Bob Nims' Blog

Guy Ritchey’s latest film looks amazing compared to any of his previous ones (“Snatch”, “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”).  I know that most of it was green screen, but the illusion was very convincing.  Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law inhabit the characters of Holmes and Watson and give them a brash tone that Ritchey specializes in.  The plot of this movie is too obscure to include here – suffice to say that it provides the perfect excuse for the principals to do what they do best.  The dialog is snappy and the action is as well.  Those who pay attention will catch the setup at the end for the sequel(s) that will undoubtedly ensue.  Jack Sparrow has nothing on ol’ Sherlock!  This film will do very well this weekend (12/25/2009).  The theater I saw this in had it on 3 screens and the venue I was in was packed for the 1:30 PM showing.

I am still reading the book. Picked it up at Wegman’s after hearing the “Fresh Air” interviews with Walter Kirn (author) and Jason Reitman (director). Reitman makes some constructive changes to film the story, part of which were necessitated by the fact that the book came out before 9/11 and a number of details acssociated with air travel had to be updated.

I’m not even half way through the book as I write this, soI may ammend this review later.  But I wanted to post this while last night’s screening is fresh in my mind. I caught the 7:20 PM showing at the Pittsford Cinema (#8).  The sound was not quite right, but passable.  The print seemed pale and soft. It could have been brighter.

The story is about Ryan Bingham, a road-warrior who travels endlessy across country stopping only to perform “dismissal services” for a host of companies who are in the midst of downsizing. In other words, he fires people. He leads a very spare existence, having mastered the art of air travel in ways only someone who needs to avoid personal entanglements can even hope to achieve.  We don’t know much about Ryan, only that he doesn’t really have a “home” and that last year he was travelling 322 days and earned 300,000 frequent flyer miles.  His goal is 10 million and he’s close.

Clooney seems perfectly cast in this role.  The company he works for is really doing well thanks to the bad economy, but they bring everyone to their headquarters to announce that they will soon be converting to video conferencing for the termination interviews instead of the traditional face-to-face.  Ryan is adamant in his objection and spars with the newly-hired Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) .  His boss directs her to accompany him on his next trip to learn the ropes from “the master”.

Watching Clooney’s character interact with Natalie provides us with a lot more information about how he became who he is, but more importantly, we see him begin to change and open up in ways he was reluctant to before.  During this road trip he meets Alex (Vera Farmiga) and the couple has a lot in common, each being road warriors for a number of years.  There is real chemistry between them; they compare their schedules and arrange future meetings – he even takes her to his sister’s wedding as his “plus one”.  

From the Fresh Air interview, I learned that a number of those who appear in the film as terminated employees were actual recently-unemployed people.  Don’t expect to be able to tell which ones unless you know them personally.  The filmmaking is first rate.  Jason Reitman, son of Ivan Reitman (“Stripes”, “Ghostbusters”, “Dave”, etc.) gave us “Juno” last year and “Thank You For Smoking” in 2005, does a wonderful job of pulling the elements together and striking just the right tone so, that when the time comes for Clooney to give what amounts to his best performance on film, it comes across perfectly. 

I strongly recommend this film.

Saw “Avatar” in IMAX 3D yesterday. It was the most amazing use of 3D and CGI I have seen to date. But it started out as a good story. The writing and casting further strengthens it, but the visualization takes it to an entirely new level. I won’t try to summarize the film’s plot here.  I strongly recommend that those who plan to see it, be sure to see it in 3D. There are a lot of things on the screen during the intense action sequences. Cameron makes good use of 3D to help the audience follow many of those intricate details. In 2D, they might be hard to detect;  the extra depth makes it crystal clear. I’ll probably see this film several times in the coming weeks – not because I couldn’t figure it out the first time, but because I want to study some of the details that I took for granted during my first viewing.

Latest from director Jim Sheridan (“In America”) starring Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman and Sam Sheppard. This film may contain the career-best performances of each of these accomplished performers. It tells the story of two quite different brothers, one a successful Marine Officer Sam (Maguire), the other Tom, a loser (Gyllenhaal) just getting out on parole for a robbery.    Sam has requested to be re-deployed to Afghanistan and his helicopter crashes during a mission.  When his family is notified of his death, Tom takes it upon himself to help his brother’s family through the pain and, in doing so,  makes significant progress in getting his own life in better shape.  The most traumatic scenes in this film occur in Alfghanistan where we see that Sam, along with one of his men has been captured by the enemy and forced to witness and perform some truly horrific things.  Sam is finally returned to his family, but he is haunted by those experiences and it places an impossible burden on everyone.

I reccomend this film.  I expect to see nominations for many of the performances at Oscar time.