The Reel World

There is a difference between calling something the “best” and calling it your “favorite”.  For instance when I look back at the films I’ve seen over the course of the year, I can say Django Unchained is my favorite film of the year that I enjoyed immensely, but I don’t believe I can say it is the best film of the year.  Will Django be a film to live on for decades and be hailed a classic in the annals of film history?  It’s too soon to even suggest such notions, but what I can say is that the film was a hell of a good time. 

"Who is Jack Reacher? Born Jack, not John. No middle name. He's a ghost. Served in the military police. A brilliant investigator, troublemaker, too. And two years ago he disappears. You don't find this guy unless he wants to be found."

We've found him. The character of Jack Reacher comes from a series of thriller novels written by Lee Child. From the very start you know that this is going to be a different kind of Jack Reacher

"My dear Frodo, you asked me once if I had told you everything there was to know about my adventures. Well, I can honestly say I've told you the truth, but I may not have told you all of it..."

It's hard to believe that it's been a decade since Peter Jackson last brought us to the fantastic lands of Middle Earth. It was one of Hollywood's most ambitious projects ever. Jackson took on the perilous journey of adapting J.R.R. Tolkien's famous Lord Of The Rings trilogy. Perilous because of the beloved place the works hold in the hearts of those who have read them over the years. There is such a wonderfully detailed world delivered by Tolkien that we already had very vivid ideas of these places and characters.

“They just want the same thing over and over again. They put me in a coffin…and now they’re nailing it shut.”

He has been regarded as “the master of suspense”, “the greatest British filmmaker”. He is Alfred Hitchcock; well, in this case, Anthony Hopkins portraying the infamous director. Set during the time of Hitchcock’s most notable and influential film, Psycho, the film walks you the through the entire process of the making of said movie without that boring documentary vibe typically found.

If you’ve been to a multiplex over the last few months, there’s a decent chance you’ve seen the one-sheet promoting Playing for Keeps accompanied by the tagline, “This Holiday Season, What Do You Really Want?” Let’s pretend we know absolutely nothing about this film, shall we? Gerard Butler occupies the biggest rectangle, so he’s clearly the star. Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine as to what this movie is actually about.

"They cry, they plead, they beg, they piss themselves, they cry for their mothers. It gets embarrassing. I like to kill 'em softly. From a distance."

Brad Pitt demonstrates that very well during one of his execution scenes. Killing Them Softly is director Andrew Dominik’s adaptation of the 1974 novel, Cogan’s Trade by George V. Higgnins. This film is Dominik’s third go-around serving as both writer and director (the other two times being Chopper and The Assassination of Jesse James), and I must say that he seems at home with double the amount of work.

"For them this is just some place. For us it's our home… it's up to us to fight for it."

For decades it was the doomsday scenario. Cold War Americans lived in almost constant fear that the Soviets might drop a nuke on us and begin Armageddon. It was unthinkable that a conventional invasion could reach our shores instead. Red Dawn stirred its own mushroom cloud of controversy when it reached theaters in August of 1984.

"Pause...take a breath."

At first you might expect A Late Quartet to be about the music. There is certainly plenty of it to go around. The film even manages to convince us that Christopher Walken is a renowned cello player even though we all know what he can do with a pocket watch. Yeah, you caught yourself smiling there, even if you'd like to believe you're above such things. It demonstrates the real strength of the film.

There’s an old showbiz adage warning performers to “never work with children or animals.” There’s also an impressive list of legendary filmmakers — including Steven Spielberg and James Cameron — who struggled mightily to make water-based blockbusters like Jaws and Titanic. (That list also includes somewhat less legendary names like Kevin Reynolds and Waterworld.) Apparently, no one told Ang Lee any of this before he agreed to make Life of Pi.

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this..."

These were strong words, and the man who spoke them was certainly a dominant figure in American history.