THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I love Ebert as well.  He can highlight well-made movies without being elitist - no mean feat for a movie critic.  Turned me on to Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans which I just saw and loved, probably my favourite movie of the year.

Neeson is an immense acting talent and Ebert’s reviews are generally spot on.  I’ve trusted him ever since he gave “The Rock” a strong review.

I like rotten tomatoes, but it needs to be adjusted for the person.  I’ve been thinking about doing a system for adjusting the number based on plot.

Something like
Action movie - Add 10 points
Comedy - Add 10 points
Historical - subtract 10 points
Set in Iraq - subtract 20 points
Good reviews based on “strong visuals” - subtract 10

etc.  Doing things like this, I can predict the movies I’m going to like pretty well.

I’m not a huge fan of Ebert; he’s an excellent writer, but we tend to disagree at times.  (I prefer James Berardinelli at http://www.reelviews.net.)

But I agree with you on Neeson, and Taken.  The former is an underrated actor, and the latter was a blast to watch.

I agree 100% with your assessment of the movie.  It is a good mind-numbing action movie which is entertaining if that’s all you are looking for that evening.  Otherwise it is a pretty bad movie.  Not a bad script or bad acting (like, say, The Happening), but just a generic action movie which has very little plausibility (like lots of action movies) and a very vanilla script.

I am somewhat of a movie buff, so I’ll briefly comment on the movies I have seen recently:

Men who Stare At Goats - didn’t work at all.  Pretty good acting, with somewhat of a cute script, but the plot went nowhere.  C-

2012 - Sort of the same thing as Taken.  Good action, good special effects, acting or script wasn’t terrible, but pretty much a bad yet entertaining movie with very little plausibility - almost a parody on plausibility.  B-

4th Kind - fairly entertaining, no-name actors who did a decent job.  Decent idea and decent script.  I would give it a B- but I am going to make it a C+ because the claims of most of it being “true” were pure B.S.

Paranormal - terrible movie. Nothing else to say.  Some people like it because there were 2 or 3 parts that lasted a few seconds that scare you, like when your friend jumps out in front of you and says, “Boo!” F.

The Blind Side - true story.  Very good.  A little clicheish, but emotional and uplifting and pretty good acting.  A good movie to take your kids to, which is rare these days.  A-.

Law Abiding Citizen - Walked out on it after half an hour, which I rarely do (the only other one I can remember recently is Nacho Libre).  I spoke to several people who said that it was actually good if I gave it a chance, so I won’t rate it.

Haven’t seen some of the other new ones, like Twilight, Ninja Assassin, Old Dogs, and Brothers.

I liked Blind Side also, I thought it was truly fantastic (and a little bit clichey).  I also really enjoyed A Serious Man, but I think you have to be Jewish to really like that movie.

Saying The Blind Side is a little bit cliche is like saying Ryan Howard swings and misses at pitches sometimes.

If you haven’t read the book, I would highly recommend it.  Seeing the movie gave me a new-found respect for it - and I’m typically one who likes movies better than their paper counterparts.  The movie is so ridiculously over the top in every single possible way.

I count cheesiness in terms of how many times I grimace and cringe during a movie.  Miracle, a Disney movie for pete’s sake, had two cringe moments (I forget one, but the other was “MIKE ERUZIONE, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA”, which by the way never happened).  Rocky Balboa was written by Sylvester Stallone, and only had two cringe moments (again, I forget one, but the other was “Ay yo, didn’t our forefathers sign some piece of paper in here?").  The Blind Side had at least a dozen cringe moments… and that’s not including if you count the stupid expression the actor playing Oher had on his face the entire time, or the entire ridiculous, essentially fabricated, character that was the Tuohy’s young son.

Show me a middle school career assessment that gives you a percentile mark for “protective instinct” and I’ll take back everything I just wrote.

"The Haunting” was a pretty lousy movie that Liam was in. He hasn’t missed to often though. I had to look it up.

Oh, and Lian is playing Hannibal Smith in the A-team movie coming out next year. Should be interesting…

"Oh, and Lian is playing Hannibal Smith in the A-team movie coming out next year. Should be interesting…”

Maybe the actor who portrayed Oher in The Blind Side can play Mr. T!  He would have to be a tad more animated though.

I think Quinton “Rampage” Jackson is playing Mr. T - any other MMA fans out there?

Agreed wholeheartedly regarding Neeson. He is one of my favorite actors.

This Luc Besson film’s success is also noteworthy considering that, for an action flick shot on two continents, it was made on a modest $30M budget. “Taken” ultimately grossed over $220M, not including DVD sales.

After Hollywood’s recent attempts to push anti-war films down our throats (they all bombed, IIRC), it was a treat to see such a top-shelf actor play a CIA operative, who must take on the corrupt bureaucracy as well as gangsters (no Miranda rights uttered!) in order to free his daughter. (And, of course, it didn’t hurt to have Uncle Rico play one of Neeson’s Agency buddies!)

MGL, my girlfriend and I saw “The Happening” in theaters, and we both kept asking the other if we should leave. We didn’t because we assumed that at some point in the two hours a single interesting thing (outside of some neat ways characters died) would happen. We were wrong. We now joke that it should be called “The Nothing’s Happening.” It’s not that we need shoot-em-up action, but I’m sorry, when a mild breeze is the movie’s antagonist…

As for Ebert, I almost always agree with him. At the very least, I always see his point even if I’m sometimes not with him all the way. Usually, when I disagree, I don’t have any real objective arguments and it’s a matter of taste and I can accept that. I HATE when people say “Oh, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I always love what he hates and vice versa.” My response “Well, then, you probably have horrible opinions on movies.” Sure enough, these are the types of people who love “Dude, Where’s My Car?” and think “The Shawshank Redemption” is “too long” or something.

To those people I say this: Ebert LOVES Groundhog Day. If you don’t agree with him that Groundhog Day is marvelous, well, then, we have nothing more to discuss in this world.

The Happening was without a doubt the worst movie I have ever seen, other than a “throwaway” movie like Nacho Libre. I lost all respect for M. Night and whoever allowed that movie to be made and then released.  While not a particularly good actor, I generally like Wahlberg and his movies, but that film was a complete disaster on every level, and M. Night should be ashamed of himself or he simply has no shame.  Then again, to write that kind of crap evinces some level of non-talent or at least a non-awareness of what is a good or bad (terrible in this case) movie.

JD:  That’s funny, since “The Nothing’s Happening” was my name for “The Village.” Did M. Night actually manage to make an even worse film?

As a Chicago guy, I’ve been reading Ebert for 30 years. IMO, he’s a knowledable guy who tends to give proportionately too many positive reviews, relative to other serious reviewers, because he simply loves movies. Whether you prefer that depends on your movie ‘replacement level’. His is low, like that of BPro. Mine is higher.  I go to the theater for few films nowadays, and I only want the postseason types--the .600 teams (oops, movies).

I much prefer the wisdom of crowds approach to movies, as exemplified by Rotten Tomatoes. Ebert has his say there, but so do many others. I have tried to find other reviewers who agree with me on my favorite films. But I’ve found little correlation on other films. So, don’t depend on Ebert or any other individual to be a good guide. Look at the overall consensus, and then filter it thru your own preferences.

As far as Taken, what’s the fuss. It was an OK action movie, but nothing more…

Ryan, I actually thought “The Village” was decent, and it was far better than “The Happening.” The Village at least had some suspense, though I didn’t realize the twist was a twist (because I thought it was a secluded modern community that still had old-fashioned ways from the get-go).

Here’s the entire plot of “The Happening” in one sentence: People start killing themselves in droves, Wahlberg and his people flee in a panic, eventually realize trees are making people off themselves because we’re mean to the environment, and in the end the trees stop killing people for no discernible reason - but wait, it’s not over because now trees are killing people in other countries.” Seriously, that’s the movie. There are a couple neat ways people die if you’re into the “Final Destination” sort of thing, but even those were tame compared to the FD movies.

MGL, I’ve heard that the movie we saw was actually a complete rewrite of the script. What I find funny is that after the initial negative reviews came out, M. Night started saying he was making a B-movie. Here’s the problem: The movie isn’t campy or silly or laughably bad. There’s no quotable lines or anything fun at all about it. I can get into some bad 80s B movies, but this is not that.