JimBell Blog

I spend a lot of time and effort chosing movies to watcfh. My motto is LIfe is too short to watch poor movies. But . . . here are the worst ten movies I saw this year.

2 Days in Paris (2007)

Review: April 12

12:08 East of Bucharest (2007)

Review: April 21

I’m Not There (2007)

Review: August 7

The Other Boleyn Girl (2008)

Reivew: August 9

In Bruges (2008)

Review: Sept 24

No Reservations (2007)

Review: Sept 1

Flight of the Red Balloon (2007)

Review: Sept 30

The New World (2005)

Review: Sept 30

Bound (1996)

Review: Oct 9

Still Life (2006/2008)

Review: Dec 18

Marley and Me (2008) is a disappointment. First, it is not a comedy. Oh, yes, you may think it is because the post calls it a comedy, Internet Movie Database labels it “Comedy,” the stars Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston are usually seen in comedies, and the 2005 book was funny . . . but as James Berardinelli’s critic’s caption says, “Three hankies, minimum.” The ending had people in the theatre sobbing. Second, in the book Marley and Me, the author and his family learned lots of life lessons from having “the world’s worst dog,” but in the movie they put up with a dog that destroys their property. Worse, the emotional bond the family establishes with the crazy yellow Lab is taken for granted, but most people would not be able to stand such a dog. Third, while the whole point of Marley is that he is like no other dog, the family in the movie is the opposite—a cookie cutter Hollywood family. Thus, while the 22 dogs playing Marley age realistically, Wilson and Aniston look exactly the same at 40 as they did 15 years and three kids earlier. Finally, the ending to the movie—very different from the ending to the book—is so bad that the first thing I did when I got home from the cinema was to look up who wrote the screenplay--Scott Frank, a respected and successful Hollywood screenwriter who has written some good stuff (Dead Again; The Lookout) and done many respected adaptations of books (Out of Sight; Get Shorty). Well, he and his writing partner Don Roos blew it here! The movie ends with a long, protracted, three-plus hankie death—Marley slowing down, grinding to a halt, kids crying, parents distraught, and finally the long slow deathbed scene when the owner says good-bye to his old friend and the vet pumps in the lethal drug. The end. But the ending in real life and in the book is much better. After Marley dies, the family happens to see an ad in the paper one day for a rascally dog the owners cannot handle. It sounds like the dog has the same psychiatric problems Marley did, the same craziness, the same energy, the same irrepressible zest for life. It is profound—and profoundly happy—that Marley’s old family decides without hesitation to adopt the dog.

Under discussion:

The Visitor  (2008)

The central theme of Tom McCarthy’s top-notch film, The Visitor (2008), is a burnt-out, 62-year old professor recovering his appetite for life when he stumbles upon and befriends two illegal immigrants in his New York apartment. Professor Walter Vale’s (Richard Jenkins) slowly coming out of his shell is handled deftly and does not follow a predictable arc. If you think everyone is going to live happily ever after, you don’t know the realism of director and writer Tom McCarthy’s film. The young Syrian drummer, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), is jovial and charming until a misunderstanding on the subway lands him in a detention center facing deportation. And then things get worse and better simultaneously.

The more high profile theme is the terrible way the Immigration Department treats illegal aliens post-9/11. But here, the argument is skewed and unfair. While the detention center is stark, the immigration officials uncaring bureaucrats, and the entire process gut-wrenching, we only get incomplete glimpses of why, some years ago, Tarek and his mother were not granted refugee status. Tarek’s father spent time in a Syrian prison for something he wrote in his newspaper, and two months after his release, he died. His wife and son went to the USA and asked for refugee status. That’s all we know. There is nothing in that information that would give them a very good chance of being granted refugee status, and they were not. So, yes, many heart-breaking things happen to Tarek and the people around him, and, yes, the Immigration Department looks heartless, but Tarek and his mother probably had a fair hearing that refused them asylum, a probability the film all but buries.

I really liked the film because the characters and their interactions were superbly drawn. But you would not like the film if you don’t like small-scale dramas, or if you cannot identify with a burned-out, old, white, male professor, or if you want a scathing instead of subtle condemnation of “the system,” or if you want an undeniably happy ending. I found the characters memorable and affecting, and I enjoyed spending time with them at a turning point in their lives.