2009 Movie List

January

1. Bloodwork - Clint Eastwood as retired cop who gets a heart transplant from the victim of a serial killer and is called back into the game to catch him. **

2. Towelhead - The story of an Iranian-American girl's sexual awakening with her rapist neighbor (Aaron Eckhart). ***

3. The Wicker Man - Nicolas Cage is summoned by his ex-girlfriend to an island with its own crazy set of laws and customs. *

4. Everything is Illuminated - Nothing like the book, but a pretty good movie nonetheless. (Elijah Wood) ***

5. Rest Stop: Don't Look Back - For real, I can't believe I rented this. 

6. Murder at 1600 - Diane Lane and Wesley Snipes solve a murder at the White House. **

7. Frost/Nixon - A dramatic rendition of the interview of Nixon by British talk show host David Frost. (Michael Sheen) ****

8. The Stand - 8 hour mini-series about a post-apocalyptic world. (Rob Lowe) **

9. Hostel 2 - A really bad sequel to a really bad movie. *

10. American Gangster - A mob movie starring Denzel Washington, based on a real figure in Harlem history (Frank Lucas) which I watched because Norman Reedus was in it for 1 minute. He said one line. ***

11. The Great Debaters - Based on true events, about a black college debate team who defeats Harvard. From what I read, they didn't actually debate Harvard, but they did defeat a well-ranked white team. (Denzel Washington) ****

February

12. The Uninvited - This is apparently based on the really popular and good South Korean horror movie A Tale of Two Sisters. I'd have to watch it again to compare them, because I saw it along time ago. Anyway, the movie was pretty good on its own. The big difference I can say immediately was that the American version was a whole lot more obvious. There was a dead giveaway in the middle of the twist ending, which if it hadn't been there, would have made the movie a lot better. But it was entertaining, and kind of scary, at least. ***

13. Revolutionary Road - Man, I really didn't like this movie at all. It won Golden Globes, and is apparently nominated for Oscars, which I can't imagine. The acting seemed really stilted. I get that they were trying to seem like people from the 50s, but I'm not sure I believe that people spoke in a stilted way then. They were stilted, except when they were yelling the f-word at each other. I really want to read the book, because I feel like it will work a lot better as a novel, but the movie was really disappointing. Neither character was sympathetic, especially April, and I really couldn't wait for it to be over.

14. The Reader - I think, sadly, that my feelings towards this movie suffered because I saw it as part of a Kate Winslet double feature, and I hated her a lot in the first one. This movie was overall good, and moving, although I wouldn't say it was great. I think more could have been done with it, though I'm not sure how. I just feel like movies dealing with the Holocaust always move me a lot, and this one barely touched me. I felt the same way as about Revolutionary Road, almost no one in the movie was sympathetic, so I didn't feel sad when they were destroyed. The thing that bothered me most was that Kate Winslet spoke with a German accent some of the time. My friend K thinks it would have been distracting if she hadn't, because all the other actors were German, and thus spoke with German accents in English, but I just thought it was ridiculous. She's not German, and everyone was speaking English anyway! Grrr. It almost ruined my enjoyment of the movie, which might say something about me, but whatever.