Fantastic Mr. Fox

Fantastic Mr. Fox is far and away my favorite movie of the year.  It was perfect in almost every way.

The writing was hilarious; the story was great — bunch of wild animals band together to defeat the evil farmers who are upset due to one fox’s (George Clooney) overactive ego.  There’s also the wonderful family dynamics… my favorite part being Ash’s numerous attempts to be seen as an athlete, primarily his bringing “some old trophy I won for being an athlete” to the dinner table.

The claymation was just gorgeous.  It provided a needed warmth with all of the underground scenes… not to mention the interesting camera work used in the film.

Alos, this must be George Clooney’s best role ever.  It struck the perfect balance between pretentiousness and likability.  Clooney always does pretentiousness well, but I don’t always like him — in this, I loved him.  As for Meryl Streep, I had to look up the character on IMDB.com because I thought the actress was terrific and I had no idea it was her — I know she’s a pro at accents, but I was a bit surprised that I couldn’t pick up it was her.  It’s kind of scary, but not that surprising, that she can do cartoon voice overs better than everyone.  And Jason Schwartzman… hilarious.

I could go on and on about this movie, but I’m not that good of a writer and I’ve already used every superlative I know to help describe this movie.

So, please rent it.  It’s the best movie I’ve seen in a long, long time.

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And if you’re interested, here’s the Adam’s Oscar scorecard…

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As you may know, I’m doing my own Oscar balloting this year since my opinion tends to better than the majority of the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (at least in my opinion).

Basically, I took the 8 highest grossing movies of 2009 and the 8 most well-reviewed films of 2009 (per Metacritic).  Then I watched them all and gave them scores based on Directing, Writing, Acting, Cinematography, and Editing (with Directing and Writing weighted 3x and Action weighted 2x).

Back in February I listed out the bottom 8, so here are 2-8 (I’m saving #1 for another post).

#8 — In the Loop (initial ranking: Metacritic #4) — In the Loop was such a surprise.  It is a brilliant political satire export from Britain, and it hits almost all the right notes.  I usually stray from political movies because they fabricate so much so the audience can stomach it.  In the Loop is both scary enough to be real and scary enough to turn your head.  It’s only real downfall was the overall story (war in the Middle East) which is somewhat tired in the post-Bush era, but it was one of only 3 movies which got a perfect score for dialogue, and you should watch it for this alone.  It also got bad marks for cinematography and editing, but who really cares with lines like, “Twelve thousand troops. But that’s not enough. That’s the amount that are going to die. And at the end of a war you need some soldiers left, really, or else it looks like you’ve lost.”

#7 — Up (initial ranking: highest grossing #5) — Up wasn’t my favorite Pixar creation.  But, it is cute, and it’s wonderfully made.  I just can’t stand Ed Asner.  I haven’t forgiven him since I saw him in a play a couple of years ago where he was playing a dying man and I thought he had actually died on stage (it was really awkward, I felt like the stage hands should have done something).

#6 — Star Trek (initial ranking: highest grossing #7) — It was such a surprise to see Star Trek and to like it!  I’ve never been a Trekkie, but this movie was fantastic.  The acting, the writing, the directing… it was all great.  I actually give huge props to the director, JJ Abrams.  I don’t know how you take a storied franchise like this, attempt to resurrect it, and actually come out with a great and enjoyable movie.  He used just the right balance of new and old, and he even brought back Spock in a scenario that wasn’t TOO hokey.

#5 — Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (initial ranking: highest grossing #3) — I loved this installment of Harry Potter.  If they had left out the “love” scenes between the kids, it probably would have been my #2 movie of the year.  I felt that David Yates directing was absolutely perfect and the visual feel of it all couldn’t have been better.  Aside from the dumb dialogue, the acting was, as usual, a bit mixed — as one would expect when you put pros like Michael Gambon and Alan Rickman up against Rupert Grint and Emma Watson.

#4 — Up in the Air (initial ranking: Metacritic #8) — Up in the Air was one of the movies that stayed with me for a long time.  We’ve all heard the coming-of-middle-age story before, but not with George Clooney!  I don’t even really like George Clooney, but he was great in this.  I’d never seen Anna Kendrick before, but I definitely hope I see a lot more of her.  I thought she was perfect.  Actually, the entire cast was perfect.  And the dialogue was fabulous.  Ultimately, I loved, loved, loved the ending.  It was real… which means it took my heart out, threw it on the ground, and stomped on it a few times.

#3 — An Education (initial ranking:  Metacritic #5) — For the record, the difference in score between An Education and Up in the Air is so infinitesimal, they should just be considered a tie.  Also, if I had to recommend one movie subjectively, I would recommend Up in the Air, but that’s mostly because “I loved, loved, loved the ending” of Up in the Air, while hating the ending of An Education in inverse proportion.  An Education’s ending was not real… which means it was happy.  However, on my technical merit score, An Education scored higher, and it really is quite a good movie, despite the failings of the last five minutes.  If Adam’s Oscars had Best Actor nominations, Carey Mulligan would most certainly be in the top two (with Meryl Streep of course).  Her performance was incredible… really incredible.

#2 — The Hurt Locker (initial ranking: Metacritic #1) — The funny thing about The Hurt Locker is that I probably wouldn’t recommend it to many people, and I definitely don’t want to see it again… but at the same time, it’s a nearly flawless film.  It’s only downfall is the story, which doesn’t have much depth — it’s a just a simple tale about a guy who is addicted to his own adrenaline and the bombs that keep that adrenaline pumping.  In fact, of the top 7 movies, The Hurt Locker scored the lowest in the “Story” category.  But, the other facets of the movie were so strong, it didn’t really matter.  Kathryn Bigelow deserves the Oscar for Best Director.  She did a truly fantastic job.  Visually, the movie was stunning.  It certainly felt like the Iraq I’ve read so much about, and just watching it made my throat parched.  Lastly, Jeremy Renner was great in the lead role, and I wish he weren’t so overshadowed by the director.

But, however great these movies were, they were not even close to number 1… coming soon.

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A few weeks ago I had this great idea to do a movie playoff.  I took the 8 highest grossing films and the 8 highest scoring Metacritic films and paired them up against each other.*

It turned out to be a dumb idea, but what it did do was allow me to watch movies in a more objective and critical way.

I created 5 categories and gave each movie a rating from 1-10 based on that scale.  The categories were direction, writing (sub-divided into story and dialogue), acting, cinematography, and editing.  Direction and writing were weighted 3x more than the other categories, and acting was weighted at 2x more.

I’ll start with the bottom 8:

#9 — Cove, The (initial ranking: Metacritic #6) — The Cove was a really well-made documentary about the annual dolphin killing in Japan.  It had more suspense than most Hitchcock movies, and they used some really interesting filming techniques.  However, for me it never answered some basic questions like why these dolphins were more valuable than cows or chickens.  Well, it tried to answer that question, and the best it could come up with was a seemingly-crazy guy who used to be on Flipper (yeah, that Flipper from the 60′s), fell in love with Flipper, and thinks dolphins are really smart — therefore we shouldn’t kill them.  There’s also way too much ethnocentrism and lack of cultural understanding for my taste.

#10 — Still Walking (initial ranking: Metacritic #2) — Still Walking is a Japanese film about people with daddy issues.  It pretty much runs like any movie with people with daddy issues.  It’s well made, but the pacing is torturous.

#11 — Avatar (initial ranking: highest grossing #1) — Where does on start with Avatar?  It would be too painful to start with the script.  It would be too mean to start with the acting.  I know… the special effects were awesome!  Avatar is an awful, awful movie wrapped in shiny paper.  But, I did really like the paper.

#12 — Blind Side, The (initial ranking: highest grossing #8) — First of all, if Sandra Bullock wins an Oscar for this movie, I will be so eternally pissed I might look favorably upon Julia Roberts winning over Ellen Burstyn and Laura Linney in 2001.  As in all of her movies, she’s such a pleasure to watch, but she certainly doesn’t deserve any superlative that comes close to “best” on her resume.  Now that that’s out of the way… The Blind Side is not a good movie.  And by “not a good movie” I mean that it’s hokey and predictable.  So hokey and predictable, I cried in like 3 different parts.

#13 — Hangover, The (initial ranking: highest grossing #6) — This movie was just dumb.  It took from some really great “guy” movies like 40 Year Old Virgin and Forgetting Sarah Marshall and created a nightmare… like literally, a nightmare.

#14 — Goodbye Solo (initial ranking: Metacritic #3) — This movie has to be the biggest letdown of this project.  It got stellar reviews from almost everyone, and now I’m saying I’d actually rather re-watch The Hangover than sit through this predictable odd couple driving around town.  As I said on my Facebook page, “I hated it. I felt like Elaine watching The English Patient:  I can’t do this anymore, I can’t. It’s too long. Quit telling your stupid story… and just die already. DIE!”

#15 — Transformers (initial ranking: highest grossing #2) — Does it really need to be said why Transformers is a bad movie?  There are many reasons, but if you must have one, here you go — Michael Bay.

#16 — New Moon (initial ranking: highest grossing #4) — Congratulations go out to anyone who actually made it safely to the 130th minute.  I considered several options to end/forget things: jumping out my window, burning my computer, getting a lobotomy… but I finally decided that pressing Stop was the cheapest way to end the torment.

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*to be fair I didn’t exactly take the highest Metacritic movies.  I took the top 4 from “Limited Releases” and top 4 from “Wide Releases.”  I thought this was best given reviewers’ tendency to rate foreign films and documentaries very differently from more popular movies. Also, some movies were simply not available for me to watch — like Ponyo.

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