Moneyball is about baseball and one of my favorite things is baseball and sports movies are a guilty pleasure of mine. Moneyball tells the story of the 2002 Oakland A’s and their General Manager Billy Beane and his use of Sabermetrics. While the movie has a baseball theme, the movie really explores Beane’s attempt to have some type of success after being a failure as a baseball player.


Drive is a beautiful mess. The cast is top notch, filmed in a style that keeps you watching, and violent. Drive is violent, very violent at times, but done in such a way that it almost operatic. Ryan Gosling is brilliant in the cold calculated stunt drive and Carey Mulligan is gorgeous. Drive is so good at times, it is easily one of the best films. It does have some awkward dialog at times. Mmmmmhmmmm.


Action. Action. Action. That is pretty much what Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol has going for it. That isn’t a bad thing, the action is great, especially if you see the movie in IMAX. The sequences filmed at the Burj Khalifa (tallest building in the world) in Dubai is amazing and vertigo inducing. The entire cast is top notch including the always great Simon Pegg. Go see it in IMAX and buy some popcorn and enjoy.


Source Code came out a while ago, but still provide a great experience. Source Code plays out as a interesting present day sci-fi film by Duncan Jones (David Bowie’s son). Some parts The Matrix and Run Lola Run, it has you repeating the same sequence in attempt to solve the puzzle.


I’m a huge Conan fan, but this movie kinda change my opinion of him, for better or worse. The guy is crazy and kind of a jerk. I’m sure if you are in his inner circle, you understand his humor, but Conan is somewhat delusional and sad. Always putting himself and his staff down. A very interesting look as one of the funnier comedian of the last decade.


My only foreign film on the list, I Saw The Devil is a violent, gory, revenge film. Much like Drive, this film if gorgeously shot, each shot is brilliant, but the film is easily one of the more violent movies I have ever seen. Add the fact that the main villain is Choi Min-shik known for his role in the movie Oldboy, it makes it even more creepy. Well worth watching, but you have been warned about the content.


Super 8 was one of the more enjoyable movies I saw all year. It is a 80′s homage taking notes from classics such as E.T., Stand By Me, and The Goonies. As someone who grew up on these movies Super 8 hit all the same notes of silly kids doing crazy things under unthinkable circumstances and in the end triumphing over impossible odds.


What were some of the movies you enjoyed in 2011?

The Hobbit is just a year away. Start counting down.

JJ Abrams homage to Steven Spielberg is a quality movie that harkens back to some of those great kids movies of the 1980′s (Flight of the Navigator, Explorers, The Goonies) with more explosions. The characters and the pacing are right on par with your kids involved in extraordinary circumstances and triumph in the end. It was nice to see real kids play the roles in a movie not scared of being more mature for kids, which is where memories of E.T., The Goonies, and other kid movies of the 80′s really hit home. This isn’t a kids movie like iCarly or Diary Of A Wimpy Kid. It is dark. The kids swear. People die. Nothing graphic, though it does have tense moments due to your typical Hollywood magic (movie gets quiet and there  is a monster and loud sound!). The first hour or so of the movie is strong and feels much like JAWS. Abrams paces the film well not letting you see the monster, but the last 30 minutes fall flat. In the confrontation between the lead character and the monster (this kid is stronger then everyone thinks) he just yells at the monster and they have a heartfelt chat telepathically that the monster should just go home, not kill him and his friends, and should just go home. Which is what happens.

Overall Super 8 is offspring of someone who watched E.T. and JAWS too many times. While the ending leaves a little to be desired, the overall film is worth seeing.

With all the snow the local Blockbust had almost everything rented, so I fired up Comcast OnDemand and combed around to see the entire Back to the Future Trilogy in HD.  I have seen these movies countless times over the years, but not all three in a single night.  They are fairly silly, but I have to give the writers credit for paying attention to detail.  Christopher Lloyd is insane in this role, and I really can’t imagine Marty being Eric Stoltz at all.

I picked up the BBC mini series Planet Earth on Bluray and it is amazing.  If you have a HDTV and a Bluray player, you must do yourself a favor and buy it now.  It is truely amazing to watch.  The detail is jaw dropping, and seeing nature in such scale that is almost looks fake.

So I got the chance to watch Max Payne recently and I couldn’t even finish it.  The movie was just painful to watch.  As a fan of the games, I was surprised how poor the transition to film was.  The story went no place for me, I finally turned it off.  Also Mila Kunis was just painful in this role.  I’d avoid this movie.

The film is a great departure from David Fincher previous body of work.  This was just a crime drama, and not the mind twist that Fincher has previously done with The Game and Seven.  The attention to detail in the time period is striking and really has a excellent visual style to it without even noticing it.  Many aspects are subtle but greatly effective in making the movie quite tense at moments.

The movie also had an excellent cast including Jake Gyllenhaal as Graysmith, Robert Downey Jr. as Paul Avery the crime reporter at the SF Chronicle, and Mark Ruffalo as Inspector David Toschi.  All of them give great performances especially Downey Jr, as he always does.  Gyllenhall really plays the part of this noble naive eagle scout perfectly.  At times you can see the boyhood curiosity in his eyes through the film, which then turns into a downward spiral of obsession losing everything including his marriage and children.

Probably the one major problem with the movie is the length, at almost 2 hours and 40 minutes.  It keeps going and going.  While it is full of some amazing insight and information and some great story telling through film, it does drag for about the last 30 minutes.  There are some spots that really could have fallen on the editing room floor.

Overall it was a great true crime movies.  If you are interested in shows like Dominick Dunne’s Power Privliege and Justice, L.A. Confidential,  The Black Dahlia, or Summer of Sam, you might want to check out Zodiac when it comes out on DVD in a couple months.