Dberm108's Blog

Extract movie review

David Berman — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:41:19 +0000

What a great cast for a comedy: Jason Bateman, Mila Kunis, Ben Afleck, Kristen Wiig, and more. What a bad comedy: Extract. Great cast squandered. A few laughs, but mostly sour, bitter, and mean spirited. The plot: a bunch of idiots and jerks make bad choices with bad consequences. The kind of movie that you stumble across on Comedy Central, watch for 10 minutes, then switch to something else. Not recommended.

Away We Go movie review

David Berman — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:38:09 +0000

Away We Go is another dysfunctional American suburban family comedy by director Sam Mendes, following American Beauty and last year’s Revolutionary Road. In this case, the central couple is not too dysfunctional, just young, winsome, and still trying to figure out what to do with their lives besides be together and have a baby. And where to live once they have it. Thus, they embark on tour of various options all around the US and Canada. This tour starts out quirky and amusing, but quickly devolves into the equivalent of Dante’s Inferno of screwed-up couples and their mangled offspring. Each couple they visit is horribly messed up, each in a totally different way than the ones before. It is meant to be insightful and satirically amusing, but it becomes disturbing and depressing to be shown absolutely no successful parenting role models for the young couple to befriend or emulate. Not nearly as grim as Revolutionary Road, where Leo and Kate argue viciously their whole lives then die. But not the transcendentally brilliant social satire of American Beauty either. Instead, it is a quirky, sweet, touching little picture. Well acted, especially Maya Rudolph, who gives a winning and nuanced performance after years of SNL caricatures. It tries to be a wry, uplifting comedy, but for me it was dragged down by too many characters and couple screwed up to the point of ugliness. The central couple ends up with hope they will live happily ever after all. But based on all the other examples shown, I fear their hope must be misplaced. A lot of good elements in this movie, but ultimately a letdown.

Fragile Human Hits the Sidewalk

David Berman — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:34:25 +0000

I am on my daily bike ride, the last minutes of daylight fading around me. Suddenly not far in front of me I see a small white-haired asian woman flailing out of control instead of walking along the sidewalk. She hits the pavement face first and lies still as I pull up beside her. A local woman and her son arrive from across the street same time as I do. “Don’t touch her, don’t talk to her,” the woman advises both her son and me. “You could get sued.” “OK, don’t touch her, but we can talk to her, can’t we?” I suggest, simultaneously dialing 911 for an ambulance. Before we can work out how to help without risking legal consequences, a young woman bursts onto the scene, announcing she’s a nurse as she takes over. By now the little old lady is regaining consciousness and wants to get up, but the nurse won’t let her, fearing she might have a spinal injury. I don’t think that’s likely, having watched her fall, but I understand that’s the proper first aid response. The ambulance arrives after a few minutes, red lights flashing in the now gathering darkness of twilight. Two paramedics help the fallen woman onto a stretcher, witnessed by the small crowd of neighbors, joggers, and strollers who have quickly gathered. Realizing the situation is entirely under control, I get back on my bike and pedal off toward home, past the dispersing crowd, past the idling ambulance, past the smear of blood left behind where the old woman’s face had hit the ground. Finishing my bike ride in near darkness, I feel painfully aware of what fragile creatures we are, and I am glad no passing cars run me over, since I have seen enough ambulances for one evening. I make it home safe and sound. Which is more than I can say for some people.

Taking Woodstock movie review

David Berman — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:33:29 +0000

The title Taking Woodstock has a trick meaning. Not like taking the beach at Normandy. It means Taking Woodstock the way hippies took LSD to expand their mind and realize higher consciousness. Suggesting Woodstock was a giant psychedelic experience that America ingested and was never the same afterward. The movie itself follows the same psychotropic trajectory. It starts off as a tightly wound narrative of a young man who comes home to take care of his elderly parents’ failing motel in the Catskills. The family dynamics have sharply observed edges almost to the point of absurdity, reminiscent of Ang Lee’s earlier film The Ice Storm. Demetri Martin tries to be the good son by straining to save the motel, while his jewish parents are spitting caricatures of my own bubbie and zadie: nagging, kvetching, bargaining like the extreme jewish stereotypes they are. Then comes the Woodstock music festival, sweeping everything small and normal away in an tsunami of hippie industry. We see the effects the concert has on the characters, but we don’t ever really see the concert itself, except as a distant hubbub. Finally, Demetri Martin’s character drops acid and it blows his mind. And at the same time it appears that Ang Lee took acid too, because he drops the crisp narrative threads and lets them unravel into a random non-linear tapestry. It’s like he’s saying LSD blew Demetri’s mind, and Woodstock blew America’s mind, and making this movie blew the director’s mind. So it all ends up a big cosmic mess: the characters, the country, the movie. That’s what happens when you tune in, turn on, drop out. By the end, the movie is not about Woodstock but about a boy working out his issues with his immigrant parents and getting on with his life. Ably abetted by the wise council of Liev Schreiver giving a unique performance as a transvestite marine with attitude to spare. All and all a funny, interesting study of the impact of half a million hippies spending a weekend with the town folks in the country. Then everyone gets high, including Bubby and Zaidie, and wander off in all directions. Recommended especially for those with a soft spot for the psychedelic sixties. I liked it OK.

Fin Man

David Berman — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:32:29 +0000

There was an armada of party boats blaring music, floating in the waters of Maunalua Bay, a hundred yard boat ride from our beach in the back of the Pink House. My young buff neighbor Juan wanted to check it out. So go check it out, I told him. No he needed me to go with him to swim out to the party. He needed me to be his wing man. Wing man? I protested. Fish don’t have wings, they have fins. He clearly wanted me to be his fin man. OK, fin man, come on, Juan agreed.

I didn’t know about having to swim to a party. I’ve never had to do that before. I promised to put on a bathing suit, go to the water’s edge, and decide if I felt like swimming out. Christ, I find it socially awkward enough to show up uninvited at a party using the locomotion of my own two legs like a proper mammal. Not emerging dripping from the shimmering deep like a stuck tuna.

But Juan wouldn’t take no for an answer. He just fidgeted from foot to foot, biting his lip tentatively and soft focusing his floundering eyes everywhere but in my direction. OK, I’ll go, but just for a quick visit. And off we swam. Side-by-side attacking the waves. Juan could have darted ahead, being a much better swimmer than I, but he was a good fin man and he let me keep pace with him so we would arrive together. When we paused together half way there, a group of drunken bikinied beauties cheered and beckoned us to continue. They were thrilled to use their abundant female charms to lure us to their side.

When I arrived at the side of the boat, one bouncing beauty reached out a hand to greet me. She pulled me from the surf like beached dolphin, and I rolled on the deck gasping for breath, fit to be filleted. Quickly I established basic composure, grabbing a corona and hoisting myself into a seat at the edge of the 3 gyrating beauties shaking their ample booties. One guy staggered over to ask if I were one of the Kennedys? Must have heard a hint of Massachusetts accent amidst the gasping and glugging, or it was my rugged east coast good looks he was noticing. I’m the Kennedy who’s still alive, I replied, which he thought was too funny.

I finished my beer while the sound system blared the can can song from the follies bregier. Everyone kicked along like the cast of Moulin Rouge, including one brown beauty doing synchronized swim in the water by herself, zen-master style. When the music stopped, Juan and I bid farewell and leapt off the deck back into the heaving ocean.

As we swam hard back toward shore, one drunk guy on the dock shouted Is that your girlfriend waiting for you on the beach? Probably one of them, I called back over my shoulder, imagining the shore lined with hypothetical loved ones. When Juan and I finally washed up on shore I said hi to the woman waiting on the beach. She looked like she used to be pretty when she was younger; now she was mostly pretty drunk. Waiting for the guys on the party boat to notice her and send a jet ski for her. Waiting in vain, so far. Either they couldn’t see, or they couldn’t bother. No chance she was going to swim out like Juan and me. So I left her standing forlornly on the beach. Waiting until such time as we meet again. Or something else. Another good day in Hawaii

Inglorious Basterds movie review

David Berman — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:23:42 +0000

Inglorious Basterds is a Tarentino-esque mess of a movie. One quarter excellent and three quarters awkward and nonsensical. Don’t believe the preview that the movie is about Brad Pitt and a jewish dirty dozen killing nazis behind enemies lines. It’s about that for about 15 minutes out of 2.5 hours. Mostly it’s about six or seven cat and mouse standoffs between opposing characters that are nerve wrackingly tense because they threaten to explode at any time but don’t. Instead the antagonists just talk and talk and talk instead of pouncing. I found this tedious yet fascinating the first time, but after multiple iterations it became obvious that the payoff was way too small to justify the extremely patient viewing it took to get there. So ultimately I found this movie too long and too dull, despite a very few moments that really worked. There’s no sign that Tarentino cares about the story he’s telling, he just cares about drawing iconic characters. The most ridiculous plot point among many is when Brad Pitt, who is supposed to be all that, poses as an italian filmmaker as he tries to infiltrate a posh German movie premier under the cunning eye of nazi security agent. But gets caught instantly because he only speaks limited italian in a hillbilly accent. That was lame. Tarentino also cares about making a movie about movies about movies. He shows Goebbels making a propaganda movie where the actual facts don’t matter, so he takes the same license to outrageously change historical facts in the movie. Movies don’t have to make sense, he is saying, they have to sweep us away with fantastic magic. So he says, but mostly he just confounded me with nonsense. BTW, don’t worry that this movie is too violent, because it’s not. It has very little violence, especially for a war movie. What violence there is is sometimes graphic and gross, but only for a few quick moments here and there. Mostly we just watch people sitting around talking and talking waiting for something to happen. Must see for Tarentino fans, obviously. But for the general public, not so much.

District 9 movie review

David Berman — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:21:47 +0000

District 9 is absolutely brilliant. A combination of political thriller, social commentary, intelligent sci-fi, and just the right dollop of shoot ‘em up action adventure. It features a million stranded ET’s, all unable to phone home. Instead they are placed in temporary makeshift housing, which we find twenty years later as a stinking, crime and disease ridden ghetto, echoing refugee camps and occupied territories throughout modern xenophobic human history. Regardless of the sci-fi context of space ships and CG alien creatures, this is totally a socio-political story of US versus THEM. The ghetto-bound ETs are hated entirely because they are other. Despite initial liberal bureaucratic intentions, they are inevitably treated inhumanly because they are not human. Then the story follows one middling corporate nobody who is promoted purely through nepotism to spearhead a corporate/military relocation of the aliens with initially disastrous but ultimately redemptive results. I don’t want to say any more about the story, because it is such an innovative and unique vision that it is best seen with as little foreknowledge as possible. Easily the best movie of the summer, probably the best movie of the year so far. Very gritty and harsh, so maybe not for the overly squeamish. But absolutely must see for everyone else. I’m tempted to give it the best picture oscar without waiting to see what the rest of the year will bring.

(500) Days of Summer movie review

David Berman — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:19:37 +0000

An unusual romantic comedy where the couple are destined to break up at the end. They show you that right from the beginning. 500 days, that’s it. So we see a real relationship come together and come apart, not a predictable romantic fairy tale living happily ever after. Refreshingly honest and accurate for a romantic change. Well written, creatively directed, especially the split screen scene showing expectations unfolding on one half and cold reality on the other. Brilliant performance by 12 year old little sister who knows more and better relationship advice than big brother ever will. But only flaw for me is Zooey Deschanel doesn’t have what it takes to play the girl that all men instantly want. She’s cute and perky, but hardly mesmerizing and irresistible. Maybe Scarlett Johanson would have been a better choice. Good job over all for telling a romantic tale about real life instead of same old fairy tale. And the whole movie ends up a setup for a brilliant single punch line at the end. Worth seeing.

Funny People movie review

David Berman — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 10:55:49 +0000

Judd Aptow’s Funny People turns out to be two very different 70 minute movies for the price of one. The first mini movie was pretty damn good; the second one, unfortunately, was pretty damn bad. The first mini movie takes place in the challenging world of professional stand-up comedy. It tells the unlikely buddy story of two comedians, one young and disappointingly unsuccessful and the other old and even more disappointingly very successful. It just goes to show you what a tough business comedy is. The dramatic struggle of that story resolves, but to my surprise, the movie doesn’t have the good sense to end. Instead, it launches into an equally long second act that thematically has almost nothing to do with the first half. This half prominently features writer/director/producer Apatow’s real life wife and two too cute to be true real life daughters. It’s like a very expensive home movie showcasing all his relatives acting, singing, dancing, mugging for the camera. It made me wonder at which point I gave the film maker permission to show me video from his recent family summer vacation. Meanwhile, the nominal storyline in this half of the movie was awkward, tedious, and rather intentionally not at all funny. Strangely reminiscent of recent Aptow/Rogen films as Pineapple Express and the horrible more recent Observe and Report: first half funny and entertaining, second half dramatic, unfunny, and unentertaining. What’s the matter, they can’t figure out to make a movie that’s funny and dramatic at the same time? Apparently not. Thus, Funny People ends up being all in all a disappointment, particularly because I had been rather eagerly waiting for the movie to arrive. Unfortunately, after an interesting and amusing first half, I spent the second half of the movie eagerly waiting for it to depart. Recommend you wait till it comes out on video, then stop paying attention when the self-indulgent home video section begins.

Man rescues crab

David Berman — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 06:33:24 +0000

Today in pinkhouse news, local resident Juan saved a badly injured sand crab from sure death after it mistakenly found its way into our chlorinated fresh-water swimming pool. “He must have gotten turned around, Juan told an interviewer. Without a moment’s thought to his own personal safety, Juan removed the seemingly lifeless crab from the pool, and returned it to the ocean, where it showed tentative signs of reviving. Juan was recently filmed by the Discovery Channel for his efforts rescuing sea turtles caught in nets in local waters. Today’s actions indicate his commitment to care for even the smallest marine animals. He was ably assisted in his rescue efforts by jogging mate Ocean, a noted marine conservationist and likewise pinkhouse resident in good standing. Stay tuned for further updates.

Juan returns crab to ocean

Pinkhouse news update: Despite the best effort of concerned neighbors, the rescued sand crab was pronounced dead at 1:43 PM HST. The cause of death is assumed to be acute chlorine exposure. There is believed to be no truth to the rumor the salty crustacean may have thrown himself into the pool after struggling with depression, despite a long history of being crabby. At this time, Michael Jackson’s personal physician has not been taken in for questioning.

A brief memorial service was held at water’s edge, attended by dozens of voracious but possibly grief-stricken ants, and one member of the media. In lieu of flowers, the crab’s adopted family suggests that donations be made to the pinkhouse tenants ping-pong-table fund.

Da crab: Rest in Peace.

Crab funeral with many ants in attendance

Final update:
A pinkhouse news investigation has uncovered the possibility of foul play in the recently reported death of the sand crab in our swimming pool. The death was originally reported as an accidental drowning, or possibly a tragic suicide. But in a follow-up interview, neighbor Juan admitted his suspicion that the crab had been tossed in the pool by one of the younger members of a nine-day wedding group who had just departed the pinkhouse days before the incident. Juan admitted that he had thought this the most likely explanation all along, rather than the astounding theory that the crab had mistakenly wandered the considerable distance from the beach around the side of the pinkhouse and eventually into the pool. He explained that he had posited his original “the crab must have gotten turned around” explanation to spare the feelings of his girlfriend Ocean who is notably sensitive about issues of human cruelty to marine life. The imaginary chief of pinkhouse police says the are no plans for a criminal investigation, citing lack of funds and manpower. Meanwhile, an imaginary aquatic psychologist insist that it is mostly likely the crab took his own life, stating that suicide is always a shelfish act.