no clue movie review: Lots of Sunshine at the 2007 Independent Spririt Awards

I just finished watching the 2007 Independent Spirit Awards and Little Miss Sunshine was a big winner. The awards ceremony hosted by Sarah Silverman was carried Live on IFC. There will also be an edited version of the show on AMC later tonight.

You can see who the nominees were and who the winners were and much more at the spirit awards website. I'm going to use my blog to give some mini-reviews of the movies that I enjoyed watching the most during the voting process for this year's ISA. But first, here's who I voted for.

BEST FEATURE - Half Nelson
BEST FIRST FEATURE - Day Night Day Night
JOHN CASSAVETES AWARD - Chalk
BEST DIRECTOR - Ryan Fleck (Half Nelson)
BEST SCREENPLAY - Jason Reitman (Thank You For Smoking)
BEST FIRST SCREENPLAY - Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck (Half Nelson)
BEST FEMALE LEAD - Catherine O'Hara (For Your Consideration)
BEST MALE LEAD - Ryan Gosling (Half Nelson)
BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE - Amber Tamblyn (Stephanie Daley)
BEST SUPPORTING MALE - Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine)
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY - Guillermo Navarro (Pan's Labyrinth)
BEST DOCUMENTARY - You're Gonna Miss Me
BEST FOREIGN FILM - Days Of Glory

I must admit that I didn't get to watch all the movies that were nominated, but I did my best to watch as many as possible.

One film that was nominated I gave a full review to earlier in the year. Click here for the review for "Thank You for Smoking". It's got a great script and was very funny. Aaron Eckhardt is fantastic.

And now, the mini - reviews:

Little Miss Sunshine: Great movie about a crazy dysfunctional family going on a road trip to a beauty pageant for young beauty queen Olive. Reminded me of a little kid pageant that my parents took us to once. We were so not right for the thing, but it was a fun time. Not sure why we went, it was called Cutest Kids or something. This movie made me laugh so hard. It has an outstanding cast and a fantastic ensemble performance. It is a movie with sad characters each trying hard to cope with their life's dreams, failures, etc. But it's also a movie about family. And how a family pulls together and no one loves you like your family. Did I mention it was hilarious.

Half Nelson: An amazingly well done movie about a teacher who is struggling with watching one of his students possibly fall into a world of dealing drugs, a world he lives in as an addict. Ryan Gosling leads the film with a career defining performance. He's amazing. He is great in a lot of movies, but in this film he really gets to shine showing many different sides to this greatly flawed character. It's a great movie and deserves to be watched. Even though at times it's terribly difficult to do so.

Chalk: This is a very funny movie about teachers. It's shot in documentary style and looks very improvised, by a great number of very funny very talented writers/actors. It gives you the low-down on teacher politics, bickering in the teachers lounge and even one teacher's crusade to be named Teacher of the Year. This is a fantastic movie. It was also a welcome respite from some of the heavy handed films that I was watching for this year's voting process. It's not been released theatrically or on DVD that I know of, but join their mailing list and get the details on when it comes out.

For Your Consideration: What else do I need to say? A Christopher Guest Film about a film that gets early Oscar nomination buzz. Fantasticly Funny. It's out on DVD now.

Stephanie Daley: This wasn't a great movie. Overall. This was an interesting movie about teen pregnancy and its effects on this one individual girl. You see Stephanie Daley is the name of the character in the movie that is charged with killing her newborn child while on a high school ski trip. This is a heavy movie, but the performance of Amber Tamblyn is not to be missed. She's incredibly convincing in this role. It blew me away. She was just so good as this scared girl, not wanting to really admit to herself what was happening even as her body is going through these incredible changes. This movie is going to get some sort of theatrical release in the next few months and will come out on DVD after that. Seek it out just to see this incredible performance and make the judgement on the movie yourself.

You're Gonna Miss Me: The documentary category is usually filled with political films and statement pieces for the Sprirt Awards. But, this film took me by surprise. It's a documenatry about a fallen rock star into a state of mental breakdown due to drugs and quite possible family history. It makes no judgements, but tells a fantastic story about Roky Ericson. He's a member of a 1960's rock band 13th Floor Elevators. The movie is really interesting to watch and the music is utterly fantastic. A stand-out rock documentary.

Pan's Labyrinth: This movie was described to me as an adult fairytale. It's really a movie about war, family, struggle with good and evil and one girl's escape to a fantasty world. This movie is so well shot and has amazing images. It's really worth going to see. It has subtitles yes, but ignore those and just let the images tell you the story. It's a great experience.

I normally don't want to talk about movies that I hated, but I feel a need to tell you about a movie which I feel destroyed itself. It's called "Sorry, Haters". The movie stars Robyn Wright Penn as a woman who is hurt after 9/11 and is an emotional mess. The movie becomes a portrait of her as a tortured soul, but the movie ends amounting her to nothing more than a common psychopath. I feel this movie just killed itself and makes itself about nothing. I think the movie wastes an amazing performance by Robyn Wright Penn who is a fantastic actress. Watch it if you want, it's out on DVD, but I hated this movie with a passion that I can't fully explain.

On that note, that sums up my 2007 Independent Spirit Awards posting. I hope to have more movie reviews for you coming up soon. I'm definitely watching flicks, just don't always have times to write about them.

I'll post my oscar picks next.

no clue movie review: Nacho Libre

I must admit from the trailers I'd seen, I figured this movie would be a laugh riot. I also just assume that seeing Jack Black on screen will compel me to laugh histerically. Add to this director Jared Hess, of Napoleon Dynamite fame, and I was really expecting to just roar. Unfortunately, this movie didn't live up to expectations. It was fun, funny at times, but not a hilariously funny movie as I expected.

This movie features Jack Black as Nacho, a friar in an orphanage, who also serves as the cook. He is enamored with a new nun and wishes to become one of the famous Luchadores (wrestlers). Nacho goes around for food for the orphans, rarely having any type of ingredients, and then goes off to wrestle at night. He gets money for the orphans and feeds them more than the slop that they've been getting. There are many funny scenes mostly belonging to Black. The other actors do a fine job, but none of them are really breakouts. None of them has the quality of a new actor that I would love to see in another movie either.

The movie has the look of a lower budget movie which is fine. It fit with the locale and the story. But since the cinematography and the acting aren't really what it's for, it needs to be really funny. Many of the funny scenes that you saw in the trailers are there and make you laugh hard. But the movie was missing many of the big belly laughs that I so desperatley needed to be able to recommend this movie. In fact many of the really funny parts are really bathroom type of humor, which wasn't overused I don't think, so it's pretty funny.

To sum it all up, the movie has some funny spots and overall left me with a good feeling. It's not a big laugh fest like I thought, so I would recommend waiting on video for this one. Maybe it will be funnier sitting in my living room, rather than a big movie theater.

For more information, visit the official site

Got comments or suggestions? email me

Come back soon for more, until then I'll try to watch as many movies as possible....without going broke....

no clue movie review: Brick

I saw this movie a few weeks back and I must say that I was pleasantly surprised and confounded at the same time. It's a different type of movie to watch and it's worth seeing for its original vision. Hats off to the filmmakers, because I would never have thought of this one.

Directed by Rian Johnson, the movie is essentially a detective story. It's told in that detective style "i met this dame..." sort of way, but it's set in modern times in a high school setting. I think setting it in a high school actually helps to get this story going and bring you into this world of drugs, underworld dealings and the like. It's a familiar setting and high school has its share of clicks. It's also what throws you off, because the language doesn't seem to fit the characters at all. I thought it would be more of a creepy movie, but it's not. It's really just a guy, Brendan, played by Joseph-Gordon Levitt ("3rd Rock from the Sun", Mysterious Skin), looking for this girl who he found was killed. He had cared for her and they had dated previously before the film started. What's really kind of clever though, is that the kids in this world, really function almost without any adults and they are acting like the old time adults like a Humphrey Bogart kind of character.

The movie looks fantastic and was shot really well. The camera work is inventive and serves the story in a great way. I was truly impressed since in a lot of independent films, the camera work or sound isn't that great. This movie really stands out in this respect. The camera work helps to create the aura of the movie and I think complements the movie as a whole. It almost acts as a character at times.

The actors are all respectable and do a fine job. The cast is quite large for an independent movie and Gordon-Levitt has a ton of screen time which must of been demanding. He really carries the movie. Other actors that you may know are Lukas Haas, Emilie De Ravin ("Lost") and Richard Roundtree. A stand out among the newcomers for me was Nora Zehetner. She's a real find and plays the femme fatale character really well. She's sexy, dangerous and also a girl next door at times.

All in all, I found the movie to be uneven. At times, it seemed to drag and just got a bit weird when we found out more about "the pin" and "the brick". But it was entertaining and I feel for the inventiveness alone, it's worth checking out. I'm curious to see what the filmmaker does next.

For more information, visit the official site

Got comments or suggestions? email me

Come back soon for more, until then I'll probably be at a movie....