) will co-star.

- The X-Men: First Class cast has signed back on for a sequel (including James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence), and Matthew Vaughn will return as director.

- Simon Cowell will not bring back host Steve Jones or judges Paula Abdul or Nicole Scherzinger for the next season of The X Factor.

- After being diagnosed as pre-diabetic, Alec Baldwin cut sugar out of his diet, and he claims he's lost 30 pounds in the past four months.