In August of 2010, I made a list of the movies I had to see before the end of the year after reading Entertainment Weekly’s Fall/Winter movie preview edition. I ranked 15 films in order. #1 was Ben Affleck’s
The Town, which has turned out to be my favorite movie (as of 2011). #2 was
Buried, which starred Ryan Reynolds. This movie, which I did not see in the theatre, was one of the biggest wastes of two hours of my life. And #3 was
The Company Men, which starred 4 Academy Award winners. The release date of
The Company Men kept getting pushed back further and further, and while its limited release date was in very late December, the vast majority didn’t have a chance to see it until 2011. By then, my list had changed based on the Oscar Buzz and the lukewarm reviews of
The Company Men. I finally was able to check the movie out on Netflix. Based on the film I had seen since my initial list,
The Company Men would have still made the top 15, but it would have been closer to the 12-15 range rather than the 1-3 range. To further digress into my poor list,
Little Fockers was #4,
Unstoppable #5, and
The American #6. The movies I liked most were
The Social Network (initially #7) and
Blue Valentine (initially #8).
The Fighter (initially #10),
127 Hours (initially #11),
Love & Other Drugs (initially #13), as well as
True Grit,
Rabbit Hole,
Black Swan, and
The King’s Speech (both of which I did not even rank).
Continue reading The Company Men (2010) →
Eastern Promises was David Cronenberg’s follow-up to his critically acclaimed breakout directorial hit, 2005’s A History of Violence. A History of Violence was a bit overrated, and William Hurt receiving a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination for his ten minutes of screen time was a bit of a joke. However, Viggo Mortenson was terrific in his role in that movie, and his work in Eastern Promises is stellar.
The American starring George Clooney (Michael Clayton, 
Roger Ebert said it best in his review of Crazy Heart about lead actor Jeff Bridges’ performance when he said, “The notion of a broke-down, boozy country singer is an archetype in pop culture. We’ve seen this story before. The difference is, Bad Blake makes us believe it happened to him.” It’s such a simple statement, but so true. Bridges (Tron, The Big Lebowski) gives the performance of his legendary career and, rightfully so, his first Academy Award win. He is the highlight of a very good, albeit flawed, movie.
It is hard to add a lot of new insight to a movie that has been reviewed thousands upon thousands of times and is liked so much that it is ranked #46 in the AFI’s Top 100 List of Greatest Movies. With that said, most reviews of A Clockwork Orange were written in 1971, when the movie was released. I watched this movie for the first time in 2011, 12 years after the death of its director, Stanley Kubrick (The Shining, Full Metal Jacket). To date, this will be the oldest movie that I have reviewed.