We are two days into the new year and I’ve already seen two new movies: Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and Charlie Wilson’s War. I went to the latter because I didn’t have to work a full day today and the RMV didn’t take as long as I thought to get my new Mass license (woot!). The picture is awful… Anyway, here’s some thoughts on both of these fine films.
SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t seen these two movies and are planning to, don’t read this. You know I don’t like to hold back my thoughts. 🙂 This especially applies to Charlie Wilson’s War as I basically give away the entire ending.
Walk Hard: I think I’d vote this as the funniest movie of the year and the funniest Judd Apatow (sp?) movie out there for consumption. It perfectly parodies musical biopics and the rock n’ roll genre, from early Buddy Holly days to late Patridge Family. John C. Reilly is an amazing actor with a fantastic voice and even if you haven’t seen Ray or Walk the Line, the two main targets of this comedy, you will enjoy it just because of Reilly. There are also about a million cameos in this thing. I found Ed Helms and Paul Rudd to be the funniest ones, though I am biased. 🙂 The songs are really great also. They are funny and very offensive at times but they also stay true to whatever time period they are supposed to be from and come out as decent songs. ITunes has the extended album for $15.99 and it is definitely worth it. The whole movie is. All of you should see it. Beware: there is a lot of nudity in it and not just from the women.
Charlie Wilson’s War: I had intended to go see Atonement but as this movie was starting sooner and my mother had recently seen it and liked it, I gave it a shot. It’s an odd movie. Not the best movie I’ve ever seen, but incredibly thought-provoking and very well acted. Why Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts haven’t worked together before this is a mystery because they had wicked chemistry. So, the movie is about this congressman who, with the strong persuasion of a conservative Texas woman with money, works with CIA covert operations to get modern military weapons to the refugee camps in Northern Afghanistan during the Cold War to use against the Soviet aggressors. The movie was written by Aaron Sorkin and his stamp is all over the film. There’s shots taken at religion and for most of the film, overwhelming patriotism and the belief that America is actually a goodly nation that only cares about doing the right thing is, at times, downright sickening. ‘Cause what you are watching in the film is how the U.S. gave Afghanistan the weapons and the motivation to fight against us. 90% of the movie feels cliched and way too rose-glassy about America. And then you get the last 5 minutes of the movie that completely reverses all of those ideas. Charlie Wilson does come up with the plan and the means to give the refugees weapons and that does push out the Russians from Afghanistan. But that is where is power stopped. One of the last scenes of the movie shows Wilson trying to persuade his fellow congressmen to allocate one million dollars to rebuilding the schools in Afghanistan after Philip Seymour Hoffman shows Wilson the dangers of destroying the country and not staying to rebuild it. Of course, Congress doesn’t go for this. The very end is a black screen with a quote from the actual Charlie Wilson saying something like “We did a good thing and then fucked up the end game.” It was a good little twist to reality that made the movie much more relavent to today. Very hard movie to watch as there was lots of carnage happening. Was good though and I would recommend it. Beware: there is a lot of nudity in it and not just from the women. Tom Hanks is not as thin as he used to be. I still like him though.
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Three Months\' Time 