Judgement Day

PHOTO BY MOVIEWEB.COM

SUN SCREEN ’08

Brent: While I’ve been writing for the Sun for five years now, Mom and I have only been doing the Sun Screen gig since August. Prior to that, we didn’t see a movie every week, and we didn’t always see movies together, so there are some features this year that one, the other, or both of us have missed. The sad fact is that many of the most critically acclaimed movies of the year come to Santa Maria late—or never come at all. Hopefully, if the long-promised movie theater in the Town Center Mall finally materializes, we’ll get a little more variety.

The Best

Roberta: In Bruges—I want to tell everyone how good it is. Brent: If only she could pronounce the title. Roberta: The entire cast is great, especially Colin Farrell. When I heard he was in it I was like, “Okaaaaaay, I’ll watch it.” It was just so good, I was with him 100 percent. I think he’s great, brilliant, really amazingly wonderful, fantastic. He nailed it, and so did the guy who played his partner (Brendan Gleeson). The story is, they’re hitmen, and their boss puts them in this little town. They’re supposed to be on vacation between jobs, but they’re really there for other reasons … fantastic movie. It has everything: love, action, hysterical comedy, violence. It’s got a rhythm. It’s sad, but at the same time it’s fun and crazy. I highly recommend it. It’s probably my No. 1 movie of 2008, and I’d love to see it again. Anyone wanna see it with me? Brent: I do. She hasn’t stopped talking up this movie since she saw it. Another movie that combined humor, drama, and violence was Burn After Reading, which satirized the neurosis and paranoia of the world of espionage. In our review we both agreed that it was a hilarious example of the Coen brothers’ (directors of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Fargo, Raising Arizona) unique, quirky style of filmmaking. If you’re looking for something for the whole family, there’s Pixar’s WALL-E , which tells the story of a little trash-compacting robot who finds love with the sleek female ’bot EVE amid the detritus of a future Earth. What sets Pixar apart from other major animation studios is that they’re willing to experiment and take risks. WALL-E is a prime example, with its silent-film-inspired, nearly dialogue-free first act. The protagonist is essentially a pair of binoculars atop a metal crate, yet he’s one of the most expressive characters in recent memory, hearkening back to the sweet simplicity of classic cartoon character designs. The animation wizards at Pixar even managed to make WALL-E’s fairly realistic looking pet cockroach adorable. While the film has a satirical message about consumerism and environmental destruction, it’s certainly the most optimistic post-apocalyptic movie ever made. My only real criticism is that it loses focus on its lovable lead character around the climax, but it’s still a great film for all ages. Speaking of metal men, Iron Man was recommended to me by everyone from Mom to my editor, Ryan Miller, but I haven’t gotten around to seeing it yet. Roberta: Robert Downey, Jr. was great as Iron Man, very believable. He made the hero funny and witty, and he had a drinking problem, which was interesting. Battles are done with wit, yet they’re intense in how the combatants outwit each other. The interaction was fun, and you really were rooting for Iron Man. Delightful, fun movie. Iron Man is one of my heroes now. Brent: We split on another hero movie, Punisher: War Zone. She thought it was really fun, I didn’t—but we both had fun at the ABBA musical Mamma Mia!. Roberta: Wonderful, cheerful, bright. Every woman my age—middle age—should go see it, but I think everyone would like it. Brent: I liked it, and I’m a 27-year-old guy. Roberta: There was the excitement of Meryl Streep’s character seeing guys who came from her past, and the audience wondering which would be her daughter’s father. I came out of the theater very happy. It’s uplifting, like I wanted to dance right with her. I can’t wait to see it again.

The Worst Brent: M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening: Let’s start with the title. I can understand having a cryptic title in order to be mysterious (especially since this is Shyamalan) but come on—The Happening could apply to virtually any narrative film that has ever been made, since something happens in all of them. In this case, what’s “happening” is that crowds of people in the Northeastern United States are killing themselves, and nobody knows why. It’s not the parade of gratuitous gory death scenes that kill this movie, it’s the underdeveloped main characters and their marital problems. The biggest “Shyamalan twist” in this plot is that, just when the climax arrives, we’re suddenly expected to care about them. And I’ve ceased to care about the storyline of Anakin Skywalker, the future Darth Vader, which is revisited once again in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. It’s basically a 90-minute pilot episode for the Clone Wars TV series on Cartoon Network that somehow blasted its way into theaters. The film yielded a $4.75 rating from me at the time, for the novelty of seeing a “Saturday morning” cartoon on the big screen. However, now that I’ve seen how dull the TV series is, it somehow makes the movie seem even worse. But what really earned the film a spot on this list is that it introduced the character of Ahsoka Tano into the Star Wars canon. The Jedi Council assigned her to Anakin Skywalker as an apprentice, but that’s just a cover—her real mission seems to be bringing the tween girl Hanna Montana demographic to the Star Wars side of the merchandising force. Roberta: Ditto. And you’re even braver than me if you watched the series. After that movie, you wouldn’t catch me doing that. Brent: Hey, it was animated—I had to at least try it. Mom, you saw another George Lucas franchise this summer, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Roberta: I think I’m one of the few people who thought it was just action upon action. I told a friend what I thought, and he said, “Wow! You just don’t get it.” He loved it so, so much, but I wasn’t entertained. It only had a few good moments for me. Brent: For a long time, my lowest-rated movie of 2008 was the comedy The House Bunny. The writers of Legally Blonde (2001) penned this inferior self-ripoff about an airheaded Playboy Bunny who gets kicked out of the mansion on her 30th birthday, and lands a job as the house mother of a misfit college sorority. What puts House Bunny several hops below the merely mediocre comedies of 2008 are the sorority girl characters. They seem to have escaped from a bad SNL sketch, and while such sketches seem to go on for 90 minutes, this movie actually does! House Bunny was replaced in my lowest-rated slot only last week by The Day the Earth Stood Still. I asked Mom (who rated even lower than I did) whether she thought it was one of the worst films of the year, and 
she said: Roberta: It was so boring, it wasn’t even worth hating it.

Brent M. Parker is a writer, artist, and aspiring animated filmmaker. Roberta Slutske is his proud mother who taught him everything he knows. Contact them at mail@santamariasun.com.