Adam stars Hugh Dancy as a young man with Asperger's Syndrome who must learn to live on his own after his father passes away. He falls in love with his upstairs neighbor, Beth (Rose Byrne), and slowly begins to find his way in society, haltingly and unsuccessfully most of the time, though. I can't say that I particularly enjoyed this film, because except for the inclusion of the Asperger's Syndrome, there's nothing really new here. It's a quirky independent movie with quirky independent character types. You're likely seen this film before, just with a different issue that what Adam has. Dancy is good, much better than, say, Dustin Hoffman was in Rain Man. Where Hoffman was all gestures and tics as an autistic adult, Dancy is very subtle and sweet (really). However, I'm not sure that his performance is truly substantial enough to recommend watching the entire film.
All About Steve was a waste of time and money, frankly. I went with a friend because, as he put it, "it looks funny from the trailer." Whatever jokes were in this film must have all appeared in the trailer. Sandra Bullock--who needs some career advice and fast--plays a woman who creates crossword puzzles for a living (well, as much a living as you can have living at home with your parents and making a little money from crosswords). She goes on a date with a local TV cameraman, the vastly underused Bradley Cooper, and thinks they are destined to be together after he tries to brush her off too politely. She has a little trouble with reality, I suppose. Thomas Haden Church is a lot of fun to watch as the reporter Cooper works with regularly, but he seems to be in his own movie at times. Avoid this film at all costs unless you want to see how a movie turns the incident of a dozen deaf children falling into a well into comic fodder.
District 9 was one of my favorite movies of the summer. An alien spaceship gets stuck over South Africa, and rather than exterminate the aliens, the government decides to restrict them to one slum area, the District 9 of the title. A government agent, played by Sharlto Copley, shows up with the troops to help relocate the aliens, many of whom do not want to leave. One, in particular, wants to stay because he thinks he has almost found the secret to reviving the engine of the mothership. Through an odd series of events, the agent becomes infected with an alien chemical and begins turning into one of the "prawns," as the aliens are known. Yes, I realize the allegory is pretty heavy-handed for those of us trained to find allegory, but I have a sense that most of the people leaving the theater never caught on to the racial and ethnic politics underpinning this film. I'm not always a fan of science fiction movies, but District 9 is compelling, particularly for the performance of Copley as the frantic human trying to make some short of connection with the aliens with whom he now shares DNA and for the documentary style the film makers have used here. The visual effects blend smoothly into the hand-held camera work to make us feel like we are witnessing an actual news story.
(500) Days of Summer has two things working in its favor. It has a clever structure, going back and forth in time to show different days in a relationship between a young man and woman who work in the same office where greeting cards are created. And it has Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the male lead. Otherwise, if you put the story elements in chronological order, you'd have a fairly pedestrian love plot and a really vicious portrayal of a young woman named Summer (Zooey Deschanel) who breaks, seemingly maliciously, the heart of Gordon-Levitt's Tom. I've admired Gordon-Levitt's work in Mysterious Skin and Brick, and he's very good in this film as well. Too bad the film doesn't really rise to the level of his performance. It's just too mean to its female lead to make you fall in love with it.
Inglourious Basterds was the most fun I've had at the movies all year. Quentin Tarantino's latest film is an intriguing experiment in alternative history. What if Hitler and the highest ranking Nazis were killed before the end of the war? The movie takes place primarily in Occupied France and features a gange of pretty ruthless Nazi hunters led by Brad Pitt as Lt. Aldo Raine. Pitt seems to be having a blast in this role, and it's good to see him enjoying acting (more so than he did in that tiring The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). To attempt to summarize a Tarantino movie is really a fruitless exercise, so let me concentrate on two aspects of the movie. The first is the acting of Christoph Waltz as Col. Hans Landa. What a find this guy is. Multi-lingual and hugely talented, he's spellbinding whenever he's on the screen. The rest of the cast, including director Eli Roth as one of Raines' crew, are uniformly good too. And then there's the music. Does anyone have a better ear for music than Tarantino? In particular, his use of David Bowie's "Putting Out Fire" from the movie Cat People was brilliant. That scene alone should put an Oscar in Tarantino's hands next year. I wish more filmmakers were as audacious as Tarantino. We'd get to see a lot more interesting movies if they were.
Julie & Julia features two great performances from two great actresses. It's no surprise that Meryl Streep is at the peak of her considerable acting talent portraying chef Julia Child. Streep has such a joy that radiates through her in this part. How she's able to give one standout performance after another is a testament to her skill. She's quickly surpassing many of the greats (Davis, Garbo, Hepburn) in my esteem. The other performance, though, is equally good, and that's the one that has been most criticized. Amy Adams plays a bureaucrat who decides to cook all of the recipes in Child's book during one year. Adams is meant to represent a certain type of person in her generation: self-absorbed, prone to emotional outbursts if things go wrong. I think she nails the part and allows us to see the contrast between her Julie and Streep's Julia (and to see the many, many traits they have in common). A quick shout-out for Stanley Tucci as Child's husband Paul. If all of us had spouses that supportive and, frankly, that randy, we'd all be as happy as Child was.
Ponyo is an absolute delight. It's an animated film by the Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki (of Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle and My Neighbor Totoro fame), and it is just glorious in its use of color and action. The title character is a goldfish who meets by accident a little boy named Sosuke. So enamored does Ponyo become with him that she transforms into a little girl with wild red hair and a wild attitude to match. I mean, it's not every little girl who can run on top of the waves of a tsunami, but Ponyo can. She gains her powers from her father, Fujimoto, who is sort of a wizard trying to protect the sea creatures from the ill effects of mankind, and her mother, who is a sort of goddess of the sea. I know that all sounds strange, but this movie is so charming that you find yourself accepting the most remarkable of events as being possible. I'd have a tough time choosing between this film and Up as the best animated feature of the year so far. They are both such masterpieces and worth a second or third or even fourth viewing.
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